Blogging Pedagogy - collaboration

Show Students Your Own Work

Aubrey Plourde — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 19:30:53 +0000

Author:

Aubri Plourde

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The best thing I did last semester was to show my students some of my own shitty writing. Previously, I had avoiding putting up any of my own work, not out of some kind of fear of student reactions, but because I didn't want to make the class all about me.

Still, about halfway through last semester, I got the impression my students were feeling all downtrodden and dismal about their writing. I wanted them to see that even though we grade "final" drafts, none of us, their teachers, think about writing purely in terms of product, either.

I'm a big fan of Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts," like Rhiannon, and of Theodore Cheney's Getting the Words Right. Cheney's book has been invaluable for teaching revision. So often, I lacked a vocabulary or even examples for the kinds of changes I wanted my students to make. Cheney provides all of that and more.

Several years ago, I performed an exercise Cheney suggests, which is to reduce the redundancies and weak constructions in my writing. I wanted my students to see that clarity is ruined by extraneous words. So, I sent them a few paragraphs of Cheney's prose, and I met them in class with a PowerPoint full of my own shitty paragraphs.

The first one went like this:

Original (164 words)

This advice, found in a letter Sarah Orne Jewett wrote to Willa Cather in 1908, defines Jewett’s purpose and style as an author. The quotation followed Jewett’s suggestion that Cather change the sex of a dying woman’s lover from male to female, but the piece of advice designed for Cather’s story also applies to Jewett’s fiction. The phrase “done it as yourself” suggests self-sufficiency and capability, both in the general sense and on the specific part of women in love. Jewett’s reference to a woman’s capability to love in a “protecting way,” a way most often assigned to men, illuminates her belief that women could love in a traditionally masculine manner. However, the implication of a woman that both protects and nurtures (“[cares] enough”) implies that a woman may not only love as a man loves but can love simultaneously as both genders. Jewett’s resulting work shows women performing both gender roles not in a muddled androgynous manner, but as stronger, more well-rounded women.

The following slide held a screen shot of my self-comments, labeling each instance of wordiness: redundancy, repetition, weak construction, unnecessary modifiers, and so on. I walked them through each instance, reading the sentence aloud and poking fun at myself and my undergraduate writing.

The revised version slide looked like this:

Revised (119 words)

This advice, written to Willa Cather in 1908, describes Jewett as an author. The quotation followed Jewett’s suggestion that Cather change the sex of a dying woman’s lover to female, but the advice designed for Cather’s story also applies to Jewett’s fiction. The phrase “done it as yourself” reveals the self-sufficiency and capability of women in love. Jewett’s reference to women loving in a “protecting way,” often assigned to men, illuminates her belief that women can love in traditionally masculine ways. The idea that women simultaneously protect and nurture (“[care] enough”) implies that women not only love as men love but can love simultaneously as both genders. Jewett’s work shows women performing gender roles not halfway, but androgynously.

No brilliance here, but the content isn't important so much as the sentence-level revisions. It also modeled a thesis statement that isn't a graduate-level argument, but is of upper-division undergraduate level.

I was struck, upon receiving my evaluations, that many of my students expressed their enthusiasm for seeing my own writing. I probably would have forgotten about it, honestly, but as I think back at their revision goals, I do think modeling revision for them worked far better than talking to them about revision. It feels uncomfortable, sure. You'll never catch me showing them part of a dissertation. And there's always this fear that they'll go, "She's not that good..." Ultimately, though, it cost me very little to humanize myself--a smill victory--and to demystify the process of writing for them--a much bigger one.

The Adapted Lesson Plan

Meredith Coffey — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 20:27:50 +0000

Author:

Meredith Coffey

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Photo by Meredith Coffey, 2009

I love borrowing and tweaking a good lesson plan to meet my own students’ needs. From my first formal teacher training, when I received an enormous binder of lesson plans ready to adapt, to the DWRL’s encouragement to check out its amazing database of lab member-generated plans, I’ve been lucky enough to have regular access to other teachers’ excellent ideas. After years of reworking others’ plans, however, I’ve only recently come to terms with the fact that there is just no set formula or foolproof way to make these adaptations work flawlessly—just like any lesson plan I invent on my own.

