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What makes [communities of practice] successful is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance and value to attract and engage members . . . nothing can substitute for this sense of aliveness. (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p. 50)
Lave & Wenger (1991) suggest that five factors determine the success of a CoP:
1. the existence and sharing by the community of a common goal;
2. the existence and use of knowledge to achieve that goal;
3. the nature and importance of relationships formed among community members;
4. the relationships between the community and those outside it; and
5. the relationship between the work of the community and the value of the activity.
Wenger (1998) later added the idea that achieving the shared goals of the community requires a shared repertoire of common resources, e.g., language, stories, and practices.
There are a number of key factors that influence the development, functioning and maintenance of CoPs (Lathlean & LeMay, 2001). The legitimacy of initial CoP membership is important. Commitment to the desired CoP goals, relevance to members, and enthusiasm about the CoP’s potential to influence practice are also key. On the practical side, a strong infrastructure and resources are essential attributes. These include good information technology, useful library resources, databases, and human support. Of course, skill in accessing and appraising knowledge sources is important, as is skill in bridging this knowledge to practice. In order to provide these key factors, one or more strong, committed, and flexible leaders are needed, to help guide the natural evolution of the CoP. If professional learning is to flourish, it is critical that community members can learn from positive and negative experiences in a blame-free culture (Triggs & John, 2004).
Millen, Fontaine & Muller (2002) have outlined key questions to address in establishing a CoP, including:
• How will the community be formed and evolve?
• How and when will members join?
• What do members do and how will they interact?
• How will the CoP be supported by the members’ organization(s)?
• What value will members and their organizations receive?
Wenger et al. (2002) suggest principles for cultivating CoPs:
• CoPs are dynamic entities and need to be designed for adaptability and scalability.
• They should combine the perspectives of both insider members and outsider participants, and all members should be valued regardless of their level of participation.
• Both public and private spaces are necessary and need to be related.
• Although familiarity is important, challenge and excitement are needed to keep the energy high.
• The CoP must provide value to its members, otherwise participation will be minimal or absent.
• Finally, the CoP needs to settle into a rhythm that works for its members.
Case Study: Small Cities Online Research Community
The Small Cities Online Research Community was and continues to be funded through a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant. The original \$20,000 SSHRC grant came from the Strategic Research Cluster Programme (SRC) and it was awarded in the fall of 2004. The purpose of the grant was to facilitate the creation of a research cluster.
So far participation in the community has largely been top down; there is a lot of lurking, the term sometimes used for reading without participating. Its organizers realize that having a variety of activities in the community invites participation. With that in mind they have seeded discussions, produced webcasts, offered polls, and produced other events to encourage more active participation. The Small City site allows for daily/weekly/monthly email notices of content updates and more recently a RSS feed has been added to help push communication about these activities out so that those interested in participation are made aware and can choose to participate. All these are ways in which facilitators are fostering participation. Today their major challenge is making community members aware both of the availability of these tools and how to use them.
Online communities must provide their members with value. The Small Cities community provides members with value in the form of easy access to research articles, notices of upcoming events, and communication with colleagues at a distance. They believe that they need to make their members aware, through education, of this value and the possibilities of the community platform. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/30%3A_Supporting_E-learning_through_Communities_of_Practice/30.4%3A_Fac.txt |
Virtual (online) communities play a socialization role just as “real” communities do (Henri & Pudelko, 2003). The theoretical foundation of virtual communities is based on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986). This theory makes several assumptions, including:
1. all life experience is a social experience in various communities;
2. learning can be considered as a social process, and is a process of identity construction; and
3. negotiation of meaning is at the base of any individual and collective learning.
Henri & Pudelko (2003) propose three components of the social context of activity in virtual communities:
1. the goal of the community,
2. the methods of initial group creation, and
3. the temporal evolution of both the goals and the methods of the group.
Figure \(1\) illustrates these ideas and identifies four principal types of communities:
Table\(1\):Principal descriptors of the four types of virtual communities (adapted from Henri & Pudelko, 2003, p. 485)
Community of interest Goal-oriented community Learning community Community of practice
Purpose Gathering around a common topic of interest Created to carry out a specific task Pedagogical activity proposed by the instructor Stems from an existing, real community of practice
Activity Information exchange Sharing of diverse perspectives and production of objects commissioned by the mandate Participation in discussions of collective topics Professional practice development through sharing knowledge among members
Learning Knowledge construction for individual use Knowledge construction from diverse knowledge systems towards collective use Knowledge construction by carrying out socially situated activities Appropriation of new practices and development of involvement
As described here, a full CoP requires a highly cohesive group with a clear goal. A successful virtual CoP generally arises from an existing, face-to-face CoP in which professional practice is developed through sharing knowledge among members. Through this interaction, new practices may be developed and identification with the community can occur.
Table \(1\) outlines the three dimensions that characterize the community types illustrated in Figure \(1\) This shows that many types of virtual communities can exist, but not all are true CoPs.
Virtual CoPs are a recent phenomenon and studies on their effectiveness to enhance learning have not yet been done. Parboosingh (2002) advocates conducting evaluation studies that focus on how the CoP takes advantage of the technology, rather than how the technology affects the CoP.
Case Study: The SCoPE Virtual CoP (Simon Fraser University)
SCoPE, hosted by the Learning and Instructional Development Centre (LIDC) (www.lidc.sfu.ca/scope) at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is an online community for individuals who share an interest in education research and practice. The community participation in SCoPE extends beyond the university to provide opportunities for dialogue across disciplines, geographical borders, professions, levels of expertise, and education sectors.
The core activity for SCoPE is scheduled, topic-based seminars moderated by volunteers in the community. They have scheduled one seminar per month, usually three weeks in length, and have avoided overlap in the schedule. A regular format helps to build anticipation each month, encourages members to revisit the community, and also invites participation from new members who are interested in the topic.
MicroSCoPE, an online monthly update on community and member activities, is distributed to members. This newsletter includes upcoming events, a recap of past events, and information about SCoPE members’ activities and achievements, such as conference presentations and awards. Any questions about the community tools that affect participation are noted and included in MicroSCoPE as well. Following each MicroSCoPE issue, there is an increase in activity on the site. However, inasmuch as a monthly newsletter contributes to a community rhythm, a SCoPE community blog (in the works) would provide more timely updates. A blog does not reach the same audience as a community newsletter, so organizers are investigating ways to produce and manage both. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/30%3A_Supporting_E-learning_through_Communities_of_Practice/30.5%3A_Vir.txt |
If you are considering implementing a virtual CoP, the theoretical background and case studies presented so far should give you some knowledge of what it could accomplish and how it might function. However, getting from start to full operation involves skillful design and ongoing management to ensure success. In this section we outline guidelines and tips to help you begin and facilitate a CoP in your learning context.
Getting Started
A community of practice can form around a common problem or topic, but generally someone has to set up a structure for the community to succeed. Kim (2000) breaks the process of building community into nine strategies revolving around:
• purpose: clearly define the community you are building, why you are building it (i.e., what needs it will meet for its owners and for its members), and who its members will be;
• places: where you will bring people together. For online communities, places can include mailing lists, discussion topics, chat rooms, multiplayer games, virtual worlds, a website, or some combination of these spaces;
• profiles: ways to introduce members to each other, develop and maintain their identities, and build trust and relationships;
• roles: member roles such as newcomer, old-timer, and leader, each of which may have unique interaction and contribution needs within the community;
• leadership: those who take on roles to animate and organize the community. Kim’s examples of their tasks include greeting newcomers, coordinating events, managing programs, maintaining the infrastructure, and keeping activities lively and civil;
• etiquette: behavioural standards or social boundaries that are explicitly stated and agreed on by the community;
• events: planned and facilitated events that bring people together and help to define the community and move it forward;
• rituals: welcomes to new members, celebrations and other observances to help members feel at home and create an online culture;
• subgroups: member-run small groups with common interests, to help create a sense of intimacy and common purpose.
More simply, CoP participation becomes a function of roles and rules. Everyone has something to contribute, whether coordinators, novices, local experts, experts from outside the organization, or something in between. However, there must be some structure related to how the contributions are made. In the online education sphere, we also have to remember the expert-novice paradigm, where “experts” forget what it is like to learn particular information or skills. Often fellow novices have better explanations or advice regarding how to solve a problem, because they themselves just figured out how it works. Including people from outside the organization can inject new ideas into the group and can also help prevent “groupthink.”
Software Support
Face-to-face communities can hold physical meetings and events, but how is a virtual community supposed to interact? Technology plays a pivotal role in enabling online communities of practice to grow, to share knowledge and ideas, and to allow members to support each other as people. Choosing which technology to use for these purposes is not an easy task. If you start with a list of your desired activities and resources, you can often find help from technical support staff and Internet sites that review online tools.
Case Study: Technology Decisions for ScoPE
The process of choosing a suitable platform for the SCoPE community facilitated by Simon Fraser University was unexpectedly complex. Although organizers had decided that their most important criteria were ease of use, flexibility, ability to customize, and good communication tools, their preliminary research did not yield any existing community platforms that met their needs.
The technical support staff at SFU’s Learning & Instructional Development Centre (LIDC) considered several different solutions, starting with building an inhouse solution, then moving to the open source community platforms Sakai and TikiWiki, and finally settling on Moodle (www.moodle.org). Moodle stood out as satisfying most of our user requirements. Moodle took (literally) eight minutes to install, and following initial installation has required very little maintenance by the LIDC technical support staff. Although Moodle was developed as a course management system, branding and customizing its interface and language was straightforward, and making the changes that made SCoPE feel like an online community rather than a course space were easy. The community coordinator has the access privileges necessary to deal with day-to-day operations.
What’s the lesson? Select tools that match your specific community requirements and context. There is no single ideal community platform, so plan for a good foundation to build as new uses and needs emerge. This example demonstrates that a cost-effective tool does exist that could be used by an instructor, with minimal support from technical experts.
If your community does not have a technical support staff, do not worry. Since your community is interacting over distance, there is no need to host the community site yourself. Just as some face-to-face communities find a public or private space to meet, you and your online community can use public or private web-based spaces for communication, activities, and more. For example, the SCoPE project hosts its own installation of the Moodle learning management system, but different companies can host Moodle for you for a range of fees, depending on how sophisticated you want to get. The following case study discusses another hosted solution.
Case Study: Technology Decisions for BCcampus
As a new organization in 2003, BCcampus was, and remains, a small organization relying on outside partnerships for provision of services (see the BCcampus Case Study above). Providing an online community was really only feasible via an application service provider (ASP) solution where hardware, software, and technical support resources were provided by a host provider.
LearningTimes (based in New York) was chosen as the host provider because of BCcampus staff’s first hand experience in helping launch their LearningTimes.org site and confidence in the underlying technical solution on which their online community services are provided. BCcampus research revealed LearningTimes to be uniquely positioned as an online community provider for the education market and a leader and innovator in the use of online community for education. The online community technology provided by LearningTimes is a customized version of Ramius’ CommunityZero platform. This technology is very robust and provides support for a mix of asynchronous and synchronous capabilities, including: text discussion forums, file posting, contributions area, calendar, live meeting rooms, automatic email updates, integrated instant messenger, photo gallery, polls and surveys, announcements, group email broadcasts, basic chat room, related content, search, admin controls, and more.
With LearningTimes’ help, the first community in the BCcampus network of online communities was configured, branded, and launched within a few short weeks.
Organizing Your CoP
We can think of a CoP in terms of a model of participants and interactions that can guide its implementation. Diagrams of CoP models take a number of shapes, including pyramids, concentric circles and interconnected nodes. To illustrate one possible approach in an education context, we will look at a learning-community model and extend it to a full CoP for researchers, teachers, and students working in a classroom or distance education setting.
Tom Carroll (2000) suggests a no-boundary model for a classroom-centred learning community consisting of students, teachers, and other resource experts. In this scheme, activity is centred around the problem itself. Teachers become expert learners who actively participate in the learning rather than just guide students from the side. If we apply these concepts to creating an online learning community, we can construct a detailed model (Figure \(1\)) that shows not only the interconnections between the learners and expert learners, but also some of the tools that a learning community might use. Wikis, forums, chat, email, and even cell phones and text messaging can be used. The circle in the diagram is not meant to show an impermeable boundary, but a collaborative space for interaction. In this scenario, a guest participant from another university or organization has access to the learning management system (LMS) space for the course that is attempting to solve a common problem, “P.”
We can extend this model to a full CoP using Wenger & Snyder’s (2001) suggestion of an “overall network structure” with “several layers of participation” centred around the community creators. While their work had an industry focus, there are elements that also apply to learning communities, including layers for charter members, stakeholders, and peripheral community participants, such as the Co-op alumni and Co-op employers. In education, stakeholders might include research grant funding agencies (e.g., CURA), department chairs, college deans, or program assessment coordinators. Peripheral community participants might include support staff and faculty from units, such as the technical support staff at SFU’s LIDC who support SCoPE. Charter members might be the first cohorts of students who joined the learning community, and now they continue to participate even though they have moved to other classes or have graduated from an institution like BCcampus.
Since neither model completely meets our purposes, we can refine our own, original model for communities of practice for online teaching and learning. Wenger & Snyder drew boundaries around the core community members, but Carroll makes a good argument to avoid boundaries. On the other hand, Carroll focuses on just one problem, “P,” while it is more likely that a learning community would focus on a set of problems. Hence, our drawing below depicts several problems for the community to solve within the same topic area, possibly using the concept of subgroups described by Kim (2000). Learners in different subgroups might only address one problem, as depicted here, but some learners are attracted to more than one problem in the overall set. Expert learners are sometimes invited by other expert learners to collaborate. In our model, the instructor works with peer instructors as well as expert learners in a professional organization. Again, the circles in the drawing do not denote boundaries, but environments used for learning community interactions. For coursework, it might be an LMS like Moodle or WebCT, but for a professional organization it might be a different online space with similar tools, such as LearningTimes.
As expert learners working in the online environment, we must make it our job to structure both the inquiry and the collaboration around one or more problems related to our course content. Learners can present their findings to other learners, so the set of problems can be distributed among the group. This is similar to the “jigsaw” cooperative learning strategy in which students in small groups specialize in a portion of the total material, collaborate with students in other small groups who have been assigned the same portion, and then teach the rest of their own group.
The next step is to select tools within the community environment (e.g., Moodle, LearningTimes) that would permit this type of collaborative sharing. It is important to start with tools that you are comfortable using yourself, since you are part of the learning community. Remember that the community can use a variety of tools, though, that might not need your direct interaction. In both Figures 30.2 and 30.3, students use email, cell phones, chat, and other tools to communicate and share with each other. They can use wikis, blogs, and forums to record any thoughts about how to solve the problem, where everyone can see it and respond.
The last steps involve facilitating comprehensive interactions, making sure that no one is excluded due to issues of access or the digital divide, engaging external expert learners and learners alike to participate, pushing the learning community to learn as a group rather than as individuals in the same space, and sharing knowledge and experience with people and groups outside the learning community.
Case Study: Organizing the Small Cities Online Research Community
The LearningTimes platform provides a range of options for public and private designation. One option is to set the community security so that it allows previewing, where visitors are allowed to preview (but not post to) the community before joining. Small Cities community organizers decided instead to create a public, dynamic website, which is currently under development as part of a five-year Community University Research Alliance Grant, called Mapping Quality of Life and the Culture of Small Cities, or “Mapping CURA” for short. This public website will be fed from the databases of Small Cities. So, instead of “preview” mode, they have set the community to “restricted” mode, which allows people who have been invited to join by existing members to participate immediately. However, those who have not been invited must first be approved by the founder or an administrator before gaining access. Their policy is to allow anyone to join who is interested, but they are only granted membership to the general member group.
As well, the LearningTimes platform supports the creation of both public and private spaces among its members. An unlimited number of groups can be established, with each having their own private area for file sharing, discussion, polling, or whatever other activities they wish to pursue. Currently, Small Cities has 17 different groups, each with different privileges.
As of September 2006, the community had 140 members of whom 55 were members of the Mapping CURA group. The LearningTimes platform allows them to easily add groups to the community and to restrict access to areas of the community through group privileges. For example, the major tools (Contributions, Calendar, Articles, Discussions, Databases) each have a folder for Mapping CURA that only members of Mapping CURA can see and access. There are other groups that also have their own areas set aside for their unique group interest. The creation of these subgroups is an important means for allowing the community to evolve naturally than forcing it to conform to a static, predefined structure. As interests are identified with the growth of the community, the evolving design permitted by the LearningTimes platform allows members to quickly access and participate in matters of their direct interest.
For example, a conference was held in Kamloops, British Columbia, called “Artist Statement Workshop”. One of the requirements of the workshop was to submit presentations ahead of time, which could only be viewed by workshop participants. This was to facilitate meaningful discussion at the conference. The LearningTimes platform enabled creation of a group with appropriate folders that only those participating in the workshop could see and access.
As the community grows, new groups can be easily added with a range of different privileges. This enables private space within public space, much as one can do in the physical world.
Maintaining Momentum
Creating a community is only the beginning. To maintain a CoP over time, everyone must keep an eye on common goals or shared themes. Community leaders need to keep the participants’ focus on both short-term and long-term objectives and also need to re-energize the community, when needed, through new postings and events. The entire community also bears responsibility for watching particular dynamics that affect any momentum or growth that a CoP has developed. Foremost among these issues are how people feel about the community, how much time they devote to community activity, and how the community was designed for evolution.
People who participate in a CoP must feel that the community is engaging, responsive, and useful in meeting their needs. The participants must also respect and trust each other and others’ contributions. Otherwise, they are likely to leave the community, never to return.
Members’ time demands can weaken a CoP by restricting their participation. It becomes difficult to deepen knowledge and expertise in an area, as Wenger defines community of practice activity, if members are not interacting on an ongoing basis. Production schedules and academic calendars affect community momentum in different ways. People who are scrambling to meet tight deadlines do not always have time to participate in a community. Conversely, people who work nine-, ten-, or eleven-month contracts have less incentive to continue contributing to a community during the remaining part of the year. They may have to take another job during the down period to make ends meet, or they may take advantage of the lull to take a vacation. This does not mean that your CoP must be so engaging that people participate from Internet cafes near Macchu Picchu, Peru. It does mean that a community may need to adjust its goals to accommodate common fast or slow periods.
As Kim (2000) and others have stated, each community should be built from the start with eventual change in mind. Factors that might precipitate changes include changes for the community members themselves, external events, value changes within the supporting agency, and changes in technology. Whether the community functions in educational or business-related circles, graduation, retirement, relocation, and similar life events may prompt community members to drop out for a while, or indefinitely. Equally important, we need to watch for resistance to a change that might otherwise drive the community forward.
Case Study: Maintaining the Co-op Program Community (Simon Fraser University)
A key element for creating a successful community of practice is to design for evolution. In this case, it is vital to implement design principles that allow for the Co-op Community’s own direction, personality, and enthusiasm to lead the way. The design is non-traditional in the sense that the community’s organization and structure were not predetermined, nor dictated by the developers. Rather than an out-of-the-box vendor solution or onesize-fits-all software product, many of the community’s features are custom-built, based on the needs indicated by the stakeholders.
To ensure the community remains vibrant, a fulltime community coordinator and a community host (a Co-op student) work together to address the emergent needs of the members and to stimulate and encourage interaction. This largely involves open and ongoing communication as well as offering support for those Coop staff members (i.e., Co-op coordinators) who frequently engage with Co-op students.
In this way, the community’s social support systems are designed to create room for growth and cultivation of the online space that allows members to play active roles in shaping its features. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/30%3A_Supporting_E-learning_through_Communities_of_Practice/30.6%3A_CoP.txt |
To help you begin to create your own community of practice, here are useful recommendations taken from the preceding case studies.
General
• Select tools that match your specific community requirements and context. There is no single ideal community platform, so plan for a good foundation to build as new uses and needs emerge.
• Document observations in the community.
• Support movement between communities.
• Avoid heaping in lots of content. Rather, model how it can be done and encourage members to contribute.
• Begin working on your own research needs early on. What should you keep track of? What type of agreement do you need with your members to conduct research?
• Research new communication technologies and trends both outside and inside your community. Be creative and responsive in experimenting with tools to support community activities.
How Do I Get Started?
• Identify an existing gap or need for the target stakeholders (e.g., needs assessment of Co-op students).
• Establish an overall vision or value statement to meet the target stakeholders’ needs.
• Actively involve the development team from the inception of the idea to create a community, including participation in brainstorming activities.
• Elicit input about specific needs / requirements / wishes from the stakeholders. Conduct surveys with the stakeholders pertaining to topics for the learning modules and the types of activities they would find useful in an online community.
• Involve stakeholders in planning, design, development, and implementation of the online community.
• Ensure that resources are in place for the project. (This is not an initiative done on the side of one’s desk.)
• Build enthusiasm and excitement both internally and externally so that everyone feels they have contributed towards, believes in, and is committed.
• Maintain ongoing project evaluation.
• Monitor and analyze stakeholders’ use patterns and satisfaction levels.
• Ensure resources are in place to implement future technical upgrades and development changes as the community grows.
Who Can Help (Human Resources)
• A development team with multiple perspectives and roles, i.e., Co-operative Education staff, discipline-specific Co-operative Education coordinators, learning designer, instructional designer, experience designer, programmers and systems administrators, intellectual property coordinator, editors, new media designer, project managers, facilitators, and most importantly, students’ (Co-op and work-study) involvement in planning, hosting, moderating, and providing input and feedback.
What Other Resources are Needed?
• An online community platform with content management and discussion capabilities
• Server and back-up
What Funding is Needed?
• Funding for the multitude of staff roles and expertise, i.e., a community coordinator, community host, marketing materials, and promotional events and prizes, as well as funds to ensure the continued development of existing and new features.
How Do I Plan?
• Identify the overall scope for the online community and different phases as needed.
• Allocate extra time for testing, launching, and unforeseen events.
• Provide promotional items to departments, internally and externally.
• Secure support and buy-in from stakeholders (key for success).
• Ensure that orientations and training are part of the plan. Allot generous time for training.
• Identify milestones within the scope of the online community plan and celebrate accomplishments.
• Conduct a phased-launch approach whereby you advertise then launch the online community to one group of stakeholders at a time to assess their interactions and uses, etc.
• Dedicate a minimum of one full-time staff member/student to administer/monitor the online community.
• Expect that it will take time for the online community concept to take root, and even longer for stakeholders to engage with the online community. Ensure you indicate the direct value each stakeholder group may experience.
Outline the Key Steps in the Delivery of the Online Community
• Plan events and promotions (marketing plan).
• Ensure necessary resources are in place to support and maintain the online community.
• As much as possible, make the delivery of the online community appear seamless to the target group.
• Plan to collect feedback from the target group for modifications to the existing processes, features, content, functionality, and the environment (i.e., user interface).
• Ensure continued development and upgrades to the current features and continual updates to content.
• Obtain student (and relevant stakeholder) involvement at all levels: planning, implementation, and contributions.
How Do I Ensure an Impact on Learning (Evaluation)
• Gather data from Co-op students while at university and after they have graduated.
• Embed reflective elements whereby students can record/showcase their learning outcomes (i.e., discussion forums, comment boxes, community profiles).
• Encourage a pull vs. push approach (enable self-directed learning) whereby stakeholders are required to think about how the information they are seeking influences them personally, rather than providing them with directive instructions. Allow for inquiry-based acquisition of content.
How do I Let Others Know? (Communication Plan)
• Attend conferences, events, departmental initiatives, etc.
• Host information sessions and informal presentations.
• Online promotions (email) are effective, as well as electronic newsletters.
• Ensure a marketing strategy/plan is in place, specifically designed to target individual groups.
• Incorporate the online community URL and relevant information within existing marketing materials (department-level and/or program level).
• Incorporate the various tools into your regular processes (i.e., online event registration, creation of profiles for new intakes, etc.).
• Publish your initiative and findings in academic journals and/or special-interest publications.
30.8: Sum
“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community … Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own”. – Cesar Chavez
In this chapter we have defined communities of practice, grounded the CoP concept in theoretical background, and offered guidelines and tips to help you get started on implementing your own CoP. Case studies describing several different CoPs illustrate the application of these ideas and incorporate many of the elements of successful communities of practice. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/30%3A_Supporting_E-learning_through_Communities_of_Practice/30.7%3A_Rec.txt |
Learning outcomes
• Connect content demands, student needs, and instructional strategies.
• Select instructional strategies along a continuum of potential practice.
• Envision a way in which the continuum of practice can inform your work.
In this chapter, we distinguish between online and blended learning. The term “online” refers to teaching and learning done totally at a distance, mediated via electronic means (email, discussion boards, electronic conferencing, etc.), while blended learning includes a face-to-face component as well as distance learning, usually with one component supporting the other, depending on the emphasis. In the K–12 or post-secondary educational environment, these learning options enable students to complete work that they would not otherwise be able to do.
Initially, this audience included students with extended illnesses or disabilities who could complete course work that they were otherwise unable to do, or rural students who lacked access to courses required for postsecondary schooling. Increasingly, this audience has expanded to include students who are working towards their personal learning goals, and need access to courses content at their own pace.
In a corporate environment, training is often considered an incentive, something that is available only to the people who are already recognized as high performers. This view tends to deny under-performers the opportunity to reach their potential, although a commonly cited benefit to training in general is that it tends to lead to improved performance and satisfaction and a reduction of staff turnover. Corporate online/blended learning initiatives can make training available to everyone at anytime and in any location.
Historically, online and blended learning is rooted in distance and correspondence education from the mid- 1800s (Smith & Crichton, 2003)—much of it pioneered in Canada and Australia. Given this long history, and the variety of settings in which blended and online learning are being used today, this chapter focuses on the realities of creating educational environments in the digital age, and the continuum upon which they can be achieved.
This chapter suggests that online and blended learning, as currently practised, fall along a continuum that ranges from easily recognized teacher-directed instruction (passive, correspondence-type materials) to learner-centred, constructivist strategies (active, student-negotiated, experiential projects). Educators, as never before, have a full toolbox of instructional strategies, methods, and media at their disposal. They only need awareness and opportunity to make rich and meaningful choices for their students.
The definitions below set the context for this chapter and serve as a starting point for building a common understanding of the components that create learning events and environments along the continuum.
Face-to-face learning
Face-to-face learning refers to traditional learning environments whereby the learners and facilitators are colocated for the same purpose and for a pre-determined period of time. Workshops, seminars, courses and conferences that have facilitators or instructors physically present in the same room at the same time with participants or students are examples of face-to-face delivery models.
Online learning
The term online refers to teaching and learning done totally at a distance, mediated through a range of electronic means (email, discussion boards, electronic conferencing, etc.). The Advisory Committee for Online Learning (2001) defines online learning as “what occurs when education and training are delivered and supported by networks such as the Internet or intranets” (p. 1). This definition of online learning highlights the flexible and dynamic nature of the online environment, a characteristic that makes it possible to engage in learning at anytime and from anyplace. Online learning can take a variety of forms. Each of these forms involves a combination of synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous components and includes the following:
• Blended learning—Blended learning includes a face-to-face component as well as an online component. In blended learning, the face-to-face can support the online or visa versa, depending on the emphasis placed on the two options.
• Webcasts—These refer to the transmission of live audio or video over the Internet. They are the Internet equivalent to traditional radio and TV broadcasting and can be used as stand-alone events that participants register for or as a component of an online course, conference, or session.
• Podcasting—This refers to the capture and storage of digital audio files that can then be played back over the Internet. Increasingly, podcasts are being used as stand-alone events that participants register for or as a component of an online course or conference.
• Discussion forums—These are the mainstay of many online learning offerings. Discussion forums or groups refer to online, asynchronous, text-based areas, which can be password-protected or open to all, that provide an interactive discussion via keyboard (typing). For organization and readability, various discussion threads can be established for different topics. In the context of an online course, they are generally moderated by the course facilitator, and student participation is expected. In the context of an online event such as a webcast, discussion forums are generally used pre-webcast and/or post-webcast as a place for participants to further expand and elaborate on the context of the online event.
• Instant messaging—This is often referred to as a quick collaboration tool, as it allows two people (or more) to interact back and forth using the keyboard (most often in real time, but not always). In general, participants must be specifically asked or invited to join (i.e., MSN chat, Skype or ICQ).
• Synchronous collaboration tools—This refers to a suite of features useful for online meetings, delivered over the Internet via one point of access, and generally password-protected. These features generally include real-time audio discussion as well as document sharing, interactive whiteboard space, text chat, desktop sharing, and the ability to break into small groups for synchronous discussion. In addition, the entire meeting can be recorded for playback later via the recorded meeting link (i.e., Elluminate Live, iLINC). Synchronous collaboration tools are often used to host independent events that participants register for, as well as components of online courses or as online office spaces, etc.
Online courses
Many of the features discussed above are components of an online course and can be combined in a variety of ways, depending upon the needs of the audience, the specifics of the content and unique characteristics of the learning context.
Most often, online courses are delivered through a learning management system (LMS), which allows course materials and content to be stored and usability statistics to be collected. LMSs typically include collaboration tools such as discussion groups and synchronous sessions, all in a web-accessible, password-protected environment. It is also possible to create online courses that function external to an LMS should tracking not be a requirement. While there are a variety of proprietary LMS tools on the market, open source/freeware LMSs are increasingly popular as an alternative to increased licensing costs.
Online communities
This refers to an online collaboration space for people working on a common topic or area(s). The functionality in an online community includes much of what is available in a learning management system but an online community may or may not be course dependent or assignment-driven. Generally, a stand-alone online community includes access to a range of asynchronous and synchronous functions through a single access point. The functions required in an online community include discussion groups, chat, user identification icon, synchronous tools for holding web meetings, file sharing, etc. There is general agreement among educators that an online community requires a facilitator to keep it vibrant, sustainable, and used by its community members. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.1%3A_Introduction.txt |
In 2004, I had the opportunity to design a graduate course in digital filmmaking. The decision was made to offer this course via distance delivery. As this was a new distance course, it was critical that it leveraged the existing technology creatively and model sound instructional strategies. Previously, I had taught other online courses, using a variety of software (First Class, Nautikos, Web CT, Blackboard, Elluminate Live!), and, in each of those situations, I had modified my instruction to match the software. This time I decided to try a different approach. I determined the instructional strategy would be studio-based, assuming the software (Blackboard and Elluminate) could be adapted to support it.
The course, Inquiry Into Digital Filmmaking, received very positive reviews from the students. The opening assignment, the creation of a short film, shared within the Blackboard discussion board via links to the students’ web pages, served three purposes:
1. as an icebreaker—literally, for one of the students;
2. as a pattern for the completion of the other tasks within the course and a chance for students to see how studio-based instruction might look in a totally online environment; and
3. as an opportunity for students to demonstrate their prior knowledge and skills with filmmaking.
The first purpose, an icebreaker, is critical for the development of positive learning environments (Dooley, Lindner & Dooley, 2005) and is consistent with Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction (Gagne, 1977). It supports the development of a collaborative, supportive community of practice that promotes risk-taking and social interaction (Crichton, 1998, 1993). It also provides an opportunity for students to introduce themselves and begin an authentic discourse (Wenger, n.d.) around a relevant topic — the successful completion of the course. The first assignment, a one-minute video showing “My favourite place to get a warm drink” was designed to be fun and to provide a way to begin building a sense of who the participants are in the course — a commonly cited best practice for facilitating online (Salmon, 2001). A warm drink was chosen for its universality and neutrality, as students, a mix of urban and rural, and from a variety of educational backgrounds and levels of film-making experience, were located in Hong Kong, Northwest Territories, Alberta, and Ontario.
The second purpose, a pattern, helps students to determine the rhythm of the course and its expectations. In studio-based courses, activities consist of required and elective components, and evaluation takes the form of critiques (crits). Sharing and trust within a community are essential parts of a studio environment, so a collective understanding of acceptable behaviour for constructive criticism is important. Rubrics and/or checklists, circulated in advance and negotiated during the completion of the activity promote a positive “crit” process. Patterns, as suggested by Alexander et al. (1977), help to break down complex concepts or activities into their component parts, allowing experts and novices to participate at their own levels. In the case of the icebreaker activity, pitching a story, story-boarding the actual film segments, and providing access to a final version constitute the pattern for task completion for the remainder of the course.
The third purpose, an opportunity to demonstrate prior knowledge and skills, is consistent with sound principles of adult learning (Knowles, 1995). Adults bring rich and varied life experiences to their learning. Because of this, they are capable of latitudinal as well as longitudinal learning. This means that they can encounter a new concept, link it to a previous experience, modify their understanding, and incorporate it into something new. The literature (Knowles, Holton & Swanson, 1998; Richards, Dooley & Lindner, 2004) suggests that adults come to learning highly motivated, so drawing on their need to know, prior experience, and readiness to learn is essential. Well-designed icebreakers can set that positive tone for the course, letting students experience the course expectations in a safe and supported initial activity.
The following scenario is from one of the films from the icebreaker activity in the Inquiry into Digital Filmmaking course. James was from NWT. The opening sequence shows the thermometer outside his house reading minus 30°C. He fires up his Skidoo and heads out through a wooded area onto the frozen lake. He bores a hole in the ice, sets up his chair, casts his finishing line, and pulls out his small Thermos. As he pours his warm liquid into his cup, he says, “Here is where you and I enjoy a warm drink in Res Lake!”
