Weighing Student Work

August 13, 2023 by

Gold colored scales of justice sitting on a wooden table

Scales of Justice by Michelle Grewe on Flickr, used under public domain

I’m definitely doing too much thinking about contracts and how to set up the expectations fairly. So much so that I’ve realized that I’m stuck on the very essence of grading. I’m no where near ungrading. I’ve lost all track of where I should be.

Fooling Myself

To start, what are my beliefs about assessment? I would be easier to point to the people whose pedagogy I try to work within: Jesse Stommel, Alfie Kohn, and Susan Blum.

Grades don’t work. They cause students to focus on the wrong things. In my contract, students may still be focused on the wrong thing. They are counting (and obsessing) over writing tasks. I’m fooling myself to think that the counting of Completes is immune from the curse of focusing on the elusive grade.

My great confusion on how to count (or not) the group work should have tipped me off sooner. Trying to figure out what would count as effort in a group is the wrong thing. I’m trying to invent a system where I decide how the quality and quantity of work determines the ultimate grade.

I’m still acting as the arbiter of course knowledge and assessment since I am the judge of Complete or Incomplete. I decide whether the effort that students put in counts. If I were truly faithful to the ideals of ungrading, I would be powerless. Students would determine what and when they have learned.

So what if I scrapped it all? What if I counted only submissions? Did the student turn the task in? Yes? Then it counts toward the expectations.

A Model Contract

So what if I go back to Inoue’s Labor-Based Grading Contracts system? I don’t like it for reasons I’ll get into, but it is a starting place. Here are his contract expectations (p. 127):

Grade Level # of Non-Participation Days # of Late Assignments # of Missed Assignments # of Ignored Assignments
A (4.0) 3 3 1 0
B (3.1) 3 3 1 0
C (2.1) 4 4 2 0
D (1.1) 5 5 3 1
E (0.0) 6 6 4 2

First, let me get my problems with these guidelines out of the way. I don’t like counting attendance, which is what the # of Non-Participation Days essentially does. I believe it’s not only ableist, but also inhumane to students stretched thin with other obligations. The system does have exceptions for excused absences, which could reduce some of the ableism. Still in a time when COVID still exists, I do not want to encourage any system that would ask a potentially sick student to come to class to avoid slipping down the expectations chart. Since my courses are all asynchronous online classes, it’s also irrelevant. There is not such thing as an attendance day to count at all.

I’m not a big fan of punishing students for late assignments either, so that column of the chart is problematic for me too. I believe in a more humane system that trusts students to put in their best effort. If they need an extra day, they should have it. I do recognize that Inoue’s course is highly interactive, and if students do not bring their work to class, they miss getting feedback from others. Peer review is a tough problem to negotiate in a due date system. I may not like this portion of the chart, but I understand why it’s there and critical to the way his classes work.

What counts in this contract model bugs me the most though. This is a deficit model. It counts failures and devalues the idea of failing as a critical part of learning. I’ve read enough of Failing Sideways to know that it’s more valuable (to me anyway) for students to be allowed to fail, to try again, to take risks without being punished.

Toward My Own Contract Model

I need to articulate my own model, and this time, I want something that is more in line with the spirit of ungrading. I haven’t worked out the details yet. Honestly, I haven’t even begun the work of determining what I expect students to do to demonstrate their learning. I do know that I have these goals in mind:

  • I want a positive model that counts things students do rather than things that they don’t. Such a thing should be more Canvas-friendly anyway. As far as I know, Canvas cannot use a system that counts failures.
  • I’m going to have to work in more self-reflection and group reflection. The challenge will be to add that reflection work without over-burdening students. They already have a lot of writing to do in this course.
  • I need that reflection to be authentic, which can be a challenge. In my experience, students are so over reflection. They have been writing reflections on their work their entire academic career. As a result, reflections can look more like an exercise in busywork instead of showing any deep recognition of who and when their writing has changed.
  • I still have to find a way to check student work to ensure that students are on track. I know that I should just trust students to do the work, and not feel compelled to check that they are not turning in blank files (yes, that has happened in the past). I’m just not there though, and I’m relatively sure that anything else would be frowned upon.
  • I‘m going to need a good explanation of the difference between feedback and completing/submitting work. A document can count as a submission and still have extensive feedback on how to improve it.
  • I’m going to have to figure out how to manage the extra work that moves students from a B to an A. I left that part out of Inoue’s system above. He offers several possibilities, including revising projects and creating more in-depth work (p. 132&endash;133). I will surely include revisions, but I need to think that system through.
  • I need to invent a TARDIS because I need to squeeze a lot more time out of this next week. Classes start Monday the 21st.

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm, technical writing, ungrading

Like or Dislike? Assessment for this Fall

August 12, 2023 by

Two self-inking stamps: one stamps a thumbs up with the word Like and the other stamps a thumbs down with the word dislike.

Would it be wrong to grade pass/fail work with these? by tengrrl on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-SA license

I’m focused now on the last big decision for my fall classes: How I will make the assessment system work with all these new assignments. The many collaborative writing tasks and related homework impact the system dramatically. Specifically, I’m trying to determine how (or if) to change my old system now that three of the five documents I count as major projects require collaborative writing.

The old system was pretty straightforward:

  • A: Earn a Complete on All Five Major Project Submissions
  • B: Attempt and submit all five of the Major Project Submissions, and earn a Complete on Four Major Project Submissions
  • C: Attempt and submit all five of the Major Project Submissions, and earn a Complete on Three Major Project Submissions
  • D: Attempt and submit fewer than five of the Major Project Submissions, and earn a Complete on at least two Major Project Submissions
  • F: Attempt and submit fewer than five of the Major Project Submissions; Earn a Complete on fewer than two of the Major Project Submissions

I’m listing only the major projects here. There are, of course, other requirements. You can see the full chart from the Spring in the Short Guide to the course.

Looking at that arrangement, I’m wondering if I need to break out the five documents into two individual projects and three collaborative projects. And if I do break them out, how do I indicate their worth?

The new course template does require that the Usability unit and the Project Management unit are worth more than the other portions of the course. To indicate that in the assessment chart, I am thinking that I may need to list them explicitly. For instance, perhaps the chart needs to indicate that a student cannot earn higher than a D in the course if they skip the collaborative work.

That thought leads me to wondering about how I am going to assess that collaborative work. Will this system based simply on whether the work is complete or not allow a student to put in the least possible effort on the collaborative work but still earn an A because other group members pick up the slack? After that thought, I get all mixed up on if a complete project management document means students learned about project management.

