Writing Together book coming out soon

The new book that I co-authored with former Drexel student Diana Gasiewski is coming out soon. Writing Together: Ten Weeks Teaching and Studenting in an Online Writing Course will -- fingers crossed! -- be ready by CCCC in Kansas City.

Diana and I are excited -- to say the least -- about the book. It's a narrative of a teacher and student's experience in a first-year OWC. It's written somewhat as a "call and response": I describe in great detail how I approached and taught the course that term, and Diana describes her experience as a student -- we draw from Mary Louise Pratt in calling her experience "studenting" -- that same term.

NCTE, especially Kurt Austin and Bonny Graham, has been a great partner, from concept to cover art.

We hope that our narrative approach to composition scholarship is informative as well as engaging, and that it helps open up new channels of inquiry about the student experience in OWI.

We also would like this book to help refine and enhance not just how we see OWCs and teach them, but how we see our students as collaborators in knowledge-making about our field. We write in our intro, citing many other voices in composition, about how absent student voices can be in our conversations, but we're not picking on comp/rhet: This issue is widespread in education.

Our book aims to be a story of teaching and studenting, of how writers came together in a virtual educational community to work and learn together. Above all, we hope you enjoy it.

Observing and evaluating online writing courses

Conducting a course observation/evaluation of an online writing course (OWC), whether peer-to-peer or administrator-to-teacher, presents various challenges. Teaching evaluations in general, or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say the process of conducting teaching observations, can be vexed. You can run into issues ranging from the academic hierarchy to establishing fair criteria

These problems can become more complicated online, especially with OWCs. Evaluators, often administrators, may lack the expertise to "judge" online learning. We have known this about distance learning for a while; Benigno and Trentin said in 2000, “Given the special characteristics of online courses, their quantitative/qualitative evaluation calls for the adoption of specific procedures to assess both the learning process and the participant performance” (1). Our OWI Committee's Position Statement took this problem on, and in a number of Effective Practices we encourage observations specific to OWI:

• Effective Practice 7.11: Online writing teachers should be evaluated/assessed by a peer or supervisor who has similar training and equal or superior abilities/experience in writing instruction generally and OWI particularly.
• Effective Practice 7.12: OWI teacher assessment should occur in the setting and modalities that the teacher uses in the online writing course.
• Effective Practice 7.13: OWI teacher assessment should be engaged as rigorously as—and not more rigorously than—it would be in a similar traditional onsite course.

Quality Matters has a well-regarded review process. But – and I need to talk with my QM certified colleagues and friends more – my understanding is this process and rubric can be challenging to apply to OWCs (although some have made the effort [2]).

Here are some guiding ideas for me when I've observed an OWC or the online component of a hybrid:

"Movie” of the course. First off, my underlying teacher observation strategy, in any modality, is to write a "movie" of the course (I kinda took this from Peter Elbow's "movies of the mind" approach to writing critique  [3]). My letter is just that: Here is what I saw. Ultimately, I’m not the assessor. Someone up the ladder is. I think the idea of a judgment-based evaluation is a problem, so I just say what I see and provide scant editorial commentary. The resulting narrative can be judged by others, and that will help us to avoid stupid teaching observation rubrics that include things like what people are wearing when they teach.

A guided visit. I prefer that the instructor leads me through the course, even if we do that over the phone. Most instructors have been open to providing me with full access, but I'd rather not just wander through unchaperoned. Onsite, the instructor has some control of what I see, and I believe the same should apply online.

The importance of time online. I try to think about the time that both the students and instructor are putting into the work that week. This opens up tricky questions about time and learning/teaching. How much time should someone put into a class? That's tough, and the Carnegie credit is under fire, but once I observed an online course in which the only thing going on one week was that a paper was due. I talked to the instructor about it in terms of an onsite course: What would you be doing all week, sitting in the classroom waiting for students to drop off papers? What would you do with the class time? I try to look at the work of a few students and attempt to get a sense of how long I think it's taking them to read, post, review, etc. Time and space are different online, especially in an asynchronous writing environment.

What does the student see? I try to view the class design and structure from the role of a student, but I don’t obsess over those things. In short, I don’t need pretty, but I do look for function and usability.

There's more to be said about this topic. I have long believed that OWI offers great opportunity for writing instruction. In similar ways, OWCs may offer new ways to observe and understand teaching. In a recent conversation with my colleague Michael Moore from DePaul, we discussed how the “integrity” of observation can be strengthened in an online course, for a simple reason: The whole course is right in front of you. Rather than pretend that a one-shot visit to a classroom one day is good enough for us to say something general about a teacher, we instead can see a broader view of the course and that person's teaching.

