Rosen's blog

The Teaching Record

Rosen — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:50:23 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

In the Learning Record, I tell my students, change is a requirement. If you don’t change, you fail. The Learning Record, an alternative grading system designed by Professor Peg Syverson at UT, provides the structure for monitoring change and the vocabulary for describing it, thereby aiding students in their process of self evaluation. The six dimensions of learning describe six ways to change: in knowledge and understanding, acquiring new vocabulary and conceptual frameworks; in skills and strategies, adopting new practices of reading, writing, learning; in confidence and independence, replacing passivity with initiative; in creativity and originality, attempting the unexpected; in use of prior and emerging experience, applying know-how to new situations; in reflection, looking back to place work in the broader context of learning, learning in the broader context of a holistic understanding. With six ways to change, it’s fair to say that if you don’t, you fail.

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Besides, I believe that change is a requirement for success inside and outside of the classroom. This semester, inside the classroom, I’m fulfilling that requirement by using the Learning Record to monitor my own progress as a teacher. Like my students, I began the semester by writing a reflection on my prior experience, my established skills and strengths, and my concerns and goals for this class. As the semester advances, I make weekly observations on my teaching. And now, at midterm, I look back and provide an interim evaluation. The “Teaching Record” has been a welcome and productive addition to my teaching practice as it helps me direct change, self evaluate for my teaching portfolio, and make productive use of my after-class thoughts and feelings.

At my midterm reflection and evaluation, I notice that some goals I set initially have fallen by the wayside. While I wrote early on that I aimed to “get the best out of every student,” I realize now that I can push further some class members who are largely silent during discussion. Furthermore, I notice that this unmet goals lines up exactly with the student feedback on my teaching I’ve received. When I met with students individually at midterm, some complained that a few students don’t participate, and asked me to do more work to include all. As I move forward in the second half of the term, the Teaching Record has helped me identify where to focus productive changes, and helped me realize that I’ve created a classroom where my students and I share a vision of the ideal discussion dynamic (even if I haven’t yet created that ideal).

At the end of term, just like my students, I’ll repeat this process: reflecting on the entire semester, noting where I’ve met my goals and what I’ve changed, and evaluating my development as a teacher. This final review will not only help me understand what has happened in this class, it will also be useful for the purposes of building my teaching portfolio. My end-of-semester Teaching Record can serve as a standalone self-evaluation and as notes towards revising my teaching statement.

In the meantime, the Teaching Record serves as a productive outlet for all my post-class thoughts and feelings. An electrifying discussion, or a flat one, can hold my attention long after class ends. The Teaching Record gives me a place to focus that attention: in writing a brief observation and reflection on the day’s meeting, theorizing its outcomes, and noting what I’d like to repeat or change next time.

One of the most rewarding parts of the Learning Record is seeing a student really take control of their development, taking it exactly where they need it to go. I see this as a student’s observations accumulate, as they exceed requirements, as they get more creative and more committed. When the Learning Record really works, a student becomes one of his own best teachers; his teacher becomes a collaborator. Now that I’m working with the Teaching Record, I’m changing the ways I’m teaching myself, and becoming a better student of pedagogy.

Digital Midterm

Rosen — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:05:05 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

David Bonner

In the week or two before Spring Break, it’s customary for lab chit-chat to turn towards what we look forward to on break. This spring, as my colleagues told me how they anticipated getting out of town or getting some writing done, I told them that I was looking forward to my students’ midterm. “I’ve never given a midterm,” was the repeated response. Before this semester, neither had I. So I’ve decided to write here about why I gave the midterm and how I used the Lab resources to enhance it.

The midterm I gave was a standard open-book essay exam. Students were required to write one essay in which they advocated a position, engaged the position in one foundational article, and incorporated three additional sources from our reading list. The essay prompt was available to them from day one (it was printed in the syllabus) and students were allowed to refer to the required readings, as well as any notes they made in their course-pack, during the exam. (The complete Digital Midterm lesson plan is available on the DWRL site.)

One major reason behind my midterm was my own curiosity. I often incorporate in-class writing so students have a low-stakes context in which to explore their ideas through writing and to synthesize major ideas, concepts, and connections of the course. I believe that these writing assignments allow students to grasp major trends in the course and that they better prepare them to move forward with the material. But I never get to see the writing assignments. Part of the “low-stakes context” is the promise that students don’t have to turn the work in — or show it anyone, although they’re often asked to speak afterwards, using the writing as an aid to their spoken response.

The midterm gave me a chance to see how students were synthesizing ideas, grasping major trends, and understanding the course concept. My curiosity was satisfied. Students put texts together in interesting and unexpected ways, using several readings to support their own arguments, or using one text to support their reading of another. Furthermore, they consistently demonstrated that they understood the basic argument of the course, “Health Rhetoric”: that “health” is a problematic term in argument because rhetors agree on its value but not on its definition. And students supported (or complicated) that argument in a variety of fascinating ways.

