In a blog post from April 6, 2020, Imagining a Resilient Pedagogy, Bill Hart-Davidson, Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University College of Arts and Letters gets at the heart of the challenge that faces us– teachers– as we repurpose our face to face courses for remote instruction.

Teachers, he reminds us, often spend most of their time planning to deliver content. We think about the ideas students need to engage with, what students need to read, and what we will discuss in class.  We choose readings and set up the calendar.  The “important interactions that facilitate learning”– group work, discussion, and so on– are the fabric of everyday life in the course.  When we move our courses online, we must plan carefully for those important interactions that facilitate learning. They include,

all the ways that teachers and students need to communicate with one another, see one another, learn from one another, in a variety of contexts that are important to our learning goals and outcomes. It also includes the way students need to see, shift their perspectives of, manipulate, and practice with the objects that scaffold their learning.

In this quick start guide, we’ll focus on three topics. You’ll notice that the strategies and tools you can use with learners overlap.

• Scaffold writing assignments in your class with discussions, class activities, informal and formal writing assignments
• Make your expectations clear through assignment materials, peer review, rubrics, discussion boards and other activities
• Create a variety of opportunities for students to interact with you and one another

As it happens, principles that inform good practice of online instruction overlap with some research based conclusions about writing instruction in general, particularly in the area of assignment design.

In his book Engaging Ideas: A Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, John Bean describes the outcome of a study conducted by the Council of Writing Program Administrators and the National Survey of Student Engagement. You can find a selection of from Bean’s book that describes the study and its conclusions, along with an explanation of how it can guide teaching here.  For our purposes, we’ll focus on its chief conclusion: “the use of writing to promote deep learning depends less on the amount of writing assigned in a course than on the design of the writing assignments themselves.” The researchers identify three components of an effective writing assignment.

A meaning constructing task. Writing assignments should ask students to think critically to solve problems that matter to the audience– often a disciplinary audience– and the student.

Interactive components. Interactive components include brainstorming activities, writing center visits, and drafting and revising in response to classmate and instructor comments. In general, interactive components, Bean writes, encourage deep learning because they allow students to “situate writing as a process of inquiry and discovery.”  Students learn to see rewriting and revising as a problem of meaning making, rather than solving a few local problems– like correcting grammatical errors.

A clear explanation of writing expectations. Bean observes that it’s common for instructors to assume that students understand expectations that the instructor takes for granted (the expert’s blind spot). Instructors should be careful to offer detailed  information about the assignment to students. That information would include more than page length and number of sources. Instructors should share information about the rhetorical situation (the genre of the assignment and its audience), where the assignment fits into the learning objectives of the course, and how the assignment will be assessed, perhaps through a rubric.

Use these principles to guide how you scaffold your students experience of writing for your class.

It’s important, I think, since your students will be interacting with you and one another in writing quite a bit to view the different tools you use as occasions for writing. These occasions are social activities, with a relationship between writer and audience that has an impact on the form of writing and expression.

If you are clear about the nature of these occasions and can explain what you expect, your students can act with more agency, which makes their writing better. You can choose how– or how not to– assess the work with confidence and speed.

Each occasion varies in degree of formality and spontaneity.

Many students approach “writing” as the text they submit– a transcript of thoughts and arguments.

If you treat each of these opportunities to write a occasions– discussion board, journal entry, email– you will help your students see the many and varied ways that writing, when used purposefully as an activity, can be a means to clarify thought and expression.

That is, you’ll introduce students to writing as you write.

Choosing The Right Tools and Gear: Keep It Simple and Relevant

Choosing the right tools and gear for your class means thinking about what a tool does. You might ask, What does it allow my students and I to do?

I’m highlighting these tools in particular because they can anchor your course’s scaffold and routine.

These tools can range in formality and informality, and can be assessed based on what you expect. In another section, I’ll discuss how you might grade what students write or incorporate what they write into a participation grade.