Course observations raise good issues that, as I mentioned, I'm going to investigate more over the next few months.

Notes

1) V. Benigno and G. Trentin. The evaluation of online courses. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. Volume 16, Issue 3, pages 259–270, September 2000.
2) Harkness, S., Soodjinda, D., Hamilton, M., & Bolig, R. (2011, November).  Assessment of a pilot online writing program using the QM Rubric.  Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Quality Matters Conference, Baltimore, MD.
3) In Writing Without Teachers.

“Running Themes” on course message boards

This winter, I taught a graduate course for Drexel’s School of Ed: Using and Integrating Learning Technologies. The students were smart and hard-working, and they cranked on our message boards (through Bb Learn) all term. Through their efforts, I realized that I could easily and productively change my usual time-bound discussion thread approach, using the simple "walllessness" of online learning to build conversation spaces that ran all term.

This was a great aha moment for me. As I’ve described on this blog in some detail (e.g., see http://onlinewritingteacher.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html), I assign message boards in weekly “frames.” While I feel I do provide students with excellent thinking and writing opportunities, the conversations are organized and thus tend to exist within the constraints of week 1, week 2, etc.

That's pretty limiting. As onsite classrooms are bound by walls, my discussions were bound by weeks. When a week ended, normally the conversation would fade too. Sometimes I’ve extended conversations into a second and maybe third week, and I also use “general” threads – such as “Tips Advice Resources” – for other conversations, but our message boards are mainly controlled by time markers.


In the winter course, we had a couple of topics that kept re-emerging, so I did something simple: I opened up threads in a course forum called “Running Themes.” Students, in fulfilling their weekly requirements, were welcome to post in a Running Theme thread instead for some of their posts. And they did. They continued, in our case, to want to talk more about MOOCs or "What makes a good online/hybrid (blended) teacher?" Often, by the way, they would reframe our ongoing conversations about these topics based on current readings, building from dialogue in the weekly posts.

In retrospect, this was obvious. As I said, why was I constricting students? It didn’t make sense in online learning, which has the great advantage over onsite learning that it can naturally and easily extend dialogue. Conversations can happen in parallel, and they don't need to end when the bell rings at 2:00. Different students can dig into areas of high interest particular to them and enjoy the luxury of extending conversations after they've had time to percolate. Even if you have a tight, required-post type pedagogy, like I do, your messages boards can still be fluid and organic. (If you're worried that students will use Running Themes to excess and won't stay up with current material, it's easy to still require some posts in the weekly forums.)

Running Themes. I’m really happy with this idea and will create ongoing asynchronous conversation spaces in all of my courses.

Tales of OWI

I just returned from this year's Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) (in Vegas). My friend and colleague Beth Hewett and I are co-chairs of the CCCC Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction (a group that will likely be re-named to replace the word "Best" with "Effective").
It was a busy CCCCs for our committee.

First and foremost, the practices and effective principles document that this group has developed, six years in the making, was approved by the CCCC Executive Committee. This is big news we hope not only for us but for the world of writing instruction, and the document will be on the National Council of Teachers of English site very soon. Our committee conducted a panel introducing and discussing the principles, a special interest group meeting (a SIG, in CCCCs parlance) to discuss ways of using the principles, and an open session to talk about technologies to help build conversation around them. We also had a three-hour committee meeting.

Throughout these events, we had lots of conversations with people who teach writing online. As the week went on, I was struck by not only how varied the stories are out there about people's OWI experiences but how eager they are to relate those narratives. People want to share these stories.

I guess this will not come as a surprise to anyone who teaches anything anywhere, but the differences in teaching environments and situations for online writing teachers are staggering. Of course, we have distinct pedagogies, philosophies,and strategies. Of course our institutions are different, as are our students. But I listened to people, I was struck by the vast diversity of reasons behind why they teach online and how varied their institutional and professional experiences are. And then I thought about how illuminating it might be if we could somehow capture their answers to questions like these:

• Why is your program/unit/school offering online writing courses?
• Why do you teach writing online? What got you started?
• What do you like about teaching writing online? What don't you like?
• What kind of support do you have: Technologically? Pedagogically? Administratively? Philosophically?
• What kinds of technology do you use in your courses?
• How well are you paid?
• Can you characterize the kind of students who mostly take your online courses?
• What is your teaching reality like? How are your courses assessed? Where is your office?
• Who develops your course materials?

