Reference Managers and Writing Workshop – 11/8/13
Ref managers
Endnote
Zotero
Qigga
Mendeley
Endnote has gotten better over the year. It’s funky, but
good at certain tasks.
Which tool you use is really about how you work.
If just getting citations from Jstor, those pop into Endnote
easily, goes into Word very easily.
Endnote Web allows you to go to the web storage easily.
But in Archive, digital photographs, Zotero (only tool that
can work with Web pages and web-based research materials easily). Also allows
annotation; has mostly functional ipad/iphone app. Open source. Zotero is very
stable; funding from the Mellon foundation, NEH. Can be used with Open Office
and not just Microsoft Works, so other capabilities.
Reference Managers are part of a whole ecosystem of tools.
DiRT, bamboo group – some of tools free, some paid. Things
you can do are things like create collaborative maps; maybe text, citation, or
network analysis. Citation managers are also starting to integrate into this
world. Qigga will make a citation map for you with additional visualization
capabilities. On the downside it doesn’t do its task of being a reference
manager all that well.
Citation managers handle bibliographic data. You can also
attach PDFs to them; most have an annotation ability. Automatically format your
bibliography into whatever style is required, whether APA
or journal you’re submitting to.
Citation
map, you can graph the network of co-authors to see who was collaborating with
whom, and institutions that collaborate with one another. Bibliometric analysis.
It’s looking at the authors and also if you are using [something] it also
extracts the reference information.
Zotero –
- oneclick capture of web pages and images.
- Cloud storage of citations and documents.
- Public and private groups
- Information discovery
- Annotate and make notes within
- Works well with word processors
- Apps for mobile devices under development
Mendeley –
Just purchased by Elsevier. Endnote is owned by
Thomsen/Reuters
Was begun as a startup by bibliometric students.
Can share PDFs and images around. You can have a little
discussion group in Mendeley (not shared publicly, but within groups.)
You can import and export citations into and out of tools
very easily.
“Faculty of 1,000” is
peer review subscription process. Meant for science peer review mostly.
Gets at idea of how articles are shared, how often, with
whom.
Endnote:
- Oldest and most established
- Works best with citations from databases
- Can hndle large volume of citations quickly
- Automatically find and attaches full-text
- Private groups through EndNoteWeb
- Cannot share PDFs, only citations
- Over 5,000 citation styles for nearly all journal titles.
- Very good for systematic reviews and scientific literature management.
Comparison charts of the managers are all over the Internet
and most libraries have one.
WSU research guides exit for Endnote and Zotero
Tracy – Scrivener – you can have split screens, drag and
drop between screens.
Can moved back and forth, can export as .rtf file. Can also
use it as a transcription tool and play tapes into it (?). Has notecard
feature, look at things as though they’re on a bulletin board.
Marsha – NotaBENE.
Designed for academics. Database, articles
Has bibliographic software built in. Orbis is a huge
database itself. Key word search for all documents. Internally searchable. Can
be hooked up to libraries and search for things.
Danielle – Bill Cronon’s presidential speech. Core biz of
Historians is “resurrection.” Make the dead past live again. No worse crime
than to make it forgettable.
n We
tend to write history that is forgettable.
n Writing
is something you develop and can hone.
Historiography and debates within our specialty are OK in
our dissertation, hone in seminar, etc. All of that is important, but it tends
to suffocate our narrative and makes for writing that’s really boring to read.
Really good writing is narrative-driven.
Habits – constant editing can whittle down a really bloated
narrative to a few sharp points.
Editors – they care about you and want to yelp you say it
better.
Habits –
Write about your writing. A lot of us have really good ideas
at weird times. In the shower, right when you’re trying to go to sleep, in
conversations with friends over lunch or over drinks. Keep an idea journal. If
you think about an anecdote that might fit in a much larger narrative, jot it
down.
Brilliant ideas might not look so brilliant later, but at
least they’re there.
Journals don’t have to look good. Nobody has to see it
except you.