Reading Failing Sideways Queerly

A slightly off-topic aside

My friend Will Banks pointed me to the discussion of narrative assessment in the recent book Failing Sideways: Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment (2023), which he co-wrote with Stephanie West-Puckett and Nicole I. Caswell. The book arrived yesterday, and I recognized that I didn’t have time to read it through before classes start on the 21st. I found myself skipping around in the book, following index entries and looking up passages I found with Google Books for specific terms. I flipped back and forth, completely ignoring some sections. I really don’t care about the history of the bell curve, for example. I can read that section later (if at all….I seriously don’t care about bell curves).

I did dip into details on queering the writing process, which has never really been the harsh step-by-step progression that textbooks would lead readers to believe. It suddenly occurred to me that I was reading queerly. I wasn’t following the expected linear progression through the book. I was frantically flipping about, skipping from one topic to the next.

Assessing the Major Projects Sideways?

From flipping around in Will’s book, I landed on these thoughts and possibilities, in no particular order. Funnily enough, I ended up with ten:

  • Now I’m questioning my whole system of marking work as Complete or Incomplete, having realized that it’s imposing the “success/failure binary onto the writing and learning experience” (p. 162). Ugh.
  • Stephanie’s “low-stakes self-assessment activities meant to provide quick and dirty data that could inform instructors about students’ writing experiences and orientations, as well as about ways to better meet students’ needs” (p. 92) gave me new-found happiness for the weekly student check-in surveys that I incorporated into my class a year ago. I made up my practice on my own, but apparently I was right on track with my system.
  • I’m always stuck when I work on assessment between what works for programmatic assessment and what works for individual students in a writing class. I always feel like I’m trying to smash the proverbial square pegs in round holes.
  • I also get lost between the curricular expectations for a technical writing program and the actual writing instruction that students need. With a service class like the technical writing course I teach, there are so many outside stakeholders who want the class to do specific things (e.g., teach the memo, prepare students for the workplace, erase all “errors” in their writing). Generally, none of that is what I think makes someone an effective writer who is ready for the workplace.
  • I could use contract-based writing assessment based solely on labor, but given the expectations for the course among other departments and the program itself, doing a lot of work without producing something similar to the five major projects and other materials in the template wouldn’t fly.
  • I want to like labor-based grading, but it raises questions for me.
    • Failing Sideways points to a University of Akron study that “found their students viewed grading contracts as largely irrelevant because these students had come to expect that the amount of work they invested in their courses would automatically be reflected in their course grade (Spidell and Thelin 2006)” (p. 163). /li>
    • I’m also bothered by what feels like an invalid argument that tells students that if they just work hard enough and put in their very best effort, they will be just fine in the course. That stance outright defies the lived experiences of many BIPOC students who know full well that they can work their asses off and still not get the same rewards as their white classmates.
  • Not relevant to assessmnet per se, but Nikki’s discussions with writing center consultants about the space, the value that it holds, and how it expresses those values (p. 134) included some questions that I believe I can combine with Cecilia Shelton’s (2019) Linguistic Landscape Analysis approach for the analysis of usability projects in the middle unit of my course.
  • The discussion of narrative assessments through learning stories is intriguing, but I question whether I can ask students to write narrative assessments of their learning voyage on top of all of the other things that they have to write for the course.
  • Would looping students through questions about their understanding of the large goals of the course reveal adequate information for some kind of assessment? For instance, what if I asked students questions like these: “What counts as technical writing? What counts as effective technical writing? What need one have to be a good technical writer?” Would their answers from the beginning, middle, and end of the course tell me anything about their changing ideas of the field of technical writing as it relates to them and their careers? Note that I am saying “changing ideas” and not “increasing understanding” there.
  • Finally, my most favorite moment in the book was seeing the photo of Stephanie and Will’s 3D model of their research data on p. 196. I immediately flashed back to my description of a CCCC Forum from (gulp) almost forty years ago: HyperYarn: Threading space (1994).

And after all of that, I have ideas but I still haven’t figured out what to do with the contract system for the course. At least I have a whole week before I have to have things ready to go.

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm, technical writing

Late Policy & Grace Period Options

August 11, 2023 by

A statue of an angel with an uplifted arm. Its wings are spread wide open. Surrounding tombstones are also visible.

Grace by Jonathan Lin on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-SA license

I seriously hate having to change my late policy. I had more than a few students thank me for it last term. Several even said that they would have had to withdraw without it. That said, I understand that members of a group cannot all work under different ideas of the due dates if they are going to create collaborative documents.

My challenge then is to search for some way to give everyone some freedom without hampering collaborative work. I thought brainstorming the options would help:

  1. Screw it. Use the old system. Let the groups have anarchy.
  2. Also screw it. No grace period. No humanity. Meet the deadline or else.
  3. Use a short grace period on everything. 3 days.
  4. Use 3 day grace periods for tasks like homework, check-ins, etc. Longer grace period for major projects (up to one week?).
  5. Use 3-day grace periods for tasks like homework. Groups set their own independent deadlines for all collaborative work. Provide “suggested” deadlines to help them pace things out.
  6. Give up. Go live under a bridge with the other trolls.

Option 6 is looking like best right now. Okay, not really. I suspect Option 5 is the best way to focus students on Project Management, which is, after all, the focus of the final unit. They are to write proposals, progress reports, and recommendation reports; but the overarching goal is learning project management in the context of composing technical writing.

In some ways, earning a Complete on the writing projects should not be the goal. Working smoothly and effectively as a group should be. I’m having flashbacks to the good old days when I taught Writing and Digital Media. Back then, students had a major project that could be anything from a video documentary to a website. I tried to be aware that the goal was learning about how to compose with digital tools, not perfect productions. I emphasized being brave and taking risks. I regularly reminded the class that if they put in the effort, took risks, and tried, they would do fine in the class.

Obviously I don’t want to set students up to have problems with the grace period, but I could emphasize that the goal is to collaborate well while meeting as many of the writing goals as possible. I’m beginning to see that the deadlines put the emphasis on the wrong things. I’m freaking out over how to have work turned in so that the group can proceed to the next task. If I control all the deadlines and have a lockstep progression that I expect the class to follow, students aren’t practicing or learning anything other than obedience—and I don’t teach courses on obedience.

I hope this still makes sense tomorrow.

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm, technical writing

The Tricky Focal Question Solved?

August 10, 2023 by

Wide blue garage door with a yellow sign above that reads Focus for DIY and Gardening

Focus by morebyless on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license

Yesterday, I finally settled on the general assignments and their connections among one another. There was still one tricky issue however. I needed to figure out the specific focus sites or documents that students would use for their assignments. I left things by pointing out these three general options:

  • Students focus on their own major/field/discipline/career goals (however it’s defined).
  • Students focus more generally on their college’s area (e.g., Engineering, Science, Agriculture & Life Sciences).
  • Students focus on anything they like (which I fear is too open and could result in analysis of random and likely off-topic sites).

Because the Usability unit in the template asks students to revise User Documentation, whatever I end up with has to include some kind of instructions that students can analyze and rethink.