I’ve chosen these tools for the way the encourage interaction, help students connect course subject matter to their own lives in meaningful ways, and help make expectations class.

Also– I want to keep it simple.

Discussion Boards

“Discussion Boards” may be the most easily understood and widely used tool for online instruction. They are a routine part of face to face and online courses. In a face to face course, students can use discussion boards to prepare for class or keep a conversation going between classes.

Discussion boards are excellent tools for writing instruction, especially if you think of writing as everything that goes into the evolution of a writer’s thinking, and if you incorporate discussions boards as “writing groups,” as opposed to think of discussions boards as a place you only use for dialogue about subject matter.

Of course, there are many tools available online for people to interact with one another: a twitter or instagram feed, a blog post with comments, or Slack are just a few examples.

For our purposes, we’re going to look at discussion boards in a course management system. Each of those tools– a course management discussion board, a twitter feed– structures how people interact, what they can post, how much, and who can post.  For many of us, “Discussion” is the core of a college classroom experience. Dialogue, disagreement, exchange of ideas. As you’re preparing a transition from face to face to online discussion, you might take a moment to think about what you mean by “discussion” in a class.

In online and face to face courses, “discussion boards” are a routine way for the class community to interact with one another asynchronously.  Discussion boards can be a “routine that helps”. You can assign them as a regular part of every week as part of face to face and online classes.

Our question is, “How can discussion boards facilitate writing for my online courses?”  To answer that question, let’s start with something more basic. What kind of tool is a discussion board? Or in other words, what will this tool enable me to and my students to do.

• In a discussion board on a Course Management System, a teacher creates a forum around a prompt. Students reply to the prompt, then to one another according to instructions.
• You can track student participation. Posts can be evaluated and graded. A discussion board can anchor a classroom community.  Students can exchange ideas, offer support for each other’s work, and share experiences.
• Many students find participating on discussion boards liberating. They have time to think before they post. If a student is uneasy talking in large groups, a discussion board is a welcome way to participate.

Discussion boards allow students to write for an authentic audience– each other.

Discussion boards have real audiences– you and the students. But an audience can be featured in a prompt.I want students to learn to pay attention in certain ways or use a set of concepts, I feature close reading in the prompt.

When I think of the sum total of the writing students do through discussion boards, I always tell students to think of the writing they’ve done as draft material for other assignments we do.

I’m particularly fond of discussion board forums where students connect their experience to something we’re working on, or talk about their work as writers in college.

Journals

Course management systems have “journal” functions, but you can use a google site with pages set to announcements and or a google drive folder for each student with a document named “journal”.

Although it’s called “journal,” let’s begin with thinking of it simply as a tool. Students can write extended– not too long, but longer than a discussion post– prose. You– the teacher– can read and even comment– but the space favors, primarily, the student writing to think through a set of ideas and questions.

In some classes, I’ve given students a list of journal questions to answer throughout the term. They’re required to answer specific questions at the beginning and the end of class, but in between, they can choose. In this way, I use the journal to help students connect course subject matter to their lives and evolving ideas. Students must do a certain number and can take weeks off, but can’t double or triple up at the end.

Journals can be used occasionally. Perhaps you want students to practice summary. You might ask them to post summaries weekly.

You might use journals only occasionally. Asks student to evaluate their own performance, to share an idea for a paper, or to summarize comments on a paper. Respond briefly, as the occasion demands.

Email

At the beginning of many of my classes, students are required to read a post on my Course Management System page that discusses how email is used in the class. It has a short reading on email etiquette and describes what I expect at different stages of communication– when, for example, is it okay to address someone by first name, and when it’s appropriate to not to use a salutation at all or to simply write “okay”.

I talk about things like when I will reply, and how, if they don’t reply to an email, there may be consequences.

I also describe to students a particular pet peeve. I don’t want students to write “I’m confused”. Instead, I ask students to do the following: Describe what you understand right now. Describe the obstacle to understanding what to do next. Describe what you’re doing based on you understand right now.