Let me give you just two of many possible examples. Last year, I attempted to use Cate Blouke’s plan for using Prezi to introduce the course syllabus. Following her instructions diligently, I reserved plenty of time to prepare a Prezi that reflected my own course’s guidelines. When the big day came, everyone’s introductions ran long, and with limited time to spare—horror of horrors, the Prezi would not play. I tried the link I’d emailed to myself; I tried opening it through my Prezi account; I tried different browsers. Failure.

Of course, this type of technology hiccup can happen under any circumstances, borrowed lesson plan or not, but somehow it had always seemed to me that if someone had done it before successfully, then it should work smoothly in my class, too. A seriously flawed assumption, I know. So, with no Prezi to show for all that preparation, I had to make that move with which every teacher is all too familiar—I had to come up with an entirely different plan on the spot. I promptly directed the students to review the syllabus in small groups and then present key information to the rest of the class. It wasn’t a terribly exciting icebreaker, but at least they had to learn some of each others’ names, read the syllabus closely, and speak just briefly in front of the class. My takeaway from that experience, then, was that even when you think you’re relying on a tried-and-true plan, you still have to remain able to adapt, and keep adapting, as circumstances require.

My second example comes from just a few weeks ago, when I was teaching Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and decided to borrow from Andy Uzendoski’s Lit Genius close reading activity. I followed his guidelines closely: before class, I added five passages from assigned short stories to Lit Genius; I broke them into five small groups, one to annotate each passage; and I had them present their annotations to the class. Overall, this exercise went extremely well. Several of the students were already familiar with Genius (particularly Rap Genius), and something about the digital format made creating annotations seem exciting and novel. Some groups went beyond the exercise’s requirements, adding images to their annotations, for instance. Indeed, it was popular enough that for a later presentation assignment, one group elected to use Lit Genius to share their work.

Once again, though, an unanticipated challenge arose. By and large, the groups spent much longer discussing and annotating their assigned passages than I’d anticipated. The posted lesson plan had warned that the activity could take one to two class periods, but I imagined that if we began right at the start of class, we could manage the complete exercise (one round of annotations, a round of mini-presentations, and another round of annotations of another group’s passage) in one seventy-five minute class period. As will probably not be surprising to readers of this post, this estimation turned out to be overly optimistic. I wound up extending the activity to the next class session, which was not ideal but was certainly doable.

This time around, I couldn’t pin the plan’s failure on a technology problem. Instead, it was an issue of my not having revised the plan sufficiently to meet my timeframe requirements. Even though I knew that the plan could potentially take up to two class sessions, I didn’t sufficiently limit the length of the excerpts, the close reading questions to ask, etc., to make it work for my particular group of students. Sticking closely to script made the exercise an overall success, but further work on my end to hone the plan would have made the execution go even more smoothly.

Of course, the amount of revision necessary to adapt to a lesson plan varies significantly. Sometimes plans turn out to be too short instead of too long (rarely my problem, but it happens!). Indeed, all sorts of challenges can arise while constructing or implementing a lesson plan. All this is to say that I remain a huge fan of adapting others’ lesson plans to work for my own classes—and sometimes sharing my own plans with others—but one of the many skills I continue to develop is that of the adaptation/revision process itself. Process over product, after all.

The Modified Jigsaw Classroom

Lindsey Gay — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 16:13:57 +0000

Author:

Lindsey Gay

Image Credit:

ACSD.org

Last spring I participated in a seminar through the Center for Teaching and Learning, and one of the biweekly sessions was on effective classroom organization. I resolved to try the Jigsaw Classroom model for my Fall 2013 class.

The Jigsaw Classroom is based on permanent student groups of around 4 students. More or fewer could work, though I've always liked the 4-person size. The basic idea is that the group members will work with each other throughout the semester. The advantages of this model are that activities retain some level of consistency, and students grow more comfortable participating within a stable group. Additionally, within each "home" group, each student is assigned a number--1, 2, 3, or 4--and when appropriate, the instructor separates all the groups into each number category. All the 1s will get together, all the 2s, etc. Each new group can work on a separate part of an activity or instructional concept, then when the main group of 1, 2, 3, and 4 gets back together, each student can instruct his or her home-groupmates about each concept. You can see an example of this structure in the image that heads this blog post.

