Last day, writing as a process/student essays

What comments did you hear being made about your colleagues’ student essays? What are the differences and similarities between the types of comments you heard? How does the help you re-think your strategy for commenting on essays? Explain. What did you learn about applying writing as a process in your classrooms. What techniques/strategies did you pick up for integrating writing as a process? What problems do you foresee in your attempt to treat writing more like a process and not a product?

We all identified similar areas of problems in student papers, especially with respect to clarity. Students often forget to write thesis statements, which is detrimental to their own writing and makes their essays very difficult to follow. Zach mentioned a number of ways that he tries to help students improve their writing, in particular he brought attention to the balance between evidence and claim in student papers. We also discussed the problems that occur when students draw on the work of other authors. They either cite too little or too much, or they throw out unintroduced and undigested quotes in the middle of any given paragraph. Problems also occur when students quote at length, leaving no space for their own voice and contributions.

I learned quite a bit from the writing materials that we read over this morning. I plan on using peer review sessions in my classes, in which students will bring drafts into class and get comments and critique from their fellow students. I don't imagine that I will use the point system associated with the rubrics, but I do see myself handing out to the students the list of things/areas that I will pay special attention to as I grade their papers. I do plan to post a good example of a formal analysis on Blackboard for my students to model their papers on at the end of the semester. Zach noted that using the papers of former students can usher in problems in that the students can copy the form and wording of another undergraduate much better than they can emulate the work of their professor. Keeping this in mind, I plan on posting a good student paper and a formal analysis written by the professional in the field, both of which should provide them with models to emulate.

In terms of my own critique of student papers and drafts, I found it helpful to read over the materials from this morning, which made me realize that one must be both specific in terms of what should be changed while providing some positive reinforcement. When I first started teaching I used to mark every mistake, from the missplaced comma to fundamental problems in terms of the argument. At this point, I don't nitpick nearly as much, but there are always ways of making one's comments/critique more effective.

I plan on spending more time discussing the writing assignments with the students and having them go over drafts in small groups. The problems that I foresee are simply those related to content. When I spend more time on teaching the students to write, it means that I spend less time addressing the history of western art. This will be less of an issue in my upper-level classes, where we are concentrating more on a specific period/artistic movement/theme. Nonetheless, incorporating writing in a more effective way will require me to reorganize and to some extend rethink both my syllabi and how I teach. I welcome this.