Archive for the 'Feedback' Category

The Constitution of Articles: Our Surface Errors, Ourselves…

Published
by
Barrie
on November 17, 2008
in ESL and Feedback
. 5 Comments

I am disturbed by the degree to which grammar errors can be destiny, out of proportion to their actual context. For example, should someone who can design a wind tunnel or a life-saving evacuation system or build a robot end up failing an exit exam from a technical college because he or she has made too many grammatical errors? What if that student has only been speaking English for 4 or 5 years? While nobody would deny that the student should and must continue to improve his English, shouldn’t his engineering skills take precedence at a technical college? I’m sure that everyone reading this has faced some version of this problem-I suppose it’s one of the central problems if not THE central problem of student assessment in a linguistically-diverse culture. Yet even barring grading rubrics that would strike most teachers as unfair (counting article mistakes individually, for example-don’t get me started!), non-native speakers face challenges in their coursework that are both more complex than I originally understood , and, I think, less “inevitable” then they seem.

I’m working with some project reports, which are group-written and must conform to fairly strict guidelines. Not surprisingly, the native speakers tend to do most of the writing so that the entire group isn’t penalized for grammar and syntax issues. While understandable, this situation creates conditions that are detrimental to the whole group: First , it forces the second-language speakers to do a lot of the legwork in order to “pull their weight” while potentially overshadowing their contribution, and second, it pretty much destroys any kind of group ownership of the project. When meeting with the groups, I found myself addressing the writer of each section (which I could sort of guess by noticing who perked up as I reached it), rather than the group as a whole, which generally demurred with comments like “Oh, I don’t know about that part-I didn’t write it”, or “you’ll have to ask _____-she wrote the whole thing.” Over time it dawned on me that most of the non-writers weren’t even reading their own group’s report! When I suggested some different divisions of labor (and also that it might not be the best idea to put your name on something you haven’t read) _everyone_ agreed that the chance of being graded badly on grammar/syntax errors was too great to risk, and that it really didn’t matter whether they read the report or not, at least in terms of their grade (i.e. the way that “matters”!) I admit that I didn’t have the guts to ask about the division of labor during the design process, but it occurs to me now that I might find a way to speak to the groups _generally_ about their experience working in groups. I wanted to encourage the non-native speakers to participate more in the writing process (increasing their control over their contribution ), but felt it would be hypocritical, given the very real repercussions their “mistakes” might have on their groups’ grade. I don’t have immediate solutions for this problem, of course, but I thought I’d get it on the table. Thoughts?

Outsourcing grading and written feedback

Published
by
Kate
on August 24, 2007
in Assessment, Feedback, Grading, Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

I was surprised today to find an ad on InsideHigherEd to a company called EduMetry, which offers various outsourcing services to colleges and professors, among them, a 24/7 virtual writing center, and “Virtual TA.”

Virtual TA is a program where the grading of papers, and the writing of “Rich Feedback” is outsourced.

According to “The Case for Rich Feedback,” on the EduMentry site,

One area crying out for attention is the extent of feedback students receive on their ongoing written assignments. Almost universally, assignments come back with a score or letter-grade and a few scrawls that are too brief, general, vague and or otherwise too minimal to make a difference. The student is left with little guidance on what to do differently.

The same page attributes this lack of rich feedback being given to students to a a lack of support that faculty members receive from the university.

But the solutions to that problem are smaller and fewer classes, and faculty learning how to give useful feedback, and students learning how to use that feedback.

I realize this kind of service would best appeal to those running the kinds of huge lecture classes in which “non-virtual” TAs currently do the grading and feedback writing for professors.

But the name “Virtual TA” is kind of a misnomer. They’re not virtual TAs; they’re real TAs you can’t see or visit with, who have no connection with the culture of the college or its student body.

Leaving aside the large lecture course, which I think is not a good idea pedagogically except in certain fields, I fear that this Virtual TA system might be employed in more standard college courses. And if it were, I can’t imagine it being a good idea for the professor, who won’t be reading the papers, and who won’t be learning all s/he can about the students, who themselves won’t be benefitting from the professor’s own feedback.

In response to that concern, EduMetry says (on their FAQ):

Wouldn’t you be interfering in the instructor-student relationship?

We have no direct contact with students. We are at the service of the institution and its faculty members. We provide instructors with a student-ID-scrambling utility that ensures a double-blind grading process. As former academics ourselves, we do everything possible to keep the professor in the loop (and not in the dark, as delegating grading might appear at first blush). In addition to having access to all the individual-student feedback, professors receive a summary report for the class that points out the highlights from the grading of that assignment. This report further ensures that faculty members are aware of how students did, adjust their teaching (content, pace, style, design of assignments) based on the summary feedback.

Truly rich feedback can be provided only by those who know both the subject, the students, and their work, as intimately as is possible given the circumstances.

It’s not the interference between teacher and student, mentioned by EduMentry above, that I fear.
Instead, it’s the gap between teacher and student that this creates.

I guess you might say I “mind the gap.”

Inventing the Critical “I”

Published
by
Jenny
on February 12, 2007
in Feedback, Liberal Arts, Pedagogy, Process, Revision and literature
. 1 Comment

In the Uses of Literature, Italo Calvino writes that “[t]he preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character, who is the author of the work.” Literature classrooms present an interesting paradox: although the work under discussion is literature, students are asked to produce critical works, not literature. Yet, when asked to discuss or write about a work of literature, students are often happier, indeed more comfortable, with relating the work to their lives (in a sense creating a type of literature?) instead of looking at the work with a critical eye.

I think that we can apply Calvino’s “preliminary condition” in the classroom. It may be easier to think of Calvino’s “preliminary condition” alongside something that Nancy Sommers writes about in “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” She writes that “experienced writers imagine a reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose expectations influence their revision process. They have abstracted the standards of a reader and this reader seems to be partially a reflection of themselves and functions as a critical and productive collaborator–a collaborator who has yet to love their work.” Just as a writer of literature must first invent an “I” who is, according to Calvino, the author of the work, a successful writer, according to Sommers, imagines (or invents) a critical “I” to shape the work into an effective piece of writing.

Students in literature courses will inevitably encounter religious texts and be asked to write on them or do some comparative work. They are often hesitant to engage in this work, so close are they to their personal selves, the personal “I.”

I once had a student in an out-of-class workshop say that she couldn’t write on religious texts; she was afraid that her writing might be deemed offensive, that she might say “the wrong thing.” One student in an in-class workshop said that he hoped he wouldn’t have to do a presentation on a piece of writing as controversial as a 17th-century sermon. His impulses were to blame the sermon for outcomes in history rather than reading the sermon as a piece of literature.

Instead of having our students write unimaginative and often weak theses, I’m wondering if we should instead be trying to help them invent an “I,” a critical collaborator with which to think through and write, an “I” that can help them to author critical essays without the personal “I” impressing itself needlessly into the work. Perhaps the “preliminary condition” of any literature course should be the invention of this “I.”

Audio Responses to Student Writing

Published
by
Mikhail
on October 10, 2006
in Feedback and Technology
. 0 Comments

A long while back, Cristina put up a post entitled “Digital Audio Comments in the Age of iPod” on audio commentary on student writing and linked to this article on using mp3s as a means of delivering feedback. This is something we’ve been talking about trying here at the Institute for a while.

I just came across this detailed report on precisely this sort of thing in Susan Sipple’s English Composiution I course at the U of Cincinatti. Take a look. Interesting stuff.

For what it’s worth, Chris Anson, whom Sipple cites in her report, is slated to speak at our upcoming Symposium in April.