For my first foray into the Jigsaw Classroom, I ended up seldom using the second part of this organizational strategy. My students remained in their home groups for nearly every group activity. First, I'll discuss how I organized the groups. I wanted their composition to be deliberate instead of random, especially because teaching in a computer classroom introduces the hurdle of some students not being familiar or comfortable with technology. I therefore created a Google Doc in which each student gave some information about their comfort level and experience with the types of tech we'd be using in our class. After each student had added their information, I began organizing the groups. I wanted each group to have at least one person with high skill and comfort levels, and one person with very low levels. I also tried to make the groups as gender-balanced as possible. I divided my 21 students into five groups (one group had five people), they chose their group name, and we got down to business.

In general the groups functioned just like groups randomly-chosen each day: class activities such as locating examples of certain concepts within a particular reading, or performing a rhetorical analysis of an image or song, were much as they had ever been. However, when we planned more in-depth activities, such as a group presentation or a trip to the Oakwood Cemetery, the permanent group idea really paid off. The students were more comfortable working on activities outside of the classroom with people they had already gotten to know. Group dynamics in general seem to be pretty high-functioning. At our individual midterm conferences, I asked each student their opinion of their groupmates' participation levels, functions, leadership, work ethic, and the overall effectiveness of the group. The vast majority of students felt that the workload was evenly shared, that certain roles (like note-taker or class reporter) were fulfilled on a generally rotating basis, and that the group experience was overall rewarding. One group became so close-knit that they elected to do their final digital research project together instead of individually, which puts them in each other’s' company for quite a while.

Initially I wanted to experiment with the Jigsaw Classroom because my previous Course Instructor Surveys noted that more groupwork would have been beneficial in those classes. I had never really considered myself "good" at setting up group activities, so I consciously pushed myself to try something new. I'd say that I have increased by at least two- or threefold the number of group activities I've incorporated into my teaching. Though it took some additional effort at first, I have definitely become more comfortable and confident with designing group activities and monitoring my students' participation through their home groups. It helps that the students consistently work with classmates they have come to know and are comfortable with, instead of having to navigate a new group dynamic every time. (I have also been lucky that no students have complained about their group members, though I made sure that any complaints or concerns would be addressed with the utmost respect and seriousness!)

Collaboration and Chaos

Cole Wehrle — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:46:08 +0000

Author:

Cole Wehrle

Image Credit:

Cole Wehrle

As long as I’ve had the pleasure of teaching in one of the DWRL class rooms I’ve flirted with the idea of using Google Docs in a classroom setting. In-class writing assignments are certainly nothing new, but Google Docs made it possible to transform what was a space for quiet reflection into one that demanded open collaboration.

At least, it was theoretically possible. While useful for all kinds of list-making and brainstorming, the promise of Google Docs, as a productive space for real-time collaboration seems largely illusory. As anyone who has ever tried to write a CFP at the same time knows, what results is mostly frustration and confusion. It might be easier to have everyone shouting over a laptop.

So I tabled the idea until, a few weeks ago, I found myself reading about the idea of the “flipped-classroom,” which had become the pedagogical-tactic-of-the-month and was generating lots of buzz on various blogs and op-ed pages. For those who missed the wave (or have yet to catch it), the idea is simple and counterintuitive. Teachers, usually working in small groups, record all of the classroom lectures and send them to students so they can stream them at home. Then, when the students come to class the next day, the teacher will help them with their homework. This has been applied to subjects as diverse as algebra and American history, and many teachers are finding that the “flipped-classroom” has allowed them to tailor their class to the needs of individual students without sacrificing content.

I was intrigued by the concept but was unsure how to apply it to a writing class. When I was a journalism student we routinely had to produce short articles in the space of a 75 minute lab class, but it was a demanding experience and seemed unfair to give it to students in a basic writing class. About that time I realized that Google Docs might provide the answer. If it was too much to ask a single student to produce a research summary in a 75 minute class, perhaps it was somewhat more reasonable to ask it of a group.