I was sitting here tonight not even thinking about the assignments. I was finishing up the online Kroger order for pick-up tomorrow, and suddenly I thought, have them choose any website that a Virginia Tech student might use in their academic work. Exclude academic departments, centers, schools, and colleges. Require that the site includes some kind of user documentation among its features.

  • Software company sites like Canvas or MatLab.
  • Resource sites on campus like the Counseling Center.
  • Library sites.
  • Various academic support sites like the registrar’s office or the Services for Students with Disabilities site.
  • General software company sites like Microsoft or Adobe.
  • Textbook websites, whether OER or publisher sites.
  • AI sites like ChatGPT.
  • (Probably not a good idea, but…) Sites like Chegg or CourseHero.
  • Communication software like Zoom or Gmail.
  • Video sites like Kaltura or YouTube.

I think this focus will result in choices that students can relate to regardless of major. It can even be a benefit if the group moves on to choose a resource that a group member has never used. Who better to test online instructions and other resources than someone trying to figure out how to use it for the first time?

Those are all large sites, so I will have to provide some guidance for narrowing the focus to a particular portion of the site. It just might work!

I still have no idea how to solve the thorny grace period problem, but I think the rest of things are coming together.

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm, technical writing

Potential Assignment Sequence

August 9, 2023 by

Vertical stack of stuffed-full writing journals

journals by Barry Silver on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license

I could just think my plans through and go implement them. I’m better though if I think them through by writing them out. Just trying to think in my head means I may not consider everything. So these Ramblings posts are essentially my think-aloud teacher’s journal. I’m figuring out what I want to do and documenting why I’m doing it.

These posts not only help me figure things out now, but they will also help me at the beginning of next term when I assess how things went and make changes for the Spring semester. So if you’re interested, read on to see what I’m thinking.

Tentative Assignment Sequence

Yesterday I struggled mainly with the recommendation report focus and my desire to connect the major assignments so that they build on one another in ways that students understand. I could just say something like, “Trust me. These are related.” It’s better though when students can see and understand the connection. That “Trust me” stuff only goes so far. And honestly, I need their trust in other areas more than I do in believing in the connections among the assignments. (Specifically, in the ungrading system. But that’s another post for another day.)

Following all the thinking yesterday, I’ve come up with these series of major assignments:

Unit/Module Major Assignment(s) Other Activities to Include
Foundational Information Analysis of Online Resources (from Your Field?)
Usability
  • Online User Documentation Revision
  • Reflection Memo
  • Alternately Online Customer Support Document Revision?
 ???
Project Management
  • Online User Documentation Recommendation Report
  • Proposal
  • Progress Report
 Meeting Minutes

What to Do about Specific Focus Areas & Groups?

I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with groups and the topics of these pieces. The major issue is whether to have students

  • focus on their own major/field/discipline/career goals (however it’s defined).
  • focus more generally on their college’s area (e.g., Engineering, Science, Agriculture & Life Sciences).
  • focus on anything they like (which I fear is too open and could result in analysis of random and likely off-topic sites).

The group composition is the key here. If groups are completely mixed, it will be harder to choose topics for the recommendation report. For instance, if I’m an Ag major, I’m not going to have much connection to a website on assembly language, chosen by and Electrical Engineering major. If it’s wide open, I’m likely to get coffee house websites or local hair salon websites. That feels far away from students’ fields. So far away that it borders on busy work. This is a major issue to figure out.

Restructuring for More Group Collaboration and Coordination

I like the The Writing Commons structure of having a problem-solution definition project feed into the recommendation report (as I mentioned in the last post). Students write their problem-solutions, and then they develop a pitch based on that problem-solution that they present to their group members. Group members then choose among the presented problems of the group members for the topic of their recommendation report (and related documents).

To implement a similar assignment arc, I’ll need to rearrange the course structure in the template a little. I want students meeting and interacting with their groups BEFORE they have to decide on their recommendation report focus. Not only would it allow them to get to know one another before it is critical to their work, but it would also give them support as they work on their second projects. I’m seeing them working as a peer review group on the Usability unit and then moving to collaborative writing for the Project Management Unit.

Beyond the collaboration angle, I’m worried about the jam-packed end to the semester in the existing template. Here’s what it looks like as is:

Week Assignments Due
Week 10 Meeting Minutes
Week 11 Proposal Draft
Week 12 Progress Report & Proposal Final Version
Week 13 Recommendation Report Draft
Thanksgiving Break No work due
Week 14 Recommendation Report Draft 2
Week 15 Recommendation Report Final Version (by end of exam week)

I have multiple concerns about this schedule. First, I don’t think it’s reasonable to have major drafts and final versions due every week for the last third of the term. These are juniors and seniors for the most part, and they are all busy with major projects in all their courses. Many of those courses are far more important to them than my tech writing course (like their in-major senior capstones, for instance). I know this is a group project, so there is less work than individual projects. Still it feels far too crowded for me.

Beyond that, I readily admit that I am not superwoman. How in the world am I supposed to keep up with feedback on all of that for 4 classes of 22 students?! I’m in favor of plenty of feedback, but if I can’t keep up with this schedule, I’m hurting students—and trust me, I know I cannot keep up with that schedule.

That schedule also violates some working guidelines that I have been using the last few years when scheduling course work and my workload. Most importantly, I do not collect drafts (early or final) to respond to over Thanksgiving Break or Spring Break. That decision has allowed me to take a break and come back ready to finish out the course.

I also allow unlimited revision until the end of the grace period (usually the last Friday of classes). That means I could need to provide feedback on these documents even more times than are listed. I strongly believe in risk-free drafts that students can revise as much as needed. Even if a small handful need revision chances on these documents, it is going to add even more to my workload. I don’t think it’s reasonably possible. I’d rather start the collaborative writing earlier to have a better pace on the writing for the students and feedback for me.

Finally (yes, I have one more thing to say), I use ungrading that allows students to meet contract-style expectations to earn their grades. For instance, they need to earn a Complete on all of the major projects in order to earn an A in the course. In my system, the final exam is an optional Performance Review, in which they review their work during the term and can then argue for a higher grade than the number of Completes they have earned. They could argue for a lower grade too, but students are not crazy. The final is an important part of my system, so I don’t want to drop it. Nor do I want to pile it on top of the other work they are doing for the course. So this too means that I need to slide the work back in the term.

The downside of shortening time on earlier units would seem to be that students will have less time to learn those concepts. I don’t think that is an issue however. I’m setting up the sequence with the UX unit feeding into the Project Management unit and with the foundational information serving as the basis for their analysis of the UX document and of their recommendation report. Students will spend slightly less time during the opening weeks, but they will work with those concepts all term long. They are literally the foundation of every project they will complete.

