Next year, I think I’ll ask students to check their knowledge and skills in writing about every two weeks. This may take the form of a self-administered checklist or a short piece of reflective writing that answers the question, What do I know about my writing now that I didn’t know 2 weeks ago? This will probably work best with my presenting specific goals for each two-week period (which I’m already doing, but am not making so explicit; it’s contained in the topics of class discussion and the focus of peer assessment). So, for example, if the first assignment is some kind of self-assessment of oneself as a writer, and my goal for students is to craft recognizable thesis statements and well-developed paragraphs, I might give them a quick quiz (something I usually don’t do in writing classes) asking them to choose the better thesis sentence from a pair of thesis sentences and the better developed paragraph from a pair of paragraphs. Then I might ask them to look at two drafts of their current essay and have them write a paragraph of reflection on how they improved their thesis sentence or how they revised a paragraph, for example, by adding evidence or adding transitions or summing up the point made at the end of the paragraph.
Following up on this throughout the semester every couple of weeks would help students think about revising as they write every paper. Also, a series of such quizzers and reflections could give students some already processed data to consider as they write a final reflective essay as an self-assessing introduction to the portfolio. The habit of reviewing one’s own work for signs of improvement would be established.
The frequent assessments would also give students a stronger awareness of the structure that is present in a writing workshop class. The workshop environment can lead students to believe that teaching and learning isn’t really going on—since they are used to defining teaching and learning in terms of content delivered and tested. But the focus of each successive self-assessment with an actual score on the quiz would help students see their progress from focusing on thesis and paragraph development to skillful integration of evidence to documentation to improving transition to more self-aware word choices in general to improved conclusions.
In an upper-level class last spring, I assigned a final 4- to 5-page paper on “what I have learned about teaching writing this semester.” As students began listing the things they’d learned, they realized that quite a lot of ground had been covered—but, as one student put it, “It felt like we were just sitting around talking, but when I started listing things I’d learned, I realized how much I’d learned.” This, like all my classes, was a class evaluated with a final portfolio rather than an exam. I was gratified that students had learned a lot—but concerned that they had experienced the class as “just sitting around talking,” not recognizing they were learning anything till the end. Since they were sophomores and juniors with a strong motivation to get as much as they could from the class, I didn’t worry too much about it—but at the same time, one of my best ENG 102 students wrote in her final cover essay that she hadn’t actually learned anything but was a better writer. Her early essays and late essays clearly showed excellent development of her writing ability. So I began thinking about ways to help students see that becoming a better writer necessarily involves learning some things about writing.
All of the literature I have read about the “Millennial” generation in school and in the workplace suggests they need frequent reassurance that they are on the right track, that they want to feel they are making progress toward a goal. And, realistically, if I want my course evaluations by students to reflect a realistic picture of their learning, I have to foster their awareness of their learning to be better writers.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Portfolio Pedagogy
Two epiphanies refocused my portfolio practices: the first when I homeschooled my younger daughter in fourth grade and she prepared a portfolio for the school district’s review (in Pennsylvania), the second when I read Portfolio Pedagogy, edited by Kathleen Yancey, while I was getting my Ph.D. At these moments of insight, I realized that a portfolio could showcase much of what a person had learned because it showed what that person could do, that it was concrete evidence of learning in a way that a numerical average of grades could never be; and that once I used that portfolio as the final evidence of learning in a course, I could shape the whole course around helping students produce that—so that everything we did throughout the semester was directly tied to the outcomes shown concretely in the portfolio.
That second insight helped me practice “portfolio pedagogy.” The A-word—assessment—is not scary if one teaches to the assessment, right? But for “teaching to the test” to work well, one has to define the test in ways that measure what one wants to accomplish in the course. Start with the portfolio: what products should it contain to show that students have learned the things the teacher expects them to learn? Once those products have been identified, say, five pieces of writing of different types, we can design the assignments that lead students to the production of those portfolio pieces (e.g., the research assignment). We can determine what lessons need to be taught and what practice activities performed to prepare the students to produce those portfolio pieces. This analysis leads us to our schedule of readings, activities, and lessons.
This approach to designing a course from the final demonstration of student learning seems obvious, once one’s perspective has shifted, but before I really “got” this concept, I’d start planning a course with questions like, What book will I use? What readings will I assign from the book? When will it be convenient for me to receive a batch of papers from this class? And I didn’t necessarily sequence or build activities and assignments to reach a specific goal (students’ production of a particular paper).