Our principles are designed to help teachers, administrators, and institutions to address these questions. But what could we do with these stories? There are narratives out there, but most teachers and administrators aren't lucky enough to get to go to CCCCs to hear them. Like many writing teachers, they work diligently but in an often sealed world, having parallel experiences to what others are doing -- but not realizing it.

I'm going to close on an enigmatic note, because my thoughts aren't fully formed, but I'm wondering if there's a grand project here, one that tries to capture some of these narratives and share them. Stay tuned.

Interview with Higher Ed Talk Radio about teaching writing online

I wanted to share with you a link to my interview last week with Higher Education Talk Radio. I spoke with gracious host Larry Jacobs about "Why Online Is a Great 'Place' to Learn to Write." Thanks to Millie Davis from NCTE for setting this up.

Argument Statements

As I've said numerous times in this space, I value asynchronous environments for online writing courses for many reasons, especially because they allow a conversational learning environment. I've certainly depended heavily on the dialogic, interactive nature of these written message boards in my teaching.

These technologies also have the advantage of rapidly and efficiently putting writing in front of a broad audience, whether those readers are asked to respond explicitly or not.

In thinking about the audience aspect of message boards, this term I'm having students write "Argument Statements." Each week, in one of the threads in our online class, they respond in a substantive, almost proclamatory way to a prompt, basically devising/creating a short argument (the course is Persuasive Writing & Reading).

This is not pedagogically mind-blowing, of course. In fact, you could argue this almost essayistic writing is the easy part on message boards and the challenge has been to build conversations. But these "Argument Statements" open other writing opportunities when used in conjunction with conversational threads. Pedagogically, my expectations are different, as the "Statements" provide multiple chances for students to work out a voice, an approach, a strategy for argumentation. It's the equivalent of the one-page essay every week some teachers assign, but, again, this time they write for peers each time. (Of course, there can be dialogue and response, but these "Statements" aren't by nature conversational the way I am introducing them.)

In addition, most weeks I'm going to use these as ways to promote students to take a stance about their own writing practices -- in line with my writing about writing approaches -- and how they will, in line with overall course aims, argue that their particular approaches are effective -- or in fact aren't.

For instance, early on I asked them to think about how they write. Using our very good text Praxis (this is a solid book for a rhetoric-grounded first-year course, and I thank my colleague, Drexel First-Year Writing Program Director Rebecca Ingalls for introducing me to it in our core syllabus), I gave them this prompt:

Subject: Argument Statement: How I write
Dear students,
For this week’s Argument Statement, I want you to think about, well, how you write. Write about how you approach writing, and craft through that an argument about why your particular style of approaching writing is effective for you. You have a couple of good readings in chapter 5 of Praxis to work from to help you think about this.
Thanks,
Prof. Warnock

Thinking more about the proclamatory nature of this type of reading, after we read King's "I Have a Dream" speech, I asked them to write their own speech, including laying out the context for that speech:

Subject: Argument statement: A speech
Dear students,
This week, you read King’s famous speech. Please write a speech that you would deliver arguing any issue of your choosing. Obviously, it will be short. In the first paragraph, in parentheses, describe briefly where you should be to most effectively deliver this speech and why. Then write the speech/argument. You can choose any issue; King was talking about one of the most pressing issues of the 20th century, but perhaps you have something more personal about your day-to-day life that you’d like to argue.
Best,
Prof. Warnock

Finally, I was able to tweak one of my favorite types of message board threads (see this May 2010 post), in which I take on an alter ego, a "provoker," asking that their "Statement" address directly my argumentative, bombastic alter-ego, Dr. Logoetho:

Argument Statement: Challenge Dr. Logoetho about Wikipedia?
Dear students in Prof. Warnock’s English 102 course,
I am will be an occasional visitor to your course. My name is Dr. Logoetho. Perhaps this may shock you, but I have never been defeated in an argument. Never. I have decided to give you the honor of trying to end my undefeated streak this week with this argument, because I have something to say about Wikipedia.

I think that Wikipedia is a completely useless site except as entertainment. No one should ever use it for anything of importance or for real research. Wikis are an unreliable way to build true information. I think the positives of Wikipedia are grossly exaggerated and are only promoted by people who have something to gain from Wikipedia or who don’t understand the informational value of the Web!

There. If you want to take me on, at least show a little argument savvy and use some evidence.
I doubt you're up to the task,
Dr. Logoetho

In some ways, I'm going retro. In a course that is still primarily dialogic, I want them to write a brief argument each week, all, of course, with the goal of helping them develop their ability to write persuasively.

