Re-sharing my Writing 90 Adventure, now with new pieces!

I’m in the process of posting some new content to the DIG Co-lab Moodle site that comes from my first OER adventure, an attempt to move Writing 90 to a textbook-less class. Some of these assignments and resources were shared before via Merlot; I also talked about the process of creating this class in my Prezi screencast from last summer, visible here.

In actually teaching the class the following fall, I found that I didn’t actually have enough resources to cover everything, and my in-person lectures started to really feel the weight of the textbook “absence.” In essence, I was trying to cover an entire book’s worth of materials on some mornings, and that wasn’t working for the students (who had only about 2 hours a week to take notes over and absorb everything on a certain topic, like Definition writing) and it wasn’t working for me.

So, I developed new hands-on activities for some of the lessons and online texts for others. I ended up creating a handout about comparison writing that I extended into a handout I now use in Writing 95 and sometimes even in Writing 121 to explain pre-writing and citations (and to work with some students’ love of vampires). While I was at it, I created a Powerpoint presentation to stand in place of my current Writing 95 lecture about the 5 Paragraph Essay format, and this is now available on Moodle, too!

One of the assignments I uploaded became one of my favorites to use in class. It requires students to visit the National Portrait Gallery web site and its gallery of presidential portraits. As many of our presidents look very much alike, superficially (older white guys), I used these paintings to get my students working on descriptive writing that goes beyond just the surface of what they see. I asked them to choose a painting but not tell anyone in class whose painting they were describing. Then, each student wrote a “mystery draft” of a descriptive paragraph about a president, and the class was invited to guess who they might be describing. (Content was posted to the Moodle forums for this, though now, I think I’d do it on a blog). We then reviewed the paragraphs in class and the authors announced who they had been describing, and we discussed what details in the existing draft could be changed/improved to give a reader a clearer picture of the president even without using his name.

I also uploaded what I’ll call my “frustration” quiz, which is an online reviewing quiz I gave my Writing 90 class to make sure they were attempting the online readings. It’s nearly impossible to quantify the skills involved in writing, but this quiz attempts to have students recognize a few small patterns from their readings. I don’t know if I count it as a pedagogical success, but it did improve the reading rate in my class, at least temporarily.

I’ll be sharing more links and resources next term as I try to move Writing 95 more fully into OER territory!

 

Peer Editing: A Round Robin Approach?

I’ve been working on finding new ways to incorporate peer editing in my classes, and this term, I tried two new things. First, I tried a highly prescriptive format that drew on the readings from the textbook (Writing First) and gave students very explicit directions about what to read for, what to comment on, and how and when to respond to their peers. This was called a “Round Robin” peer editing approach because groups of three or four students read each others’ papers and provided different types of feedback to each other. For instance, in a group with students A, B, C, and D:

Student A reads B for development question, C for mechanical issues, and D for organization and unity.

B reads C for development, D for mechanics, and A for organization.

C reads D for development, A for mechanics, and B for organization.

D reads A for development, B for mechanics, and C for organization.

This approach worked well in some respects. Everyone was able to get feedback, and most everyone had at least one review that they found constructive/helpful. Everyone was also challenged to look specifically at another person’s paper with some of my grading criteria in mind, and this seems to have made students improve their own writing in these categories, too.

The area in which this didn’t work well was, of course, that some students simply didn’t engage with the assignment very thoroughly. Some completely ignored the mechanics review, and others tried to answer open-ended development questions with just “yes” or “no.” What did work nearly every time was engaging students to write each other letters. They seemed to take this more seriously and really get into discussing points with each other and, wonder of wonders, the students actually responded to each other online about the letters. That discussion was exactly what I’m looking for.

In the coming term, I’ll be working on incorporating more online peer editing. I’ve created (and posted) a Guide to Respectful Feedback that my classes will be reading during the first week to get things kicked off.