Watching my daughter produce her first portfolio, though, showed me the importance of involving students in their own assessment. We had submitted a long list of learning objectives for each academic subject in order to receive permission to homeschool. Then, as Natalie prepared the portfolio with my guidance, we looked at each objective and considered what work she had done related to that objective, and what showed best that she had achieved the learning objective. Working on the portfolio enabled Natalie, even in fourth grade, to think about what she had learned and how to present her learning to others—much more cognitively demanding than taking a test that someone else designed and graded, much more informative than receiving a numerical score from the grader of a test. When the student takes stock of what he or she has learned, that step consolidates knowledge and enables the student to take the knowledge along to the next step of education as a foundation to build on—rather than to forget the “knowledge” because a test score is all that matters in the contract that public education makes with students.
That second insight helped me practice “portfolio pedagogy.” The A-word—assessment—is not scary if one teaches to the assessment, right? But for “teaching to the test” to work well, one has to define the test in ways that measure what one wants to accomplish in the course. Start with the portfolio: what products should it contain to show that students have learned the things the teacher expects them to learn? Once those products have been identified, say, five pieces of writing of different types, we can design the assignments that lead students to the production of those portfolio pieces (e.g., the research assignment). We can determine what lessons need to be taught and what practice activities performed to prepare the students to produce those portfolio pieces. This analysis leads us to our schedule of readings, activities, and lessons.
This approach to designing a course from the final demonstration of student learning seems obvious, once one’s perspective has shifted, but before I really “got” this concept, I’d start planning a course with questions like, What book will I use? What readings will I assign from the book? When will it be convenient for me to receive a batch of papers from this class? And I didn’t necessarily sequence or build activities and assignments to reach a specific goal (students’ production of a particular paper).
Watching my daughter produce her first portfolio, though, showed me the importance of involving students in their own assessment. We had submitted a long list of learning objectives for each academic subject in order to receive permission to homeschool. Then, as Natalie prepared the portfolio with my guidance, we looked at each objective and considered what work she had done related to that objective, and what showed best that she had achieved the learning objective. Working on the portfolio enabled Natalie, even in fourth grade, to think about what she had learned and how to present her learning to others—much more cognitively demanding than taking a test that someone else designed and graded, much more informative than receiving a numerical score from the grader of a test. When the student takes stock of what he or she has learned, that step consolidates knowledge and enables the student to take the knowledge along to the next step of education as a foundation to build on—rather than to forget the “knowledge” because a test score is all that matters in the contract that public education makes with students.
Why Assess with Portfolios?
Why does portfolio grading work? How can it be practiced most effectively, producing the best outcomes for students? I’ve been committed to portfolio grading for many years, deferring all grading till I receive a portfolio—at midterm and again at the end of the semester. Now I am questioning elements of my practice because of generational changes. Today’s students are used to frequent evaluation. How can I reconcile their need to know how they’re doing with the pedagogical benefits I see in deferred grading?
As I have practiced portfolio grading, the portfolio receives a single grade that is an overall assessment of quality + effort. Before grading the portfolio, I have offered plenty of feedback on individual papers, and I’ve implemented self-assessment and peer assessment, along with lots of instruction in what makes writing good.
The rationale for this combination of instruction, peer and instructor feedback, and self-assessment is my belief that students who understand what makes writing good and who participate in assessing their own writing will not get any surprises when they receive the portfolio grade, that they will have realistic expectations of what the grade will be when they hand in the portfolio. They know what is expected of them as writers and they know how well they have achieved the level of expectation. Usually, they know whether they have invested sufficient effort to receive a high grade, and they know how their writing quality compares to the quality of their peers’ writing.
One of the major justifications of this approach is that it keeps students working on their writing right up to the point when the assessment instrument, the portfolio, is turned over for the grade: good students kept working on their writing to make it better, poor students kept working because they were not discouraged by low grades on early efforts, and most students felt less pressure because they had the whole semester to produce that final body of work.
