Getting students to read paper comments

In composition studies, we spend a fair bit of time debating the best kind of paper comments. What's the best balance between marginal comments and end comments? How much should we address the grading criteria and how much should we provide encouragement or engage ideas? Often, however, it just doesn't matter--because students don't read the comments.

This is particularly true for electronic papers. To read paper comments on Blackboard Learn, a student must go to My Grades, click on the course, and scroll down to the assignment where he or she will see the grade and the comments I've entered in the grading block. And this is where students usually stop, although I've written "see the attached file for the grade rubric and more comments." They think, "where's the attached file?" They would have to click on the hyperlinked grade to even see the file, and most don't know this or don't bother. Since this is a complicated process, I went to the trouble to make a Screencast-o-Matic video and linked it on Blackboard--but I discovered they didn't watch it.

But today, I am feeling particularly brilliant. Our class was held in the computer classroom in order to learn to use Google Docs. For a practice activity, I asked the students to list their strengths and weaknesses as demonstrated by the first paper, which meant accessing the rubric. I walked several students through the process and directed them to the video. I was able to see everyone in the class open their graded files. Will they read the marginal comments? Probably not. But at least I know they have read the end comments and looked at the rubric.

Flipping the Classroom

Image Source

The "flipped classroom" is all the rage right now. There are articles in the Economist, The Chronicle, and Wired, and there's even a Wikipedia entry. The basic premise is that passive learning activities are moved outside the classroom and active ones are moved inside. For many disciplines, that means posting lectures as videos to YouTube or course management systems like Blackboard Learn or WebCT. What does it mean in the composition classroom?

Lectures in the composition classroom are rare, in my experience. Students may read outside of class (passive learning, though we try to get them to take notes and actively respond). In class, the most passive of approaches is large-group discussion with Socratic questioning. Often there will be small-group exercises to assist students with comprehension and analysis. And sometimes there is in-class writing. So, the basic composition classroom is already "flipped." (Contrary to the Wikipedia entry, the flipped classroom doesn't necessitate the use of internet technology.)

What, then, can composition glean from this trend? What if we move the major active learning activity into the classroom? That's right--let's write in the classroom.

Last week in my composition class, I spent 30 minutes watching a 30-second commercial with my students. We watched it again and again and again, taking a different set of notes each time. Their homework was to perform the same note-taking for the commercial they have chosen for their first assignment. In tomorrow's class, we're going to transform those notes (in groups) into model first drafts for the first paper. I'm very excited about this idea because it allays student anxiety. It provides a strong foundation, showing them how to perform the steps toward the paper. It presents writing as a process. I like it so much that I wish I had time to have them write the first page of their actual drafts in class.

Where does reading fit in? The reason I don't have time for more in-class writing is that there is some assigned reading we need to discuss. I could simply record a video lecture about the reading and have them watch it. But I also need to build a foundation for the second paper, which requires close textual analysis. I could reduce the amount of reading, but ultimately good writing is dependent upon good thinking, which comes about from reading and discussion. It's a hard balance.

Have you flipped your classroom? How do you balance reading and writing in your composition classes?

Writing is a process best begun early.

Here are two conversations I recently had with different students:

Student 1: "I'm having trouble focusing my thoughts. I just keep going around and around in circles. I feel like I'm trying to include too much."

Me: "Well, how many pages have you written so far?"

Student 1: "Oh, none."


Student 2: "I'm really worried about this topic. It just doesn't seem like there's enough to say. I don't really know where I'm going with it."

Me: "Well, how many pages have you written so far?"

Student 2: "Oh, none."


Okay. See the problem here? I suspect I'm speaking in another language when I tell them, "Write first. Make writing a part of your process. Writing is an act of discovery. No time spent writing is ultimately wasted."

They have also not heard me when I said, "The best paper is a done paper." Less than half of my students managed to submit their final papers on time.

My current mood vacillates between frustrated and punitive.

Exams as educational tools

While researching something unrelated, I stumbled across an article by Howard E. Aldrich entitled, "How to Hand Exams Back to Your Class" (College Teaching 49 [2001]: 82). Aldrich's method has several parts:

1. An answer key with "best answers" given to the students
2. Students meet in preassigned groups to compare their answers. Those with correct answers take on a teaching role, explaining why theirs is a better response. 
3. At the start of the next class, Aldrich administers a 5-question multiple-choice quiz covering the questions most frequently missed. 
4. A cumulative final exam.

