Writing Assignments in Large Classes

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Dear List,

These are all great ideas, and I think it's so important to keep our
work meaningful in light of the larger and larger classes we are
teaching everywhere. I'm happy to hear other suggestions, and I'll
throw my own into the mix!

Caveat: I have not personally tried anything like this, but I saw it
at a teaching conference and would love to give it a try someday.

The presentation I attended was about how students in a senior stats
class were paired with students in a beginning research methods
course, and that those senior students were then expected to assist
the junior students with developing the statistical analysis of their
research paper. The junior students learned well because they were
able to have more one-on-one interaction with someone teaching them,
and the senior students learned well because they had to teach it to
someone else. The participants in this program said it was a marvelous
success and that it received high student ratings as well. Of course,
the instructor was on hand to answer any questions and to make sure
that incorrect information was not being taught, but for the most part
the students did a lot of the work themselves. The senior students
were motivated to do a good job because part of their grade was based
on how well the junior student understood the material.

I think this sort of arrangement could be adapted in a number of
ways. I could see a student in feminist theories, or perhaps in a
higher level composition/writing course, working with an introductory
women's studies student. The introductory student would get useful and
thoughtful feedback and the senior student would be able to teach
information about feminist theories, writing, etc. to the intro
student.

Just another idea!

Best,

Blaise


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Blaise Astra Parker, PhD
Asst. Director of Women's Studies
101 Benson Building
University of Georgia
Athens, GA, 30602
706-542-2846
blaiseparkerphd  AT  yahoo.com
http://www.uga.edu/~wsp
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~blaze

"You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit
group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people
as yourself and your friends." - Robert Anton Wilson
**********************************************************************

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I tried something similar to this in an introduction to mass communication
course. There was no formal structure in place for doing it, so I set up
independent study credit for students who wanted to be involved. I took
people who had gotten A's in my intro to mass comm class earlier (and who
wanted to participate), signed them up for independent student with me, and
had them attend class. They would facilitate interactive discussion groups
in class and provide out-of-class study groups for students who wanted extra
help studying for my very difficult exams.

The advanced students who did this felt they learned the subject even better
than they had the first time around and they gained new appreciation for
what is involved with teaching. The beginning students who participated in
the out of class study groups found them very helpful and did indeed improve
their grades in the course.

Unfortunately, my fellow faculty saw this as a bit too "revolutionary" for
their tastes! Ahhh well.

Georgia

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Georgia NeSmith, Ph.D.
Adjunct Associate Professor
University of Maryland University College
Communication Department
gnesmith  AT  frontiernet.net
http://homepage.mac.com/georgia.nesmith
http://georgia_nesmith.tripod.com
************************************

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Hi,

I'm not sure if anyone has suggested this yet, but what I do with my
40-some students is assign one research paper, then I divvy up the due
dates.  I set 4 dates and on that date the student gives a brief
presentation of their research and hands in the paper.  This has
several benefits, one being that I don't get 40 papers at once (on top
of teaching 2-3 other writing classes), and students can figure out
when the best time for them to work on such a paper.  Some sign up
early so that the paper is done and out of the way.  Others put it off
to mid-term, etc.  I also allow for revisions, but these trickle in,
and I don't feel swamped with 40 at one time.

Kathy Coudle King
Sr. Lecturer - English & Women Studies
University of North Dakota
kathleen_king  AT  und.nodak.edu

http://www.angelfire.com/nd/wannabe

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Hello, everyone,
I, too spend a lot of time grading students' writing. I have a couple
of different kinds of suggestions regarding keeping writing
assignments meaningful while making the most of instructor time:

1. when I grade students' papers, I use a heuristic. In part, it's a
bit like Daphne's key, with some narrative/descriptive feedback,
too--maybe like this:
THESIS--this paper has a strong thesis statement or idea that is
maintained throughout the paper
        yes             no
then, under the circled "yes" or "no" I put specifics (i.e., the
thesis is developed in the conclusion; or, your example in parag. 4
does not support your thesis--can you make the connections you see
more explicit?)


2. at the end of every student's paper, I write or type a short
narrative comment that goes something like this:
The strengths in this paper include _____________________. To make
your next paper stronger, try to _____________________.
I keep the "try to" comment to two or three suggestions, at the most.
Students are required to type this narrative comment at the beginning
of their next writing assignment. So, the narr. comment from the end
of paper 1 is typed at the top of the first page of paper 2, and the
one from paper 2 at the top of paper 3, and so on. This means that,
at the very least, they've read my comment one time before turning in
their next paper.

