Building a prompt: Characteristics of prompts

Last time, I wrote about types of prompts that can help you be successful in starting asynchronous conversations.

As promised, in this post I want to describe several characteristics of good prompts:

1. A clear, succinct subject line. Also, if your discussion/messaging software allows it, encourage students to change the subject when appropriate, i.e., when the conversation has gone in a different direction.
2. Clear, direct language. Think about OWI Principle 3 Effective Practice 3.1: “When text is the primary medium, OWI teachers should use written language that is readable and comprehensible” (12).
3. Salutation/greeting. The salutation/greeting is valuable territory: Don’t waste it. You have a chance to use your voice. Sometimes you may be formal. Sometimes you may be welcoming, friendly, or even playful. Plus, you want students being clear about who the audience of their posts are: Often, they reply to a particular person but don't indicate this in their salutation/greeting. You should model this: “Dear students” or something similar is fine.
4. Goal or objective. With a few words,  you can make the goal of the prompt clear.
5. Specific instruction. What are students to do in this thread? Sometimes “just write” is good enough. Sometimes it’s not.
6. Context. Make it clear how the thread the prompt begins will fit into what is happening in the course.
7. Minimal number of questions and scaffolding. This is a key area in which teachers get into trouble, I find: they overdo it with prompt complexity and length, forgetting that both they and the students will build the conversation as it goes; you don’t need to front-load everything.
8. Further anchoring of prompt to material/texts in the course. Many first-year programs in particular have required, program-wide texts, and I have seen teachers struggle to find ways to use these texts in their courses. You can almost always anchor your prompts to some lesson or aspect of the writing book you are using in your course – look for ways to do that. By the way, I find this type of connecting works better in online writing courses than in onsite courses.
9. Possible broadening of topic. Students’ main goal may be analyzing an argument, but at the end of a prompt, you can also ask their stances on the argument’s subject matter. I find these subtopics get picked up at the end of the week.
10. Complimentary closing. Like the salutation/greeting, this is valuable space that is often squandered. You can overtly invite questions and comments. You can also get a lot of voice/personality mileage out of a few words: “Interested in what you have to say” can be an encouraging close to a prompt.
11. Sign off. If you're going to be "Prof. Warnock" to your class, write that. You may be "Dr. Warnock." You may be "Scott."
12. Works cited. If appropriate, do it. I ask students to cite in their posts, and I think I should model that practice.

Of course, not every characteristic will be included in every prompt. But if you consider this 11-item list as being a basis for constructing prompts, I think you’ll end up with good ways to spur your students’ writing.

Building a prompt: Types of prompts

I was excited to see that a new journal has gone live, Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments. The writing assignment, the prompt, lies at the base of much of the work we do as writing instructors -- and the success of that work.

I think that how you get students started in the conversations they have online, that is, the prompts, is crucial (although, as I'll discuss in my next post, less is often more). Here are several types of prompts that I rely on in OWI.

A primary type is not complicated: It's a prompt designed to help students have a conversation about assigned texts/media. Having such conversations might sound familiar, and it should, because it's what many teachers do in the majority of their onsite courses. You might find in a FYW OWC that many of your prompts are simply designed to help students get talking about a reading.

You can also use writing-to-learn prompts that spur students not only to discuss but learn specific content.

Particularly in persuasive writing-type courses, you can introduce prompts that inspire debate or argument about a topic. These can be straightforward, and the written environment of discussion boards, I think, is particularly well-suited to such student debates.

You can also use prompts to have them work on/explore specific aspects of writing. For instance, they could analyze, using their own texts, all the verbs “to be," and try to replace them (they often find this devilishly difficult) .They can extend this kind of "metawriting" prompt to also discuss texts created by other students

Of course, prompts are often essentially reflective. If you're feeling brave, you can extend this reflection to the course itself -- and maybe even to you, the course's instructor.

You can also use prompts to have students generate ideas for larger project topics in a course. This is a favorite kind of thread of mine, and it builds on the course practice of having them talk about such topics in class: They brainstorm and then propose topics.

Prompts such as icebreakers can develop course community, helping students meet one another and learn about one another's interests and predilections.

Finally (in this hardly exhaustive list), you can use prompts to encourage students to understand/work through course logistics. They can sign up for conferences with you, etc., right through a discussion thread.

These categories have very blurry edges. For instance, many prompts are based in a course text, which then can lead to a dialogue that may focus on metawriting or even debate.

Next time I'm going to offer some specific characteristics of prompts that I think are helpful.