Presentation Slides

From WolfWikis

This page: graphics, screenshots, slideshow and notes.

Graphics etc.

Screenshots
COM Group - the blank page...frustrating for me. It might be my title shot.
SOC Group - The active group that suddenly stopped posting.

Websites
My Course Website - The one they luuuuuv.

Graphics
Bulletin Board - Introducing the comments section?
Bulletin Board2 - alternative version?
Keyboard - For the title slide

Slideshow

Title Slide

Introduction

Slide 2	Slide 3

The Project

Slide 4	Slide 5

The Blogs

Slide 6	Slide 7
Slide 8	Slide 9
Slide 10	Slide 11

Analysis

Notes

Introduction

Slide 2 - Overview
This project addresses a failed experiment in incorporating group weblogs as an interactive peer collaboration and revision technology in a first-year writing class. After a brief introduction to technology in the classroom, I will discuss the project in which I embedded the weblogs, including the project requirements and the addendum in which I included instructions for the group weblogs. Following this, I will present an analysis of the discursive characteristics found within and address the possible reasons for its failure. Finally, I will offer some recommendations for future use and conclude with some final thoughts.

Slide 3 - Introduction
Onscreen you see my explanation for the title, and a hint as to the reasons why my support project failed. Advocates and detractors of digital writing technologies often forget that producing or decoding written text in any form involves the use of technology: writing is a human construct, an abstract linguistic representation by which we attempt to record thought. A long line of educators since Plato have argued against various advances in writing technologies: in the early twentieth century, they argued against allowing students to use erasers with pencils, noting that "students would do better, more premeditated work if they didn't have the option of revising" (Baron 31). In the mid-twentieth century, they argued against the typewriter, which "depersonalized writing" (19), then against calculators, and most recently, against the computer. Like its predecessors in the long history of educational resistance, the computer has, for better or worse, become a fixture in our classrooms; like our predecessors in pedagogy, now that the technology is here, we must determine how best to use it.

The Project

Slide 4 - The Project
The third project in my section of ENG 101 was worth as much as the first two combined. It was intended to be a social science literature review, according to the project sheet, a "status report for a research field," that takes stock of what is and is not being stated within the field at that time. They were to choose a single discipline within the social sciences, and within that discipline, a single topic of study. They were to incorporate five recent scholarly sources into a 5-7 page literature review comparing the claims made by different scholars within the field. A good example was one student's project that examined the effects of fashion advertising on the body images of teenage girls.

Slide 5 - The Weblogs
The group weblogs were established as a support mechanism for their first major project. Because it was intended as support, and was not a part of the original assignment, I did not count their participation in the final grade. I split the students into groups by discipline: sociology, communication, a subgroup of sociology that focused on human effects upon the environment, history, and psychology. I created the group blogs and provided each student with the URL and posting login for his or her group: because the blogs were not linked to the web as a whole, and because they were temporary in nature, I did not seek permission.

from the addendum - While working on the project, you might post interesting sources, rough drafts of paragraphs, rough outlines for sections, questions about sources, and other project-related items. Check the blog as often as you wish, but do so at least twice per week, and post replies to at least one entry per week. Your project will not be graded on your posts; however, they will be a part of your overall participation grade for the class.

The Blogs

Slide 6 - The Groups
There were five groups, each with its own blog: communication studies, political science, psychology, sociology, and a subgroup that studied environmental issues within various social science disciplines.

Slide 7 - COM
One of the most frustrating group blogs from my perspective was the communication group blog (screen shot), which had zero posts throughout the entire project. The least active group after this was psychology. Only one student posted from this group, a female with outstanding grades on all of her assignments.

Slide 8 - Environmental Issues
Following this was Environmental Issues, with two active students: a male whose performance to date had been spotty: although he was a regular participant in class discussions, his project grades and drafts had fluctuated between the low seventies to a ninety percent. His post was an annotated bibliography entry from a source (newspaper) that I had asked them not to use, and the entry itself showed a poor grasp of the assignment. He received one comment, from highly motivated female student whose performance had been outstanding, warning him that his entry, while interesting, was for a poor source and didn't quite conform to the assignment. There were two more full posts, both from this respondent, both entries from her annotated bibliography. She received one comment, from the student to whom she had replied.

Slide 9 - Political Science
History was a bit more active, with several test posts (is anyone reading this?) followed by a post from a male student asking, "Can anyone post an entry so I can see an example?" There were two full posts afterward: one from a student whose performance up until then was below her personal standards and who was trying to improve. This was the longest post from the group: three entries. Three hours later, and ESL student posted a single entry. No further posts were made (what happened to the first one?), no comments were made, and participation ended there.

Slide 10 - Sociology
The most active group was sociology (slide?), with several posts and comments made until about one week into the project, at which point all posting stopped. The first post was created by a female student whose performance to date had been weaker than average, a test post asking if anyone in the group was posting. The second post was an annotated bibliography entry written by a male student. The third post was by a different female student, whose grades did not reflect her capability: this post was extremely detailed and statistically oriented. She received one response, from a female student with excellent grades to date; yet who does not participate in in-class discussions. The response detailed both the strengths and weaknesses in the post, and offered extensive review notes as to ways in which the original poster could improve. The fourth post was by the test poster, two AB entries, which received a response from the third poster. This comment was along the lines of a "good job" remark typically associated with unguided peer reviews. The final post was a full, six entry AB by the respondent to the third post, the good student with less in-class participation. It received no responses.

