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Writing to Learn

Writing to Learn: Helping Students by Assigning (but not Grading) Writing

26 or 27 January 2006            

In the advertisement for this session, I suggested that having students do more writing was good for two reasons – it increases understanding, AND it raises the students’ sense of engagement in the class.

Let me start with the latter.  Richard Light, in his in depth survey of Harvard students, concluded that:  (ov)

“The relationship between the amount of writing for a course and students’ level of engagement – whether engagement is measured by time spent on the course, or the intellectual challenge it presents, or students’ level of interest in it – is stronger than the relationship between students’ engagement and any other course characteristic.” (55)

Now, Light was talking about all kinds of writing – graded and non-graded – but his interviews make it clear that any kind of writing increased the sense of student engagement with the material.

So, what about my other claim -- writing to increase understanding?  Marilla Svinicki, who is a guru in the teaching and learning field, talks about the need to overcome the “illusion of comprehension.”  She suggests that many students confuse familiarity with understanding.  They highlight and re-read the text or make flash cards and conclude that if they recognize the information they must know it.  That works fine if we ask them to regurgitate the same material in the same way, but they are lost if we ask them to apply the principles they have studied.  Similarly, they listen to our explanations of things – and if we are good – they think they understand because we have made it seem coherent.  The problem comes when they have to actually do what we have explained.

The point then, is that we need to find ways to help our students own the knowledge.   And one essential step in that process is to help them learn in their words rather than memorizing ours. 

Writing can do that.

If we are going to get there, however, one key step is to break out of what of Peter Elbow terms the fallacy of seeing writing as a two step process where you first think through what you want to say, and then put it into words that someone else reads and understands.

Elbow’s vision calls for lots of free writing – just getting thoughts/ideas down on paper so we can work with them.  In other words, don’t worry about how to begin, finding the right word, grammar, or any of the other premature mental editing that we do.  He argues that if we do this, we can gain a much greater understanding of whatever it is we are thinking about – that the writing helps create an organic process of understanding.

Let me amplify Elbow’s ideas with this schematic (OV).

Stages/Purposes of Writing

As Elbow suggests, we usually think about writing as a way to communicate with someone else.  We put our conclusions into words so someone else can see what we think.  As you can see in this schematic, that ignores all sorts of intermediary – and very useful – forms of writing, that can help us learn.

Stages or purposes of writing

  1. Writing to (Re)Collect information
    1. aids in preparation
    2. lays ground work for critical thinking
  2. Writing to Explore Information
    1. enables student to form ideas
    2. to name and re-name ideas
    3. invites speculation
    4. to identify confusions/uncertainties/areas for further study
     Writing to Analyze information
    1. identify sub-topics
    2. form categories for better understanding
    3. form hypotheses
  3. Writing to Synthesize information
    1. shape developing ideas into logical claims, evidence, arguments
  4.  Writing to Communicate Information
    1. compose thoughts and knowledge in appropriate genres (i.e. audience, purpose)

What we usually do is ask students to do step 5 without ever suggesting to them that the first four steps are necessary and useful.  What I want to lead you through today are a number of ways of getting students to do some of those earlier stages of writing as part of the learning process.  If that leads to better papers at step 5, then wonderful, but that isn’t my focus.

Ok, how can we encourage writing to learn?

One way, obviously, is simply to talk about the different ways we can use writing to learn, and try to get them to do them on their own.  Encourage them to use writing to sketch out initial understandings, test them, and refine them.  Talk about what we do – how we evolve things that we publish.  Help them see that the final product comes from an organic process of testing and refining ideas on paper.

Ok, I know I am hopelessly naïve, but I do think that if we talked more about this we might reach some of the more motivated ones.

Let me, however, move on to some more coercive ways to get our students to use writing to learn.

In Class

Minute papers at the end of class
I imagine that many of you have heard of minute papers.  There are lots of variations, but typically you ask students at the end of the hour to write for two-three minutes on some question, collect the results, and see what you find out. 

Minute papers are typically done anonymously and not graded.  People have found that students are usually willing to put in good effort without the grade because they see them as beneficial.  We can cement that if we make it clear that their responses affect what we do.  Of course, if you want to up the ante a little, you can have them put their names on the responses and provide some minor grade or comments.