Screencasts and a Favorite Software

I started experimenting with screencasting software (apps? Must I use that word?) for my iPad earlier this term, mostly out of frustration with trying to use a desktop effectively. I found several well-reviewed apps available, but the one that has so far worked best for me is called Educreations. It was created for doing exactly what I want to do — make short videos for classes — and its iPad app is very user-friendly. You download it, create an account (free!), and then you just write on your screen and talk like you normally would. When you’re done, the video is saved and uploaded to your Educreations profile automatically, where you can make it publicly visible, visible to only your students, or private. (The students feature involves enrolling your class at Educreations, which seems like a neat feature I might play with in the future). You can also embed the video into your blog or right into Moodle.

The downside to using Educreations is (as Alice pointed out to me yesterday!) that if anything happens to their web site/server, you lose your videos. They promise that the ability to download your videos is coming… at some point, but until then, the best way to save them is to play them back full-screen while running a screencasting software like Screen-Cast-o-Matic.

I created a short series of videos to help my students through Chapter 3.1 in the Bittinger basic math textbook. Unfortunately, the embed code doesn’t play well with WordPress, so I can’t share them here, but they are all publicly shared with the Educreations community (and you!) if you visit my Educreations profile. You can also find there a wealth of screencasts by other teachers sorted by subject.

Article Summary and Thoughts: A Study in Feedback

Article: Gulley, Beth. “Feedback On Developmental Writing Students’ First Drafts.” Journal Of Developmental Education 36.1 (2012): 16-36. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 May 2013. (available from our library database!)

In this article, Professor Gulley seeks to answer whether receiving oral, written, or a combination of both types of feedback will be most helpful for developmental students. Over three semesters, she worked with four different classes of developmental writers at a community college on a narrative paragraph (their first assignment). The 70 voluntary-participant students had the chance to have either a conference with her where they received only verbal comments, a conference where they received written and verbal comments, or no conference but e-mailed written comments. Gulley used a standard form very similar to the paragraph evaluation form we use in our department to guide her feedback.

She discussed, first, the confusing history of providing feedback, paying particular attention to the four-page article by Mary Hiatt from 1975, “Students at Bay: The Myth of Feedback,” which argues that conferences actually discourage student writers by making those with low-level skills feel attacked and/or by providing means for a teacher to take over a student’s paper. She also discussed some studies that show students generally improve their work after conferences, though these were not conducted with a focus on developmental students (for instance, one study was conducted at Harvard – a hot bed of developmental education).

Her hypothesis was that all forms of feedback are equal; in other words, she thought the result would be that students would revise similarly no matter how they had interacted with her. To judge this, she had all of the paragraphs in first- and final-draft form graded by two outside readers and an electronic grammar/punctuation editing program. The students’ scores on the COMPASS test (similar to Accuplacer) was used to control for initial level of skill, meaning that the goal was to judge overall improvement, not to figure out a raw score of what type of feedback led to the most A grades. 

What Gulley found was two-fold: First, she confirmed her hypothesis, finding that the type of feedback used had no measurable effect upon the improvement of final drafts. All students improved their pieces in organization and content between drafts at an equal measure no matter what type of feedback they had received.

Second, Gulley found that the final drafts had statistically more grammatical errors than the initial drafts (no matter the type of feedback included). 

Her conclusion is that teachers should model their feedback method on their own and their students’ learning styles. The implication of the admittedly small research study here seems to be that teachers can choose what they’re most comfortable with and proceed; I can also see how this would be a useful study to encourage consideration of a multiple-method or tailored approach to providing feedback. 

I’d be very interested to see this type of study extended to include a comparison between feedback presented in hard copy and feedback presented electronically (in either type-written comments or audio comments that a student can download). Currently, I’m working with the TurnItIn anti-plagiarism software at LBCC, which provides the option to give students feedback on the paper in small, line-edit comments, in a written end-note, in recorded verbal comments that the student can download to listen to, and in a final grading rubric. I think the idea of providing individual audio feedback to students could be very valuable to developmental writers, as – and Gulley cites this here – it’s been documented to leave students with a more positive feeling about the feedback they’re receiving and, as a result, with more confidence about the skills they can improve.