Procrastination – make it work for you by visualizing things
in your head. Think about what you want to say, how you plan to structure, visualize
a draft, envision yourself writing. Athletes use visualization all the time.
Say everything in your head, visualize yourself doing that.
Recruit a support group (broadly). Every good writer is part
of a community. Use that community – mentors, colleagues, friends, whoever is
in your world. Ask advisors to give deadlines for chapters. Ask people who I
feared a little bit to give me the deadlines. People with psych sway. If
mentors give deadlines, much more responsible to them.
Writing is a process. It takes time. You need to put in your
schedule time to write. Life tends to intervene; everybody has a lot going on.
n Know
when you’re sharpest. I cannot write anything really good after 10 p.m.
n You
don’t have to set aside full days or full weeks, but can set aside a couple of
hours or an hour.
n If
you are inclined to needing deadline pressure, form a writing group – being
accountable to other people who are supportive and caring of your goals. It’s
like the gym – if you’re meeting a friend there, you’re going to go.
o Just
make sure that when you form a group, you choose people who have the same goals
and work styles.
o Try
not to form writing groups with people who are troubled. You want to be with
people who are sane and leave the crazy where crazy belongs.
o Turn
the Internet off. Horrible, demonic time-sucker. Make a deal with yourself –
turn off your phone, Internet, television. Focus your attention.
n Ask
for feedback. All good writers have really good editors. We need lots of other
eyes on our work. People we trust will give it to us straight. Some will be
really good at narrative; others really good at structure.
o Important
for people to have non-academy people read the work. Does it make sense to
them? If it doesn’t then there’s a problem. People not in our specialty need to
know what we’re saying. If they don’t we need to be able to fix that.
n Omit
needless words (Strunk & White). Twitter is an amazing editing tool to
force you to think about extraneous words in sentences.
n Read
novels and really good non-fiction. Pay attention to the tools those writers
bring to the art of storytelling. Form.
o Narrative
arc; character development; setting a scene.
n Pay
attention to details – vividness, clarity, empathy, explanatory force.
o Noone
loves your topic AS MUCH AS YOU DO. Make them care – bring the tools of writing
into play. Write about scenes. What was the weather like the day you’re talking
about?
§ Travel
guides, farmers almanacs, city directories, old photographs. Get the
descriptive details just right.
o Show,
don’t tell. Dialogue, sensory language, quotes.
o Let
your characters speak for themselves, but be very selective with your quotes.
§ If
the quote is so good, don’t describe it – let the quote speak for itself.
§ Delicious
little morsels that you cannot possibly recreate or summarize in your own
words.
·
Let them add flavor and texture.
n Do
not edit as you write. It will suck up your time and destroy your morale.
o Ann
Lamont calls first draft the “down draft.” Get it down. Then comes the “up
draft” when you clean it up.
Peltzer competition OAH.
Janine – Clockwork Muse. It will save your life.
Rhinoceros skin. They have to write a book some day – and I
will critique it. We all have to find ways to get over our own insecurity.
Insecurity about writing, presenting, can paralyze us. We have to kick them out
of our own head – they’re causing you to slow down or stop It’s unnecessary
worry. We’re not that cruel in our profession. Let that go – sweep it out of
your mind.
Marc – You’re not as stupid as you think you are. There is
always that fear of finally being found out, about people discovering (finally)
that you’re not as good as they thnk you are. They’re gong to read something, a
sentence that you had pained over for a day, and I remember making my first
publisher (before it was easy to do digital changing) change a paragraph and I
had to pay for the change in my page proofs in order to save this paragraph –
for the life of me I couldn’t find where the damned paragraph is in the book.
He could have taken the stupid paragraph OUT and it would have been
inconsequential. The way that you overcome it is by doing it.
I found it a whole lot easier to write my second book than
my first book. I felt good about having survived my dissertation, and then I
was very proud of having written a very well reviewed and published book. I
didn’t enjoy writing that first book. But I had a blast writing my second book;
I went into the basement with two thermoses and lock myself in for the day.