While other videos included cups of tea in snowy backyards, a Starbucks in Hong Kong, a kitchen in Toronto, and a cross-country ski trip in Banff, James broke the ice on many levels. Students watched videos and then engaged in conversation within the discussion forum, asking questions about the subjects of the film and sharing technical tips or tricks, details about locations, and other details. The short films also provided a first glimpse of the students—we actually saw each other and got a taste for one another’s lifestyles—something often missing in online learning.
Prior to sharing the videos, students were given some background on studio-based learning, a rubric for evaluating the films, and suggestions for how to participate in a critique of the work. Blackboard was used to organize the course, breaking the lecture content into weekly modules (course document section). The discussion board organized the 13 weeks of the course into discussion topics and hosted the film festivals for the students’ work. This allowed students to annotate to their QuickTime video links as well as organize the “crit” sessions around individual videos. Additional discussion areas were created for sharing technical tips, innovations and updates in hardware and software, and solutions to common problems. By designing the course around tasks and inviting students to solve problems collaboratively, a very strong community of practice (Wenger, n.d.) formed. Hosting a video course online presented numerous problems with file size, etc., but the studio aspect allowed students to customize assignments, experience things at their own pace and skill level and engage in rich conversations concerning tasks, problems, work, and social environment. Without a doubt, video, in a studio design environment, pushes the technology of the university server, as well as that of the instructor and the students, but the design creates the type of rich online social interaction and knowledge construction rarely found in the actual practice of many online courses. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.2%3A_The_Studio_Story.txt |
The video course described above is an example of designing from the perspective of a particular instructional strategy with the intention of supporting a specific learning experience. Attempting to build an online environment to support studio-based instruction was a risk for the instructor, and a leap of faith for the students, but it worked. It was a clear departure from the typical online course design of reading content and posting comments for discussion. It clearly changed the roles for the students and the instructor, forcing both to negotiate tasks, engage in problem-solving, and participate in critiques. While studio-based design is certainly at one end of the continuum that we will discuss later in this chapter, it shares the three constants inherent in all teaching and learning interactions—the intersections of teachers, students, and content.
We became aware of the importance of those intersections in our recent work in a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) project, Strengthening Capacity for Basic Education in Western China (SCBEWC). There we were called upon to introduce instructional design and develop a distance education system to train teachers in rural, remote regions. However, it wasn’t until one of us was invited to lecture graduate students at Beijing Normal University on the importance of instructional design in the West that we were forced to consider the issue ourselves and share it with others in a way that ensured the key essence was not lost in translation.
The graduate students at Beijing Normal University were persistent in their demands to understand why the design rather than simply the content of the instruction is important. Figure \(1\) helped scaffold their understanding and provoked an interesting discussion concerning the overlap among the three circles. The importance of social interaction that can be generated when the teachers and learners come together to explore, solve problems, and negotiate the content was also discussed. A plate was added for the three circles to sit on, and it was labelled instructional strategy, levels of learning, and types of media. This diagram helped the students understand that it is the role of the instructional designer to select the strategy that best suits the needs and goals (Vygotsky, 1986) of the three variables (teacher, student, and content).
Right there, in that simple drawing was the crystallization of the authors’ thinking about social constructivism; work that draws on Dewey (1929), Piaget (2002), and Vygotsky (1986). Drawing from our experience, it was easy to share examples of a variety of educational contexts, ranging from training situations in which computer-marked drill and practice was the most appropriate approach to achieve simple certification requirements, to the development of complex simulations and scenarios to encourage higher-order thinking and problem-solving at the graduate level. Figures \(1\) and \(2\) allowed us to introduce Bloom’s taxonomy for levels of complexity of task design as well as Dale’s Cone of Experience for appropriate media selection as examples of instructional strategies and categories.
Between us, we hold a combined 30-plus years of experience in instructional design, content development, online teaching and consulting; therefore, the linkage between the components of the modified Figure 1, was fairly intuitive. However, it did take the presentation in Beijing to make them tangible. Eisner (1998) is correct when he says, “There is nothing slipperier than thought …” suggesting that capturing thoughts on paper or blackboards helps to make the intangible (thoughts) tangible and therefore editable and discussable” (p. 27). We trust that sharing the figures presented in this chapter will cause you to engage in some activities that will make your thoughts tangible as well. We support Eisner’s belief that it is not until people begin to capture their thinking in a sharable form (text, concept maps, collegial conversations), that it becomes concrete enough to be actionable. Our work in China has forced us to explain things in a clear and concise manner, fit for translation, that we held intuitively, and it has encouraged us to think of the diverse instructional strategies we have seen in various courses, resources and training situations and situate them along a continuum of practice. It has been through that process of sharing our individual knowledge that we have been able to solidify our thinking and enlarge our own community of practice.
The Continuum Story
Both of us have taught instructional design at the graduate level and in workshops. We have developed content for corporate training as well as K–12 courseware. However, our work in China has forced us to synthesize how we present the importance of instructional design to others. Typically, in that work we are introducing the concept of design as a means to an end rather than a process in itself, and more often than not, doing so through a translator, with limited time allotted to the task at hand.
As we work with our Chinese colleagues to develop a system of distance education for 10 million teachers, and eventually 200 million students (China has the largest public education system in the world), the development of a continuum of practice has been helpful. To illustrate a range of increments along that continuum, we developed a table of significant approaches, matched with appropriate software, media, and instruction. Of course, any table such as Figure 31.2 generalizes important concepts and subjects those generalizations to criticism of either omission or over simplification. However our work suggests Figure 31.3 provides a helpful starting place for those considering alternative or innovative approaches to teaching and learning, especially for those new to online teaching and learning. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.3%3A_Verbalizing_the_Con.txt |
The lovely thing about a continuum is that items on it are linked to represent a continuous series of possibilities that blend into each other gradually and seamlessly. Unfortunately, the physical presentation of Figure \(1\) suggests otherwise, with the rows and columns appearing fixed; the individual cells, independent and rigid.
When we reduce Figure \(1\) to its simplest form. The educator, learner, and content components appear on the left side of the simplified continuum in Figure \(2\) .
So, how can an awareness of Figure \(2\) affect teaching and learning opportunities in either online or blended contexts? In the introduction we stated that educators, as never before, have a full toolbox of instructional strategies, methods and media at their disposal. They only need awareness and opportunity to make rich and meaningful choices for their students. Teachers must recognize that software and hardware that support online learning need not dictate instruction. The needs and goals of the teachers, students and the demands of the content must do that, trusting that the technology will be flexible enough to support it.
If students need certification on a specific training issue, synchronous online instruction may be adequate, while students requiring more complex, higher-order thinking activities might need a blended learning experience. The onus is on the teacher / institution to match the learning outcomes to the instructional opportunities suggested in Figures \(1\) and \(2\) , if the promise and potential of rich education environments are to be fully realized.
Online and blended learning create opportunities for remote, rural, and less-mobile learners, as well as for those in urban settings with access to both physical campuses and online options. By thinking about both the instructional strategy and the role of media, students can benefit from extraordinary multimedia-enhanced, customized learning experiences. Teachers begin to realize that they can actually offer learning content that previously would have been impossible in traditional, face-to-face classrooms.
In traditional classrooms, teachers confront the reality of a totally synchronous environment. Bells ring, class periods start and stop; instruction is reduced to chunks of time—typically less than 60 minutes. In the world of adult education and training, the reality of time and the reliance on the synchronous environment is no less apparent. The distractions may be slightly different as cell phones, laptops, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) compete with the training for the learners' attention, but the chunking of instruction is constant. Main and supporting content areas are layered around the mid-morning and afternoon breaks and sandwiched between is the ever-protected lunch break.
In both settings, as the content becomes more complex, students begin to break from the pack with some ready to move ahead and others falling behind. Tests typically occur at regular intervals, and mastery of content becomes lost in the need to cover the curriculum within a prescribed semester or school year or the workshop content before the session ends. Consequently, we see a range of grades or course completions and dropouts rather than a consistent mastery of core concepts by all students. With facilitated or blended instruction comes the potential for more flexible, asynchronous learning. Time demands change as the teacher or facilitator assists and mentors, rather than directing the instruction. The role of the content becomes important, as the student engages with it while the teacher/facilitator supports the process.
So what might the learning options presented in Figures \(1\) and \(2\) look like in actual practice? We have experienced all four options, as well as modifications and variations along the continuum, noting that rarely does learning opportunity rest solely in one type or another. In the next section we will share examples. Each of the examples was a course-based learning experience that resulted in formal evaluation and a final grade or certification. This is an important distinction, as many online training and professional development activities that use blended or fully online delivery models do not evaluate.
31.5: A Story of Online I
An example of the online course continuum type is a project for the Naval Officers Training Centre in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Working with their development team, our task was to create an online course for Naval Reservists to prepare them for the hands-on portion of their training. The target audience was university age, and the expectation was that they would complete the online course over the school year.
The course content itself was predetermined, but the way in which it was structured and combined with multimedia assets was up to the project design team. Due to budget constraints and the adoption of a phased approach to incorporating online learning into the Reservists suite of course offerings, online facilitation was confined in this pilot phase to ensuring access and troubleshooting technical issues. The assessment was based on a standard multiple-choice examination conducted face-to-face at Reservists locations nationally. It was essential that participants complete the course and pass the examination to participate in hands-on training. So while this example was not conducted inside a postsecondary institution, it did include a formal evaluation aspect in which grades were assigned.
Given these parameters, the design team needed to address any potential motivational issues that could affect the learning. They also designed media elements to support the learning. The resulting courseware was a mix of instructional strategies enhanced with multimedia components such as opportunities to check progress and learning, short video clips of on-ship procedures, audio files of past course participants and instructors, scenarios and case studies depicted via video or still images, matching games, etc.
The resulting courseware provided the students with flexible access to multimedia-enhanced content in an organized, predetermined manner and allowed the teacher to use the limited face-to-face time for other content considerations. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.4%3A_Stories_from_the_Co.txt |
EDER 673—Introduction to Instructional Design—was designed in response to my experiences as an instructor teaching an audio version of the same course. The course participants were all part of a M.Ed. program and came from a wide range of backgrounds including postsecondary, K–12 and corporate education with an average age of 40. As teachers/trainers, many already thought of themselves as instructional designers and had a difficult time relating to the language and practices of the instructional design field. However, as they progressed through the course, all found that. in practice, they were using the same techniques and approaches as those featured in the course, just under another title.
Upon reflection, and influenced by Donald Schon's book The Reflective Practitioner (1983), I realized one of the problems with the structure of the audio course was lack of acknowledgment of teachers' experience as designers. I was trying to present a different view of instructional design, not their first view. For this reason, the online course of EDER 673 focused on the exploration of curriculum ideologies, the development of their own personal views of teaching and learning, an analysis of different texts and the incorporation of some of these ideas into each student’s personal instructional design model. Given this approach, it was my hope that the students would not dismiss instructional design theory, just as the instructor was not dismissing their experience as teachers and designers of their own instruction.
The online version of EDER 673 was designed around the following assumptions:
• The “meat” of the course lies in the online discussions and related activities. As a result, there were very few content pages to scroll through, but rather pointers to articles and activities to do for each week’s discussion forum. This design approach was based on my experience that it is through reading, reflecting and conversing with others that one gains a better sense of the complexities of instructional design (ID). From there, participants really need a space and place to share ideas with others and to contemplate how the course concepts might work in their unique setting.
• An ID course has to be application-focused. There is a certain amount of how-to that comes with learning the language and process of ID, but at some point folks need to get their hands dirty and use the tools of ID in their own unique settings.
• Learning ID should be fun. I have been working and teaching online for eight years and, if there is one thing that technology has reinforced, it is the need to have patience and a sense of humour!
Based on these assumptions and the constraints of the online environment, LMS structure and organizational requirements, I then began to structure the course and in essence the learning space for the participants—prede-termined. I knew that when dealing with messy and complicated concepts it is necessary to be able to see how they relate to the larger picture, as well as to real-life situations in a variety of settings. For this reason, I chose to use an adventure metaphor to represent the introductory travels through the field of ID and its associated methods and techniques. As with all adventures, there is no linear path to success. In instructional design there is no systematic method for applying one technique at one time and then moving forward. The reality is that we use all of the techniques and models in a complex, ever-changing environment.
Online Course Structure
The online version of EDER 673 was designed around units to be completed each week in order to give people time off on the weekends for reading, contemplating and reflecting. In order to be able to participate in the online activities and discussion required for each, the participants had to complete the readings prior to beginning of the week’s unit.
In the course documents section of the LMS, the unit for each week built on:
• a preamble introducing the topic and its relevance
• a back-grounder explaining the rationale behind the readings selections
• a variety of activities to be completed as part of participating in the discussion forum for the week
In order to keep the discussion forums manageable, they were set up so that there was one discussion forum per week of the course. Participants were responsible for participating in 10 of the 13 discussion groups. Forums for each assignment were also set up so that questions relating to the assignments could be dealt with in their respective forum, where all participants could learn from the dialogue.
The course also included scheduled, synchronous online discussions using Elluminate technology at three times during the course. These discussions provided an opportunity to touch base and see how all are doing, clarify assignment requirements and host guest speakers in various topic areas relevant to the course content. These sessions were all recorded and archived for review in case participants were unable to join in at the scheduled day and time.
My role, after the course had been designed and posted to the LMS, was that of facilitator. I was actively involved in the discussions while at the same time creating space for participants to discuss and sort through their developing understandings of ID—a tricky balance. I tended to be more heavily involved in leading the discussions during the first few weeks of the course and then gradually moved into a participatory role as I attempted to build and foster a discussion space and culture that valued all contributions as we developed our shared understandings of the content and topics. My turnaround time for assignments was one week. For discussion postings or emails, it was 48 hours at the latest, but more often was within the same day. Virtual office hours were twice a week—although rarely used—and the synchronous sessions were well attended, as I tried to get guest speakers that were in keeping with both the topic area as well as the undercurrent of discussion at that time.
The course centred around two assignments prepared in three phases each:
1. the creation of an instructional blueprint for a piece of instruction, and
2. the development of an original instructional design model based on the characteristics and constraints of participants’ work environments.
Course feedback has been consistently positive over the past eight offerings. A common comment is that students really appreciate the overall structure of the course and the flow of the weeks. The final assignment, developing their own model of instructional design, gets rave reviews each time. One participant in particular used her final assignment to outline her approach to instructional design in an interview within her school district, and she was the successful candidate for the position of Assistant Principal—Online Learning. For me, the take away from this experience was that in this case, with this audience and the content being covered, a facilitated instruction approach was effective. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.6%3A_A_Story_of_Facilita.txt |
Typically described as an instructional strategy that incorporates the best of face-to-face learning and online content and discussion groups, blended instruction often meets with mixed success. A key challenge to designing blended learning strategies is to sort out what content is best suited to which format—online or face-to-face. If that decision is not well considered at the design level, the workload for both the teacher and students may seem overwhelming, and the learning experience may be inconsistent with the curricular goals.
In blended learning, typically the face-to-face component is supported by supplementary online content. This is usually contained within an LMS, often with asynchronous discussion groups and synchronous sessions, and it may take the form of blogs, podcasts and multimedia simulations. Conversely, a blended course might exist primarily online, with a few face-to-face meetings for more experiential learning opportunities such as labs, visits to specific sites, or face-to-face orientation sessions so students can meet each other and the instructor.
In winter of 2004 I had the opportunity to design a campus-based course for pre-service teachers. It was entitled Distributed Learning: Teaching and Learning Online. The desire to build and teach this course came directly from my personal experience as a K–12 online educator, as well as my research into the practices of K– 12 online teachers. I felt the course had to model excellent practice and leverage emerging technologies, as it would introduce blended and online learning to preservice teachers.
The course, an elective, met on Friday mornings for three hours, and it was assumed that students would work an additional three hours per week independently. Further, all similar electives within the program, required students to complete an inquiry paper based on action research.
Before the semester started, I met with the students and determined that none of them had taken an online course before. The majority had very limited technology skills and were actually enrolled in the course to gain them. Therefore, I started the design of the course by considering the amount of time available (13 weeks) and listing the learning experiences that I wanted the students to have; I then organized the content to fit those constraints. I sorted the content into experiences that I felt were best shared, either face-to-face during the Friday sessions or online during the expected independent study time. Further, I modified the inquiry paper to include the development of a student-negotiated learning object. I planned for the final face-to-face class to be a celebration of learning where the students could share their learning objects and talk about their successes and challenges. Therefore, I was left with 11 sessions to present content, develop technology skills, and model more student-centred approaches to learning.
Assuming the first session and the last were orientation, introduction and celebration, respectively, I distributed specific content to each of the other 11 sessions, covering topics such as roles and responsibilities for online educators, content development, issues of pedagogy and assessment, characteristics of asynchronous and synchronous learning, global issues—digital divide, employment opportunities, and universal design. Paralleling each topic were weekly online content structured within the LMS and opportunities for students to practise moderating the discussion forum. The face-to-face sessions became workshop opportunities, with matching software complementing the various topics. For example, the week on content development was supported by concept mapping using Inspiration software for storyboarding and an introductory, hands-on session in digital filmmaking.
The most critical design decision on my part was where on the continuum I should start. As our program is inquiry-based, I felt it would have been inappropriate to start with online instruction only. Further, because there was an existing face-to-face expectation, the facilitated online instruction model would not work either. The choice rested with a blended approach or a studio-based approach, and I chose blended, designing the face-to-face sessions as a studio-based model in terms of the hands-on learning and open critiques of the products and process.
This course has been offered each year since its introduction in 2004, and students have been hired directly from the course for jobs in online teaching for the local school board. Each year, the course content has changed as new technology emerges. In the last offering, I included podcasting, wikis, and blogs, and I am still exploring options for the upcoming course. The course has exceeded my expectations, and the evaluations have been excellent.
During the first offering, a graduate student (Shervey, 2005) researched this course for her thesis. The study was positive and reaffirming, as it revealed that the students’ perceptions of promise and potential of online learning changed as they experienced them firsthand.
Blended learning worked well for the Distributed Learning course. For example, it allowed me to share asynchronous technologies during the sessions on asynchronous and synchronous learning. Rather than attend class, I encouraged the students to connect from home during the Friday class, letting them experience what it felt like to be learning along from home. One of the most successful sessions was the discussion of employment. I invited colleagues who work in various online professions to join the discussion forum. I created a forum topic for each of them, introducing them to the course and explaining to the students how I knew them or had worked with them, thereby personalizing these potentially anonymous guests. Each guest then posted a description of their work and invited the students to ask questions. And question they did, asking everything from who are you, to how much do you make, and are you lonely sitting at home.
Over the three offerings of this course, I have done little to change the structure or my instructional strategies, which appear to be working well, but the design is flexible enough to allow me to change the content as new things emerge. I cannot imagine offering this course in anything other than a blended approach, as I have learned that our face-to-face time is as important as our online time. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.7%3A_A_Story_of_Blended_.txt |
The story of studio-based instruction (SBI) was introduced at the beginning of this chapter. In this section, we’ll place that story within the framework. SBI requires teachers to think differently about course structures. In other online graduate courses, I had simply taken the number of weeks available, subtracted two for start-up and conclusion, and plotted the topics to be covered over the remaining 11 weeks of a 13-week semester. In my previous online courses, I situated three activities, each increasingly complex, over the 13 weeks, and planned two synchronous class meetings for students to share their second and third assignments. Content, in the form of text lectures, was placed in the course document area, and a discussion forum was created to correspond with each lecture. Students were expected to read the content, post comments, and negotiate the assignments. I designed a format for the content lectures, so students could expect to see the same pattern presented each week. This approach received excellent reviews. The format included sections for my presentation of content, student tasks, suggested resources, and a to-do list. However, I also received criticism because the course was so tightly designed, and the activities were so varied that students felt they had covered the content broadly but not deeply.
Criticism from my previous courses, about breadth rather than depth, informed my decision to try SBI. While I still had the 13-week semester as a constraint, I decided that Inquiry Into Digital Filmmaking—EDER 675.15 was not going to be a sampler of filmmaking techniques; rather, it would be an inquiry into the potential of digital filmmaking in research techniques, content development, DVD production, and digital literacy. At the graduate level, the course could not be a how-to workshop for filmmaking, so students needed the opportunity to either (1) demonstrate their existing skills and prior knowledge through digital filmmaking, or (2) gain those skills quickly enough to begin to use them in the course. As digital filmmaking and editing were relatively new, I also did not want to penalize students who did not have regular access to editing software or digital video cameras. Therefore, I needed to create a variety of tasks such as creation of simple films, development of DVDs or completion of research papers on related topics.
Mindful of the need to design a learning environment that supported a rich understanding of the potential of film, while allowing students to gain a deeper experience, I turned to SBI, breaking the course into three required components. The first component was designed according to adult learning principles. It asked students to provide evidence of 30 hours of concentrated inquiry into the knowledge and skills of basic filmmaking, asking them to either attend a workshop on digital filmmaking, or work through the textbook The Director in the Classroom, or explain how their previous experience was equivalent to the 30 hours of inquiry into digital filmmaking. To demonstrate their understanding of Component 1, students had to share their one-minute video described in the ice-breaker activity in the Studio Story section of this chapter. It was suggested that students complete Component 1 within the first four weeks of the semester.
Component 2 consisted of four modules of which students were to select two. A few students negotiated for the two to be merged into one larger component, and some students chose to work collaboratively. Details of the modules are available online.
Component 3 required students to participate in the online discussion forum in Blackboard throughout the semester. Because the students would be working asynchronously on their projects for the various components, I felt the discussion forum would create a space for the development of a community where we could come together and discuss the various modules. This would allow students who were not doing a particular module to begin to understand what it was generally about and engage in conversation related to it. Discussion forums introduced topics the first week and then elaborated on them in the second. The final week was an online film festival, with invited guests offering their criticism and suggestions.
Essential to SBI was the notion of a class critique, or crit. The crit provides an opportunity for sharing, feedback, constructive criticism, and interaction. Crits help build community and social interaction, and the concept of the crit, as well as roles and responsibilities, was clearly laid out before the first one occurred at the end of Component 1.
My role was to design the learning environment, including the content for the modules and the tasks for each of the three components, and to support subsequent learning. Immediately, students had to take an active role, negotiating their learning and deciding which modules to complete. Many found this challenging, as it was beyond their previous experiences with online learning. Only two students had ever taken a studio-based course before. These two students quickly became class leaders. SBI learning allowed the students to work independently and asynchronously. I supported them via regular email, and they connected with their classmates through the forum during the week. I arranged for two synchronous, Elluminate Live! sessions, one early in the semester to clarify course expectations, and one later in the semester to share final assignments for Component 2.
The course design was an absolute success. Course evaluations were glowing. Students were appreciative of the chance to experience an instructional module different from more typical facilitated or blended instruction. As well, the content of both the written work and the digital videos was excellent. The course did require technical support, as those students working in the Windows environment struggled to edit their videos and export their final products to QuickTime format. The Macintosh users had a much easier time using proprietary software available only for that platform. Fortunately, bandwidth was not a concern, and the three students who created DVDs as part of their Component 2 option had to mail actual DVDs of their work, as the file sizes were too large regardless of their locations.
I would offer this course again, using the SBI approach. However, I did learn two major lessons. The first was that students found it hard to adjust to the radical changes in course design inherent in SBI. They were initially reluctant to be proactive and negotiate tasks. In subsequent discussions about the course, a number of the students suggested that their initial concerns were exacerbated by being online and not having the initial trust that they could make the course work for them. Further, they stated that they were not sure if they could communicate openly and freely with an instructor they didn’t know, suggesting they would have known be better if we had met face-to-face first. Therefore, it will be incumbent on me to consider an additional icebreaker, in advance of Component 1, to begin the process of community building in the hopes of supporting greater risk-taking sooner in the limited time available.
The second lesson I learned was the need to stay with a proven pattern for content presentation. Instead of using the format I had developed for text lectures, I shifted to a series of hyperlinked web files. That format confused the students, did not create a pattern for content expectations across the modules, and added an unnecessary level of complexity. Consequently, I will need to revise the content portion of the synchronous modules to address this shortcoming. The greatest irony in this is that one of my colleagues used my hyperlinked Web file format in a course that one of my filmmaking students had taken, and the student suggested I might want to try my colleague’s format as it was so effective!
Studio-based instruction is at one end of our continuum, as it is the greatest departure from the original correspondence-based distance education. It requires active learning on the part of the students, and it forces teachers into the role of facilitators. It requires innovation and flexibility on the part of educators, as well as a rich understanding of media and software to support an authentic crit process. Further, because the curriculum is negotiated, and therefore student-centred, self-paced, and individualized, it requires a great deal of subject-matter expertise from course facilitators. There are no answer keys or computer-marked quizzes in this format!
31.9: Summary
One of the greatest lessons we have learned over our many years of teaching and learning in and about online and blended contexts is that educators have a range of choices concerning their instructional strategies. While the three constant factors (teachers, learners and content) remain, and should influence teachers’ choices, the degree and purpose of social interaction changes, depending upon the design of the instruction. Consequently, it becomes the job of educators to select instructional strategies and media to support them, and then make the technology itself disappear so that learning can occur. As seen in the four stories illustrating our continuum, the teacher must push back on the technology and not be dictated by it. Online and blended learning is not about technology; it is about learning. The technology must become transparent and ubiquitous to learners, and part of the role of educators and course designers is to ensure that occurs.
Having students and teachers alike reading lectures or listening to yet another podcast or video clip can no longer be considered a new or provocative way to teach as we begin the 21st century. We have more tools and technologies at our disposal than ever before, but we are still limited in how we conceive using these tools in our practice.
As educators, wrestling with myriad digital technologies, we must remember that our students have computers on their desktops that are many times more powerful than those that initially put astronauts on the moon. Therefore, are we really going to ask them do the ordinary things when they are poised for and capable of the extraordinary? Will online learning continue to be a poorer option to classroom learning, or are we prepared offer richer learning opportunities than are available in the majority of traditional classrooms? Is our nervousness about technology stifling our creativity? Until we understand our options, and begin to make informed decisions about instructional strategies and the media that might support them, we fear the promise and potential of learning online will continue to be lost.
We realize that it is our task to make the technology disappear for the learners and allow it to become an ordinary part of the teaching and learning environment. When we consider the rich learning opportunities created in the studio-based example shared in this chapter, we realize what is possible. What we don’t know is what will be possible in the future. However, we do know that all that is limiting us is our willingness to push the limits.
Closing Question to Ponder
What can you accept as indicators of success for the various instructional strategies?
As multimedia is added to courses, how does the teacher ensure the content is not lost in the process? How can the media and technological frameworks be made to disappear and only support the learning?
Assuming the continuum of practice is an effective way to discuss online options, what might we expect the next extensions of the continuum to look like? | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_Education_for_a_Digital_World_-_Advice_Guidelines_and_Effective_Practice_from_Around_Globe_(Hirtz)/31%3A_Looking_Forward_-_Stories_of_Practice/31.8%3A_A_Story_of_Studio-B.txt |
By the time students enter higher education, most have a pretty good idea how they learn best, though they may not have thought about it specifically. Perhaps you do, too.
For example, is it easier for you to learn by reading the instructions or by studying charts and graphs (visual learning)? Do you do better by hearing someone explain something or by listening to a video presentation (auditory, also known as aural, learning)? Or, does it help you to actually “get your hands on” whatever the task is, whether writing a paper, fixing the sink, or organizing a softball game (kinesthetic learning)?
These three learning styles, as they are called, are some of the most common ways we comprehend information, whether learning in a classroom, a kitchen, or on the job. We will be covering two additional well-known learning theories, the “Brain Dominance Theory” and “Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” as well. But for starters, complete the following exercise.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 1.1
Take the Learning Style Inventory to capture your “best practices” when it comes to the basic three learning styles. This inventory and others you will take throughout the course will become part of your take-home mid-term and take-home final. When you complete the “Learning Styles Inventory”:
1. Download the inventory.
2. Download the article What’s Your Learning Style.
3. Based on your inventory results, annotate by highlighting, underling, circling, or some other annotation device, ideas about how to maximize your learning style and strengthen others from the lists of multiple styles and preferences. Annotate for at least FIVE helpful perspectives and/or strategies per each of the three learning styles. Save this in your notebook for help with your portfolio’s written response for this unit. Your instructor may require you to hand it in for scoring.
01.2: Lesson 1.2: Visual Learning
“Eyes” by Clker-Free-Vector-Images is in the Public Domain, CC0
Studies indicate that up to 80% of us use our sense of sight as our primary learning style, or modality. Unfortunately, a lot of information in classrooms, workshops, meetings, and so on, is delivered in a lecture format. Nevertheless, there are still visual strategies that can be used to aid the learner.
To see how one teacher expanded her classroom presentations to include more visual strategies (and her success with that), and to offer several more visual strategies that may be helpful for you, too, complete the following exercise.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 2.1
We will discuss in class what you found, and you will use the information for a writing response assignment at the end of the unit.
01.3: Lesson 1.3: Auditory Learning
“Ear” by OpenClipart-Vectors is in the Public Domain, CC0
Modality number two is learning by hearing, or auditory/aural learning. Studies show that the percentage of people who learn best by hearing is as low as 10%, so most of us need strategies for how to get the most out of straight lecture classes or workshop and meeting presentations.
For a reminder of how tricky this type of learning can be, complete the following exercise.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 3.1
1. Write out instructions on how to create a simple paper airplane*. NO FAIR COPYING ANYBODY ELSE’S INSTRUCTIONS, online or your uncle’s. These must be YOUR original instructions that your instructor will be presenting to the class to see how classmates hear your directions and how you have organized the tasks. NO ILLUSTRATIONS, only words.
2. When your instructions are read by the instructor, you may not offer any prompts, explanations, apologies, or comments.
*If you have never have tried this before, here is an example:
“Paper Airplane” by pfunked is licensed under CC BY 3.0
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 3.2
Read the article Auditory Learning and choose six strategies that you think might help you. You can either download the article to annotate, or list the strategies on a separate piece of paper. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_01_Overview--Learning_Styles_and_Preferences_Unit_Terms/01.1%3A_Lesson_1.1%3A_The_Three_Learning_Styles.txt |
“Helping hands” by AlphaZeta is in the Public Domain, CC0
Kinesthetic or hands-on/tactile learners, surprisingly, comprise only about 25-50% of learners. But maybe I’m surprised because I am definitely a kinesthetic learner! It is my major mode. For kinesthetic learners, adding physical movement as a comprehension strategy is one of the best ways to learn. They do not do as well just listening to lectures or watching videos or sitting through power point presentations.
You have already gleaned much information on how to adapt a learning environment for this kind of learner from the previous readings and exercises in this unit. Now, take a look at one special environment designed primarily for hands-on learning, and complete the exercise below.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 4.1
For a look at one way kinesthetic learning has been incorporated into an educational facility specifically for learning challenged students, take a look at a website advertising a facility called Academy at SOAR. There is a short video presentation, and several features to read and learn about this facility that serves a population that often struggles in more traditional settings.
As you watch and read, you will learn about several kinesthetically-designed learning activities including hiking, rock climbing, snorkeling, a Spanish-immersion program and more.
For each of FIVE of these activities, write down as many traditional classroom or “regular school” learning tasks as you can think of. This is a good activity for a team or study group, as well as for individual students.
EXAMPLE:
ACTIVITY: rock climbing
CLASSROOM LEARNING TASKS:
survival skills (detail these)
physical fitness (detail these)
safety skills (details)
Math…
communication…
Writing assignment…
Get the idea?
The results of your lists will be discussed in class.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 4.2
PART A: Team activity.
1. Team up in groups of three at the most.
2. Your instructor will assign each team a “learning style” (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic).
3. Decide how you would teach a group of teens, in a high-risk group for not completing their high school education, the importance of graduating.
4. Use “your learning style” to decide how you would present the information.
5. Oh, and your community LOVES to fund education, so you have an UNLIMITED budget for field trips, production projects, etc. NOTE: you do not have to actually present the lesson, just describe it to share with the class, later on. For online learners, you can perhaps get together with a study group, or do this on your own, choosing any of the learning styles.
PART B: Independent activity–case study. Help Ben!
Ben, a first-time college student who has not attended school since he graduated high school ten years ago, is anxious about succeeding in college. He recently had to quit his very successful, though small, construction business after he hurt himself and could no longer do many of the tasks. Although he was disappointed, he sold his business and decided to invest his money in higher education to fulfill a dream he had as a youngster: becoming a history teacher. He loves to read as much as he loves building custom homes, so he looks at what happened to him as a chance to start a new chapter. That said, he’s nervous.
He was never an “A” student in school, although he received several awards for his work in shop and art classes. He also did pretty well in history classes as long as he could use his creativity. He found it hard to sit still and he was easily distracted when the teachers lectured, but he was one of the first to comprehend the information on charts and graphs. His GPA was high enough, however, to get him into college.
He wonders if you would give him some strategies about how to help him get the most out of his classes, given what he has shared, here.
