Sharing Student Writing and Teacher Response

1. Sharing Student Writing and Teacher Response How Posting to a Class Website Has Altered Our Teaching

2. Our Website Project • Phase 1—developing a Freshman English Portal with pages for individual sections of freshman writing, with password-protected student and class portfolio pages to which students post their writing. • Phase 2—adding materials to guide assessment of student writing; enhancing the database to facilitate commenting on posted writing; using the site template to create sections for courses throughout the English curriculum

3. Today’s presentation • Focuses on our own use of the portfolio and commenting functions at two levels, freshman writing, and a 400 level literature course • Addresses the ways in which our own practices, as teachers, have been altered by our expanded use of these functions

4. Underpinnings in Composition: Portfolios • Allow collection of writing at different stages of completion, over time • Take emphasis off individual graded assignments • Make the writing, not a justification of a grade, the focus of comments • Give students “an opportunity to explore, experiment, and compose across a body of work without receiving a summative evaluation of their efforts” (Huot)

5. Underpinnings in Composition: Peer Response • Can create supportive and critical readers of the writing of self and others (cf. Elbow and Belanoff, Sharing and Responding • Can help writers develop a sense of audience: beyond the teacher, for more than evaluative purposes (Harris)

6. Underpinnings: Peer Response • Can create supportive and critical readers of the writing of self and others (cf. Elbow and Belanoff, Sharing and Responding • Can help writers develop a sense of audience: beyond the teacher, for more than evaluative (grading) purposes (Harris) • Can help readers develop descriptive, analytical, and evaluative approaches to a text (Bruffee)

7. In effective peer responses, students • Tell authors what they think the language in their drafts says; ask questions about places that confuse them; suggest ways “for the writing to do its job better” (Gere and Stevens) • Ask questions, suggest revisions, agree or disagree with peers, explain intentions about stylistic choices) (Davis)

8. Peer response concerns • Students’ comments may focus on surface vs. substance • They may be affirming without being constructive • They may be overly directive • They rarely include an effective description of what’s there (an important stage in effective peer response cycles)

9. Peer response concerns • Writers might not be able to use the comments they receive constructively • They might not really get constructive help from peers • Peer comments might have a negative impact on their sense of themselves as writers. • Writers may questions skills of peer respondents

10. Common peer response practices • Typical focus is on complete drafts of formal papers • Students often respond to teacher’s guiding questions • Teacher does not typically participate in a response group, but responds separately or to later drafts

11. Underpinnings: Assessment • Even with portfolios and peer response, the teacher’s comments are most often separate, private, and directly linked to grading • We need a discourse of assessment that’s separate from the discourse of grading (Huot), a discourse that can be used by both teachers and students

12. Website: Our goals • To address limitations of hardcopy portfolios (range of work not easily available to other readers) • To expand boundaries of peer response, beyond teacher-directed response to full drafts of formal papers • To begin to shape and share a supportive and constructive response discourse and a separate evaluation/grading discourse for both suents and teachers

13. Website design elements • Individual portfolio spaces where students can post their work in an ongoing way • A comment function that allows peer and teacher responses to all of that work • A class portfolio that shows all student postings for a particular task

14. Website results • Online portfolios are available all the time to all class participants for reading and commenting • Online portfolios make all writing available to other student readers, informal writing as well as drafts of formal essays • A class portfolio creates a sense of shared enterprise, allowing students to see many other approaches to a writing task • When teachers comment online, their comments, like student comments, are available for all to read

15. Changes in our responding practices • Sometimes taking our cues from the groups—responding as other students do • Sometimes re-presenting (describing) what we see • Sometimes modeling constructive analytical and evaluative responses • Sometimes working with the writer, to add what we see (modeling ways to extend the work the writer has begun) • Doing more and more of this in public

16. Changes in our assessment and grading practices • Naming expectations in rubrics • Developing those rubrics with students • Posting rubrics as a reference point, to guide final, formal papers • Inviting students to self-assess, using those rubrics

17. Examples • Ellie’s response to 101 transcript (Jeremy): http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=3698#comment • Transcript & analysis (Myles) http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=3797#comment

18. Examples 2 • Ellie’s descriptive response to a memoir, using Word comment function http://www.freshman.umb.edu/SampleRubrics.htm • Christian’s response to a memoir, using Word comment function http://www.freshman.umb.edu/SampleRubrics.htm

19. Examples 3 Ellie’s response to 443 student analysis Naming what’s there (Rachel 5) http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=3184#comment Adding observations (Will 10) http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=3701#comment One comment among several (Melodie 11) http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=3757#comment Adding to others’ comments (Valerie 11) http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=3777#comment

20. Examples 4 • Christian’s posted comments http://www.freshman.umb.edu/SampleRubrics.htm

21. Examples 5--Assessment Sample rubrics • 101 rubricshttp://www.freshman.umb.edu/SampleRubrics.htm • 443 project rubric http://www.freshman.umb.edu/engl101/fall05/engl443/assignments.htm

22. Further thoughts • Having students comment on the comments they receive