Prepared for Presentation at The Collaborative, Trinity University
W. Caleb McDaniel
Rice University
- Introductions: Homepage and Twitter
- Acknowledgments to Center for Teaching Excellence and DU Writing Center
- Blogs for a Fall 2011 freshmen seminar in which small groups kept blogs like this one or this other one while working on a semester-long project
- Other course blogs for seminars on abolitionism and utopias
- Blogs for Civil War history in Spring 2011 and Fall 2011, which were used to develop a public Omeka exhibit
- A digital history methods guide created collaboratively by students
- Teaching with technology increases student engagement.
- Giving students an audience of more than one will improve their writing.
What I (Think I) Know Now ...
- My rationale for a backwards history survey.
- My Spring 2013 "backwards survey" and the Wednesday Reports assignment.
- My look back at the problems with that course, in particular the "inauthenticity" of the Wednesday Reports.
According to Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in Understanding by Design, an authentic task (p. 154):
Asks the student to "do" the subject" ... [and] Replicates key challenging situations in which adults are truly "test" in the workplace, in civic life, and in personal life. Real challenges involve specific situations with "messiness" and meaningful goals: important constraints, "noise," purposes, and audiences at work. In contrast, almost all school tests are without context (even when a writing prompt tries to suggest a sense of purpose and audience).
They contrast these sorts of "performance tasks" with "academic prompts"---both of which are important but each of which occupies a slightly different place along a continuum of assessments.
- My Spring 2015 "backwards survey"
- The American Yawp "textbook" I used, partly to create authentic situations for writing assignments
- Comments left by students on feedback site, with response from editor
Another example assignment:
Before today's class, you read two recent Opinion columns published in the Washington Post:
- One by Kate Masur on Lincoln's New Year's reception and their relevance today.
- One by Joseph Califano, Jr., on LBJ's contributions to Selma and his relationship with MLK.
For your next writing assignment (due Monday, January 26, at 8:00 a.m.), compose a letter to the editor of the Post sharing your opinion about ONE of these two columns.
Your letter may challenge or criticize the author's claims, OR it may corroborate and support them, OR it may do some combination of both. But you should support your letter with relevant evidence from this course, and your letter should apply the historical thinking skills (narrativity, evidence, empathy, etc.) that we have been discussing and practicing in class.
Remember that anything you have read in this class or anything I've shared with you in class counts as "available evidence" for your writing, and also that you may be able to use evidence that does not immediately seem relevant to the specific issue at hand. Think of yourself as a Post reader who has, in this class, already built up a body of historical knowledge and set of historical skills that you want to share with the editor and other Post readers.
Note that letters to the editor are usually very concise. The Post prefers submissions of around 200 words, though examples of recent letters show that they are sometimes a little bit longer. Consider 400 words an upper maximum, and heed the Post's advice: "Letters editor Mike Larabee looks for concise letters that offer a new perspective or add depth to the discussion of an issue." This means that you will need to think carefully about what point you most want to make, about how to make that point complex but concise, and about which evidence you can use to best effect.
Write your letter to the editor, as usual, in your Google Doc.
- Just using technology doesn't guarantee increased student engagement.
- Just making writing more public doesn't guarantee authentic performance.
- But both can help.
- These are a surer way to ensure student engagement, with technology or without.
- They demonstrate "transferability" of understanding.
- Adjusting to new audiences is one of the trickiest things for students to master when they are learning how to write!
- Design around Problems and Frame Using GRASPS (goal, role, audience, situation, product, standards), as in an imperfect recent example.
- Find a Real Audience, online or in person.
- Peer Review and Response (demonstrated examples using Google Docs and Poll Everywhere)