Hello everyone,

I see responding to students from two very different perspectives. My main job right now is working full time as a writing coach here on campus. I also teach a section of English 100 at Palomar in a f2f classroom. These two perspectives have allowed me to view giving feedback in different ways and using different tools for my feedback.

As a writing coach in a Writing center, I can’t always use the tools that I use in the classroom (rubrics, goggle docs, email feedback, peer review freedback) in quite the same ways as in the classroom. One primary reason for that is that in the Writing Center, we do not write on drafts-our pedagogical approach stems from the fact that we are ideally functioning as “peers” responding to another peer, so writing in a margin or at the end of the paper is not viable. Students do not always remember to bring in rubrics and prompts or drafts with instructor feedback- so sometimes the tools are conspicuously missing in the session. However, in the Writing Center I do fall back on some basic principles that actually serve me well when responding to my own students’ essays: As a reader, criteria based feedback, and Socratic questioning. These strategies still translate well to online feedback, and I am using them for online feedback in my f2f class, where I am responding to their drafts online through Canvass and the speedgrader platform that Canvass offers. As a writing coach, I do give feedback online to your students, and the tool we use is either snagit or Camtasia 9. The things that is interesting about asynchronous feedback is that I have to be more directive than I would be in person. I try to balance that directivity with key placed open ended questions (often for when I am trying to get a student to add more writing, so those open ended questions are usually brainstroming in nature). Online feedback also means that I have to do things like narrate my moves. I say things like, “let’s scroll to page 3 now and look at the paragraph that start with…”. This helps students get situated in the context of their essay, and then I can scaffold my recorded feedback better.

As a writing teacher in a f2f classroom at Palomar, I use speedgrader to give digital based feedback. Speedgrader has some nice digital features that mimic what it is like to give written feedback on a hard copy draft. You can write marginal and terminal comments using a text box type feature. You can highlight, draw with a drawing tool, and include  what they call “point annotations” when you want to create a longer comment. I tend to use the point annotation feature for offering models or sentence starters, or for when I ask more open ended questions intended to generate thinking, more reading etc…Speedgrader also has a way to record audio feedback. I have been playing with the audio feedback for my terminal comments that sort of sum up the next steps that I would like to see them take in their next draft. I plan to play with audio feedback on my next batch of essays by using it to record model sentences and some grammar feeedback- feedback that I feel has been, in the past,  hard to do online.

Ultimately, the tools I use for feedback in the Writing Center have had some really good implications for how I teach in the classroom and give feedback to my students online. I have seen myself do more scaffolding with my feedback. I also feel my Writing Center feedback experience has enabled me to take on a better persona as a responder. My students see a more friendly responder, and they say that my “as a reader” comments are less scary and thus more “doable” than when they hear me respond as a “professor”. I think they still feel it is a professor response, but the “as a reader” comments actually encourage more revision from my students.

Last, my online feedback experiences from my Writing Center work has also changed my practice in the classroom. Stuudents are often overwhelmed by too much feedback. But the online feedback I give to your students here in the center has trained me to pick only 3 top tier higher order issues to focus on. So in that way, I see myself cutting down how much I respond to my own students, and I hyper focus on only 3 next steps for them to tackle in a revision. This 3 next steps is a key to the Writing Center’s pedagogy for online, yet it is so interesting to see how it has impacted my teacher persona when I am responding.

Hello, everyone! It is great to be back in this learning platform with you all, and I look forward to sharing ideas, resources, and tools.

I thought I would address my response to this blog by going back to the three areas I identified in the google doc as the writing concerns that most often elicit my feedback in the writing process, and then highlight which tools/practices I am likely to use in onground vs. online environments and how although the goals may be the same, the methods vary.

1. Issues with interpreting the topic/prompt (e.g. is the student’s initial work/claim clearly responding to the assignment; does it need some redirection or strengthening).