I explain to students that more often than not, students understand exactly, or mostly, what to do– they only need a little encouragement or direction. If they explain what they understand, I get tot he heart of the matter quickly. I also explain that if they develop this approach as part of their academic and professional lives, they’ll likely be seen in a positive way, and develop confidence.

At the end of that first reading is an assignment which asks them to introduce themselves to me in a specific format.

I then use email periodically and sparingly to encourage an informal, testing kind of conversation. For example,

Write me three versions of your thesis statement as you see it currently.

I reply briefly with guidance or questions.

Google Forms

It can be important to find out what your students know about writing for your class, about their prior knowledge of subject matter, and about their use of the technology you expect of them.

Google Forms are not that hard to make. You might create a brief questionnaire for the first day of class, and one when you assign a paper.

The information you get can be very, very helpful.

Introduction

Although you might skip this part of the “Quick Start Guide,” I want to suggest that you skim the material here, though. There are many aspects of the way you have taught that, at this point in your career, that are deeply embedded in your plan for a course and also emerge spontaneously and intuitively during the semester.

A scaffold differs from a schedule in that it is more conceptual. A scaffold for a writing assignment emerges when you give thought to what writers need to know to complete an assignment or fulfill a course objectives.

With respect writing, the scaffold works in two ways.

• If you approach writing for the course as a means for students to learn course concepts and practice skills or habits of mind, your scaffold can include informal and formal assignments (usually short ones), as well as small group collaborations and peer review.
• If you approach writing for the course in terms of the what’s needed to adequately produce formal assignments, your scaffold might include what you see in the above approach, as well as activities, models and reading that target the specific features and requirements of the formal assignment.

Review– Or Clarify– Your Learning Objectives

If you take a few moments to clarify learning objectives and articulate the subject matter and rhetorical knowledge that students need to complete an assignment successfully, you may find it easier to choose the tools you want to use and design the scaffold for the assignment.

Here you’ll find a link to What are Learning Objectives and How Can We Use Them, from the book How Learning Works: 7 Research Based Principles for Smart Teaching. The piece contains sample objectives and a list of verbs categorized according to Bloom’s taxonomy.

I used the list provided at the to prepare the following learning objectives.

Example: Fall 20 Course Objectives for “How to Read an Essay”

In the fall, I’ll teach a course called “How to Read an Essay”. I’m going to use my ongoing planning for this course as an example throughout this guide.

This will be the first time I teach the course. I had ambitious plans for the course based on a studio model– interactive components that facilitate learning are the very definition of a studio. Now, I need to envision an online version of the course.

We will meet synchronously via Zoom. The work students do to prepare for our work on those days are essential to the success of the course. Teaching online changed the way I approached how students prepare for class. I learned to use digital tools like email, google docs, journals and discussions in ways that improved writing and participation. I have taught similar courses asynchronously, and will address the challenge of an asynchronous version of the course below.

In the course, we’ll be reading contemporary essayists who use the form as a means of inquiry into identity and culture. Here, I’m going to focus on the scaffold for critical writing students will do for the course. These objectives are still under construction.

Course Objectives

• Describes the main features of the “essay as inquiry” and defines how specific essays exemplifies a craft concept under review
• Assesses how writers construct an authorial identity, integrate research and testimony, and employ the form of the essay as a means of inquiry into identity and culture
• Formulate a critical map of one or more features of the “essay as inquiry” and assemble a group of essays that exemplify those features

Writing Objectives

• Compose organized, reader aware critical prose in three areas: one page precis that summarize an essay and describe how it exemplifies a feature of the essayist’s craft, a five page “conversation collection” defines key features of a group of essays, a five page “anthology introduction” that recommends a group of essays according to a critical map
• Demonstrate the ability to incorporate feedback from the instructor and colleagues into rewriting
• Offer feedback to colleagues based on critical frameworks developed in class
• Demonstrate the ability to distinguish between observation and inference when writing critically
• Employ course concepts across of a range of writing occasions, both formal and informal, including journals, discussion boards, email, and formal writing assignments

Consider how a specific writing assignment fits into a course

I use these questions to help me figure out what I need to do to prepare students to write a particular assignment, which helps me to define the scaffold.