Before the class I asked my students to look over two sample research summaries, one very good and the other very bad. Then, during the next class period we began by coming up with two lists of what qualities made the good research summary good and the bad example bad. I then played a short video, passed out a transcript, and asked each group of 3-4 students to produce a good research summary using Google Docs on that video. After a few minutes, when they had set everything up, I casually mentioned that they had to turn it in by the end of class. No late assignments would be accepted.

Panic ensued, complaints were levied, but, after they realized that this was not a point for compromise, they began dividing the work and approaching their job systematically. The activity had forced them all into the 11^th hour crunch, but this time both their classmates and I were on-hand to help. Over the next 45 minutes the students bombarded me with concise, earnest questions about phrasing and grammar while helping each other frame and format their citations. By the end of the class every single group had produced a finished research summary and it was likely the best batch of short papers I’ve ever received.

I’m not sure how to apply the activity to a longer paper, but it certainly seems like an avenue worth exploring.

Social Writing: Done with the One-on-One

Cole Wehrle — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Cole Wehrle

Image Credit:

Photo by Corand Poirier via Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (reference #P48,S1,P23104)

It’s been a few months since we had Criterion co-founder and innovator extraordinaire, Bob Stein, on campus, and since his visit I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the things he had the say. For those of you who missed it, Stein was showcasing a few new projects related to the future of the book, centered on the idea of social reading (you can hear Zeugma’s great interview with him here. Essentially, he argued that our understanding of reading is stuck in the 19-century and that technology has opened up new avenues for all kinds of new reading practices that could transform education. He wasn’t just talking about distribution modes like ebooks either. Instead, he was suggesting ways in which the book could be read and discussed community: discussions would flow beyond the classroom and a student would never have to face a difficult text alone. While, the technology that enables this kind of seamless discussion isn’t quite ready yet, I’ve been thinking about the concepts behind Stein’s idea. How did it apply to my teaching practice? Were there ways in which I could test some of these notions out in a first-year rhetoric and writing course (RHE 306)?

My first thought was writing itself. In 306 I spend a lot of time talking to students about their experience typing. It never takes long for the horror stories to come out: the all-nighters, the embarrassing typos, the misunderstood prompts, and, perhaps above all, the terrible blank page, ticking clock, and languishing page requirement. Of course, all of these problems are “student problems” and, though the isolation of writing is critical to its mastery, there are also ways in which the structure of 306 feeds into its less-than-welcoming appearance. In most courses a student’s work is a private affair, graded under cover of night (well, for most of us) and then discussed with hushed voices in tiny cubicles. But maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. This spring I began instituting formal writing groups in my 306. I borrowed this from my experience in Journalism School. Instead of one-on-ones, I decided to block longer meetings with small groups of between four and five students. Every student would have to read all of the other papers in their group and be prepared to share a comment on their writing. Praise doesn’t count. This sounds a little mean, but it’s not hard to keep it in the spirit of good fun. There’s a bad writer in all of us and the best way to root him out is to acknowledge his existence. I usually started meetings by finding terrible sentences that I had written in my own undergraduate papers. We would laugh together and then diligently pick apart the writing. Then, one student at a time, we would look at awkwardly phrased sentences, silly typos, and all kinds of convoluted language with that same care. At first this can be a little off-putting, but the slight embarrassment and knowledge that other people, your peers, will be reading your work, can be a very helpful motivator, and its not hard to keep things light-hearted when you have that much material. These meetings have proven so useful that I began to work them into the in-class peer-review workshops and my grading methods. On a recent paper I decided that instead of providing any marginal comments I would write each student a letter about their work, offering general instructions for improvement but without any specific prescription. Then, in the peer workshop I sat my students in a large circle and instructed them to take out an extra copy of their paper. Some students had expressed anxieties about their own proofreading, so I decided to help them defamiliarize their own writing. We began a “rapid line edit.” I had each student pass their paper to the person on their left then check for one thing about the paper. On the first pass they circled every main verb (and emphasized weak verbs with sad faces or extra circles). On the second pass they found the longest sentence and the shortest sentence in the paper. On the next pass they looked for thesis statements, then topic sentences, then transitions, et cetera. In each case classroom discussion flowed naturally from the exercise and, perhaps because of the open environment that we had built in our small meetings, students seemed comfortable asking questions like “What exactly is a main verb?” or “What is the difference between a Topic Sentence and a Thesis?”. And, as I clarified my terms and taught short lessons on grammar students cheerfully volunteered broken and beautiful passages alike. At the end of class I handed back my letters to each student with their grade and they went home with my comments, and a copy of their paper filled with all kinds of zany marginalia that could guide their revisions.

