EdRem 6714 "Status Report"
Big Question I Am Currently Exploring:
My big question has to do with the use of technology in the writing classroom, and the use of a hybrid course design. SWIC has been piloting the hybrid writing course for two semesters now, and I've been teaching online writing classes (and literature classes) for three years now.
I have had a fairly good experience with online courses, and my hybrids, but my colleagues have not. There's been a steep learning curve with both online courses and the hybrid, not in terms of the technology, but in terms of how to design the classes, and how to best port my f2f instruction to the online environment.
In both cases, the students who have finished the classes, I feel, have learned a great deal about writing, about themselves as writers, and developed an independence as a writer and learner.
My big question is WHY?
I have a hunch that it has something to do with responsibility, feedback, and audience. I think the students who finish the hybrid or online courses must take responsibility for their own learning. I am there to scaffold their experience, to a degree. Early in the semester, there's a great deal of anxiety among some students, and they tend to send me e-mails regarding every little thing. In responding to these e-mails, I try to maintain my patience, post good questions to a FAQS page, and in responding, direct the students to the resource or page they need to answer the question for themselves. If they ask me about how to complete the reading journals, I send them to the page that covers that issue. In my experience, most of the business sorts of questions have answers online, but they just have not spent the time working through the course's resources.
For rhetorical questions, such as, "what am I supposed to write my essay on?", I give them a rhetorical answer - "You need to fiigure that out on your own, but consider purpose seriously and make sure that there is something at stake in this essay for both you and your reader."
I think feedback plays a role. The feedback I provide is almost entirely formative in nature, and I avoid fixing their papers. It's cumbersome doing so with digital copies of their essays, and I really figure, at this level, if there are issues with mechanics or syntax, it is their responsibility to take care of it by consulting the handbook, or taking their essays to the Success Center.
The third element is audience. I think students expand their conception of audience because of their correspondence with me, which is frequent, and their peers. I DO NOT do a great job of building a social environment online, but I think the students take up the slack, and in writing to one another to offer moral support, answer to questions, and feedback on their papers, they experience, maybe for the first time in an academic setting, a reader who listens carefully and responds.
My big question is still WHY? Why does it work.
There has been lots written about students' experience in online classes, and how teachers should design their courses with a clear itinerary, and clearly delineated objectives, to help students succeed. I know all this, but I'm looking for more, and looking for answers to questions related to writing in particular.
I'm not formally collecting data, but I would like to. Everything the students write is recorded, so I could try and analyze growth and development by doing a sort of case study. Or, I might ask them to complete more metacognitive sorts of assignments so I could get a glimpse at their inner workings. I have them complete a number of reflections assignments on revision, feedback, evaluated writing, form, and such, but this doesn't really seem to tell me what I want to know.
I guess the help I would really like is fairly straightforward. I would like you to tell me what to do. I'd like you to say:
1. keep fieldnotes in which you record . . .
2. arrange an interview with a few students
3. develop some additional metacognitive activities that ask students to respond to issues of authority and audience.
4. do a literature review
5. narrow and focus your question.
6. write it up.
Right now, the text that is most helpful to me is "The Writing Teacher as Researcher," ed. by Donald Daiker and Max Morenberg. For the past week, I've been reading articles about the theory of research. It's very interesting, but sort of selfish. I need to read the section on the writing teacher and authority, and I think there might be some good stuff the section on the writing teacher in the lit class, such as: "The Construction of Meaning: Practicing What We Preach," by Lee Odell, and "Observing Students' Reflective Thinking: A Teacher-Research Project," by Barry Kroll.
I'm going to start reading Freire for the Classroom when I'm finished, and I picked up a book by Bruner, Acts of Meaning. I'm a really slow reader though, so this hinders me a great deal, but I will keep plugging away.
My big question has to do with the use of technology in the writing classroom, and the use of a hybrid course design. SWIC has been piloting the hybrid writing course for two semesters now, and I've been teaching online writing classes (and literature classes) for three years now.
I have had a fairly good experience with online courses, and my hybrids, but my colleagues have not. There's been a steep learning curve with both online courses and the hybrid, not in terms of the technology, but in terms of how to design the classes, and how to best port my f2f instruction to the online environment.
In both cases, the students who have finished the classes, I feel, have learned a great deal about writing, about themselves as writers, and developed an independence as a writer and learner.
My big question is WHY?
I have a hunch that it has something to do with responsibility, feedback, and audience. I think the students who finish the hybrid or online courses must take responsibility for their own learning. I am there to scaffold their experience, to a degree. Early in the semester, there's a great deal of anxiety among some students, and they tend to send me e-mails regarding every little thing. In responding to these e-mails, I try to maintain my patience, post good questions to a FAQS page, and in responding, direct the students to the resource or page they need to answer the question for themselves. If they ask me about how to complete the reading journals, I send them to the page that covers that issue. In my experience, most of the business sorts of questions have answers online, but they just have not spent the time working through the course's resources.
For rhetorical questions, such as, "what am I supposed to write my essay on?", I give them a rhetorical answer - "You need to fiigure that out on your own, but consider purpose seriously and make sure that there is something at stake in this essay for both you and your reader."
I think feedback plays a role. The feedback I provide is almost entirely formative in nature, and I avoid fixing their papers. It's cumbersome doing so with digital copies of their essays, and I really figure, at this level, if there are issues with mechanics or syntax, it is their responsibility to take care of it by consulting the handbook, or taking their essays to the Success Center.
The third element is audience. I think students expand their conception of audience because of their correspondence with me, which is frequent, and their peers. I DO NOT do a great job of building a social environment online, but I think the students take up the slack, and in writing to one another to offer moral support, answer to questions, and feedback on their papers, they experience, maybe for the first time in an academic setting, a reader who listens carefully and responds.
My big question is still WHY? Why does it work.
There has been lots written about students' experience in online classes, and how teachers should design their courses with a clear itinerary, and clearly delineated objectives, to help students succeed. I know all this, but I'm looking for more, and looking for answers to questions related to writing in particular.
I'm not formally collecting data, but I would like to. Everything the students write is recorded, so I could try and analyze growth and development by doing a sort of case study. Or, I might ask them to complete more metacognitive sorts of assignments so I could get a glimpse at their inner workings. I have them complete a number of reflections assignments on revision, feedback, evaluated writing, form, and such, but this doesn't really seem to tell me what I want to know.
I guess the help I would really like is fairly straightforward. I would like you to tell me what to do. I'd like you to say:
1. keep fieldnotes in which you record . . .
2. arrange an interview with a few students
3. develop some additional metacognitive activities that ask students to respond to issues of authority and audience.
4. do a literature review
5. narrow and focus your question.
6. write it up.
Right now, the text that is most helpful to me is "The Writing Teacher as Researcher," ed. by Donald Daiker and Max Morenberg. For the past week, I've been reading articles about the theory of research. It's very interesting, but sort of selfish. I need to read the section on the writing teacher and authority, and I think there might be some good stuff the section on the writing teacher in the lit class, such as: "The Construction of Meaning: Practicing What We Preach," by Lee Odell, and "Observing Students' Reflective Thinking: A Teacher-Research Project," by Barry Kroll.
I'm going to start reading Freire for the Classroom when I'm finished, and I picked up a book by Bruner, Acts of Meaning. I'm a really slow reader though, so this hinders me a great deal, but I will keep plugging away.
posted by CA Lund at 9:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home