Zombie Professors

From my lovely wife come these two zombies, one composing a lesson plan, and one grading (complete with a brain-and-chocolate cookie):

Blogs in Developmental Reading

Shu, Hui-Yin, and Shiangkwei Wang. “The Impact of Using Blogs on College Students’ Reading Comprehension and Learning Motivation.” Literacy Research and Instruction 50.1 (2011): 68-89. ProQuest. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

In their 2011 article, Shu and Wang report on a study they did on the use of blogs in developmental reading courses. They write that recent research suggests that helping students develop a command of digital (and multimodal) literacies is important so that “students can successfully access and create the evolving language required in higher education and future workplaces.” However, they assert that not much research has been done about “how […] college reading education respond[s] to today’s students who are familiar with and motivated by […] digital technologies,” revealing what they see as a bias toward print in higher education.

Shu and Wang focused on nine sections (three instructors, each teaching three sections) of developmental reading at the same four-year U.S. university; two sections (taught by different instructors) incorporated blogs, while the other seven sections did not. The curriculum between the blog-enabled and traditional courses was standardized; in the blog-enabled sections, instructors supplemented traditional instruction by asking students to post responses to and analyses of textbook chapters, news articles, and YouTube clips. Students were encouraged to marshal Internet sources in support of their posts and to read and respond to others’ posts.

Appropriately, an extensive section of this article is devoted to their methodology, and I do not have the space to go into it in detail here. In brief, though, they incorporated demographic and academic data such as age, race, GPA, pre- and post-course COMPASS measures, post-class retention rates, and a thirty-one question survey “divided into four factors: self-efficacy, confidence in prerequisite skills, self-directive and initiative, and interest in learning the subject.” They also interviewed the two instructors who used blogs. Shu and Wang’s research questions focused on whether blogs affected students’ reading performance or motivation, what other factors might affect reading performance, and what instructors’ perceptions were about integrating blogs in their classes.

Their findings were extremely interesting. Their study did not support the contention that blogs (at least as they were used) improved reading performance or motivation. While Shu and Wang found several factors affecting student reading performance, blogs were not among them. However, student retention correlated strongly with blogging: students in blog-enabled sections signed up for another semester of classes at around a 10% higher rate than their fellows in traditional classes. Interviews with the instructors suggested that students in blog-enabled classes formed stronger learning communities and were better able to express themselves (due to the equalizing nature of the online environment).

Shu and Wang appear somewhat disappointed with these results. In their conclusion, they admit that, in retrospect, they do not feel they spent enough time training the instructors in blog usage, and they devote the majority of their conclusion to a discussion of why non-tech-savvy instructors might be resistant to using much technology and how such resistance might be addressed. However, as someone who has served on a committee for several years focusing on, among other things, student retention, I found their retention results astonishing, and I wished they had spent more time discussing them. A “payoff” of 10% for a relatively small change is incredible, and I plan to share the article with my committee. I would also recommend this article to a colleague interested in how to design and report on a research study—the discussion of research questions, methodology, and findings is exemplary.

An Interesting Progression

Stine, Linda. “The Best of Both Worlds: Teaching Basic Writers in Class and Online.” Journal of Basic Writing 23.2 (2004): 49-51. ProQuest. Web. 12 Feb. 2011.

I approached this article with great interest, since, at first blush, it appeared to contradict the 2010 article by the same author I reviewed for my last blog post. I was surprised to see such unequivocal positivity in this title and abstract after reading the 2010 article, which I would describe as cautionary.

Reading this article confirmed that Stine views hybrid basic-writing courses very positively. Although she begins by laying out potential difficulties basic writers may have with online environments—issues of access, technological fluency, and learning to read online, among others—the bulk of her article is devoted to describing the positive potential of moving at least some of the work of the writing class online. In the middle third of her article, she lists ten general ways in which web-enhanced courses can outperform traditional ones. Her reasons are compelling and cover situations both outside and inside the purview of the course—for example, hybrid courses can greatly simplify scheduling for working single parents, and they can encourage students with shaky academic skills to develop them by requiring students to use the Internet, research, word-process, and communicate online.