And so….

That’s where I’m at now. I still need to figure out how I want to arrange students in groups, which matters in deciding the ultimate focus of the assignments.

I also have to figure out how the grace period (or late policy) is going to work for all these assignments. It has to be adjusted for the group work. I can’t have a single student’s decision to use the grace period impact an entire group’s progress. I know it means that I have to have different grace periods for different work. The big challenge is figuring out how to set that up, and the even bigger challenge is finding a way to make the system clear to students. I’ve had too many students in the past who get confused when different tasks have different grace periods. I need to figure out how to make it as clear as possible.

Those two tasks will wait until later however. That’s enough progress for today.

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm, technical writing Tagged with ,

What to Focus on for Fall Writing Assignments

August 8, 2023 by

SEAL candidates participate in surf immersion during training at Naval Special Warfare.

SEAL candidates participate in surf immersion during training at Naval Special Warfare by Official U.S. Navy Page on Flickr, used under a CC-By 2.0 license.

You might say that I’m a little overwhelmed as I try to set things up for the fall, and I really need to figure out my fall assignments. First the requirements. There are three units (arranged in Canvas Modules) that I must work within, and for each unit there are related expectations:

  1. Foundational Information, which covers
    • rhetoric
    • audience
    • ethics
    • plain language
    • document design

    The example assignment in the course template is an examination of kinds of writing in each student’s field (old version of that assignment that I have used).

  2. Usability, which covers
    • document design
    • plain language
    • accessibility

    The example assignment in the template asks students to choose a user documentation document (defined as including things such as an assignment from another course or a syllabus) and then revise it to increase usability. Students also write a reflection document that explains their choices.

  3. Project Management, which includes
    • proposal
    • progress report
    • recommendation report

    The example assignment proposes a recommendation report that identifies a campus-based situation and recommends improvements. For instance, the report might address how to “expand or improve study spaces or computer facilities (choose ONE) on campus.”

Additionally, the course needs to include memos, meeting minutes, and email. There are also various short or informal pieces that students complete each week (labeled as homework in the template).

What to Do???

I need to start with the Recommendation Report and work backwards. I prefer that there is some connection among the assignments so that they build on one another. It would be more difficult to start with foundational information when I’m not 100% sure what the foundation needs to support.

I gathered a list of potential report approaches. I’m not a fan of wide open assignments. They don’t include enough support to help students succeed. I like many of the options listed, and I’d love to do something similar to Cecilia Shelton’s project one day. But that day it not today. I would need to do more preparation for that kind of project than I have time for.

I have used assignments when students analyze a website and suggest improvements many times. In this new template, I like that it would build on the foundational information and the usability analysis that students would do in the first two units. I’m still very undecided on what websites students would consider however. These seem like the possible ways to go:

  • Since this has to be a group project, asking them to focus on something related to their majors doesn’t really work. In some groups, they may all be in different majors.
  • Students could choose a Virginia Tech website other than academic departments (similar to the Student Affairs approach I mention on the options page).
  • They could look at Fortune 500 companies, but such websites tend to be highly polished. That leaves less room for students to find issues they can revise. Additionally, many Fortune 500 companies will have massive websites, far more than students could manage in the scope of this assignment.
  • Students could look at local business, nonprofit, or organization websites. When I used this assignment in the past, many of the reports focused on local coffee houses, bars, and restaurants. Given that students may not have a shared career to work from, I’d probably see that focus again. I’d rather that the reports were a bit closer to students’ career interests.
  • Perhaps it would work to go with larger companies (or even Fortune 500 sites) and then focus on customer support sections of the site. That would potentially engage students with technical how-tos and specific technical writing genres. It could bridge back to the Usability unit as well, where students analyze and revise a user documentation document.

If I go with that last idea, which seems maybe the easiest to adjust to groups and get away from overly polished sites (assuming I limit things properly), I need to think about these issues:

  • When student analyze the sites (both for the usability and the rec report), I want to use Shelton’s questions for linguistic landscape analysis. She is having students look at a geographical space, but I think that a corner of the web can be defined as a space in a way that would work. The questions would need some adjustments, but I like that they get beyond simple aspects of document design, etc.
  • The Writing Commons information on Recommendation Reports has students individually write problem-definition statements, and then use those within groups to decide on and write their recommendation reports. That is, if I follow the information in the Writing Commons site. I wish there were more details or examples there. Back to my classes though, I’m thinking that something similar could work here. Unit 2 on Usability is the individual piece, and then the groups work from those indy pieces to identify the challenges and then make recommendations.
  • I still don’t know what to do with the first unit on Foundational Information. The topics are relevant, but I’m not sure about the analysis of writing in your field spreadsheet. Honestly, I’ve used that assignment so much that I’m kind of burned out on it.
  • It would be cool to define customer support for the rec reports so that it includes things like tech support or advice podcasts, videos and the like. It would be quite cool if I can set things up so that it doesn’t have to be a company.

And that’s where I’m leaving things for tonight. I’m running out of time to get all this figured out, and NONE of the homework (which I’ll call Try-Its) or other assignments (big and small) are ready. I am committed to continue contract-based ungrading, so there is a lot of work I’ll need to manage to set that up. Especially with the weighting requirements in the template. Plus I’ve realized that my late policy needs a major revision to work for group projects. T -13 days…

Filed under Teaching Prof Comm, technical writing

List of Ten: Food Story Ideas

May 27, 2022 by


A light blue plate filled with perfectly browned latkes. A paper towel rests under the latkes on the plate.
Photo: Latke Time [345/366] by Tim Sackton on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license

I’m using a food-related theme for my summer technical writing course. The first assignment is an oral presentation (video) that they will use to introduce themselves to the class and then share a personal food story with the class. To kickstart their ideas, I created this List of Ten. I should work for any course that is focusing on food.

  1. What food must be in your home? Why? What happens if it’s missing?
  2. Tell us about a favorite (yours or your family’s). It can be a favorite meal, restaurant, dessert, cook, or something else.
  3. Tell us about the most complicated thing you’ve ever prepared or seen prepared. How did it go?
  4. What is your food indulgence? Tell us a story about the food that takes you to your happy place.
  5. Tell us the story of the weirdest thing you ever ate/drank. What was the experience like?
  6. Share a story of a time you were judged (or that you judged someone else) because of what they ate/drank.
  7. Tell the story of your experience with a food you hate.
  8. What has been your biggest food fail? Tell us about a meal or food situation that went wrong.
  9. What food is your enemy and why? Tell us a story of your battle with that food.
  10. What food aroma/smell takes you somewhere else? Tell us the story of where you go and how the smell is part of that trip.