The classic minute paper question is “summarize the main point of class.”  Asking this has at least three benefits.  First, research shows even this little bit of writing increases retention.  Second, it encourages students to focus on the big picture, rather than obsessing about some minor point.  Third, it can give you a very clear picture of whether or not you communicated what you really wanted them to get.

Another very common end of class minute paper question is “what is the muddiest point?”  What part of what we talked about today is still unclear.   This question pushes students to think about what they didn’t get, and is a great way for us to find out what didn’t work.  A very quick flip through the responses can tell you if you need to start the next class with the review of a particular concept.

If you are willing to give up a little more class time and do a little more work, another alternative is to ask for a more substantial summary of what was covered.  In this version, you need to give them at least 5-6 minutes.  Since you are asking for more, it makes sense with this version to collect and grade them in some minimal way.  I’d use a check, check plus, check minus format and just count them as part of the discussion grade.

Naturally, you can also use minute paper variations at times other than the end of class.

Middle of class
Again, two-three minutes.

Or, you could ask if so and so is true, and x happened, what would you conclude?   Another variant would be to use student work (past or made up) as a prompt.  Put up a brief student response to some issue/question you have been working on.  Ask the class to write for a couple of minutes on where statement is correct/convincing and where it isn’t.

In short, anything that forces them to take something they have learned and apply it is great.  In the process of writing, they are sorting out ideas, working toward understanding and really coming to own the information.

You can integrate each of these writing exercises into the larger flow of the class by – after they have written – getting a few to read their responses out loud, and then use that as a springboard for discussion and/or lecture. 

If you want variety, have them write, then discuss in pairs or in small groups. From my perspective, things like this don’t even need to be collected, much less graded. The threat of being called on will be sufficient to get them to do it – along with the reward of class participation.  So we get more student engagement, better learning, and we don’t have to do any grading.  The only cost is the lecture/coverage time we give up – but in my book that is more than offset by the learning that happens and my opportunity to find out what they know.  If they’ve got it, I can forget about “covering” that point.

Beginning of Class
Naturally, we can also use these techniques at the beginning of class.

If you want to pick up on prior class (and push them to review) then ask:

If you just want them to focus what they learned preparing for this class, ask:

If you want to check on whether they prepared/understood, ask:

If you want to use this writing as segue into small group discussion, have them:

For Math/Natural Science:

With any of these, the students write first, and then you have your choice of how to proceed.  Some days you can just call on a few to read out loud and use that to get a large group conversation going.  Other times you can send them off to small groups to discuss their written statements and come up with something more refined that you can use for a large group discussion.

I really like using these kind of beginning of class questions because I want to send a message about student responsibility for coming to class prepared.  If they expect to write, they will think more.  Plus, the fact of writing – and then possibly discussing in small groups – means that they struggle with the ideas on their own before I get involved.  That helps learning.

When I use these beginning of class exercises, I collect them and grade them on a minimal basis because I want to send the message about valuing preparation.

Out of Class

Journals
Another very popular way to encourage students to use writing to learn is through journals.    The idea here is to get them to write about what they are reading/learning.  Get them to show a growth of understanding, a gradual ability to make connections.

You can use a general “react to what you read/learned” assignment, or can be much more specific.  For example, explain a scientific process or a sociological concept that you read about in your own words.  Or, how is this new idea connected to something learned earlier?

Most of the literature suggests several guidelines on doing journals.

Now, checking on their journal entries is going to mean more work for us, but let me offer a couple of relatively low energy options.

One suggestion is to collect and read the journal rarely, but force them to keep up their writing by calling on two or three people randomly at the beginning of each class.  Ask them to read from their entry for the day and start class from there.  (Assumes that you have fairly focused assignments that are keyed to subject for the day.)

A second suggestion is to randomly collect of a few journals every day.  That will push everyone to keep up, while you only look at a few.

Whether you collect only a few or all of them periodically, most people who use this technique make the following suggestions on grading.

o        Respond to only selected entries.
o        Focus on ideas, not grammar and clarity of writing
o        Emphasize positive responses.
o        Grade them on whether or not they did the entries – not quality

If you want to escalate – do more work – here are a couple more ideas.  One is to spend some class time making what you expect in the journals explicit.  Show them how to paraphrase material from text or put up examples of good critical reflection.

