Just how much are they writing online?
One of the main reasons I'm such an advocate of digital environments for writing--especially first-year writing--courses is because, plain and simple, students write so much in these environments. If teachers use asynchronous tools, their courses easily become focused on student texts.
But just how much do students actually write with these asynchronous tools? Last spring, I taught a hybrid first-year course, Analytical Writing & Reading, a literature for composition-type course. Remember, Drexel is on the quarter system, so this was a 10-week course. In this hybrid, my students met once a week, on Tuesdays, and much of their work for the second half of the week took place online, with the bulk of that work being conversations about texts on message boards (in this case, Bb Vista Discussions). I also used the Journal function of Bb Vista Discussions to enable each student to set up a journal; essentially, the Journal function creates a message board thread only viewable by the instructor and the student, and I found it a convenient way to maintain journals.
As a step toward answering the question "how much do students actually write?," I cut-and-pasted all of the message board and journals posts from two students in the course, placed them in a Word file, and then counted the approximate results (making sure to subtract post headers and such). Student 1 wrote 6,800 words in the journal and 8,300 words on the course message boards. Student 2 wrote 9,100 words in the journal and another 9,000 words on the message boards.
Although I know students write a lot in my classes, I was still a bit awed by the amount of writing: These students are writing, again in an environment with all of the advantages I've described in earlier posts, an additional 1,500 to nearly 2,000 words each week on top of their formal projects and other informal assignments.
I want to make a couple comments to accompany these results. One is that this wasn't just a lot of writing; no, this was a lot of high-quality writing. Also, while these two were both certainly good students who were on the high end of the scale in terms of their performance in the course, they were within the "normal" behavior of students in this environment; in other words, this is representative student work in my courses.
1,500 to 2,000 words a week. That's a lot of writing--and that's what I want my writing courses to be about.
But just how much do students actually write with these asynchronous tools? Last spring, I taught a hybrid first-year course, Analytical Writing & Reading, a literature for composition-type course. Remember, Drexel is on the quarter system, so this was a 10-week course. In this hybrid, my students met once a week, on Tuesdays, and much of their work for the second half of the week took place online, with the bulk of that work being conversations about texts on message boards (in this case, Bb Vista Discussions). I also used the Journal function of Bb Vista Discussions to enable each student to set up a journal; essentially, the Journal function creates a message board thread only viewable by the instructor and the student, and I found it a convenient way to maintain journals.
As a step toward answering the question "how much do students actually write?," I cut-and-pasted all of the message board and journals posts from two students in the course, placed them in a Word file, and then counted the approximate results (making sure to subtract post headers and such). Student 1 wrote 6,800 words in the journal and 8,300 words on the course message boards. Student 2 wrote 9,100 words in the journal and another 9,000 words on the message boards.
Although I know students write a lot in my classes, I was still a bit awed by the amount of writing: These students are writing, again in an environment with all of the advantages I've described in earlier posts, an additional 1,500 to nearly 2,000 words each week on top of their formal projects and other informal assignments.
I want to make a couple comments to accompany these results. One is that this wasn't just a lot of writing; no, this was a lot of high-quality writing. Also, while these two were both certainly good students who were on the high end of the scale in terms of their performance in the course, they were within the "normal" behavior of students in this environment; in other words, this is representative student work in my courses.
1,500 to 2,000 words a week. That's a lot of writing--and that's what I want my writing courses to be about.
posted by Scott Warnock at 5:54 AM
2 Comments:
Scott,
That is really amazing...
While time consuming, the really convincing data would be looking at ALL the students in your class.
What you've inspired in students, and discovered, is the ideal iceberg situation. That is, 10 to 15% of their writing is 'sticking out of the water' in their formal assignments. But the vast quantity of writing is below the water line...which is where the value is. To get one good page, you've got to write 5 to 10 so-so pages...
Certainly in my college career I wrote only what was assigned. So if there were three 1,000 word papers assigned in the term, I wrote 3,000 words. Period.
You've just given me inspiration for my next study. Also, I love the iceberg metaphor.
Thanks,
Scott
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