We’re all always insecure. You build confidence through a
lot of the things that Danielle discussed today.
Danielle – I’m terrified of writing my second book, because
I’m afraid it won’t be as good as my first book and that I’ll have nothing to
say. That voice will always try to come in.
Ann Marie – Find your own voice. It enables you to be more
direct. You’re not hiding any more behind words, behind passivity. You’re
crisper, you’re more direct.
Michael – It’s the painstaking going back, that has always
been my, and continues to be.
Endnote!
Karen – I have this problem with the historiographical
argument. I don’t want to have one; I just want to tell the story of these
amazing people that I love and I think it breaks it up, and I don’t want to.
Danielle – I agree with you, I think it does break up the
narrative, put it in the footnotes. You don’t have to argue; I think that all
of us, the stories we tell come out of history, out of a context. A lot of the
stories we tell were told in part by somebody else, and we’re dusting them off,
bringing them in with new eyes, telling them in order to tell a new story.
Tracy
– Different advisors want different things in these regards. This is
frustrating. Mutual friends of ours have 50 page lit reviews. You have to do
what they want. If your topic and writing style is mismatched with your topic
and your advisor.
Danielle – but if you’re telling it well, you can make a
case for telling it the way you want to.
Danielle – note taking – one place for everything – not
ramdom legal pads or whatever you had that day.
Cami – I find that my procrastination tendencies are a
manifestation of what Tim is describing – if I procrastinate enough then the
errors in my work are because I procrastinated, not errors in my own head.
That’s the excuse. I just finished writing it five minutes ago and now I’m
sending it to you, OF COURSE it’s not perfectly polished. It’s an excuse.
Barry – The best advice came from Dr. Kruman, keep your
backside in the seat and keep writing. Listen to the man, he knows what he’s on
about.
Marc – You will meet a lot of people who you will think are
a whole lot smarter than you are, and they will at some point drift away. If
you want to succeed, the best way to succeed is to keep your butt nailed to the
chair. You have to plan to do it every day and commit yourself to sitting there
for that time. I actually like Howard Becker’s term for a first draft in
writing for Social Sciences, he calls it a “spew draft,” you just “bleh” it all
out. If you even think of it in those terms, you can’t expect a whole lot from
yourself if it’s all spew.
Danielle – Always easier to edit if you’ve got words on
paper or the screen than to produce finely-honed sentences as you’re writing.
Tracy
– I’m an incredibly undisciplined person. You just have to accept that you’re
going to feel like inadequate and not as smart as the people around you. It’s
not true. So instead of trying to discipline yourself, it’s better to reward
yourself. I set myself little daily rewards. But when it’s stuff that I just
kind of do out of habit, I can’t take it away from myself. Rewarding yourself
rather than punishing yourself is probably better.
Danielle – there’s different kinds of writing, too. A review
or something for a class I’m writing the night before. But there’s other
writing.
Tracy & Danielle – It’s probably important for you to
have deadlines to make sure you have a crappy first draft. If you can write
three pages, then you can write another three pages, and writing a book is just
repeating that over and over again.
Joe – I really like that earlier Danielle said she uses note
cards. Low-tech handwritten
Janine – I use binders. Everything goes in binders and then
Danielle – I use notecards, and use them in the archive. Raw
material for my book is in four boxes. All the notecards are chronicleogically
arranged . . . the narrative is sort of storyboarded out with note cards.
Andrew – any advice for moving into professional article
writing for the first time going into it?
Danielle – take the very top one. Start at the top, not the
bottom, because you just don’t know. Then if you get rejected go to the next
one. See how they look and study their form. Where’s their thesis statement? Up
in the first paragraph, or later? Study their form, their structure, and then
write your draft in their form. Then when you start to craft your essay, put it
into that format, formulaically. Then have a whole lot of people read it before
you submit it. That would give more likelihood to getting it accepted.
Tracy
– Know how much historiography they want. Some want a little, some want quite a
lot.
