Meeting+Minutes+2010-2011

listed by most recent meeting (March 31; March, 9; February 10; January 18; November 24; November 4; October 13; September 23)
 * Writing Circle Meeting Notes**

At today's session select faculty shared the outcomes of various writing initiatives implemented in their Winter courses. Margaret Leask outlined an assignment she used in two different couses to encourage students to do the readings and using writing as a means to connect their learning to the main themes and topics of the course. In her Brantford offering of her one course, for example, students were asked to identify a quote or passage from the readings that resonated for them and to articulate in writing (about one page) why the quote was salient and how it spoke to the core themes of the course. Students also had to footnote their reference to get them in the habit of citing the work of others. Students had to complete a minimum of 7 out of a possible 11 submissions. Three marks were allocated to each submission: one for selecting a quote, one for their commentary, and one for their footnote for a possible 21 out of 20 marks. Of her Brantford group, more than 50% submitted more than 7 submissions. Margaret commented on the fact that students asked if they could use "I think" in their commentary suggesting this was unfamiliar territory for them. While they were certainly encouraged to share their perspective, the importance of grounding their perspective in the readings and the course themes was emphasized. A recommendation to show students exemplars of student work for each set of submissions (anonymous of course) was suggested - both to make writing public and to demonstrate the vast array of submissions both in format and perspective. Margaret said she would integrate this assignment into her courses again and would be asking students for feedback on what they thought of the assignment such that further enhancements could be made.
 * March 31, 2011**

Tristan Long from Biology also shared a new approach he had taken in his larger first year biology course with the goal of getting students in the habit of writing. Basically, students were asked to keep a journal in which they way 6 half page entries per week for a total of 60-70 entries at 5-6% of their grade. Next year, he indicated that he would continue with this approach but ask students to submit their work to their TAs at regular intervals during the coruse.

Today's session focused less on writing and more on student engagement (or lack of it) and performance, not to mention the transition of students from high school to first year. This began with Michael Imort sharing some statistics on the number of students at risk of being on probation in the Faculty of Arts which led us down the path of trying to identify why it is that students of today are disengaging and/or giving up too easily (e.g., missing class, dropping course, performing poorly on assessments). The question of what if anything has changed in high school that might be predictive of student performance was also addressed. Had the goal of high school change (e.g., social integration versus preparation for university or college)? After going back and forth and exploring several tangents there was some agreement amongst the group that we can make the claim that knowledge is mediated and that professors can influence knowledge construction more by helping students learn how to learn early in their education experience rather than focusing on covering content. Further, there was agreement that learning takes times (more than the 12 weeks of a given semester) and as such, the results of learning in any one class, regardless of assessments, may not be fully realized until a later point (i.e., another course, term, post graduation). From here we discussed the role and importance of setting high expectations for students and student learning as being key. Mention of Quest university (a private institution) in BC and the success they have had in recruiting high caliber students, even though they are new, was attributed to their high expectations of students right from the admission process and the supports provided by the institution to support student learning. Coming back to writing, we ended the session with a brief discussion of the value of a writing hook for writing and whether or not in some disciplines (e.g., sciences) it may confuse students. The group also provided some questions to Michael Imort to ask students in his upcoming focus groups with BA students. Michael agreed to report back at a future meeting on what students shared.
 * March 9, 2011**

The article “Strategies to Improve Student Writing” is a compilation of solid, well-founded ideas about improving student writing in an abbreviated, easy to read format. The IDEA series is a good resource for educators. Emmy noted that the “Writing to Learn” section has the baseball blues example from John Bean’s book, which is a very good example of a writing assignment.
 * February 10, 2011.**

Debbie commented that CBC has a show entitled “Quirks & Quarks” that would be a good premise to prompt students to communicate in writing. The program presents the people behind the latest discoveries in the physical and natural sciences - from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the largest objects in the sky and everything in between all in small, manageable snippets for a range of audiences. Students could write a piece for the show or even in a “Dear Abby” format. This suggestion arose from the discussion that first year students think the audience of their writing is the TA who is marking the assignment; they are reluctant to write for an alternative audience. They often try to emulate academic articles and fall short because they do not yet have the skills to write at that caliber.

Across departments, it seems that students begin their research at Wikipedia and sometimes it ends there, without consulting any peer-reviewed articles. This lack of references and overall approach to research the writing cirlce members found to be of great concern and something that needed to be addressed campus-wide.

