September 22, 2003
Commenting
I'm still learning the culture and conventions of blogspace, and I'm happy to see that already some folks have found their way to The Pedablogue and kindly left some encouraging comments. And people like my colleague Dennis Jerz have even blogged and discussed my opening entries. It's encouraging to know that I'm not just calling out into the abyss, so thanks!
"Commenting" is actually a major teaching topic, especially when it comes to writing marginal notes on a student paper. ...
I just got out of a "Teaching and Learning Seminar" on campus, where John Spurlock, chair of the Humanities Division, gave a PowerPoint presentation on how he runs a distance learning course on Western Civ. The most interesting element to me, beyond his refreshingly humorous delivery, was his discussion of the writing-focus that his course has taken (as opposed to merely testing over the content, his students now produce "problem-solution" papers that force them to intellectually process history rather than rotely memorize content for tests). I enjoyed hearing how Spurlock comments on these distance learning student's papers (using MS Word's commenting feature). This is a method I also use for my teaching of creative writing students in the MA in Writing Popular Fiction program at SHU, but I picked up a few new tips I hadn't considered before:
+ To do "end comments" write the word "comments" at the bottom of the original manuscript and then highlight it and generate a "comment" using Word. (I'd been writing commentary on a separate document for some reason; I guess I thought I was being respectful to the student's original manuscript somehow). + Similarly, you can add a pseudo-link to "grade" or "criteria" to bracket these elements off from the focus on the manuscript.
+ Use Word's mock "highlighter" to call attention to grammatical errors and typos that aren't worth commenting on but are worth calling attention to (I've been doing this already, so it was good to see another person adopting this method).
Well, maybe these aren't groundbreaking tips, but every little shortcut can help when commenting electronically, so long as a student knows what conventions you're using. Sometimes we implicitly teach "how to comment" in our approach, so it's important to think about how this works.
I could go on and on about the nitty gritty of how to comment, but I have papers I have to go comment on right now, so I'll leave it at this and possibly return to this topic later...
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Comments
A former colleage of mine at UW-EC, Bob Nowlan, has students use highlighting when they submit revisions. He has them highlight all editing changes in one color, and all substantive changes in a different color. Then the student submits the old draft, and the highlighted revision -- which makes it very easy to flip back and forth to see how/whether they have addressed each point.
I use this model on printed papers, and I ask students to explain their major changes, or give a justification for ignoring a suggestion. There is of course nothing preventing the student from highlighting an electronic revision in a similar way -- other than the eyestrain that may result from prismatic papers.
And, as John noted, avoid the color red -- yellow, green, blue and light gray work nicely.
Mike mentioned in an early blog that he had taken an idea of mine, using the MS Word comment function to provide a general comment on a paper rather than creating a new document for that purpose. My question, though, is this: Do we know that making commments on papers has any value? I'm thinking about this now because I just spent several hours reading through, and commenting on, papers that students in my WCT class turned in today. I did sense some general improvement from the last round of papers. But, it seems to me that a comment on a paper has to meet several criteria in its production and also consumption in order to make a difference. The teacher has to make a comment that is accurate and clear, and of course we hope it does not violate the student's sense of self-worth. On the student part, the students must a)attend to the comment; b)understand it; c)apply it.
In my class, I comment on papers as we go with the hope that students will apply these to the next paper. Since all of the papers have a general similarity, then the comments should enable them to improve during the course. But it seems that each of my three criteria for use is fraught with danger. We've all had experiences when students did not read our comments (that, in fact, is probably closer to universal than to its opposite, which I lack an adjective to characterize). I know that my handwritten comments must frequently be hard to understand, but even clearly typed comments may not appeal to anything in the student's life. And applying it puts the student to the task of transfering learning, though in this case what is to be transferred isn't even something the student has learned.
The point of all my hand-wrining, then, is to wonder if we know that commenting works? What kinds of comments work best? Are there tactics that should be used in addition to or in place of comments? I think this is fairly important. Scribbling remarks on papers is probably the single most time-consuming thing we do as teachers. If it is worthwhile, then that's time well spent. If not, then, what?
"Do comments matter?" Great topic! Too important to marginalize here... I hope to blog about it sometime soon. My gut response is YES, if only in the same way that it matters that someone nods and replies when you speak to them. Do they integrate (or "transfer") what we suggest back into their writing or thinking process? I'd say that some do... that's the sort of process we're teaching them to become attentive to in our Freshman "Seminar in Thinking in Writing" if we're doing it correctly.
-- Mike
Do comments matter? I don't believe any effort is wasted. You might not see the immediate results of your comments, though. It might take some time to sink in. You have give students a somewhat permanent record and recommendation that they can go back to time and again.
Regarding MS Word comments: Word's hidden text feature seems to me an overlooked alternative for notes and comments by both document creators and reviewers. This article mentions how to use it: http://windows.oreilly.com/news/word2k_0900.html (number 11).
Document creators can use hidden text to keep notes where they are most useful. End comments could be in hidden text also.
The viewing and printing of the hidden text can be turned on or off using the Tools->Options View and Print options.
Mike, the idea of using your blogosphere for the scholarship of teaching is brilliant! I hope this has wide circulation among our faculty.