How Email Can Change the Way Professors Teach (2011)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Whenever a paper was assigned, I always started it that same day, finished later in the week, and then sent it to the professor for their thoughts.
I’d address the professors concerns, follow up on their suggestions and-surprise!-did well.
Everyone else seemed to wait until the last minute, stress out, spend the same amount of time as me writing, just to end up with a worse grade and feedback too late to be useful.
This wasn't limited to my English/Rhetoric courses- I've come to the conclusion that none of my professors actually slept given how quickly and frequently they'd respond to e-mails.
As a hiring manager who assigns a case study as a core component of the interview process, I can tell you that how an interviewee engages during the case study process predicts about 80% of the quality of the case study -- ie. do they ask clarifying questions about the prompt, do they ask about the expected format/level of effort, do they submit something for feedback before coming in, etc.
If I could have done this, I probably would have. But no one told me of the possibility. I'm sure many other students were even less aware than I was.
For many this changes for the better over time, but then I've met plenty of college students (and coworkers) who were still stuck in that mindset.
Personally, I was lucky to only have have missed most of primary, middle- and high school (home-schooled), so I didn't have a very established or negative view of what 'studying' was like. But even for me it took about a year to realize that I was paying the teachers (via loan), so I better make sure to make use of them, that teachers are just people and most of them love it when you show initiative and inquisitiveness, and so on.
Consider the same workflow for a test. Would you expect to be able to give it to the professor beforehand so they can let you know which answers are wrong and then you have an opportunity to correct them before it gets graded?
Likewise for a several courses, in which short papers were handed in for professor comments, and the opportunity for revision the following week.
As a teacher, I would not respond to the early submission of an assignment like that. If you had specific questions or clarifications, I would be willing to answer. However I would not give you "multiple bites at the apple", so to speak, in terms of grading. It's simply not fair to the rest of the class.
That having been said, being in CS, I didn't tend to give assignments like that. I would give a programming assignment, start the automated tester, and everybody had 2 weeks to get the tester to give them a green light. During that 2 weeks, I would freely answer questions, and, generally, I would go over publicly during the beginning of the next class and questions asked privately that were particularly insightful or useful. That way everybody benefits from all of the questions.
I have two primary concerns when teaching a class: 1) getting the information across and 2) treating everybody in the class fairly. Everything else flows from that.
Isn't it? If everyone has equal opportunity, how is it unfair if some don't take advantage of that opportunity? I can see a distinction with, say, paid outside tutors, as not everyone can afford to use their services.
Rather than unfair, I say that it detracts from one of the (implicit, and not always acknowledged) goals of schools: certification.
Teaching clearly benefits from the rapid feedback. Certification, on the other hand, is harmed by the ability to redo, because it also becomes a measurement of diligence and conscientiousness as well as skill. Even so, the consumers of grades (employers and graduate programs) are looking for diligence and conscientiousness, perhaps even more so than demonstrated skill.
I tell the class this on the first day, and repeat. And it still surprises me how many students who can benefit from more feedback nevertheless start last minute. Some have legitimate reasons, sometimes: upcoming deadlines, juggling work schedule, other classes that demand more attention. Still, suprrisingly few students seek feedback or start early enough to benefit from it, even if they aren't getting the grade they want.
Drawback is that it increases work load for the teaching staff.
Also, they complain when you don't explicitly make their work perfect. For example, highlighting an incorrect term in a equation leads to complaints that you didn't write the correct term.
A buddy wrote his MA in Education thesis about how, in short, technology assistance by way of spell check, auto correct, and social casual conversation degrading into emojis that long-form thinking and writing are certainly suspect for an incoming college generation. Attention span, composition, and rote discipline are assumed to be low for incoming Freshmen as a hypothesis (untested, though a consistent complaint it seems both by students and faculty, re: poor writing skills).
His methodology to improve was centered around slowing down the process, forcing attention to detail by using antiquated tools - difficult to use ones as well. A quill, then a pencil, then a ball-point, eventually a typewriter. The point being active, engaged thought is needed to avoid making mistakes, and in the case of the quill, a mistake requires a full re-write (in the course design). Quite the opposite of spitting out stream of consciousness, right?
Other reading on the subject that might be of interest is "The Performance of Self in Student Writing" by Thomas Newkirk[1], which I found to be an excellent, dense consideration of the ins and outs.
But as for this quote:
>It's no wonder that so many students struggle with writing: you're never really shown how to do it. Your practice is sporadic and undirected. You're expected to pick it up, basically, perhaps by reading, perhaps by winging an essay here and there. Which is like expecting a kid to pick up tennis by watching lots of Wimbledon and losing in the early rounds of the occasional junior tournament.
No, no, no, no. This is wrong. Reading and writing have a significant feedback loop. Practice makes better. To quote Mike Judge in character in Office Space, "What do you think of a person who only does the bare minimum?"[2] Writing, like playing an instrument, isn't something that just sort of falls into place by showing up to class, or doing the bare minimum.
It also takes a lot of drive (or weird love of punishment) to get through years and years of criticism which get thrown in by participating in the creative process. I say this as having been in my fair share of workshops over the years. Sometimes it's a hard go.
Also, this left a little something out:
>Which is funny because email has such obvious promise as a tool for writing, and sharing writing, and teaching writing.
It's also got a lot of potential to get people fired, with Reply All and/or sending things when in a emotional state when cooling down might be a more prudent pathway.
[1]Link to a review PDF: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/282/Performan...
I thought most studies showed that immediate feedback in the form of spellcheck and auto-correct generally helped a lot with improving the quality of writing? In general - the quicker corrective feedback is given, the better the learning experience?
This isn't a replacement for practice of course - writing without at least three drafts isn't really writing -- and if that's how people "practice writing" (in college or earlier in lower level education) -- then they aren't likely to become very good writers.
As you note, and I completely agree with, it's practice that helps keep the "their, there, and they're" type issues from becoming normal pitfalls. English is tough in that regard, and often confuses people trying to learn either as natives or ESL. I guess that's why I stress all the more knowing the rules is important, because many make sense until they get broken in dialect haha.