Instructions: write a letter to Ben with TEN advice points to help him in his classes. Include specific strategies related to what you believe are his strongest learning styles. But also keep in mind where he struggles, too, so you can offer him some help there, as well. He has to take the following classes his first term: math, writing, effective learning, physical education, and an elective which, as you might guess, is History of the Americas, 101. A letter of advice of about 250 words will suffice. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_01_Overview--Learning_Styles_and_Preferences_Unit_Terms/01.4%3A_Lesson_1.4%3A_Kinesthetic_Learning.txt |
“Rainbow Brain” by Muffinator is in the Public Domain, CC0
The next learning theory reviewed in this series is somewhat controversial. It is called the “Brain Dominance Theory,” or, technically, Lateralization of Brain Function. This theory suggests that certain approaches to thinking and learning differ according to the hemispheres, left and right, of the brain. Critics of this theory claim it is the result of pop psychology more than sound science. Indeed, common sense indicates that, of course, we utilize all parts of the brain continually–which is why I like the multi-colored graphic of the brain. It infers a kind of brain symmetry–if not of function, of form.
To utilize your own “both/and” brain power, first read the article linked above, annotating for, or taking notes on, information you want to remember and include, perhaps, in your mid-term portfolio project and for your responses to the exercises below.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 5.1
1. Review the chart below that gives a brief summary of the so-called right/left brain kinds of activities, thinking, and preferences.
LEFT BRAIN RIGHT BRAIN
Logical Uses feeling/intuition
Detail oriented Perceives the “big picture”
Facts are important Imagination is important
Math and science interests Philosophy, religion, art interests
Perceives patterns Perceives spatial relationships
Reality based Fantasy is a focus
Keen on analysis/strategies Considers possibilities
Linear thinking Thinks holistically
2. Based on the information gleaned in the article and in # 1, design two 8 1/2 by 11 inches posters, one for each side of the brain, illustrating the same information as is on the chart, but according to how you think each kind of thinker/learner might design them. For example, the poster for “right brain” thinking/learning might be much more colorful. The student might also think of some sort of paper structure (origami?) by which to illustrate the differences. Enjoy.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 5.2
Based on the information in the article and the chart, above, compare how friends, “R.B.” (Right Brain) and “L.B.” (Left Brain) would respond to planning a weekend getaway to the fictitious “Wilderness Resort” located in the lush, Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Activities could include: planning, packing, traveling to and from, meals, indoor/outdoor activities, and so on. Contrast R.B. and L.B. regarding at least 5 different activities. EXAMPLE: regarding packing for activities both indoor (heated pool, fully equipped exercise room, a few casino type gaming tables, dancing, etc.) and outdoor (hiking, boating, guided field trips through an old growth forest, etc.), RB takes a casual approach: whatever is clean and easy to pack. LB first checks weather forecasts and maybe the location of any poison ivy that might be growing in the forest.
An organization chart might help with this exercise:
ACTIVITY R.B. RESPONSE L.B. RESPONSE
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 5.3
1. Answer the following question (no more than about 150 words):
Though it is controversial, how do you think knowing about the Brain Dominance Theory can still help you in the learning process? As you are thinking about this subject, consider how you might enhance your current response to learning and completing assignments or tasks by trying out either new left-brain or right-brain approaches.
01.6: Lesson 1.6: Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory
The last learning theory previewed here is called Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, of which there are currently nine so-called intelligences, listed as follows. (Note: number nine is pretty new on Professor Gardner’s evolving list and is yet to be included in most representative graphics, such as the one below.)
1. musical-rhythmic and harmonic
2. visual-spatial
3. verbal-linguistic
4. logical-mathematical
5. bodily-kinesthetic
6. interpersonal
7. intrapersonal
8. naturalist
9. existential.
“Multiple intelligence” by Sajaganesandip is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
When I began teaching effective learning classes, there were still just the original eight intelligences. According to the article, Gardner may soon add even more, including “teaching-pedagogical intelligence… humor, cooking and sexual intelligence.In Gardner’s view, human beings are indeed multi-talented and multi-intelligent.
To help you remember the various learning abilities cited in this theory that are available to us to comprehend and interact with the environments in which we live, study, and work, complete the exercises below.
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 6.1
1. Read the article linked above.
2. Create a list of these intelligences, but define them in your own words.
3. For each intelligence and definition, also create a picture as a mnemonic device. You may wish to create a three-column chart on which to organize the information, for example:
INTELLIGENCE DEFINITION PICTURE/SYMBOL
UNIT 1, EXERCISE 6.2
PART A
Individually, in a team, or in a study group, list as many “intelligences” you can discern that would be used to accomplish the following tasks:
1. Shopping for groceries:
2. Changing the oil in the car:
3. Planning a garden:
4. Acing a math test:
5. Writing a report on the human digestive system:
6. Running a 10k fundraising event:
7. Comforting a friend who just lost a loved one:
8. Organizing a softball game:
9. Collecting samples of music from Latin American countries:
10. Hosting a religious study:
11. Designing a brochure of information for new college students:
12. Performing a scene with your study group from a Shakespearean play:
PART B
Choose 5 of the nine intelligences, and design an activity for each one. Challenge: see if you can design just 1 activity that would incorporate all 5! | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_01_Overview--Learning_Styles_and_Preferences_Unit_Terms/01.5%3A_Lesson_1.5%3A_The_Brain_Dominance_Theory.txt |
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1.7: To the Instructor: Optional Assignments
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Activities
Ice Breaker
Since this is the first week of the course, an “ice breaker” for face-to-face classes helps students get to know each other better while also providing an opportunity to introduce two mnemonic devices: remembering by using association and organizing information by using a graphic (in this case, a three-column chart).
• Direct students to create a chart that has three columns. In the first column, they will write their classmates’ names. Across from each name in the second a third columns, they will write a word then a picture or symbol for each classmate that will help them remember the names (a fishing pole for one who likes to fish, for example, a flower for a gardener, a hat for another who says he always wears hats). Explain that they will be filling it out for as many classmates as they can in whatever time is available for this activity.
• Demonstrate by filling out the first entry for yourself. A “word association” for me might be that I am tall, or that I am the instructor. I ask the students what kind of picture or symbol usually represents a teacher to them. Most often, it will be an apple.
• Give students an amount of time to get as many names down as they can. Afterwards, they can test themselves using this mnemonic creation by studying it however they want to, to help them remember names. Of course, they have also engaged in a good opportunity to find out who they will be learning and working with in a casual and enjoyable way–as has the instructor.
Syllabus Treasure Hunt
Many students will simply tuck a course syllabus away in their notebook. It’s a pretty dull document, after all, with information such as course standards, objectives, classroom rules and regulations, and the like. They might do little more than glance at it and transfer the instructor’s email address and phone number to their cell phone.
However, there is often not only vital but also very useful information in a syllabus: grading information, holidays/school closure lists, where they might access disability accommodations, campus emergency numbers, how to lodge a grievance and many more useful items. One way to not only help them realize that a syllabus contains vital data but also to practice annotation skills is to assign a treasure hunt.
I usually tell the students to annotate (highlight, underline, circle, make marginal notes) for the following three items:
1. Information they especially want to remember (most annotate my contact info)
2. Information they have a question or concern about
3. Any additional information they would appreciate having on this handy resource
Here is a sample EL115 syllabus treasure hunt for a typical EL115 course syllabus at Lane.
Simple Notebook Organization Plan
An additional activity for a face-to-face class is to assign the students a simple notebook organization task (for in-class or for homework). Of course, some students may already have a lovely organizational plan. Here is my suggestion:
From the topmost page when you open the notebook, insert:
• Your assignment/to-do list(s)
• Course syllabus
• Perhaps a list of classmates names/contact information: sample classmate contact form.
• Your text or other official materials (downloaded text, if it is to be downloaded, any additional packets that might be required)
• 12 notebook dividers (one for the handouts, hand backs, scored/graded assignments for each of the 10 weeks of the course; and two for students’ choice. Some of my students prefer to keep all quiz/assessment type tasks in one place, for example. Some of them keep paper in another for note taking or other tasks.
Campus-wide virtual, or Online, website Treasure Hunt
This can be created as an actual physical search around campus for student services, or a website hunt. For our students at Lane, here is a sample online hunt: Lane Community College Students Services, campus treasure hunt.
Optional Extra Credit Opportunities and/or Grading Elements for Unit 1
Grades for this course as taught are determined primarily by the rubrics for the rubric for-take-home mid-term and for the take-home final portfolio projects assigned at the end of Unit 3 and Unit 6, respectively. This instructor teaches this as a face-to-face class presented on a Course Management System (MOODLE, at Lane), and includes points for attendance, as well as some miscellaneous homework assignments, mostly lesson exericises. However, this OER can be used for online or hybrid classes as well.
Here are some suggestions for additional course components and grading elements:
• The Glossary of Terms in the back is good information for weekly quizzes, mid-term tests, and/or final exams.
• For exercise 5.2 (re: the Brain dominance Theory), students could act out their responses. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_01_Overview--Learning_Styles_and_Preferences_Unit_Terms/1.7%3A_To_the_Instructor%3A_Optional_Assignments/01.7%3A_To_the_.txt |
World View
“World” by Clker-Free-Vector-Images is in the Public Domain, CC0
Most textbook chapters on management tasks involved in effective learning start with the famous (and infamous) topic of procrastination. The term comes from Middle French and Latin and, of course, means putting something off until later.
It is hardly necessary to define this common problem at school–and everywhere else–in any language, however. We all know what it is. We all do it, and we’ve all suffered to some extent because of it (missed deadlines tend to make instructors–and bosses–crabby).
But here is a problem: some people procrastinate more than others. And NOT just because they are lazy, disorganized, unmotivated, or confused about what to do. Those might be the surface assumptions and sometimes true, but at other times, or perhaps beneath what appear to be the behaviors listed above, defeating habits like procrastination have to do with deeper issues, maybe beliefs and thought patterns such as:
• “What’s the use if I get this done, or not?”
• “I do better under stress, so leaving things until the last minute actually helps me.”
• “I’m just naturally disorganized.”
• “I never manage to do anything on time. I’ve always been that way!”
This is why Unit 2 begins with “foundational issues,” perspectives and beliefs about ourselves such as our world view that operates at the bottom of our pile of motivations, and our sense of self-efficacy (or lack thereof) that generates thoughts that either work for or against us when it comes to successfully managing time, tools, and environments of learning. Lesson 2.2 deals with procrastination itself, often a by-product of a negative or unexamined world view and a low sense of self-efficacy, but with an emphasis on how to overcome it.
First, here is a look at world view, a concept some experts put at the foundational level of how we think and perceive the world. On top of our world view, so to speak, and as a result of it, are our beliefs. And on top of beliefs lay our conscious-level feelings and thoughts.
Our world view, as researcher F. Heylighen defines it, is “a framework that ties everything together, that allows us to understand society, the world, and our place in it, and that could help us to make the critical decisions which will shape our future.” In his article What is a world view? Heylighen, citing the work of Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel, lists seven basic components of a person’s world view:
1. A model of the world (how the world functions/how it is structured)
2. Explanation (of the model)
3. Futurology (where are we going?)
4. Values (good/evil)
5. Action (plans of action based on our values)
6. Knowledge (true and false)
7. Building Blocks (what fragments of others’ world views helped us shape ours)
These components cover the fundamental questions about existence human beings find themselves mulling over in time, questions that ultimately guide beliefs, thoughts, and feelings.
Exercise 2.1 is based on Heylighen’s article. Whereas this exercise is not a “personal inventory” per se, it has value in guiding the learner to discovering, perhaps, some foundational issues that can hinder a successful approach to overcoming non-productive actions and habits such as procrastination.
For example, if a person has a world view that is post modern, he/she views the world with a heavy dose of skepticism and distrust of ideologies, rationality, and absolute truth. Therefore, it might be easy to subscribe to a “What’s the use?” thought and feeling when it comes to academic and work-world norms such as being on time and getting one’s work done.
Note: it is not necessary, however, to know precisely which world view one has been influenced by to complete the exercise. Indeed, most people more or less absorb their world views from parents, institutions, and the culture in which they grew up. The value in knowing such information about oneself is in understanding how to deal with certain attitudes and beliefs that work against successful learning, and success in life in general. It is also valuable to know what has contributed to successful attitudes and beliefs so that these can be affirmed and reinforced for future success.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 2.1
1. Read the article by Heylighen, linked above, for a more detailed explanation of world view and the seven components he cites.
2. Briefly respond to your thoughts on each of the seven components. If you have not given much thought to some of them as of yet, take time to consider them now. Three to five sentences will likely be sufficient for each component, for a total of approximately 21-35 sentences. It would be helpful to number the components. This does not have to be completed as an essay.
Self Efficacy
Self efficacy, or one’s sense of being able to achieve goals, is an essential ingredient in a learner’s ability to succeed. Thoughts and feelings on this topic, which stem from one’s beliefs (remember the pyramid illustration) contribute to more, or less, success.
A key element of self efficacy is the concept of locus of control. As the definition indicates, the locus, or place, of control is usually either internal or external, but sometimes it is both.
Obviously if a person believes that he/she is in control of situations and outcomes (an internal locus) achieving goals is more likely. If a person believes he/she is controlled by external forces, achieving goals is less likely. But everyone experiences both internal and external forces for various reasons. For example, choosing to do the right thing on the job is based on the external control of workplace rules. Yet, one might apply for the job based on one’s internal belief that he/she can succeed. And both internal and external loci of control are in operation when one chooses to do the right thing at any time based on one’s beliefs about God.
For a more detailed explanation and the relationship of self efficacy to locus of control, complete exercise 2.2.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 2.2
After reading the definition of this concept in the article cited above, answer the following questions:
1. List three attitudes and/or perspectives that a person with a primarily internal locus of control might have that will help him/her succeed in life, and why.
2. List three attitudes and/or perspectives that a person with a primarily external locus of control might have that might hinder his/her success, and why.
3. List three instances where both internal and external loci of control help a person, and why.
A chart might help you organize your response.
INTERNAL EXTERNAL BOTH
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 2.3
Write about FIVE ways the information in this lesson can help you to create and achieve more success in your life-long learning career, whether in a classroom or in any of your other learning arenas. While you are gathering your thoughts about this topic, consider learning situations at school, work, home, and in relationships. 200-300 words (about one page, typed, double-spaced). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_02_Overview--Management_of_Time_Tools_and_Study_Environment_Unit_Terms/02.1%3A_Lesson_2.1%3A_World_View_and_Self_Efficacy.txt |
“Do it now” by Maklay62 is in the Public Domain, CC0
Before entering into some solutions, common and creative, to help you solve what is arguably the number one detriment to effective learning at school, home, and/or on the job (aka procrastination), complete Exercise 2.1, below.
This personal inventory is a bit different from others you may have taken. It incorporates very little about the usual bad habit suspects when it comes to the “P” word and includes more on the other reasons for such a habit, as suggested in the previous lesson as well as one or two other procrastination-inducers which have cropped up in our now social-media-saturated lives. Perhaps there is, in fact, more to your challenges with procrastination than the assumptions about laziness, disorganization, etc. See what you think. More importantly, see what you can do about it.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 2.1
For each item, circle one. Oh, and by the way, feel free to add any comments you wish. Sometimes quick-answer exercises like this just don’t have enough of YOUR personal response options, but try not to overthink things. This is, after all, a simple snapshot of where your beliefs and feelings are at this moment in time.
1. I admit it. Just like everyone else, I feel that I am lazy when it comes to getting my assignments and/or work done.
• usually
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
2. I am disorganized when it comes to getting my assignments and/or work done.
• usually
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
3. I get confused about what I am supposed to do for the assignment or task.
• usually
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
4. I have a hard time saying “no” to others which puts me behind in my work/studies.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
5. I have this sinking feeling that I will succumb to the usual reasons for procrastinating, no matter what they are.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
6. I just don’t think I have the organizational abilities to be able to stop at least some of my procrastinating.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
7. When I was in high school it wasn’t a problem studying for most tests the night before.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
8. I work best under pressure, so I think that procrastinating is really good for me.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
9. When what I have to study or accomplish is just not that important to me, I find it more tempting to procrastinate.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
10. I have a hard time talking myself into maintaining a better attitude about not procrastinating.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
11. I think I have more time to finish something than I usually do.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
12. It annoys me that some instructors assign so much homework when I have a life outside of school, too! So, I believe that it can be their fault that I have to procrastinate on certain things.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
13. I am very social and spending time with my friends sometimes gets in the way of doing my work.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
14. I can’t seem to stay away from social media.
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
15. Here is something (or perhaps more than one) not on this list that also causes me to procrastinate. (Possible issues might include a disability or some kind of learning challenge, homelessness or some other kind of living situation challenge, pregnancy, work hours and responsibilities, and/or personal life stress.)
_______________________________________________________________
• most of the time
• sometimes
• rarely
• never
NOTE: This exercise is not graded on responses. The answer key to this personal inventory is to get right into helping the learner start solving some of these causes of procrastination.
As promised above, let’s get started with some immediate solutions as well as some perspectives that might, in time, help you adjust your thoughts and feelings or perhaps a flagging sense of self efficacy and/or other reasons you might commit the “P” word.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 2.2
We are fortunate at Lane to have a library of Study Tips written by Lane Instructor Dan Hodges and continually in use to enhance our Effective Learning classes. Below are two articles (study tips 10 and 15) he has written that will help you begin to glean some solutions to your procrastination challenges, whether they stem from your beliefs, feelings, and thoughts, or whether they stem from some of the more specific issues in the survey you just completed.
Instructions:
1. From your responses to exercise 2.1, select your top five challenges when it comes to procrastinating. Create a chart, such as this, but leave yourself ample space to fill in solutions you find:
CHALLENGE Solution
1
2
3
4
5
2. Keeping in mind your top 5 picks, as you read through the following articles, insert what information strikes you as being most helpful. The Tips are chock full of information, so allot yourself an hour or two to read them and annotate for ideas. That said, of course, don’t stop there! You will likely pick up several more solutions you hadn’t thought of before.
Also, note: future lessons on reading comprehension, organization of time and materials, etc., will also help you with solutions, so this can be an ongoing treasure hunt for you as you conquer one of a learner’s worst enemies…you know…the “P” word…
Study Tip # 10–How to Create A Positive Attitude and Stop Procrastinating–this article is now linked on a PDF that includes all of the articles. You will have to scroll down.
Study Tip # 15–What Most Instructors Expect Their Students to Do–this article is also now on a PDF file that includes all of the articles.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 2.3
There is a new phenomenon called “social media addiction”. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate. I, myself, succumb from time to time. However, for more specifics, perspectives, and assistance in conquering this particular cause of procrastination, download the article and annotate it for information you think might help you. Write a short summary (5-7 sentences). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_02_Overview--Management_of_Time_Tools_and_Study_Environment_Unit_Terms/02.2%3A_Lesson_2.2%3A_Procrastination.txt |
“Clock” by geralt is in the Public Domain, CC0
Some people just seem to be born organized. The remaining 95% of the population* need help, especially when it come to organizing time!
It used to be that physical organizers, called schedulers or day-timers, came in pocket- or purse- sized folders, books, or multipurpose binder creations with cleverly designed nooks and crannies for everything from pens and pencils, to cell phones, to daily, weekly, and yearly schedules, address and phone number lists, and other handy components. Now, cell phones and other electronic gadgets advertise apps for such things, though some people still prefer hard copies.
For students, early in your school career such a management tool was not really necessary. Other people handed you a schedule, defined your routines, and that was that. Not so for college students, where changing term requirements and time demands that differ from class to class can present a variety of management challenges. Of course, add other life factors such as children, work, and/or caring for aging parents and, well, many people not only want, but NEED a strategy to stay organized.
But before we get into some specific management tools, complete the exercise, below, designed to help you determine what your best times of the day to accomplish academic activities are. Some people describe themselves as night people, others as morning people. Others, with busy lives, might say “I’m a 24/7 person!” But the more we know about ourselves in this regard, the more we will be able to adjust our schedule to be more effective.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 3.1
Read the list below of academic tasks meant to be completed outside of class. Beneath that list are time slots during an eighteen-hour day. If you are not restricted by work schedules or other obligations, from what you know about your best times of the day to accomplish certain things, when would you tend to be at your peak performance for each activity? (Later on, you will complete a schedule for all of your current school, work, meals, relaxation time, and home life obligations). Think about this matching exercise as a wish list.
Insert the numbers of as many of the activities listed on top that apply to your schedule this term in the appropriate time slots on the bottom. Not all may apply to your course of study. You may also be inclined to split the same activity into more than one time of day. Some activities may extend to two or more hours. When you are finished, complete the reflection activity below.
ACADEMIC TASKS
1. Memorizing
2. Organizing notes and materials
3. Copying or typing notes
4. Writing essays
5. Creative writing (stories, poetry, etc.)
6. Problem solving such as in math classes
7. Lab tasks (science, geology, horticulture, culinary, etc.)
8. Reading textbooks
9. Taking notes from textbooks or lectures
10. Physical activity (sports, workouts)
11. Planning a presentation: debate, speech, etc.
12. Sculpting, drawing
13. Taking pictures for a photography class
14. Practicing music
15. Rehearsing for dance classes/performances
16. Rehearsing for drama classes/performance
17. Rehearsing for a group presentation of another kind
18. Studying alone
19. Studying in a group
20. Completing computer-related tasks and assignments
TIME SLOTS
5:00-6:00 a.m.______________________________________
6:00-7:00 a.m.______________________________________
7:00-8:00 a.m.______________________________________
8:00-9:00 a.m.______________________________________
9:00-10:00 a.m._____________________________________
10:00-11:00 a.m.____________________________________
11:00-12:00 a.m.____________________________________
12:00-1:00 p.m._____________________________________
1:00-2:00 p.m.______________________________________
2:00-3:00 p.m.______________________________________
3:00-4:00 p.m.______________________________________
4:00-5:00 p.m.______________________________________
5:00-6:00 p.m.______________________________________
6:00-7:00 p.m.______________________________________
7:00-8:00 p.m.______________________________________
8:00-9:00 p.m.______________________________________
9:00-10:00 p.m._____________________________________
10:00-11:00 p.m.____________________________________
REFLECTION
Again, considering this a wish list of what you know to be the best times of day/night for you to be at your most alert for the types of tasks noted, write about three ways you might be able to change or incorporate your survey results into your current schedule, or next term’s schedule. Write approximately 100-150 words, or about half a page, double-spaced.
A few things to think about as you reflect:
• What kind of changes in your current class and study schedule might be more effective for you this term?
• How might keeping in mind that most instructors advise scheduling anywhere from one to three hours outside of classwork for every hour in class influence any changes in your current schedule or your thoughts about future schedules?
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 3.2
Before you fill out your “real life” schedule, you know, the one that includes all of the other things you do and are responsible for, read the article How to Plan Your Time so that You Can Get Your Homework Done by Dan Hodges (study tip # 14, scroll down to page 36). Add 5 recommendations from his article to your reflection in Exercise 3.1 that you think might help you manage your time more efficiently.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 3.3
Based on your responses to exercises 3.1 and 3.2, fill out a reasonable schedule for you for one week, all seven days. Incorporate what you learned about yourself in the previous exercises, that is, your best time of day for studying certain subjects, and how you might alter your current schedule to insert a few of the recommendations.
Instructions:
• Download the seven-day-schedule
• Print a couple of copies of the template just in case.
• Fill out a schedule that includes all of the classes, study times, and outside of school activities and obligations you have to accomplish in one week.
• Color code each activity for easier reference. For example, blue for class times, green for study blocks, red for work, purple for relaxation time (“buffer time,” as it is also known), brown for home life activities.
• NOTE: for some people, a work schedule can change from week to week. Just choose the most typical week for you this term.
• When you are finished, write a short, 5-7 sentence reflection on how you believe your altered schedule can improve your time management skills. You might already have a pretty good schedule, but most students find at least a few changes they can make.
*This is not a scientific percentage, just a hunch. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_02_Overview--Management_of_Time_Tools_and_Study_Environment_Unit_Terms/02.3%3A_Lesson_2.3%3A_Schedules_and_Scheduling.txt |
Study Cards
“nerd alert” by drcw is licensed under CC BY 2.0
This lesson focuses on flash cards for studying any subject, and graphic organizers for various kinds of essays. We covered how to organize a notebook in the first lesson, Optional Assignments, # 3, which is another essential organizational tool.
First, let’s take a look at study, or flash, cards. For the first activity, you will need a set of either 3×5 or 4×6 cards, colored, lined, or plain. Colored pencils or markers might also help you create more effective study cards.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 4.1
1. Read the article How to Make Flash Cards.
2. Create a flash card for the 5 methods suggested. On one side, put the sub-heading (e.g., “Preparing to Make Flash Cards”), and on the other, condense the advice to bullet points or numbered points.
3. Copy your cards onto online “cards” according to the instructions in method 3 or method 4.
Graphic Organizers for Papers
The next tools management topic concerns graphic organizers for papers. Every class, not just writing classes, sooner or later includes some kind of essay, whether expository essays such as exemplification, cause and effect, process, comparison/contrast, or definition papers or other genres such as narrative, descriptive or argument. Most writing instructors will require that students to complete outlines or fill out graphic organizers to help organize their writing prior to actually writing the essay. The kind of outline that may be required will depend upon the style manual used in the class. Here, however, are several common types of organizers:
Click on the thumbnail for a full-size view.
Click here for a sample Graphic Organizer for Exemplification or Definition Papers
Click on the thumbnail for a full-size view.
Click here for a sample Graphic Organizer for Narrative, Process, and Cause and Effect Papers
Click on the thumbnail for a full-size view.
Click here for a sample Graphic Organizer for a Comparison and Contrast Paper
Click on the thumbnail for a full-size view.
Click here for a sample Graphic Organizer for an Argument or Persuasive Paper
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 4.2
From the flash cards you created for exercise 4.1:
1. Fill in a graphic organizer for a short paper for each topic, below.
2. You do NOT need to write the papers.
3. The topics and thesis statements are given for you.
4. Download the matching graphic organizer, linked above, or create one like it, to go with each topic. Note: each topic goes with a different style of organizer. The first one is done as an example.
Topics:
• Topic: Examples of 3 of the study card methods. Thesis statement: There are several ways to create and use your study cards. Answer: for this paper, you would fill in an organizer for exemplification papers.
• Topic: Why I prefer using study cards to prepare for tests. Thesis statement: Although some people don’t like them, I have found that study cards are very effective when studying for tests.
• Topic: Story of why I decided to use study cards to prepare for tests. Thesis statement: Although I was resisting the use of study cards, I finally learned why this is one of the most effective ways for me to do better on tests.
In other words, your finished products will be filled-in graphic organizers of the appropriate kind for each of the topics. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_02_Overview--Management_of_Time_Tools_and_Study_Environment_Unit_Terms/02.4%3A_Lesson_2.4%3A_Graphic_Organizers_and_Study_Cards.txt |
Tips for Effective, Individual Study Spaces
“Cluttered desk” by OpenClipart-Vectors is in the Public Domain, CC0
Most students more or less take what they can get when it comes to study areas. Schools usually offer a variety of nooks and crannies for students to hunker down and get their assignments done. The school library is a good (and quiet) place. Many common areas elsewhere on campus have tables, chairs, couches, and lounges to accommodate learners. But most students end up doing the majority of their outside of class work at home.
Home environments may be limited in terms of providing all of the recommended aspects of a good study space, but many of the recommendations can be either implemented or adapted from what a student has on hand or what can be improvised no matter what environment he or she is living in. Elements conducive to a more effective study/homework experience include such things as good lighting, ample supplies, comfortable seating, adequate space, and personalizing the study area to add a touch of inspiration and motivation.
Before taking a look at some expert advice to help you with your particular study area challenges, if any, complete the exercise below.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 5.1
PART A
Describe your current study area at home–the good, the bad, the ugly. Be thorough.
PART B
Read what the experts advise in the article How to Make a Study Space and list as many ways you think you can realistically improve, change, (or start over…) your study area. Remember, you might not have the advantage of a whole room, or even a corner of a room, but there are still some changes you can make to create a more effective study environment. Take notes from the article for each of the “Parts” of an effective study area featured, as well as the “Tips” at the end. Organize your list, titled “How I Could Improve My Study Area,” like this:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Tips:
Tips for Effective Study Groups
The list of tips linked in Exercise 5.2, below, is more for organizing the group itself, not just the location and equipment. Study groups, whether meeting in a dorm, the library (check your library to see if there are rooms you can reserve for this purpose), a coffee shop, or somewhere else, usually find what is convenient. What this lesson concerns are the dynamics of the group itself. That is, how to ensure that a study group does not devolve into more of a socializing occasion. The tips offered here cover such topics as the steps to take, warnings, and things you will need.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 5.2
Read the article How to Form a Study Group and take notes on the following topics, titling your notes, “Effective Study Groups”:
8 Steps:
Tips:
Warnings:
Things You Will Need:
NOTE: from your own experience with study groups, add anything else you have found to be effective.
UNIT 2, EXERCISE 5.3
PART A: Study Area–Help Tran
Create a plan for Tran, based on the recommendations, above, on how to organize a study are in her busy home where she lives with six members of her family.
Tran is a first year college student from Vietnam. She has been in the U.S. with her family for three years and recently passed the English Language Learner classes at the topmost level, so now she looks forward to pursuing her degree in Business Management.
She lives with six other family members, her mother, father, grandmother, and three younger siblings aged 14, 12, and 9. Their home is located right next door to the family restaurant. This makes it convenient for Tran and her parents to work their regular shifts and to fill in if one or the other is ill. Tran is also responsible at times to help her younger siblings with their homework and/or take them to school and other activities if her parents are busy. This usually occurs at peak times for customers in the restaurant. Her grandmother helps out when she can but arthritis flare-ups prevent her from working as much as she would like.
Tran does have a small bedroom to herself, but it also sometimes serves as a storage room for restaurant supplies, mostly paper goods, so it can get crowded.
She is anticipating setting up an effective homework/study area for what she knows will soon become more of an intensive course load.
PART B: Study Group–Help The Athletes
Jeb, Andrew and Nelson are first year students at the university on sports scholarships: Jeb for basketball, Andrew for tennis, and Nelson for track and field. They share an apartment near the college sports complex. They are all taking Math 95 this term and realize that forming a study group as their instructor encouraged everyone to do would really help them, too.
One of the problems in getting a group going is that they are all big fans of ESPN and each one favors a different sport, so the television tends to be on long–and loud.
They also enjoy trying out all the restaurants in this southern city which is famous for having the best barbecue joints in the nation. They have calculated that there are at least seven restaurants nearby they want to get to know.
And then there are those campus parties on Friday and Saturday nights…
Although the men are highly motivated to eventually finish their degrees in business, culinary arts, and economics, they could use some advice on how to form a useful study group–and how to stick with it, particularly before their sports programs kick into high gear.
Activities
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2.6: To the Instructor: Optional Assignments
This page was auto-generated because a user created a sub-page to this page. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_02_Overview--Management_of_Time_Tools_and_Study_Environment_Unit_Terms/02.5%3A_Lesson_2.5%3A_Study_Areas_and_Study_Groups.txt |
“Books” by Hermann is in the Public Domain, CC0
Most students entering college have not yet dealt with the level of difficulty involved in reading–and comprehending–scholarly textbooks and articles. The challenge may even surprise some who have pretty good reading and comprehension skills so far. Other students for whom reading has mostly consisted of social media, texts, forum chat rooms, and emails, find they are intimidated by the sheer amount of reading there is in college classes. There are other challenges as well, having to do with a variety of issues. To begin this unit, complete the “Reading Sample for Annotation,” below, to determine where your reading challenges might exist.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 1.1
Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the subject of reading comprehension. As you read it, annotate for the relevant bulleted items, just below. You may not experience all of the listed items.
You can highlight, circle, underline, and/or write notes in the margins. You will have fifteen minutes to complete this exercise. Note that several of the terms in the excerpt are technical and most people would not normally know them. These would be examples of items to circle or highlight, not look up at this point.
P.S. I tried to find something relevant, but “dry,” if you know what I mean (no offense to the wonderful author of this article).
The list of items to annotate for:
• words or terms you do not know or remember: you do not have to look them up now
• where you may have lost your concentration (put a note next to the section)
• where you had some confusion about meaning
• where you became distracted by environmental issues such as noises, lighting, etc.
• where you had to re-read for meaning
• where you became frustrated with the reading material
• where you felt restless
• where you felt bored
Reading Comprehension Definition
Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the text/message. Comprehension is a “creative, multifaceted process” dependent upon four language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.Proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. It is also determined by an individual’s cognitive development, which is “the construction of thought processes”. Some people learn through education or instruction and others through direct experiences.
There are specific traits that determine how successfully an individual will comprehend text, including prior knowledge about the subject, well-developed language, and the ability to make inferences. Having the skill to monitor comprehension is a factor: “Why is this important?” and “Do I need to read the entire text?” are examples. Lastly, is the ability to be self-correcting to solve comprehension problems as they arise.
Reading comprehension levels
Reading comprehension involves two levels of processing, shallow (low-level) processing and deep (high-level) processing. Deep processing involves semantic processing, which happens when we encode the meaning of a word and relate it to similar words. Shallow processing involves structural and phonemic recognition, the processing of sentence and word structure and their associated sounds. This theory was first identified by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart.