Andrew – I’m really anxious because my main form of writing
right now is seminar papers.
Danielle – it should be different. Everything goes right
into that five paragraph format of thesis, evidence, conclusion.
Marc – in my seminars I say you should be writing a journal
article. I realize that getting there in a semester isn’t realistic, but I
always set that as the goal for what the best seminar paper is.
Danielle – in graduate school, you’re always focused on
criticism, centering it in a conversation. But when you’re writing a journal
article, you are presenting your own stuff. You need to state the “so what?” in
a journal article. You need to make a case for yourself.
Tracy
– Look at the last three year of the journal and see what they’re publishing
in. From what I’ve seen in research papers from graduate students is that it
becomes very quickly a narrow topic.
Danielle – something like the OAH, you can have a small
story that speaks to a larger issue. Your topic needs to speak to larger issues
not only in the field, which your topic is part of, but also to the larger
American history.
Write it,
and then let us see it, and we’ll help you hone it and make it publishable.
Never not try because you don’t think it’s good enough. I’ve been reviewing a
ton of submissions for journals and I realize that they all needed more editing.
The things
that I notice is, one, there isn’t a coherent structure. It’s hard to find a
thesis, and then, the essay doesn’t support the thesis. Two, it’s full of
mumbo-jumbo, academic doublespeak where you use fancy words and big theories
that doesn’t say anything. Three, full of information that’s not useful. Quote
from meeting minutes – really? Just summarize. Giving information that takes
you away from the main point, and takes you too far down the road. Know when to
need to cut off the broad painting and come back into the narrow focus. And I
also think that people have good stories to tell but they’re not always aware
of why it matters. People need to know why it matters. Effective submissions
make that point very effectively, and then remake that at the end. Finally,
it’s about gracious writing.
What’s really wild is I always think that it’s graduate
students submitting, and then later I find out it’s some esteemed professor
that I’ve just given “eeeeh” to.
Tracy
– a lot of seminar papers, they just start. You need a stronger introduction.
Joe – Do what you SAY you’re going to do, don’t make false
promises in coverage.
You’re
going to get contradictory advice from people, so you have to strategically
choose which ones you’re going to listen to.
Tracy
– in JAH, you want to cite largely historians, the heavy hitters who’ve been on
your topic, and probably in the footnotes (for the first three pages).
Danielle: 40 PP per chapter. 100 pages is too long for a
chapter. Tell stories. If we can’t tell them effectively, then we’re in trouble
as a profession.
Tracy
-- Imagine you’re writing for a really strong undergrad.
Danielle – I would take it further and say your mother.
Writing Workshop HGSA Nov. 15
“Responding to Student Writing”
HSGA.wordpress.com
General overview – talk about how some more general
principles can translate to responding to papers in History.
We do get a lot of your students in to the writing center,
specifically about certain types of assignments, problems. Have good feel for
how students are responding to your papers.
Joe Paszek, graduate tutor this year. Hope to get a few more
people in that are kind of at the dissertation level. A lot of us in writing
studies have more experience talking about disciplines, gendres, and stuff.
We do a number of things with grad students:
Seminar papers
Masters theses
Dissertation drafts
Article drafts
Job letters (very formulaic in a lot of ways)
Teaching statements
You might not realize our service is available to you in the
writing center.
Reminder – just because we made it into graduate programs
doesn’t mean we don’t need to talk with somebody about our writing. We’re never
finished learning how to write or learning how to write for our disciplines.
I might not have direct experience, but can help you assess
the genre.
Grad students allowed two visits to writing center per week
Undergraduate students are allowed one visit per week. We
see 3,000 students, maybe more, per year. Before, we would see maybe 100 a
semester. Next fall we may have maybe four or five dissertation students who
can work with undergraduate students.
Sometimes we’ll spend the entire hour just understanding the
assignment.
Reading skills – sometimes they just don’t have the reading
skills necessary to write history papers.
We work with organizational and mechanical skills as well.
