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Articles Conference Reviews |
K.6 Teachers’ Comments through Students’ EyesK.6 Teachers’ Comments through Students’ Eyes Chair: Kathleen Blake Yancey from Florida State University, Tallahassee Nancy Sommers from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA: “Writing in the Margins: Why Students Find Some Comments Useful and Ignore Others” Sommers acknowledged that teachers of composition are pushed by a desire to include useful, humane comments on student writing and pulled by the practical constraints of the work of commenting on student writing. Her project, born out of a workshop with Bunker Hill Community College English faculty, involved interviewing BHCC students. She asked students from different backgrounds and with different majors to comment specifically on the role teacher comments played in their writing. Hearing these student voices was eye-opening. All the interviewees consider teacher comments on their writing extremely important, and noted that they want to know more specifically how and why a teacher comments on their papers, so they can better understand the comments. One student asked for comments that “begin conversations, not end them.” Chris Anson, from North Carolina State University, Raleigh: “Giving Voice: Reflections on Oral Response to Student Writing” Anson, the 2012 CCCC Chair, presented examples and results from a pilot study using streaming screen capture to comment on student writing. This technology records everything the teacher does on the computer while looking at a student’s paper in the way of a screen shot, but includes voice recording. The pilot study used Jing, which produced a file that could be saved and uploaded to Screencast.com. This software allows for a 5 minute response which students can view more than once. One particularly effective aspect of Anson’s presentation was his example of a screen shot of a student’s paper with his own voice over comments including suggestions for a stronger introductory paragraph. Anson’s presentation also included video of a student viewing a screen cast from his instructor on his recent paper, and commenting on how the experience differed from receiving written comments. Lastly, Anson presented results of a survey of students who received written comments for their first paper and screen cast comments for the second. More students rated screen capture comments in the category “very helpful”. |