Game Controllers and Course Design

Scott Nelson — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:21:56 +0000

Author:

Scott Nelson

Image Credit:

Scott Nelson, 2013, CC BY-NC-SA

So, I've been thinking this week about controllers and controls. The Playstation 4 controller was announced, and there are some significant changes in the design that speak to the changing nature of gaming in general. The new controller has a touch screen and a color-coded light bar to identify different players. Most significant to this post, though, is the missing 'Select' and 'Start' buttons. Since the 1980s, these buttons have been standard on most game controllers, and Sony's decision to replace them with the 'Share' and 'Options' button signals a shift in video games' focus. Gamers have definitely noticed this seemingly small shift, with some making video tributes to the lost buttons.

The earliest computer games were somewhat solitary affairs -- a single human player competed against the computer. Later, with Tennis for Two, two human players could go head-to-head. Competitions in the arcade era focused on beating a high score set by another player at another time. Players had to be in physical proximity to one another to share a game. In the 1970s, though, that changed with the advent of online games where multiple players could compete simultaneously.

However, even through these changes, the basic controller signaled a particular interface with the machine. The relationship between the player and the game was highlighted. You could select from certain options and start the game. Sony's redesign shifts that relationship to one among a community of gamers. With a quick press of a standard button, gamers can share their experience with others through short screencaptures and broadcasts.

So what does this have to do with pedagogy? More than you'd initially think. My particular preferences as a gamer got me thinking about this shift and the design considerations that will surely follow. While pedagogues may not focus on these considerations, video game designers have made it a focus of significant study. Damien Schubert -- the lead designer of the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Star Wars: The Old Republic -- made it the focus of his 2011 Game Developer's Conference presentation. In designing for a game genre that by definition brings many people together, how can we still make space for the "lone wolves"?

At least in gaming, I happen to be one of those loners. I have a handful of Playstation Network friends who never hear from me, as I prefer to game alone. And I think World of Warcraft is boring. There, I said it. I'm sure other gamers will say that WoW really gets good after you begin raiding with others, but I just don't prefer that kind of experience. And game designers know that there's enough people similar to me that they should design with us in mind.

The same can be said for our classrooms. Digital Media production invites collaboration, as it can be too complex for a single student's workload. However, not all students thrive with those constraints. We should be careful to nudge students outside of their comfort zones, but also be mindful of the lone wolves out there. Not all students' careers will require them to collaborate often, and some web technologies are allowing us to work together, yet separately.

One way I mitigate these different learning styles is to design unit projects with options -- students can opt for simpler, individual projects, or for more complex group projects. The pull of the larger projects tends to be their "wow" factor. Some students would just prefer to make a video over a static image.

The other way is with something I call "Nelsonslist" (after the classifieds site Craigslist). I ask students to post on the course wiki a brief introduction to both their current digital media skills and skills they'd like to pick up. Students are then invited to network with others of similar interests. Over three years, it's worked quite well. Some students form affinity groups while others express their desire to work alone.

Though Web 2.0 technologies encourage us to share more and more of ourselves online, we can't assume all who participate in these communities enjoy posting their meals, high scores, and random thoughts. Lurkers make up an important part of those ecosystems, and we'd do well to keep them in mind when designing assignments.

