The presentation by Kristen Jameson and Linda Clemons, from the University of Minnesota's "Student Writing Center," in class on November 25, 2008, was very eye-opening for me. It looks like they are doing some great things with "SWS Online"--very much advanced from the traditional sit-down-together-one-on-one writing conference. See their website for more information. Also, check out the more general website on the writing center at UMN.
My first reaction to their presentation was, "This would be great to do with my own students, especially if I begin teaching fully online courses, or even partially online "hybrid" courses. I was a big "fan" of Donald Murray in graduate school--and one other guy who's name I can't think of right now--and I have twice tried courses where the students and I met as a group very infrequently, and the rest of the time was spent in individual conferences.
My second reaction to their presentation was, "Wow, this would sure take a lot of time" ... time, Time, TIME ... which is already an issue for all writing instructors who use a process-approach to writing and who try to provide their students with various forms of feedback, both formative and summative, throughout the process of each paper and throughout the course. (And not an issue at all for more traditional teachers who don't assign or read multiple drafts, and who only put a few comments and the grade on the final product ... much like my own freshman composition instructor!)
Of course, an "online" conference, using IM-ing or even Skype, might help to engage and motivate students who are not challenged, engaged, or motivated with more "traditional" teaching methods. But it would have to be carefully thought through and planned.
And I even like the idea of online peer review, but again, sorting out all the logistics seems daunting! And, would an online peer review even make sense to do in a computer lab where students are sitting right next to each other? Maybe, even quite possibly or probably. Students might write more, and they might approach response differently, given this new "medium" for peer review. But what would I use: a wiki, a chat room, a discussion board in D2L, ...?
I also like the idea, given either in class or in the textbook, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, where a rubric is kept in digital form, opened each time a professor grades a paper, comments inserted directly into the rubric, the rubric saved under a different file name, and the rubric then attached to the paper, or, more digitally, emailed to the student. But, again, my concern is TIME.
TIME is also a concern for students emailing their papers to me, me saving and then opening each one, me reading and commenting using MS Word's Insert Comments and/or Track Changes features, and then me saving and emailing the paper back to the students. I like the idea, in theory, but in practice it still seems daunting. But I might have to give it a go to see how it goes.
Finally, TIME is also a concern for me if I choose to digitally record comments about a student's work, as both of my professors--Dr. Richard Beach and Dr. David O'Brien--are doing for me/us this semester. I think I heard that I would actually need two computers, one for the blog, or wiki, or document, or whatever, that I was looking at, reading, analyzing, and evaluating, and another one for the recording, with Audacity open and ready to go. The recording would have to be made, the MP3 encoding would have to be done (using LAME), the file would have to be saved, and then the file would have to be emailed back to the student--perhaps along with their paper. My college doesn't have a Media Mill server or feature, as the U of MN does, so I couldn't just email students a link to their comments.
And I wonder if students would listen to their comments, right away or even at all. When I received my digital comments from both professors this semester, I didn't immediately "open" them and listen, as I would if I got a hard copy of my paper handed back to me with notes in the margins. It's a new way of thinking for me. Maybe my students are already there, maybe not.
Also, my regular teaching load is 3 writing courses and 1 literature course each semester. Writing courses enroll 26 or 28 students, depending if the course is college-level or developmental, respectively, while literature courses can enroll up to 50 students. With this load and number of students, I don't think there's any way to give the kinds of feedback I've gotten this semester. Prof. O'Brien not only gave me recorded comments but also used the Word commenting feature to insert specific comments throughout my paper. And Prof. Beach gave me extended recorded comments. (Of course, there's also the difference between undergraduate and graduate level courses, I don't think my UMN professors are teaching more than 1 or 2 courses each semester, and my Reading course has only 12 students in it while my Digital Writing course has between 20 and 25.)
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2 comments:
Scott, Absolutely applaud your efforts to give students detailed feedback on drafts at all stages. I remember the courses in which I learned the most were always those where I could have an equivalent of a detailed 1:1 with the instructor.
As I was reading your post, I couldn't help but wonder if an online document feedback tool wouldn't be really useful. (Full disclosure, I work on a free one called Backboard http://www.getbackboard.com). These tools show the document in your browser and make it as fast to give feedback online as it is to use a red pen on a paper copy. You can generally upload multiple versions of the documents, which would solve some of the problems managing drafts and remembering what feedback you had given at each stage. Most don't support voice annotation, but we'll be supporting it soon.
Something that works for me is preparing a rubric as a Word table and giving students electronic copies. They can use the rubric as a checklist as they prepare their work.
After they finish their papers, they have to insert a copy of the rubric at the bottom of the paper. I might save a minute or two per paper, which isn't much unless I've got five sections of 20 students...then those minutes add up.
I gave up using the Word "Comments" as students never read them. I put comments in brackets in blue type in the text instead -- much harder for students to ignore the comments as they scroll to the bottom of the file to see their grade.
Linda
http://www.you-can-teach-writing.com
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