Grading and Technology

The outside resources sent to us by Dr. Rice- the article on using text expansion software and blog about digital media and oratory- have shaped the direction of this week’s blog. I am interested in the question of how technology in teaching might change the way students receive grades and comments on their own texts, and the way educators respond to student texts as graders. As I have grade assignments, I wonder how the students will receive my comments. I think about whether or not they will click on those links that will transfer them to Bedford to explain those common problems, or if the layers of this process will distance them from examining their own error. This made think about how they interact with their documents as a whole since they are only used to receiving feedback only on handwritten or word-processed printed out documents. Does the Raiderwriter interface distance them at all from their own writing when they look at their assignment? In the same way that many CI’s have commented on feeling distanced from their students in the grading process, do students become distances from their own work working with it in a strictly digital capacity? I am not suggesting that the Raiderwriter software is ineffective or that this transition to dealing with their texts as digital media isn’t a necessary one, but that these possible impacts should be considered.

On the teacher aspect of technologically aided grading- I was thinking about the “Using Text-Expansion Software to Respond to Student Writing” article. This writer’s creation of quick links for grammatical issues so that he can take a longer time on content implies a preference of content over form. His desire to spend more time on this aspect of student papers suggests that grading grammar is an inconvenient stage that must be gotten through in order to get to the more substantial portion of a grader’s responsibilities- content and delivery. I do not disagree with this approach or favoring of content- I lean the same way myself. What I am interested in is why if many composition educators (as indicated in the many respondents to the post which reflected similar grading strategies) are distancing themselves from highly formulaic approaches to writing in terms of time spent on grading components, how is this reflected in their teaching? How much time do they spend on grammar in the classroom? How do they weight grammar in the grade as a whole? A grader’s relationship with technology also reveals specific value systems for composition pedagogy. A system like RaiderWriter is not only a practical tool for grading such a large number of papers, but within its very structure and interface reveals composition preferences.  There’s no real conclusion here, just awareness that the tools we use to grade reflect composition priorities and should be evaluated as well as teaching and composition tools.   

Collaborations?

The historical overview of invention that Crowley described made me wonder how the actual students entering into composition programs affect the shift in theoretical paradigms within composition and rhetoric studies. Within composition programs there are specific methodologies and aims in place, but also the reality of the preparation level the incoming students may or may not have to meet those specific goals. So how are the needs of incoming comp students aligned with the aims of a program? How do specific theories get translated into practice in what may be a less than an ideal situation? If the level of freshman coming in is sub-par and this is impacting the way college teachers must teach their students, is there something that post-secondary institutions could do to provide some form aid of to secondary schools? Are there resources that could be shared between secondary and post secondary education?

Collaborations could be initiated first on a local level where universities invest in programs to create a sense of continuity in composition and represent a logical relation between learning imperatives at the two levels. It could be counted towards faculty service requirements and would be a proactive step towards addressing the issue of freshman preparedness (which seems to greatly affect our freshman composition program). I understand that the kinds of policy enacted around secondary public education may in many ways hinder working relationships between the two. It would be difficult for teachers to introduce new teaching methods when they have specific standards they are supposed to meet and when doing well on standardized testing provides the greatest currency to school funding and job security. However, I am suspending this reality for the moment to pursue this idea.   

A conversation I had with a friend about composition led me to think of one potential area for collaboration. I asked this person if she had taken freshman comp. She received AP credit and did not, but went on to talk about her high school experiences in English, where she entered the advanced track as a freshman. In this track, they started with a very rigid idea of writing structure and rules as a basis, but over the years were taught to incorporate more freedom within their writing. She said this specific progression of rigidity to freedom over a long period of time created a basic reference for composition, but that eventually resulted in a more expansive mode of expression. Without the time frame, she doubted that it would have produced the same result.

If incoming freshman have not had this kind of preparation, what can be done about it? If the extremely structural and rule oriented approach creates results, but only over an extended time period, what can we hope for our freshman to take out of the classroom with them at the end of two semesters? If we can’t play catch up to four years of missing or inconsistent composition studies, is there another way to approach composition?

Many of my students have communicated a feeling of frustration with the amount of technology that they must use for class. Orienting them to technological modes as sites of academic and professional writing earlier than college would be beneficial. Because their interaction with communication on the internet is usually entirely social before college, learning the professional uses of online communication would not only better prepare them for the kinds of things that they will have to do in college, but expand their thinking about communication forums and show that the communication world is not sectioned into clear neat boundaries. A blog where they would begin to grasp the idea of posting academic ideas into a public forum would be a helpful start, and would also encourage the idea of learning as a socially mediated act. Instead of receiving information from teachers in familiar lecture style, they could share information and ideas with each other and begin to take ownership of their own ideas. With no outside software necessary to purchase, a blog could be a highly accessible option. Students would increase their sense of audience awareness, be able to analyze a wider range of communication mediums, and learn to incorporate feedback from peers.

