Campus demonstrations don't bother online courses, I'm glad to say. I am not so glad to note that the lack of picketers may end up being the highlight of my latest finals week.
I never have very high hopes for my Colorado State course, at least in terms of students producing a high-quality final report that combines research and some sort of arguments to address an important issue in the students' academic areas/careers. That doesn't mean most of them won't get A's, of course, since the grading is rigged in ways that would make a KGB officer blush.
It's a strategic writing class, in theory, but we don't do much of that and I'm not really allowed to include much practical writing. There are lots of textbook quizzes and two multiple choice exams, each worth 100 points in the 975-point course. The quizzes may be taken twice, and CSU students are very good at tests.
It couldn't be a more "university" thing to have two multiple choice exams for over 20 percent of the total score in the course. What could be more "academic" than for a school to mandate reading about writing over actual writing in a... writing course.
One of my goals for the course is to get students to demonstrate that they can write with a specific primary intended audience in mind. I ask for a "prepared for..." statement on the title page, and the hope is that will help them keep their focus and push them to use appeals and tone that a audience like a state legislator or a CEO of a company or a department chair or the chair of a national organization would appreciate. The goal is to write for an audience that can enact any recommendations they come up with.
Over and over, they just write general comments, filled with vague points and unfocused advice.
I supply over a dozen sample reports for them to browse since they have never written such a report before. I spend a lot of time in the class advocating for reader-friendly document design but few college students have any skills in Word beyond using it as a typewriter. Still, you would think that adding a few subheads to break up the long stretches of gray, academic prose would be within their power. You would be underwhelmed by their power.
The Metro class often disappoints, but I have a larger investment in the course since I created it on top of some loose parameters the First Year Writing program insists upon. And once in a while I can see extensive growth in those writers. This semester, not so much.
There is no textbook beyond documents I have created, often based on published columns and other material from the New York Times or Washington Post. I also draw from all the same materials that I would use were I teaching a high school English class. There are no multiple choice exams.
My repeated advice is, "No claims without support." Even more basic is my repeated plea for a clear and concise thesis statement that can guide their persuasive essays.
To my dismay, over half the class did not demonstrate a very strong grasp of either using a strong thesis statement or following up claims with some sort of specific evidence in their final persuasive argument on some aspect of mandatory national service. I may need to find something less complex for the next group of future leaders.
After over a decade of struggling with these online courses, with limited success, I think more and more of the power of the "defaults" that students develop in their secondary education. Habits are tough to break.
And the nature of the online course means that much of my specific advice comes through comments that I insert directly on their essays and reports through Canvas, the management system both CSU and Metro use. Kathleen often kids me about the constant "click click click" of my keyboard as I respond to essays each week. It is a sort of white noise for her as she works on cleaning up some family history research she has been doing.
I suspect I am mostly writing to myself, based upon the glacial improvement I see, if I see any at all. Perhaps my comments are white noise for the students, as well.
But no one learns more than the teacher, as the old saying goes. Boy, am I getting educated.
But no rest for the wicked. I embark on a four-week version of the CSU strategic writing course on Monday, following a full weekend of rest and rejuvenation.
I'm sure it will all be better.
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