Class Discussion and Writing Due Dates

Jay Voss — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 05:16:45 +0000

Author:

Jay Voss

Image Credit:

The New Yorker

This semester I’m teaching a composition class centered around The New Yorker magazine. The impetus for this course was that I wanted my students, who grew up with the immediate culture of the internet, to spend hours musing over longer arguments, and then try and rearticulate those arguments in a critical manner. This is a difficult task when one’s being bombarded with tweets and texts all the time from friends, as I know most twenty-first century students are. It’s an especially difficult task for undergraduates when the arguments in question are as subtle as The New Yorker’s. Another thing that's great about the course is The New Yorker is often an exemplar of good prose style, and I happen to think that good writing is a product of good reading. So it’s my hope that students will find something for them in the magazine, become captivated in the reading, and that this magazine’s good prose will filter into their writing. But I face a problem in the class on days in which writing is due: How should I ignite discussion of a particular New Yorker article after students have been up late hammering out the final sentences of their own writing?

Some might chide me as foolish for not having my students submit electronic versions of their writing on days that class doesn’t meet, the implication of this being that precious class time doesn’t become a nap making up for the night before. But the world awaiting my students after college won’t work like that. They’ll be expected to manage their time in a way that allows them to accomplish multiple tasks, and orient their production to proffer complete items randomly in the middle of the day. Seeing that this is something one learns only with practice, I’m not really inclined to make work due “by midnight on Friday.”

I had to deal with such a scenario this past week. At the start of class last Wednesday I polled my students to find out who completed the day’s reading in addition to the previous night’s writing. Only about 11 hands went up in the air, roughly half of the class. What I did was have the class count off in fours and split up into groups of 5 students, and each group was to take 35 or 40 minutes and outline the day’s New Yorker article. It happened to be about a Houston-based neuroscientist, and the piece ends with the scientist traveling to London to hang out with Brian Eno and a bunch of drummers. Not only are the articles subtle enough to get students scratching their heads, but surprise trips across the ocean to be with 1980s rock stars can be hard for students to analyze rhetorically. So, as my students split up into groups and began their outlines, I also asked them to figure out how the final part of the article was functioning as part of a coherent argument.

At the end of 40 minutes each of the groups was only the right track, and 3 of the 4 had successfully determined why Brain Eno was cropping up in an article about a Houston neuroscientist. This was an especially helpful experience for my students that are struggling with the New Yorker’s subtlety. It is my hope that they don’t give up, and subsequently the next time they see the rather simplistic rhetoric of, say, a presidential candidate, they’ll see right through it. Not to mention my other great hope – that all the good reading improves their writing.

Encouraging Class Participation with Google Docs

Rachel Mazique — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:35:40 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

Salman. "Google Docs VS Microsoft Office Web Apps." Techtoggle. 15 July 2009. Web. Sept. 30 2012.

Classroom dynamics can vary widely from one group of students to the next. This fact has really struck home now that I’m teaching two sessions of Rhetoric and Writing: “Disability in Pop Culture.” I walk into both classes with the same lesson plans, with (one of) the same interpreters, and with the same kinds of technology available. Many variables are different; different buildings, different classroom space (in terms of size), one interpreter is different, different days, different time of day (although both take place in the afternoon).

However, the biggest difference is the group of students themselves. Both classes have a range of upper classmen with a few sophomores. One class has a good number of journalism majors, but both classes have students with a wide range of majors and educational backgrounds.

Because I assess students using The Learning Record, I know from their background information (interview and reflection), that many students in one class prefer to listen rather than speak when learning new ideas or grappling with new concepts. In the class that took about four weeks to open up and have a rolling discussion (or one that doesn’t require my constant prompting) many students are self-professed introverts. Now, because The Learning Record requires “outstanding participation in all course activities” for an “A” grade, the hesitation to participate in class discussions becomes a concern for those students who learn best by listening—or those who have a fear of speaking in class.

In order to have a class document of students’ questions and thoughts on their assigned reading, I planned an in-class activity in which students would write their questions on a class wiki page—for all to see. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, our course work is conducted almost entirely on the wiki (excluding class meetings, office hours, and required reading in the form of printed text). This class document would also serve as an informal work sample (in the language of The Learning Record) documenting evidence of their reflective learning and critical thinking processes. However, my original plan to use a wiki page for the activity did not go as planned, as PBWorks does not allow for more than one typist at a time.

