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| I'm gunna write that essay as soon as I finish looking at the fishes! |
Too many students aren't learning enough.
That alarm was sounded by the book Academically Adrift two years ago and has been the theme of numerous articles and conferences since. It also underlies the frustrations of employers who find recent graduates ill-prepared for the workplace.
What if colleges, in their search to more clearly demonstrate how much students are learning, insisted on an old-fashioned requirement: writing?
Writing works exceedingly well as both a way to assess learning and a means of deepening that learning, according to experts who study its effects on students.
Even faculty members whose disciplines are not commonly associated with writing think so.
"There are very few test methodologies that are as effective as having you sit down and write your thoughts and have someone read it carefully and come back with comments and say, 'You have to rewrite this,'" says Daniel D. Warner, a professor of mathematical sciences at Clemson University.
I saw this article posted by a colleague and didn't bother to read it, because I am trying to keep my blood pressure down.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm reading it here. Go figure.
As a (mostly) comp proffie, I am constantly telling my students that the skills I'm teaching (critical reading and analysis and writing) have applications for nearly every major.
Thanks, Crampicle, for validating my existence! Now maybe I can get my class sizes down to 20 or fewer students and really be able to assign more short writing practice. Because let's face it, faced with 3 sections at 24 students each (plus my lit section, capped at 38), there aren't enough hours in the week to grade all the stuff I could be using to help them get better.
Amen. And there's some good discussion in the comments about time investment, possible tradeoffs in terms of how much content is taught (with someone usefully pointing out that the real issue is content learned), etc.
ReplyDeleteLike BurntChrome, I'm a writing teacher, so obviously I believe in this. But I'm also keenly aware of how much time commenting on writing takes, and how little attention most students actually pay to the comments. Partly for that reason, I'm beginning to lean toward the idea that, while the ideal is for them to write a lot and receive a lot of feedback in an environment that forces them to pay some attention to it (one-on-one conferences, required revisions with written commentary on what was changed and why, etc.), the next best thing might be for them to write a lot, period -- more, in fact, that I can read carefully. Of course the lack of any real audience is a problem (and no, I don't think that writing it on a blog will help; just because you put it on the internet doesn't mean anyone is going to read it), both because audience really is important in writing, and because the trophy generation is used to an audience, even when it's just a practice or a regular-season game. So I do a certain amount of trying to maintain the illusion that I'm reading various kinds of things (formal papers, discussion board posts, etc.) more carefully than I am. It goes against my perfectionist/conscientious streak, but I think it's the best I can do in my circumstances (which are similar to BC's in terms of numbers of students and sections, except that I usually just have 4 writing sections, with literature only occasionally).
Another interesting tidbit that I came upon while looking for some statistics yesterday: in most universities and colleges, writing programs have the highest percentage of non-TT labor of any dept or program in the institution (foreign languages come close behind). So, like many things, it's important, but nobody wants to pay for it.
P.S. If anybody has any good sources to offer on the question of whether tuition revenue from core/general education classes essentially subsidizes more-expensive-to-teach upper-division ones, I'd be grateful.
"Another interesting tidbit that I came upon while looking for some statistics yesterday: in most universities and colleges, writing programs have the highest percentage of non-TT labor of any dept or program in the institution (foreign languages come close behind). So, like many things, it's important, but nobody wants to pay for it. "
DeletePreach it, sister.
And around here, when they're talking about starting to use differential salaries, you know that they're not talking about raising ours, because business and science are a lot more important (and harder to hire for, granted, because who the fuck wants to make $42,500/year teaching business classes or engineering when they can make twice that right out of the gate somewhere else? Yes, $42,500 is the starting salary for TT in all disciplines where I teach.)
This issue about students not paying attention to feedback on their writing is the one that frustrates me the most. I spend time in class talking about specific writing issues, often with the focus "here are 3 simple things you can do to improve your grade," or "this is what I want to see in your essays" only to see students ignore the advice. So then I comment on their work and hope they apply the comments on the next assignment.
DeleteVery few of them do. I once asked a student whom I had told 6 times on assignments not to keep using "you" why she was so resistant to taking my advice, and she replied "I dunno, in high school they told us.." It was like she was actively trying NOT to learn anything new.
I keep wondering about somehow grading their ability to show they paid attention to the comments, but I can't think of a way to do it that won't make them hate me. More.
Here's how I address this--I give a piece (or two) of "focus advice". I note it along with a paper's grade in my grade program. Students are notified via syllabus and frequent repetition when discussing first papers and upon their return that failure to actively apply the specific advice in the focus will result in a grade no higher than 15 points LOWER than previously earned grade. Students are urged to meet with to discuss said advice in the weeks leading up to the nextdue date; in conference, I talk them through applying the advice in revising the original paper--for no regrades--what they give me as "finished" work is what I will have evaluated. Here, still, earning a better grade on future work to ameliorate a past poor grade is still enough motivation to encourage students to actively attempt revision that can help them see their way to stronger, more authoritative voices.
DeleteThis too, drives me crazy. Why won't they take our feedback and fix their papers??? I had a student who would turn in drafts and then not fix the problems I pointed out. When I asked him why he said "Oh, I took some of your suggestions." He also more times than I can count, would say "But in Professor X's class..." as if he didn't need to learn anything more from me. (and oh yeah, prof X's class was statistics and my class was how to write research papers).
DeleteAIEEE! This is an on-going conversation across my 20+ year career here at Certainly-Better-Than-Some High: Sweet Jeebus on a pogo stick, if my colleagues across the curricula would simply hold kids accountable for their *assigned reading* via prompts for short yet specific writings, we'd *all* see a stronger student body. Golly gee, Molly, they'd be READING a bit more, therethrough having greater exposure to standards in written expression outside of an English classroom, having thenwith the potential to recognize both value and voice in written expression and perhaps thereafter--Heaven forefend!--a stronger sense of previously-been-read text as model material afterwhich to pattern one's own. Hel-LO!
ReplyDeleteI will say an Amen to the reading thing. When my students write about readings, it's clear they're either too lazy or too stupid to understand even the smallest point being made.
ReplyDeleteAnd God forbid if a reading might include even the smallest sense of sarcasm. Half the class ALWAYS thinks the writer is making the opposite point.
O God--I just walked a class through the first section of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, using a worksheet where they had to identify his premise, reasons, and example for a given chapter.
DeleteThey cannot do it. By the time I was 4 chapters in, I was ready to curl up in a fetal ball under the desk.
Is this like how when they read "A Modest Proposal" they are all shocked to learn that the Irish ate babies in the "olden times"?
DeleteTaking Modest Proposal seriously? Seriously? Please tell me this is satire.
DeleteToo many of my AP (high school) kids take it seriously and have to be gently walked through the signatures to *sse* that it is, in fact, satire. Lo and behold, thereafter each year, I have students who willingly admit that they now "get" The Colbert Report and South Park. Wish it weren't so, but it is. Weirdly, they get Lysistrata more readily, though some find it beyond far-fetched--until I introduce them to Leymah Gbowee, which kinda blows their minds, especially when they learn that Gbowee had never heard of Lysistrata.
DeleteAs a non-comp proffie I do require some writing (clear writing equals clear thinking), but I can't do as much as I would like (or as much as students need) when I teach six classes per semester of 35 students. I know because I tried my first semester here (only teaching five classes) to give all the same assignments I used at the SLACs. I nearly died. The other thing that is undercutting writing is the push by Assessment types to use standardized testing because the data is easier to collect and analyse. No matter if it undermines actual education, just so long as it is easy to assess!
ReplyDelete