Why you should hire an editor for your manuscript

There's nothing much better than reading a great book. Unfortunately, even the best books can be cheapened by writing errors. It is demoralizing when readers return poorly written ebooks for refunds. In the past six months, I have returned a number of Kindle books for full refunds. The stories were excellent in most cases; however, the writing was not good enough for a published work.

Ebooks are not new; however, the sheer volume of indie ebooks has grown phenomenally over the past several years. Unfortunately, not all indie authors are careful about publishing a polished, error-free ebook. People all over the world have been reading professionally published print and digital books for years and years. Readers have been exposed to professionally edited publications their entire lives and this is the main standard of comparison. When you self-publish, your writing is judged by those commercial publishing standards.

It is never acceptable for books to exhibit a lack of writing expertise with errors in grammar, mechanics, or word choice. Incorrect homonym, homophone, apostrophe, and verb tense usage exhibits a serious lack of expertise in written language on the part of the writer. Sometimes writers decide to allow friends and/or family to proofread manuscripts and, frankly, this never works.

All indie authors should find a professional editor to proofread final manuscripts prior to publishing an ebook. Even so, editors are not all created equal. A good editor can correct all types of writing and language errors during the proofreading process. When an editor is not well-versed in written language, the result is a self-published book that reflects poorly on the writer.

Communities of Practice: Formative Assessment

Regardless of the type of assessment used, some common criteria need to be included in all. These assessments should all be research-driven; students may use the learning resources and textbook in the course, and/or they may locate outside relevant sources to use as evidence in demonstrating their mastery of the concepts. Other common criteria are academic/professional writing and correct citing of sources within their assessment projects. In all subject matter courses, students need to be held to high academic writing and documentation standards.

Students are all different in the way they learn and the way in which they explain concepts to others.  When students produce an assignment for assessment, they are, in effect, explaining concepts to their faculty, who, will grade their attempt at demonstrating mastery of the content. It stands to reason, that assessment projects should be different throughout the course. Taking it a step further, doesn’t it also make sense that each unit of study include multiple choices in types of assessments students may use to show mastery? In my course observations, I have seen those in which there is the traditionally-formatted weekly discussion, homework copied from the textbook chapter, and a short essay every week. Students in classes like this have no opportunity to use their strongest learning and communication skills in demonstrating mastery of the course content. In fact, I would go so far as to say that these types of assessments do not show any understanding whatsoever of the course content.

Find out more about how Creating Communities of Practice can recharge your teaching and ensure students' success in class 

Get out of Grading Jail

“Grading Jail” refers to the long and frustrating hours spent grading papers. Grading takes more time than any other part of teaching. Teaching is the easy, fun, and rewarding element of education. Administrative chores are distasteful but usually not too time-consuming. Grading, however, is not only time-consuming, but also frustrating and stressful.

Grading discussions, essays, and other written work takes a lot of time without an effective system. Using the tools and strategies outlined in this short ebook, I’ve worked out a system that allows me to grade approximately fifty essays in about 5-6 hours and the same number of research papers in about 10-12 hours. This includes comprehensive feedback and personalized comments on every paper. Students always mention on course evaluations how much they appreciate my thorough suggestions, corrections, and comments on all their work. They like getting their assignments back so fast so they can use that feedback to better prepare for the next assignments.

Students want substantive feedback on their work and they want it fast. My usual practice is to return work within 24 hours of due dates. If I happen to have more than two classes with the same research paper due dates, then it might take me 48 hours. I like getting all the grading finished by the end of the first and second day of the week because that leaves me more time to interact with students in the discussions and individually via email or online text chat.

Writing comments on students' work takes time and reflection. It is so much easier to use the "bouta" method (bouta A, bouta B, and so forth). More faculty than you might imagine use this method of grading and do not bother to include comments on students’ work to explain grades. In one graduate course, the professor put a B on a twenty page case study with the following comment: “The content is good but you need to learn to use APA correctly.” That was it – nothing more.

Giving meaningful feedback to students about their work is a huge part of teaching and learning.  I am very nitpicky about writing and APA so I write a lot of comments throughout the paper about writing or using and citing sources properly. I also write questions here and there about content because students need to think more creatively and critically. They can figure out what works best without being told what to do. I always write a paragraph summarizing my reflections about the work.

Check out Grading Made Fast and Easy for tips on how to get out of grading jail fast.