Neila Seshachari goes further in what she calls “instructor mediated journals.”   Her mediation takes the form of sharing examples of good practice in class during the first couple of weeks.  She then begins to make comments in individual journals as she reads them that encourage critical thinking.  At the same time, she continues to share examples of good practice.  Beginning about week 6 she escalates by expanding her comments to clarity of writing as well as well as critical thinking – and she encourages those who need help to visit the Writing Center.

Seshachari says she reads the journals very quickly -- about one typed page per minute, and puts only positive comments on them.  She says she “makes negative comments disguised as positive ones to the whole class – i.e., most of you are writing critically…only a couple of you are still…”  Then explain ways of overcoming the problems.

Other Ways of Keeping the Workload Manageable While Writing to Learn

Naturally, we can encourage students to use writing to learn with any out of class writing assignment, but let me stay focused on relatively low cost ways of doing this.

One is requiring more short, formal writing – as opposed to fewer big papers.  Like lots of people, I use short papers.  About every third class I ask them to write 1-2 pages on whatever the central idea is for class that day.  Works easily in the humanities and social sciences, but I can imagine in the natural sciences doing something like asking them to apply a concept to a particular problem – or having them explain a process in their own words. 

I insist that these be done as formal essays because I think that pushes the though clarification process, but I grade them in a pretty informal way with just a check, check plus, or check minus and add the results to the discussion grade.  I admit, early in the semester I spend more time on them because I am trying to set expectations in terms of writing, but that’s my problem.  Later, once they have gotten the hang of it, I can do 35 of these in 25 minutes so it isn’t too bad.

Another way of having students write while keeping our workload down is to have them all do whatever short writing assignment we want, but collect and grade only a random sample each time.  I’ve never tried this, but I know that Jim Schempf uses it and thinks it works well. 

A closely related alternative is group projects.  Team written papers seem especially appropriate in those fields where our students are going to be asked to work collaboratively when they get into the real world.  I wouldn’t want to do this all the time, but if you have one or two group papers in a class each semester instead of individual ones, you obviously would cut your grading significantly and you would force your students to become much better peer critics of their collective work.   Obviously, however, a big key to having this work is building in structures for accountability.

My other on-going comment on this – some would say never-ending rant – is that we have to remember that we are not editors.  Our job is NOT to prepare a student essay for publication, but to help them grow.  That means limiting our comments to the two or three things that would make the most improvement in the paper.

Finally, we can re-enforce the idea of writing to learn with our students in two other ways.  First, allow them to do re-writes.  I do this only on major essays – grade, then if they respond in very substantial way to my comments, can earn as much as one full grade higher.  Doesn’t take too much time if you insist on getting the original along with the revised version. 

The other way of re-enforcing writing to learn requires even less effort.  That is connecting assignments.  What I mean by that is having the various small, ungraded or minimally graded written work feed into a larger paper.  For example, have the students write individual reflection papers that prepare them to write a larger unit paper.  Diane says this has worked really well for her, especially when dealing with tough ideas in senior seminar.   Or, you could ask them to do some individual writing to clarify their thoughts, and then ask them to discuss in small groups and come up with a group outline.  Then, you could have a graded individual assignment that worked off the same basic question.  I imagine that a lot of us do this, but if you are like me, you don’t do it consistently or even real intentionally.  I’ll bet that if we did this more carefully – and if we were explicit about what we were doing and why – some of our students would get the idea that writing is a way to clarify their ideas prior to communicating them.        

Key Sources:

Wendy Bishop and Toby Fulwiler, “The Braiding of Classroom Voices: Learning to Write by Learning to Learn,” New Paradigms for College Teaching (1997)
Peter Elbow, Writing without Teachers (1973)
Richard Light, Making the Most of College (2001)
Ciara O’Farrell, “The Write Approach: Integrating Writing Activities Into Your Teaching,” in Emerging Issues in the Practice of University Learning and Teaching (2005)
Neila Seshachari, “Instructor Mediated Journals,” College Teaching vol 42 #1
Marilla Svinicki, Learning and Motivation in the Post-Secondary Classroom  (2004)

           

 



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