One of the problems is that they are so obsessed with being mechanically
correct that they cannot begin to write organized papers.
Appointments made by coming in to writing center; by calling
in; by using online scheduling. Recommend doing it online; easier, have fewer
issues.
His schedule has been booked for almost a month. We do get a
lot of no-shows and cancellations. Walk in 15 mins after the hour to see if
there’s a no-show. It is a risk.
(He will pass a list of GTA
names, and he is more than willing to meet with anybody).
They have a stamp to use if require students to come in;
they will stamp a draft and make it official with initials. If you’re going to
require students to come in to the writing center, have them bring in
something. Don’t just come in empty-handed.
All undergraduate tutors are really well trained. Most have
been there for longer than five years.
They don’t really work on the mechanics; more focus on
higher-order issues, which come first. In the process, we will address
mechanical issues, but very rarely will they sit down and do line editing. Only
50 minutes, much more important things to be addressed, such as word usage,
comma splices. Idea is learning, not line editing. Not to overwhelm the
student. Looking at grammar in context, rather than grammar as mechanical
skills. We are not there as an editing service.
Tips in responding:
Respond to content first, not mechanics.
Look for ideas, not errors.
Use strategies like modeling student papers, talking through
what you expect.
Don’t get wrapped up in how you would write something.
-
word choice.
-
Sentence structure.
Read the paper for its larger intention.
Consider the integrity of the intention.
2. Give more substantive feedback rather than mechanics.
Respond personally and positively where possible. This is a big deal for our
students. They often don’t feel as if teachers are actually reading their
papers. When students get personalized comments on their paper, much more
motivated to work on their paper. Use their name within comments. Encourage at
certain points. I always try to find at least a couple positives right off the
bat. He uses +/- sign for plus side in the paper, etc. There could be a load of
things they did poorly, but if we can find a few things they did well, they
won’t get overloaded. Select two or three of the biggest higher-order issues.
“For the next paper, what you really need to focus on is developing a strong
thesis.” So there are some things they can keep in their head for a better
paper. Are they learning a historical event, responding through a historical
lens.
3. Revise earl drafts, edit later drafts; grade final
drafts. Push away grading a paper. An early D means “oh, it’s just useless, why
would I revise.” Remember that a C isn’t a bad grade. For a lot of our students
it means they’re doing fine in class. If a student gets a C, there are a lot of
cases where they don’t want to revise it. We have to relinquish conrol
sometimes.
4. Comment critically on one item at a time. Easy to
overwhelm student with all sorts of negative comments and plethora of
suggestions about what to do next. Commentary may not actually accomplish a
purpose. Single out one or two problems for comment; leave others for
subsequent drafts. Challenges us to think about what our assignment is asking
students to master. If objective is to learn historical theory, limit to how
well student has grasped historical theory. If 26 of your students are not
doing this successfully, it’s more than a student problem – it could be your
clarity of assignment. With revisions, focus on key things *you* want to see.
5. Be specific when you comment on problems. Make it clear
what instructor wants from them. If you just circle something and say “awkward”
99 percent of the time the student will not know how to fix that. Students do
‘ing fishing, or estimating academic language. They sound as if they’re trying
to sound smart, but they sound really belligerent. (passive voice, intensifiers
((e.g. very important)) or weird sentence construction with lots of “which”
statements. One of the things I’ve been doing a lot of is taking dependent
clauses, circle them, turn them into an adjective and put it in front of a
noun.
Point out
what you object to without necessarily correcting it yourself – let them do the
correction.
“Hey, I get
where you’re going, but for this type of paper perhaps X is more appropriate.”
-or- “Hey, I would
actually write it this way.”
Modeling
and mimicry are the first way students try to master genre writing. If we give
them a successful example and they mimic it, that’s them estimating the types
of styles that we want. If they are achieving certain goals and objectives,
then mimicry may be a good thing. Enough times and they can begin go master
those principles.