• Where does this assignment fit into the course? Does it fit into a particular unit or module and at what point is it introduced and written?
• What kind of thinking skills are you trying to develop during that part of the course where this student appears? John Bean describe thinking skills usefully and succinctly:
• Such skills include ways of observing, habits of mind, questioning strategies, use of evidence—whatever thinking process processes are important in your course of discipline. To put it another way, what ways of thinking characterize a historian, an accountant, a chemist, a nurse, and so forth
• What kind of problems will individual students have to solve to complete the assignment?
• What kinds of skills and resources will they need to complete the assignment?
• What will the completed paper tell you about student learning? Think in terms of course content, thinking skills, and the rhetorical demands of the assignment.  Consider things such as how well they use evidence or develop arguments for your field. Leave aside issues like sentence level errors or paragraph organization.

Example: Fall 20 Course Objectives for “How to Read an Essay”

I will be asking students to compose two critical pieces for the course.

Conversation Collection

One will be a “Conversation Collection”– a kind of bibliography essay where the focus is not on evaluation. Students apply course concepts by choosing a group of essays. They explain how this group fits together and how, in key ways, they diverge. The audience will be for a readership interested in choosing essays to read– a kind of omnibus review.

Anthology Introduction

Students will appraise a group of essays and select them for inclusion in an anthology. They’ll have to explain the concept of their anthology and define how each essay fits into the anthology, so they can justify the inclusion of the essays in the anthology in terms of the impact of these essays on a reading audience and in terms of how the essays exemplify a particular approach to the craft.

To write these essays successfully, students will have to need to do the following:

• Describe key critical concepts from the course
• Formulate a critical problem
• Summarize the key features of an essay
• Compare and contrast the way particular essays address a critical issue
• Classify essays according to a craft feature
• Make concrete observations (rather than inferences) about what we read
• Define a critical conversation
• Design a framework for including– or excluding– certain essays and writers

A Sketch for the Scaffold

When I begin planning a course, I start with a simple list of days in a table. Writing evolves over time, along with student understanding. I want students to practice some features of the craft, I want them to apply course concepts in open ended informal ways, and I want them to investigate the assignment itself as a piece of writing that they are going to produce for me.

Students will also be doing a major semester long project. They’ll create their own “essays of inquiry”. We will decide on a general topic as a class, divide into editorial groups, develop stories, pitch and propose.

To write those essays successfully, they’ll need to investigate the craft of the essay thoroughly. The students’ investigation of the craft is the subject of the scaffold below.

To meet the learning objectives and produce the critical writing I’ve outlined above, students will do the following:

• Weekly Discussion Boards Participate in weekly discussion boards where they prepare for class by answering a critical question and responding to one another. Post ideas for their critical essays on discussion boards with their classmates will respond to
• Weekly Journal Entries Students will post weekly journal entries that summarize the essay we are reading for the week. When they receive my feedback on their essays, they will be required to summarize in their journals within a week
• Bi Weekly Rhetorical Precis Students will submit a one page precis on an essay of their choice every two weeks
• Occasional Email Students will send me a (brief) email which I will respond to (briefly) that explains their approach to the essay they intend to submit
• Bi Weekly Writing Groups Students will be organized into writing groups to brainstorm ideas and share drafts in development

Map the Scaffold onto the Calendar

I’ve decided that the critical essays will be due at the beginning of the Week 7 and Week 11 of the class. By the seventh week, they will have read a variety of essays, practiced key craft skills, and had feedback from myself and their classmates. The shorter period of time between Week 7 and 11 accounts assumes encourages students to think of the second piece as an extension of the first, with a different “look” at the material.

