Sharing stories, expanding worlds

October 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was recently introduced to the work of a wonderful British singer/songwriter  Catherine Paver. Her self-introduction reads: “I write storytelling songs in an acoustic/Americana style. I love deserts, rivers and dusty little towns full of stories. I am a London-based singer/songwriter and accompany myself on guitar and keyboards.” At the midpoint of the semester, when you’re swamped with work and terrified by deadlines, the expansive spaces of the American West and Southern Africa in her photographs are dangerously inviting, as are the touching stories told in her lyrical songs, as you can tell from their titles: “The Fire of the West,” “River Song,” “Thunder Gold.”

On Paver’s website, you can find mesmerizing photos of the places that have inspired her songs. Many of them feature proverbs and aphorisms originating in those places along with the lines from her songs. One saying stood out to me, mainly because it managed to express my dissertation thesis with the clarity, precision, and suggestiveness I could never hope to achieve in my writing: “People are people through other people” (Xhosa proverb).

I was also tempted to read this in connection to our last Great Works faculty roundtable that centered on the different uses of student writing in the classroom: modeling, peer reviews, blogging, writing workshops, collaborative writing (i.e., wiki). One faculty member voiced a very common concern that students are not always ready to give each other constructive criticism in peer reviews. One could add that more often than not the recipients of their peers’ feedback tend to ignore it, jumping to the professor’s comments for obvious reasons. Yet, we still try to find ways to encourage students to open doors into each other’s writing, and through that into each other’s experiential realities and thinking paradigms. Isn’t it, in the long run, about helping them grow as people through other people (other than the authority figure of their professor)? David Ignatow says it better than I ever could in his poem “My Place”:

I am good to talk to,

you feel in my speech

a location, an expectation

and all said to me in reply

is to reinforce this feeling

because all said is towards

my place and the speaker

too grows his

from which he speaks to mine

having located himself

through my place.

Filed Under: Faculty Development, Feedback, Music

Fun With Clickers!

May 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

language-chartThe Finance Economics team recently experimented with using the Turning Point Technology. It is an audience response system which allows students to participate in presentations or lectures by submitting responses to interactive questions.

Each student holds one of the thin little clickers and answers the questions you placed in your Power Point slides. You can see the results immediately (or hide them from the class if you choose).

We were apprehensive about having to learn new software and then adjusting it to work with a Power Point presentation and a workshop we have been working on for months already. But it worked very well. The IT resources tech support person was happy to train us, it took barley half and hour. A little experimenting later and we were able to figure out how to make it work for us. It was as easy as creating additional slides to add to our Power Point. But the benefits were clear: we were able to ask students to respond to questions which then allowed us to introduce a related element of the workshop, or helped us explain a point we were making, or, at the end of the session, we were able to ask student to asses the workshop: what they learned, found useful, found challenging. After the session, with a click of a button, we printed out a report with percentage and graphical representation of the answers (see the fragment of it at the picture attached to this post). We designed very simple “yes” and “no” questions but the possibilities are endless.

The added bonus is that the box of clickers for students is brought to the classroom and then taken away after the class is over, by an IT person. You don’t even have to pick it up. Hopefully, some of our Institute’s PCs will have the Turning Point installed. You can also try it on your home PC. Give me a holler if you need help figuring it out.

Filed Under: Assessment, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Feedback, Uncategorized

Writing Spaces

May 15, 2009 By 6 Comments

From where I sit
Creative Commons License photo credit: Olivander

Aside from its main mission to establish a relationship between academic and business discourses, this year’s Symposium has, in my view, peripherally addressed another notorious bifurcation of academic and creative writing. Perhaps Peter Elbow’s proposition to ignore audience for some time can be hard to grasp in the context of business letter writing. It does, however, resonate fully with our experience with more expressive writing forms, those that convey a personal voice and in turn strike personal notes in the audience.

Listening to Elbow, I recalled a Q&A session with Orhan Pamuk. To my question whom he imagines as his audience when drafting his autobiography, he quickly responded “myself.” He explained that thinking about potentially disapproving readers would hamper his authenticity and creative effort. Another writer, whose personal journals have been a subject of my scrupulous analysis these days, connected his inability to write truthfully about his life to his typewriter, seeing it as his immediate audience.

But a self-invitation into a room of one’s own, as Virginia Woolf has famously called it, is something we seek also when working on projects less posh than a poetic autobiography (though a psychologist can easily make a case that a dissertation is a piece of autobiography); I’m referring to such prosaic items of academic life as seminar papers, articles, and dissertations. For me, an important take-away from Elbow’s speech was that the process of composition happens in very similar ways for writers engaged in creative and academic projects. Whether one is working on a novel or dissertation, the vocabulary to describe the writing process would be the same, ranging from such romantic concepts as exploration to such terrifying buzz words as writer’s block.