6. Edit a page or two, not the whole paper. Sometimes do a
paragraph for them. Get them to start getting practice writing the way we think
they should write. Isolate a small section filled with errors that are
particularly a problem for the student. Show the student what construction or
stylistic problem bother you. “I notice that you use a comma in this instance
all the time – perhaps look into your paper and see where else you’re doing
that.
7. Include peer evaluation if you can. Group peer eval of an
anonymous paper. Bring in a C and an A paper. Most of the time, do the A paper
first. Then open up the C paper and have them respond to it, without telling
them it’s a C paper. This assignment’s always really fun for me, most of the
time they become really, really strict graders all of a sudden. Then ask them
to do it to their own peer papers. It’s something students just need practice
with. ((Use papers that aren’t from class for those examples)). If it’s
completely anonymous and not from this class, they become vultures. They go
over the top. It is intereting, across the board, students identify weaker
papers with female authors, and stronger papers with male authors. From my
experience, I’ve had stronger female writers.
8. What is said includes how it is said – don’t split
grades. Don’t give a grade for content and a grade for mechanics as separate
grades. The two are explicitly tied together. The more difficult the concepts,
the more grammatical issues they have. The language just gets bogged down and
they can’t figure out how to say it.
Dialect problems: Successful writing is context specific.
Good writing for a history class may look drastically different than for a
science class. We try not to devalue “Home
Discourse” or more personalized discourse communities, but
that they are not appropriate for certain discourse communities. Writing is
context specific and goal oriented. If they are using certain types of
language, we say they are not appropriate for this type of writing, for this
objective. Don’t’ cause dissonance, but instill that successful writers are
flexible writers. They’re able to maneuver themselves within different types of
settings.
Qs: Beth -- Personal pronoun: They need to see examples of
strong genres you’re asking them to write within. In writing studies we do this
through rhetoric. “It’s not sufficient evidence to support your claim.” We have
to have conversations sometimes of how other types of audiences will not accept
the Bible as proof, as evidence, for example. WE can either do this through
genre, or that the audience you’re writing for will not accept this as evidence
or proof. “Your personal experience will not be enough.”
The “I
believe” statements are either because students see that as sufficient
evidence, or it’s a hedging move – they don’t know how to support strong
arguments with certain types of evidence. Try to identify where those personal statements
are coming from.
Tim - The Same/but different – this may be coming from the
genre of high school, a rhetorical move ingrained in them, through the compare
and contrast movement. I continuously encourage instructors to bring in strong
examples that does something different – modeling. Talk very consciously about
the structural moves. Sometimes students don’t know how to talk about history
papers. The don’t know how to make that shift. If we can bring in strong
student papers and talk about why is this evidence successful, students can
start to estimate and model. And ensure that students are aware that “this is
what historians do.” They use citations differently. In the humanities, we use
more extensive citation to build evidence and proofs, and we consider that some
sort of critical thinking, critical engagement with prior processes. In the
sciences, that is entirely incorrect – critical thinking and critical analysis
(come from a different model). Encourage to talk about how you write successfully
for History in your classrooms.
Miriam – stepping back from your own writing? I am of the
opinion that no writing happens in isolation, no paper is ever single-authored.
It goes through so many gatekeepers. WE have difficulties doing (line editing)
for our own writing, but in doing that to hers, I’m more able to effectively do
it to mine. A lot of the problems our students have are similar to our own.
Where are we hedging? Where are we putting in those extra dependent clauses
that can easily be turned into adjectives? I do this too. Maybe on a different
level, but I do this too.
Robert – where do you draw the line for different learners?
I find it really fortunate that I gete so much writing from my students and
work so closely with them that by the end of the semester I know who they are
as writers. There are some students that LOOOVE the line editing – they want
more grammatical feedback. So I’m not against doing that, I just won’t do that
wholesale for all of my students. Off the bat, I wouldn’t be able to identify
students, it just takes time and experience. One thing that I love doing is
using the comment feature in Word; in Talkbacks, students required to respond
to my comment with a comment of their own. “You’ve said this; why would it be
more effective than saying this?” And
they’re not allowed to revise until they have commented back. Perfectly
acceptable to respond with “I don’t understand.” Not all students will respond
the same way. Students sometimes take it so personally that they just crumble.