If I do rough drafts, then I require the narr. comment from the first
draft to be typed at the top of the second draft, and so forth.


3. my favorite Intro WS writing assignment is a course scrapbook. The
scrapbook is comprised of 6 "scrapbook entries." Each entry has a
broad, assigned topic (i.e., "gender identity"; "reproductive health
and politics"; "women and political power"; "definitions of
feminism," etc.). The assigned topics correspond to units in the
class.

For each assigned topic, the student finds some item or event to
analyze. For example, in the "reproductive health and politics" unit,
a student may choose to write about a current controversy in the
news, a law that is being decided within the court system, the layout
of a birthing room, a particular fictional representation of a
pregnant woman, or the experience of a friend who is a young mom (or
any number of other things). The analysis must draw connections
between the thing being analyzed and our course materials and
concepts.

There are eight assigned topics for the scrapbooks, and each student
chooses six of the eight to do--this helps reduce my reading load a
bit. Each scrapbook entry has a due date--usually right at the end of
the corresponding unit. Then, the students can revise their entries
and turn in a revised scrapbook at the end of the term for a final
scrapbook grade.

If anyone would like to see the syllabus description of my scrapbook
assignment, I would be happy to e-mail it to you on an individual
basis.


4. Finally, I encourage students to submit papers to me via e-mail
(not on discussion boards, but just to my personal e-mail account).
My typing is much faster than my handwriting (and much more legible)!
I grade the paper on my computer, print a hard copy on already-used
(on one side) paper, and hand that back to the student.

Peace,
Jeannie

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I'm enjoying all the suggestions here.  I second (and third, and
fourth) the recommendation to take a look at John Bean's book; it's the
smartest, most accessible, just-in-time book that I know of for
teachers who assign writing across all disciplines.

I like and have used extensively the idea of "directed" journal or
short-paper assignments, as homework and/or as a 10-minute in-class
activity; a number of short assignments like that could count as one of
your main assignments, and they're quick to grade (check plus, check,
check minus).

To build on Jeannie's suggestion about having students reiterate her
comment at the top of their next paper/draft (which I *love* and am
going to steal!), I'd recommend *not* doing "lots of comments" on a
final draft, particularly on a final draft of a kind of paper the
students only do once in the class.  Very few students can sort through
"lots of comments" meaningfully, and fewer can transfer them to the
next assignment.  Your time will be better spent commenting "lots" on
(a) the first short-assignment you give, to prep them for future short
assignments, and (b) a proposal or early draft of a longer assignment.
(And not having to comment much on a large essay at the end of the
semester is a real life-saver!)

I often build in a percentage of the grade for "significant revision"
and require students to write about the changes they made:  it's
another way of making my comments "count" -- and encouraging their
learning.

I've also begun to try to devote more time to having students bring
their marked-up (by peers, by me, by themselves) drafts to class and
work on them there, where their peers and I can support them in
actually responding to the comments, or I can guide them in "trying
something" with their drafts ("Add a 'because...' statement to your
thesis sentence," or "Add a sentence beginning with 'another example of
this is...' to a body paragraph").

Jeannie's idea of the rubric or checklist can also be a huge time
saver.  I do it even more minimalistically than she does, though!  In
reviewing drafts (another assignment that I give a small
grade-percentage to, in order to encourage students to turn in a
completed assignment), I now use an assignment-specific checklist with
room for three end-comments:  "What I liked best here is....  The most
important revision you should focus on is....  A second kind of
revision you could focus on is...."  (I've been trying to be stern with
myself in limiting each comment to a sentence!)  There's a sentence at
the bottom:  "Please also review the checklist above to see if you
could make other improvements."  My checklists -- which I don't comment
on, though I occasionally circle words or draw arrows to one of my 3
comments -- include things for all papers like "Introduction catches
and holds audience's attention" and "Each paragraph is on one topic,
and is not underdeveloped," and things for specific papers such as
"Makes reference to all three class texts as required" or "proposes a
specific solution."

Note:  I don't use my rubrics for grading, only for informational
purposes.  That is, I don't dole out 6.2 points for intro, 3.765 points
for topic sentences, 15.1 points for thesis sentence.  They get checks
or sometimes check-pluses, but nothing more specific.  Not only does
the minute point-breakdown contradict everything I believe about
holistic grading, but it takes up extra time, since the teacher has to
give (and if needed, be able to defend) 10 or 15 serparate grades for
each paper.  Ugh!