Brain region activation
Comprehension levels can now be observed through the use of a fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging. fMRIs’ are used to determine the specific neural pathways of activation across two conditions, narrative-level comprehension and sentence-level comprehension. Images showed that there was less brain region activation during sentence-level comprehension, suggesting a shared reliance with comprehension pathways. The scans also showed an enhanced temporal activation during narrative levels tests indicating this approach activates situation and spatial processing.
History
Initially most comprehension teaching was based on imparting selected techniques that when taken together would allow students to be strategic readers however in 40 years of testing these methods never seemed to win support in empirical research. One such strategy for improving reading comprehension is the technique called SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review that was introduced by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1946 book Effective Study.
Between 1969 and to about 2000 a number of “strategies” were devised for teaching students to employ self-guided methods for improving reading comprehension. In 1969 Anthony Manzo designed and found empirical support for the ReQuest, or Reciprocal Questioning Procedure, it was the first method to convert emerging theories of social and imitation learning into teaching methods through the use of a talk rotation between students and teacher called cognitive modeling.[citation needed]
Since the turn of the 21st century, comprehension lessons usually consist of students answering teachers’ questions, writing responses to questions on their own, or both. The whole group version of this practice also often included “Round-robin reading”, wherein teachers called on individual students to read a portion of the text. In the last quarter of the 20th century, evidence accumulated that the read-test methods were more successful assessing rather than teaching comprehension.[citation needed] Instead of using the prior read-test method, research studies have concluded that there are much more effective ways to teach comprehension. Much work has been done in the area of teaching novice readers a bank of “reading strategies,” or tools to interpret and analyze text.[12]
Instruction in comprehension strategy use often involves the gradual release of responsibility, wherein teachers initially explain and model strategies. Over time, they give students more and more responsibility for using the strategies until they can use them independently. This technique is generally associated with the idea of self-regulation and reflects social cognitive theory, originally conceptualized by Albert Bandura.
Vocabulary
Reading comprehension and vocabulary are inextricably linked. The ability to decode or identify and pronounce words is self-evidently important, but knowing what the words mean has a major and direct effect on knowing what any specific passage means. Students with a smaller vocabulary than other students comprehend less of what they read and it has been suggested that the most impactful way to improve comprehension is to improve vocabulary.
Most words are learned gradually through a wide variety of environments: television, books, and conversations. Some words are more complex and difficult to learn, such as homonyms, words that have multiple meanings and those with figurative meanings, like idioms, similes, and metaphors.
Three tier vocabulary words
Several theories of vocabulary instruction exist, namely, one focused on intensive instruction of a few high value words, one focused on broad instruction of many useful words, and a third focused on strategies for learning new word etc…
Broad vocabulary approach
The method of focusing of broad instruction on many words was developed by Andrew Biemiller who argued that more words would benefit students more, even if the instruction was short and teacher-directed. He suggested that teachers teach a large number of words before reading a book to students, by merely giving short definitions, such as synonyms, and then pointing out the words and their meaning while reading the book to students.The method contrasts with the approach by emphasizing quantity versus quality. There is no evidence to suggest the primacy of either approach.
Morphemic instruction
The final vocabulary technique, strategies for learning new words, can be further subdivided into instruction on using context and instruction on using morphemes, or meaningful units within words to learn their meaning. Morphemic instruction has been shown to produce positive outcomes for students reading and vocabulary knowledge, but context has proved unreliable as a strategy and it is no longer considered a useful strategy to teach students. This conclusion does not disqualify the value in “learning” morphemic analysis – prefixes, suffixes and roots – but rather suggests that it be imparted incidentally and in context. Accordingly, there are methods designed to achieve this, such as Incidental Morpheme Analysis.
[…]
Reciprocal teaching
In the 1980s Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Ann L. Brown developed a technique called reciprocal teaching that taught students to predict, summarize, clarify, and ask questions for sections of a text. The use of strategies like summarizing after each paragraph have come to be seen as effective strategies for building students’ comprehension. The idea is that students will develop stronger reading comprehension skills on their own if the teacher gives them explicit mental tools for unpacking text.
Instructional conversations
“Instructional conversations”, or comprehension through discussion, create higher-level thinking opportunities for students by promoting critical and aesthetic thinking about the text. According to Vivian Thayer, class discussions help students to generate ideas and new questions. (Goldenberg, p. 317). Dr. Neil Postman has said, “All our knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question-asking is our most important intellectual tool” (Response to Intervention). There are several types of questions that a teacher should focus on: remembering; testing understanding; application or solving; invite synthesis or creating; and evaluation and judging. Teachers should model these types of questions through “think-alouds” before, during, and after reading a text. When a student can relate a passage to an experience, another book, or other facts about the world, they are “making a connection.” Making connections help students understand the author’s purpose and fiction or non-fiction story.
Text factors
There are factors, that once discerned, make it easier for the reader to understand the written text. One is the genre, like folktales, historical fiction, biographies or poetry. Each genre has its own characteristics for text structure, that once understood help the reader comprehend it. A story is composed of a plot, characters, setting, point of view, and theme. Informational books provide real world knowledge for students and have unique features such as: headings, maps, vocabulary, and an index. Poems are written in different forms and the most commonly used are: rhymed verse, haikus, free verse, and narratives. Poetry uses devices such as: alliteration, repetition, rhyme, metaphors, and similes. “When children are familiar with genres, organizational patterns, and text features in books they’re reading, they’re better able to create those text factors in their own writing.”
The Reading Apprenticeship (RA) Approach to Comprehension
Now to some strategies to help you with some typical college-level comprehension challenges as well as some of your specific challenges identified in the previous exercise.
This lesson focuses on a method called Reading Apprenticeship. It is based on the premise that people who have become expert readers can assist learners by modeling what they have learned to do. As explained in the text, Reading for understanding, How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, “One literacy educator describes the idea of the cognitive apprenticeship in reading by comparing the process of learning to read with that of learning to ride a bike. In both cases, a more proficient other is present to support the beginner, engaging the beginner in the activity and calling attention to often overlooked or hidden strategies.”
This is a strategy that takes a metacognitive (how we think about how we think) approach to comprehension, utilizing various strategies readers may already know they know how to do, then adding even more. For example, most readers have learned to make predictions (think ahead to the next stage of a plot in a mystery, for example), ask questions concerning meanings (“I wonder about…”), visualize a scene being described, associate the material being read to some other material, and, at the end, summarize the material (particularly if required to do so by an instructor or for a paper).
I like to call these our “hard drive” skills. Like a computer hard drive always humming in the background doing its thing behind the scenes, our metacognitive skills have already been assisting us as readers. We just don’t usually talk about what we are doing, for example, “Well, by golly, now I’m predicting what Godzilla will do to the poor villagers in about two scenes from now,” we just automatically predict, especially if we are familiar with characters and plot lines. For another example, “I am now going to visualize this scene in graveyard when Hamlet comes across the deceased court jester’s skull in Act V, Scene 1.” We just see it in our mind’s eye.
Just now, however, as a reminder, a review, and an affirmation of important comprehension skills you already possess, complete exercise 3.2, below.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 1.2
Go back through the excerpt, above, on reading comprehension and THIS time, write marginal notes where you used any of the comprehension tools listed below:
• predicting
• asking questions of the material such as, “I wonder about,” “Could this mean?”
• visualizing
• connecting this material to something else you have learned
• noting where you think you might need to read something over again for comprehension
• summarizing | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_03_Overview--College_Level_Critical_Thinking_and_Reading_Unit_Terms/03.1%3A_Lesson_3.1%3A_Comprehending_College_Level_Reading_by_Us.txt |
Reading Textbooks: Front and Back Matter
“Books” by Clker-Free-Vector-Images is in the Public Domain, CC0
Before diving into every line of text in a textbook reading assignment, it is helpful–and saves time–to find out, first, what resources the entire book has to offer you. Then, as those chapter readings are assigned, it helps to first skim read them for the big picture meaning.
Exercise 2.1 will help you find all the resources in your textbook–and some textbooks have a lot more help in the front matter and back matter of the text than you may realize. I always think of one Effective Learning student who, when given this exercise to use on any textbook he had with him, picked his math book. He was at that time re-taking that math class because he had failed it the term before. As he did the exercise, he realized the back matter of the book included an answer key for half of the problems for every exercise. “Had I known this last term,” he said, “I would have passed!” See if you, too, find something useful in your textbook that perhaps you didn’t know was there, either.
Exercises 2.2 and 2.3 will then cover good strategies for skim reading specific chapters as well as a strategy for getting the most out of graphics included in textbooks.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 2.1
Here is a list of several kinds of resources typically in the front of a textbook, known as “front matter,” and a list of typical “back matter” resources. For one of your textbooks, put a check mark next to the front and back matter features it includes, then answer the two questions, below.
Textbook title____________________________________________________
FRONT MATTER
___Table of Contents
___Preface
___Introduction
___To the Teacher
___To the Student
___Other (list, here): _____________________________________________
BACK MATTER
___Glossary of Terms
___Index of subjects
___Answer Keys
___Additional Exercises
___Additional Readings
___Tables, graphs, charts
___Maps
___Other (list, here): ________________________________________________
Answer the following questions:
1. Were there any surprises for you?
2. How can you use the front and back matter in your text to help you with your studies? (3 or 4 sentences)
Skim Reading Textbook Chapters
Before doing a detailed reading of a textbook chapter, get the big picture by following these steps:
• Similar to reading the Table of Contents for the entire book, read the Introduction or Chapter Overview, whichever the textbook features, for the main ideas and how they are divided.
• Read the headings and sub-headings.
• Note the graphics (charts, tables, illustrations, etc.).
• Read the first one or two sentences in the paragraphs (the paragraph topic is sometimes covered in more than one sentence).
• Read the last sentence in each paragraph which might be a paragraph summary.
• Read the summary of the entire chapter, if given.
• Read any sentence with boldface or italicized words or word groups in it which are usually either key ideas or a technical terms.
• Stop when needed if you come across a complicated idea or topic and take a little more time to skim it until you understand it.
• Skim the study questions, too. They will help you focus on key points.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 2.2
Using the recommendations on how to skim through textbook chapters, do so with a textbook chapter of your choice. When you are finished, close the book and write about the following: write down as many of the main ideas of this chapter as you can remember by skim reading it. Try not to look back. When finished, check your work to make sure you have transcribed the information correctly.
Reading Graphics
“Statistic” by JuralMin is in the Public Domain, CC0
Listed below are various types of data found on most graphics, whether a pie chart, bar graph, line chart, or other type.
The key to comprehending graphics and using them to get more meaning from a textbook chapter or an article, or to answer study questions, is to pay close attention to the typical elements of the graphic. Not every graphic includes all of the elements listed.
1. Title
2. Captions
3. Legend
4. Axis information (vertical information, or “Y” data, and horizontal information, or “X” data)
5. Publication date (important for the most current information)
6. Publisher (important for credibility)
7. Labels
8. Color (used to differentiate and compare data)
9. Size (also used to represent comparisons)
10. Spatial positions (helps for comparing and contrasting)
11. Patterns represented by the content, itself, and
12. Trends that appear more evident when viewing the visual representation of the data.
It is easy to overlook all of the information present in a graphic, so give yourself enough time to note all the elements and their meanings before answering questions about them. Exercise 3.3 offers some practice.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 2.3
This exercise uses Thematic Maps of the United States Census Bureau.
1. Choose a Theme of the many listed that include, for example, Agricultural, Business, Income and Poverty, and Natural Disasters. There are many categories to choose from.
2. Click through to the actual graphic for the information on that theme. For example, click on Natural Disasters, then Hurricane Katrina Resource Maps, then to more options listed from there.
3. Write down the title of the thematic graphic you choose, and list all of the elements of the graphic from the list, above. Not all may be present on the specific type of graphic you choose.
4. Summarize three things you learned about the information presented in this graphic form. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_03_Overview--College_Level_Critical_Thinking_and_Reading_Unit_Terms/03.2%3A_Lesson_3.2%3A_Getting_the_Most_Out_of_Your_Textbooks.txt |
Patterns
“Texture” by ZIPNON is in the Public Domain, CC0
Knowing the pattern of an article, essay, or textbook chapter aids comprehension. For each kind of writing certain clue words, also called linking and transition words, are used. They signal the direction the writer is taking. For example, when writing an essay with a contrast pattern the clue words would include “in contrast,” “although,” “conversely,” and “however”. For another example, writing to emphasize a point is often presented with clue words such as “again,” “as a matter of fact,” and “for this reason.” Below is a list of common clue words used for various patterns in writing. Note: a passage could include more than one pattern (Exercise 3.1 includes examples of this).
Clue Words to Show Addition
additionally, again, also, and, another, besides, finally, first, second (etc.), further, furthermore, incidentally, lastly, likewise, moreover, next, too, along with, as well as, equally important, in addition, what’s more.
Clue Words to Show Time
about, after, afterward, at, before, currently, during, eventually, finally, first (etc.), following formerly, immediately, later, meanwhile, next, next week, previously soon, subsequently, then, thereafter, till, today (etc.), until, when, after a few hours, as soon as, in the future, soon after.
Clue Words to Show Location
above, across, adjacent, against, along, among, around, behind below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, inside, into, here, near, nearby, off, onto, outside, over, there, throughout, under, away from, at the side, in the back, in back of, in the background, in the distance, in the front, in the foreground, on top of, to the right (etc.).
Clue Words to Show Comparison
also, as , like, likewise, meanwhile, similarly, simultaneously, after all, at the same time, by and large, in comparison, in the same way, in the same manner, in the same way.
Clue Words to Show Contrast
although, but, conversely, however, nevertheless, nonetheless, notwithstanding, otherwise, still, true, yet, or, and yet, even though, in contrast, on the contrary, on the other hand, while this is true.
Clue Words to Emphasize a Point
again, obviously, truly, undoubtedly, as a matter of fact, for this reason, in fact, to emphasize, to repeat.
Clue Words to Clarify
for instance, in other words, put another way, that is.
Clue Words to Give Examples
namely, specifically, as an illustration, for example, for instance, to demonstrate, to illustrate.
Clue Words to Introduce as a Result
accordingly, consequently, so, therefore, thus, as a result, due to this.
Clue Words to Show Cause and Effect
if…then, this led to, for this reason, caused, not only but also, which led to.
Clue Words to Introduce Conclusions
accordingly, consequently, finally hence, so, therefore, thus, as a result, in brief, in conclusion, in short, in summary, on the whole, to conclude.
NOTE: this is not an exhaustive list, of course, and as you have noticed, various words and expressions can work for more than one pattern of writing, so they illustrate just one strategy to help reading comprehension.
Exercise 3.1 is a treasure hunt for determining genre by recognizing clue words.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 3.1
For each selection, determine which pattern of writing it is and list the clue word or words. There may be more than one pattern in each selection. The paragraphs are numbered for convenience.
by Hamlin Snakebite
1. First, you might work on another piece of writing for a while, something completely different. For example, if you are writing an adventure, switch to writing a meat recipe or a report on the life cycle of the billy goat.
Pattern(s)_______________________________________________
Clue word(s)____________________________________________
2. It is also good to keep in mind something my mother also used to say: “Weak muscles equal weak minds.” Take a walk, ride a bike, or mud wrestle.
Pattern(s)___________________________________________________
Clue word(s)________________________________________________
3. Lastly, instead of thinking typical writer’s block thoughts, for example, “I will never EVER be able to write another word,” or “I SHOULD have gone to taxidermy school,” etc., replace them with more peaceful thoughts, or hum peaceful tunes, or read through Stedman Nimblebody’s Taxidermy Through the Ages. After reading that book chances are you will soon nod off, thus easing your worried mind for a little while, anyway.
Pattern(s)__________________________________________________
Clue word(s)_______________________________________________
4. Draw pictures of the characters, setting, and scenes in your story. This might make them more real as well as giving you more ideas for what to do next. It might also cause new appreciation for writing because you might soon realize you stink at art, therefore you’ll want to get back to your story as soon as possible.
Pattern(s)__________________________________________________
Clue word(s)_______________________________________________
5. Take two complete days off and do things you don’t normally do. Watch cartoons and eat gummy bears, take pies to shut-ins, or enter a ping-pong tournament.
Pattern(s)__________________________________________________
Clue word(s)_______________________________________________
6. Listen to some music, but try to match the music with the kind of writing you are working on. For example, if it’s a mystery, pick something dark and worrisome with lots of organ music and cymbal crashing. if you are working on a peaceful scene, listen to something like “Flora Featherly’s Greatest Oboe Hits,” or something with a lot of flutes. If it’s a romance, find an orchestral piece loaded with violins written in the nineteenth century. But if you are a writing crime detective drama, plug into a few tunes from the Goth-rock band “Shrapnel,” in particular anything on their latest CD, “Scream Bloody Murder”. Not only will it put you in the mood for blood, guts and gore but also it will likely keep you up nights out of fear–thus giving you more time to write!
Pattern(s)__________________________________________________
Clue word(s)_______________________________________________
Context Clues
Besides clues to help you determine the pattern or genre of a reading selection, there are clues to help you figure out the meaning of specific words that are unfamiliar to you. Here are the five most common:
1. Definition/Explanation Clues: sometimes the meaning of a word or phrase is given right after its use.
Example: Taxidermy, the art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of animals (especially vertebrates) for display or for other sources of study, is popular among museum curators.
2. Restatement/Synonym Clues: sometimes a word is presented in a simpler way.
Example: Stuffing dead animals has been a dream of Stedman Nimblebody, author of Taxidermy Through the Ages, ever since his pet snake died when Steddie was six years old. He still misses Mr. Scaly Face.
3. Contrast/Antonym Clues: sometimes the meaning of a word is clarified by presenting a word or phrase opposite of its meaning.
Example: Little Steddie wanted to visit the Taxidermy Museum but the rest of the family preferred a trip to the Zoo to see live animals.
4. Inference/General Context Clues: sometimes the meaning of a word or phrase is in the surrounding sentences, or must be inferred or implied by the general meaning of a selection.
Example: When Steddie finally got the chance to visit the Taxidermy Museum, he was very excited. He even found a stuffed snake that looked exactly like Mr. Scaly Face! “Just think,” he exclaimed to his parents, “If Mr. Scaly Face was stuffed, I could still tease the cat and the dog with him!”
5. Punctuation: the correct use of punctuation helps a reader get the meaning of a term, phrase, or thought. Likewise, incorrectly placed or missing punctuation sometimes gives an entirely different and incorrect meaning across.
Example:
Missing punctuation: Is it time to eat Grandma?
Corrected: Is it time to eat, Grandma?
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 3.2
There are many examples online of punctuation errors in signs that change the meaning. Create a chart such as the one below for 5 of the signs that you really like.
WHAT THE SIGN SAYS WHAT THE SIGN REALLY MEANS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_03_Overview--College_Level_Critical_Thinking_and_Reading_Unit_Terms/03.3%3A_Lesson_3.3%3A_Patterns_and_Context_Clues.txt |
Close Reading
“Books” by Wokandapix is in the Public Domain, CC0
In addition to using reading comprehension skills such as predicting, visualizing, “talking to the text,” skimming a textbook before reading, and noting patterns and context clues as featured in lessons one,two, and three, another strategy called “close reading” is helpful. This is popular with literature professors; however, the skills involved in close reading are applicable to any complex reading assignment.
I usually begin my close reading instructions with a visual demonstration. Perhaps describing it here will help you, too.
Since this kind of comprehension starts with knowing nothing about the elements of a story, novel, poem, or essay, I stand with my arms spread wide.
I then discuss, briefly, each element of a work starting with the title as a place to begin comprehension, while slowly moving my arms toward one another, a few inches per element.
Titles, for starters, particularly of non-fiction works, usually tell you precisely what the main idea, or thesis, is. For example, a book about “The History of the Roman Empire” usually gives you just that–the history of the Roman Empire.
This is not usually true, however, for works of fiction, for which inference is the key to comprehension. For example, “Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, while it might seem to be something about time, also suggests it is about something other than a clock ticking away seconds and minutes, and indeed it is.
I next add the author, as this might aid comprehension. For example, most students are familiar with Stephen King, who writes in the horror genre. Knowing this element brings the arms in a bit closer as the reader will know to anticipate (and predict) a horror story with a lot of plot twists and turns in some horrible ways. Prediction has begun.
Next, I briefly discuss how knowing about the remaining elements – plot, characters, and setting – help the reader close in on meaning enough to be able to discuss the theme or themes of the work with reasonable evidence to support one’s conclusion.
This visual of the arms getting closer together can continue through a discussion of close reading of small passages, individual sentences, and even specific words. Each level of careful attention and thought helps a reader “read between the lines” when meaning is not overtly stated, when themes are inferred rather than explained outright.
Exercises 4.1 and 4.2 demonstrate how we already engage in this kind of thinking–for different purposes.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 4.1
Idioms are good examples of inference, or “reading between the lines.” They also employ the comparison skill called metaphor (comparing two things without using the terms “like” or “as”).
Write out as many meanings for the list of idioms, below, as you can.
(Note: for international students: here is an additional reference list, if needed that includes meanings).
Some examples are:
Keep it under your hat.
Over the hill.
Barking up the wrong tree.
Paint the town red.
Lion’s share.
Turned a deaf ear.
Up a creek without a paddle.
Eyes are bigger than your stomach.
Put your nose to the grindstone.
Keep your shoulder to the wheel.
Running on empty.
Too many irons in the fire.
Spitting image.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Wild goose chase.
Clear sailing.
Walking on cloud nine.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 4.2
Captions and titles for pictures, art, and sculpture are also examples of the use of inference. At Lane, we have a number of sculptures on the grounds as well as a small art gallery of student work. Take a “mini field trip” around campus or if the weather is bad, access the list of art works at Lane. Choose three artworks to re-name, using inference.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 4.3
Cartoons, especially editorial cartoons, also make good use of inference skills.
For the cartoon, below, answers the questions about each of its elements to get to the meaning. Cartoons, like other forms of art, include additional visual elements such as facial expressions, and setting. Many of us are able to comprehend cartoons within a few seconds just because we have so many inference skills already in our “hard drives,” so to speak, but examining them now will be a good reminder of how to comprehend complex subject matter–by close examination of all of the elements.
1. Setting:
2. Subject (what’s going on):
3. Facial expression(s):
4. Quote:
5. Meaning of quote (inference): | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_03_Overview--College_Level_Critical_Thinking_and_Reading_Unit_Terms/03.4%3A_Lesson_3.4%3A_Close_Reading_for_Literature.txt |
How to Study Math
“Math” by Pixapopz is in the Public Domain, CC0
Math is one of those subjects that many people struggle with in college. One reason for this is that many students haven’t taken a math class for a few–or many–years and math is one subject that, as the old expression goes, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” This isn’t always the case, of course. Some people with more “logical/mathematical intelligence” (remember Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences from Unit 1?) enjoy math and seem to easily transition to college level math courses, or at least may not have to take preparatory classes beforehand.
For everyone, however, no matter what the level of math or interest (or lack thereof), there are a number of steps that will help a student achieve greater success. The exercise below will help with this process.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 5.1
1. Read the article How to Study Math. The article features 12 Steps in the study process, 7 Tips that include perspectives to ease common stressors along with a few memory helps and some encouragement, 4 Warnings for further advice and encouragement, and a list of things you will need.
2. From all of the advice given in the article, make a list of your personal “Top Twenty Tips for Success in Math Classes”.
How to Study Science
In a previous lesson, we covered some basics when it comes to getting the most out of any textbook. However, science textbooks–and science itself–present a bit more of a challenge. In this subject, there are a lot of specialized words, symbols, and formulas to comprehend and memorize. The following exercise will help you discover your own methods and techniques.
UNIT 3, EXERCISE 5.2
1. In a search engine such as Google, type in the key words “how to learn science words, symbols, and formulas.” Add “YouTube” if you prefer to learn from video presentations. Sample search results: “how to memorize the Periodic Table of Elements,” “how to write word equations for chemical reactions,” “word equations examples,” and so on. Scroll through a few pages of these, narrowing your search by looking for subjects you are interested in such as medicine, psychology, biology, botany, anthropology, archaeology, etc.
2. From what you found, above, create a list of fiveresources. Include a very brief summary of the information presented in the resources, and how you think the resources can help you. It might help you organize your thoughts by making a chart such as this:
RESOURCE/SUBJECT/VERY BRIEF SUMMARY/ HOW YOU THINK THIS RESOURCE CAN HELP YOU
03.7: RUBRIC FOR THE TAKE-HOME MID-TERM PORTFOLIO PROJECT DUE
Here are the requirements for the two Portfolio Projects. One will serve as the take-home mid-term that covers Units 1-3, and the other will serve as the take-home final that covers Units 4-6.
TASK #1
Write a letter to yourself in which you summarize the tips, strategies, and skills learned in each of the first three Units that you believe will help you the most in your educational career. The letter should be typed and double-spaced, approximately 3 pages in length (750-900 words), and cover the material from the lessons on:
• Three Learning Styles
• Brain Dominance Theory
• Multiple Intelligences Theory
• World View and Self Efficacy
• Procrastination
• Schedules and Scheduling
• Graphic Organizers and Study Cards
• Study Areas and Groups
• Comprehending College Level Reading
• Getting the Most out of Your Textbooks
• Pattern and Context Clues
• Close Reading for Literature
• Comprehending and Studying Math and Science
It will be scored on the basis of thoroughness and details.
Possible 50 Points
TASK 2
This is the creative response task. Choose from among the options below. Your creation should feature tips, strategies, and skills you wrote about in Task #1. It will also be scored on thoroughness and details.
Possible 50 Points
• Choose a different creative response for each Portfolio Project. You can also make your own proposal for a creative response and get permission from the instructor. NOTE: for any option involving a presentation or performance, be sure to check with me regarding time allotments if this is a class setting.
• Some options are more creative than others; some require specific skills, for example, #s 3 and 7. Others are more “academic,” for example, #19. Some require certain talents or hobby interests, for example, #s 5, 6, and 9.
The hope is that you have an opportunity to exercise your talents and skills a little more and have some fun while exploring a variety of different ways to apply your learning.
1. Write an infomercial of “Best All-Time Strategies for…(the subject of the Unit)” and present it to the class.
2. Create a brochure.
3. Create a power point presentation.
4. Create a poster.
5. Create a cartoon panel.
6. Write a story.
7. Invent a game.
8. Create a tool kit of some sort with objects or descriptions of objects that would go inside of it.
9. Write a song.
10. Design a lesson plan for the class based on the Unit (for this, a little more time will be scheduled, but no more than, say, 10-15 minutes).
11. Sculpt something that can illustrate key points from the Unit.
12. Prepare a photography exhibit to illustrate key points.
13. Collect quotes on the subject matter of this Unit and present them in some way (collage, power point…)
14. Create bookmarks for each of the tips, strategies, and/or skills you feature.
15. A short (3-5 minutes) YouTube presentation of helpful tips
16. Write a short essay (about 400-500 words, or 1 1/2 typed, double-spaced pages. Be sure to include a creative title) on any of the following topics:
• Highly Effective Habits of a Successful… (whatever the Unit theme is–learner, note-taker, time-manager, test-taker, etc.)
• How NOT to.. (whatever the Unit theme is: learn successfully, take notes, manage time, take tests, etc.)
• Advice on (whatever the Unit theme is) for Incoming Freshmen
• What I Wish I Had Known Before I Started College and Why (cite at least 10 Unit strategies).
17. Other… (make me an offer!)
03.
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3.6: To the Instructor: Optional Assignments
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Activities
Optional Extra Credit Opportunities and/or Grading Elements for Unit 3
Here are some suggestions for additional course components and grading elements:
• The Glossary of Terms in the back is good information for weekly quizzes, mid-term tests, and/or final exams.
• To supplement the “Close Reading” lesson, students can clip editorial cartoons from local newspapers and analyze them according the elements listed in exercise 4.3.
• For that same lesson, students can explore other artwork on campus and come up with titles and/or captions.
• The instructor may wish to take students on a “close reading” journey by using a poem she or he is familiar with. Here are three poems I have used, but there are limitless numbers of good poems for this exercise:
• For further help with reading/comprehending and/or studying for math and science, students can take notes on Study Tips 23, 24, and 25 listed on Lane’s Study Tips site, as well as the articles How to Study Science and How to Study Math. NOTE: all of Hodges’ Study Tips Articles are linked in the Outside the Text Resources… section. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_03_Overview--College_Level_Critical_Thinking_and_Reading_Unit_Terms/03.5%3A_Lesson_3.5%3A_Math_and_Science--Tips_for_Better_Compreh.txt |
Non-Verbal Communication
“Emoticons” by OpenClipart-Vectors is in the Public Domain, CC0
When we think about listening we think about, well, hearing sounds via the ears. However, when it comes to listening in order to pick up key points for note-taking, it takes more than just hearing. In this case, it takes a “critical ear,” that is, absorbing key points by noticing not only the words spoken, but also by noting tones, volume and even the body language that goes along. Additionally, being an active listener increases a note-taker’s chances of getting the information needed. Exercise 1 illustrates common non-verbal communication.
UNIT 4, EXERCISE 1.1
PART A
List as many non-verbal, emotional cues as you can by studying the faces in the pictures below.
“Universal Emotions” by Icerko Lýdia is licensed under CC BY 3.0
PART B
The image below illustrates non-verbal body language. Describe a few poses or body movements one or more of your teachers now, or from the past, takes or has taken that communicates: pay closer attention. It might be from these examples, or something quite different. For example, an instructor might move close to the front row and fold his/her arms to indicate that what he or she will be saying is of a more serious nature. For another example, if he or she moves toward the white board to write something, it’s probably key information.
“Men Silhouette” by geralt is in the Public Domain, CC0
Active Listening
In previous units, we covered ways that students can actively engage in the learning process in order to get the most out of their education. There are ways to actively listen as well, in order to get the most out of lectures and, more importantly, take all of the notes that might be required. The video in the next exercise covers several active listening strategies along with why we sometimes have difficulty listening.
UNIT 4, EXERCISE 1.2
PART A
Watch the 7minute TED talk 5 ways to listen better and answer the following questions:
1. What 3 types of listening does the speaker discuss?
2. How and why have we been “losing our ability to listen,” as the speaker suggests? He cites 5 ways.
3. What are the 5 tools we can use to listen better?
PART B
Taking into consideration all of the activities in the exercises above, write a one-page (250-300 words) reflection on how you can use the information on non-verbal and listening skills to enhance both your ability to pay attention to lectures and to take better notes on them.
04.2: Lesson 4.2: Note-Taking Part 2 Key Information and Formats
“Notes” by English106 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Perhaps the most useful learning tools of all are notes taken from both lectures and course materials. By annotating for key information, then condensing it, students not only create personalized summaries but also aid their memory by using both visual and kinesthetic learning styles. Add auditory, too, if the notes are taken from a lecture or video.
Often, students are unsure about what constitutes “key information.” Here is a list of items to highlight or annotate for in textbooks and a list of items to listen for in lectures.
Key Information in Textbooks
In addition to paying attention to all the items listed in Lesson 3.2, Getting the Most Out of Your Textbooks, the following elements of a textbook chapter are especially important in helping you discern key information:
• Introductions
• Summaries
• Study questions
• Topic sentences (as the speaker in the video on “Skim Reading,” exercise 3.2, also in Lesson 3.2 notes: sometimes the reader has to read the first two or even three sentences of a paragraph or section to get the entire main topic).
• Anything that is bolded, or in some other way set off from the default print size and style. Sub-topic titles are good examples of this.
• Side bars,” which are boxes of related information. These might include statistics, brief biographies of authors or persons of note related to the chapter content, price points on brochures for businesses, charts, graphs, photographs, and/or illustrations. They are typically a different color or in some other way set off for attention but not as the focal point of the text. Pay attention to the captions or legends that might accompany graphics. In this e-text, the exercises are set apart in side bars.
• Glossary terms that may be incorporated in the margins or otherwise set apart.
• Some textbooks include outlines of each chapter’s main points in the introductory section.
Key Information in Lectures
As the lecturer, live or video, presents the material, there are two types of key information cues to be aware of.
NONVERBAL CUES
As covered in the previous lesson on listening skills, a speaker will often have unique facial and body nonverbal cues that alert you to several things, as you learn to “read” your professor:
• Stances or movements that alert you to when he/she will shift to a different topic or subtopic.
• Other cues that alert you to when the information is of special significance (including verbal clues, below).
VERBAL CLUES
• Pay attention to when the speaker uses any of the transition clues used in reading comprehension, as listed in Lesson 3.3, context clues. Click on common clue words for a separate list.
• Many speakers also announce when they are adding information or changing topics in various other ways.
For tips on how to deal with fast talkers, when you should NOT take notes, what note-taking formats work well, and other advice, complete the exercise below.
UNIT 4, EXERCISE 2.1
1. Download and read Study Tip #9-Taking Useful Class Notes, by Dan Hodges, found on the PDF file with all of his articles. Scroll down to #9.
2. Number each of the 7 sections for easy reference.
3. As you read, annotate (highlight, circle, underline, write marginal notes, etc.) for items that you especially want to remember from each of the 7 topics.
4. Transfer the notes to a Cornell Note-Taking form. Hodges also includes instructions for creating your own form. Hodges features the Cornell format in section 4, “What Style of Note-Taking Works Well?”
