Tips for grading less / faster?

Hi all,

One of my biggest weaknesses is grading on time. I know - it's terrible. And every semester I make changes to my classes that are supposed to help me return grades faster. Here's what I have already implemented into my repertoire:

  1. very specific blackboard rubrics to shave time writing long explanations.
  2. truncated "reading response" assignments to be low-stakes and quick grading (5 minutes turnaround to read, grade, and leave a comment)
  3. TRIED to limit the number of assignments however I'm fighting against the idea of having major assignments take too much credit (I'm finding 20% is a max for a 4-credit course, which means at least 3 major assignments sprinkled with quizzes and reading responses).
  4. I have implemented blackboard multiple choice quizzes as much as I can (I'm really good at those - I make mine open-book, open-google, open-everything, almost unlimited amount of time, and averaging an unlimited number of attempts, and students still have a nice bell curve. It's not insanely hard, I just write quizzes that ensure students paid attention to understand the questions)
  5. Tried to abide by my colleague's helpful advice that for a class of 20 students, it should take me as much time to grade an assignment for the class as it took one student to complete it. If a student takes 30 minutes to complete a reading response blog post, then it should take me 30 minutes to grade that assignment for the entire class.
  6. I've tried to be proactive in designing a spreadsheet that will calculate how much time I'll be spending on grading every week, against how much time I've allocated for grading in my schedule. Right now, if everything goes perfectly well (I keep to my colleague's advice above AND nothing unexpected happens), then I'm at equilibrium! One week I may be at a negative, but the next week I might be at a positive, and I have a large deficit going into Spring Break and the week before final grades are due, but I'm okay with that.

Because I know that the unexpected will happen, and that I'll have to complete a self-evaluation for my yearly review, I am looking for more tips to minimize grading time.

As it is, for my 16 credit load (two 4 credit courses and four 2-credit courses) I have allocated 12 hours each week for grading. I'd like to push that down to 10 hrs each week for grading.

(I teach 14 hours each week, and have allocated the other 16 hours each week to office hours, administrative stuff, meetings, and "prep". I can't just work later hours because my 40 hrs / week already assumes I'm working from 9pm - 12 or 1am because I pick-up and drop-off my kids for school and I make the weeknight dinners.)

ANY OTHER TIPS for trying to plan and organize my life to minimize grading?

Thanks.