Slide 11 - Comments
If you'll look at the comment handout I distributed, you'll notice three main characteristics:

Females who did not participate in class discussion were most likely to post comments. Good students were likely to post extensive comments related to global, assignment-specific (not textual surface) revision comments.

Males and weaker female students were more likely to post "good job," or surface comments typically associated with unguided peer review in basic writing courses.

Posting was reciprocal and initiated by stronger female students: posters who had received comments were likely to comment on others' entries.

Analysis

Slide 12 - Chris Anson
My failure to adequately implement Anson's challenge to guide instructional uses of technology was the first step towards failure in this case: my students are web-literate, and technologically savvy; however, beyond MS Word, Powerpoint, and Google, they haven't used this technology for academic purposes. These are first-year students, whose use of technology in the university must be guided.

Slide 13 - Cameron Richards
Richards states that we must move away from technology-centered design to user-centered design. Using a technology requires scaffolding: use it from the beginning and guide their use heavily, while gradually reducing support to a level that is adequate by the instructor's standards. Adding a technology in the middle of the course makes it a lesson in itself (indeed, we devoted an entire class period, and then some, to using the blogs). Long-term use of the technology renders it transparent: students are comfortable responding to one another and will do so more easily and more in line with course standards.

Slide 14 - Stuart Blythe
With Blythe's work, another strong indication as to why I failed becomes evident: I had become comfortable with their use of one web-based element, the course website. Their response to the course website was favorable: I had designed it with students in mind: thinking back to the course websites in my own academic past (the first of which I saw in 1997), I designed the site as a student-centered resource, incorporating the best elements as well as those I had always wanted to see:

• The daily readings and homework updated every 5-7 days based on the course calendar, and appeared on every page of the site but the calendar.
  
• The coming due dates for each project updated after every final due date.
  
• The readings and homework side bar, the calendar, and the syllabus all linked to html and PDF versions of readings, worksheets, handouts, project assignment sheets, and evaluative criteria.
• Links to main university sites (FYWP, LOBO, Libraries, WSTS, etc.) were at the top of each page.
  

Because of their enthusiastic reaction to the course website, I felt comfortable adding the group weblogs into the picture at the beginning of the third project. The biggest mistake I made was this: I confused the medium with the genre, their positive reaction to a one-way (teacher-student) course website, was simple: they liked the format. They were used to using the academic web in this way.

Although a blog is delivered on a web-based medium, it is not strictly an informational space, especially not in the way they were used to seeing one. The weblog is a participatory discursive space, much like the writing classroom itself, and needs to be treated as such.

Recommendations

Slide 15 - Not all Gloom and Doom
Mine is, I'm sure, not the only example of failure in incorporating weblogs into a course. In fact, even in journals such as CCCC and Computers and Writing, which are devoted to pedagogy, we find few success stories. Those we find are anecdotal; however, they all exhibit similar characteristics. First, the instructor supported and guided the students at all times. The technology was used throughout the semester, making it a transparent "part of the course." Lee Honeycutt noted that the asynchronous, typed responses were generally viewed as more favorable to students than synchronous review. Daniel Anderson established peer groups at the beginning of the semester, adding another layer of support and transparency. All noted, which was confirmed by my own experience, that students who were shy in class were more likely to become engaged by the layer of separation inherent in the electronic medium.

Slide 16 - For the Future

1. I liked Anderson's idea of peer groups established at the beginning of the semester. This method might establish accountability and community right up front, which would make discussion more productive as the semester wore on. Note - I would have to make sure to establish the benefits of peer response in order to ensure that students would give productive responses, because as the semester wore on, they might be reluctant to offend their friends; however, the prompting system might curtail that: using instructor (authority) established prompts would create a sort of "buffer" - (I'm doing this because he's making me do it this way).
   
2. Ask them to use the blog as a regular means of response for the informal writing assignments? This way they might see the review as a homework assignment, but a more formal, instructor-guided assignment so long as I stress that involvement is an aspect of their grade. In other words, if they blow it off, they might be penalized in their own grades. This would be a good place to use the group blogs to emphasize standards. If regularly used in this way, the technology might become transparent, as recommended by Nicole DeVoss. "Scaffolded" support: gradually scale back, only providing global prompts, and be ready to intervene (reassert control) if they start to drift away from the intentions I established as a part of the blogging process.
   
3. As much at issue as the responses is the construction of the review prompt. The instructor should provide a series of "review prompts" for the students engaged in review, separating issues such as transitions, order, coherence, etc. by prompting, which focuses the reviews and also lets the reviewers know that the instructor will be observing the nature of their responses. Each review exercise will be seen as separate, and the instructor-as-facilitator will help establish a sense of responsibility (If I don't do this correctly, he'll know).

Slide 17 - References