This takes center stage in the ESL classroom (as I’m sure it does in a more traditional classroom), but it can be quite a challenge due to students’ experience (or lack thereof) of expository, reading-based writing assignments in their home countries as well as the linguistic gaps that might hinder their initial understanding of the depth and breadth of an assignment. In a f2f classroom, students can orally share their thesis statement for immediate feedback; students can post their initial ideas on the board for a walk-around feedback from me and their classmates; we can select some strong thesis statements and direct it back to the writing prompt to ensure the topic is being interpreted correctly and the claim is one which will work for a given assignment. It is pretty second nature to do a number of these activities early in the process in the classroom.

In a completely online setting, we would need to get the same accomplished but use the technology to assist. A couple of immediate ideas would be to use a google doc to have students post their work and have written feedback/suggestions provided. Based on that work, I could create a Jing or Camtasia video looking at the google doc and its comments and work through orally and with highlighting etc., some of the stronger ones showing the connections we are looking for, and/or selecting a few that might need some redirecting and using those to talk through some options and suggestions.

2. Developing support in the body paragraphs. I often need to encourage the students to “dive deeper” vs. staying surface level in supporting their claims through the evidence and analysis (usually the area I need to spend more time addressing) provided.

Again, we spend a lot of time in a traditional classroom working to get students to develop their evidence and analysis more specifically and convincingly. In f2f, I might ask students to select a paragraph that is brief or that has already received some initial feedback that offers suggestions for further development. I might have students underline their topic sentence and then for the supporting sentences that follow use a colored marker to highlight whether the sentence seems to offer evidence for the claim or is analyzing it. This works to get them to see what type of development they might be favoring and where they need to go deeper. For this type of activity online, I might use the Discussion Board to have the student do this same activity, highlighting sentences as evidence or analysis. This is a good check for me to see if they are understanding the difference and it allows for them to easily compare their thinking to their classmates. I could then assign others to use directed questions to ask their classmates and offer suggestions on how they might more specifically develop content.

3. Clarity issues- I don’t typically comment on students’ grammar but instead focus on their clarity, particularly in the early stages.

In an L2 classroom, it is very commonplace to offer suggestions for language/word choice issues. When students are grappling with an assignment and a number of readings on a new topic of exploration, they may not have some of the targeted vocabulary necessary or expected in an academic response; they also typically need help with collocations and other more discrete word form issues. For example, on an assignment addressing issues of what it means to be financially independent, they would need to understand the differences between word forms, e.g. finance (as both a noncount and countable noun), financial, financially, etc. They would also need help with collocations related to finance: frugal, budget, investment, credit, debt, consumer, etc.  And of course, they might need help understanding other idioms of finance like “a ballpark figure” or “cutting one’s losses.” In an f2f class, we start a Vocab/Word Form list of common vocabulary they are likely to encounter and/or use in their own writing. Each class as something comes up, we add it to the list, I take a picture of it at the end of class, and it gets posted to Canvas.

So this can also be done virtually using a google doc specifically designed for these sorts of global vocab needs. As for more personal responses to student writing, again I would likely either offer some typed feedback suggestions or use a simple audio feedback option on a discussion board.

In all honesty, I think that doing the feedback online is much more time consuming than doing the feedback collectively in a classroom. But the benefit of the online systems is that they are a more “permanent” experience that students can go back to, review, reflect, model, etc. I know even though I do the same sort of feedback in a classroom, in writing and/or orally, it can be more fleeting or the students might only capture part of it. With online, I can redirect them back to the feedback and they can also learn from feedback I provide to classmates.

So for the last bit of this (sorry, rather lengthy) blog, I wanted to comment on Chapter 12: Grading: Should It Change When You Teach Online? I think this is such a critical conversation and one which I have been thinking about a lot. Warnock provides his breakdown of grading percentages of his onsite vs. online class. I have never been one to give quizzes in a comp class or a number of smaller point-based assignments; instead, I build in a number of scaffolded assignments that culminate in their essay assignment. Each essay assignment through the semester builds on the previous and point values increase. I do have additional points for their final portfolio, active participation, and journal. However I think I would really need to restructure some of this for online. I am fortunate that I get to observe three online 100 classes this semester by our online gurus- curry, Tony B. and Jim. I am noting that each of them has a lot of regular, weekly points assigned for anything from small quick-check quizzes on lessons to postings made to google docs, to graded discussion board forums. This would be a huge shift in my teaching approach but one that I think is necessary and would be beneficial in the online arena. As I see more of this play out and read your perspectives, I see that this is likely to influence and change the way I grade in my f2f as well.