Extra Tips

  • Your story does not have to be on the numbered list above. It’s just a list of ideas to help you get started.
  • For our purposes, food is widely defined. It can include meals, ingredients, beverages, candy, and so on.
  • You can talk about your food experiences, the experiences of your family (however you define family), or experiences related to your culture or community.
  • Please no stories about topics like the first time I got drunk.

 

Filed under List of Ten, Teaching Composition, technical writing Tagged with

10+ Things to Add to Your Community Action Toolkit

May 13, 2022 by

Vintage wooden toolbox filled with tools for woodworking
Image Credit: Toolbox by Florian Richter on Flickr,
used under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

As I mentioned on my List of 10 on hashtags, I’m working on a series of assignments and classroom activities that will support the “Digital Assignments for Activist & Justice-Oriented Projects” presentation that I’m giving at the Computers and Writing Conference this year. In this list I’m moving on to community action toolkits (see examples below) and several overarching assignments.

First, let me explain what these toolkits are. Imagine you have a group of people all interested in a specific cause, but unsure how they can promote their work and gain other followers. That’s where these toolkits come in. They provide some background on the cause and why it’s needed, and, then, they outline how to promote and participate in the common cause.

Because community action efforts are typically grassroots movements, toolkits help those organizing and promoting their cause. Toolkits can include advice on reaching out to community supporters, the media, and the public. Further, they can include step-by-step instructions for common tasks that support community efforts, such as writing letters to politicians and government officials as well as to media outlets such as letters to the editor and comments on news websites. The name of these collections, toolkits, are a perfect analogy: these collections provide the tools and resources that a community effort can use to promote its cause.

Deciding on the Composing Strategy

These assignments and activities present opportunities for students to create their own community action toolkits, focusing on the ways that writing and digital composing contribute to activism and social justice efforts:

  • Individually-authored Toolkits: Use this assignment as a course-long project by asking each student to create their own toolkit, working individually. Based on the length of your course, suggest the number of documents students should compose. If appropriate for your course, choose specific items students need to complete. Allow for some choice among options as well.
  • Small Group-authored Toolkits: Arrange students in small groups, and have each group choose a community effort for its focus. Ask each group member to contribute to the toolkit by creating one (or more) components of the report. The entire group is responsible for framing the toolkit and ensuring consistency in the overall document.
  • Class-authored Toolkits: Choose a community effort as a class, and have each student in the class contribute to the overall class-authored toolkit. The class can begin by collaborating on design guidelines to make the assembly of the document smoother.
  • Individual Projects: Instead of creating a complete toolkit, choose any of the components listed as an individual writing assignment. For example, everyone in the class writes an FAQ on a local community action campaign.

Choosing a Local Focus

If possible, students will choose a local community action efforts and create their toolkits to support those efforts. The activities can work for larger efforts as well; however, students may find that resources already exist. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has published a StopBullying.gov Community Action Toolkit that takes on the campaign to end bullying in schools. Rather than duplicating such work, students can provide resources specifically focused on what the local community needs.

When working on local community efforts, students can also benefit from closer access to the audience and stakeholders for their toolkits. For instance, students working on an anti-bullying campaign on campus can connect with administrators and faculty who support their cause and with some persuasion, possibly have their toolkits adopted for local use.

Deciding on Media for Interaction

In addition to choosing the kind of community action students explore, you can narrow their projects to particular kinds of interaction—anything from fairly traditional print communications to highly visual or interactive broadcast or social media. Here are the most obvious options:

  • Open Guide: Students can write a general guide without restrictions. Anything that fits the genre goes. Students can decide if they want to focus more specifically.
  • Guide for All Media: Students ensure that their guide covers a variety of media, including print media, social media, video and broadcast media. A broader toolkit of this sort is perfect for class-authored toolkits, as it broadens the list of components to include.
  • Guide for Social Media: Students focus specifically on community action that uses social media as the primary communication tool. Resources in the toolkit would focus on sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok.
  • Guide for Broadcast Media: Students produce broadcast-ready videos that can be shared on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Videos can also be embedded on websites and in blog posts as well as distributed to local media outlets (e.g., open access channels and local community television stations).

Toolkit Components

Your Community Action Toolkit can include a variety of resources. Depending upon the needs of the community and the goals of the community action group, you can add information to tell readers about the group and its work as well as resources to help readers participate in the work of the group. Once you determine who your readers are and establish the purpose for your toolkit, choose among the following items to include in your toolkit:

  1. Background on the Campaign & Need
    Every toolkit needs some background information that explains the cause and persuades readers to join in working for change. Tell the story of your cause and the needs it will serve. Remember that stories make your cause personal, so focus on a specific person or people who have or will benefit from the campaign. Be sure that your background information convinces readers why the cause is important to the community. Keep your paragraphs short and clear, and add photos that help tell your story.
  2. Timeline
    Provide a fast review of the key accomplishments the community has reached and the levels of need that exist. Your timeline can include past events as well as upcoming milestones. Try using a tool such as Knight Lab’s TimelineJS to create an online timeline for a web-based toolkit.
  3. Info Sheet or Fact Sheet
    People interested in the community effort can use the fast facts from an info sheet or infographic to convince others to support the cause and to promote the group’s work. Create a one-page sheet that provides the most important details about the cause and how the community works to solve it. See the “Intimate Partner Violence and Transgender Communities: Factsheet” (on page 7) for an example of the genre. If your toolkit is to be a print document, you might increase the size of your info sheet to a two-page spread. Incorporate document design and graphical details to make the info sheet easy to understand. Use the Fact Sheets resources from Kent State to learn more about info sheets.
  4. Infographic
    Identify significant data related to your cause and create an infographic that visually presents the details.
    Read the article “Designing Effective Infographics” (2018) from the Nielsen Norman Group to find out more about infographics. You can find Infographic templates on sites like Canva, Venngage, or Easel.ly. [Teaching Note: For a more structured assignment, use The Infographic Project from Writing Commons.]
  5. Campaign Schedule/Key Dates
    If the community action group has upcoming events, create an agenda or a calendar that indicates the dates and provides those who use the toolkit with the basic information they need to participate in the events. For events that take place regularly (like an annual activity), you can point to past resources to show the successes the campaign has had. Adobe Express (formerly Spark) and Canva include calendar templates.
  6. Case Studies
    Stories will draw people into the campaign, as they read how others faced challenges and worked to succeed. Add case studies or success stories to the toolkit to demonstrate the impact that the community effort can make. Tell the story from a participant’s point of view, integrating quotations and descriptive details that show the reader how community action has made a difference. Photographs of the people in the story will emphasize that these are real members of the community who have benefited from community action. For examples, see the Appendix: Stories of Success (p. 71) in the Be the Change—Community Action Toolkit. If you have before and after images that you can include, use the Juxtapose tool from Knight Lab to create slick comparisons that show the change.
  7. Instructions on How to Participate
    Readers who are new to the community need instructions that show them how they can participate in the work of the campaign. Choose activities that fit your toolkit, and provide step-by-step details on how to accomplish them. For a social media toolkit, for instance, you can provide instructions on how to participate in an Instagram Hop, a Tweetstorm or a Twitter Chat. Consult the technical writing resources on Writing Instructions for help with the genre. Read the StopBullying.gov Resources (p. 33) for an example of step-by-step instructions.
  8. How to Contact a Politician
    Add instructions on how to contact government officials and elected representatives to ask for support of the community action project. Include step-by-step details on how to identify specific people to connect and how to compose effective messages. Further, provide sample letters, text messages, and phone/voice mail scripts that readers can use as models. Consult Section 1. Writing Letters to Elected Officials from the Community Tool Box for examples of what this section can include. To understand how audience effects toolbox documents, compare Contact Elected Officials (written for family adults) and Contacting Your Representatives (written for youth advocates)—both from the Community Action Toolkit: A Guide to Advancing Sex Education in Your Community.
  9. How to Write an Op-Ed or Letter to the Editor
    Letters and public statements can share the community action through newspapers and television sites as well as through blog posts and similar forum sites. Add instructions that show members of the community how to compose their messages and provide advice on submitting them to local media outlets. The “Writing Opinion Editorials and Letters to the Editor” resources from the CDC’s “Community Action Toolkit: A Guide to Advancing Sex Education in Your Community” (2021) are a good model. You can also find useful ideas in Tips for Working with the Media (p. 22) from the StopBullying.gov Community Action Toolkit.
  10. Shareable Images or Videos
    Create a collection of easy-to-share images and videos that community members can post in their social media networks. Focus on images and videos that focus on your main message without any clutter. Videos can focus on public service announcements, brief testimonials, and news from the community. Follow the guidelines for image size and shape and video resolution and length that are recommended on the sites where they will be shared. For instance, choose square images to be shared on Instagram.
    Section 19. Using Social Media for Digital Advocacy from Justice Action Toolkit | Community Tool Box outlines useful background information. The shareables and Twibbon resources in the 2020 Global 16 Days Campaign Social Media Toolkit and Social Media Posts for COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters are useful examples.
  11. Sample Posts
    Compose ready-to-post status updates that community followers can easily copy and paste on their social media networks. As with shareable images and videos, Section 19. Using Social Media for Digital Advocacy from Justice Action Toolkit | Community Tool Box provides useful tips. Text Messages for Community-Based Organizations to Encourage Vaccination and the Community Action Month- Mini Toolkit #1 provide sample text messages to copy and use. In addition to posts meant to be copied and pasted, consider other kinds of messages that community members may find useful. The Social Media Safety Toolkit for Veterans, Their Families, and Friends, for example, directly addresses the possible issues that their community may face by including Sample Responses to Posts and Tweets That Indicate Emotional Distress (p. 4).
  12. Slideshows
    Design PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides presentations that can be used to share details about the accomplishments and goals with the community and that community members can use to encourages others to participate in the efforts of the group. Check out the Presentations section (pp. 12–18) of Effective Tools for Communications and Leadership in Indian Country for useful advice on creating presentations. For examples, the sections of the Justice Action Toolkit | Community Tool Box include Powerpoint presentations that summarize the information included on each topic in the toolkit. Use the tabs above the Main Section to switch to a link allowing you to download the presentation. You can also create slideshow carousels, or Stories, that rotate on social media sites like Instagram. See How social justice slideshows took over Instagram for more details.
  13. FAQ
    Gather a list of questions that community members may have about the cause or about the community actions to support it, and then provide clear answers to each one. Use the
    FAQs on COVID-19 Vaccines for Essential Workers in Agriculture as an example. Find advice on writing FAQs from ZenDesk’s “8 great FAQ page examples and how to create your own” or Truckee Meadows Community College’s “FAQ Writing Guidelines.”
  14. Glossary
    Go through your toolkit and identify words and phrases that community members may be unfamiliar with.
    Your list can include abbreviations and acronyms, proper names of relevant parts of the organization or of documents that the group relies on. For each word or phrase, explain what it is and how ti relates to the community. See the Glossary (p. 72) in the Be the Change—Community Action Toolkit for an example, and consult Writing Definitions from the Purdue OWL for help with the genre.
  15. Additional Resources
    Gather links to additional resources that provide community members with more information or tools to use as they work toward the community’s goals. Include direct links to the resources and short annotations that explain what the resource is and how it will help the community member. Add subheadings to help community members find what they need easily. For examples, see the list of Further Resources (p. 10) from the Community Action Toolkit for Addressing Intimate Partner Violence Against Transgender People and Social Media Suicide Prevention Resources and Additional Suicide Prevention Resources (p. 8) from the Social Media Safety Toolkit for Veterans, Their Families, and Friends. Consult the Annotated Bibliographies resources from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for tips on writing annotations.

Example Toolkits

Center for Community Health and Development. (2020). Justice Action Toolkit | Community Tool Box. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://ctb.ku.edu/en/justice-action-toolkit

Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. (2020). 2020 Global 16 Days Campaign Social Media Toolkit. Global 16 Days Campaign. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://16dayscampaign.org/2020-global-16-days-campaign-social-media-toolkit/

National Association for State Community Services Programs. (2016). Community Action Month- Mini Toolkit #1. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://nascsp.org/community-action-month-mini-toolkit-1/

National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. (2017). Community Action Toolkit for Addressing Intimate Partner Violence Against Transgender People. National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ncavp_trans_ipvtoolkit.pdf

National Congress of American Indians, & Pyramid Communications. (2011). Effective Tools for Communications and Leadership in Indian Country. National Congress of American Indians. https://www.ncai.org/news/tribal-communicators-resources/NCAI_ConferenceBooklet_FINAL_SinglePage.pdf

Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). (2018, November 18). Community Action Toolkit: A Guide to Advancing Sex Education in Your Community. SIECUS. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://siecus.org/community-action-toolkit/

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2021, December 16). COVID-19 Community-Based Organizations Toolkit. WECANDOTHIS.HHS.GOV. https://wecandothis.hhs.gov/resource/community-based-organizations-toolkit

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2017). StopBullying.gov Community Action Toolkit. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.stopbullying.gov/sites/default/files/2017-09/community-action-toolkit.pdf

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2022, February 10). Suicide Prevention—Mental Health [General Information]. https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/prevention/index.asp

Verhoeven, Andii. (2014). Be the Change—Community Action Toolkit. World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.wagggs.org/en/resources/be-change-community-action-toolkit/

 

 

Filed under instructor resources, Teaching with Digital Tools, technical writing Tagged with , ,

10 Assignments on Hashtags

May 5, 2022 by

Hashtag mark drawn in the sand
Image Credit: Piqsels.com, used under public domain.

