We are about four days the end of the four-week summer course I am teaching, and it's like we just began. The way the course is structured means that most of the 23 students of this online sprint will be earning A's. Grades seem to pile up on autopilot.
In fact, the students are doing exactly what they are asked to do while having too little time to research, to draft, and to publish... but they will be sharing their final report, an analysis of some controversial issue within their academic major (usually) by Sunday night.
For most of those students, this is their only current course and they have shown that when they can focus tightly on one course, they are smart and quite good at the academic world's requirements.
I have often mentioned in this blog that I did not invent the course (Strategic Writing and Communication) and have almost no input on either the content or the assignments. Rubrics come with each assignment. There are online quizzes tied to e-text readings that students can take multiple times. There are two multiple choice exams (a midterm and a final).
The course is so brief that there isn't time to comment on a rough draft, though there was a proposal that each student created to sort of "map out" what they intended to do. That was my chance to influence content and approach.
Let's face it: this course mostly checks the box on having an "advanced writing" course among the CSU graduation requirements. My job is to not mess things up, I suppose, and no one in the department will spend a moment wondering about 90 percent plus of a class receiving A's.
Tuition has been paid. I am being paid (though pitifully). Transcripts will be generated.
I have tried to push students to write their report to someone not "Jack," with the idea that no one in their right mind researches and writes reports unless someone has hired them to do so (beyond college campuses). I have emphasized that from the first day of this course, based on my experiences with students writing for a "real audience."
Journalism courses are great places to explore communicating with real audiences, of course. Most academic writing has a fixed primary reader of a teacher. One teacher. Journalistic writing often gets responses from a wide range of readers.
I have long tried to convince high school and college writers that writing for the teacher is fine as far as checking boxes is concerned but that their future writing has to focus on what an overscheduled CEO or local owner or a harried manager or legislator might respond to.
I saw an article in the Denver Post about a program funded by the state legislature that teaches a small group of high school students how to create a piece of legislation, from clearly defining and researching the issue through drafts, and eventually to the proposed bills.
The program is newish, but at least two bills, written by high school students and sponsored by individual legislators, were signed into law in the last two weeks.
I know a tiny bit about writing laws, trying my hand at amending a state statute in order to include journalism teachers just doing their jobs from retribution by angry or embarrassed administrators and school boards. The total number of words added to the existing statute added up to about 110.
But each had to be analyzed and supported (in case someone challenged with questions). The good news is that the amendments passed without objection in both houses of the legislature (just before the pandemic).
The quickly (and often poorly) researched 12-page reports from my intrepid CSU students will not be going anywhere. But maybe they could be writing clear revisions, improving statutes that could make their lives... Colorado citizens' lives... a little better.
Gov. Polis signed a new law yesterday that requires all secondary schools in the state to provide free menstrual products in buildings NLT 2028 (some rural districts requested time to find additional money, facilities, etc. -- sounds weak to me, but...). Most larger districts already provide those products, but it seems unfair to allow smaller districts to leave young women to their own devices.
I sat in a committee meeting in 2019 on an earlier version of the bill. The facts and the arguments were quite clear and no one spoke against the bill. It still took until 2024 for it to become law. Each word was parsed and stroked and judged... and there may be future amendments.
Now THAT is real world "strategic writing."
I'm afraid universities are not where that happens.
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