Mary

With a warm moment of nostalgia, Warnock reminds us of the longstanding notion of the writing teacher persona, “sitting in a café with papers stacked neatly on a table, quietly reading, and then writing comments by hand” (p124).  All that is missing is the tanned classic leather satchel to complete the image in my mind’s eye. It is a nice thought and I certainly remember those days.

I do enjoy the integration of technology and I fully support Warnock’s notion that the digital landscape affords us many new opportunities to explore writing and student engagement.

The integration of digital tools has fundamentally changed how we can operate and interact with learners.  Whether you are teaching an F2F class, hybrid, or fully online, I have seen teachers at all levels integrate many of these wonderful new technologies by necessity.  That is, in many ways this new paradigm for teaching was inevitable given that more and more of our students are “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) and we strive to continue making our lessons both real and relevant for them today.

For my F2F classes, I give the option for students to write by hand and/or by computer (most use computers).  For my hybrid classes I integrate the Google suite/ Adobe products through a CMS. For both types of classes, I have always provided my global commentary in a digital format because I type over 100 wpm and my handwriting, well, based on what I’ve been told of my penmanship, I could have been a doctor.  Naturally, I still collect papers and write notes in the margins, but I try to do as much as I can digitally.  Macros and rubber-stamping have not worked that well for me as I tend to enjoy writing personal remarks to each student.

I actively implement many of the ideas presented by Warnock in regards to grading/ quizzes and rubrics. In particular the use of quizzes to provide a structure for students as they work through the materials.

Now that I’ve established my fondness for technology, there is one thing that truly remains a challenge for me and takes me back to the days of having a leather tanned satchel filled with essays in a café. That is, the face-to-face exchanges and the information that transpires when people interact with each other directly. I know that there are many great tools out there that we can use from voice threads to videoconference, but for me they still fall short. Perhaps it is rooted in my Waldorf education experience, but I feel very strongly about face-to-face social interaction for humans. So, there is my dilemma and I look forward to learning from all of you how I might be able to bridge that concern.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking:
I have not used this tool as of yet, but I’ve heard much about it and I can’t wait to try it. I’m excited to see what I might be able to do with it and how my students respond. I’ll gladly provide my thoughts on it soon.  Is this the same program that the writing center is using?

Skype/ WhatsApp / Zoom:
Of all of these I’ve found WhatsApp to work the best for students and me. It’s free and all that is required is a WiFi signal to connect anywhere on the globe.  They all allow you to add documents to the conversation, etc. etc. and provide an opportunity for face-to-face communication.

Google Suite:
Google Docs / Google Groups / Google Voice (text/call) / Google Hangouts (video/chat/text) Synchronous editing is great for student collaboration and for editing documents with students. Has features for editing directly or simply making suggestions (like notes in Word). Google products can be integrated into your CMS if features are not already built in.

Inserted Spoken Comments:
Yup, have tried this.  Never quite got into this one. Just seems a lot easier to type a comment in the notes / margin.  I do like the idea of recording global summary feedback on writing projects.

Phone:
I know some teachers give out their personal phone numbers. I don’t.  I’ll gladly text or have a call with a student, but we’ll use a 3^rdparty provider like WhatsApp or Skype.

Podcasting:
I have created podcasts in the past, particularly as a world language educator, but have not yet applied the technology to my writing classes. Podcasting is best suited for long-form content but I’ve used it for 10-15 minute introduction and overviews of projects and lessons. I’ve also used it successfully (I thought) for literature reading review projects. Although podcasting does not solve my issue with the lack of the face-to-face teaching component, I do think it goes a long way in building a genuine connection with your audience instead of one that might feel a bit lackluster and distant.