Another reason I gave the midterm was to let students craft a written argument earlier in the semester. In my syllabus, students complete several writing assignments — a summary, a rhetorical analysis, a synthesis, a bibliography, a proposal — before they finally write a persuasive argument in their final paper. However, I often encourage students to argue for their positions in class discussion, and I wanted to give them a chance to do that in writing before the semester’s final weeks.

As I fielded questions the week before the midterm, I realized that the prompt was confusing to students, precisely because it asked them to write an original persuasive argument — something they had not done before. They needed extra explanation and encouragement to employ the rhetorical figures and appeals we had been analyzing. But that explanation and encouragement paid off in their writing. They made strong cases for their positions, using the appeals and figures they had studied appropriately and to great effect.

Although my midterm was similar to every essay exam I’ve proctored as a Teaching Assistant or taken as a student, I modified the template in one important respect: no Blue Books. I had students write their essays on the Lab computers. They were therefore able to revise, or at least edit, on the fly and submit more polished, better organized writing. This system also eliminated the grading bias that I know I’m subject to when I read a barely legible student essay. Every essay looked the same. I believe that this made the midterm grades more objective. And it certainly made me better enjoy reading them over my Spring Break.

On the day of the exam, students arrived in class to find a printed midterm prompt in front of each lab computer. They logged on and opened the word processor (opening other programs or using a web browser would result in a failing grade). And they printed and stapled their finished exam essay for me before they left. Some students will need accommodations or prefer Blue Books. I had a private conversation with a student who has a learning disability; I gave them the option to write the essay by hand (they chose to do so). I also made an announcement that anyone with a legitimate reason for preferring a Blue Book instead of the word processor could see privately me to make that request. In my class, no one did.

Overall, the midterm was a success. The grades were high, the essays were interesting and well-written, and the students took the process very seriously. I didn’t realize, when I included the exam on my syllabus, how much a midterm would mean to the undergrads. I got the sense, however, that the inclusion of a midterm gave my course more weight in their minds. On the one hand, it took up more of their study time and gave them more anxiety. On the other, the studying and anxiety led to quality writing, though which they came to a fuller understanding of what the course is about and why it is important. This is what made the midterm most worthwhile. By synthesizing ideas through writing in a high-stakes context, my students “got it” fairly early on in the semester. And having done that, I’d like to think they especially enjoyed their Spring Break.

Distributed Peer Review

Rosen — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:54:34 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

via Teaching Community

What is the purpose of peer review? Whom is it meant to benefit?

Over my years of teaching Rhetoric and Writing, I have learned through repeated student feedback that peer review (student-generated feedback on student writing) doesn’t work. My students tell me their peers are “too nice” or “too vague” and that they prefer “more teacher feedback” since I’m the one “giving them a grade.” In the past I’ve tried to fight this trend with highly specific and focused peer review instructions, to improve the quality of student-generated feedback But lately I’ve shifted my focus from the peer review benefits for the “reviewee” to the benefits for the “reviewer.” I’ve cut out the feedback stage of peer review for one major assignment because I’ve realized that the greatest benefit of peer review can actually be exposure to other student writing and the recognition—and incorporation—of successful writing strategies.

I have come to this realization by encouraging public writing on a class blog. In my Rhetoric of Health class, we use a class blog as the repository for most major writing assignments, including a research summary, a rhetorical analysis, and a persuasive essay. By the time we get to our second unit and our second assignment—the rhetorical analysis—the blog already has an archive of material, and students are already accustomed to posting on and following it. (See my Distributed Peer Review lesson plan for more information.) When they write their rhetorical analyses, rather than trade papers with one partner, students post their papers (as blog posts) for all to see. Furthermore, students have staggered due dates for these blog posts, so most students get the chance to read several student examples of the assignment before they even begin their own. As students read each others’ posts in order to leave required comments, they begin to notice how their peers have handled the assignment and which strategies are more successful. To encourage this kind of recognition, we spend some time in class examining those different strategies.

For example, one day we took a sample of blog posts to examine different types of introductions. The five posts due that day had used three different kinds of introductions: some students had offered an anecdote, some had provided background information, some had introduced a problem. We used these student examples to begin a discussion of the advantages and uses of each type of introduction. For instance, we noted that an introduction with a personal anecdote can quickly establish the writer’s ethos as someone close to, and passionate about, the issue at hand. We then used this conversation as a spring board to consider other types of introductions, and their respective advantages and uses. And this in-class discussion reinforced what most of the students had already realized: that they could learn from each other’s writing.

