Chris M. AnsonNorth Carolina State University

Learner-Centered Teaching:Helping Students to Succeed, Part 2

Qatar UniversityMay 2, 2007

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Sharing Responses

• Please share your responses to the case assignment from yesterday at your tables.

• Be ready to share some ideas with the larger group when we reconvene.

Supporting Learning in Larger Projects

• Informal summaries• In-class oral progress reports

and • Metacommentaries and reflection• “Microthemes” and short, low-

stakes papers• Planning and invention exercises• Peer response sessions• Self-assessments• Sharing and discussing

evaluation criteria or standards

SUPPORT

A traditional model of writing

assignments

Teache r gives assi gnmen t

Studen t w orks alone

Studen t turns i n best effo rt(usually a f irst draft)

Teache r reads/views (edits )the result

Studen t is s uppo sed tolearn by tri al and e rror

But the nex t assi gnmen t isdifferent . . . .

A goal-based model of writing that includes response and revision

Your Instructional Goals

Your Assignment Design

Students' First A ttempts

Revision Confer ence or Focus

Students' Revisio ns

Final Draft

Your Resp onses/ Suggestions

High Potential for Leaning

Some Potential for Learning

Places for Support

drafting, rethinking, and revising

Sta

rt o

f as

sign

men

t

most common

prelim. exploration & brainstorming

topic selection

first attempt

first full draft

second & nth drafts“rewrite”

Sub

mis

sion

for

fin

al e

valu

atio

n

practicing skills & strategies

Your Turn . . . .

• Someone at your table please volunteer to discuss your assignment

• Focus on the nature of the support that you provide for learning from the assignment

• How can you maximize learning through activities that students engage in before the first draft and between the first and final draft?

Evaluation for Support?

Develop Goals for Student Learning

Create Supporting Activities for Student

Learning

Evaluate Learning

DesignAssignments

Low-stakes/informal

High stakes/formal

Operative Questions

What new knowledge, skills, and processes do you want students to be able to know or use?

What activities support the development of the assignment?

How do you judge whether the learning goals are reflected in students’ products?

What aspects of your assignment help to accomplish those goals?

Learning Goals

Assignment Design

Supporting Activities

Assessment

Create a Scoring Guide (“Rubric”)

Categorical • Based on categories that

match the goals or characteristics of performances

• Assumes that we can judge the quality of these features separately

• Assigns separate scores to each category

Descriptive • Based on clusters of

characteristics that generalize levels of performance

• Assumes it is hard to separate features from each other

• Assigns scores based on “impressions” of the whole

• Rubrics are “shorthand” methods for categorizing desired features of responses

• Every category has more specific, underlying features

• If students don’t understand a category, they can’t use it productively

• Supporting the use of assessment rubrics for students means helping them to internalize the underlying features

What’s “Behind” a Rubric?

[ ] reflects thoughtful response/critical analysis

What is

this?

Essential: Define Criteria

• What does it mean to “analyze”?• What’s “good scientific observation?”• What’s “style appropriate to the occasion or

audience?”• What characterizes “strong use of secondary

source material?• What’s “evidence that you studied the material in

the manual”?

How Far to Go?

• Based on the assignment and your comfort level, decide how specific you want your criteria to be in your scoring guide

• Consider “front-loading” the specific features into your teaching instead (help students to internalize criteria by working with them in class)

Use Evaluation for Support

• Evaluation criteria are often hidden from view

• If they are available, they are often generalized across various assignments

• How can we help learners to internalize standards for success? How can we make evaluation productive?

Explain and Work With Categories

Thoughtful response/critical analysis:

The thoughtful response shows that you have read the material thoroughly and reflected on it fully. It demonstrates a careful and thorough application of the question to the material at hand. It may offer some interesting and creative insights that are supported by material in the text. The response will be generally well written and structured, with an allowable informality considering the nature of the task, and there will be few errors that distract or get in the way of meaning.

Making Criteria Formative

• Create evaluative criteria with direct reference to your assignment goals.

• Make the criteria available to students in advance of their beginning the assignment.

• Use the criteria:• in the evaluation of sample drafts• In any supporting activities that guide students’ work• in the response questions you give students• In the collaborative formulation of criteria • In the annotated models you provide on paper or electronically

Suggestions: Assessment

• Always craft criteria from your goals.• Avoid collecting and grading first drafts: use revision

and peer review to improve writing before you see it.• Match your evaluation methods to the formality of

your assignment.• Give students your criteria in advance, or create them

as a class. Make criteria productive.

Responding to Writing

Criterion-based responseCriterion-based response

• What could the writer do to improve the paper’s organization or structure?

• What could the writer do to make his/her transitions smoother?

Responding to Writing

Reader-based responseReader-based response

• List three words that best capture the image the writer conveys of him/herself in the paper.

