Your Feedback Counts
I know that is a silly title, but it is to the point. Let me start by thanking David for jolting me back on track with one of his questions on a meme (who says they can't be useful?). I have a six-week College Composition (basic transfer English) course this summer term. Classes start on 7/5 and meet Monday through Thursday each week for three hours at a stretch. That said, I have been looking at how I can use blogging as part of the course, though I hesitate to build it in as a requirement. The students are not signed up for an online course, and I cannot guarantee their universal access to an internet connection. Here is my plan:
I will set up a blog for the sole purpose of posing questions or providing nudges to my students. They will then be able to read and respond, both to me and to one another. From this, I hope to find directions to take (or avoid) in classroom discussion.
I am troubled, though, in that what I have just outlined in the most general terms will provide little, if any, real benefit. What do you, dear readers in the blogosphere, feel I can or should do to punch up this plan and make it a real force for (pedagogical) good? Remember, Your Feedback Counts.
posted by Andrew Purvis @ 8:13 AM
6 Comments:
That sounds a lot like Blackboard, the system some professors use in my University. We have an e-board, where we leave responses to specific themes of the week, and sometimes comment on each other's statements. It allows us to open up and exchange ideas, but some people actually find it more restrictive than an in-class discussion. Moreover, if the question is particularly controversial, there is a tendency to flare up online, the way one wouldn't necessarily do in "real life", and write in a more emotional manner, rather than thinking everything through.
I have used blog-like things a lot and I'm actually teaching a course where the blog will be both the medium and the topic. Some possibilities:
1. peer review of papers or sections of papers
2. they could ask the questions and solicit comments
3. rough drafts for papers
What I've seen some people do (and I've done this myself with some success) is have each student make a post and then they're required to comment on two other posts. It works pretty well. I'll be interested to see how this works out for you.
Irina, your point is well made. I am a staunch defender of speakers' rights in my classroom, provided they don't trample on listeners' rights (much as I have heard both liberals and conservatives idealize the First Amendment). Online, however, I have less control over what might be said, though I can delete comments that are out of line. I would hate to cross that line, however. It will take delicate work. I am familiar with Blackboard and WebCT, but I am opposed to the use of proprietary systems. I can very easily check the box for password protection on the blog and then allow my students access. Proprietary systems, in my experience, have a tendency toward software and hardware selectivity, and as a Mac-and-Safari-using person, I won't risk that.
Amy, I don't think you are saying this, but you give me a jumping off point: I don't want to replace anything in the classroom. Rather, I want to add to it with provocation in a safe environment, which you allude to. I am no longer surprised that the oft silent students are the ones who frequently supply breakthrough ideas at critical moments, though with Torquemada at my side, I would never have drawn such comments out until the students were ready. I'd welcome your further ideas, too.
Geeky mom, I suspect your course is of a little higher level than English 100. I am not sure how I could implement—or even if I want to implement—a peer-review aspect to this course. Students at that level blanch at the thought of sharing opening paragraphs in class, but the semi-permanence of the web is riskier still. Make this Comp & Lit, though, and it's on! (I make community college students in that class deliver one seminar paper each.) The idea of "add one, comment on two" follows the model my wife is required to use as a student with Capella. If I go that route, I would, I think, have to include it as a graded element, which may put a technological strain on some of my students.
All of these ideas so far, and the cautions, are helping me shape not only the idea but my presentation of it. I am still leaning toward the optional end of things, but with a note about the benefits. One of my more useful techniques is simple recognition for ideas and writing. When I read a top essay to the class and say to the writer (before the entire class), "This is a fifth draft, isn't it?" only to receive a Yes, jaws drop (I recognize the number of revisions with startling accuracy). Amazingly, when everyone realizes that it is the highest number of revisions the student has used, most students add at least one additional revision for their next papers. I can apply a similar technique with top responses online.
OK, I have blabbed enough for this comment, though not enough of you have blabbed yet.
I have resisted the temptation to include participation as an elementof grading. I find ways to factor that in later, if necessary, but it is rare. I am a bit active, in that bouncing-off-the-wall sense, when in the classroom, and it tends to catalyze my students well enough that such a component would become a grade-inflation factor more than anything else.
However, Amy, I do like that you have concretized one thing I had floating loosely in my head: namely, that the questions of comments should remain, in all cases, abstract. These should be the kinds of things that make students Google ideas, comment, and eventually elevate class discussion. Here is an example using Borges' "The Library of Babel," which will be on the reading list for this summer's course (pardon its roughness, but it is being done on the fly):
"Believers of Cabala (there are many spellings) try to reorganize the letters of the Torah in order to create the one true Order of the book, as it was originally imagined by G.D. You can find a translation of the Sefir Yetzirah, the book that guides this action, here (I would include a link). What do Cabala, and the Sefir Yetzirah in particular, suggest about Borges' project here?"
OK, it was rough, but it would save me a long explanation of Cabala, and even allow some students to fill in blanks for others during discussion.
hmm..My advice...
Check out Blog ho
http://legsakimbo.blogspot.com/
Actually, Andrew, my course is a freshman level course, so it may fall flat, I don't know. Lots of good advice here, though.
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