As the unit progressed, I saw student writing consistently improve, due to simple exposure to many examples and from active experimentation with strategies that students saw working in their peers’ work. One obvious disadvantage of this plan is that some students will have the benefit of reading many student examples before they write their rhetorical analysis, while some will see few or none. But this disadvantage could be mitigated by giving the stronger writer earlier due dates or, as I did, giving all students the option to revise their work at any time during the unit. This organic, distributed peer review resulted in improved writing across my entire class. And no one told me that peer review “wasn’t working” or that their peers’ feedback “wasn’t helpful.” They weren’t getting feedback; they were generating it and applying it to their own writing.

Teaching Ethos with No Impact Man

Rosen — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:32:11 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

Jimmy Gardner

This semester I’ve had my students teach each other key terms and concepts in rhetoric during weekly student presentations. After each presentation, I plan an activity designed to put the concepts just learned into practice, often using a text I provide or one from their research projects. I designed one such activity on “Ethos in No Impact Man” with specific attention to problems former students have had with ethical appeals. Because many students wrote incomplete analyses of rhetorical appeals, I provided guided questions which elucidated three main parts of successful rhetorical analysis. Because some students misunderstood altogether the concept of rhetorical appeal, I put students in groups so that any major questions could be answered by a classmate. And because students sometimes struggled with texts that made less explicit rhetorical appeals, I provided a text which makes many obvious ethical appeals (so many that, although each group was only assigned a two-page excerpt, no group had trouble finding examples).

These activities are often a lively portion of our class meetings, so students were already enthused when they settled down to the task. I was pleased to find that groups worked well together and stayed focused for the ten minutes they were given. The guiding questions, plus the assignment to synthesize their findings in a few sentences, gave them plenty to do. Furthermore, the fact that their sentences would go on a wiki page being projected on a screen for all the class to see kept their writing at a high level.

The most interesting part of this exercise was the presentation at the end, in which each group read its findings aloud for the class. Because everyone was analyzing the ethos of the same author, hearing all the groups’ findings yielded a very thorough and complete sense of Beavan’s ethos in this chapter and the purpose that ethos serves for the arguments he makes in his book. Sharing our findings this way also showed students how they could build up a more sophisticated understanding of an author’s ethos in their own analyses (in their essays) by analyzing multiple examples of ethical appeals in the same text.

This activity, fairly simple in assignment and structure, was successful precisely because of its repetitiveness and accumulation. Students need to hear many examples of good rhetorical analysis in order to understand how to write such analysis, just as they need a demonstration that the quantity of evidence can actually change the quality of the claims it supports.

Successful Student Writing

Rosen — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:10:11 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

4shared

Students come to Rhetoric 306 without much writing experience. Some students even come to RHE 306 fresh out of high school. The novelty of the college classroom, coupled with the fast pace of writing assignments in our course design, can make even confident writers newly wary in this course. As an instructor, I combat this with low stakes writing practice and by drawing attention to successful student writing, when my students produce it.

After reading the first major student essay assignment, I invariably notice that several students have struggled with some of the same elements. This may be a sign that I did not effectively teach that element, that they came in with misconceptions about it, or that it simply takes more practice. In any case, this difficulty needs to be addressed in class before my students revise their essays for its required second submission.

But when reading all the student essays, I also notice that some students have excelled in the very same elements that others faltered in. Therefore, I thought it best to show my class examples of classmates’ successful writing to model these difficult elements. For example, many students cited “experts” without explaining who those people were. So I pulled a few sentences that succeeded in introducing quotes by explaining exactly who said them (and why we should listen to that person). Our in-class activity using these student writing examples is described in my lesson plan.

When students were given examples of their classmates’ best writing, they usually found exactly what I had hoped they’d find. If I gave them the example from above, they would notice, “This student provided background info about the authority she cites.” And if they had enough time, they found even more successful elements within the same example, such as “She introduces the quote clearly and correctly in her sentence.” This proved to me, and the students, that they could recognize good writing. And it proved to students whose examples I’d pulled (about half the class) that they could already produce it.

My students struggled slightly with the next part of the assignment. They were meant to translate their observation about successful writing into a concrete piece of writing advice (in the form of an imperative sentence) for the rest of the class. For the example above, they were expected to write, “Provide background info about the person you quote so your reader knows why to trust them.” However, some students misunderstood this task and tried instead to craft a piece of advice for the student whose writing they had been given. That is, they started looking for something wrong with the writing—after they had already found what was successful in it. I caught the student groups who misunderstood this task and redirected their work. This was an opportunity for me to remind them that not all student writing is only worthy of critique. Some of it can serve as a model for others and is worthy of praise.