“Teaching online privileges writing in ways that traditional classes cannot.” Okay, this is a basic assertion, but it really resonated with me as someone who, in theory, prefers f2f teaching. I am still learning to think through a keyboard and migrating, ever so slowly. (Somehow it feels less daunting when it is presented as migration and not transformation…) I was struck by Warnock’s predominant theme that we identify our strengths as instructors and think about how to maximize them online. I am teaching my first hybrid class this semester, and feel like I still have a lot to learn about class management as I get more comfortable incorporating the canvas tools. I tend to emphasize process in my classes and have to be cognizant of the amount of feedback that I give students. Commenting online has been good practice for cutting down on the amount. It doesn’t seem (as the commenter) that I am writing so much when it is in pen! I would like to become comfortable with speed grader because it seems like an amazing way to cut down on the amount of comments and provide directive feedback that doesn’t overwhelm anyone. I have been experimenting with holistic grading and think that it can be a really good way to make the task of writing feel less imposing with low-stakes assignments. I would like to learn more about other approaches to grading rubrics.

Greetings! Great to be a new member of the Writing with Machines crew!

Now

Reading through Warnock’s text, it’s really got my neurons and synapses firing thinking about the overlap and inherent hybridity that is happening more and more as I integrate Canvas into the daily/ weekly work in my onsite classes. Though I’ve never taught an online course, since adopting Canvas over the summer, it (Canvas) has become an integral component of my teaching practicum. Specifically, in terms of assessment, SpeedGrader on Canvas is much more conducive to comment on drafts early on in the writing process. During workshop/ peer review over the summer, I started to reviewing and making short, targeted comments on student drafts while they are working in groups with peer drafts, I could then check in with each of them individually to discuss the comments I made. Granted, this was for a summer course and we had three hours to work on this, so adjustments would need to be made for a shorter class period. But with an online course, the highlighting and commenting functions in Canvas introduce many opportunities to engage in directed comments while mitigating the issue of illegibility that Warnock brings up in chapter eleven—something I have struggled with for so long.

Another exciting proposition that Warnock addresses in his section on grading in chapter twelve is the possibility of “generating an ongoing conversation with students about their progress . . . grading is too often a one-way announcement form the instructor” (137). One method I’ve employed in my f2f classes, and will continue in online courses, is the use of a Google doc to get a sense of where students are at with their thinking/ feeling about their essay drafts. I ask what they’re excited about, concerned about, or still have questions about- they respond onsite using laptops, phones, or ChromeBooks, and I also give them the choice to answer anonymously. This practice has given me valuable insights into student thinking – and better understanding of what I need to address/ adjust in the lead up to assessment. Students have a chance to comment on what I can do to better clarify or improve my expectations for an assignment and we can then work as a class to address concerns before a grade is assigned.

Future Possibilities

If I could sum up my thoughts about the future in teaching online courses, I would use one word—more! More comments from me, more low-stakes writing with responses from me, more quizzes to fire up thinking about the readings. Warnock has given me much to consider and to be excited about—some specifics.

Macros—I appreciate Warnock’s cautious endorsement of macros-having a bank of auto-fill comments would help mitigate or prevent “repetitive stress injuries.” I also take to heart Warnock’s privileging of student agency and awareness of student engagement when he cautions against an over reliance on macros that would lead to “boring mechanical routine, “ while “students most likely would sniff out the inauthentic nature of your comments” (126). Macros are definitely a strategy that I would like to cautiously attempt when teaching my first online course.

But the strategy that most excited me was Warnock’s section on AudioVisual Responses to student work. Warnock admits that “[u]sing AV feedback to respond to student writing in the composition classroom is trill a fairly novel application, but the technologies to support this are improving at a rapid pace” (131). I was holding office hours in the Writing Center on Thursday and I notice they had a separate room for synchronous online appointments and it seemed like a very effective use of AV feedback—both the tutor and tutee were discussing in real time the tutee’s paper. In a class of twenty-five plus students the dynamic would have to be adjusted, and one would have to account for the largely asynchronous nature of online teaching, but as Warnock mentions, “AV feedback cranks up the response process considerably from the simple tape recorder by including video of the paper . . .This [AV feedback] is much faster than evaluating papers conventionally, and I give the students more extensive feedback—saying nearly twice as much as I do in a typical written response” (131). Very exciting prospect here—and I hope to learn more about where we are with the technology now, as I imagine we’ve come a long way since 2009 when Warnock’s text was published.