This, however, became what my colleague, Cate Blouke, called a “happy accident in the classroom,” as I quickly checked to make sure that all students had a gmail account, then added a link to a Google Document titled “Questions …” to the wiki page I had intended students to write on. Google Docs does allow for multiple writers at once; students, by way of experimentation (first-time experience for everyone) developed their Digital Literacy as they quickly navigated this new format and learned how to save their own space on the document and personalize it with their preferred font, font size, and color.

Having students work on the Google Doc allows everyone to see each other’s questions; it allows me to monitor their progress without peering over everyone’s shoulder or walking around to quickly check computer screens. I can stay in one place and observe their writing process—with all the backspaces, highlighting, rewriting, pauses, and self-correcting that goes on. Google Docs also allows me to quickly intervene if a student is not quite following instructions. I also get a better idea of the time it takes students to write and can easily see when most students are done writing—as activity quiets down on the Google Doc. (Without this document, students may appear to be busily working online, but they may have jumped to a different web page or activity once completing the given task.) Having all their questions as a starting point also helps guide the discussion, and the document allows us to return to past questions that are not answered in one class. The digital archive functions as collective class memory; we will not forget because it is saved online.

In these first four weeks of the semester, after our first “happy accident,” we have used Google Documents three times. The first was for their questions on the reading, the second time was for a collaborative class resource page on instances of “disability” in pop culture, and our most recent encounter was for a quick workshop on their individual research questions.

As useful as the tool has been to me as an instructor facilitating learning and working to make the best use of our class time, what I’ve found most interesting have been the student Observations on the use of Google docs during in-class activities.

One student wrote,

“I noticed the class seems much more comfortable using technology to interact with each other. Also, all the questions that were written on the google doc, while similar, all offered a unique perspective on how people interpreted the readings. (digital literacy; Creativity, originality, imagination)”

Another wrote of his difficulty with using this new format and of his strategy for adapting to it,

“In class today while we were all brainstorming on the Google Doc, I observed that it was extremely difficult to type information on the page because it was bouncing all over the place with everyone typing at once. To solve this I typed my comments on a seprate word proccessor and copied them in. Digital Literacy &prior and emerging experience”

A third indicated that she liked being able to participate via Google Docs (I should note that this student does not generally speak up during in-class discussions):

“In class today we used a google document to express any questions or reflections we had about the readings we have been assigned to read outside of class. This type of class participation allowed me to write my own reflection and also allowed me to see what were my fellow classmates reflections and questions about the readings were as well. (Skills and Strategies, Independence;Digital Literacy)”

One observant and introverted student (who also puts good effort into pitching in when he can) noted that the digital format for class participation allows for greater “accessibility:”

“I noted that the majority of students are still shy and don't contribute much in discussion, myself included. I did notice that working on a Google Doc simultaneously allows for more easy and accessible sharing of ideas though. (Presentation, Knowledge + Understanding)”

All four of these observations came from the class that has (up until our most recent meeting) been generally quiet and reserved during discussions. The student dynamic in the other class—which is much more vocal—did not seem to view the use of the Google Doc as an alternative mode for participating or accessing class discussions. Their observations focused on the pragmatics of the Google doc (observations along the lines of: "my reading notes allowed me to remember my questions and thoughts on the readings, so I knew what to write on the Google doc;"and, "the collaborative resource on disability in pop culture allows us to see how disability really is everywhere—even if we haven’t noticed it on our own").

However, those two comments also tell me that the Google Document has a pedagogical value when used in the classroom. When asking students if they have any questions, few, if any, may speak up. Open-ended, on-the-spot questions often leave students speechless. On the other hand, when asking students to write their questions, they know they are being observed “on paper” so to speak, so they are much more inclined to generate a question to demonstrate that they have, in fact, completed their homework. Last, collaboration in online spaces allows students to “see” each other and to realize that everyone has something to contribute.

Hidden Collaboration: The Internet, Syllabi-Making, Assignment-Planning, & YOU!