Example:
KEY POINTS DETAILS
section 1: Why take notes? Good notes=better grades
(add the rest of the details)
UNIT 4, EXERCISE 2.2
There are, of course, as many ways to take notes as there are note-takers with creative minds! For this exercise, do an online search using the key words, “fun and creative ways to take notes YouTube.” Preview as many as you like. Pick one (these are all fairly short), then take notes on it (!) in the creative way suggested. Be sure to cite the YouTube source (title and URL) in your notes.
04.3: To the Instru
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4.3: To the Instructor: Optional Assignments
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Activities
Optional Extra Credit Opportunities and/or Grading Elements for Unit 4
Here are some suggestions for additional course components and grading elements:
• The Glossary of Terms in the back is good information for weekly quizzes, mid-term tests, and/or final exams.
• Case study (students write letters of advice to the following student who struggles with note taking for several reasons. The letters should cover at least 10 of the key points of information in this unit:
• Maria struggles with note-taking for several reasons. In her culture, people are easier to “read” because they are much more emotive when they communicate. She finds many Americans somewhat bland in their lecture presentations and this makes it easy for her to fall asleep during lectures, especially when she may have had to stay up all night tending one of her sick children aged six months, 2 and 5. Because English is her second language, Maria also struggles to catch all the key points of a lecture when the professor talks fast! And lastly, Maria is never sure what information she should be taking notes on, and what is the best form of note-taking. Help! | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_04_Overview--Listening_and_Note-Taking_Unit_Terms/04.1%3A_Lesson_4.1%3A_Note-Taking_Part_1_Listening.txt |
This lesson incorporates a view of the memory cycle from initial input to long-term storage, along with memory principles and techniques.
For starters, take a pre test to asses what memory techniques you already use.
An Information Processing Model
Once information has been encoded, we have to retain it. Our brains take the encoded information and place it in storage. Storage is the creation of a permanent record of information.
In order for a memory to go into storage (i.e., long-term memory), it has to pass through three distinct stages: Sensory Memory, Short-Term Memory, and finally Long-Term Memory. These stages were first proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968). Their model of human memory is based on the belief that we process memories in the same way that a computer processes information.
“Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory” by OpenStax is licensed under CC BY 4.0
UNIT 5, EXERCISE 1.1
While reading through the article linked here, “Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory” answer the following questions.
SENSORY INPUT
1. If you are just walking along somewhere and pass by the usual sights, sounds, smells, etc., about how long do you think you would remember what you just took in by your senses? (Note: nothing out of the ordinary happens.)
2. If you do nothing at all to help you remember what you just took in by your senses, about how many discrete units (pieces) of data (or input, i.e., sights, sounds, smells, etc.) would you be able to remember for the brief period of time?
WORKING MEMORY (ALSO KNOWN AS SHORT TERM MEMORY)
3. Now, If you immediately begin to try to remember the input for later (for example, you notice you just passed a shop you’ve been meaning to go to, or you smell something really good coming from a restaurant that reminds you of something you like), about how many items could you then remember?
4. How long could you keep them in your memory by just using one or two memory techniques, such as associating them with something (like a memory)?
LONG TERM MEMORY
5. About how many items can you keep in your “permanent” memory storage?
6. How long can you keep them there?
RELATED QUESTIONS
7. Why is “cramming” new information the night before a test not a good idea? Go beyond the information in the article to common sense issues.
UNIT 5, EXERCISE 1.2
“Nine Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory”
By Dennis Congos, University of Central Florida
1. Read 9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory and transfer the information on a Cornell-styled note taking form.
EXTRA CREDIT: On a separate piece of paper (or on the downloaded version of the article), complete the worksheet that follows the article, “Have a mnemonics party.” DO ANY TEN of the items. (5 points).
Licenses and Attributions
“How memory functions” by OpenStax is licensed under CC BY 4.0
05.2: Lesson 5.2: Memory as We Age
Memory and Age–Good News!
Recent studies on the age range of college students reveals that more older learners are attending both universities and community colleges. For four-year programs, the average age is 25. For community college, it is 29. The age range has steadily increased from the year 2000. In many classes at Lane, it is quite common to have students in their forties, fifties, even sixties. There are, of course, myriad reasons for people entering or re-entering higher education that include the state of the economy, changed work and family situations, and veterans accessing their education entitlement after service.
Many of my older students especially look forward to the topic of memory covered in Effective Learning. They cite the usual concerns around an aging brain. But there is good news! The article featured in exercise 1, linked below, covers what changes about the memory as we age, what kinds of memory age does affect and what kind stays the same, and 8 ways to help the memory.
UNIT 5, EXERCISE 2.1
1. Read the article “People Over 40: Learning and Memory,” by Dan Hodges. It is Study Tip #16, page 42, on the PDF file with all of the rest of the Tips. You will need to scroll down.
2. Write a letter of help and encouragement based on Hodges’ advice to Cathy who is 50 and just now entering community college after raising three children and one grandchild. In the letter, cover at least 10 suggestions for her. Cathy has always had a dream to pursue a Culinary Arts degree and open a healthy foods restaurant. She is concerned, however, about being able to memorize all of the material in her required courses. She is worried about her decreasing ability to remember names and faces right away, and the fact that it seems to take her longer to learn new things. She is quite confident of comprehending and passing classes related to her major because she has been a “foodie” as far back as she can remember. She has also won many awards for her cooking and baking at the county fair over the years. However, she hasn’t had a math or writing class since high school, and those are her big concerns.
05.3: To the
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5.3: To the Instructor: Optional Assignments
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Activities
Optional Extra Credit Opportunities and/or Grading Elements for Unit 5
Here are some suggestions for additional course components and grading elements:
• The Glossary of Terms in the back is good information for weekly quizzes, mid-term tests, and/or final exams.
• The instructor may wish to post test students with a list featuring another set of 36 words, post (memory) test Memory test Unit 5, similar to the pretest linked in Lesson 5.1. Have students compare scores and discuss what new memory concepts and techniques they used that they feel helped them to achieve a (hopefully) higher score. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_05_Overview--Memory_Principles_and_Techniques_Unit_Terms/05.1%3A_Lesson_5.1%3A_Memory_Model_and_Techniques.txt |
Pre-Test Strategies
“Anxiety” by HAMZA BUTT is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Q: When should you start preparing for the first test? Circle…
1. The night before.
2. The week prior.
3. The first day of classes.
If you answered “3. The first day of classes,” you are correct. If you circled all three, you are also correct. Preparing to pass tests is something that begins when learning begins and continues all the way through to the final exam.
Many students, however, don’t start thinking about test taking, whether weekly exams, mid-terms, or finals, until the day before when they engage in an all-nighter, or cramming. From the previous unit on memory, you might recall that the brain can only process an average of 5-7 new pieces of information at a time. Additionally, unless memory devices are used to aid memory and to cement information into long term memory (or at least until the test is over tomorrow!) chances are slim that students who cram will effectively learn and remember the information.
Additionally, a lot of students are unaware of the many strategies available to help with the test-taking experience before, during, and after. For starters, take a look at what has helped you so far.
UNIT 6, EXERCISE 1.1
Pre-Test Taking Strategies
PART A:
Put a check mark next to the pre-test strategies you already employ.
____ Organize your notebook and other class materials the first week of classes (sample notebook organization plan).
____ Maintain your organized materials throughout the term.
____ Take notes on key points from lectures and other materials (examples of note-taking formats).
____ Make sure you understand the information as you go along.
____ Access your instructor’s help and the help of a study group, as needed.
____ Organize a study group, if desired (review of organizing study groups).
____ Create study tools such as flashcards, graphic organizers, etc. as study aids (review of study aids).
____ Complete all homework assignments on time.
____ Review likely test items several times beforehand.
____ Ask your instructor what items are likely to be covered on the test.
____ Ask your instructor if she or he can provide a study guide or practice test.
____ Ask your instructor if he/she gives partial credit for test items such as essays.
____ Maintain an active learner attitude.
____ Schedule extra study time in the days just prior to the test.
____ Gather all notes, handouts, and other materials needed before studying.
____ Review all notes, handouts, and other materials.
____ Organize your study area for maximum concentration and efficiency.
____ Create and use mnemonic devices to aid memory (review of mnemonic devices).
____ Put key terms, formulas, etc., on a single study sheet that can be quickly reviewed.
____ Schedule study times short enough (1-2 hours) so you do not get burned out.
____ Get plenty of sleep the night before.
____ Set a back-up alarm in case the first alarm doesn’t sound or you sleep through it.
____ Have a good breakfast with complex carbs and protein to see you through.
____ Show up 5-10 minutes early to get completely settled before the test begins.
____ Use the restroom beforehand to minimize distractions.
PART B
By reviewing the pre-test strategies, above, you have likely discovered new ideas to add to what you already use. Make a list of them.
UNIT 6, EXERCISE 1.2
Read How to Create a Study Schedule to Prepare for Final Exams, which lists 10 steps, 4 tips, 2 warnings, and a list of things you will need. Based on this advice, design a plan you know will work well for you when it comes to studying for any big test–final, mid-term, State Boards, etc.–incorporating at least 10 of the suggestions.
Mid-Test Strategies
Here is a list of the most common–and useful–strategies to survive this ubiquitous college experience. Note: the important topic of test anxiety will be covered separately, in lesson 6.2.
• Scan the test, first, to get the big picture of how many test items there are, what types there are (multiple choice, matching, essay, etc.), and the point values of each item or group of items.
• Determine which way you want to approach the test:
• Some students start with the easy questions first, that is, the ones they immediately know the answers to, saving the difficult ones for later, knowing they can spend the remaining time on them.
• Some students begin with the biggest-point items first, to make sure they get the most points.
• Determine a schedule that takes into consideration how long you have to test, and the types of questions on the test. Essay questions, for example, will require more time than multiple choice, or matching questions.
• Keep your eye on the clock.
• If you can mark on the test, put a check mark next to items you are not sure of just yet.
• It is easy to go back and find them to answer later on.
• You might just find some help in some other test items covering similar information.
• Sit where you are most comfortable. That said, sitting near the front has a couple of advantages:
• You may be less distracted by other students.
• If a classmate comes up with a question for the instructor and there is an important clarification given, you will be better able to hear it and apply it, if needed.
• Wear ear plugs, if noise distracts you.
• You do NOT have to start with #1! It you are unsure of it, mark it to come back to later on.
• Bring water…this helps calm the nerves, for one, and water is also needed for optimum brain function.
• If permitted, get up and stretch (or stretch in your chair) from time to time to relieve tension and assist the blood to the brain!
• Remember to employ strategies to reduce test-taking anxiety (covered in the next lesson)
• If despite all of your best efforts to prepare for a test you just cannot remember the answer to a given item for multiple choice, matching, and/or true/false questions, employ one or more of the following educated guessing (also known as “educated selection”) techniques. By using these techniques, you have a better chance of selecting the correct answer.
• It is usually best to avoid selecting an extreme or all-inclusive answer (also known as 100% modifiers) such as “always,” and “never”. Choose, instead, words such as “usually,” “sometimes,” etc. (also known as in-between modifiers).
• Although there is some dispute about this, it is still safe to say that choosing “C” is often correct.
• If the answers are numbers, choose one of the middle numbers.
• If you have options such as “all of the above,” or “both A and B,” make sure each item is true before selecting those options.
• Choose the longest, or most inclusive, answer.
• Make sure to match the grammar of question and answer. For example, if the question indicates a plural answer, look for the plural answer.
• Regarding matching tests: count both sides to be matched. If there are more questions than answers, ask if you can use an answer more than once.
• Pay close attention to items that ask you to choose the “best” answer. This means one answer is better or more inclusive than a similar answer.
• Read all of the response options.
Post-Test Strategies
In addition to sighing that big sigh of relief, here are a few suggestions to help with future tests.
• If you don’t understand why you did not get an item right, ask the instructor. This is especially useful for quizzes that contain information that may be incorporated into more inclusive exams such as mid-terms and finals.
• Analyze your results to help you in the future; for example,
• See if most of your incorrect answers were small things such as failing to include the last step in a math item, or neglecting to double-check for simple errors in a short-answer or essay item.
• See where in the test you made the most errors: beginning, middle, or end. This will help you pay closer attention to those sections in the future.
UNIT 6, EXERCISE 1.3
Write a letter of advice to Chen incorporating 10 test-taking tips and strategies you think will help him.
Chen believes he is good at organization, and he usually is–for about the first two weeks of classes. He then becomes overwhelmed with all of the handouts and materials and tends to start slipping in the organization department. When it comes to tests, he worries that his notes might not cover all of the right topics and that he will not be able to remember all of the key terms and points–especially for his math class. During tests, he sometimes gets stuck on an item and tends to spend too much time there. He also sometimes changes answers but finds out later that his original selection was correct. Chen is also easily distracted by other students and noises which makes it hard for him to concentrate sometimes, and, unfortunately, he does admit to occasionally “cramming” the night before. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_06_Overview--Test-Taking%3A_Pre_Mid_and_Post_Unit_Terms/06.1%3A_Lesson_6.1%3A_Pre-_Mid-_and_Post-Test-Taking_Strategies.txt |
“Overcoming Math Anxiety” by wecometolearn is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Most people experience some form of anxiety when it comes to taking tests. Sweaty palms, heart palpitations, mental block, and other forms of normal test anxiety may surface before, during, even after taking tests (see the end of this lesson for a more complete list).
This entire class is, of course, designed to help alleviate test stress by offering numerous strategies and perspectives when it comes to general preparation for and participation in academia. However, there are some specific helps to subdue the stress as well. NOTE: the type of test anxiety or stress referenced here is not of a clinical nature requiring medical and/or counseling treatment.
To help you come up with your own, customized plan of test stress reduction, complete the following exercise. The articles cited cover such essentials as what might be influencing your worry about test taking, methods to help you feel safe during a test, and what to do in a major anxiety attack.
UNIT 6, EXERCISE 2.1
1. Read Study Tip #18, page 46 – HANDLING TEST ANXIETY (Part 1) and Study Tip #19, page 48 – HANDLING TEST ANXIETY (Part 2), by Dan Hodges. Scroll down to these two tips on the, click here: PDF file.
2. From Hodges’ list of suggestions and perspectives, write about
• what influences you with regard to test anxiety,
• some methods Hodges’ presents that you believe would benefit you,
• how you might alleviate a lack of safety around test taking that you might experience, and
• some ideas you would like to keep in mind should you ever experience more challenging anxiety attacks during tests, especially finals and/or State Board exams.
3. Write about 250-300 words or one page.
“How to Deal With Exam Anxiety” offers a more complete list of normal test taking anxiety symptoms:
Anxiety is not only an emotional state; it produces physical symptoms that you can identify if you know what to look for. If you experience any of the following symptoms when studying or thinking about a test, this would be a tell tale sign that you’re feeling anxiety.
• Headaches.
• Dry mouth.
• Rapid heartbeat. Usually a heart rate above 100 beats per minute characterizes a rapid heartbeat.
• Sweating.
• Shortness of breath.
• Light-headedness.
• Extreme body temperature, either excessively hot or cold.
• Gastrointestinal discomfort. This can be characterized by nausea, diarrhea, bloating, and abdominal pain.
06.3: Lesson 6.3: Understanding Test Items
Test Items
“Target” by Freeimages9 is in the Public Domain, CC0
There are several common kinds of test items. For objective tests, students answer multiple choice questions, matching items, and fill-in-the-blank items. The other kind of test items are short-answer responses and essays. The following are explanations and examples of these along with tips for educated guessing, if applicable–after all, sometimes even though we study hard, a bit of test anxiety might cause a sudden mental block!
Multiple Choice Test Items
Explanation:
These test items offer several answer choices. The test prompt (or question) is known as the “stem” for which you choose one or more of the answer options.
Examples:
1. A simile is
• a comparison without using “like”
• a comparison using the word “as”
• a comparison using either “like” or “as”
• none of the above
2. Memory devices include
• acronyms
• inference
• acrostics
• associations
• 1, 3, and 4
• all of the above
Tips
Make sure that all the rules of grammar apply when you match the stem with the option. for example, in example item number 2, above, notice that them stem directs you to look for a plural answer because “devices” is plural. Number 5, then, is the correct answer (answers 1, 3, and 4 are all plural).
Educated Guessing
• Choose “3” or C, which is more often than not the correct answer (as in example item number 1, above).
• Choose the longest or most inclusive answer, also as in example item number 1, above.
• If the test item is for a math quiz, choose the in-between number, or one of the in-between numbers. example: 1) 432, 2) 77, 3) 12, 4)2,098. Your chances are better by choosing either 1 or 2.
Matching Test Items
Explanation
This kind of test item features two columns, a numbered column and a lettered column. Students are asked to match the correct answer with the correct stem.
Example
1. NASA ___organization device
2. headache ___acronym
3. graphic organizer ___symptom of test anxiety
Tips
Count the number of items in each column. If there are more on one side, ask if an answer can be used more than once.
Fill-In-the-Blank Test Items
Explanation
These are items for which you must fill in a word or words.
Example
Fill in the ____________ questions are featured frequently on exams.
Tips
Fill-in-the-blank questions usually expect you to write one word per blank. If more than one word is expected, there will be more than one blank space or the blank will be long.
Short Answer Test Items
Explanation
This type of test item usually involves a short answer of approximately 5-7 sentences. Typical short answer items will address only one topic and require only one “task” (see “essay test items,” below, for a test item requiring more than one task).
Example
Define the term “mnemonic.”
Tips
Since many short answer test items ask the student to define a term, here are several ways to expand a definition to achieve the 5-7 sentence desired response (depending upon the course and the teacher’s requirements, that is):
• the dictionary definition
• an informal definition (in your own words, for example)
• give an example of how the term is used
• give the category in which the term is used, for example, what kind of essays belong in the “expository” genre (argument, explanation, cause and effect, etc.)
• the history (etymology) of the term
• include antonyms
• include synonyms
• tell what the term is not (some terms mean more than one distinct thing, for example, a “whatchamacallit is not only a slang term but also a candy bar.
Essay Test Items
Explanation
This type of test is usually a multi-part prompt requiring several paragraphs or pages to answer. You can make use of writing formulas, for example how to write a basic, five-paragraph essay suitable for most classes. However, for writing classes the task will be expanded as per the type of writing class and the level of writing sophistication required.
Example
Contrasted with short answer items where usually one task is required to fully answer them (such as a simple definition), there are typically several tasks required to fully answer an essay prompt. For example in the following prompt below, I have underlined all of the tasks and decisions required to fully address the prompt:
Many people believe Mark Twain’s book Huckleberry Finn is racist and should not be included on high school reading lists. Others believe that Twain correctly portrayed race relations in the Southern part of the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and, in fact, by telling the story he exposed the negative racial attitudes existing then. Do you think the book should be kept on reading lists? Explain why or why not in relation to today’s emphasis on “political correctness.”
Tips
• Review terms often used in essay exams before taking the exam:
• compare–show similarities between items
• contrast–show differences between items
• sometimes both comparing and contrasting is required
• define–give a concise meaning (see how to expand definitions, above)
• describe–recount, characterize, or relate information in narrative form
• discuss–examine, analyze, and present pros and cons regarding the topic. Detail is essential
• enumerate–incorporate (which might require listing or outlining) major points in order
• explain–clarify and interpret the material including explaining how and/or why. Detail is essential
• Do NOT merely summarize the plot of the work if this is an essay for an English class or a literature class.
UNIT 6, EXERCISE 3.1
List how many tasks need to be accomplished in order to fully respond to the essay prompt below, or another one your instructor will provide for you.
Select a novel or a play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the themes of the work as a whole. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_06_Overview--Test-Taking%3A_Pre_Mid_and_Post_Unit_Terms/06.2%3A_Lesson_6.2%3A_Handling_Test_Anxiety.txt |
Here are the requirements for the two Portfolio Projects. One will serve as the take-home mid-term that covers Units 1-3, and the other will serve as the take-home final that covers Units 4-6.
TASK #1
Write a letter to yourself in which you summarize the tips, strategies, and skills learned in each of the second three Units that you believe will help you the most in your educational career. The letter should be typed and double-spaced, approximately 2 pages in length (550-600 words), and cover the material from the lessons on:
• Listening
• Note-taking
• Memory (models and mnemonics)
• Memory as we age
• Test-taking: pre test
• Test-taking: mid test
• Teat-taking: post test
• Handling test anxiety
• Understanding test items (objective tests, short answer items, and essays)
It will be scored on the basis of thoroughness and details.
Possible 50 Points
TASK 2
This is the creative response task. Choose from among the options below. Your creation should feature tips, strategies, and skills you featured in Task #1. It will also be scored on thoroughness and details.
Possible 50 Points
• Choose a different creative response for each Portfolio Project. You can also make your own proposal for a creative response and get permission from the instructor. NOTE: for any option involving a presentation or performance, be sure to check with me regarding time allotments if this is a class setting.
• Some options are more creative than others; some require specific skills, for example, #s 3 and 7. Others are more “academic,” for example, #19. Some require certain talents or hobby interests, for example, #s 5, 6, and 9.
The hope is that you have an opportunity to exercise your talents and skills a little more and have some fun while exploring a variety of different ways to apply your learning.
1. Write an infomercial of “Best All-Time Strategies for…(the subject of the Unit) and “perform” or present it for the class.
2. Create a brochure.
3. Create a power point presentation.
4. Create a poster.
5. Create a cartoon panel.
6. Write a story.
7. Invent a game.
8. Create a tool kit of some sort with objects or descriptions of objects that would go inside of it.
9. Write a song.
10. Design a lesson plan for the class based on the Unit (for this, a little more time will be scheduled, but no more than, say, 10-15 minutes).
11. Sculpt something that can illustrate key points from the Unit.
12. Prepare a photography exhibit to illustrate key points.
13. Collect quotes on the subject matter of this Unit and present them in some way (collage, power point…)
14. Create bookmarks for each of the tips, strategies, and/or skills you feature.
15. A short (3-5 minutes) YouTube presentation of helpful tips
16. Write a short essay (about 400-500 words, or 1 1/2 typed, double-spaced pages. Be sure to include a creative title) on any of the following topics:
• Highly Effective Habits of a Successful… (whatever the Unit theme is–learner, note-taker, time-manager, test-taker, etc.)
• How NOT to.. (whatever the Unit theme is: learn successfully, take notes, manage time, take tests, etc.)
• Advice on (whatever the Unit theme is) for Incoming Freshmen
• What I Wish I Had Known Before I Started College and Why (cite at least 10 Unit strategies).
17. Other… (make me an offer!)
06.4: To the
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6.4: To the Instructor: Optional Assignments
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Activities
Optional Extra Credit Opportunities and/or Grading Elements for Unit 6
Here are some suggestions for additional course components and grading elements:
• The Glossary of Terms in the back is good information for weekly quizzes, mid-term tests, and/or final exams.
• Watch the video “Best 10 Foods That Help In Enhancing Your Brain Power” and create a menu for any combination of meals the day before and/or day of the test. If you are a “foodie,” come up with your own dishes. If not, do a search for ideas by using an Internet search engine to type in the main ingredients (two or more) and add which meal: breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Book%3A_How_to_Learn_Like_a_Pro_(Nissila)/Unit_06_Overview--Test-Taking%3A_Pre_Mid_and_Post_Unit_Terms/06.5%3A_RUBRIC_FOR_THE_TAKE-HOME_FINAL_PORTFOLIO_PROJECT_DUE_AFTER_COMPLETI.txt |
Author: Sheldon Loman, Portland State University
2.01: Prelude
Author: Samuel Sennott, Portland State University
02: Naturalistic AAC Communication Intervention
“...model, model, model...” —Patty Cassidy, CCC-SLP
It was a crisp autumn day when I departed my graduate class in augmentative and alternative communication alongside my course instructor Patty Cassidy. It was one of those sublime moments after an inspiring class when you find yourself thinking deeply about the subject matter. I remember innocently enough asking her what she thought was most important about language learning for children who could not use their voice to meet their full daily communication needs. At that point we stopped on the steps of the College’s building and she shared that she thought modeling the communication systems we were using with the children was the most important principle. She tapped me on the shoulder as we were walking away and said, “model, model, model... remember that, Sam.” Walking away inspired from the class session and conversation, I had little idea exactly how important those words and the concept they represent are for the language acquisition process of children who have difficulty speaking. Five years later I found myself defending a Ph.D. dissertation on the subject of teaching adults to model using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) to help children learn how to use those AAC systems.
I remember finding classic texts on language input and motherese such as Snow and Ferguson (1978) and realizing how long people have been interested in the importance of modeling language interactively to children. The following quote exemplifies the spirit of naturalistic communication interventions.
When asked how a parent might best support a child’s learning of language, Roger Brown (in the introduction to the seminal Snow and Ferguson, [1978, p. 26]) provided the following response: “How can a concerned mother facilitate her child’s learning of language?” His answer was, “Believe that your child can understand more than he or she can say, and seek, above all to communicate. To understand and be understood. . . . If you concentrate on communicating, everything else will follow.” The research on communication interventions for children with disabilities impacting their ability to communicate provides evidence that these same high expectations and the use of AAC modeling based interventions can produce benefits for individuals with CCN. The challenge is how to better provide a rich communication environment full of models of language, engagement, high expectations, and opportunities for participation. When these conditions are provided, there is good reason to think that the learning of language “. . . will follow.”
This chapter introduces AAC, shares select intervention resources, and then introduces a naturalistic AAC intervention strategy, MODELER.
What Is AAC?
Child language development is impacted by the interaction of the child’s abilities in all domains such as motor, vision, hearing, and language (Siegel & Cress, 2002). For individuals with disabilities that impact their ability to meet their daily communication needs using speech, language acquisition can be empowered through providing access to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013).
AAC Definition
“AAC includes all forms of communication (other than oral speech) that are used to express thoughts, needs, wants, and ideas. We all use AAC when we make facial expressions or gestures, use symbols or pictures, or write. People with severe speech or language problems rely on AAC to supplement existing speech or replace speech that is not functional. Special augmentative aids, such as picture and symbol communication boards and electronic devices, are available to help people express themselves. This may increase social interaction, school performance, and feelings of self-worth. AAC users should not stop using speech if they are able to do so. The AAC aids and devices are used to enhance their communication.” American Speech-Hearing Association, retrieved from: https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/AAC/.
There are many first-hand accounts of individuals who have found alternate ways to communicate (Brown, 1964; Creech, 1992; Koppenhaver, Yoder, & Erickson, 2002). As a whole, their writings, combined with research documenting efficacy express the message that despite not being able to speak, it is possible to become a competent communicator by utilizing AAC (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013, Romski & Sevcick, 1996).
The goal of AAC, described by Porter (2007), is to give people the ability to meet socially valued daily language needs efficiently, specifically, intelligibly, and independently. This is accomplished both through using AAC tools and by providing AAC intervention and training to support the individual using AAC.
Figure \(1\): AAC is a set of tools people use for interactions and learn to use through
interactions.
One fear many parents and professionals have is that by using AAC system components to assist in communication, the child’s speech development will be impeded. Fortunately, this is not the case. Evidence suggests that AAC not only does not impede development, but may even support speech development (Millar, Light, & Schlosser, 2006). Parents, teachers, and therapists also may be concerned about prerequisites for commencing AAC interventions, but as Cress (2002) points out, there are no prerequisites for AAC.
Communication and Language
Communication is sending messages. Language is the coded system of symbols with agreed-upon patterns and rules that enables a community of people to interact and communicate with each other and to efficiently send messages (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013). There are important social purposes of communication such as (a) expressing needs and wants, (b) feeling social closeness, (c) sharing information, (d) fulfilling established conventions of social etiquette (Light, 1988) and (e) engaging with oneself in an internal dialogue (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013). Communicative competence is not necessarily an inherent trait, but something that must be learned and scaffolded. Communicative competence can be organized into linguistic, operational, social, and strategic domains (Light, 1989). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/01%3A_Guiding_Principles_for_Developing_Comprehensive_and_Meaningful_Instruction_for_Individuals.txt |
Table 2.2.1 highlights a selection of important Internet resources for AAC.
Table 2.2.1: AAC intervention web resources
Resource Description Link
AAC Kids The website provides step by step guidelines for early intervention specifically designed for children with complex communication needs. aackids.psu.edu
PrAActical AAC Top blog in AAC provides practical resources for intervention. praacticalaac.org
Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs Resources and ideas for teachers of learners with severe, profound, intensive, significant, complex or multiple special needs. teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com
Communication Practices from the Autism Internet Modules
The Autism Internet Modules have some terrific overviews of popular approaches to communication intervention for individuals with complex communication needs.
1. Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
2. Pivotal Response Training
3. Naturalistic Intervention
4. Functional Communication Training
5. Speech Generating Devices
These concise modules overview the essentials of a practice or concept along with reviewing key research findings and provide checklists for implementation.
The National Joint Committee, A Communication Bill of Rights (NJC, 1992) is an important document outlining the human and civil rights of people with complex communication needs. This document draws connections to the concepts of inclusion, self-determination, universal design for learning, the least dangerous assumption, and valuing the human dignity of all people. Some of these rights are more straightforward, such as “8. The right to have access at all times to any needed augmentative and alternative communication devices and other assistive devices, and to have those devices in good working order.” Yet others are much more nuanced, “7. The right to have communication acts acknowledged and responded to, even when the intent of these acts cannot be fulfilled by the responder.” Taken together, they serve as an important message for pre-service teachers.
Table 2.2.2: National Joint Committee, A Communication Bill of Rights
National Joint Committee, A Communication Bill of Rights (NJC, 1992)
All persons, regardless of the extent or severity of their disabilities, have a basic right to affect, through communication, the conditions of their own existence. Beyond this general right, a number of specific communication rights should be ensured in all daily interactions and interventions involving persons who have severe disabilities. These basic communication rights are as follows:
1. The right to request desired objects, actions, events, and persons, and to express personal preferences, or feelings.
2. The right to be offered choices end alternatives.
3. The right to reject or refuse undesired objects, events, or actions, including the right to decline or reject all proffered choices.
4. The right to request, and be given, attention from and interaction with another person.
5. The right to request feedback or information about state, an object, a person, or an event of interest.
6. The right to active treatment and intervention efforts to enable people with severe disabilities to communicate messages in whatever modes and as effectively and efficiently as their specific abilities will allow.
7. The right to have communication acts acknowledged and responded to, even when the intent of these acts cannot be fulfilled by the responder.
8. The right to have access at all times to any needed augmentative and alternative communication devices and other assistive devices, and to have those devices in good working order.
9. The right to environmental contexts, interactions, and opportunities that expect and encourage persons with disabilities to participate as full communication partners with other people, including peers.
10. The right to be informed about the people, things, and events in one's immediate environment.
11. The right to be communicated with in a manner that recognizes and acknowledges the inherent dignity of the person being addressed, including the right to be part of communication exchanges about individuals that are conducted in his or her presence.
12. The right to be communicated with in ways that are meaningful, understandable, and culturally and linguistically appropriate.
2.03: AAC modeling Rationale
Language input is an important factor in child language acquisition (Gallway & Richards, 1994; Snow & Ferguson, 1978; Tomasello, 2003). During early childhood, children using speech are exposed to large levels of language input and interaction (Hart & Risley, 1995; Tomasello, 2003). The amount of words speaking children typically hear in their first four years ranges from approximately eight to 50 million words (Hart & Risley, 1995). Similarly to children who learn to communicate using speech, language input is important to children who use other expressive communication modalities as well, such as individuals with complex communication needs (CCN) who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). These individuals may communicate expressively using various modalities such as unaided AAC modalities such as sign languages, gestures, vocalizations, and speech, or aided AAC modalities such as with paper and computer based communication displays (e.g., iPad). The overall AAC language acquisition literature emphasizes the role of language input for individuals with CCN who require AAC (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013). For example, research in sign language acquisition stresses the importance of language input, demonstrating that given appropriate sign language input, children can develop complex language abilities using sign language (Bavelier, Newport, & Supalla, 2003; Newport & Supalla, 2000).
Individuals with CCN who use aided AAC systems, such as those with picture or word systems that may be paper or computer based, also require appropriate language input (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013; Romski & Sevcik, 1996). However, these individuals rarely observe models of AAC use, creating what Smith & Grove (2003) called an asynchrony of language input to output. That is, these individuals experience spoken language as input, but are expected to communicate expressively using AAC. Consequently, a number of AAC interventions have been developed in an attempt to provide this missing language input to individuals with CCN as a way to stimulate language gains (see single-subject meta-analysis; Sennott, Light, & McNaughton, 2014). For clarity and conciseness, Sennott et al. (2014) used the term AAC modeling to consolidate and describe the various types of language input provided through AAC modalities. Various AAC modeling intervention packages have positively impacted four different language areas: (a) pragmatics in the form of turn taking (e.g. Kent-Walsh, Binger, & Hasham, 2010); (b) semantics in the form of receptive and expressive vocabulary (e.g. Drager et al., 2006); (c) syntax in the form of increasing multi-symbol utterances (e.g. Binger, Kent-Walsh, Berens, Del Campo, & Rivera, 2008); and (d) morphology in the form of increased use of target structures (Binger, Maguire-Marshall, & Kent-Walsh, 2011). analysis results also indicated that because of the packaged nature of the interventions, parsing out modeling as the sole independent variable impacting student performance was difficult. In addition to the AAC modeling variable, time delay, and responding or recasting, were included in the majority of the reviewed packaged interventions. Those three intervention variables have been included in a newly designed intervention package called ModelER (Model, Encourage, Respond) for Read and Talk. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/02%3A_Naturalistic_AAC_Communication_Intervention/2.02%3A_AAC_Intervention_Resources.txt |
The ModelER intervention package is built on theory supporting the importance of language input (Gallway & Richards, 1994; Hart & Risley, 1995, Tomasello, 2003) and effective instructional components as highlighted in AAC modeling research (Sennott et al., 2014).
