Assessments, Journals, and Plagiarism

In chapter eight of Multimodal Composition, Selfe describes the use of progress journals for formative assessment. I have often performed formative assessments and conferenced with students mid-project, but it never occurred to me before reading this suggestion to write down what we discuss each time. Doing so would eliminate the preliminary discussion in which the students have to remind me about their topics or the challenges they knew they would have.

I also see great value in having students keep progress journals. This is where they can express frustrations or triumphs, contributions to the group, and questions they have for me when I come to speak with the group. These journals would facilitate the writing of reflective pieces, or "heads up" as Shipka calls it. Students would have notes to pull from and to remember the process they went through and to document their growth.

Another inspiration I took from chapter eight was the example assignment, starting on page 107. Selfe writes that, "The class then uses their understanding of this rhetorical situation to develop a rhetorically informed rubric for the assignment." Students are often tougher on themselves than their instructors would be, so it would be interesting to see what they would prefer to be graded on and why. This is also an excellent way to introduce a discussion of affordances and the differences between different types of text.

The sample assignment itself is a wonderful example of what the traditional research essay should move toward, in my opinion. I would take it one step further, however, and look for an actual contest or grant that students could apply for via video. Many such opportunities exist, including the Project for Awesome on YouTube.com. Can you imagine the work students would put into their projects if there were a realistic possibility that they could change the world in which they live?

Moving on to Teaching Writing, I do have experience using Word's comment features in peer editing. Being able to interact with the text electronically seems to appeal to my students more than trying to revise with pencil and paper in the classroom. They typically write much, much more and the feedback is more useful ("This sentence doesn't make sense" instead of "Good job"). This doesn't happen automatically, though. Modeling and instruction has to happen before peer review does more than draw smiley faces on papers.

David Nunuz' suggestion to have students practice via blog comments is a great way to encourage thoughtful responses. By looking for "interesting, constructive comments," Nunez avoids the bare minimum approach to which students will default if left to their own devices. Since blogs are great reading response tools, these blogs and comments will serve multiple purposes.

Kathleen West's suggestions on methods of grading blogs answered some of the questions I had about blog evaluations. I do believe that at first grading on completion only is important to help students create confidence in the modality. As time goes on, grading of blogs needs to be somehow based on the content of the blog rather than the minimal requirements of timeliness and length. I am intrigued by West's suggestion that a better blog is one that generates more worthwhile discussion.

Regarding the discussion of plagiarism, I agree that although sites like turnitin.com are useful in eliminating hours on Google checking suspicious papers, they do also assume students will plagiarize. I have seen this create a negative environment in my classroom before. As soon as the students find out they must submit their papers, they balk and worry that I, like the university in the example Beach gives, will take the computer's word for it rather than examining papers on a case-by-case basis. My policy is to look for significant finds on turnitin.com, and then to evaluate the offending passages myself. Almost every time it is the computer's misreading of the text and not a student's plagiarism that has been highlighted. Turnitin.com is very useful for situations in which students modify another student's work with their names on it.

Beach makes a vital point, one that is more important than whether or not such services should be used: "teachers need to do their part to provide a context in which it is difficult to plagiarize and in which students are not motivated to do so—for instance, by creating unique, interesting, engaging assignments instead of dull, canned assignments" (203). Who cares really whether students have correctly cited boring, useless information that students have been regurgitating for decades? Critical thinking, collaboration, and meaningful communication are the skills that we are looking for so we may as well eliminate situations in which a reliance on others' work exclusively are available.

Overall, whether multimodal or alphabetic, the texts our students write should not be a repackaging of what has happened before, but a reimagining of ideas, the juxtaposition of thoughts that are surprisingly complimentary or contradictory. When we ask students to write about old topics in the old ways, we are not teaching, but reminiscing.