Hi Everybody! I hope you’re all having a productive semester. It’s good to be back with the Writing With Machines gang!

The first reading assignment from Warnock’s text was a great opener to the purpose of OWcourses, as I continue to think about how to replicate the face-to-face experience via online.

The most valuable pieces of advice that Warnocks offers to understand the difference between ‘Responses versus Grading’ and keeping feedback ‘Conversational versus one-way-announcements.’

I think these are the types of interactions I feel comfortable doing in the classroom, and always questioning how to bring these interactions into OW courses. Of course it all comes down to the kinds of technology that can help manipulate more personal instructor-student experiences concerning the writing process.

A few things I already practice with students when online feedback is provided are what Warnock calls ‘in-text markers.’ At times I give students the opportunity to submit a thesis statement or body paragraph via email and most of my feedback comes in the form of highlighted comments, underlined areas of focus, arrows for direction and so forth. I find these simple tasks pretty easy for students to visually read suggestions and questions regarding assignments.

To push beyond markers, I do want to remind myself the importance of the ‘first week icebreakers’ as Warnock mentions, the ‘snapshot of yourself’ which is vital for students to feel I’m present, or more so to see myself as their AUDIENCE.  Which leads me to the ‘technologies of responses’ and how to use these resources to avoid blood shot eyes from hours of computer watching and carpal tunnel. I love the idea of using spoken comments and audio visual comments. I’m interested in exploring what apps or programs are out there that work best for providing such feedback. Any suggestions folks?

But I find VOICE and Facial Gestures, heck even hand gestures as a way to communicate my personality to students over the sterile typed comment. I know a few students have submitted their essay to the Writing Center via email and they’ve received some great video responses from writing consultants. The feedback is great since students can stop and play these videos, as the videos scroll through their essays and there’s audio in the background offering feedback. So I’ll definitely be investigating what methods the Writing Center uses to make these videos. Also I need to evaluate how time consuming it is to make videos and which apps/programs are more efficient.

If anybody has some audio/ video app suggestions please send them my way. I’m not the most tech savvy person, but I’m always down to learn!

The thread connecting the writing issues that most frequently prompt my response — logical gaps, weak support, and irregular clarity — is my role as the writer’s audience. When I ask marginal questions that begin with how or why, or when I say “this sentence is unclear to me,” I am trying help the writer understand that I am interested in their argument, and am pointing out where I become skeptical or confused. This kind of feedback is most effective in onsite classes when it is supported by a face to face conference.

Having read this week’s assigned chapter, I think that audiovisual resources, such as a Camtasia recording, would be an effective method of providing end comments and  drawing attention to specific areas in the text. I could use Camtasia in conjunction with the color highlighting tools available with the Speed Grader function in Canvas. As Warnock cautions against feedback becoming “mechanical” and “inauthentic” (126), I think voice and video responses would keep that from happening.

In addition, I would like to experiment with recording my feedback using my tablet and stylus. Perhaps the handwritten marks and notes, in addition to my voice comments, might foster a more personal, less mechanical, experience for the student.

In the past I have used the comments bank in Turnitin, and I currently use my grading rubric as a Google Doc scoring sheet that I fill out for each student’s paper and share the link with them. This practice has been effective, especially in reinforcing my expectations for their writing. But in an effort to increase efficiency, I plan to check out the different programs listed by Warnock on page 126.

Sometimes I write too many notes on a student’s paper when I grade them electronically. It’s sad, but true. I own it. I’ve been trying to pull back, telling myself “Kellen! Don’t overwhelm them! Be judicious, but, for everyone’s sake, be pithy, mate!” That’s why I’m excited to test out some of the tools Scott Warnock glosses to see if I can give more detailed feedback in a way that is more consumable for students. Namely, I wanna try these three in particular: macros (cuz they seem easy, right?), rubric software (cuz I love me a rubric), and Camtasia (cuz wouldn’t it be nice if I could just say things?). Oh! I’m also gonna totally just add a quick something about peer review stuff at the end.