We began our meeting today with a discussion of an email that went out to faculty from the Dean of Arts that notified professors that 43% of first year students had a GPA of less than 5 (too low to declare a major). From there, we discussed some of the initiatives that Laurier has put into to better help its first year students make the transition from highschool to university, as well as to get back on track in their first or second year. As an example, Emmy Misser shared that 600 students who were identified as struggling academically were invited to one of three evening information sessions, designed to help them become more aware of their options and the support services that exist. Of the 600 invited students, only 200 took the opportunity to attend one of the sessions.
 * January 18, 2011.**

One participant told us about a particularly difficult meeting she had had recently in which a student brought her father (who happened to be a university professor) with her to try and appeal a low grade she had received on an essay assignment from the previous term. From this example, we discussed the increase in helicopter parenting that we are seeing at the university, the need for students to learn how to communicate problems earlier to us (rather than wait until after the term is over), and the privacy / confidentiality issues surrounding parental involvement in students' academic affairs. For a related discussion on helicopter parenting from an earlier CoP meeting, see the minutes from the October 10th meeting of the Teaching Larger Classes CoP.

We tried to ground some our conversation today in the article that Emmy Misser and Boba Samuels had provided on the differences between high school and university writing. Some of the ideas that the group found particularly interesting were the emphasis on the need for strong writing skills in the workplace, the difference between what teachers / professors expect in the two different types of institutions (e.g. greater emphasis on analysis and interpretation at the university level), and the lack of emphasis on audience and purpose at the university level versus in the highschool system that was revealed by the study. There seemed to be a general consensus that the expectations for writing in the university were much different than at high school, as well as agreement on the fact that greater efforts should be made to incorporate more writing into our classrooms. Different opinions were exchanged on whether or not this should take place in the form of a general mandatory first year course, or integrated in a more discipline-specific manner through a university-wide commitment to writing intensive courses. Emmy shared that this type of approach, wherein an increased emphasis on writing has been incorporated directly into the disciplinary curriculum, has been incorporated in some Australian institutions.

Emmy referenced this report on the need for strong writing skills in the business world that was referenced in the article and that she has been using for some workshops.

Post meeting, Terry Stuartevant shared the following link regarding a faculty member's experience with a "no deadlines" policy for submitting written work. Check out this [|link]to learn more.

In our next meeting on Thursday, February 10th, we decided that we'd use an IDEA paper entitled "Strategies to Improve Student Writing"for the basis of our discussion. A link to the article will also be provided in the reminder email that will go out the day before the meeting.


 * November 24, 2010**
 * Today's meeting began with a discussion of an article suggested by Boba Samuels entitled "Generating dialogue in assessment feedback: exploring the use of interactive cover sheets" from //Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education//. This article reports on research done in a first year undergraduate classroom in which students were asked to include a cover sheet with their essay when they submitted it identifying what areas they would like feedback on. The group reiterated many of the concerns raised in the article, such as the fact that only the stronger students would be equipped to identify their own weaknesses and that students often don't recognize what it is that they need help with in their writing. Emmy Misser reported that the Writing Centre sees a lot of this: students come to the centre asking for help with one thing when it is something else that is really the problem. This led into a related discussion of how students aren't always the best judge's of their own abilities. Terry Sturtevant referenced an article on this subject entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". The group was in agreement that dialogue with students about their writing offered great potential for their learning.


 * The issue of curriculum planning was raised when Debbie Chaves shared that a department recently realized that no professors of 200-level courses were asking students to write essays at all; it was assumed that "someone else was doing it." It was acknowledged that some departments value writing more than others and that it can be a challenge to add writing to courses that traditionally don't feature it.


 * Michael Imort shared some information on a peer review assignment he has students currently completing. Through Turnitin, students in his course had anonymous access to all the other papers written for the course. In addition, they were each assigned two papers that they were responsible for providing feedback on. Michael assisted in this process by providing students with 12 questions that they had to respond to in their peer review. He also set a minimum word count (20 words) to ensure that students were providing substantive comments. Michael's peer review guidelines can be found in the Participant Practices section. In order to prepare students for the peer review activity, he does a practice session with students in class in which he walks them through the process. For this assignment, students have to take Michael's feedback as well as the peer-provided feedback to revise their assignment. Boba commented that this staged assignment had several benefits in that it helps to achieve dialogue with and amongst students on their work, it decodes the assignment requirements, and it gives students a greater perspective on their work and the work of others.