In both cases, receiving effective feedback from, alas, audience, at later stages of the composition process becomes essential as well!

Filed Under: Audience, Feedback, Process

Here’s Lookin At You, Kid…or Not.

March 9, 2009 By 4 Comments

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRAcZ2rTGPg&feature=related[/youtube]

I love this quirky little how-to clip, mostly because the audio doesn’t match up to the video, making poor Leila look like she needs her own mandated visit to the house of corrections. But I can relate to Leila and her message, and I’m willing to admit that I stumbled upon this video in a moment of desperation, when I was brainstorming different approaches to this question of encouraging solid eye contact in oral communicating.

As most of us have probably discovered by now, when we’re providing feedback on speeches, merely repeating “you need to make more eye contact” doesn’t do the trick. (And really, why should it?) Most of the speakers we work with know full well that eye contact is something they should shoot for—they’ve seen this on speech evaluation forms and read about it dutifully in their Intro to Public Speaking class way back when. But if they commit this same “offense” in every presentation they make—staring at the PP screen, or at the floor, or at their hands, or note cards—when does the practice actually come in?

And, just as importantly, how do we invigorate our own approach to this thorny delivery snag? Some days, “make more eye contact” becomes the easy go-to, that dull phrase you know you’ll probably say before the student even begins. But isn’t commenting on eye contact just another way of saying that they didn’t make a connection with their audience? If we wanted to get all Eckhart Tolle on this post, we could extend it into the idea of being fully present (which has plenty of resonances in actor training). We all know how magical it can be when someone gives really great eye—that mixture of confidence, care, and connection– but how is it best learned?

I’ve tried a few new things in my recent quest to investigate the power of the Connecting Eyes. In the classroom, I’ve become more emboldened to push away the chairs and try out some of the better eye contact exercises that I know of, forcing people to get used to going eyeball-to-eyeball. Some of these exercises transform the room into a sort of communications gym class, which is a little hard to get used to, but not a bad thing at all. Does this have more successful outcomes in student performance? Hard to tell, exactly. But it certainly increases comfort and community among the students.

And during my BPL sessions with student groups, I’ve changed my approach. Instead of allowing the students to run through their entire presentations before I provide my feedback, I now occasionally stop them mid-stream, prompting them to re-do an entire section, this time focusing on, say, sustained eye contact. I know some of you out there have run your practice sessions like this for quite a while, but I’m just now catching on to its real benefits. I had been skeptical of the logic of isolating one element and potentially distracting the speaker with it, but I’m now thinking of these sessions as true rehearsals; if they can’t “run through” their work multiple times, what are the chances that a pattern of poor delivery will be broken?

Filed Under: Audience, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Feedback, Interpersonal Communication, Oral Communication, Pedagogy, Powerpoint and Presentations, Process, Style, To Ponder

How do we deal with writer’s block again?

February 10, 2009 By 2 Comments

Students often approach me to get advice on how to overcome this writing disaster. I got bored with my old explanations and ‘googled’ it only to find an extensive and impressive list of solutions on Wikipedia. “Challenging negative thoughts about one’s skill or ability to write” – isn’t this a good one? This ‘challenging’ can be immeasurably difficult if one’s experience with writing hasn’t been very positive in the past. Let’s rethink again the amount of red ink we spend on each paper and the tone of our comments!

The last thing I want to do in this post is pretend that I never question my writing abilities. What can and in my case does effectively dissolve this negative thinking is reading. Somehow, as I move from sentence to sentence, even in the most familiar of pages, I’m made aware of my skill to think, to feel, and to formulate my thoughts and feelings in language. Once I’ve consciously gone through this process, I feel inspired to write.

The Wikipedia page includes a list of “dramatic depictions of writer’s block,” among them Shakespeare in Love and Stranger than Fiction. I’d add another list – literary depictions of writer’s block. And, perhaps, one more – professional writers’ strategies for overcoming writer’s block. Here is how it goes for Hemingway: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” How is this for a first-day low-stakes writing activity?

Filed Under: Feedback, Language, literature, Low-Stakes Writing, Writing Instruction

The Constitution of Articles: Our Surface Errors, Ourselves…

November 17, 2008 By 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?

Filed Under: ESL, Feedback

Outsourcing grading and written feedback

August 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment

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.”

Filed Under: Assessment, Feedback, Grading, Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Instruction

Inventing the Critical “I”

February 12, 2007 By 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.”

Filed Under: Feedback, Liberal Arts, literature, Pedagogy, Process, Revision

Audio Responses to Student Writing

October 10, 2006 By Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Feedback, Technology