Caring comments

In Chapter 16, Bean addresses the extremely difficult (in my opinion) task of writing comments on students’ papers. I would prefer to only conference with students in response to papers, however, time does not allow me such a luxury. I appreciated and already do (with varying degrees of success) much of what was recommended in this chapter. If I could choose one area in which to improve (and which I have been working on for the last two years) it would be in my marginal comments. I have a colleague, whom I shall refer to as Prof. X, who is a MASTER at writing amazing marginal comments, and I aspire to be at least half as communicative, positive and open in my comments. In part, I think that the platform (Google Docs) he uses allows for more inter-action between author and commenter, to respond to each others’ comments. Often times, Prof. X phrases comments like this “What I hear you saying is _______. Is that what you meant?” In this way, his comments make clear that the author’s meaning was somewhat obscured, without saying anything which might be considered unkind or abrupt like “I don’t understand” or “point unclear”. Also, by asking questions in a format where students can actually RESPOND and get additional feedback from the professor is pretty amazing. Prof. X has responded to some of my work and we have frequently gone back and forth seven or eight comments deep in discussion about certain ideas. Does anyone else use a platform that allows similar back-and-forth between original author and commenters? What kinds of experiences have resulted?