 * A lively discussion on recent academic integrity cases that have arisen in the U.S. over the past couple of weeks followed. //The Chronicle of Higher Education// recently published an article entitled The Shadow Scholar about an academic who makes a living writing papers for undergraduate and graduate students. Another case at UCF where students hacked into the question database from which the professor drew his exam questions has also garnered a great deal of attention this week. You can view a disheartening student response to the UCF situation here. What do we do when websites like this (shared by Bob Jefferson) abound? Bob also shared a plagiarism case he came across in which a students' parent (who was helping to "edit" their child's work) had been the one who had actually plagiarized. This led into a discussion about the blurry line between helping a student to improve their work through dialogue and guidance (such as at the Writing Centre) and writing it for them (as private tutors or other for profit academic companies might do). Emmy shared that they no longer refer people to tutors for fear that this line may be crossed. It was acknowledged, however, that our insistency upon students writing their own work is somewhat at odds with real-world or more advanced forms of academic writing which is often collaborative.

This was our final Writing Circle meeting for the term. Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 19th. One of the focus points for this meeting will be a recent //College Composition and Communication// article entitled "Writing in High School / Writing in College: Research Trends and Future Directions."

What a great discussion we had today! We decided to forego an agenda and let member interests guide the flow of the discussion. Some of the ideas, issues, and concerns that came up in our conversation included:
 * November 4, 2010**


 * An editorial in this week's //Cord// by a student reporting on a recent night class in which the projector broke and the students had to rely solely on the professor's oral lecture to take notes. This sparked outrage among numerous students, many of whom left at the break. This led to some discussion in our group about how "wired" everyone (including the university President, who was seen texting at Convocation) has become.


 * Frederique Guinel brought in a few samples of student portfolios (from BI296) from courses taught last year and explained how she has moved this project online as part of the MyLearningSpace e-portfolio pilot this semester. Several members noted how insightful it was to read the student journals that were part of the portfolios as they shed light on who our students are and what is going on in their lives.

> For information about how to post students' papers (and reviews, if desired) anonymously, check out http://www.turnitin.com/static/knowledge_base/view_access.html > >
 * Michael Imort spoke to combining peer and/or self-assessment into assignment design. Michael uses the peer marking feature of turnitin.com and instructs students to submit their written assignments anonymously. Having their work on display for all the class to see seems to be incentive to ensure good work is submitted. Michael does note the importance of spending time in class discussing the principles of peer review.
 * Michael Imort spoke about the value of face-to-face feedback (in addition to written feedback) to ensure students are looking at areas of improvement. Michael also mentioned that he keeps electronic copies of drafts and compares them to the final version of written assignments.Although the process is time intensive, the results are significant. As a result of time constraints, he does not have a course final exam.
 * Whether or not final exams have any learning value. A couple of group members reported on ways that they had successfully removed final exams from their courses in order to focus on assignments that provide more feedback to students. Michael Imort shared a strategy in which he has students write and submit a one page double-spaced reading reflection at the start of each class (see Michael's syllabus here). Students have 20 opportunities to do this but only the best 15 are counted. The reading reflections are worth a total of 50% of the students final mark and marking and providing feedback on these reflections is done by the T.A. These small, low-stakes writing assignments have proven to be a great way to get students to do the readings, attend classes, and practice writing skills. Terry Anderson shared a concept that he had read about in which, instead of final exams, students had to take entrance exams to prove that they were eligible for certain courses. It was acknowledged that the issue of the learning value of final exams is discipline-specific, and that in some departments, is a requirement.


 * Jim Weldon shared a strategy he is using in a graduate course to help students learn different genres of disciplinary writing. For example, students in the course have to produce a publishable paper, as well as play the role of a journal editor / reviewer. The goal for these methods is to teach good writing practice as well as help students to imagine themselves in professional situations.

> > Here is a one page highlight
 * Different opinions were exchanged on the role of the professor in a 21st centry classroom and the "games" one is required to play nowadays in order to facilitate student learning. Is a professor required to entertain their students? The catchy term "edutainment" was put forth by Bob Jefferson to describe what students expect from their professors today. A continuum was posited between being a human being (at one end) and a parent (at the other end). It was suggested that oftentimes, a professor ends up nearing the parenting end of the continuum. The benefits of appearing human to ones students and in building student trust also came out in this conversation.
 * Debbie Chaves shares a link to the American Association of Colleges & Universities report "High-Impact Educational Practices"

In our next meeting on November 24th, it was suggested that we read and discuss the following article: =Generating dialogue in assessment feedback: exploring the use of interactive cover sheets = //Bloxham, S. & Campbell, L. (2010).//

The topic of feedback seemed appropriate given that many CoP members will be busily engaged in student marking!