Figure \(1\): MODELER for Read and Talk
ModelER
The Improving Partner AAC Training (ImpAACt) series of studies (e.g. Binger et al., 2008) effectively used variants of a specific strategy instructional package (Read, Ask, and Answer [RAA] and related variants) to teach partners to better engage in shared storybook reading with beginning communicators who use AAC. These studies demonstrated positive results in the form of increased communication turns (Kent-Walsh et al, 2010; Rosa-Lugo & Kent-Walsh, 2008), increased multi-symbol communication turns (Binger et al., 2008, Binger, Kent-Walsh, Ewing, & Taylor, 2010), and increased use of morphological forms (Binger, Maguire-Marshall, & Kent-Walsh, 2011). ModelER has been designed to build on the findings of the ImpAACt research, but to optimize for generalization beyond the context of shared storybook reading, because of the importance of promoting interventions that can be used across multiple contexts (e.g. play, academics, snack/ meal times) for children learning to use AAC.
Figure \(2\): Video example of MODELER found at http://youtu.be/d4tI-xqVoDE
The major components of ModelER are (a) model - modeling AAC use (Sennott et al., 2014); (b) encourage - encouraging communication through time delay/ expectant delay (e.g. Halle, Baer, & Spradlin, 1981); and (c) respond - responding to child communication attempts through AAC recasting (Camarata & Nelson, 2006; Nelson et al., 1996; Harwood, Warren, & Yoder, 2003). AAC modeling is the foundation of the intervention and is designed to provide a model of language use (pragmatics), content (semantics), and form (syntax and morphology) for the individual with CCN learning to use AAC. Encouragement to communicate, in the form of a time delay, is designed to provide opportunities for the child to initiate a communication turn, showing them that the adult communication partner is waiting and interested. As a support to the child’s communication attempts, the respond component focuses on recasting the child’s utterance by repeating their utterance, and expanding it in a meaningful way. The respond component is designed as an adaptation of the recasting intervention described in Nelson et al. (1996), which described that the recast maintains the basic meaning of what they child says, focuses on expanding the length of utterance, and keeps the conversation turns flowing. The hope is that the child can better attend to the more advanced structures being modeled because the utterance is based on what they just previously communicated. Put together, the sequence of modeling, encouraging by waiting for the child to take a turn, and then responding through AAC recasting is designed to create individualized, language-rich multi-turn communication sequences.
Figure \(3\): Video example 2 of MODELER found at http://youtu.be/htsAWLYfBXQ
Read and Talk
The Read and Talk component of the package refers to reading a book and talking about it through making comments or asking questions. The Read and Talk components create a learning environment that would be typical of an early childhood shared reading context. Variants of shared storybook reading, such as dialogic reading, that includes engaging in conversation with the child, has extensive empirical support in general education (Dale et al., 1996; Whitehurst et al., 1988), special education (Ezell & Justice, 2005), and AAC specific literatures (Bedroisian, 1999; Sennott et al., 2014; Stephenson, 2009). Dialogic reading interventions (e.g. Dale et al., 1996) are comprised of reading with children and asking targeted questions, which matches the approach the RAA strategy ImpAACt studies took (e.g. Kent-Walsh et al., 2010), which primarily focused on reading and question asking. By including commenting in addition to question asking, the approach taken in the Read and Talk components of the intervention expands on the scope of adapting dialogic reading for children using AAC. The decision to include both commenting and question asking was made because question asking has the potential to place the child into a passive or question prompt–dependent role, which could be detrimental to individuals who require AAC (Light & Kelford Smith, 1993). Instead, this approach is designed to teach the communication partners to model multiple pragmatic functions, comments, and questions, with the objective of promoting the children taking increasingly independent turns such as making comments or asking questions themselves.
Table 2.4.1: MODELER Implementation checklist
Strategy Step Description
Model EA models one or more AAC symbols during a communication turn using the iPad based AAC system.
Encourage EA provides a time delay, or wait time, until child takes a communication turn or five seconds.
Respond EA responds to a child communication turn with an AAC recast by repeating some portion of the child’s utterance and attempts to expand the utterance and models one or more AAC symbols during a communication turn using the iPad-based AAC system
Read EA reads a page or page spread in the book and uses ModelER
Talk EA makes a comment or asks a question using ModelER
Conclusion
For children who are minimally verbal and use AAC it is important to develop an expressive language system and to have an appropriate language learning environment. The iPad combined with a communication app has become a very popular AAC system, creating more opportunities for these children to have access to expressive language. A number of useful resources have been introduced in this chapter from various web sources. Specifically, the naturalistic communication intervention MODELER has been introduced.
In considering the language learning environment of children, we know about the importance of language input described across general language acquisition (Gallway & Richards, 1994; Gerken, 2008; Hart & Risley, 1995, Tomasello, 2003), sign language (Bavelier et al., 2003; Newport & Supalla, 2000), and AAC (Goosens, Crain, & Elder, 1992; Romski & Sevcik, 1996; Sennott et al., 2013; Smith & Grove, 2003). AAC researchers have developed interventions that target providing models of AAC use. Sennott and colleagues have developed a package intervention called MODELER (Model, Encourage, Respond) that is designed to help the child’s communication partners provide AAC models in an easy, interactive format throughout the day. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/02%3A_Naturalistic_AAC_Communication_Intervention/2.04%3A_MODELER_Strategy.txt |
Bavelier, D., Newport, E. L., & Supalla, T. (2003). Children need natural languages, signed or spoken. Cerebrum, 6(4), 19–32.
Beukelman, D., & Mirenda, P. (2013). Augmentative and alternative communication: Supporting children and adults with complex communication needs (4th ed.). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Binger, C., Kent-Walsh, J., Berens, J., Del Campo, S., & Rivera, D. (2008). Teaching Latino parents to support the multi-symbol message productions of their children who require AAC. Augmentative and Alternative Communication. 24(4), 323–338.
Binger, C., Kent-Walsh, J., Ewing, C., & Taylor, S. (2010). Teaching educational assistants to facilitate the multi-symbol message productions of young students who require augmentative and alternative communication. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 19(2), 108–120.
Binger, C., Maguire-Marshall, M., & Kent-Walsh, J. (2011). Using aided AAC models, recasts, and contrastive targets to teach grammatical morphemes to children who use AAC. Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research, 54(1), 160-176.
Brown, C. (1954). My left foot. London: Secker & Warburg.
Camarata, S. M., & Nelson, K. E. (2006). Conversational recast intervention with preschool and older children. In R. J. McCauley & M. E. Fey (Eds.), Treatment of language disorders in children (pp. 237–264). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
Creech, R. (1992). Reflections from a Unicorn. Greenville, NC: RC Publishing Co.
Dale, P. S., Crain-Thoreson, C., Notari-Syverson, A., & Cole, K. (1996). Parent-child book reading as an intervention technique for young children with language delays. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 16(2), 213–235.
Drager, K. D. R., Postal, V. J., Carrolus, L., Castellano, M., Gagliano, C., & Glynn, J. (2006). The effect of aided language modeling on symbol comprehension and production in 2 preschoolers with autism. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 5(2), 112–125.
Ezell, H. K. & Justice, L. M. (2005). Shared storybook reading: Building young children's language and emergent literacy skills. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Gallway, C., & Richards, B. J. (1994). Input and interaction in language acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gerken, L. A. (2008). Language development. San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.
Goossens', C., Crain, S., & Elder, P. (1992). Engineering the classroom environment for interactive symbolic communication: An emphasis on the developmental period 18 months to five years. Birmingham, AL: Southeast Augmentative Communication Conference Publications.
Halle, J. W., Baer, D. M., & Spradlin, J. E. (1981). Teachers’ generalized use of delay as a stimulus control procedure to increase language use in handicapped children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 14(4), 389–409.
Harris, K. R., Graham, S., & Mason, L. H. (2003). Self-regulated strategy development in the classroom: Part of a balanced approach to writing instruction for students with disabilities. Focus on Exceptional Children, 35(7), 1–16.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Harwood, K., Warren, S., & Yoder, P. (2002). The importance of responsivity in developing contingent exchanges with beginning communicators. In J. Reichle, D. Beukelman & J. Light (Eds.), Exemplary practices for beginning communicators (pp. 59-95). Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
Kent-Walsh, J., & Mcnaughton, D. (2005). Communication partner instruction in AAC: Present practices and future directions. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 21(3), 195–204.
Kent-Walsh, J., Binger, C., & Hasham, Z. (2010). Effects of parent instruction on the symbolic communication of children using augmentative and alternative communication during storybook reading. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 19(2), 97–107.
Koppenhaver, D., Yoder, D. E., Erickson, K. A., (2002) Waves of words. ISAAC Press.
Light, J. (1988). Interaction involving individuals using augmentative and alternative communication systems: State of the art and future directions. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 4(2), 66-82.
Light, J. (1989). Toward a definition of communicative competence for individuals using augmentative and alternative communication systems. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 5(2), 137-144.
Light, J., Binger, C., & Smith, A. K. (1994). Story reading interactions between preschoolers who use AAC and their mothers. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 10(4), 255–268.
Light, J., & Kelford Smith, A. (1993). Home Literacy Experiences of Preschoolers Who Use AAC Systems and of Their Nondisabled Peers. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 9(1), 10–25.
Millar, D. C., Light, J. C., & Schlosser, R. W. (2006). The impact of augmentative and alternative communication intervention on the speech production of individuals with developmental disabilities: A research review. Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research, 49(2), 248-264.
Newport, E. L., & Supalla, T. (2000). Sign language research at the millennium. In K. Emmorey and H. Lane (Eds.), The Signs of Language Revisited: An Anthology in Honor of Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Nelson, K. E., Camarata, S. M., Welsh, J., Butkovsky, L., & Camarata, M. (1996). Effects of imitative and conversational recasting treatment on the acquisition of grammar in children with specific language impairment and younger language-normal children. Journal of Speech Hearing Research, 39(4), 850-859.
Porter, G. (2007). Pragmatic Organization Dynamic Display (PODD) communication books: Direct access templates (US letter paper version). Melbourne: Cerebral Palsy Education Centre.
Romski, M. A., & Sevcik, R. A. (1996). Breaking the speech barrier: Language development through augmented means. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Rosa-Lugo, L. I., & Kent-Walsh, J. (2008). Effects of parent instruction on communicative turns of Latino children using augmentative and alternative communication during storybook reading. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 30(1), 49–61.
Scheeler, M. C., McAfee, J. K., Ruhl, K. L. & Lee, D. L. (2006). Effects of corrective feedback delivered via wireless technology on preservice teacher performance and student behavior. Teacher Education and Special Education, 29(1), 12–25.
Sennott, S., & Niemeijer, D. (2008). Proloquo2Go (computer software). Amsterdam, NL: Assistiveware.
Sennott, S., Light, J., & McNaughton, D. (2014). A meta-analysis of the effect of aided AAC modeling on the communication and language development of individuals with complex communication needs. Manuscript in preparation.
Siegel, E., & Cress, C. (2002). Overview of the emergence of early AAC behaviors: Progression from communicative to symbolic skills. In J. Reichle, D. Beukelman, & J. Light (Eds.), Exemplary practices for beginning communicators: Implications for AAC (pp. 25-57). Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
Smith, M., & Grove, N. (2003). Asymmetry in input and output for individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication. In J. Light, D. Beukelman, & J. Reichle (Eds.), Communicative competence of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Snow, C. E., & Ferguson, C. A. (1978). Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Stephenson, J. (2010). Book reading as an intervention context for children beginning to use graphic symbols for communication. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 22(3) 257–271.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Whitehurst, G. J., Falco, F. L., Lonigan, C. J., Fischel, J. E., DeBaryshe, B. D., Valdez-Menchaca, M. C., & Caulfield, M. (1988). Accelerating language development through picture book reading. Developmental Psychology, 24(4), 552–59. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/02%3A_Naturalistic_AAC_Communication_Intervention/2.05%3A_References.txt |
Author: Kristy Lee Park, George Mason University
03: Principles of Applied Behavior Analysis
The current chapter will present an overview of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) as an effective teaching method. ABA is an approach that, when used properly, can work to teach a wide range of behaviors to a wide range of participants. ABA is a research-based science, derived from the experimental analysis of behavior and the application of those procedures. Multiple studies demonstrate that people’s lives can be improved by learning academic skills (Gardner, Heward, & Grossi, 1994), social skills (Garcia-Albea, Reeve, Brothers, & Reeve, 2014) and communication (Luczynski & Hanley, 2013) and by the reduction of problematic behaviors (Roantree & Kennedy, 2012). The foundation of ABA rests on the analysis of environmental influences, such as what happens before and after a problematic behavior (antecedents and consequences) to predict when behaviors will increase, decrease, or remain the same. These principles of reinforcement and punishment will be summarized to highlight the main procedures that teachers may find effective in the classroom. Finally, this chapter will end with a case example that will walk through how a teacher applies the principles and procedures highlighted in this chapter.
Chapter Objectives
• Define Applied Behavior Analysis and explain the characteristics within a 5-step model
• Describe the principles and procedures that increase or decrease behaviors
• Provide an example of the application of ABA in the classroom
3.02: Defining Characteristics of Applied Behavi
[Principles of ABA for Teachers Video]
Principles of ABA for Teachers Video, https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=UuvQpat4CAk
Based on the principles of learning theory, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is an applied science, meaning that practitioners use systematic procedures to teach, resulting in improvements in areas like self-care, communication, academics, behavior reductions, behavior, and/or recreation and leisure (Allen & Wallace, 2013; Van Camp & Hayes, 2012; Wolf, 1978). Behavior analysts approach problems of social significance from a scientific perspective. It is not a matter of nature versus nurture but a matter of nature and nurture working together to produce observable changes in behavior (Skinner, 1974). This focus on social relevance, or social validity, to the individual marks a division in the field of behaviorism from a strictly experimental or basic research to an applied research. Baer, Wolfe, and Risley (1968) clarified this distinction in the seminal article “Some Current Dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis,” published in the first issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, which describes ABA and outlines the future applications of its characteristics. These seven characteristics include: applied, behavioral, analytic, conceptual, technological, effective, and generalizable. When using ABA, one incorporates these components within a process to teach and evaluate effects of the approach. For example, one starts with 1) choosing a socially relevant behavior, 2) measuring the behavior, 3) using data to determine which treatment to use, 4) using data to implement procedures, and 5) using data to evaluate effects of the treatment (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007). The characteristics of ABA will be described within this 5-step model to show how the fundamental characteristics are interwoven with data to make a good ABA program. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/03%3A_Principles_of_Applied_Behavior_Analysis/3.01%3A_Prelude.txt |
ABA is applied, meaning that the targeted behavior is of social importance to the individual, rather than its importance to theory (Baer et al., 1968). The proposed behavior change is meaningful to the client and all those who may be affected by the intervention (i.e., parents, siblings, staff). For each targeted problematic behavior, a desired behavior is also identified, optimally a behavior that is incompatible with the problematic behavior. A common problem is that teachers have too many behaviors identified for change. Cooper et al. (2007) provide guidance on the selection process through guiding questions that help teachers set priorities or criteria for choosing one behavior over another. These include:
1. Does the behavior pose a danger to the student or others?
2. Does changing the behavior improve the person’s life and is this behavior change age-appropriate?
3. What is the likelihood of success to change this behavior? For example, are there sufficient opportunities to show the behavior in the natural environment (i.e., classroom) and will teachers and staff reinforce this behavior when demonstrated?
4. Will changing the behavior have long-standing effects or lead to further skill development?
5. Do the benefits of teaching this behavior outweigh the costs (i.e., time, resources) needed?
These guiding questions assess the behavior of interest based on safety concerns, probability of intervention fidelity by the staff who may be involved, and risk-benefit analysis of the proposed behavior. Social relevance or applicability is therefore worked into proposed short- and long-term goals, teaching procedures, and potential results to increase maintenance and generalization of the skill use (Wolf, 1978). Examples can include social skills to increase peer interactions, fluency of academic skills, decrease of maladaptive behaviors that interfere with successful interactions with peers and staff, self-help skills to build independence, or leisure and recreational skills to improve quality of life.
3.04: Measure the Behavior with a Reliable Data
Behavioral means that the behavior itself is the subject matter, so the dependent variable must be operationalized in observable and measurable terms with the goal of having inter-observer reliability, or a high percentage of agreement between multiple observers that the same behavior occurred or did not occur during observations. In order for direct observations to occur, there must be a precise definition of the behavior and a measurement system to record the behavior. Choosing a measurement system depends on how the behavior is exhibited (Alberto & Troutman, 2003). For example, the behavior may be problematic because of how often it occurs (i.e, too many times or not enough times) or the length of the response (i.e, too short or too long). When the number of occurrences of the behavior is the problem, one would choose an event-recording system if the behavior has a specific start and end in order to teach occurrence, like the number of times a student talks out of turn during instruction time. If the response does not have a distinct beginning and end, use an interval recording system. When the length of time the behavior occurs is the problem, choose duration recording to measure the span of each occurrence. Like duration, latency measures time; however in this measurement, one measures the elapsed time after a signal and the onset of the behavior. For example, one could measure the amount of elapsed time between when the teacher gives the direction and when the student starts the first problem.
The context in which the behavior is exhibited provides a picture of when the behavior occurs or does not occur in relation to other events (Johnston & Pennypacker, 1993). Observing the changes of behavior requires knowledge of an analytic approach. To be analytic requires a believable demonstration of the events that caused the change in behavior. These changes of behavior are empirical demonstrations of functional relations between antecedent events, behavior, and consequence events. There are different degrees to this level of analytic behavior change. At the highest level, research methodology using single-subject research designs (i.e., reversal, multiple-baseline line) is used to determine if functional control is established, verified, and replicated (Kennedy, 2005). A less-rigorous level still includes demonstrations of prediction and control (i.e., baseline or phase with no intervention, intervention phase, intervention removal, and reintroduction of the intervention) but may have lower levels of inter-observer reliability of data-collection procedures. The value of the data depends on the accuracy and reliability of the data to make decision about which intervention to choose, continuation of the procedures, or when to stop the intervention. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/03%3A_Principles_of_Applied_Behavior_Analysis/3.03%3A_Select_a_Socially_Relevant_Behavior.txt |
Conceptually systematic highlights ABA’s reference to the principles and basic concepts of behavioral development (Baer et al., 1968). Predicting why the behavior change occurred relies on the established principles in behavior analysis and the past repertoires of the individual.
One observes the patterns or relationships (i.e., contingency) between stimuli before and after behavioral responses. An example of the contingency between the antecedent and behavior is provided in the following if-then contingency statements: The behavior happens only when the antecedent has happened first, and if the antecedent doesn’t happen, the behavior doesn’t happen. If the antecedent happens, the behavior happens as well. The behavior doesn’t happen unless and until the antecedent has happened first. The repeated and predictable patterns between the antecedent and/or consequent stimuli and the behavior are described as functional relations. The function of behavior refers to the effect the behavior produces on the environment and behavior serves two major functions: to obtain desired events (i.e., objects, attention) or to avoid/escape events (i.e., work, interaction with others). For example, a student may cry as a function to get the desired object but the same behavior for another student may use crying to escape work demands. This is why ABA focuses on the context and contingencies for each student rather than a topography-based intervention, in which all students who engage in the same behavior get the same type of intervention. Interventions focus directly on environmental events that generate and maintain behavior. It’s the antecedents that get the behavior moving but the consequences that keep the behavior going (Daniels, 2000); therefore, ABA interventions arrange contingencies of reinforcement to alter the problematic behavior to make the alternate behavior more effective, efficient, and relevant for the student (Sugai & Horner, 2006).
ABA makes interventions specific to the individual, based on the function the behavior may serve for the person. These can be broadly categorized as function-based (negative or positive reinforcement) and include antecedent-based (i.e., prompts, choice, environmental arrangements) and consequence-based procedures (i.e., positive punishment, token economy, response-cost, differential reinforcement procedures). Antecedent technologies such as modeling, prompting, and prompt-fading are often used to teach new behaviors, or shape new behaviors by reinforcing successive approximations (Alberto & Troutman, 2003). Importantly, larger or more complex skills are broken into component skills (i.e., task analysis) and skills are taught in a specific teaching sequence (i.e., forward chaining, backward, total-task). Instructional procedures like discrete trial training (DTT) or errorless learning have also broken skills into teachable steps then presented in trials, or multiple opportunities, until performance meets a criterion level.
3.06: Implement Procedures with Fidelity
Effectiveness is the degree of learning, or the amount of change in student performance, in other words, the change of behavior (either increase or decrease) from baseline to after the intervention is implemented. Effectiveness looks at student performance data to modify what is taught (i.e., programs or curricula) as well as how it is taught. Data, especially data graphed visually, help teachers make decisions to keep going, revise, or stop an intervention. When student performance is not being made, contingencies surrounding the learning environment are examined and these include monitoring and modifying staff behavior.
Reliability measures and inter-observer agreement data collection provides an objective look at the consistency of how staff are recording behavior and also how staff are implementing the programs. A major component of staff performance is technological, a term that describes the clarity and precision of written procedures so that others can replicate the teaching. The success of interventions is largely dependent on the extent to which they are implemented as designed with accuracy and consistency (i.e., treatment integrity; Gresham, 1989). To help with consistency, procedures are operationalized into step-by-step actions with visual prompts that prompt accurate staff behaviors (Noell et al., 2002). Performance feedback is another valuable tool for helping staff improve performance in the implementation of intervention plans (Codding, Livanis, Pace, & Vaca, 2008). In fact, research shows that when staff implement procedures with high fidelity, rates of problematic behavior are low, and the inverse is also shown—when there is low treatment fidelity, there is an increase in problematic behavior (Fryling, Wallace, & Yassine, 2012; St. Peter Pipkin, Vollmer, & Sloman, 2010).
3.07: Evaluate Long-term Effects of Treatment
ABA is committed to teaching skills that are practical, relevant, and functional for the student. The last ABA characteristic is generality, which describes whether interventions produce lasting change in behavior that occurs in all relevant settings. A student has truly learned the skill when the behavior is shown after a period of time (e.g., 6 months), untaught scenarios, and novel responses to similar antecedents (Baer, 1982). This happens when practitioners incorporate generalization strategies into teaching procedures through multiple teaching examples, practice opportunities outside of the teaching setting, and, importantly, teach the students how to recruit reinforcement (i.e., teacher attention) through socially acceptable behaviors (Reeve, Reeve, Townsend, & Poulson, 2007). Incidental teaching has been used to promote generalization of language skills (Hart & Risley, 1968), social interactions (Strain, 1983), and reciprocal interactions with peer models (McGee, Almeida, & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1992). This teaching procedure occurs in the naturalistic context and consists of a prescribed chain of student-teacher (or peer-sibling) interactions in which the student initiates a request (e.g., reaching, pointing, vocalizing) and the item requested is given contingent upon appropriate asking in the targeted mode.
In this section, the characteristics of applied behavior analysis were described within a model that all ABA-based approaches have in common which are: 1) select a socially relevant behavior, 2) measure the behavior with a reliable data collection system, 3) select an evidence-based treatment procedure, 4) implement the procedures with fidelity, and 5) evaluate the long-term effects of the treatment. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/03%3A_Principles_of_Applied_Behavior_Analysis/3.05%3A_Select_Evidence-Based_Treatment_Procedures.txt |
This chapter has discussed how student behavior is regulated by consequences, which are the events that occur after the behavior. The description and analysis of these contingencies surrounding a behavior is operant conditioning, which describes the probability of certain behaviors based on the history of consequences (Skinner, 1974). Reinforcement and punishment are the core tools of operant conditioning, and both affect the desired behavior: reinforcement increases and punishment decreases the probability of the desired behavior. Events can be added in (positive) or removed (negative) from reinforcement and punishment procedures. For example, positive reinforcement is the addition of a stimulus (i.e. praise, token), whereas negative reinforcement is the removal of a stimulus (i.e., loud noise, work demand), and both maintain or increase the frequency of the behavior.
3.09: Procedures to Increase Behaviors
In negative reinforcement, a stimulus is present, and the occurrence of the targeted behavior removes the stimulus (Cooper et al., 2007). For example, a difficult task is presented, the student asks the teacher for help, the difficult task is removed, and over time the frequency of the student asking the teacher for help increases. With positive reinforcement, when the targeted behavior occurs, something is added to the environment, and that behavior is more likely to occur in the future. What often gets added is called reinforcers and the types of reinforcers include unconditioned reinforcers (i.e., food, drink) and conditioned reinforcers (i.e., edible, sensory, tangible, activity, social; Cooper et al., 2007). Reinforcers have different values for different individuals; therefore, reinforcer assessments are conducted to identify potential reinforcers. This is done by asking the student, asking others who know the student well, observing the student, or using trial-based methods (i.e., single, paired, multiple; Carr, Nicolson, & Higbee, 2000).
Along with the potential value of reinforcers to the student, other factors related to effectiveness include when it is provided (i.e., immediacy), the level of effort required to perform the behavior and the likelihood of the delivery of the reinforcer (i.e., response effort), availability of the reinforcer elsewhere, and motivational effect (i.e., how much does the student want it based on the state of deprivation or satiation; Michael, 2000). Reinforcers can be provided on a continuous or an intermittent schedule, immediately after the behavior or after a delay, and the decision to use one schedule of reinforcement or another can have predictable effects on the consistency of performance and rate of response. This determines when the reinforcer is provided—immediately or after a delay (i.e., interval schedule) or after a specific number of responses (i.e., ratio schedule). For example, when a student is learning addition facts, the teacher may provide continuous reinforcement (after every response) to get the quickest learning rate, then fade the schedule to reinforcement after every third response (fixed ratio 3) based on student response.
3.10: Decreasing Unwanted Behavior
Like reinforcement, punishment is defined by its effect, by adding (i.e., positive) or removing (i.e., negative) something in the environment, to decrease the future probability of the behavior. The problem with punishment procedures in itself is that they don’t teach what to do instead of the punished behavior, but only provide temporary decrease with unintended potential side effects (Rolider, A., Cummings, A., & Van Houten, R. 1991). Extinction decreases behavior by discontinuing the reinforcement after a behavior and is used in conjunction with reinforcement such as differential reinforcement procedures (i.e., alternative, incompatible, other). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/03%3A_Principles_of_Applied_Behavior_Analysis/3.08%3A_Procedures.txt |
In the kindergarten classroom during center time, Ms. Kang ran over to the train set to stop Alex from bothering a classmate again. After being put in time out, Alex returned to the train center and initiated play by shoving a train track into the classmate’s hand. Then he grabbed a train from another peer. Alex was a bright student, verbal and compliant to teacher requests; however, his behaviors during peer play restricted interactions. Ms. Kang and Alex’s mother agreed that teaching Alex to play would help reduce aggressive behaviors and facilitate social interactions with others. For step 1, select a socially relevant behavior, aggression was operationalized as unsolicited physical contact with peers (i.e., pushing, pulling, and/or forceful grabbing, excluding tripping or falling onto peers). The long-term desired behavior was to ask, wait, and accept the answer “no”; however, the short-term behavior included appropriate peer social interactions using skills such as getting a peer’s attention, asking peers to play, and sharing objects for one minute.
For step 2, measure the behavior, an event-recording data sheet was used during the most problematic routine, center time. Appropriate peer interactions were task analyzed into teachable steps and measured as the number of correct steps completed (see Appendix). Ms. Kang and the instructional assistant, Ms. Sanchez, used the operational definition and data-collection sheet to observe so that they both agreed that the behavior was measured accurately. Next, both observed the social interactions of four boys during the train center time using an antecedent-behavior-consequence data sheet to identify predictable hypotheses such as, when the train track is started by others, Alex will engage in aggression to obtain items (i.e., remove the tracks), to start another track he designed. A reinforcer assessment indicated trains as the highest reinforcer and the absence of a train track at home strengthened the value of this reinforcer.
The next step was to select an evidence-based treatment. A differential reinforcement of alternative (DRA) procedure was used to decrease aggressive behaviors through extinction (i.e., aggressive behavior no longer resulted in access to item) and appropriate social interactions was reinforced with access to trains. The task analysis of peer play with trains was directly taught. The ten steps were printed and cut out so that Alex could sequence the steps. He then watched a teacher and then peer model each step. A backward chaining instructional model was used so that the teacher prompted the first nine steps and Alex completed the last step independently. This continued until he mastered all ten steps.
In addition, the entire class was taught what respecting property and others looked like during center time and the rules were reviewed before center times. To neutralize the antecedent, each center activity was postponed until all peers were in the group. The absence of aggressive behaviors (i.e., one-minute intervals) resulted in a train sticker and the accumulation of train stickers allowed additional time in the train centers.
To measure implementation with fidelity, Ms. Kang and Ms. Sanchez agreed to both take data for one session during five sessions available using the data sheets located in the same secured location. The staff teaching steps were laminated and both teachers reviewed the steps and the data during Thursday morning planning times. Prior to baseline, the average number of aggressive occurrences was seven, and afterward, when peer skills were directly taught through a DRA procedure, the number of aggressive occurrences was zero. During baseline, the correct number of steps completed was 10%, and after instruction, Alex maintained 80% or higher for five consecutive days.
Last, the ABA program was evaluated for effectiveness and generalization. Based on the data, Ms. Kang continued with the DRA intervention and focused on generalization of peer skills to other center areas. A checklist of the peer-interactions task analysis was sent as homework for Alex’s mother to work on with Alex and his other peers.
3.12: Summary
This chapter focused on applied behavior analysis (ABA), the definition, the characteristics, and the procedures that make this a program that works to teach desired behaviors. Teachers can design and implement an ABA program using a 5-step model to:
1. Select a socially relevant behavior
2. Measure the behavior using reliable data-collection measures
3. Select an evidence-based treatment based on the contingencies of the behavior
4. Implement procedures with fidelity
5. Evaluate long-term effects | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/03%3A_Principles_of_Applied_Behavior_Analysis/3.11%3A_Example_from_the_Classroom.txt |
Alberto, P. A. & Troutman, A. C. (2003). Applied behavior analysis for teachers (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Allen, K.D. & Wallace, D.P. (2013). Effectiveness of using noncontingent escape for general behavior management in a pediatric dental clinic. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 46(3), 723–737.
Baer, D. M. (1982). The imposition of structure on behavior and the demolition of behavioral structures. In D. J. Bernstein (Ed.), Response structure and organization. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1, 91–97..
Carr, J. E., Nicolson, A. C., & Higbee, T. S. (2000). Evaluation of a brief multiple-stimulus preference assessment in a naturalistic context. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 33, 353–357.
Codding, R.S., Feinberg, A.B., Dunn, E.K., & Pace, G.M. (2005). Effects of immediate performance feedback on implementation of behavior support plans. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 38(2), 205–215. Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Daniels, A. C. (2000). Bringing out the best in people: How to apply the astonishing power of positive reinforcement. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fryling, M.J., Wallace, M.D., & Yassine, J.N. (2012). Impact of treatment integrity on intervention effectiveness. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 45(2), 449-453.
Garcia-Albea, E., Reeve, S., Brothers, K., & Reeve, K. (2014). Using audio script fading and multiple exemplar training to increase vocal interactions in children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(2), 325-343.
Gardner, R., Heward, W.L., & Grossi, T.A. (1994). Effects of response cards on student participation and academic achievement: a systematic replication with inner-city students during whole-class science instruction. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27, 63-71.
Gresham, F. M. (1989). Assessment of treatment integrity in school consultation and prereferral intervention. School Psychology Review, 18, 37–50.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Establishing use of descriptive adjectives in the spontaneous speech of disadvantaged preschool children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(2), 109–120.
Johnston, J. M., & Pennypacker, H. S. (1993). Readings for strategies and tactics of behavioral research (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, HF: Erlbaum.
Kennedy, C. H. (2005). Single-case designs for educational research. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Luczynski, K. & Hanley, G.P. (2013). Prevention of problem behavior by teaching functional communication and self-control skills to preschoolers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 46(2), 355-368.
MccGee, G. G., Almeida, M. C., Sulzer-Azaroff, B., and Feldman, R. F. (1992). Promoting reciprocal interactions via peer incidental teaching. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 25 (1), 117–126.
Michael, J. (2000). Implications and refinements of the establishing operation concept. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 33, 401–410.
Noell, G. H., Witt, J. C., LaFleur, L. H., Mortenson, B. P., Ranier, D. D., & LeVelle, J. (2000). Increasing intervention implementation in general education following consultation: A comparison of two follow-up strategies. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 33, 271–284.
Reeve, S. A., Reeve, K. F., Townsend, D. B., & Poulson, C. L. (2007). Establishing a generalized repertoire of helping behavior in children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 123–136.
Roantree, C.F. & Kennedy, C.H. (2012). Functional analysis of inappropriate social interactions in students with Asperger’s syndrome. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 45(3), 585-591.