Rubric for evaluating message board posts

"But how do I evaluate message board posts?"

That's a question I'm often asked when talking with colleagues about using the flexible, user-friendly technology of message boards in their courses. For some time, I've been refining a rubric for discussion posts. Below, I share that rubric.

It's unlikely you'll grade every post with the actual rubric, since students will write so many message board posts each term. The idea is to share this with students so the evaluation of this key course component is transparent, opening up ways of having a dialogue about course assessment.

A few quick notes about the rubric. It has 12 categories. The bottom eight will look mostly familiar to you. They are based on writing areas like purpose, organization, evidence, and mechanics, and each has five levels of performance, correlating with a grade. But the rubric is specifically for asynchronous, dialogic writing, and the criteria reflect this. For instance, the "Audience and context" criterion is geared toward how the poster/post interacts with others; that helps me encourage conversation. "Originality/creativity" is because I overtly want to encourage students to embrace risk and creativity in their writing.

The first four categories look somewhat different. These are binary categories, for things that I view as either "it's there or it ain't." They help me define things like timeliness and communicate my interest in ethics.

Communicate. The rubric, as I said, is designed to help me communicate with students, providing us all with a way to share an understanding of expectations in this environment.

General criteria

Gross mistakes. Either "There are no gross mistakes in the post" or "There are excessive errors or some other gross mistakes that cause readers to doubt the effort/expertise of the document’s creator; these posts score no better than 60%"

Ethics. Either "The post appears ethical, including its use of evidence" or "Some aspects of the post are unethical; for example, it uses inappropriate evidence (including plagiarism); recommends morally questionable practices; attacks others; or uses deceitful data; these posts may fail"

Timeliness. Either "The post is on time" or "Late post; late posts lose 20% of their grade for each week they are late"

Length: Either "Post length is appropriate; longer posts are welcomed" or "Post is too short; short posts lose 20% of their grade; excessively short posts count only as “peeps”"

Writing criteria

Purpose/Main idea/Focus
A: Clear main idea that raises an excellent, focused point
B: Clear main idea that raises an interesting point
C: Loses focus; main idea is questionable
D: Why did the writer create this post?; main idea seems uninteresting and perhaps even unreasonable
F: Main idea is unfocused and unclear; off topic

Organization
A: Excellent organization; clear topic sentences; transitions between ideas are handled well
B: Organized effectively but could be refined/ tightened a bit (better topic sentences, transitions, etc.)
C: Adequately organized; needs better division between ideas.Note: One- paragraph primary posts receive a maximum of B
D: Disorganized; little coherent structure; confusing
F: Completely disorganized

Evidence
A: Relevant, correctly cited evidence; quotes from posts
B: Relevant evidence; some citing issues
C: Adequate evidence; citations are wrong
D: Evidence not used or used incorrectly
F: No evidence

Audience and context
A: Clearly connected to other posts and conversations
B: Relevant to other posts and conversations
C: Not clearly connected to other posts; unclear if writer read other posts; repetitive; does not build the conversation much
D: Highly repetitive; not connected to other posts and conversations; may attack other posters; does not build the conversation at all
F: Irrelevant to conversation; makes no effort to connect with audience; flaming

Style
A: Highly engaging, distinct writing style; solid sentences and word choice; may take productive risks
B: Solid writing style; writer could have written more clearly/more concisely
C: Some of the writing is awkward and clumsy; weak word choice or unsophisticated sentence structure
D: Writing is awkward, repetitive, and/or wordy; the writing was not engaging
F: Writing style is inadequate for a college-level assignment

Grammar and mechanics
A: Few errors, if any; writer shows considerable mastery of the language
B: Some grammatical/ mechanical errors, but they do not interfere with the reader’s understanding of post
C: Numerous errors that interfered with the reader’s understanding of the post
D: Many errors that made the post difficult to understand; reader questions writer’s credibility and skill
F: Post is filled with errors; reader doubts writer’s competency

Originality/ creativity
A: Highly original or creative; may take a productive writing risk
B: Some originality or creativity, but doesn’t push the limits
C: No real originality
D: Repeats other ideas or posts’ reader may not have read other posts
F: Blatantly copies other posts

Understanding of course material
A: Clearly demonstrates understanding of course material
B: Good understanding of course material
C: Some of the course material details are incorrect
D: Low understanding of course material
F: Poor understanding of course material; some errors