My standards have been reasonably high—that is, simultaneously high and attainable, especially with the revising in response to my copious feedback on individual papers. My goal in giving lots of feedback and requiring lots of revising was to get students to internalize the revising voice—which at first was mine, and later would become part of their own writing knowledge. I was pleased a decade ago when a student told me, “All the time I was drafting, I kept hearing your voice saying, ‘More evidence, more evidence,’ and I put it in.” The student who hears that voice can look at other papers he’s written, as he’s preparing his final portfolio and can see the places where he might put more evidence into them—so that the effort he makes in putting together his final portfolio will result in his receiving a higher grade than he would have received as an average of grades given on each paper as submitted throughout the semester. Perhaps the most important lessons for students from portfolio grading are that writing is never really finished—we just meet deadlines with the best work we can assemble at that point—and that the overall quality of our education in any area may be better represented by the presentation of our best work than by a statistical average of the work turned in at various points during it—because we can slog away at a task over time and then have an epiphany that transforms our insight.
I have long believed that many students reached significant insight and improvement about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the semester, when the repetition of specific messages in the feedback they received reached a sort of critical mass, enabling them to significantly revise papers for the final portfolio—rather than insight’s coming in regular increments with each paper they wrote.
My dilemma now, in light of the way our students come to us now, expecting frequent evaluation and reassurance is: How can I preserve the advantages of my past practices with portfolios while providing students with the ongoing assessment they need in order to recognize that they are learning something and making progress in my class? This is especially challenging when I teach so many first-semester college students, who come to my classes with high school standards and expectations and little experience in taking charge of their education.
As I have practiced portfolio grading, the portfolio receives a single grade that is an overall assessment of quality + effort. Before grading the portfolio, I have offered plenty of feedback on individual papers, and I’ve implemented self-assessment and peer assessment, along with lots of instruction in what makes writing good.
The rationale for this combination of instruction, peer and instructor feedback, and self-assessment is my belief that students who understand what makes writing good and who participate in assessing their own writing will not get any surprises when they receive the portfolio grade, that they will have realistic expectations of what the grade will be when they hand in the portfolio. They know what is expected of them as writers and they know how well they have achieved the level of expectation. Usually, they know whether they have invested sufficient effort to receive a high grade, and they know how their writing quality compares to the quality of their peers’ writing.
One of the major justifications of this approach is that it keeps students working on their writing right up to the point when the assessment instrument, the portfolio, is turned over for the grade: good students kept working on their writing to make it better, poor students kept working because they were not discouraged by low grades on early efforts, and most students felt less pressure because they had the whole semester to produce that final body of work.
My standards have been reasonably high—that is, simultaneously high and attainable, especially with the revising in response to my copious feedback on individual papers. My goal in giving lots of feedback and requiring lots of revising was to get students to internalize the revising voice—which at first was mine, and later would become part of their own writing knowledge. I was pleased a decade ago when a student told me, “All the time I was drafting, I kept hearing your voice saying, ‘More evidence, more evidence,’ and I put it in.” The student who hears that voice can look at other papers he’s written, as he’s preparing his final portfolio and can see the places where he might put more evidence into them—so that the effort he makes in putting together his final portfolio will result in his receiving a higher grade than he would have received as an average of grades given on each paper as submitted throughout the semester. Perhaps the most important lessons for students from portfolio grading are that writing is never really finished—we just meet deadlines with the best work we can assemble at that point—and that the overall quality of our education in any area may be better represented by the presentation of our best work than by a statistical average of the work turned in at various points during it—because we can slog away at a task over time and then have an epiphany that transforms our insight.
I have long believed that many students reached significant insight and improvement about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the semester, when the repetition of specific messages in the feedback they received reached a sort of critical mass, enabling them to significantly revise papers for the final portfolio—rather than insight’s coming in regular increments with each paper they wrote.
My dilemma now, in light of the way our students come to us now, expecting frequent evaluation and reassurance is: How can I preserve the advantages of my past practices with portfolios while providing students with the ongoing assessment they need in order to recognize that they are learning something and making progress in my class? This is especially challenging when I teach so many first-semester college students, who come to my classes with high school standards and expectations and little experience in taking charge of their education.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Rereading and discussing A River Runs Through It
My ENG 102 class is reading (I hope) A River Runs Through It, and I am rereading it with them. I have used it several times in summer classes, especially, because the time feels right for thinking about an activity most of us would associate with summers and vacations--spending time outdoors, pursuing a leisure activity, getting hot and sunburned, cooling off with a few cold beers, eating sandwiches.
I use this wonderful novella because it asks a central question that I think is really important: How do I help someone whom I love when he doesn't want to be helped? And it places the problems of one human life, that of the narrator's brother Paul, in the larger context of Christian faith, the effort to explain the deepest dilemmas of human existence. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain asked. Yes, we must bear responsibility for helping or failing to help other human beings in their struggles in this life. But often we cannot do so.
