Implementing Revise and Resubmit for Students

When we were young, we learned through a different kind of revise and resubmit — trial and error. If we wanted to learn something, we maybe took lessons, which today mostly entails watching YouTube videos rather than having a coach or teacher. Those lessons are followed by trying and probably failing, then figuring out what went wrong and how to do it better. Any skill takes practice. Of course, we don’t have time to let students try over and over again, but we can at least give them an opportunity for a “do-over.”

In a previous article on this topic, I mentioned that implementing an opportunity to revise and resubmit made grading easier. That might seem counterintuitive, given that it would mean grading more assignments since you would be grading the same assignment from a student more than once. The key is to reconsider how you grade, and I suggest using a system similar to one typically used by journals for assessing manuscripts.

Keep It Simple

When you submit a manuscript to a journal, it is assessed (reviewed) by an editor and/or reviewers. If a journal were to use a grading system like we typically use for student assignments, and it were to require an A or 95% to be accepted for publication, you would probably find that there is little meaningful difference between an 89 and a 91. And the method employed by the journal editor would likely be complicated and subjective. For students, however, the difference between an 89 and 91 can mean a major difference in grade.

Fortunately, most journals do not use a point or grading system. Instead, the editor assigns one of a few categories, for example: accept; minor revisions; major revisions; and reject. Along with the category, you receive (hopefully) extensive feedback. The categories give you some idea about the extent of revision that is necessary. To implement revise and resubmit in the classroom, you want to use something similar.

There are many ways to do this besides the manuscript categories. In one example, Alexis Wiggins describes using standards-based grading for writing assignments, marking them as “Publishable,” “Revisable,” and “Redo.” I have been using specifications (“specs”) grading for several years, which is similar to standards-based grading. Rather than letter grades or points, I assign “Good,” “Good Enough,” or “Revise.”

Learn from My Mistakes

It took time to settle on these specific terms. Initially I had just two categories – “Satisfactory” and “Unsatisfactory.” This did not work out as planned. Students found the label “Unsatisfactory” to be demoralizing, especially if it only needed minor revisions. So, the next semester I changed to “Good” and “Not Good Enough.” But that was probably worse. So, I changed again the following semester to “Good” and “Redo.” This was better, but the word “redo” made students feel even more anxious and stressed. It suggested to them that they had to start over, which was not what I intended. I just wanted them to improve their work by rewriting sections or adding more detail, etc.

I experimented with extending the categories to include “Excellent” to distinguish students that really went above and beyond the requirements. But then students all felt disappointed if they didn’t get “Excellent.” So, I switched it from “Excellent” and “Good” as the top two categories to “Good” and “Good Enough” as the top two. The latter was for the papers that were just barely meeting the specifications of the rubric but could have been better. “Good Enough” was treated the same as “Good” in terms of final grades and thus did not require any revision. This category allowed me to provide some guidance as to how they could do better on future assignments, which was beneficial for both the students and me. Papers that were “Good” needed only minimal feedback. For the “bottom” category, I settled on “Revise,” based on the idea of Revise and Resubmit for manuscripts. These categories and labels worked as intended – simplified grading, communicated clearly, reduced stress and anxiety from grades (not just for the students, but for me too), and were by far the most positively received by students.

You don’t have to completely change the way you compute grades. This can still be used in a points system, which is useful when using an LMS. One way to do it is to assign “Good” as an A or 100%, “Good Enough” as anything from a C to A- or 70-95%, though I kept it to 90 or 95%. Revise should be much less than “Good Enough” to encourage them to make the revisions to their work – something like one-half of whatever “Good” or “Good Enough” is worth – but not so little that they feel that revising would be too daunting, so I suggest between 25 – 50%. This isn’t the only way to do it. For example, Alexis Wiggens uses “Publishable” (an A), “Revisable” (B+ to D-), and “Redo” (F).

Tips for Getting Started

I don’t recommend jumping in headfirst and fully implementing this into your syllabus (trust me). But you can implement it on a limited basis. Here are some ideas for how to do so.

• John Orlando, Ph.D. suggests that instead of extra credit, let students revise and resubmit a previous assignment. This better ensures that the student meets the learning objective.
• Use it for the very first assignment of the semester. This will help students at least better understand what you look for when grading. In this case, it will be important to give plenty of feedback for all categories.
• Apply it to the one thing that students absolutely have to learn/master in the class.
• Make sure to use a well-specified rubric to help students see where exactly they need to improve and to make grading easier for yourself.

If you have used something similar or even completely different, feel free to share your experience in the comments section.