Instead of glancing at the grade and stuffing the test into their folders, Aldrich's students use the test as a learning tool. It becomes necessary to review one's progress in order to improve at the next stage.

My literature courses aren't heavily test-based. I give 2 or 3 exams, including the final. What are your thoughts on cumulative finals in literature courses?  Would they encourage students to build on their previous progress? Or would they overwhelm them?

Image source

Thanks, Peyton!

Previously, I've commented on the problems caused by the physical learning space. This summer, I am overjoyed with my classroom. It's the most perfect environment I've ever had. The desks are independent and movable. The other classrooms nearby aren't noisy. We have a view of the river. The room has white boards and is stocked with markers. It's a SMART classroom, with a projector and sympodium. It also has . . . (drumroll) a working PC and an opaque projector! And I owe it all to Peyton Manning:

Sign outside my classroom in the Communications Building

And of course the nice folks at the Registrar who scheduled me there.

Having a PC in the room has made me very willing to include media that I ordinarily wouldn't have bothered with. In yesterday's class, I had planned for the students to put Tess Durbeyfield on trial. While they were working, I loaded a Pandora station to play music so they would be more comfortable talking. The speakers in the room were excellent. Later in the class, I played a clip from the 2008 BBC adaptation, available on YouTube. I decided to show it at the last minute; I would not have brought my own computer for these minor uses. There are also many days that I would (and initially did) bring my own laptop to hook up to class. I frequently give PowerPoint presentations about the historical context of our readings. It's wonderful to have a class where this is easy to do. Thanks, Peyton!

The Raven, or The Death of the Author

Common Raven (and yes, they can be trained to talk)

The Raven (2012) features John Cusack as Edgar Allen Poe in a highly imaginative (i.e. no basis in fact) plot. Poe helps solve a series of murders based on his stories. As one reviewer described it, "It's like a grisly one-person interactive book club focused on one man's literary output" (Michael Phillips). The movie itself is mediocre. Cusack's innate charm, plus decent performances from Alice Eve as his love interest and Luke Evans as the police inspector, can't quite rescue the film from poor pacing and uneven tone. Still, I quite enjoyed it. I love watching Cusack in just about anything, and I was able to congratulate myself about all the Poe stories I had read.

What I thought most about, though, was the pleasure readers take in seeing their favorite authors on film. Becoming Jane is a prime example, though it's in a different category than The Raven, being 90% factual. Dickens' appearance in Dr. Who ("The Unquiet Dead") and Stephen King in Quantum Leap (The Halloween Episode) are other examples. People like to interact imaginatively with authors. They also enjoy learning more about their lives and personalities, to look at the wizard behind the curtain.

As a teacher, I'm ambivalent about the place of biography in studying literature.

I was educated in the formalist tradition, where what matters most is the text. I grew into a reader-response position, where what matters most is the meaning that readers make out of the text. I see the text itself as unstable and shifting, based a set of signifiers waiting for the reader to settle into the signified. One must avoid trying to figure out the author's intent, which is ultimately unknowable--if I intended this post to be brilliant and you read it as boring, is that your fault or mine? In this way (and several others) I align with Roland Barthes, who in his seminal essay, "The Death of the Author" (1967), argues that the identity of the author shouldn't be used to form meaning.

But on the other hand, isn't the speaker part of the rhetorical exchange? And doesn't knowing the context in which something is written affect the meaning? I concede that knowing more about the author and his/her time is one way of adding meaning to the text. I do include historical and biographical background in my classes. But perhaps I should do more. After all, in college I greatly enjoyed learning stories about the author's lives, not just the bare facts in the textbook overview. Having the sense of really knowing an author was part of the pleasure for me.

 It occurs to me that I know very little about the life of Poe.

Recursive Journaling

In last year's English 101, I used student blogs to try to get students to reflect on their political ideals. I was dissatisfied with the depth they achieved. One possible solution is recursive journaling. This is where students write an initial journal, and then, after some discussion and additional information, they revisit the journal entry.

This process was briefly described in Lisa Taylor's article, “Reading Desire: From Empathy to Estrangement, from Enlightenment to Implication.” Students in Taylor's teacher-education course write their first journal as they read  Persepolis, commenting especially on their identification with Marjane. Students read contextual materials alongside Persepolis and learn more about history, then revisit their first journal. The purpose of this activity was to have students question their empathic identifications, which often are merely projections of the self onto the other. The recursive journals allowed students to examine their assumptions and place of privilege. 

Persepolis image from Slant Magazine

Have you used recursive journaling? If so, what sort of guidance did you provide to students?