I’m working on a series of assignments and classroom activities that will support the “Digital Assignments for Activist & Justice-Oriented Projects” presentation that I’m giving at the Computers and Writing Conference this year. Hashtags seem like the right place to start. Campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo have demonstrated that hashtags capture attention and can fuel justice-oriented social action.

Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl (2005) identify “two foundational aspects of collective action: (a) the binary choice to participate or not and (b) the role of formal organization.” As they unify voices around a common cause, hashtags provide “formal organization” for collective action using social media. In the same way that corporate logos and taglines work, hashtags can become the brand identity for a social movement. By adding a hashtag to a social media post, writers choose to participate and further to align their comments with others who use the same hashtag.

To use hashtags effectively in their activist and justice-oriented projects, students need first to think critically about how hashtags work in social activism (AKA hacktivism). These ten assignments and activities present opportunities for students to examine how hashtags have contributed to collective action in the past.

Assignments and Activities

  1. Ask students to hashtag themselves.
    As an icebreaker, invite students to introduce themselves by hashtag. Have students list seven to nine hashtags that describe who they are, what they care about, and/or what they like and do. Students can post anonymously if they desire. Collect all of the hashtags for the class in one document. Students can enter their keywords in a Google Form to simplify this process. Go to the Voyant Tools website, and paste in the class list of hashtags to generate a word cloud showing frequency as well as additional statistics on the hashtags. As a class, discuss what the hashtag data reveals.
  2. Tell the story of the local community hashtag.
    Begin by examining the story of a highly visible hashtag. Time‘s “The Silence Breakers: Time Person of the Year 2017” reviews people who spoke up during the #MeToo movement. Supplement the Time article with the 2018 Pew Research Center’s “How Social Media Users Have Discussed Sexual Harassment Since #Metoo Went Viral.” As they review the story behind the #MeToo hashtag, ask students to identify how the story connects with details on the impact of the hashtag. After examining the #MeToo story, ask students to choose a local hashtag used by community members to influence collective action. Suggest a chronological order for the stories, perhaps with flashbacks. Remind students of the importance of including a discussion of the impact of the hashtag (the “so what?” for their stories). As an alternative to writing a narrative essay, students can enter key moments that tell the story of their hashtags on a timeline, using a tool such as Knight Lab’s TimelineJS.
  3. Create a one-page info sheet for a hashtag.
    After examining resources on info sheets on local issues, have the class create a list of useful information to include on an info sheet for a local community hashtag. At a minimum, lists should include the hashtag, details on who uses it, and its purpose. Further details depend upon the hashtags and how they are used. If students are examining existing hashtags, they can add some background information on the creation of the hashtag, for instance. Encourage students to create and add graphics to illustrate their info sheets. Students can add embedded posts that include photos or other graphics related to the hashtag.
    To support students as they structure their info sheets, use the Fact Sheets resources from Kent State.
  4. Design an infographic for a local community hashtag.
    Have students read “Designing Effective Infographics” (2018) from the Nielsen Norman Group to learn about the characteristics of a strong infographic and use the information from the Nielsen Norman reading to analyze recent infographics. Once students understand the infographic genre, ask them to create infographics for local community hashtags. Share one or more of these readings from the Pew Research Center to demonstrate the kinds of data students can gather about their hashtags:

  5. Define and describe a hashtag.
    Ask students to write technical descriptions
    of their hashtags that explain what the hashtags are, how they are formed, and how they function. For example, students might discuss how various word or numbers are combined to form the hashtag. Have students include photos or embedded media that show the hashtag in use, integrating the graphics with the text description. Suggest students add details on history, privacy, and other background as appropriate for their hashtags.
  6. Explain how (and why) to use a hashtag.
    Discuss the complex ways that hashtags are used, asking students to unpack rote practices and typical expectations. Consider questions such as the following:

    • Where do you include the hashtag—the beginning? the middle? the end? wherever it falls in the statement? How do you decide?
    • How does the social media tool that you use (for instance, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram) influence the way the hashtag is included?
    • How are hashtags used with other ways of communicating, like sound, photos, and drawings?
    • What persuasive information belongs in explanations of how to use a hashtag?

    Once students have explored the conventions for using hashtags, ask them to write step-by-step instructions for using a hashtag in a particular way (e.g. for a particular medium and purpose). Ask students to consider the audience for their instructions as someone who understands and uses social media personally but has never used social media as part of collective action in an organized way. Supplement the assignment with outside resources on Writing Instructions.

  7. Propose or recommend how to build a collective action campaign with hashtags.
     After exploring how hashtags can be used as part of collective action, ask students to write a proposal or recommendation report on how to engage with hashtags as a company, nonprofit, or community. The audience for the project will depend upon the group involved. If a company will be participating, the audience might be marketing management within that company and possibly the company’s owners or executive directors. For a community-oriented project, the audience might be members of that community who are unsure how to participate or want to have a stronger impact. Encourage students to think broadly about the ways that hashtags can be used, rather than limiting themselves to a single kind of use, such as status posts on Twitter.
  8. Curate an annotated bibliography that illustrates how a hashtag has been used for collective action.
    To learn about how hashtags work in community action campaigns, have students compose annotated bibliographies of resources on topics such as the stories behind hashtags, how hashtags evolve with use, viral distribution of hashtags, public impact of hashtags, or how to use hashtags effectively. Alternatively, students can focus on a particular hashtag. For instance, students can begin with an article like “The Hashtags that Brought Black Scientists Together,” from Nature (2021) or “How Black Lives Matter Came to the Academy,” from The New Yorker (2021) and then investigate the hashtags involved. Share the Annotated Bibliographies resources from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to provide background information and tips for the genre.
  9. Compose an FAQ about hashtag use in a collective action campaign.
    Ask students to imagine themselves as people who want to participate in a campaign but aren’t quite sure if they understand enough about how hashtags work in an organized campaign.
    Brainstorm questions and relevant issues that people may have about using hashtags for collective community action. Spend some time discussing how to phrase questions for the FAQ so they fit the language and style of the audience. Next, ask students to choose five or more questions and then provide clear and complete answers for each, again with attention to the language and style of the audience. Share advice on writing FAQs such as ZenDesk’s “8 great FAQ page examples and how to create your own” or Truckee Meadows Community College’s “FAQ Writing Guidelines.” If desired, talk about document design and the formatting tools in the composing software to ensure that they know how to make the separate questions and answers easy to read and use.
  10. Write an Op-Ed encouraging support of a campaign by using a hashtag.
    Choose a hashtag that has been used as part of local community action, and write an op-ed that encourages readers to use the hashtag to share their support for the community action campaign.
    For background, read “Hashtag Activism Isn’t a Cop-Out,” from The Atlantic (2015) and “The Second Act of Social-Media Activism,” from The New Yorker (2020). As a class, discuss the successes and challenges of community hashtags as explored in the articles. Based on their reading and analysis, have students look critically at their hashtags, assessing the impact of their hashtag on the local community. Write your op-ed that encourages readers to use the hashtag to support the community action, using their research on its impact to support their argument. As students work on their op-eds, share the “How to Write an Op-ed or Column” from Harvard or the “Writing Opinion Editorials and Letters to the Editor” resources from the CDC’s “Community Action Toolkit: A Guide to Advancing Sex Education in Your Community” (2021) to support their understanding of the op-ed genre.