Rolider, A., Cummings, A., & Van Houten, R. (1991). Side effects of therapeutic punishment on academic performance and eye contact. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 24(4),763-773.
Skinner, B. F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Knopf.
St. Peter Pipkin, C., Vollmer, T.R., & Sloman, K.N. (2010). Effects of treatment integrity failures during differential reinforcement of alternative behavior: A translational model. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 43, 47-70.
Strain, P. S. (1983). Generalization of autistic children's social behavior change: Effects of developmentally integrated and segregated settings. Analysis and Intervention in Developmental Disabilities, 3, 23–34.
Sugai, G., & Horner, R. H. (2006). A promising approach for expanding and sustaining the school-wide positive behavior support. School Psychology Review, 35(2), 245–259.
Sulzer, B., & Mayer, G. R. (1972). Behavior modification procedures for school personnel. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston-Dryden Press.
Van Camp, C.M. & Hayes, L.B. (2012). Assessing and increasing physical activity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 45(4), 871–875.
Wolf, M. M. (1978). Social validity: The case for subjective measurement or how applied behavior analysis is finding its heart. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11, 203–214.
Yaw, J. Skinner, C.H., Delisle, J., Skinner, A.L., Maurer, K., Cihak, D., et.al. (2014). Measurement scale influences in the evaluation of sight-word reading interventions. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(2), 360-379.
3.14: Appendix A- Measure Behavior
Event Recording Sheet
Tally each occurrence of the behavior. Place completed sheet into the data collection binder in the locked drawer. This data will be graphed on Thursday by Ms. Kang.
Student: ________________ Date: _______ Time (Start): _________ Time (End): _______
Baseline Intervention
Behavior:____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Context/Activity (e.g. time during the activity, number of students, behaviors of the students)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tally each occurrence:
Total: Rate: per minute
Student: ____________________ Target Skill: Play Activity with Trains
Prompt: “Time for trains”
Describe each step, in order, for the behavior. Then, for each date on which the behavior is practiced, record the level of independence for each step of the behavior. Use the following symbols for your records:
I Independent, Correct V Verbally Prompted
M Modeled, Gesture P Physically Prompted
Step Description of Step Date: Date: Date: Date: Date:
1. Asks peer to play
2. Tells peer, “Let’s play trains”
3. Gives peer at least two tracks
4. Tells peer, “Let’s make a train”
5. Asks peer for train pieces
6. Puts train pieces together with peer’s pieces
7. Asks peer for animals to put on train
8. Moves train around track
9. Tells peer, “Your turn!”
10. Tells peer, “That was fun!” | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/03%3A_Principles_of_Applied_Behavior_Analysis/3.13%3A_References.txt |
Author: Sheldon L. Loman, Portland State University
(Based on an article from Loman, Rodriguez, & Borgmeier, 2014)
04: Developing Function-based Interventions
This chapter presents a practical guide for the use of research-based critical features to design positive behavioral interventions based on the reasons why students engage in problem behaviors (i.e., the function of student behavior). Research-based critical features of function-based supports for school personnel to use data from functional behavioral assessments (FBA) to guide the development of individualized behavior support plans are presented. Two case examples will illustrate the critical features for developing function-based supports.
Function-based supports are individualized interventions developed through the process of conducting an FBA (Carr et al., 2002). The FBA process involves interviews, rating scales, and direct observations conducted by trained school professionals. A mnemonic that has been used to outline the steps in FBA process is DASH (Define, Ask, See, Hypothesize). To start the FBA process, a behavior must be operationally defined (it must be observable and measurable). The next step is to ask people close to the student and the student (when possible) about what triggers and reinforces the problem behavior. Then, a trained school professional conducts an observation of the student (See) in the identified routine. Finally, a summary or hypothesis is made regarding variables affecting the student’s behavior.
Based on data collected in the FBA, an antecedent-behavior-consequence (A-B-C) sequence is outlined by a summary statement that specifically identifies: (a) when and where problem behavior occurs and the environmental variables that consistently trigger problem behavior (i.e., context and antecedents); (b) an operational definition of the problem behavior; and (c) the maintaining consequences that follow the problem behavior(s) suggesting why a student engages in the identified problem behavior (i.e., function; for a more comprehensive review of how to conduct FBA see Crone & Horner, 2003; or O’Neill et al., 1997). Function-based supports are designed using the FBA summary statement to guide the development and/or selection of interventions that prevent problem behavior while promoting desired outcomes for students.
Since FBA was mandated in 1997, several books and manuals have been published with the intent to teach function-based interventions (e.g., Chandler & Dahlquist, 2010; Crone & Horner, 2003; O’Neill et al., 1997). Additionally, many states and school districts have developed training models to teach school-based personnel to conduct FBAs (Browning-Wright et al., 2007). These texts often present “critical features” for developing behavioral supports for students with the most significant behavioral concerns. However, this chapter will heed the call from the field to “scale down” (Scott, Alter, & McQuillan, 2010) the focus to the basic features of function-based supports to guide the development of interventions for students with moderate behavioral problems. Therefore, setting events (events occurring outside of the school that may affect student behavior) and corresponding strategies have intentionally been omitted from the critical features presented to emphasize interventions that school staff may implement to immediately improve the environment, curriculum, and instruction affecting student behavior.
4.02: Resources for Conducting a Functional Beha
A number of resources for conducting interviews and observations are available via the Internet. For example, www.functionbasedthinking.com is a comprehensive website with a training manual, interview and observation tools, and interactive web lessons based on the research-based Basic FBA process (Loman, Strickland-Cohen, & Borgmeier, 2013). At this website, the interview tool that is taught is the modified Functional Assessment Checklists for Teachers (FACTS; March, Horner, Lewis-Palmer, Brown, Crone, & Todd, 1999) available at: sites.google.com/a/pdx.edu/functionbasedthinking/home/fba-bsp-instructionsand-forms. Another useful interview tool for identifying the function of behavior that is available online is the Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS; Durand, 1990: www.nsseo.org/wp-content/uploads/MAS.pdf). The ABC Recording Form (Loman, 2009) is taught and used as an observation procedure within the Basic FBA process: sites.google.com/a/pdx.edu/functionbasedthinking/home/fba-bspinstructions-and-forms. Another popular tool is the Scatterplot that helps teachers track student behavior across times and days. This scatterplot tool is available at: www.pbisillinois.org/curriculum/Course-Materials/t200fi-individualized-studentsupport-via-complex-fba-bip-wraparound-for-students-with-tertiary-levelneeds/T200fi-ScatterPlot-ILPBIS-9.3.08.doc?attredirects=0. For more information on the FBA process, review the training materials on www.functionbasedthinking.com and www.pbisillinois.org/trainings/fba-bip-training-materials. The PBIS Illinois website offers links to past webinars presenting information on conducting an FBA and designing function-based supports.
4.03: ABCs of Function-Based Supports
A function-based support plan should include components that (a) address antecedent triggers to prevent problem behavior, (b) teach alternative and desired behaviors, and (c) identify appropriate responses to desired and problem behaviors. Figure 4.10.1 illustrates the A-B-C sequence and how function plays a pivotal role in designing prevention strategies, teaching alternative or replacement behaviors, and responding to both desired and problem behaviors. In Figure 4.10.1, antecedents are defined as events or stimuli that immediately precede or trigger problem behavior. Behavior is the observable behavior of concern (i.e., problem behavior). Consequence is defined as the consistent response to the problem behavior that reinforces the behavior. This logic is based on applied behavior analytic literature (e.g., Horner, 1994), suggesting function is where problem behavior intersects with the environment to affect learning. Given this logic, an individual exhibiting problem behaviors has learned: “Within a specific situation ‘X’ (context), when ‘A’ (antecedent is present) if I do ‘B’ (problem behavior), then ‘C’ (the maintaining consequence) is likely to occur.” Through experience and repetition, the individual learns that the problem behavior is effective or “functional” for meeting their needs. Therefore, the individual is likely to continue to engage in the problem behavior under similar circumstances. Based on this model, the function of an individual’s behavior should guide the selection of each component intervention (prevention, teaching, and consequence strategies) within a positive behavior support plan. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.01%3A_Prelude.txt |
Function-based supports are developed using a clear, detailed summary statement from the FBA (outlining the antecedents, behaviors, and maintaining consequences within a specific routine/context). This summary statement should be framed within a specific routine or context because similar behaviors often serve different functions for the student in different contexts. For example, a student may predictably hit a peer during round robin reading so he can be sent to the back of the room to avoid reading failure in front of peers, and he may also regularly hit a peer at recess so the peer quits teasing him. Once the team has established a clear understanding of the problem behavior and the environmental features predicting and maintaining problem behavior in a given context, then they can develop function-based interventions.
Above the dotted line in Figure 4.10.1, a Competing Behavior Pathway (O’Neill et al., 1997) visually frames the FBA summary statement to guide function-based support planning. The FBA summary statement or hypothesis forms the center of the Competing Behavior Pathway (the antecedent(s), problem behavior(s), and maintaining function of student behavior) for a prioritized routine or context. Within the Competing Behavior Pathway the summary of behavior is used to inform identification of the alternative behavior and desired behavior. Each is defined in Figure 4.10.1.
A completed example of the FBA summary statement in Figure 4.10.2 should read, “During math (routine/context) when Jackson is asked to work independently on a double-digit multiplication worksheet (antecedent), he fidgets, gets off task, uses foul language, slams his book, and picks on peers (problem behavior), which typically results in the teacher asking Jackson to leave the room and go to the principal’s office (consequence). It is hypothesized that Jackson’s behavior is maintained by escaping the independent math worksheet (function; the “why” or “pay-off”).”
The completed FBA summary statement for Sophia in Figure 4.10.3 should read, “During carpet time (routine/context) when the whole class is receiving instruction and Sophia is asked to sit quietly in her carpet square for more than five minutes (antecedent), Sophia fidgets and disrupts the class by yelling or wandering around the room (problem behavior), which typically results in Sophia’s teacher chasing her around the room, asking her to be quiet, and scolding her about how to behave (consequence). Given this information, it is hypothesized that Sophia’s disruptive behaviors are maintained by obtaining teacher attention (function; the “why” or “student pay-off”).”
4.05: Selecting Function-Based Interventions
Using the FBA summary statement, the first step to developing a function-based support plan involves identifying the (1) desired behavior (long-term goal) and (2) the natural reinforcers resulting from this behavior (what typical students receive for performing this behavior; labeled 1 and 2 in Figures 4.10.2, 3, & 4). The next step is identifying an alternative behavior (short-term goal; labeled 3 in the figures) to achieve the same function as the problem behavior (Carr, 1997). Once the alternative and desired behaviors have been identified, the focus shifts toward the identification of function-based interventions. Following identification of the alternative and desired behaviors, the next focus is teaching these behaviors. The individual should be provided explicit instruction of how and when to use the alternative behavior appropriately as well as explicit instruction of the skills (or progression of skills) necessary to engage in the desired behavior (O’Neill et al., 1997). Explicit instruction of the alternative behavior and skills supporting the use of the desired behavior should be paired with antecedent and consequence interventions. Antecedent interventions modify the events or stimuli triggering the problem behavior to prevent problem behavior and concurrently prompt the alternative and/or desired behaviors. Then, procedures for reinforcing alternative behaviors and desired behaviors should be identified in such a way that the student receives valued reinforcement based on reasonable expectations and time frames. Finally, responses to redirect problem behavior and eliminate or reduce the pay-off for problem behavior should be identified. The specific critical features of each of these components of a function-based support plan will be presented in the following sections and are summarized in Figure 4.10.2. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.04%3A_Using_Assessment_to_Guide_Function-Based_S.txt |
Begin the function based support plan by developing a clear definition of what the student should do (versus what not to do). Very often a skill deficit (e.g. academic, social, organizational, communication) prevents the student from being able to regularly perform the desired behavior (long-term goal) right away. In Jackson’s example (see Figure 4.10.2), the desired behavior is for him to independently complete double-digit multiplication problems, but he currently lacks the skills to perform this task. Until this academic skill deficit is bridged, he is more likely to need a way to avoid or escape a task he cannot complete. Jackson is likely to continue to engage in or escalate problem behavior to avoid the difficult math task, unless he is provided another way (alternative behavior) to have this need met.
An alternative behavior is an immediate attempt to reduce disruption and potentially dangerous behavior in the classroom. The alternative behavior should be viewed as a short-term solution to reduce problem behavior that provides a “window” for teaching and reinforcing the skills necessary to achieve the long-term goal of the desired behavior(s). To facilitate decreased problem behavior, it is important the alternative behavior meets three critical criteria: the alternative behavior must serve the same function (or purpose) as the problem behavior (Sprague & Horner, 1999), be as easy as or easier to do than the problem behavior (Horner & Day, 1991) and be socially acceptable (Haring, 1988). In the early stages of behavioral change it is recommended to closely adhere to these criteria as one works to convince the student to stray from the well-established habit and pathway of the problem behavior and commit to a new alternative behavior to access the desired reinforcer. Over time, the alternative behavior will be amended to increasingly approximate the desired behavior (long-term goal). In the initial stages, however, it is important to ensure that the student perceives the alternative behavior as an efficient way to have their needs met or they are not likely to give up the problem behavior.
According to the FBA summary statement for Jackson (Figure 4.10.2), he fidgets, gets off task, displays foul language, slams books, and picks on peers to escape difficult math tasks. The alternative behavior for Jackson must allow him to escape the difficult math task (serve the same function as the problem behavior). Asking for a break addresses this function and requires less energy than the series of tantrum behaviors described earlier (easier). Additionally, requesting a break is more socially acceptable than throwing a tantrum by using foul language and throwing materials in class.
In Figure 4.10.3, the FBA summary indicates that Sophia is disrupting the class to access teacher attention. A reasonable long-term behavioral goal for Sophia is to quietly listen during carpet time, participate when it is her turn, and seek attention at appropriate times. The first step to help Sophia toward her long-term goal is to select an alternate behavior that meets the three critical features. First, the alternate behavior should serve the same function as the problem behavior. In this case, Sophia is engaging in disruption to access teacher attention. A more appropriate way to request teacher attention is to raise her hand. Raising her hand to request attention should be as easy as, or easier, to do than the disruptive behaviors, and it is a socially acceptable behavior according to Sophia’s teacher.
The main goal of a function-based support plan is overcoming an established habit and pattern of learning in which the individual uses a problem behavior because it is functional (i.e., achieving a pay-off). The initial alternative behavior should be markedly easier to do and more efficient in its pay-off than the problem behavior. Otherwise, the individual may be less likely to abandon the “tried and true” problem behavior for the new alternative behavior. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.06%3A_Critical_Features_of_Function-Based_Altern.txt |
Teaching is a critical component of all function-based interventions. Explicit instruction is encouraged to promote fluency and use of the alternative behavior and the desired behavior. Explicit instruction increases the likelihood that the individual understands when, how, and where to use the alternative behavior, as well as the pay-off for using the alternative behavior (i.e., the same functional outcome as the problem behavior). Ideally, instruction occurs with the person(s) and in the setting in which use of the alternative behavior will occur. While the alternative behavior is a nice starting point, it is a short-term solution, and over time the focus should shift toward increasing use of the desired behavior.
When teaching to promote use of the desired behavior(s), it is important to understand the extent of the discrepancy between a student’s current skills and the desired behaviors. If there is a large discrepancy, it may be necessary to identify a progressive instructional plan including instruction of necessary prerequisite skills and a progression of approximations toward the desired behavior. The progression of approximations toward the desired behavior would increasingly challenge the student to take greater responsibility (increasing independence and self-management) to access the reinforcers. Over time, instruction in the skills promoting use of the desired behaviors would provide increasing access and exposure to natural reinforcement for engaging in the desired behavior.
For example, in Jackson’s case, we could conduct an assessment to identify Jackson’s specific skill deficits and instructional needs in math. Then the behavior specialist would teach Jackson to use a picture card to request to “take a break” appropriately instead of using foul language and slamming books to avoid work. While Jackson begins to break the habit of using the problem behavior, we will provide instruction in multiplication and the prerequisite skills necessary for Jackson to be able to perform the math worksheets independently (desired behavior). As Jackson builds mastery in the necessary math and multiplication skills, the need to rely on the alternative behavior to avoid tasks should decrease. Instruction to address the underlying math deficits should ultimately eliminate the need for student problem behavior.
As Jackson demonstrates fluency with requesting breaks appropriately and refraining from slamming his hand on the desk and tearing papers, we would increase the expectation for requesting breaks. Instead of giving breaks freely, we might limit Jackson to three break tickets during math, and if he has any leftover tickets he can cross off two problems from his worksheet. As Jackson’s math skills increase, the expectation may be that he finishes at least five problems before he can request a break. When first increasing expectations and student responsibility, it is often necessary to increase reinforcement for engaging in the desired behavior to motivate the student to take the next step. As Jackson’s math skills increase and he can complete more problems, he is also accessing the natural reinforcement of pride in work completion. At first it is important to make this explicit by praising student progress, effort, and work completion by saying such things as, “You should be really proud of how many problems you completed today.”
In Sophia’s case, she would need explicit instruction and practice in raising her hand and requesting attention. Requesting attention appropriately and reducing disruption are important, but over time it will be important to increase time between requests for attention to a schedule that is reasonable for the teacher. The next approximation may be to systematically reduce the number of requests for attention (three per carpet time to two, etc.). Additional social skills instruction on appropriate ways (e.g. conversation starters, eye contact, smiling) and times to obtain adult attention should increase Sophia’s access to positive social attention during non-instructional times. Increasing specific social skills paired with incentives (e.g., earning a game with an adult) for fewer requests for attention during instructional times will help Sophia increase her endurance during instructional times and reduce her need to solicit attention so frequently. Increased positive interactions and relationships with adults (the natural reinforcers) should increase and maintain social skill use.
4.08: Critical Features of Function-Based Preven
The next step in developing a function-based support plan is to determine strategies to prevent the problem behavior. These include antecedent strategies that alter the triggers to problem behavior. The literature suggests critical features for prevention strategies that: (a) directly address the features of the antecedent (e.g., task, people, environmental conditions) that trigger the problem behavior (Kern, Choutka, & Sokol, 2002) and (b) directly address the hypothesized function of the problem behavior (Kern, Gallagher, Starosta, Hickman, & George, 2006).
Jackson (Figure 4.10.2, column A) is engaging in problem behavior when presented with math worksheets (antecedent) to avoid difficult math tasks (function). Prevention strategies could include reducing the difficulty of his assignment by interspersing easier problems with addition and subtraction problems with which he can be more successful. When this is done, his need to engage in problem behavior to escape the task is prevented or reduced. A number of other prevention strategies have been shown to address escape-motivated behaviors such as: (a) to pre-correct desired behavior (Wilde, Koegel, & Koegel, 1992); (b) clarify or simplify instructions to a task or activity (Munk & Repp, 1994); (c) provide student choices in the activity (Kern & Dunlap, 1998); (d) build in frequent breaks from aversive tasks (Carr et al., 2000); (e) shorten tasks (Kern & Dunlap, 1998); (f) intersperse easy tasks with difficult tasks (Horner & Day, 1991); and (g) embed aversive tasks within reinforcing activities (Carr et al., 1994). Choosing the most appropriate intervention will depend on the specific antecedent and function of behavior identified in the FBA summary (other possible strategies based on the function of student behavior are presented in Tables 4.10.1 and 2).
Sophia (Figure 4.10.3, column A) engages in disruptive behavior when asked to sit quietly and listen with limited adult attention for five or more minutes at a time (antecedent) to obtain teacher attention (function). Prevention strategies directly linked to this function would provide Sophia with frequent teacher attention prior to problem behavior, such as a check-in during transition to carpet time, giving Sophia jobs as teacher helper, and seating her near the teacher so it is easier to periodically (every three to four minutes) provide her with attention. These strategies directly address the antecedent by reducing longer spans of time in which Sophia is not receiving adult attention. Prevention strategies that have been effective at addressing attention-maintained behaviors include: (a) use of peer-mediated instruction (Carter, Cushing, Clark, & Kennedy, 2005); (b) self-management strategies where student monitors their behavior to recruit feedback from the teacher (Koegel & Koegel, 1990); (c) provide assistance with tasks (Ebanks & Fisher, 2003); and (d) provide the student with the choice of working with a peer or teacher (Morrison & Rosales-Ruiz, 1997). Once again, choosing the most appropriate prevention strategies will require a match to the specific antecedent and function of behavior identified in the FBA summary statement. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.07%3A_Teaching_the_Alternative_Behavior_Desired_.txt |
Once teaching and prevention strategies have been selected, the next critical step is to determine strategies to reinforce appropriate behavior and minimize or eliminate payoff for problem behavior. Although many people associate the word “consequence” with a punitive response, in behavioral terms consequences can be punitive or pleasant. Within a Positive Behavior Support (PBS; Carr et al., 2002) framework, the goal is to minimize the use of aversive consequences. The function (or purpose) of the student’s behavior should guide the selection of strategies to reinforce appropriate behaviors and minimize payoff for problem behaviors.
Reinforcing Appropriate Behavior. There are four critical features for identifying effective reinforcers. The first two are broad strategies to reinforce the alternative behavior (Petscher, Rey, & Bailey, 2009) and to reinforce desired behavior or approximations toward the desired behavior (Wilder, Harris, Reagan, & Rasey, 2007). More specific considerations when setting up effective interventions to encourage behavior are to identify reinforcers valued by the student (Horner & Day, 1991) and to set reasonable timeframes and expectations for the student to encourage behavior (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007). In our experience there are two common mistakes in using reinforcement. The first mistake is selecting incentives that are not valued by the student. The second common mistake is setting goals, expectations, and time frames that are not reasonable for the student to achieve. If we identify a desired reward but only offer it to the student for engaging in perfect behavior, we are oftentimes setting the student up for failure rather than motivating success. What is reasonable for a student depends on the student’s current performance as well as the discrepancy between this skill and the desired behavior. Often, we must begin by reinforcing approximations of the desired behavior in smaller intervals of time before increasing to closer approximations of the desired behavior over longer spans of time.
For Jackson, when he asks for a break (alternative behavior), it is important to reinforce this behavior by providing a break quickly. If Jackson does not learn that asking for a break is a more effective and efficient way to get his needs met than the fidgeting, slamming his hand on the desk, and tearing his papers, he will quickly resort back to the problem behaviors that have worked so effectively in the past. Additionally, he may earn a “free choice pass” if he completes a reasonable, specified number of problems (desired behavior). If Jackson previously has only started one or two problems on a worksheet, it is probably not a reasonable expectation that tomorrow he will earn a reward for completing the entire worksheet. A more reasonable goal might be that he attempts five problems tomorrow to earn the incentive, a more attainable approximation of the desired behavior. By combining the option for Jackson to take a break (alternative behavior), modifying the task to make it easier (antecedent), and adding the incentive of the homework pass (reinforcement), Jackson’s team creates integrated supports that set him up to be successful. The supports incentivize the desired behaviors and reduce Jackson’s need to avoid difficult tasks through inappropriate behaviors.
For Sophia, when she raises her hand to request teacher attention (alternative behavior), it is important to provide teacher attention (reinforcement) immediately. Additionally, Sophia should receive more frequent attention for engaging in appropriate, on-task behavior. She can also earn special time with the teacher if she participates appropriately for the duration of carpet time and is appropriate even when not called on every time she raises her hand (desired behavior). Encouraging Sophia with a highly valued reinforcer like “special teacher time” can be an effective motivator to challenge her to progress through increasing approximations of the desired behavior, as long as the expectations in this progression remain reasonable for Sophia.
Responding to Problem Behavior. Despite our best efforts to set up students and encourage them to engage in appropriate behavior, it is likely the student will revert to problem behavior from time to time. Therefore, a function-based intervention should include specific strategies for responding to problem behavior. These strategies are redirecting to the alternative behavior at the earliest signs of problem behavior (Kern & Clarke, 2005) and actively limiting or eliminating the payoff for problem behavior (extinction; Mace et al., 1988). At the earliest signs that the student is engaging in or is likely to engage in the problem behavior, the first and best option is to briefly remind the student to engage in the alternative behavior and then reinforce the alternative behavior according to the plan. Additionally, it is critical if the student does not respond to the prompt, the team has identified a response to the problem behavior that does not inadvertently reinforce it.
In Jackson’s case, at the earliest sign of problem behavior (e.g. off-task behaviors, fidgeting), his teacher should remind him he could request a break (redirection). When Jackson asks for a break appropriately, the teacher should quickly provide a break and acknowledge him for making a good choice to request a break appropriately. If Jackson does engage in severe problem behaviors to escape the task, he may temporarily be able to avoid the task to maintain safety and order in the classroom. However, responses to remove him from the room should be minimized, and if he must be removed, the work should be sent with him with the expectation that he completes the work when he calms down. Additionally, Jackson could also be required to come in during recess or after school to complete those tasks to minimize or eliminate his long-term opportunities to escape the task.
In Sophia’s case at the earliest signs of off-task behavior (fidgeting, looking around the room), quickly use the visual prompt (limiting the richness of individual verbal attention) to redirect her to quietly raise her hand to request attention. If she does so appropriately, quickly provide teacher attention. If Sophia does not respond, it is important that teacher attention is minimized or eliminated for problem behavior. Instead of chasing Sophia around the room and having a “talk” with her about right and wrong, attention to misbehavior should be limited. In many cases it is not safe for a student to be running around the room, but it is possible to redirect a student in a more impersonal way (no conversation, brief directions, limited eye contact, etc.) that limits attention for problem behavior. In contrast, it is essential that when Sophia is engaging in appropriate behavior she experience rich, high-quality attention so that she clearly learns the difference between the outcomes for desired versus non-desired behavior. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.09%3A_Critical_Features_of_Function-Based_Conseq.txt |
As educators increasingly encounter students with complex academic, social, and emotional needs, it is imperative they have research-based tools that can be appropriately and effectively utilized in unique contexts. The research on the effectiveness of function-based supports is vast, but educators are often missing the “how to” or “practical” strategies drawn from research. This chapter highlights “scaled-down” research-based critical features to consider when developing a function-based behavior support plan. It illustrates the importance of utilizing the function of a student’s behavior to outline prevention, teaching, and consequence strategies synergistically to positively impact student outcomes. As a reference, a list of essential components of behavior interventions presented in the chapter is provided in Figures 4.10.1 and 4. Finally, possible antecedent, behavioral teaching, and consequence strategies are presented for the functions of obtaining attention (Table 4.10.1) and escaping tasks or stimuli (Table 4.10.2).
Figure \(1\): Competing Behavior Pathway with Definitions of Critical Features
Figure \(2\): Example of Jackson’s Function-Based Support Plan
Figure \(3\): Example of Sophia’s Function-Based Support Plan
Figure \(4\): Essential Components for a Behavior Intervention Plan (from Loman, Strickland-
Cohen, & Borgmeier, 2013).
Table 4.10.1: Possible ABC Strategies by Behavioral Function: Obtaining Attention
*Strategies should be individualized for each student
Function of Behavior
Antecedent Strategies
Prevent problem behavior & support desired behavior
Make problem behaviors irrelevant
Behavior Teaching Strategies
Teach replacement & desired behavior that gets results more quickly or easily to make the problem behavior inefficient.
Consequence Strategies
Change consequences that have supported rather than eliminated the problem behavior.
Do NOT allow the negative behavior to pay off for the student, put the negative behavior on extinction
Reward appropriate behavior to make the problem behavior ineffective.
Attention Seeking
Prevention (give attention early for positive behaviors)
Check-in – provide adult attention immediately upon student arrival
Give student leadership responsibility or a class “job” that requires the student to interact w/ staff
Place student in desk where they are easily accessible for frequent staff attention
Give student frequent intermittent attention for positive or neutral behavior
Pre-correct - Frequently & deliberately remind student to raise their hand and wait patiently if they want your attention
Teach student more appropriate ways to ask for adult attention
Identify and teach specific examples of ways to ask for attention
• Raise hand and wait patiently for teacher to call on you
• likely need to differentiate (large group, small group, work time, etc.)
Respond quickly if student asks appropriately for adult attention
Give the student frequent adult attention for positive behavior
Student earns ‘lunch w/ teacher’ when student earns points for paying attention in class & asking appropriately for attention
Eliminate/minimize the amount of attention provided to a student for engaging in problem behavior
• Limit verbal interaction – create a signal to prompt the student to stop the problem behavior
• Avoid power struggles
Table 4.10.2: Possible ABC Strategies by Behavioral Function: Avoiding or Escaping Tasks/Stimuli
*Strategies should be individualized for each student
Function of Behavior Antecedent Strategies Behavior Teaching Strategies Consequence Strategies
Avoid Task
Prevention (modify task or provide support)
Modify assignments to meet student instructional/skill level (adjust timelines, provide graphic organizers, break in to smaller chunks, etc.)
Assign student to work with a peer
Provide additional instruction/support
Provide visual prompt to cue steps for completing tasks student struggles with
Provide additional support focused on instructional skills (Homework Club, Study Hall, etc.)
Pre-Teaching content
Pre-Correct - Frequently & deliberately remind student to ask for help
Teach student more appropriate ways to ask for help from teacher or peers
Provide additional instruction on skill deficits
Identify and teach specific examples of ways to ask for help
Raise hand and wait patiently for teacher to call on you
Teach student to use a break card
• likely need to differentiate (large group, small group, work time, etc.)
Provide academic instruction/support to address student skill deficits
• More focused instruction in class
• Additional instructional group
• Special Education support for academic deficit
• Additional support and practice at home
• Additional assessment to identify specific skill deficits
Respond quickly if student asks for help or for a break
Reward students for on task, trying hard, work completion & for asking for a break or help appropriately
Eliminate/minimize the amount of missed instructional time or work provided to a student for engaging in problem behavior
--However, need to make sure student is capable of doing work… or provide support/instruction so student can complete the work | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.10%3A_Summary.txt |
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Mace, F. C., Hock, M. L., Lalli, J. S., West, B. J., Belfiore, P., Pinter, E., & Brown, D. K. (1988). Behavioral momentum in the treatment of noncompliance. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 21(2), 123–141. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1988.21-123.
March, R.E. Horner, R.H., Lewis-Palmer, T., Brown, D., Crone, D.A., Todd, A.W., & Carr, E.G. (2000). Functional assessment checklist for teachers and staff (FACTS). Eugene: University of Oregon.
Morrison, K., & Rosales-Ruiz, J. (1997). The effect of object preferences on task performance and stereotypy in a child with autism. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 18, 127–137. doi: 10.1016/S0891-4222(96)00046-7
Munk, D. D., & Repp, A. C. (1994). The relationship between instructional variables and problem behavior: A review. Exceptional Children, 60(5), 390–401.
O'Neill, R. E., Horner, R. H., Albin, R. W., Sprague, J. R., Storey, K., & Newton, J. S. (1997). Functional assessment and program development for problem behavior: A practical handbook. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing.
Petscher, E. S., Rey, C., & Bailey, J. S. (2009). A review of empirical support for differential reinforcement of alternative behavior. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 30(3), 409–425. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2008.08.008
Scott, T. M., Alter, P. J., & McQuillan, K. (2010). Functional behavior assessment in classroom settings: Scaling down to scale up. Intervention in School and Clinic, 46 (2), 87–94. doi: 10.1177/1053451210374986
Sprague, J. R., & Horner, R. H. (1999). Low frequency, high intensity problem behavior: Toward an applied technology of functional analysis and intervention. In A. C. Repp & R. H. Horner (Eds.), Functional analysis of problem behavior: From effective assessment to effective support (pp. 98–116). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
Strickland-Cohen, M. K., & Horner, R. H. (in press). Typical school personnel developing and implementing basic behavior support plans. Journal of Positive Behavioral Interventions.
Van Acker, R., Boreson, L., Gable, R., & Potterton, T. (2005). Are we on the right course? Lessons learned about current FBA/BIP practices in schools. Journal of Behavioral Education, 14(1), 35–56. doi:10.1007/s10864-005-0960-5
Wilde, L. D., Koegel, L. K., & Koegel, R. L. (1992). Increasing success in school through priming: A training manual. Santa Barbara: University of California.
Wilder, D. A., Harris, C., Reagan, R., & Rasey, A. (2007). Functional analysis and treatment of noncompliance by preschool children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 173–177. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2007.44-06 | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/04%3A_Developing_Function-based_Interventions/4.11%3A_References.txt |
Author: Luis F. Pérez, Ph. D., Apple Distinguished Educator
05: iOS 8 Accessibility
Released in the fall of 2014, iOS 8 is the latest version of Apple’s operating system for mobile devices such as the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. This update was not as significant as iOS 7, with its completely overhauled user interface, but in terms of accessibility it continues to refine the user experience so that it works even better and for more people.
To locate the iOS accessibility features on your device, go to Settings > General > Accessibility. The features are arranged into five categories. Three focus on the needs of specific groups: vision, hearing, and learning. In iOS 8, there is a new category called Media for enabling captions and audio descriptions during video playback, and the category previously named Physical and Motor (which includes a number of features for those with motor challenges) has been renamed Interaction.