 * October 13, 2010**

In our second meeting of the Fall 2010 Writing Circle, we talked about:

>
 * the writing ability students have when coming into a course, and what an instructor needs to build upon for students to write in a given style for a given discipline (i.e., how does a geographer write and think, and what does an instructor need to tell/teach/develop in his/her students to achieve this level of writing and thinking?); Emmy Misser referenced an article which spoke to this directly called "Inventing the University" []
 * the importance of situating an assignment such that students know what is appropriate and not appropriate (e.g., in Economics - a data dump is not acceptable.....)
 * different weighting strategies that both motivate students to buy-in and do well on staged writing assignments (e.g., draft 1, draft 2, final draft). Terry Sturtevant, for example, offers his students the chance to increase the weighting of their lab report (worth a minimum of 50%) such that the lab assessments combined could be worth more than 100%. He briefly describes his strategy in this [|document].
 * grading rubrics. More specifically we reviewed a draft rubric that Jim Weldon will be using in one of his graduate seminar courses. The group offered feedback and asked questions to help Jim refine the rubric. Jim offered to share the final rubric, instructions, and how well it worked during the first meeting of the writing group in the Winter 2011 term. Here's Jim's revised version.
 * We also discussed the idea of reviewing a research article on a writing topic of interest. Emmy will bring in samples to consider for our next meeting, while Debbie Chaves will see if the article on writing groups is available electronically in the library.

We didn't get to sharing examples of writing to learn exercises and assignments that can be used in small or large classes, so I'm (Jeanette) adding a link here a link to part 3, [|chapter 17]of //Teaching at Its Best// by Linda Nilson which is available online via TRELLIS or PRIMO for Laurier users. Please note that if you're accessing the chapter in from off campus, you will need to login into the Library site to authentic your IP. We also have this book and the previous edition in the Educational Development library.

Frederique Guinel was not able to join us today to share a sampling of student portfolios due to illness and instead will bring them to the next meeting of the group. Likewise Jeanette McDonald will bring the five critical reading questions she mentioned and a sample article to demo with the group. In the meantime, a list of the questions can be [|found here].
 * Next Meeting**


 * September 23, 2010**

In our first Fall 2010 meeting of the Writing Circle, we debated and discussed the following topics:
 * How do we integrate writing opportunities (graded/ungraded) into large classes (e.g., writing to learning and learning to write)?
 * How can we work more collaboratively with academic support units and the library to facilitate the design and implementation of assignments?
 * What kind of writing activities can we assign to students to get them to, firstly, do the reading and, secondly, read interrogatively?
 * How can we best assess group projects?
 * What kind of assignments would appeal to a cross-disciplinary group of students?
 * What are some strategies to develop student skills and knowledge in support of their performance on a final summative assessment?
 * How do we help students develop a vocabulary for the discipline/field so that they can communicate effectively (also making sure they're using terminology properly)?
 * What kinds of short writing assignments are doable and manageable for smaller and larger class settings. What do good ones look like? And, How can they be used productively and for what purposes?

Several participants shared ideas and learning objects. They are provided below.

>
 * **Margaret Leask**, Religion and Culture, asks her students to select a key quote from their readings which they feel best reflects the readings, and to bring it to class for discussion. The group expanded on this idea suggesting that the students write a paragraph to go with the quote explaining how/why it best depicts the readings.
 * **Frederique Guinel,** Biology and Renee Ward, Medieval Studies each shared a variation on an activity which requires students to prepare index cards on which they individually/collectively develop definitions and examples for key words and topics. This could be done in class or through the MyLearningSpace course site.


 * **Jim Weldon**, English shared how he asks his graduate students to prepare a one-page response to the readings for each class whereby he directs them to write about one thing that resonated for them in the readings. These response papers formed the basis of class discussion (non graded). In an undergraduate setting you may need to assign marks as an incentive (e.g., participation/discussion component)


 * **Frederique Guinnel** additionally shared an assignment in which she has students prepare five PowerPoint slides in response to specific questions on a plant structure. This she felt helped students become more active in their analysis of plant structures while at the same time integrated a short writing component that requires them to be succinct. An outline of the assignment is attached. [[file:Powerpoint Assignment.doc]]
 * **Boba Samuels,** Writing Centre, shared a link to a syllabus research project (with a focus on assignments) she collaboratively conducted at the University of Western Ontario. A link to the article (for Laurier members) is provided here. [] (thank you to Debbie Chaves for creating this permalink)

In our **next meeting on Wednesday October 13th** Frederique agreed to share a sample or two of the student portfolios associated with one of her senior biology courses that she talked about in last year's writing circle. The group as a whole was asked to bring examples of group assessment strategies and short writing activities/assignments that can be integrated into the classroom. In a future session we might consider selecting an article that the group could review and discuss. We did this last year and it worked quite well.