Tim – what quals as “writing intensive” at wayne? Each department will qualify courses
as writing intensive.
Miriam – If a student, this is kind of a morals or ethics
question, if student writes a D paper early in the semester, and then at the
end of the semester write paper that is much improved but would still give a C,
do you think you should give them a B for making so much progress? Is it the
amount they’ve learned, or just the plain quality of the paper? A – are we outcomes based, or development
based. As a department we’ve decided that’s the province of the instructor. In
our courses, they must get a C or better to go into the (next level). I make
the judgment call of “will this student be successful in later courses.” If I
don’t feel the student has, I will have them repeat the class. There are other
instances where I will give them the C and let them go. Something that must be
discussed within the department.
Our department is highly invested in talking to different
disciplines across the university. Our composition courses are seen as
(serving) other courses in the university. The wide array of genres, contexts,
there’s no way that in 15 weeks we can teach them to do that. [departments
should figure out how to address student writing needs].
TIME SAVING STRATEGIES
-
Discuss and respond to student writing early, not as
much toward the end.
-
Skim set of essays to address common problems, put a
handout to discuss common problems. Take a class session to address overall
problems.
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Create database of commonly-used comments and links. If
you realize half of your students are having a problem that is the same, open
up a word doc, cut and paste.
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Design assignments for particular skills.
-
Stage assignments in parts (scaffolding) that reinforce
learning but can be read quickly. Smaller portions of the task. Instead of
15-20 page paper, write no more than five to ten pages at a time, build up to
end product. Students are much more successful and confident than ever seen
before. Example – introduction, then move forward to different component.
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Assign low-stakes writing, the one-minute paper, or key
word response. Pick up five key words throughout the essay, or two. It only
takes maybe ten minutes at beginning of class to do. Can help you lead
discussion.
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Use peer groups to respond to drafts. Discuss papers in
sections, making note only of compliance. Small point system for compliance in
peer review. I have them do groups of like three or four, have students give
presentation on their paper, allows to kind of condense key arguments and key
points.
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As students to turn in self-reflective note on
strengths and weaknesses, where they would like to review their paper and why.
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When you’ve responded to student drafts, you don’t need
to comment on the new draft – can give just an end note. Give brief note at end
and grade it. Spend only two to three hours grading final papers. If you’ve
commented substantively before, don’t do it all over again.
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Create rubrics. Students really enjoy creating a rubric
in class. Have the students play around with where they think the most valuable
points should be placed. Students privilege certain points of the essay. You’ll
see where they are putting too much emphasis on certain idea.s
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If essay is very confusing, or if the feedback is complex,
make a general note of the issue and ask the student to schedule an
appointment. Sometimes a face-to-face is worth much more than any amount of
commentary.
Instructor problems: Getting obsessed with mechanics – 10X
more time. For me, personally, trying to do too many essays at once becomes a
problem. Try to do no more than six at a time without taking a break. Refresh
and come back. If you’re getting really annoyed. Cluster papers in a certain
way, so that you don’t read all bad papers at once. You get really frustrated
and forget the fact that you’ll be twice as harsh on students who “didn’t get
it” when you’ve read all the good ones who did.
Q: Nate – strategy to get students to go to writing center
without forcing them. Email us, will set up a time for one of tutors to come in
and talk to one of your classes so that they really understand what we do
there. Don’t feel as if requiring a student to go to the writing center is a
bad thing. Students might have this opinion that they have to go to the writing
center, they’re a bad writer. No, we’re here just to support students. The
writing tutor is in a really strange relationship between student and teacher.
Students often vent about instructors and come up with amazing things to
self-justify. We’re trying to suss out what’s actually happening, where’s the
student emotion coming from? Have the student bring in the assignment as well
as the paper. Encourage them not to bring in a “clean” copy of their paper – it
is useful to see your comments as well. We can focus on trying to interpret
what you guys are trying to get to as well.