The last third of Stine’s essay focuses on her own experiences with hybrid basic-writing courses at her college, which, she relates, implemented the hybrid program two years before this article was published. Her college’s version of hybrid means that students alternate between meeting for a week face-to-face and “meeting” for a week online. Face-to-face sessions concentrate on describing assignments, grammar, groupwork, and quizzes; online, students write and revise, participate in discussion, and review each other’s papers. Stine writes that the hybrid environment provides advantages over both fully-online and face-to-face environments; for example, students form stronger interpersonal bonds through face-to-face interaction, but still can have the space to consider their posts in online discussion. Stine ends her article by asserting that her college’s hybrid basic-writing course “seems to offer our students the best of both worlds: the infinite freedom of the Internet enhanced and made manageable by regular classroom interactions.”

As I wrote above, the tenor of this article is markedly different from her 2010 TETYC piece, which states that “the intersection of adult education, basic writing, and online learning [is] a complicated and messy place,” and ends with a series of questions that seem to suggest how little we know about what makes a good online or hybrid basic-writing class. It’s true that the latter article focuses more on fully online courses than it does hybrid ones; however, many of her cautions in that article apply equally well to both environments. When re-reading the 2010 piece, I was struck by how Stine describes herself as “struggle[ing] each semester to decide what sort of an online teaching/learning experience to require […and] growing increasingly conflicted.” Hawisher et al. have described how the optimism of the early era of computer-mediated composition was gradually supplanted by a more critical, theoretical mindset—practitioners realized computers were no panacea and began to advocate a more critical examination of their place in the writing classroom. I wonder if Stine may have experienced a similar progression (as I have over the past decade or so).

Stine is a thoughtful writer, and I enjoyed this article. The model of hybrid class she presents is interesting and worth trying at other institutions, and she provides a good theoretical underpinning for her argument.

Hawisher, Gail, Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia Selfe. Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History. Norwood: Ablex, 1996. Print.

Adult Basic Writers

Stine, Linda. “Basically Unheard: Developmental Writers and the Conversation on Online Learning.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 38.2 (2010): 132-149. ProQuest. Web. 7 February 2011.

In her recent TETYC article, Linda Stine complicates the discussion of online and hybrid composition classes by drawing our attention to a group that she says receives little attention in the literature: adult basic-writing students. Stine begins by relating her growing realization that the students who appeared in “article after article filled with enthusiasm for Internet-based higher education” did not resemble the students she taught. Stine writes that, at least according to the articles she read, in order to benefit fully from online composition, students should posses a veritable laundry list of positive academic, financial, and social qualities, from clear academic goals to a good computer to the ability to learn equally well independently and from peers. As Stine asserts, “Most basic writing instructors would be hard pressed to fit their students into that general profile.”

Stine’s stated purpose is “to help close the knowledge gap by providing a preliminary exploration of some important factors at the intersection of basic writing pedagogy, adult learning theory, and online education research.” The three specific areas she focuses on are technological aptitude, academic skills, and individual learning characteristics, further subdividing each of these larger categories into smaller foci such as access to technology, emotion and learning preference, and cognitive load. Her technique is to present, in brief, relevant research, which she then connects to her own experience with adult basic writers. Stine’s emphasis is on the research rather than on personal anecdote; indeed, the article serves as a useful synthesis of a fairly wide range of sources and could be used as an annotated bibliography of sorts for those who wanted to examine any of the many issues she raises in more detail. (For instance, I was intrigued by a meta-analysis of online learning studies she referenced, which I saw as connecting to my own research. The analysis appears here.)

Despite Stine’s cautions against assuming that adult basic-writing students will automatically benefit from online and hybrid writing classes in the same ways that, say, full-time or tech-savvy students might, she does not advocate shying away from technology-rich writing environments. Instead, she writes that “it is essential that we learn more about how to provide a successful online experience for this vulnerable student population,” and ends her article by suggesting a number of research questions to help us in this quest.

Stine’s article was interesting, and I would recommend it to a peer principally as a very readable annotated bibliography. As a teacher of basic writing, though, I found myself wishing for more answers than questions. I agreed with her cautions and was enriched by her thorough research, but I still found myself wondering how to proceed in my own classes. It may be unfair to criticize Stine for failing to provide a clearer path, since her purpose seems to be to highlight an area that has been under-researched. However, I did finish her article thinking, “OK…now what?”