This story, with its focus on family relationships, transcends the immediate circumstances of the Maclean family. I do not fish myself, and I've never learned to cast, although my father tied his own flies and both my brothers have loved to fish from an early age. I think I see some elements of my family life in A River Runs Through It, and that has shaped my reading of the novella every time. But I certainly have been in the position of being unable to help someone who needed help--either because I couldn't seem to say the right thing or because the person refused help. As one of my family members has said on several occasions, "You can't keep me from making my own mistakes." It's frustrating to be in this position.
But I also love the story as a Montana story. Having never been to Montana, I know it only through books and movies. Every time I read A River Runs Through It, I want to go to Montana, or I want to go to Colorado next time my youngest brother goes and follow him as he fishes, sitting on a rock and reading a book as I did when we were kids, and my family camped along Pennsylvania trout streams. I love the woods, the fields, the wildlife, the streams and rivers of the East, but I don't know the West, and this feels like a lack in my education!
Come August, though, I hope I'll be heading south rather than west. My plan is to read/reread a lot of Faulkner and Welty during the next six weeks of summer classes and then to take a trip to Mississippi and, hopefully, New Orleans as well, to visit some Faulkner sites. My interest in this has been increased by other reading I've done in planning this ENG 102 class--A Lesson Before Dying and The Secret Life of Bees--and my reading of an American classic that I've never before read (and shouldn't admit to, as an English professor)--The Grapes of Wrath--not the South but written while Faulkner was writing, about poor rural folk. Sometimes I think I live my life through reading.
I use this wonderful novella because it asks a central question that I think is really important: How do I help someone whom I love when he doesn't want to be helped? And it places the problems of one human life, that of the narrator's brother Paul, in the larger context of Christian faith, the effort to explain the deepest dilemmas of human existence. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain asked. Yes, we must bear responsibility for helping or failing to help other human beings in their struggles in this life. But often we cannot do so.
This story, with its focus on family relationships, transcends the immediate circumstances of the Maclean family. I do not fish myself, and I've never learned to cast, although my father tied his own flies and both my brothers have loved to fish from an early age. I think I see some elements of my family life in A River Runs Through It, and that has shaped my reading of the novella every time. But I certainly have been in the position of being unable to help someone who needed help--either because I couldn't seem to say the right thing or because the person refused help. As one of my family members has said on several occasions, "You can't keep me from making my own mistakes." It's frustrating to be in this position.
But I also love the story as a Montana story. Having never been to Montana, I know it only through books and movies. Every time I read A River Runs Through It, I want to go to Montana, or I want to go to Colorado next time my youngest brother goes and follow him as he fishes, sitting on a rock and reading a book as I did when we were kids, and my family camped along Pennsylvania trout streams. I love the woods, the fields, the wildlife, the streams and rivers of the East, but I don't know the West, and this feels like a lack in my education!
Come August, though, I hope I'll be heading south rather than west. My plan is to read/reread a lot of Faulkner and Welty during the next six weeks of summer classes and then to take a trip to Mississippi and, hopefully, New Orleans as well, to visit some Faulkner sites. My interest in this has been increased by other reading I've done in planning this ENG 102 class--A Lesson Before Dying and The Secret Life of Bees--and my reading of an American classic that I've never before read (and shouldn't admit to, as an English professor)--The Grapes of Wrath--not the South but written while Faulkner was writing, about poor rural folk. Sometimes I think I live my life through reading.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Resuming my comments on writing instruction
Most of what I've had to say about writing instruction over the past several weeks has been put into conversations with a wide range of people, and I've been keeping a lot of notes in my handwritten personal journal. I think I'll abandon the book reviews I've been writing in this space, at least for the present. I think I'd rather focus on a lot of the things I've been thinking about, as I've reflected on this year's teaching and writing center work, honors oral exams with senior English and education majors, editing our campus publication of exemplary student writing, some reading on WAC and first-year seminars with an eye to suggesting changes in our general education writing requirements, and conversations about writing with colleagues at other institutions as well as other disciplines at my own.
I want to comment on a number of things here, including some assessment issues, portfolio pedagogy, the kinds of writing we assign in college courses, the value of thinking programmatically rather than course by course or class by class, and the role of theory.
I want to comment on a number of things here, including some assessment issues, portfolio pedagogy, the kinds of writing we assign in college courses, the value of thinking programmatically rather than course by course or class by class, and the role of theory.
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