I can totally get on board with Warnock’s assertion that all writing in an OWcourse is an opportunity for improvement—an opportunity for you to respond to a student in real time without the looming pressure of a grade. However, I am equally wary of burning out—of providing really stellar feedback to the first few papers before becoming increasingly fatigued until I just quit in frustration and watch Netflix. Of course, according to Warnock, I could just create what are called ‘macros’ to input common comments using ordinary keyboard shortcuts. Stunning! I love shortcuts. But, I’m not gonna lie. I tried for a solid 30 minutes without figuring it out. So, if anyone knows how and wants to walk me through it, I’d be so appreciative!!

After failing to master macros, I moved on to playing with the rubric software that Warnock briefly discusses. Unlike the macros, these felt much more intuitive and not terribly different than the rubrics I make on Word. Well, at least RubiStar because that was the only one I could easily access. It’s free, which is something I love. That said, it looks like Rubrix looks to be a viable, perhaps sleeker version of it that is more responsive to the most recent technologies. However, it costs money so I wasn’t able to actually do more than watch an informational video that is fully of a lot of fun cartoons that will tell you about how great rubrics are (5 Stars: would watch again!). Either way, I think these both provide really exciting possibilities for providing visually organized ways of expressing expectations without overwhelming the student (or yourself) with comments. I literally just passed out rubrics this week, so I may try to implement one of these and pilot it with my students this semester to see how they respond to it.

Finally, I am most excited to try Camtasia. I didn’t actually get a chance to explore it yet, but I hopefully will soon. A representative from the writing center came to my class Thursday and told me more about how they use it for students and have seen good results from it. In terms of an OWcourse, I think this is an especially great tool to cultivate an online persona. This can be particularly important for rough draft stages. Being able to create a file that students can consistently refer back to in order to hear your feedback in real time (…well in simulated real time…) sounds incredibly productive to me.

Getting to speak directly to your students in this way can help establish a more comfortable environment in which to receive feedback. I try really really hard in my comments to make sure I sound upbeat and positive, which can lead to a lot of extra words. By being able to just vocalize these feelings, I can save myself time while still be encouraging. Most importantly, I can customize my feedback for every single student, which feels completely less viable in other formats. Maybe this could even be a way of addressing an issue that Megen raises about potentially feeling like a “brick in a wall” in her post. Through this tool, you can start talking to students through their writing in a personal way from brainstorming to outlining to drafting to revising. By making these videos really personal and attentive to the nuances of each students writing, we might be able to recreate some of that student-teacher interaction found in f2f classes.

To conclude, I wanna talk about peer review software. I’m a firm believer that teaching our students how to be effective peer reviewers will make them stronger writers. I try to incorporate peer review workshops into my f2f courses pretty regularly. Learning how to identify issues in other people’s writing can help us recognize those same problems in our own. However, while Warnock offers tons of great examples for how to recreate peer review in virtual spaces—wikis, blogs, Waypoint, etc. The idea of creating small working groups that would be organized via Canvas sounds the easiest to produce, so I’m going to try to pilot it this semester for their last essay (when they’ve hopefully had ample in-class practice with peer review). I’ll be sure to report results!

In the end, these tools sound like really great ways of improving our ability to respond to students while also saving ourselves some time. Without a doubt, there is an air of utopianism attached to some of these tools that I’m sure I’ll be disabused of when I start implementing them more fully. In that interim, I’m going to start trying to incorporate some of these elements this semester in my f2f classes to test how their limitations and affordances.

Reading through Chapters 11 and 12 of Teaching Writing Online has made me realize how much my pedagogy already reflects many online teaching methods, even though I’ve not yet taught an online course. (It’s funny, this week, one of my student asked me to walk her through our Canvas site because she was still confused. Afterwards, she thanked me for helping her because “I haven’t taken an online class before.” The comment seemed bizarre to me, and she didn’t qualify it in any way. Reading the chapter helped me better understand what she meant, though. I take for granted a lot of the tools in my on-site classes that, really, are also suited for online teaching.)