• As a reader, were you persuaded by the argument in the paper? What was persuasive and why?

Responding to Writing

Descriptive promptsDescriptive prompts

• Summarize, in your own words, the main point or idea in the writer’s paper.

• Describe what you think are the most convincing information the writer used to support or illustrate that point.

Note the difference

“Move the third paragraph to the front.”

“There’s a dangling modifier in line 12.”

“Get rid of the clinical style.”

“Your style is too bureaucratic for a story.”

“I was sort of confused by this section.”

“Did you mean to sound so passionate?”

“I felt distanced by the language.”

“I couldn’t see you anywhere in here.”

Focus on text

Focus on reader’s experi-ence

Other Strategies

Do/Say Focus

The teacher (or peer responder) works through a paper paragraph by paragraph. For each, the reader writes what the paragraph says and what the paragraph does: “This paragraph says that people are silly to believe in ancient superstitions. It repeats the point made in paragraph #3.

Other Strategies

“Heard/Noticed/Wondered” Focus• I heard . . . Summarize the writing. What’s the

main idea? What is communicated?• I noticed. . . Describe what stood out. What

attracted your attention? What will you remember?

• I wondered… Describe gaps, puzzles, other information you wanted, confusions, things that disturbed you.

ExampleDear Karina, When reading your essay, I heard that, although you never met your grandfather, you are interested in who he was and what his life was like. He moved to the Dominican Republic from China, got married and had ten children. He opened a successful restaurant, but when the tourists no longer passed by his town, the restaurant went bankrupt. I noticed you showing the relationship between your grandfather's life in China and his life in the Dominican Republic. I also noticed how well you described the sacrifices he made by moving. For example, you went into detail about what his father had been, and about the family he left behind. I noticed that you began the story by telling us why it was important to you, and by making us curious about your grandfather.

ExampleFinally, I wondered about the Chinese family he left behind. Did he ever contact them again? Did he miss them? I wondered if you could have told us more about that. Also, why did your grandfather just stay at home after his restaurant went bankrupt. I wondered how he was able to support himself, and why he didn't try to open another restaurant. What was your father's relationship to your grandfather? Does your father have the same curiosity about his Chinese heritage that you do?Thanks for letting me read your story.Your friend,Bob (Peer Reviewer)

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/example1.html

Response and Students’ Models

TEACHER IN CONTROL

• Instructional purposes dominate

• Defers to teacher's authority

• Purpose is to do it correctly • Sees writing as "right or

wrong"--purpose is follow formulas and directives

• Is apprehensive of uncertainty; wants answers, not questions

STUDENT IN CONTROL

• Imagined or real rhetorical purposes dominate

• Finds authority in own ability to make decisions & in resources

• Sees writing as decision-making; purpose is to do it effectively by reflecting on decisions & making use of resources

• Embraces uncertainty as part of writing; asks questions of self, others

Response and Students’ Models

TEACHER IN CONTROL

• Finds little inherent purpose in writing

• Discussion of text focuses on text itself, in "past tense," as artifact

• Revises little

STUDENT IN CONTROL

• Finds much intrinsic worth writing--more conscious of being “in” the writing, even if it is practice-oriented rather than learning

• Discussion of text moves among textual, ideational, & interpersonal concerns; is both retrospective and projective; text is fluid

• Revises much

Modes and Methods

• Traditional marginal and/or end commentary• “Insert comments” on electronic texts• “Track changes” on electronic texts• Video (PIP) responses (e.g., iSight)• Digitally taped responses; podcasting; YackPack• Emailed responses• Personal Web site responses• Split screen responses

But What About Error?

The Place of Error in Assessment

• If you work from goals to assessment, concern about error can’t be disconnected from other learning goals or outcomes. It needs to be in your goals, in your assignment design, and in your supporting work.

• You can choose to emphasize error a lot, a little, or not at all, depending on your learning goals.

Some Suggestions

• Error has its place and limits; it’s not up front in the writing process.

• There are different kinds of errors with different causes: simple slips, oral interference, dialect sources, ESL sources, conceptual sources. Diagnose and respond accordingly.

• Start with meaning/effect: it makes more sense than teaching isolated rules.

• Recommend a handbook; use support services.

Some Suggestions

• Put responsibility back on students whenever possible, but offer guidance.

• Make simple errors simple. • Go sparingly. It’s easy to reach overload.• Balance response to the whole group with

response tailored to individual students.• Encourage students to create a personal log of

errors, written in their own terms with examples from their writing.

Some Suggestions

• First drafts will have more errors than revised drafts. Support revision and editing.

• Limit students’ focus to a few manageable problems in each paper.

• Balance your concerns about error with your major learning goals--don’t let error dominate your criteria (e.g., “three grammatical errors and you fail”), but in larger projects, do make error count in your assessment.

Questions and Discussion