Finally, I found her results about grammar and punctuation to be even more interesting, in part because I’ve noticed this same result among my own students and, in particular, among those students who seek in-person feedback through Tutor Central. Visiting with someone else about their writing will often produce a marked improvement in content, organization, and general development. However, fitting in all of those new ideas often leads students to use sentence forms that are more complicated, which often leads to very confusing grammatical structures, twisted syntax, and, that bane of all final drafts, faulty proofreading. I was glad to see this quantified here, in part because I have trouble convincing students that an increase in mechanical errors can sometimes be a sign of advancement. Because punctuation errors are often the most visible on a document, students see an increase in these “red marks” as a sign of certain failure instead of recognizing them as a very small percentage of an overall evaluation of thought and composition.

Anyone else have thoughts about the value of conferences vs. written feedback or the combination? I’ve found I’m using conferences these days mostly to have a face-to-face check in with students; it’s often the only way to find out if the quiet student in the back is lost because she’s so behind or bored because she’s so advanced.

Online Peer Editing: A Wish List

This term, I have two hybrid classes, one face-to-face class that I’m trying to teach as a flipped class using online videos for homework, and two classes that are taught in computer labs and must submit their homework not only through Moodle but through TurnItIn, a service new to one of my schools. So — I’m throwing quite a bit of technology around in the classroom these days, and I’m getting a number of reminders about what I like and don’t like about the virtual classroom.

The thing I like the least is peer editing. I’ve tried several ways to facilitate it online, but none of my current systems are working. It’s occurred to me, though, that maybe I’m going about this wrong: I’m trying to recreate the process of the classroom online instead of trying to reach similar outcomes.

So, I’ve decided to put together a wish list of what I want from online peer editing. I’ll add to it as I think of things, and I’ll work to see if I can find any resources or plan any activities that would help.

1. Easy access to other students’ work. One of the major roadblocks to online peer editing now seems to be just getting students to post their work in a format that other students can work with. In forums, some students copy and paste from Word (with its attendant formatting problems). Some upload an attachment, which only those who have Word (or Open Office or Works) can read. I’d like a way for students to upload their work and then read the work online, without the need for a separate program, OR, I’d like them to be able to print the work very easily.

2. Easy access to a very clear set of guidelines for response.
3. An easy way to make response available to the student being edited.
4. A way for students to respond to questions/comments on their own work.

I’ll keep thinking on this.

Little Glimmers

I experienced something while grading final papers last term that I’d guess has happened to many others. A student who had otherwise done middle-of-the-road work for the full term turned in a paper that had some really great lines and piquant observations. The paper itself is uneven, enough that I have no doubt this student actually wrote it, but it includes some lines that have made me actually smile, even laugh out loud — and in a joyful way.

That joy turns to sadness a few minutes later, of course, when it’s time to apply a grade. The worst part of these little glimmers of good writing is that they often come in the last paper of the term, when the student and I will very probably never again have personal contact. I’d venture to say 98 percent of my students never come back for their final assignments, so it’s very likely the last word this student will “hear” from me will be her final grade, a number that doesn’t accurately reflect what she seems capable of doing.

I guess I should feel encouraged that, after a term’s work, my student has progressed from barely glued sentences to a few moments of wit, but I still feel a little forlorn. I’m trying to leave more feedback online, so that students can access their final notes without having to make a dreaded office visit in the next term, but I’m as yet unconvinced that this makes a difference. I could push the final paper back and make students come to class for their final feedback, but I think the reduction in time would reduce overall quality — both in their papers and in my comments. I’ve got no good solution to this problem.

Anyway, mystery student, good work. I hope you don’t take the average grade as a sign of your potential.

Paragraph Assignments Posted to MERLOT for Sharing

I’ve posted a page on MERLOT containing several (about 4) of my created assignments for Writing 90. All of the assignment sheets and information is available under a Creative Commons License. I’m hoping to add more to the page as I develop further worksheets and hand-outs in the fall.

The assignment ideas included explain the idea of having a single Term Topic and the initial Illustration Paragraph assignment, the Classification Paragraph assignment, the Cause and Effect Paragraph Assignment and Peer Editing questions, and a Descriptive Paragraph exercise with peer editing (and a bit of artwork admiration!).

- Jenn