Commenting through Canvas

Overall, my main form of assessment and feedback have been via Canvas’s built-in commenting functions (SpeedGrader, is it called?). I use the comment and highlighting aspects of it. Before I transitioned to Canvas last year, I used Blackboard’s similar function for a couple of years (whatever that one was called). Before that, I was handwriting comments on paper copies. I have found that I do end up putting a lot more feedback on the digital versions, mostly because I type faster and find it easier to think when I’m at a computer (oddly enough). I do think I have a tendency to overwhelm students, so would like to find new ways to approach commenting. 

I also allow students to email me versions of their essay in advance for me to comment on, which somewhat minimizes my commenting on the final draft. I prefer, too, to get trough drafts digitally to office hours, which I feel is a bit taboo, but I think the feedback is better and that I don’t actually have to sacrifice a lot of the conversation. 

However, I also try to build in a lot of assessment and feedback before essays are even submitted.

Assessing in Advance

Digital tools (and specifically Canvas, in this case) have been really useful to me when it comes to making sure students can assess their own writing without too much intervention from me (similar to what Warnock says: “good teachers can facilitate discussions onside or online that feature students prominently, but at times, students need your guiding hand” (125)). I’m a big fan of learning through example, which I’ve built into my classes by simply having students put their essay drafts on Canvas discussion boards. This allows them to explore in a way unanchored from hard draft peer review (and from peer review in general, which students often find a drag–though I still do it, since it allows me to also hold informal office hours during class time). 

I’m skeptical of concepts of standards, because they are so top-down; using forums and discussions available digitally, however, create bottom-up “standards” that students can engage with. Students, then, absorb organizational structure, citing conventions, and other expectations simply by having a digital portfolio of student writing available to them. They see what is available to their writing, rather than being told (since the latter rarely ever works, at least for me).

Along with minimizing my own role as a figure of authority in favor to student-to-student learning, I also like Warnock’s idea of seeing my role as one of engaging in conversation than simply bestowing summative comments. I use digital tools to do this to some degree as well; I assign “reading responses” that are also posted on public discussion boards. These reading responses usually address aspects of the essay or attempt to develop skills relevant to the essay (without mentioning “the essay”); especially for about the first half of the semester, I respond at length to these posts, focusing on encouraging student ideas and avoiding too much “fixing” grammar or critiquing ideas. Many of the ideas ultimately end up in the essay and, therefore, I have already added my assessments in ahead of time. This is of course all possible in paper copies, but the conversation is then much less public and the record of the conversation disappears to quickly, for both me and my students.

This has also made me think of how I could use audiovisual means to further support this conversation, making it more of a “f2f” type of conversation rather than “textual” in the way Warnock describes (although, his definition of “text-based” is both fascinating to me and also a bit limiting). I am a little wary of audiovisual means of communication; they seem too performative and awkward to me, but if more natural conversations could be facilitated, I’d want to adopt more of those means (maybe through Skype or something like that, but overall I’ve mostly rejected tools like that. I have used Google hangouts when I worked at a graduate writing center, but it just felt so clunky and unnatural).

A lot of my strategies are, then, preemptive rather than tied to a particular moment of “assessment.”

In terms of reflecting a bit on the future (though the future is scattered throughout everything I’ve written already), I would like to figure out a way to use tools to better assess one of the more important aspects of student writing to me, close reading. Things like comments (whether voice, video, or traditional) and quizzes don’t seem to be particularly useful for getting students to really understand how to better close read. Often, when my students revise their essays, the close reading still remains lacking. This is one area I’m still at a loss to figure out, and Warnock doesn’t have many answer I like (comment banks and macros are rather frightening possibilities to me–they are so impersonal).

The theme in this post seems to be that I strive for a form of assessment that feels natural, decenters my authority, and is personal rather than mechanized.