This is where post-secondary collaboration could come into play. Writing programs could set up training sessions, even once a semester, to share experiences and ideas, and in the case of blogs help teachers select and get oriented to blog usage. This collaboration could benefit the post-secondary institution by producing more students ready to engage in composition at the college level. Additionally, allowing students to see individuals from universities willing to put time into their education could potentially create interest in higher education that may not have been there before for some students.  

Poe and the Creative Freshman

In addition to this week’s readings, I looked up Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition”. Having spent a lot of time with Poe in my undergraduate, but not having read this essay, I thought it was about time. How Poe relates to this all will be attended to later on in the post. But first on the readings for this week- the content describing composition programs in both the Bereton and Kitzhaber pieces brought up questions (whose answers are yet shifting) about what skills college freshman are expected to enter college with, and what skills will are commonly lacking. Another aspect of the same question is what incoming students assume composition is and how they will use it in comparison to what the university goals are for composition use among students. It was clear from both readings and our class discussions that historically and currently the answers to these questions are different in select time periods and institutions.

Having the framework of these pieces while grading the first 1301 assignment, I found it interesting that in several of the student’s responses, students identified their strengths as writers to lie in their ability to be creative. Although they recognized that they lacked technical skills, their faith in themselves as good writers remained firm because of this creative value.

Which brings me to the relevancy of the Poe essay- Poe, when describing in detail his composition of “The Raven” spends the greater part of the essay explaining the structural process necessary to convey his intention. Poe points out that many authors would have the general public believe that “they compose by a species of fine-frenzy- an ecstatic intuition,” but that this is a convenient illusion to hide the real labor of composition. Although Poe’s analysis is of his own poetic work, the process he engages in has a much wider reaching application. So I will attempt to briefly generalize this process:

1.   Establish your overall intention/goal for the work.

2.   Establish the effect you want to produce.

3.   Choose a form to best accomplish your intention and effect.

4.    Evaluate the choices you have within this form thinking of audience reception, such as length, style, and tone.

5.    Once you have established the above criteria, you can begin to select content and construct the piece.

This highly structured way of approaching the composition of a text, especially a creative one, might seem too rigid to allow for creativity. Poe, however, suggests the opposite- that this very intentional structure is the only way to compose a truly original creative work. It is this lesson that reminded me of the freshman responses to their own writing- the ingrained idea that form will naturally follow ideas, when it may be much more useful to think of ideas following form, or to consider that even our best ideas remain in the realm of the abstract without the appropriate form to communicate them. I can see where the overemphasis on magical composition abilities of the creative mind comes from- an issue in Poe's time period, it persists as an ideal today (as Boice describes). Hopefully during the semester, I can move my students away from this type of thinking- and consider it for myself when I am tempted to use that old procrastination tactic that justifies itself by saying the greatest pressure produces the best work. 

Poe, E.A. "The Philosophy of Composition". http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/composition.html 

Legitimizing Processes in Composition

I was interested in the way the readings this week described the foundational process of English not only as a course of study worthy of its own department in Universities, but also as a legitimate language to communicate “high” ideas within. This historical look at the evolution of English study was useful in framing where composition is currently headed in the face of an increasingly globalized and technological environment.

Looking specifically at the British Academy’s relationship to German as English was developing, described in the Parker article, was reflected in the opening chapters of Sartor Resartus (1833) by Thomas Carlyle, which I am reading for another class. Carlyle provided a literary account of the same sentiment- the opening chapters depict and editor introducing a groundbreaking work written by a German author on the philosophy of clothes, being translated into English in their publication. The claim is that only the German culture and language could have created these brilliant (and overlooked in British writing) conclusions and that it is then the job of the English to translate the work, essentially act as the mouthpiece of this brilliance to the rest of the western world. Among heavy satire, this idea reflects the philosophy that English is useful and powerful for getting ideas out to a growing literate population, but is not producing those ideas on its own in such a way that would completely break the tie with German. Therefore it seems that when English does reach the legitimacy of studying texts and writing them exclusively in English, it signals the widespread legitimacy not just of a language, but also the ideas being communicated by that language. 

Which brings me to what I see as the contemporary “application”: technological forums of communication and digital media, which can in many ways be understood to function like its own language (within a system of particular codes of mitigated meaning) is currently tied to English composition as a less legitimate and less academic form. However, composition programs will have to incorporate digital composition as a meaningful and socially important method of communicating as digital information becomes ever more a legitimate part of the social consciousness and exchange of ideas. It will then be the job of composition programs to create instruction that will help students make intentional communication choices and develop critical thinking within digital environments.

If this is pursued, a mutually legitimizing process can occur- where digital media gains professional credence by having knowledgeable and intentional writers and recipients, and where English departments maintain the public and academic belief in the need for composition within the scope of English study. Horner described how Aytoun altered his classes to accommodate changing circumstance to include local literature and British criticism, and in return had students paying him directly to attend his lectures. This adaptation seems like a good model for English departments.