Grading written projects: What approaches do students find most helpful?

Conscientious marketing faculty spend extensive hours grading student essays and projects. As instructors work on grading papers, they may wonder how effective their comments are. The author explored how students in a marketing principles class reported their use of various grading methods. Students generally preferred rubrics with ratings and accompanying comments and indicated that they used comments to understand their grades and also to improve their writing. Students appreciated feedback on what they did well on projects and how they could have improved. (Contains 3 tables.)