One Cohesive Writing Assignment

1. One Cohesive Writing Assignment An Approach to Teaching Research and Editing Heather Harris Assistant Professor, English Community College of Baltimore County

2. What, Why, How, and a Note about Millennials • What does one semester-long writing project look like? • Why is it a good alternative to multiple, distinct writing assignments? • How does it work in the 101 classroom and in the developmental classroom? • Some observations from a Gen Xer teaching this project to Millennials

3. Why Assign One Semester-Long Project • Barbara E. Walvoord, Professor Emerita, University of Notre Dame • Why do we allow students to walk away from writing before they have taken it through the entire drafting, revising, researching, editing, proofreading process? • Ushering students through that process takes time, but it does two important things • One: It actually teaches those skills. • Two: It builds confidence in students, as they recognize their ability to see a project through to successful completion

4. The “Recursive” Process: Writing is Re-Writing • Students resist doing work they have “already done.” • The solution is to structure the writing assignment so that students approach the revision process as a new step in creation of a fully realized piece of writing. • One way to accomplish this is by directing students to use papers they have been drafting all semester to create one integrated final paper.

5. Building Confidence in New College Writers • “If you follow my directions, do not cut corners, and hit your deadlines, you will write the best paper you have ever written.” • These are the basic steps that every writer uses to create any written document, from a research paper in any class, to a master’s thesis, to a doctoral dissertation, to a book: • Find a problem/question that genuinely piques your interest • Talk to the current experts • Read the current literature • Attend events that illuminate the issue; experience it first-hand • Develop your unique point of view, which will likely require you to narrow your focus • Devise a structure that supports your point of view • Draft, look for holes, research some more, draft again, look for awkward transitions, draft again

6. How It Works in the 101 Classroom • Students select their own topics (with some guidance). • Each student conducts and writes up a personal essay, 1-3 interview/profile essays, 1-2 scenes or essays from an observation, and either keeps a working annotated bibliography or includes 1-3 secondary source articles in each essay. • Each student then spends the final quarter of the semester consolidating their research and writing into one cohesive paper that makes a clear claim. This is due on the last day. • We work on the concepts together (primary and secondary research, thesis/claim/argument, structure, transitions, drafting, editing for focus, and proofreading for clarity) but each student’s content is unique. • Workshopping of current and former student’s work is designed to help students think through their own project’s opportunities and challenges.

7. How It Works in the Developmental Classroom (ALP) • ALP students research and write the same building essays and final project. But… • The group picks a topic that everyone will work on; variations can occur in point of view (ex. addiction is the larger topic and one student researches the user’s experience while another the family/loved one’s). • Each step involves articles that the instructor assigns and/or the group finds together and works collectively to integrate into drafts via exercises in annotating, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and citing. • Students may find additional secondary sources on their own. • Group workshopping is more relevant as both concept and content are shared.

8. Group Topic Selection (ALP) • Important for three reasons: • Shared reading comprehension exercises in class on articles, documentaries, and other assigned secondary sources. • Shared research exercises in class as students learn to find their own reliable evidence. • Shared problem solving exercises in class on how to make a claim on a common subject and then structure writing to support that claim. • (Group selection is also important for millennial generation students. More on that shortly.)

9. Collaborative Research (ALP) • Millennials are good at finding information on the Internet. They are less savvy at evaluating the reliability of that information. It is a better use of class time to evaluate a few common online sources that are not fact-checked nor cited than to explain to each individual ALP student why his/her “drugsinamerica.com” source is not credible. • Once students are convinced that academic databases are better sources of information that basic Google searches, they will often benefit from working together to hone keywords and search parameters to gather useful articles. • ALP students often become bonded, and encouraging them to share useful articles on a shared subject supports academic collaboration, which is particularly important for millennial students.

10. Collaborative Drafting (ALP) • Class-wide workshopping can be quite effective in the smaller ALP classroom. If all the students are thinking about the same subject from different points of view, student-led workshop sessions yield much better drafts. • A common subject also allows students to problem-solve collectively as they determine the claim they will each be making in the final paper. This process is one of the most difficult steps, and group work on it is important. • When students are ready to draft the final paper, ALP classes devoted to drafting and workshopping multiple versions of introductions, thesis statements, and conclusions are helpful and productive.

11. Collaborative Editing (ALP) • A week to ten days before the final draft is due, students will begin to panic about revision problems they are having difficulty solving. Solutions to these problems are most often devised by the group as each student takes turns sharing his/her crisis. • Again, this is a significantly bonding experience for students, and many remain in touch for semesters to come and support each other academically.

12. Revisions I’ve Made Over the Years • 10 steps, 12 steps, 14 steps, 7 steps: In spite if high school service learning projects, students are often overwhelmed with the idea of primary research. I have adjusted the number of interviews and observations I require them to conduct and write, although three interviews and two observations is best. • Annotated Bibliography versus 1-3 sources per paper: Sometimes I require a working bibliography that they devise and update as they are writing the first drafts of their interviews and observation. Sometimes I require them to work with 1-3 pieces of secondary support per interview or observation. There are pros and cons to both. • I recently cut the step of working with students for a week to devise interview questions. This was a mistake. They need this exercise in critical thinking, though they’ll tell you otherwise.

13. Revising Again for Millennials • Move the personal essay to the end of the semester and require it to reflect change and growth based on critical evaluation. • Move the Annotated Bibliography to the very beginning. • Add a Literature Review paper before they begin their primary research. • Require use of the third person in interview/profile essays and essays/notes on observations. Allow first person in only the personal essay and portions of the final paper where they can justify its use based on support for their central claim.

14. Overcoming Hyper Individualism (Millennials) • Millennial students do not expect to find information they can use in our answers to other students’ questions. Individual writing topics exacerbates the problem of millennial students “checking out” during class discussions. Consider one broad topic or theme, even in the 101 classroom. • Millennial students do not easily suspend their points of view; often they do not recognize the difference between researching and writing someone else’s story and writing the story of their experience of another person or event. Consider limiting students’ use of the first person. • The group work in the ALP classroom is a useful antidote to this individualism that can limit perspective and academic collaboration. Experiencing the value of working with others and forging relationships with peers in an academic setting is invaluable at this stage of their college career.

15. Overcoming Skepticism regarding Reading and Comprehension Weaknesses (Millennials) • Millennial students will voice skepticism that reading in inherently important/useful. They often prefer audio/visual material and may not question that preference. • Millennial students are also disinclined to suspend their judgement about material simply because an instructor asked them to read it. • Allowing these students maximum flexibility to select a subject on which to write leverages their natural curiosity and may encourage them to explore academic writing on that subject. • If the writing is difficult but the subject is interesting to the student, they will often work harder to make sense of the material.

16. Supporting Creative Critical Thinking (Millennials) • As mentioned earlier, the hardest part of this project is typically when the students are figuring out their thesis: the central claim or argument of the final paper, which is based on everything they have researched and written and learned about their subject. • Students will often stay with this difficult problem longer and tolerate my incessant “yes, but how?” or “that’s not what your research shows” or “can you make that more specific?” or “that’s a statement of fact, not a debatable claim” if they are genuinely interested in arriving at something that feels true to them and is informed by weeks of research and writing. • When students finally land on the claim that expresses something true and meaningful, there is a sense of euphoria that is enormously validating for a new college student.

17. Questions?