Suppose you work backward from the day an assignment is submitted. You know that by that date, students will have had to demonstrate that they understand the key goals of the assignment. Those goals will fall into two categories, subject matter goals and rhetorical goals. They must also show– if revision is part of your course– that they can incorporate your comments into the paper.

You’ve asked yourself, What do students need to know– about the subject, about writing– to write this?

You also ask yourself, What do they need to practice?

Suppose then that you consider the very first day of the assignment.

Effective writing assignments have the following components

• Writing assignments should be meaning making activities
• Expectations — rhetorical and subject matter– are clear
• Interactive components should be part of the the assignment process

You’ve decided to incorporate some simple occasions for writing, and activities built around three principles of effective writing assignments which will help students connect what they are writing to your course’s goals, to clarify expectations, and to interact with you and each other to sharpen their understanding of the assignment and develop ideas.

Anchor your course around a routine of discussion boards, short writing, peer activities, and emails.

You may use these activities as part of the course in general, but this routine can incorporate an experience that helps your students write better for you class.

Imagine the a routine that scaffolds an assignment that incorporates any of the following tools: journals, discussion boards, brief emails, peer activity. Imagine that you have four goals for these activities: to make assignment goals clear, to help students interact with one another for the purposes of developing their ideas, to practice craft components, and to get quick feedback from you to see if they are on the right track before week 8.

Then, imagine one thing you might do between week 8, when the assignment is first submitted, and week fifteen, when the revision is submitted, to help students revise the paper effectively.

1. Introduce the Assignment

8 Submit the draft

15 Submit the Revised Draft

Overview

In the section, Design the Scaffold, I used my own, in process course, as an example, “How to Read an Essay”.

I will be asking students to compose two critical pieces for the course.

• Conversation Collection
• Anthology Introduction

To write these essays successfully, students will have to need to do the following:

• Describe key critical concepts from the course
• Formulate a critical problem
• Summarize the key features of an essay
• Compare and contrast the way particular essays address a critical issue
• Classify essays according to a craft feature
• Make concrete observations (rather than inferences) about what we read
• Define a critical conversation
• Design a framework for including– or excluding– certain essays and writers

I anchor the course with the following tools that are used routinely as part of the course.

• Discussion Boards
• Journal Entries
• One page formal writing assignments submitted bi-weekly
• Peer activities (via zoom and discussion board groups)
• Email proposals and check ins

Below is a sketch for a scaffolded writing assignment, based on a routine that students will follow for course assignments throughout the term.

Week Two

Tuesday  Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Thursday Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week Reply

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Week THree

Tuesday  Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week

         Journal: Summary and Comment

         Introduce Critical Paper Assignment Sheet and Rubric

Thursday Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week Reply

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Friday   Precis

Week Four

Tuesday  Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Thursday Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week Reply

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Week Five

Tuesday  Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week

         Journal: Summary and Comment

         Email: Brief email with ideas for critical paper

Thursday Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week Reply

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Friday   Precis

Week Six

Tuesday  Discussion Board Topic: Critical Paper Ideas

         Journal: Summary and Comment

         Peer Review: Statement of Scope       

Thursday Discussion Board Topic: Reading for the Week Reply

         Journal: Summary and Comment

Week Seven

Tuesday. Due: Critical Essay One

Introduction

Remember that you won’t be seeing students in class as you were in the past, even if you do meet students synchronously via zoom.

It is important to make your expectations for writing clear to your students whether you are assigning informal or formal writing, and whether those expectations concern the conceptual or rhetorical features of the assignment, how the assignment will be assessed or the due dates and page length.

Here are some suggestions for making your expectations clear to your students.

Assignment Sheet, Rubric, Model, Resources

When you are creating assignment material, consider how your assignment sheet introduces two aspects of your assignment, subject matter knowledge (the disciplinary concepts, definitions, references to readings, etc) and rhetorical knowledge (the genre, audience, and formal requirements of the assignment).