Gulessarian — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:34:00 +0000

Author:

Lisa Gulesserian

Image Credit:

"Hidden Fire" by Azi-Isobel on DeviantArt

We’re a few weeks into the fall semester now, and I’ve just finished hammering out my assignments for E 314L: “Banned Books” using lots of in-person feedback from my peers and my teaching mentor, along with tons of help from resources on the internet. While talking about assignments and syllabi over a hot beverage with friends and colleagues is my cup of tea, the online resources I used were absolutely indispensible for coming up with the specifics of my assignments. As I planned my course, I was floored by the sheer number of pedagogical resources posted online—my post today is about this hidden collaboration amongst instructors and professors who use the internet to share and borrow lesson plans, syllabi, and pedagogical advice. In my post, I’m going to talk about my own experience in the “hidden collaboration” realm by sharing a few of my favorite sites— the English Department’s eFiles collection, the DWRL’s Lesson Plans site, and a smattering of personal instructor sites and outside-of-UT webpages.

Since eFiles is the site that we’re directed to from the very beginning of our time at UT, I won’t discuss it in detail. I’ll only say that it’s full of fantastic advice contributed by faculty, teaching assistants, and assistant instructors over the years. I used eFiles to get a feel for how much reading and how many major assignments I could feasibly assign to my students. Try it! I searched for “close reading” and I got 21 pages of results! Filtering, by course or by resource type, is the only way to navigate the site to get pertinent resources. I ended up filtering for only those results that were marked as syllabi to get an idea of how previous instructors structured their courses. After looking at the 28 contributions, I knew I could assign at least five novels to read and two essays to write. I was able to confidently move on to planning my assignments with help from instructors of years past (some whose names I didn’t recognize because they’d left the halls of UT before I was even admitted to the graduate program here!). Without even knowing it, these instructors were integral to my course’s development.

Of course, the instructors who post innovative and exciting lesson plans on the DWRL’s Lesson Plans site have helped me just as much. After a swanky redesign and the addition of archived materials from the old LP site, the new site is more user-friendly and searchable than ever. You can browse plans by type of assignment—whether it’s an in-class activity, a semester-long project, or a unit-long writing assignment—and by lesson plan content—ranging from analysis to writing process. I found it most helpful when I searched for general terms under “lesson plan content.” Under “Literature,” for instance, I found plans on blogging close readings, historical approaches to literary criticism using Internet Archive videos, and collaborative annotated bibliographies. I ended up tweaking a few of these lesson plans to create my own close reading and annotated bibliography blog post assignments (which will soon be posted on the Lesson Plans site!). I know without Pearl’s detailed explanation of the steps necessary for close reading a passage or Emily’s instructions for collaboratively writing an annotated bibliography on PBworks, my assignments this semester would have been haphazard experiments that would have taken at least another semester to hone and perfect. With the help of lesson plans posted by instructors in the DWRL (who don’t know who they will help once the assignment is posted online), I was guided through the process of creating two assignments.

Along with eFiles and the DWRL Lesson Plans site, I made use of many academic sites all over North America. At the beginning of my assignment planning, I Googled for terms like “Annotated Bibliography Assignment” and “Close Reading Paper.” Through my many searches, I found useful instructor sites and departmental resources from universities (and some high schools). The “Writing Resources” page at Harvard’s Writing Center site was one source I used to give my students practical style advice. I navigated to the University of Toronto’s Writing site to get advice for summarizing sources while identifying arguments. And of course, I used the Purdue OWL to provide students with sample MLA citations on their assignment sheets. But, surprisingly, I received a good amount of help by visiting the course sites of many instructors. From an instructor at Seton Hill University, I learned how to articulate what kinds of passages merit close reading. From a professor of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, I was introduced to books that were criticized for their historical imaginings (and which I promptly read and decided to assign in my current course). And from UPenn’s TeachWeb (a site that compiles teaching resources for English and Comparative Literature instructors), I learned about integrating peer review into my writing assignments. Without the help of savvy instructors in far-flung areas of North America, I would not have been able to craft my assignments.

Unbeknownst to the instructors that posted their lesson plans and syllabi online at the English Department’s eFiles collection, the DWRL’s Lesson Plans site, and academic sites outside of UT, I have benefitted from the information that they so freely shared. I hope that you—instructors at the University of Texas and beyond—will use and contribute just as much advice as I have!

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.