From paper exercise – make sure end comments first,
plus/minus, *then* go back and do a few things within the paper. Don’t
overwhelm the student. ID key things students are supposed to master through
writing this paper. Some things will correct themselves if you focus on
higher-order issues in places. That way students don’t get overwhelmed and
despesrate.
Limit time
spent so you prioritize beyond grammar. Start working towards higher-order
issues. Then you can go back and do something individually. Identify two
mechanical things they can work on, and play around with those. Point is
freeing up time for you guys, also. So much time in mechanical issue not
productive for you either.
Addressing awkward/offensive issues – if not malicious, do
not address it. Does it happen over and over? Or is it one phrasing that came
out in a strange way. The way we used to teach writing courses, which were
based in hot topic issues, infuriated too many people and myself as well.
Getting things that were very insensitive to a number of people, I would leave
more of an end comment. Not the idea that “you are a bad person if you offend
somebody,” saying perhaps “this is less effective because you come across as
very biased or opinionated in certain ways, you may want to rethink how you
address . . . “ Doing it solely on the level of rhetoric. I would be very happy
if people opposed to me could at least do it in rhetorically sound ways –
something logical, so we could have a sound basis for a discussion.
Provide a counter-view, and ask them to justify their
opinion in light of that counter-view. Talkbacks are useful Give a student a
chance to respond to that.
Know when to start a classroom conversation. “The US felt . . .
“ “ The FLN was . . . “ Students generally know who their audience is
(you) and so they make a conscious choice (FLN is . . . ) that is actually
correct. In reality, we are their audience, and in many ways they are
super-good writers because they address their audience. Having a more concrete
discussion about who their audience is [is important].
In general, academic writing is never aimed at a general
audience or an uninformed audience. Genres – they will never have to write as a
historian, and so we return to a focus on functional genres.
Q Andrew – first sentence in second [piece] – “greatest
political films *ever*” – students often feel they need to compliment the
sources and often do it in an over the top way. I don’t need your opinion, but
that comes across as demeaning and harsh. I don’t want to shut down my student,
but . ..
A – In this
case, I might suggest editing the first sentence. Delete, but in a comment
explain, hey, it might be more effective to jump into a more specific argument.
This is an example of modeling, hey, this is a more effective sentence.
Remember students come in thinking the three goals of an
introduction should be catching the attention of your audience, giving a
thesis, and giving a road map. Most students now assume that engaging an
audience means “flash,” and that means surprise.
Provide students with articles, look at how they write the
introduction. How do professionals establish warrants and claims? It’s all
about student modeling.
If you supply sample papers, you MUST go over them if you’re
going to supply them. Also, don’t give out a PHENOMENAL student paper at the
beginning of the semester – it will only overwhelm. No Perfect Examples. When I
do provide phenomenal examples, they come from professionals. That’s what they
should be working towards. If they can write a perfect paper at the beginning
of the semester, why should you even be in my class? Realizing that students
are emotionally fragile, 99 percent of the time.
Teaching circles? Within our department, based on the
classes we’re teaching, we set up instructor teaching circles once a month to
discuss class progress, class assignments. We also do norming sessions, each
bring in one or two papers, try to figure out where our investments are, so
that we all start with the same responses. So the reason giving feedback is not
personal bias, but representing a disciplinary way of writing, thinking.
Technically we are advocating a certain type of writing from our disciplines.
Also, you realize you’re not the only person who has terrible student papers. We’ve
been doing that for about three years now. Was brought from one of our new
lecturers who came from Eastern. Have also tossed around the idea of group
grading – how you would respond to this, makes certain things more social, but
also requires dedicate time. Consider finding people who are teaching similar
courses, meet once month.
English – Writing Studies – 1010, 1020, 3010, each with
sometimes 30 sections apiece. All students that you guys get should have taken
1010.
Time saving strategies:
Sample paper examples for more effective response:
