|
WAC
Newsletter INSIDE: Book Review: Electronic Communication
Across the Curriculum Creating Standardized Evaluation Sheets: As reported in the 1999 WAC survey, some faculty members expressed an
interest in having writing evaluation sheets available for use in
writing intensive courses. One faculty member commented: “Provide
standard writing evaluation sheets—but do not require the use of the
evaluation sheets.” This suggestion indicates a laudable interest in
maintaining consistent standards for writing in programs across the
curriculum. The WAC workshop “Developing Standardized Evaluation Sheets” on
Wednesday, January 19, was held in response to this suggestion. The
discussion at the workshop yielded a number of possible solutions to the
seemingly omnipresent task of writing evaluation. Early in the discussion, workshop attendants agreed that a “one
size fits all” mentality falls short when applied to writing
assessment. They reasoned that any standardized form would not fit the
specific parameters dictated by various assignments, courses,
departments, and disciplines. Instead of attempting to create a form that all present agreed would
be of little or no help to instructors, attendants began compiling a
list of possible alternatives. Faculty present also shared some of the
evaluation methods that they find most, and least, helpful. It was generally agreed that assessment should not merely highlight
students’ shortcomings, but should also provide students with feedback
about their strengths and suggestions for future revisions. Some
instructors noted that holistic assessment techniques such as portfolios
are often helpful because students are then graded on a body of work
rather than on individual pieces. Concerns with Standardized Grading Tools One problem participants mentioned was becoming trapped by their own
criteria. One professor cited the example of a “no comma splice”
policy that backfires when a student turns in a paper that, while
otherwise excellent, contains a comma splice. Rubrics also tend to make some instructors feel pigeonholed. Many
instructors feel that they “just know” an “A” paper from a
“C” and so forth, but they might have difficulty explaining exactly
why the paper deserves that particular grade. Rubrics can force
instructors to disregard that intuition in order to adhere to their
stated assessment guidelines or to change grades to align with the
rubric. This bending of assessment to fit the grade was deemed unfair to
students and hard on instructors as well. Participants also voiced
concerns that lengthy rubric assessment can actually increase time spent
grading. Some Usable Solutions Another participant suggested that rubrics could be developed by each
department to assess common aspects of writing in the discipline while
also leaving space on the evaluation sheets to accommodate individual
instructors’ grading criteria. Instructors could both give appropriate
weight to the elements of students’ writing they deem most significant
and uphold the standards of their respective departments. A rubric can also be developed in the context of the course material
as part of the assignment. It functions as an answer to that often-asked
question, “So what are you looking for in this paper?” Giving students the rubric prior to writing could help them remain
aware of grading criteria as they write and revise their work.
Instructors could also initiate an in-class activity to develop a rubric
in class, providing an opportunity for the professor (and students) to
explain why certain criteria should be included and why others should
not. Conclusions If such a discussion were to continue, it would be particularly
useful to have additional input from those faculty members who indicated
a desire for such standardized writing assessment tools on the fall WAC
survey. Departments across the disciplines might also help further such a
discussion by setting up discipline-specific guidelines for instructors,
which could in turn lead to standardized assessment tools being
developed for use within individual departments. -Cynthia K. Marshall Center for Teaching and Learning I. Course Design Teaching Tips—Incorporating Moderate Technology into Course Work
(Luncheon) IIa. Presentation Modes: Improving
Teaching How to Customize an Online Course (Videoconference) Case Method Teaching: A Supplement to Lecture and Discussion
(Luncheon) IIb. Presentation Modes: Media Design and
Creation Multimedia Using Astound (WIN) Introduction to PowerPoint (WIN) Introduction to PowerPoint (MAC) Making Images Digital The World of Digital Cameras Advanced Features with PowerPoint (WIN) Graphics and Information Design 101: Creating Effective and
Engaging Presentations Faculty Webworks: Leap Online Without Tripping Over Esoteric Code III. Assessment Techniques Peer Evaluation Panel (Luncheon) Scholarship Assessed (Book Group Luncheon) IV. Policy Issues Cheating on Tests (Book Group Luncheon) V. Diversity Issues Students, Religion and the Classroom (Luncheon) Adults Supporting Adults Project (Luncheon) Book Review: Electronic Communication
Across the Curriculum Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum, ed. Donna
Reiss, Dickie Selfe, and Art Young (Urbana: NCTE, 1998) ISBN:
0-81411-308-7 Computer-mediated communication has become so common on college
campuses that it’s difficult to remember what our professional lives
were like without it. Earlier this week, for instance, via the World
Wide Web and/or e-mail, I’ve sent and received drafts of a project
I’m working on with colleagues in Texas and New Jersey, been reminded
to attend a committee meeting, visited writing across the curriculum
programs in Missouri and Hawaii, read portions of an ongoing debate on
whether Wright State University should switch to semesters, received two
registrations for WAC workshops next quarter, and located an electronic
copy of an out-of-print book I want to use in a class I’ll teach in
the winter. And it’s only Tuesday. Electronic communication opens up a number of opportunities in the
classroom as well, and several earlier WAC newsletters have highlighted
ways a few people on campus have incorporated these newer technologies
in their teaching. Still more ideas are provided in this collection of
24 brief essays. While all the contributors are advocates of the
technology they describe, the approach is not blindly partisan.
Acknowledging that e-mail can provide a “less threatening forum” and
“enhance the social dimension of the educational process,” Lynch
reminds readers that e-mail in and of itself “is not necessarily
empowering or liberatory” (168). That balanced view prevails
throughout. As the titles of the various chapters indicate (see table
of contents), the writers cover a wide range of disciplines and
electronic media. Among the fields of study discussed here are history,
accounting, literature, mathematics, biology, marketing, philosophy,
teacher education, engineering, and design. While e-mail is the medium
most often discussed, such synchronous environments as MOOs and MUDs are
included as well, as are Web-based materials. Several writers concentrate on the ways in which newer technologies
can be employed to disciplinary ends. Venable and Vik, for instance,
contend that computer support has made writing more integral to their
accounting courses, allowing for more cross-disciplinary topics and
providing students more experience with the kind of collaboration they
will be involved with on the job. Selber and Karis identify some
“digital composition practices” emerging in engineering courses,
then outline several areas in which communication is crucial in an
electronic age, including interface design practices, usability testing
methods, and electronic portfolios of professional work. Not all the articles take up conventional disciplinary classes.
Strickland and Whitnell describe a course (taught jointly by a chemistry
professor and an English professor) in which students designed and
created a Web page for Guilford College. Portillo and Cummins describe
what can result when separate courses are linked electronically. In this
case, the linkage took the form of an extensive e-mail interchange on
the topic of creativity between students in a creative design course and
a first-year writing course. Electronic links need not be confined to a single campus, of course,
and a number of chapters describe collaborative efforts among groups who
may be widely separated geographically and/or culturally. Redd describes
a project undertaken by a writing class at Howard University and an art
class at Montana State University. Her discussion of the interactions
between the two diverse groups of students is of particular interest, as
is her account of their resulting publication, called On (the Color)
Line. Linkages can be international as well. Shamoon recounts a series of
semester-long exchanges between students at the University of Rhode
Island and at universities in England, Ireland, Korea, Finland, India,
and the Netherlands. Although these particular exchanges took place in
the context of a business class, Shamoon emphasizes the wide
applicability of this approach. She suggests that it can transform
typical classroom debates “from a pro/con exercise in argumentation to
a rhetorical problem in cross-cultural communication with sophisticated
applications to topics currently under debate in any discipline”
(157). While some attention is given to the nuts-and-bolts aspects of
incorporating these technologies—the piece by Hawisher and Pemberton
is especially good in this respect—most of the writers look at larger
pedagogical issues as well. One idea common to several chapters is the
way electronic media can allow for more individual student participation
in large lecture classes. Langsam and Yancey, for example, deal with
large introductory biology classes. Likewise, Gary and Valerie
Hardcastle describe some Web-based activities they have designed for use
in large lecture classes. Besides involving students more personally,
they argue, the format of the Web had a definite impact on the
students’ writing, which shows a clear sense of an audience larger
than just the class. Additionally, they believe, instructors “develop
new and better skills for sharing information” as a result of their
experience (292). Describing how synchronous online conferences are used in the WAC
program at the University of Richmond, Essid and Hickey take up the
benefits of collaborative learning. They maintain that reaching
consensus through online conferences provides a “visual record” that
knowledge is “a process of continually negotiated conversation”
(74). Wolffe describes how electronic journals help students deal with math
anxiety, claiming that they are more effective than paper journals.
Similarly, Fischer argues that e-mail journals are more effective than
print journals because they are more student-centered and because
students can write more spontaneously and independently for their peers.
“Blending the characteristics of dialogue borrowed from oral modes of
discussion with the recursive and recordable capabilities of writing
results in a more dynamic interaction . . . than does either mode
alone,” she concludes (218). Other chapters address different aspects of the topic. A couple look
at the potential impact of electronic communication on faculty
development (Hocks and Bascelli; Palmquist, Kiefer, and Zimmerman);
still others take up the topic in the context of writing centers. In
short, the range of coverage here ought to provide something of
interest—and value—for anyone wishing to investigate ways of
implementing electronic communication into this important aspect of our
professional lives. Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum CONTENTS 1. “Using Computers to Expand the Role of
Writing Centers,” Muriel Harris 2. “Writing Across the Curriculum
Encounters Asynchronous Learning Networks,” Gail E. Hawisher and
Michael A. Pemberton 3. “Building a Writing-Intensive
Multimedia Curriculum,” Mary E. Hocks and Daniele Bascelli 4. “Communication Across the Curriculum
and Institutional Culture,” Mike Palmquist, Kate Kiefer, and Donald E.
Zimmerman 5. “Creating a Community of Teachers and
Tutors,” Joe Essid and Dona J. Hickey 6. “From Case to Virtual Case: A Journey
in Experiential Learning.” Peter M. Saunders 7. “Composing Human-Computer Interfaces
Across the Curriculum in Engineering Schools,” Stuart A. Selber and
Bill Karis 8. “InterQuest: Designing a
Communication-Intensive Web-Based Course,” Scott A. Chadwick and Jon
Dorbolo 9. “Teacher Training: A Blueprint for
Action Using the World Wide Web,” Todd Taylor 10. “Accommodation and Resistance on (the
Color) Line: Black Writers Meet White Artists on the Internet,” Teresa
M. Redd 11. “International E-Mail Debate,” Linda
K. Shamoon 12. “E-Mail in an Interdisciplinary
Context,” Dennis A. Lynch 13. “Creativity, Collaboration, and
Computers,” Margaret Portillo and Gail Summerskill Cummins 14. “COllaboratory: MOOs, Museums, and
Mentors,” Margit Misangyi Watts and Michael Bertsch 15. “Weaving Guilford’s Web,” Michael
B. Strickland and Robert M. Whitnell 16. “Pig Tales: Literature Inside the Pen
of Electronic Writing,” Katherine M. Fischer 17. “E-Journals: Writing to Learn in the
Literature Classroom,” Paula Gillespie 18. “E-Mailing Biology: Facing the
Biochallenge,” Deborah H. Langsam and Kathleen Blake Yancey 19. “Computer-Supported Collaboration in
an Accounting Class,” Carol F. Venable and Gretchen N. Vik 20. “Electronic Tools to Redesign a Market
ing Course,” Randall S. Hansen 21. “Network Discussions for Teaching
Western Civilization,” Maryanne Felter and Daniel F. Schultz 22. “Math Learning through Electronic
Journaling,” Robert Wolffe 23. “Electronic Communities in Philosophy
Classrooms,” Gary L. Hardcastle and Valerie Gray Hardcastle 24. “Electronic Conferencing in an
Interdisciplinary Humanities Course,” MaryAnn Krajnik Crawford,
Kathleen Geissler, M. Rini Hughes, and Jeffrey Miller -Joe Law Responding to Student Writers Thanks to Tim Wood (Biology) for passing along a column from
the June 6, 1999, Christian Science Monitor. In it, Robert Klose,
associate professor of biological sciences at Maine’s University
College of Bangor, writes about overcoming problems he experienced using
written comments on student essays. In “When the Red Pen Fails, Try Sending the Message on Tape,”
Klose observes: “The problem with writing comments in margins and
between lines is that, even while I am at it, I realize that much of
what I write will not be read by my students.” In response to this concern, while bearing in mind his 35-student
class size, Klose began taping his comments. He observes: “As I
adjusted to this new way of doing things I found that I could be both
more personal and detailed in my comments.” Klose discusses how one student, whose early work he describes as
“nothing short of abysmal,” improved steadily over the course of the
term. That student later related to Klose that the tapes had been
effective teaching tools. The tapes also helped Klose understand the student’s commitment to
learning. The student, who didn’t have his own tape recorder, used the
tape deck in his father’s truck at night to listen to his taped
comments. Eight years after this student’s experience, Klose still
uses taped comments. As illustrated in this article, responding on tape can be yet another
method of commenting on student writing—along with other techniques
like minimal marking—that can not only improve students’
understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, but can also save time
for instructors. Does Errors Matter? How much attention should we pay to grammatical and mechanical errors
in student writing? One common suggestion for responding productively is
to mark errors selectively. “Work on the important ones first,”
workshop leaders say. But what’s important? And who gets to decide? One of the most
helpful answers to those questions comes from a relatively informal
study conducted twenty years ago by Maxine Hairston. Her starting point was highly pragmatic. Citing the concerns of
business leaders and other professionals that college graduates cannot
write a readable report or compose a decent letter, she polled 101
professionals to determine which errors bothered them most. The survey
consisted of 65 sentences containing errors, headed by the general
question, “If you encountered the sentence in a report or business
letter, would it lower your estimate of the writer, and how much?”
After each sentence, readers were asked to select one of three choices:
“Does not bother me; Bothers me a little; Bothers me a lot.” They
were also asked the question, “What is the most annoying feature of
the writing that comes across your desk?” Hairston received 84 completed surveys, many accompanied by extensive
comments. She reports that the theme dominating the comments was the
concern for content. “They care even more about clarity and economy
than they do about surface features,” she writes. “One senior vice
president of a computer company wrote a long letter saying that the
difference between the winners and the also-rans at the top levels of
business was the ability to communicate effectively” (798). In terms of the surface features that interfered with clear
communication, Hairston identified a clear pattern among the responses,
which led her to put the errors into six categories: “outrageous,”
“very serious,” “serious,” “moderately serious,”
“minor,” and “unimportant.” Of these, only the first three need
concern us here. Tellingly, Hairston points out that the “outrageous” errors are
all markers of status. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, errors
of this sort brand the user as a linguistic outsider in the realm of
power and prestige. That seems to be the case for the “very serious”
group as well. Describing error in just such terms—clearly linked to
career and advancement concerns—may motivate students to train
themselves to recognize these particular mistakes. The errors that fell into the “outrageous” category include the
following: • Nonstandard verb forms (e.g., had
went) (If you’re keeping score, the title of the present piece is
definitely “outrageous.”) Things Hairston categorized as “very serious” include • Sentence fragments Finally, most readers responded in ways that suggested the following
errors should be classified as “serious”: • Predication errors (“The policy
intimidates hiring”) Hairston’s lists make a good starting point for talking with
students about matters of correctness. After all, her respondents are
the kinds of people whose positions give them enough power to affect
others’ lives. Even though they value clarity of communication above
“mere” correctness, there is no doubt that errors affect that
communication—and that some errors really does matter more than
others. -Joe Law Reference: Hairston, Maxine. “Not All Errors Are Created Equal: Nonacademic
Readers in the Professions Respond to Lapses in Usage.” College
English 43 (1981): 794-806. |