Consider your assignment sheet as a package of information, which includes the rubric that you’ll use to assess writing, a model assignment if one is available, and links to resource that might helps students, such as selections from guides to writing for you discipline, or even “How To” and “Watch Out For” sheets that you create.

Review The Assignment On The Day You Assign It

Treat reviewing the assignment as a writerly activity. When you introduce a writing assignment, discuss it’s importance with your students. Explain how it fits into course objectives.

Use a discussion board or a small group session in class where you ask students to respond to the following:

• What are your questions and concerns?
• How would you approach the assignment if you needed to propose your topic tomorrow?
• What do you think you need to know to do well?

If you are meeting in class, you could ask students to read through the assignment aloud in groups and answer these questions together.

Discuss how the assignment fits into your course and discipline

Help students understand how the assignment fits into the overall theme or project of the course. Connect the assignment to the work they have done and will be doing.

Treat the Calendar for the Assignment as a Production Process

When you introduce the assignment, review the calendar as you would any writing process. Look ahead to the due date. Describe possible benchmarks. Share effective strategies for producing the assignment. Check in from time to time. Start a class by saying “Your major essay is due in two weeks. You should be…

Create Discussion Boards or Small Group Activities Along The Way To Connect Writing and Course Concepts

Rather than treat writing as a separate narrative that runs alongside the work of reading, lecture or discussion, treat writing as integral to learning in the course. Integrate the goals of your writing assignment into the course by asking students, periodically, to talk about how they might use what they are learning as part of the writing they will be doing.

Hold Planning or Accountability Sessions in Class or Via Discussion

Take time, via a discussion board or in class, to help students prepare. Just as you scheduled time to discuss introduce an assignment, schedule a check in. Shortly before the assignment is due, ask students to review what they’ve done. Create a structured activity that helps them plan or anticipate what they might need to do.

Ask Students to Email an Idea

Ask your students to email you– a brief email– with an idea for an assignment, or a possible thesis statement. Respond briefly with some guidance, reframing, or suggestions for a follow up, such as a visit to office hours or the writing center.

Create a Checklist

Create a submissions checklist with key features of the assignment and submission instructions.

Assignment Reflections

When students submit writing, ask them write a paragraph that describes how their piece responds to the assignment, what challenges they faced, and how they might improve the assignment, or what questions they have. If students are to revise an assignment, ask them to submit a summary of your comments and how they responded to those comments when they resubmit the paper.

Whole Class Revision Follow Up

After you’ve read a stack of student assignments, prepare a one page sheet that identifies some common challenges, errors, or stumbling blocks in the papers. This might even make your grading shorter. Rather than commenting on these paper by paper, you might indicated that you’ll be addressing certain things to the whole class. Distribute the page and discuss what you saw in the papers. You might do this in class or via a discussion board where students share what they see in their own papers and what they might do in revision.

In the video above, Dr. Joelle Mann offers an overview of the role peer review plays for writers in her course.

In this video, Dr. Mann describes the importance of focusing students attention on global issues– the argument of a piece, organization and the use of evidence, rather than on editing and proofreading.

Here, Dr. Mann describes how she structures peer review sessions and guides students. She provides students with a questions keyed to the  assignment students review. She describes how she divides peer review between two course days in online courses so that students have time to respond to the questions, then, on a second day, share their responses.

Dr. Mann urges teachers to use peer review in many and varied ways throughout the writing process, rather than as a means to review a draft prior to submission.

Dr. Mann describes how rubrics help students understand expectations for assignments. Rubrics are both assessment and teaching tools.

In this video, Dr. Mann describes the importance of introducing a rubric to students as part of the course.

Dr. Mann describes how she uses an analytical rubric to respond to student writing.

Dr. Mann describes how she uses a holistic rubrics to assess discussion boards.

The Resources folder is currently under construction.

This page will be update with bibliography entries.

At this link, though, you’ll find a number of resources on the assignment design, creating rubrics, and teaching online.

Resources for Teaching Writing