Small Successes I: Paper Activities

So I realize that I haven't had much to say in a while about my class, and in part, I want to record the successes that I've had along the way--things that I hope to repeat in the future.  I know that last time I checked in I was on the verge of despair.  *sigh*  I still have more moments of weariness than enthusiasm, but I haven't felt that bad since that week.  I have also been allowing myself to read for pleasure more, and not forcing myself to read along with everything I assign.  The latter makes me feel like a bad teacher, but it's not as if I'm lecturing on it, so I'll give myself a pass.

One thing that I feel I have done the right way is breaking the steps of the paper down for them and requiring students to "check in" (more or less) to demonstrate that they are working on the paper.  These assignments help them to stretch out the work on the assignment rather than saving it until the last minute.  They give me the opportunity to monitor progress--or not, because for the most part the burden is on them (which I'll explain).  Because they are wrestling with the paper over time, I do, in fact, hear more from them when things aren't going quite right, if they get stuck, etc.  This is definitely a success in an online course.  

What I'm proposing is something that was standard in composition classes--Topic Proposal Memo, Thesis Statement, List of Sources, Outline (maybe), Rough Draft, Final Draft.  Besides teaching time management and giving the opportunity for feedback along the way, we were also making sure that if a student was inclined to plagiarize, the supporting materials would have to be plagiarized, since a paper would not be accepted without them.  That's not really my rationale, since my paper is fairly unique and probably can't just be downloaded.  What is unusual is requiring these steps for a sophomore-level class.  Sophomores are supposed to be able to do these things on their own, right?  And sink or swim?  Well...  not really.  Not in reality. 

One of the amazing things about the online-only class is the opportunities I have along the way to correct what they're thinking about things, how they're interpreting things, how they are expressing their ideas in writing.  In class, if they don't speak, I don't know what they're thinking. Because the class meets every day, there are no assignments designed to let me know what they're thinking--whether they're getting it.  As a result, they don't necessarily get it, and I don't know until the test.  Heck--they don't know until the test.  In this case, I know.  And if we can have a discussion about it where other students can see, I'm actually teaching.  Yay!  This is how being a "guide" instead of a "sage" can still be an important function, requiring a teacher who is insightful and engaged.  

This paper was a beginning lit review, if you will.  My intentions (objectives, really) were to have them be able to write a research question, use it to do research, find scholarly sources on a literary topic, read and summarize, and begin to synthesize the sources in a very basic way in order to present the articles to an audience who wishes to know more about the literary topic in question.  It took a bit of wrangling to get them there, and I haven't graded the papers yet, but I know that learning has happened along the way.

Their supporting activities were:

1. A research question posted to a forum.  Each student had to post a question in order to see others' questions so that they were not influenced beforehand.
2. A bibliography submitted as an assignment to the instructor only.  This gave me the opportunity to check to see whether the sources were scholarly and whether the bibliography format was correct.
3. A rough draft/peer review wiki.  While it did not really function as a peer review, it could have.  Students posted their rough draft to a new page in the wiki.  They could also make changes to theirs (technically they could have to others' as well), and make comments on their and others' drafts.  If they wanted my feedback, they had to solicit it, and one did.  I could have forced each student to comment on another's draft, but feedback-by-coersion is not typically good quality stuff, so I let it go.

I had many questions during the first two stages.  Some were caught up in adhering to the question or making it perfect, so those people learned that research ideas do mutate.  Many, many students learned to construct better database searches.  And at least half of the remaining students had a rough draft in time.  All in all, a success--they did not drift away completely.

These supporting assignments were only worth 25 points each.  At first, I was going to roll these in to the daily grade equivalent--a pathetic 10% (which should be more given the effort).  Instead, I decided to reward their efforts by making the 75 points part of the paper grade, which is 15% of the overall grade.  I believe that the effort of staying on task and the learning activities involved deserve to be 3/7 of the 15%, because they are being rewarded, here, for the considerable effort of learning on their own, being engaged, and asking for assistance when they needed it.