Integrating these Activities

Because these ten activities all deal with hashtags, each can be a segment of a larger course-long project on community action, social justice, or digital media.

  • Students can spend the term working on a community action toolkit, including a variety of the projects on the list. The story behind the hashtag (#2 above) can become part of the opening of the toolkit, providing background on the campaign. The info sheet (#3) or infographic (#4) can be included in the toolkit to show the impact and use of the hashtag in the community action campaign. Instructions on how and why to use a hashtag (#6) can be part of the body of the toolkit, as they provide details on how to participate in the campaign. The FAQ (#9) can be included toward the end of the toolkit, to address questions not covered elsewhere in the document.
  • Students can first write the info sheet assignment (#3) and then after gathering the data in the info sheet, they can convert their ideas into a more visual composition by creating infographics (#4).
  • Students can write recommendation reports (#7), beginning their work with research on their hashtags, the community involved, and the intended influence and impact of using the hashtag. They can organize their research in an annotated bibliography (#8), which can be added to the appendix of the report (and referred to in the Methods and Results sections of the report).

References

Bimber, Bruce, Flanagin, Andrew J., & Stohl, Cynthia. (2005). Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment. Communication Theory, 15(4), 365–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2005.tb00340.x

Background Readings for Instructors

Haltiwanger, Shannon. (2014). Embracing Social Media AS PART OF A Storyteller’s Toolkit. History News, 69(4), 7–10.

Jackson, Sarah J., Bailey, Moya, & Welles, Brooke Foucault. (2020). #HashtagActivism: Networks of race and gender justice. The MIT Press.

Losh, Elizabeth. (2019). Hashtag. Bloomsbury Academic & Professional.

Shirky, Clay. (2011). The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change. Foreign Affairs, 90(1), 28–41.

Strickland, James. (2004). Just the FAQs: An Alternative to Teaching the Research Paper. The English Journal, 94(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.2307/4128843

 

Filed under #cwcon, assignment, classroom activities, List of Ten, social justice, teaching with techonology Tagged with ,

Why I’m Failing & How to Change

March 22, 2022 by

A pink and yellow poster with the word FAIL spelled out vertically and expanded as an acronym stating First Attempt In LearningThings are going awry in my tech writing course this term. Somehow students are struggling with assignments—not understanding the purpose, working on topics that don’t fit the assignment, mixing up the genre conventions, and more. I’m not happy. Students aren’t happy. I need to figure out why, and that means that I write to think it through and determine what I can do to make it better. So here goes.

What It’s Not

It’s Not Students

I’m not a fan of blaming students. It’s easy to say that students aren’t reading the assignments or buying the textbook. Likewise it’s not that they have pandemic fatigue or the fault of online learning. When the majority of students are struggling, there has to be something bigger going on. It’s not reasonable to argue that 80% of the class is at fault for what’s going wrong.

It’s Not Ungrading

I use an ungrading approach, with grades of either Complete or Incomplete. Students have to reach a certain level of effort by attempting a number of drafts, completing a number of logs and class activities, and so forth. It’s possible to pass the course without getting everything perfect. Taking risks and trying the projects is more important than perfection in my philosophy. That said, putting in strong effort and working to improve is also extremely important.

With the range of what is possible, a devious student could aim low with the knowledge that they could easily do better later. Sure, that could happen. But it’s not going to happen with 80% of the class. Most students are trying to improve. Their logs show me the work that they do. Giving students the chance to try again just isn’t at fault. They want to get it right the first time, but they appreciate the chances to try again. Bottom line: I don’t believe that so many students are trying to game the system.

What It May Be

I Don’t Feel Good about My Assignments

To fit the requirements of our PTW program, I have adopted assignments I don’t like. They’re okay. They just don’t sing to me. They don’t excite me to read what students have to say. I have written them. They’re not adopted from other teachers. But they still don’t fit me. They don’t feel like activities that will be fun or interesting to students. They’re not full-on busy work, but sometimes they feel like it. And if they feel like busy work to me, I’m sure students are feeling the same way.

I Am Trying to Connect Things that Don’t Fit

Assignments and activities that have smooth connections provide students build on consistent content knowledge and related audiences. With this approach, students aren’t asked to learn new content while they are also learning new genres and writing strategies. Following this philosophy, my assignment sequence follows the same issue and connected assignments through the entire term. To connect things further, I have tried to create assignments that build together toward the final longer project (a recommendation report). For example, students write instructions for someone else to gather the primary data they will use in their recommendation report, with the goal of making duplication and validation of their research possible. The instructions end up discussed in the methods section of their recommendation reports and included in the report appendices.

While the philosophy of connecting projects and using a consistent content focus work, the assignments aren’t connecting well. I can see the connections, but I don’t think students do. I’m forcing things to connect that don’t fit well together. It’s an awkward structure, which seems to make the goals of the assignments harder for students to understand.

I Am Not Succeeding at Transparency

Transparency in what we do in the classroom helps students understand the projects and ultimately do better work. In my assignments, I try to explain why we are doing all the different activities we are in the class. Based on ideas from Small Teaching and from Small Teaching Online, I structure activities so that they include a section titled, “Why I Want You to Do It,” where I explain my goals. Perhaps I’m overexplaining and the information gets lost in the sea of words that is their assignments. Maybe I’m not explaining enough so the connections and purposes of activities are not clear.

What to do?

For This Term

  1. Acknowledge the problems.
  2. Loosen expectations on assignments with wide confusion. Genre required; focus can be flexible.
  3. Create one-page fact sheets for the remaining assignments. Focus on the bare basics.
  4. Create one-page cheat sheets for genres. Stress difference between assignment requirements and genre expectations.
  5. Add options where possible (e.g., making up peer review).

For Next Time

  1. Incorporate changes from above (i.e., fact sheets, cheat sheets, additional options).
  2. Get rid of the awkwardly connected writing assignments. They aren’t working.
  3. Streamline the assignments so there is less information to dig through.
  4. Add assignments that feel fun or interesting, that will result in better student buy-in.
  5. Look for prior knowledge (e.g., instructions are like lab reports?).

 

Image Credit: Fail by mrsdkrebs on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-2.0 license

Filed under Teaching, technical writing

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