Instead of grading drafts, you could try small-group conferencing,
which some of my colleagues do:  you can address some overlapping
issues for three or four students in fifteen minutes (even better if
they've all read each other's drafts in peer review first so they know
what you're talking about).  It'll still take you 2-3 minutes to read
over each paper beforehand to look for the macro-level issues that need
attention, but that's still only 5-6 minutes per student/paper.

Someone else suggested collaborative projects:  even if you have
students do their "big" paper working with only one other person,
you've halved your grading load without halving their
writing-education.  (Anyone who's ever collaborated on a project knows
that the workload doesn't drop much!)  When I do graded group projects,
I require some individual pieces (an individual rough draft, or
individual annotated bibliography) as well as a confidential write-up
from each member of who (including themselves) contributed what.  I
often give a split grade (40% individ., 60% collab.), which is usually
the same grade unless the evidence shows that one person slacked off.

Alternatively, a collaborative presentation instead of an essay,
perhaps with a one- or two-page write-up and bibliography from each
participant, reduces stress on collaborators (who can more easily divvy
up parts of the presentation) and makes grading quicker.

As a last note, I don't know if anyone's mentioned "minimal marking"
when it comes to grammar, but Bean (and lots of others) have good
suggestions for how and why to Not Fix All Sentence Errors for
students.  Marking but not fixing sentence-level errors can free up an
amazing amount of time.

cheers,

shelley


E Shelley Reid
Assistant Professor
Director of Composition
English Department -- MSN 3E4
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030-4444

ereid1  AT  gmu.edu
esreid  AT  cox.net

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I use two of the methods suggested in my classes with
good success:

1.  Short in-class assignments, quickly marked. In my
case I do reading quizzes, about every other class.
Each quiz is worth a percentage point or two and the
output is about a written page. I give them 10 min at
the start of the class to respond to a discussion
question about the readings for that day. I know
instructors who also use post-lecture quizzes to
monitor students' comprehension and attentiveness. I
use reading quizzes because one of the biggest
impediments to good class discussion is students just
not reading the material.  If my class were
lecture-only rather than discussion-based then I would
certainly also use the post-lecture "check-ins".  When
I plan the quizzes I try to make questions that test
both understanding of the readings and authors' ideas,
and ask students to do some level of analysis. For
example:

"Choose one article from the readings assigned for
this week. How does the author of that article address
the issue of technological interventions into women's
work? Why is this relevant for...?"

I also find that frequent short writing work of this
type help students practice writing under pressure,
which in turn helps them manage exams more
effectively.  It also gives me an ongoing writing
sample to later use to assess possible plagiarism, but
that's another story...

The other role of the writing in facilitating
discussion is that many students are not as good at
responding quickly to questions verbally. A short
period of reflective writing allows them to gather
their thoughts, be "reminded" of the ideas, and have a
basis from which to proceed. Sometimes I'll even have
students write without being graded, in response to a
discussion question. They'll write for 3-5 min then
discuss. This enables different cognitive processes,
and allows students who need more "processing time" to
catch up.

I might often mark these quizzes while students are
doing something else, like small group discussions. It
really doesn't take much time at all.

2.  Cumulative assignments. I also go from research
process to compiling an annotated bibliography to
essay outline to final essay (4 assignments in total).
The final essay is worth less than the annotated
bibliography because the annotated bibliography
represents most of the research labour. Students are
required to respond to my feedback on previous steps.

I also use a marking checklist for all of these larger
assignments. The checklist is fairly detailed in its
criteria, and is divided into thematic sections (e.g.
"content", "writing mechanics", etc.). It takes
seconds to check off quickly. This has the advantages
of speed, ease, and very clear indication to the
student of how I graded. I do it in Excel so that I
can type in comments rapidly, save a record of it, and
the score is also automatically computed.

In terms of submission deadlines, I use "grace days"
that are like a credit. Students get 5 grace days at
the beginning of term that they may use at any time at
their discretion. They may not trade these days with
other students (some enterprising ones have tried).
This gives them some flexibility and spares me the sob
stories about dead grandparents and dead printers.
Since many students often do things at the last
minute, a day or two extra is a really big deal.
Longer extensions for a genuine emergency are
negotiated separately. I tell them to save up the
grace days till end of term because that's when crunch
time comes, but it's up to the students when they want
to use them.

Thanks to all for the interesting ideas.

Krista Scott-Dixon
York University
North York, ON
kristasd  AT  rogers.com
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