A handy option is the Accessibility Shortcut (formerly known as Triple-click Home), which appears at the bottom of the Accessibility pane in Settings. This shortcut allows you to enable and disable accessibility features by triple-clicking the Home button on your device at any time. If you include more than one feature in the Accessibility Shortcut you will see a popover menu when you triple-click the Home button. You can choose which features you wish to enable from this menu while you are reading an e-book, surfing the Web, or checking email, without the need to go back into Settings.
What follows is an overview of the key accessibility features available on iOS devices, with a special focus on the updates and new features in iOS 8.
5.02: Zoom
[video]
Zoom in iOS 8 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH9VHHueSRE
Apple enhanced the Zoom screen magnification feature in iOS 8 to provide even more flexibility and customization. Whereas in previous versions you could only zoom in on the entire screen (by double-tapping with three fingers with Zoom enabled), iOS 8 users now also have the ability to turn on a window mode where only part of the screen is magnified while the rest of the screen remains at its default magnification.
Furthermore, a number of lens filters are available to customize the appearance of the zoomed-in area of the screen. Lens filter options include:
• Inverted (similar to the Invert Colors feature available in previous versions of iOS, which reverses the colors for added contrast),
• Grayscale (for removing all color and replacing it with shades of gray),
• Grayscale inverted (similar to inverted but with only shades of grayscale), and
• Low light (which dims the screen somewhat for those with light sensitivity).
Many of the options for customizing Zoom, such as the lens filters, are available from a popover menu that can be accessed in a number of ways:
• triple-tapping with three fingers while Zoom is enabled,
• tapping the handle on the edge of the window in window mode, or
• tapping a new floating controller that can be enabled in the Zoom settings. You can move this controller if it gets in your way, and there is even an option to reduce its opacity when it is inactive. A tap and hold of the controller turns it into a virtual joystick for panning around the screen with the Zoom lens in window mode.
Figure \(1\): Zoom options menu in window mode.
The popover menu for Zoom also includes options for resizing the lens (the zoomed part of the screen in window mode) as well as for adjusting the zoom level. To resize the lens, choose Resize Lens from the popover menu, use the handles to resize the window according to the user’s needs, then tap anywhere outside the lens area to set its size. To adjust the zoom level, move the slider at the bottom of the popover menu until the magnification is at the desired level. A maximum magnification level for the zoom slider can be set in the Zoom settings.
The keyboard is much easier to use with Zoom in iOS 8. A new Follow Focus feature allows Zoom to follow the keyboard focus as you type, and you can also choose to have the keyboard remain at the default 1X magnification while the rest of the screen is magnified. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/05%3A_iOS_8_Accessibility/5.01%3A_Prelude.txt |
VoiceOver is the built-in screen reader for iOS devices. For people who are blind, VoiceOver converts the information on the screen into formats that are more accessible, such as audio and Braille (when the iOS device is connected to a Bluetooth Braille display). VoiceOver navigation can be performed in one of two ways:
• Drag your finger around the screen to hear what is under your finger (including items in the status bar and the Dock). When you want to select an item (i.e. open an app, turn on a setting) double-tap anywhere on the screen (this is the same as a single tap when VoiceOver is turned off).
• Use gestures: flick left or right to move the VoiceOver cursor (the black square that determines what VoiceOver will read back) then double-tap to make a selection (i.e open an app, turn on a setting).
In iOS 8, Apple added Alex, its natural-sounding voice previously only available on the Mac. As on the Mac, Alex is not limited to VoiceOver, but will work with other iOS speech technologies such as Speak Selection and the new Speak Screen (more on those later). However, note that not all devices are supported (check the Apple website to see if yours is on the supported list), and Siri still has its own voice rather than using Alex.
Building on the handwriting-recognition feature introduced in iOS 7, iOS 8 also supports Braille input. Both of these special input modes are accessed through the Rotor, a special gesture for accessing many VoiceOver settings and navigation options, which involves placing two fingers on the screen and turning a virtual dial.
Figure \(1\): The Rotor with Speech Rate selected.
The Rotor is contextual, and the options that are available will depend on what you are doing. However, you can add and remove options from the Rotor by going to Accessibility > VoiceOver > Rotor and making sure only the options you want to be available in the Rotor have a checkmark next to them.
In my opinion, command of the Rotor gesture and its options is what allows a VoiceOver user to get the most out of this powerful screen reader and take its use to the next level, beyond basic flick and swipe gestures.
With the Rotor, you can:
• adjust VoiceOver settings such as the speech rate and volume at any time, without having to leave a web page or email to go into Settings;
• navigate web pages by using the page’s structural elements, such as headings, links, form elements, and more;
• edit text by accessing options such as copy, paste, and replace; and
• access the previously mentioned special input modes, Handwriting and Braille Input.
Handwriting, which was introduced in iOS 7, can be used to search for apps, enter text, or navigate web pages by drawing letters on the screen. For example, to search for the Camera app, you would turn the Rotor to select Handwriting, then draw the first letter of the app’s name (in this case “C”) on the screen to hear a list of all apps that start with that letter. While navigating a web page with the Safari browser you can draw the letter “H” to navigate a web page by headings, the letter “L” to navigate by links, and so on. The Handwriting feature supports the following gestures:
• Three-finger swipe up or down: switch between upper-case, lower-case, numbers, and punctuation.
• Two-finger swipe left: deletes the last character.
• Two-finger swipe right: adds a space.
• Three-finger swipe right: adds a new line when entering text.
• Two-finger swipe up or down on the Home screen: navigates a list of apps once you have entered a few letters to narrow down your search (apps do not have to be on your Home screen, they can be anywhere on your device).
• Two-finger swipe up or down in Safari: navigates a list of headings, links or any other element you have selected by writing the corresponding letter first (H for heading, L for link and so on).
[video]
Alex and Braille Screen Input in iOS 8 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYUHiIlIrPk
The Braille Input feature involves the use of an onscreen 6-dot Braille keyboard that will translate 6-dot chords into text (on the iPad’s bigger screen you can also enable 8-dot Braille input). Two modes for Braille input are supported: screen away mode and table top mode. In screen away mode, the device can be held with the screen facing away from the user and the Braille dots will appear on the right and left edges of the screen. In table top mode, the dots are arranged in the shape of the letter V when the device is placed on a tabletop or other flat surface. For the Braille input mode, some of the supported gestures include:
• One-finger swipe left: deletes the most recent character.
• One-finger swipe right: adds a space.
• Two-finger swipe right (while entering text): adds a new line.
• Two-finger swipe right (on a Home screen): opens the selected app.
• One-finger swipe up/down while entering text: accesses typing suggestions.
• One-finger swipe up or down while on a Home screen: navigates a list of apps that start with the letters you started typing.
• One-finger swipe up or down in Safari: moves by the element whose letter you entered (headings, links, etc.).
• Three-finger swipe left or right: toggles between contracted and uncontracted (called “six dot”) braille (on iPads, eight dot braille is also an option)
• Hold with one finger on the screen: enter “explore mode,” where you can move a finger around to find the different dot positions.
You can exit out of either of the two special input modes (Handwriting and Braille) by performing a scrub gesture (moving two fingers from side to side) or by turning the rotor to a different item (speech rate, words, etc.).
In addition to on-screen Braille input, iOS devices support a number of Bluetooth Braille displays for Braille output. A full list of supported displays is available on the Apple website. Some Braille displays not only convert VoiceOver output to Braille but also support control of the device through a number of buttons built into the display. For example, on some displays you can tap a button on the display to scroll up or down a page or screen. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/05%3A_iOS_8_Accessibility/5.03%3A_VoiceOver.txt |
In addition to VoiceOver, iOS 8 includes support for the following speech technologies: Speak Selection, Speak Screen, and Speak Auto-text. The options for these speech features can be accessed under a new Speech pane found under Vision in Accessibility. There you can tap Voices and choose from the many languages supported in iOS 8, and for some languages you can even choose different dialects (U.S. English, Australian English, etc.). Many of the dialects allow you to download enhanced quality voices for even better results, but note that these voices take up some space on your device. Some devices running the latest A7 and A8 processors (iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina and iPhone 5s and later) also support the same Alex voice that has been available on the Mac, providing even higher quality text-to-speech support.
Speak Selection speaks selected text in email, web pages and any document where there is text that can be selected. Use of this feature requires two steps.
• Turn it on: in Accessibility > Speech tap the On/Off switch for Speak Selection. Use the slider to adjust the speaking rate.
• Select text (this will depend on the app, but in Safari you tap, hold and let go, then use the blue handles to make a selection. From the popover menu, choose Speak and you will hear the selected text spoken aloud
Figure \(1\): Popover menu for a selection showing the Speak option.
Since iOS 6, Speak Selection can highlight words as the selected text is spoken aloud. To enable word highlighting, go to Accessibility > Speech and make sure Highlight Content is enabled.
[video]
Speak Screen in iOS 8 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYpzKPyTyGM
Speak Screen is a new feature in iOS 8 that is similar to Speak Selection but does not require the user to make a selection first. With Speak Screen you perform a gesture (swiping down with two fingers from the top of the screen) and the device will speak everything that is on the display (including buttons and other interface elements). If you prefer, you can use Siri to activate Speak Screen. Just activate Siri and say “Speak Screen” and it should start reading the current screen aloud. Speak Screen has a popover controller with a number of options for pausing and resuming speech, adjusting the speech rate, and navigating the selection on the screen. This popover menu can be moved to the side as needed by tapping the arrow on the left side, or you can exit Speak Screen by tapping the X on the right side.
Figure \(2\): Speak Screen options popover menu.
Speak auto-text: automatically reads the auto-corrections suggested when you start typing some words, as well as the auto-capitalizations. This can save you from typing the wrong thing in email messages, social-media posts and more.
5.05: Guided Access
[video]
Guided Access in iOS 8 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lovgyT06qrw
Guided Access was introduced as a way to set up the iPad or other iOS device in a single app mode. In this mode, users are required to enter a passcode before they can exit an app. Guided Access also can be used to disable certain areas of the interface (for example, the Settings button in an app). To enable Guided Access, go to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access, then tap on Set Passcode to create the passcode. To use the feature, open the app you want to lock into single app mode, triple-click the Home button, and choose Guided Access. At the bottom of the screen you can disable touch (if you want to use the device for display only) or disable screen rotation. You can also disable the volume buttons, the sleep/wake button, or the keyboard for even more control. Tap Start when you have set your options and you will be in single app mode (Guided Access). To stop Guided Access, triple-click Home again and enter the passcode, then select End.
While the options screen is visible, you can use your finger to draw a selection around buttons or other parts of the interface you want to disable. Those areas will be grayed out when Guided Access is started.
A new option with iOS 8 is Time Limits. This lets you set up a time limit for how long the user will be able to access the content on the iOS device. You can enable a sound to warn the user the time limit is about to expire or use a spoken warning instead (using text to speech). You set the warning type in Settings, then the length of the time limit in the Guided Access options screen. With iOS 8, devices that included a TouchID sensor allow the use of this sensor as an alternative for entering the passcode to end a Guided Access session.
5.06: AssistiveTouch
AssistiveTouch provides access to many hardware functions (volume buttons, screen rotation) through software alternatives. AssistiveTouch also makes it possible to use multi-finger gestures even if you do not have full use of all of your fingers.
When you turn on AssistiveTouch, you will see a floating icon that looks like a dot (you can move this icon if it gets in the way). Tapping the floating icon will bring up the AssistiveTouch Menu with the following options:
Figure \(1\): AssistiveTouch Menu
• Home: the same as clicking the Home button (for people who do not have the ability to perform a click).
• Siri: will activate the Siri personal assistant on devices that support that feature. When you are done, tap anywhere outside the popover window to dismiss Siri.
• Device: for adjusting and muting the volume, rotating the screen, locking the screen, and other device functions. Tap More for options that allow you to take a snapshot of the screen that will be saved to the device’s Camera Roll, and open the task switcher, which can be used to see recently opened apps so that you can switch between apps. The Gestures option is for people who are unable to perform multi-touch gestures with more than one finger. For example, instead of swiping left or right with four fingers to switch apps (if Multitasking gestures are enabled on the iPad), you can do the same thing with one finger using AssistiveTouch.
• Favorites: you can create your own gestures, in the AssistiveTouch section of the Accessibility Settings. A pinch gesture is already included for you.
• Notification Center: for accessing notifications from apps without having to swipe down from the top of the screen.
• Control Center: for accessing the Control Center without having to swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
AssistiveTouch works well in conjunction with a number of special stylus designs, including some that can be mounted on a head harness or held in the mouth with a special mouthguard. These designs, along with others that have special grips, can be used by those who are unable to hold a traditional stylus. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/05%3A_iOS_8_Accessibility/5.04%3A_Speech.txt |
Switch Control was introduced in iOS 7 and provides access to iOS devices for those who have motor or cognitive difficulties that require them to use an adaptive switch to interact with the iOS device. With Switch Control, items on the screen are highlighted with a cursor sequentially, and when the desired item is highlighted it can be activated by tapping the screen or a separate adaptive device connected to the iOS device over Bluetooth.
Figure \(1\): The Switch Control cursor
A scanner menu can also be brought up to access scrolling, saved gestures, and a number of device functions such as clicking the Home button or activating Siri.
Figure \(2\): The Switch Control scanner menu
Switch control is highly configurable in iOS:
• You can enable auto scanning and adjust the timing parameters for the auto scanning feature, including the number of times it will loop, how long you have to hold down the switch to activate an item (hold duration), and so on. Auto scanning requires less physical effort on the part of the user, but the timing can be tricky for those who are new to switch use.
• You can adjust the visual appearance and audio effects: for the visual appearance you can choose a large cursor and select from a number of colors for the scanning cursor. For audio, you can choose to hear an audio cue when the cursor advances, as well as enable speech and adjust the speaking rate. This last feature may be helpful to someone who needs to use a switch device but also has low vision and needs the audio cues for the items on the screen.
• You can add multiple switch sources, and the switch source supports three options: external, screen, and camera. The first two are self-explanatory. You either tap on an external switch device or on the iOS device’s screen to activate an item. The camera can also be set to recognize your head movements as an action, and you can assign different actions to either a right or a left head turn. When a head movement is added as a switch source, an option for adjusting the head movement sensitivity will be available. One thing to note is that you should probably have your iOS device on a stand if you plan to make use of the camera as a switch source. Otherwise, moving the device may cause the camera to not recognize your face as desired.
Switch Control received only a minor update in iOS 8 that is intended to make use of the feature more efficient. For example, the scanner menu does not include all of the available options when it first comes up, but rather those that are most needed based on the current context. The user can then scan to a second menu/screen of options. Overall, the number of options available to the user has not changed, just the way they are presented.
5.08: QuickType Dictation and Third-Party Keyboards
The onscreen keyboard has gained smart word prediction in iOS 8. According to Apple, the QuickType prediction depends not only on your past conversations and writing style, but also on the person you are writing to and the app you are using. For example, in Messages the keyboard will provide suggestions that match a more casual writing style, while in email it will suggest more formal language. Word prediction can save time and effort for everyone, and it can be especially helpful for students who struggle with spelling or those who find it difficult to enter text due to motor challenges.
Figure \(1\): QuickType and Dictation
Dictation has added real-time feedback in iOS 8. This makes the feature easier to use, as you can see exactly what you are dictating on the screen as you go, helping you catch mistakes sooner. Starting Dictation is as simple as tapping a microphone icon that appears to the left of the space bar, speaking the desired text and punctuation, and then tapping done when finished. Dictation does not require any previous training, but it does need an active Internet connection to work.
In addition to QuickType, there is a new API third party developers can use to create customized keyboards that users can choose from instead of the standard one included with iOS. Already, a number of third-party keyboards are available. Some of my favorites are as follows:
• Keedogo: special keyboard for early writers with a simplified layout and lowercase letters
• Keedogo Plus: similar to Keedogo but with word prediction.
• Lowercase Keyboard: lowercase keyboard incorporating the Open Dyslexic font
• Fleksy: keyboard with support for swipe gestures and color themes
• Swype: keyboard that supports entering text through special gestures that require dragging a finger over the letters that make up each word
• TextExpander: enhanced shortcuts that save time by allowing you to save frequently typed blocks of text for use at any time
• Phraseboard Keyboard: allows you to create keys for frequently used phrases.
• Translator Keyboard: allows you to type in one language and automatically translate it into another language
• ai.type: improves the usability of the Shift key and allows for custom backgrounds
Installing and enabling each keyboard is a three-step process:
1. Download the app for the keyboard from the App Store.
2. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards and choose Add New Keyboard. Your new keyboard will be listed under Third-Party Keyboards.
3. Activate the on-screen keyboard and tap the globe icon to the left of the space bar and choose your new keyboard.
Figure \(2\): Menu for selecting third-party keyboards
The options for customizing each keyboard’s behavior and appearance can be accessed through the keyboard’s app. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/05%3A_iOS_8_Accessibility/5.07%3A_Switch_Control.txt |
iOS includes a number of options for customizing how information is displayed on the screen. These features can benefit not only those with vision loss, but also older adults whose vision is fading. In iOS 8, the options for customizing the display include:
• Invert Colors: reverses the color on the screen for people who need a higher contrast display
• Grayscale: a new feature in iOS 8 that replaces the color on the screen with shades of gray
• Larger Text: makes the text bigger on apps that support the Dynamic Type feature. Text size can also be adjusted in Settings > Display and Brightness in iOS 8. However, by enabling Larger Accessibility Sizes, you can make the text even bigger.
• Bold Text and Increase Contrast: adjusts the contrast of the text and the background so that the text is easier to read. For Bold Text, you must restart for changes to take effect. You can also adjust this setting in Display and Brightness in iOS 8.
• Button Shapes: adds a shape around buttons to make them easier to perceive
• Reduce Motion: replaces the zoom animation in iOS 8 with a simple fade that may be easier for some people who are sensitive to motion in the interface.
• On/Off Labels: adds an additional visual cue (a 1 or o) to each button to help you identify its state (whether it is on or off).
5.10: Audio Options
With iOS 8, the options for those with any kind of hearing loss will vary depending on the device. On the iPad, there are three options:
• Hearing Aids: allows pairing with a number of Made for iPhone Hearing Aids with advanced features such as the ability to adjust the right and left volume separately or together, environmental presets, and Live Listen for using the iOS device’s microphone to pick up audio which can be relayed to the hearing aid
• Mono Audio: converts a stereo signal so that both channels will play out of each earpiece when you have headphones plugged in
• Balance control: allows you to adjust the audio level so that more of it plays out of either the left or right earpiece when headphones are plugged in
On the iPhone, you can also enable the device’s flash as a visual alert, as well as turn on Phone Noise Cancellation to improve the audio quality for phone calls when you hold the phone up to your ear. For any of your contacts, you can set a custom vibration pattern. This is done by editing the person’s contact information, choosing Vibration > Create New Vibration and tapping the custom vibration pattern on the screen.
Although not considered accessibility features, Messages and FaceTime are two communication technologies built into iOS that can be useful to those who are deaf and need alternative modes of communication such as text messaging and video chat for sign language.
5.11: Media
The new Media category in iOS 8 includes two options for customizing video content:
• Subtitles and Captioning: turns on captions on any video or podcast that includes them. Starting with iOS 7, you can customize the appearance of the captions by creating your own styles. These styles allow you to change the text size, font, and other options to make the text easier to see and read.
• Audio descriptions: enables a secondary audio track that describes the action for someone who is blind and cannot see what is on the screen.
Figure \(1\): Closed caption styles pane | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/05%3A_iOS_8_Accessibility/5.09%3A_Display_Options.txt |
In addition to the options found in the Accessibility pane, iOS includes a number of other features that, while they are not accessibility features per se, could benefit those with special needs. Some of these include:
• Messages: includes an option for sending audio clips from within the app, which will be of benefit to people who can’t enter message text as quickly as they can speak. On the receiving end, these messages can be played back by just raising the device to hear them, making the interaction easier for those with motor difficulties. Video clips can also be sent in a similar way. For someone with a cognitive disability, the ability to see something in concrete terms with the help of a quick video clip will be helpful (a picture is worth a thousand words, right?).
• Siri now has an always-on listening mode where the user can just say “Hey Siri” to activate the personal assistant. To avoid draining the battery, this mode will only work when the device is plugged into power. This will be helpful to any individual who has difficulty pressing the Home button to activate Siri.
• The new support for a heath data API for tracking physical activity. For someone who is on the road to recovery (from an illness or an injury), such tools should prove helpful in keeping them on track and motivated about their progress. There is even an option for including a health card (with information about medications, allergies, and the like) in the lock screen. This idea will be taken even further when the new Apple Watch is released with a number of sensors for collecting health information that can be accessed with the Health app on iOS devices.
• A similar home automation API could come in handy for allowing people with motor difficulties to more easily control the appliances, lights, and other aspects of their home environment using iOS devices.
• NFC payments (Apple Pay) could make interactions at gas stations, pharmacies, and other places of public accommodation easier for people with motor difficulties. Rather than fumbling with a wallet to take out a credit card or loyalty card before buying a coffee, all that’s required is a simple tap of the phone (or upcoming watch) with the payment station.
The Apple Watch, to be released in early 2015, also points forward to new technologies and means of interaction that will benefit people with disabilities. A great example is the new haptic feedback provided by the Taptic engine in the Apple Watch, which will use subtle vibration patterns to guide someone when using turn-by-turn navigation with the Maps app. Hopefully this technology will appear in future iPhones, as it would be of great benefit for those who are blind.
You can also communicate with the Apple Watch using tap patterns, doodles, and what appear to be animated avatars, and I hope a similar app will eventually be added to iOS. These features could be very useful for young people who are on the autism spectrum or who otherwise have communication difficulties: for example, what would be easier than drawing a big heart to tell your parent you love them?
When you take into account all of the accessibility and other enhancements built into iOS 8, it is clear that Apple is truly focused on creating an ecosystem of hardware, apps, and services that work for everyone. These built-in features are a great example of universal design, an approach where accessibility is built in rather than bolted on through additional applications that have to be purchased and installed by the user. While iOS provides a great deal of customization through the large number of apps available in the App Store, out of the box a user has much of the accessibility toolkit he or she needs to access information and interact with the device on a level playing field with non-disabled peers. Furthermore, the ability to use the same device as everyone else, regardless of disability status, adds an element of social acceptability to iOS devices that cannot be underestimated when considering their use with marginalized populations.
06: Using Content Acquisition Podcasts (CAPs) to Improve Vocabulary Instruction and Learning f
Authors: Michael J. Kennedy, John Romig, & Wendy J. Rodgers, University of Virginia | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Comprehensive_Individualized_Curriculum_and_Instructional_Design_(Sennott_et_al.)/05%3A_iOS_8_Accessibility/5.12%3A_Other_Options.txt |
• 1: Overview of Online Courses
Traditional online courses come in many varieties, from small cohort models to large “lecture hall” courses of hundreds. Some of them are also considered “blended” or “flipped” in that they meet partially in person and partially online. Some traditional online courses even integrate open features like Open Educational Resources (OER), social networking tools like Twitter, and collaborative learning.
• 2: Basic Philosophies
Most (but not all) courses tend to be either focused on the instructor as dispenser of knowledge, or the learner as self-guided constructor of knowledge. Many courses are a mixture of both, but gravitate towards one side or the other regardless. Courses of any size can be either student-centered or instructor-centered, so you will first need to decide which direction your course will (generally) take.
• 3: Institutional Courses
While online courses could potentially cover any topic, your institution or company may have a specific niche within the online learning world that they focus on. Or you may have the freedom to cover any topic you like. Either way, there are several areas related to online course design that you should be familiar with before you propose and create a new course.
• 4: Production Timelines and Processes
Once you are familiar with online learning in general and the tools you will need, you will need to decide if a MOOC or a regular online course is the right choice for you. Once you have decided which the best choice is, the next step is to begin the official proposal process.
• 5: Effective Practices
In general, there are many different ways to design online courses that work in different contexts, and many ways to design online courses that do not work in various other contexts. We are avoiding the term “best practices” here because online teaching and learning can vary in different contexts, making “best” a problematic term.
• 6: Creating Effective Course Activities
In order to cross over from passive content consumption into active learning, you will need to make real-life activities the focus of your course content (Hayes, 2015). Activities can be discussions, interactive assignments, blogging, and social media participation – or could even involve learners themselves creating content and activities.
• 7: Creating Effective Course Content
Content can be videos, text, webpages, and textbooks. While MOOCs are typically lighter in these areas than a typical online course, traditional online courses can also be light on content, while MOOCs can be heavy on content. This content can be external to the LMS platform, or hosted inside of it. Since we encourage a focus on active learning over passive consumption of content in courses, we also encourage you to consider the activities first and then add content to support those activities.
• 8: Open Educational Resources
The section on openness in the previous chapter touched on the concept of “open” as being more complex than just “free.” In a more formal sense, educational resources that are released openly are often called “open educational resources” (OER). But there is often more to OER being considered “open” than just price. The OER Commons define OER as “teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge.
• 9: Assessment and Grading Issues
Grading and assessment in learning is a complex subject that can (and often does) fill an entire book alone. It is also an area that all instructors with any experience in teaching know well. Grading can run the gamut from informal off the cuff questions thrown out spontaneously in class to gauge understanding, all the way to extensively controlled, proctored high stake tests.
• 10: Creating Quality Videos
Video production is a time-intensive process that requires extensive planning and preparation. Please review the following sections to ensure that you have allotted enough time and resources to create the desired amount of video you would like for your course.
• 11: Utilizing Social Learning in Online Courses
You may have noticed that many online courses utilize social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. While there really is no one right way to utilize social media in a course, there are concepts and designs that work better than others. This section will cover some ideas and suggestions for social media usage in your course.
• 12: Mindfulness in Online Courses
Online courses have given learners across the globe a unique opportunity to learn outside of formal educational settings and in less supervised environments. The independent nature of this form of learning heightens the need for learners to have the tools to both initiate and manage their own learning. Moreover, as individuals engage with content, instructors, and fellow students exclusively online, an explicit focus on techniques meant to deepen the learning experience becomes more important.
• 13: Advanced Course Design
While there is no standard or threshold for what makes something “standard” or “advanced” course design, there are many ideas and structures (or lack of structure) that would be considered “cutting edge” or “experimental” by many. This chapter will briefly touch on a few of these that you can try in your courses. There are many others beyond these. If you can think of something that is outside of what is covered in this manual, but would be a good idea for your course.
• 14: Marketing of an Online Course
Now that you have successfully planned your course it is time to tell the world about it and get those enrollment numbers moving. For those in more traditional institutions and companies, this may just mean getting your course listed in the course catalog or company newsletter. However, for other courses (especially MOOCs), you might need to do a lot of the promotion yourself. For those that need to self-promote their course, here are some tips.
• Conclusion
At the end of the day, you will probably be the best person to lay out your own process for creating a course. Take the ideas you have learned here (or maybe refreshed your memory about) and just start somewhere. This manual follows the way that some generally follow when they create a course, but you may want to remix or reorder to fit your needs. Just keep your learners and their needs central to whatever process you decide to follow.
New Page
Modern online courses are an extension of older forms of distance learning, going back to mail and correspondence courses of the 1700s (Harting & Erthal, 2005). These courses were followed in the 1900s by radio, telephone, and television-based educational efforts (Harting & Erthal, 2005). Computers were used to deliver educational programs as early as the 1970s, even though the technology was often a hindrance. However, with the rise of personal computers, better Internet connections, and digital video technology in the 1990s, many universities began offering more courses online (Harting & Erthal, 2005). While this shift meant that online learning became more available to anyone with an Internet connection, these courses were often offered to select groups of learners. Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, various groups and universities began creating open learning or learning for all initiatives with the aim of taking learning beyond the silos it was often contained within (Harting & Erthal, 2005).
The first course to be called a “MOOC” was taught by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in 2008 (Kovanović, Joksimović, Gašević, Siemens, & Hatala, 2015). This course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08), was labeled a “Massive Open Online Course” after the fact by Dave Cormier. Attracting over 2200 students, CCK08 was really meant as an experiment in connectivism rather than massive learning. In 2011, Stanford University created their own MOOC – Introduction to AI, taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. This course attracted over 160,000 students, along with massive media attention as well. The New York Times called 2012 the “Year of the MOOC” because several well-financed MOOC providers came into existence, most notably Coursera, Udacity, and edX (Kovanović, Joksimović, Gašević, Siemens, & Hatala, 2015). Hype for MOOCs has died down since then, but there is still considerable interest in what they mean for education now and in the future. Despite the insistence of some, MOOCs will not destroy or disrupt universities, but they have already begun to make many examine exactly what teaching at scale means.
As MOOCs grew in popularity, different terms were created to label these different versions. The most useful were “xMOOC” – used to describe teacher-centric courses as “eXtension” of a traditional course – and “cMOOC” – used to describe more student-centered connectivist courses (Downes, 2013). Many other terms such as MOOC2.0, MOOC3.0, etc have been proposed, but these ideas have found little usage in most contexts. Another term that has been proposed is SPOC – short for “small private online course” (Fox, 2013). This term was first used for a more business-oriented approach of creating and licensing courses rather than what some refer to as “traditional” online courses that are also typically smaller and private (but not always).
Traditional online courses come in many varieties, from small cohort models to large “lecture hall” courses of hundreds. Some of them are also considered “blended” or “flipped” in that they meet partially in person and partially online. Some traditional online courses even integrate open features like Open Educational Resources (OER), social networking tools like Twitter, and collaborative learning. For the sake of clarity, in this handbook the term “online courses” will refer to any course that is offered partially or fully online to a specific set of learners (like enrolled learners at a University or company), while the term “MOOC” will refer only to those courses that are considered MOOCs. There are many places that regular online courses and MOOCs overlap, and many places that they differ. This book will explore both in the upcoming chapters, focusing mainly on regular online courses while highlighting any unique considerations for MOOCs as needed. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/01%3A_Overview_of_Online_Courses.txt |
Instructor-Centered Versus Student-Centered
Most (but not all) courses tend to be either focused on the instructor as dispenser of knowledge, or the learner as self-guided constructor of knowledge. Many courses are a mixture of both, but gravitate towards one side or the other regardless. Courses of any size can be either student-centered or instructor-centered, so you will first need to decide which direction your course will (generally) take.
The more the instructor focuses on themselves as the center of the course (some refer to this as “sage on the stage”), the more students will rely on them as the one to tell them everything… and to fix everything. This can be overwhelming in MOOCs with thousands of learners, but acceptable in smaller online courses with manageable numbers (although many topics in any course can still work well in student-centered approaches). The goal of any course should be to push learners into a place of learning how to learn about the course topic, so they can become self-directed learners (Kop & Fournier, 2011). This can also pose challenges for learners who were taught to focus on the instructor as the center of the class, or as the person to answer all questions. Instructors might also find it difficult to release the control over the class by letting learners take control (also sometimes referred to as “guide on the side”). However, we encourage you to keep self-directed learning in mind and work to move your course or your learners in that direction as much as possible.
Additionally, the massive nature of MOOCs and some larger online courses dictates that instructors will not have time to be the core of the course. Therefore, the design of the course will need to focus (as much as possible) on how to create self-determined learners simply out of practicality. Learners will need to begin to see other learners and the Internet as communities that are a source of answers and support (Hew & Cheung, 2014). For example, some courses have had success with creating voting systems that allow learners to post questions in the discussion forums and then allow other learners to “upvote” the ones that are most important. The instructor then answers the top questions each week. Other courses have encouraged learners to ask questions through social media outlets such as Twitter or Facebook, allowing instructors and other learners to answer as they can. Both methods have pros and cons depending on instructor’s available time as well as personal viewpoints of each method (various strategies to support each method are covered in this book).
The main concept to keep in mind is that MOOCs and larger courses can quickly become very student-centered in nature due to their massive size, and this often represents a major shift in power and control dynamics for many instructors. Be prepared for this shift. Also keep in mind that when teaching at this scale, learners don’t need you to just convey a bunch of factoids that they can look up online or in a book. They will want you to show them how to take control of the overall direction of their learning, something that is often referred to as “self-directed learning.” This is yet another large shift for some instructors. If these shifts are new for you, you might want to look into a field called heutagogy, which is this the study of self-directed learning (Blaschke, 2012).
Asynchronous Versus Synchronous
Another major factor about your course that will affect many decisions is whether or not learners will be interacting with each other and/or the course synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous courses are basically those courses that have learners meeting with each other and the instructor(s) in real time in the same space. That space may be a physical classroom, a video conference tool, or even a text-based chat tool – but the key is that learning experience for each participant is synchronized with the other participants. Typical on-campus college courses are often seen as synchronous – learners consume the materials (lectures) at the same time and place, discuss course topics during class time, and complete assignments like tests in class. Asynchronous courses are those that do not require learners to meet in the same space at the same time. Typical online courses are often seen as asynchronous – learners consume the materials at different times, post to discussion boards at the different times, and complete assignments at different times.
However, these are often not completely separate constructs. On campus courses can have online asynchronous components added for after class work. Online courses can have synchronous video chat sessions or live lectures mixed in with asynchronous discussion boards. Sometimes these mixtures are determined by company or institutional policy, other times they are left up to the instructor. If these decisions are left to you, you will need to decide what mixture is right for your course and your learners (keep in mind that sometimes the ideal solution for the course is not ideal for specific learners – in this case, try as much as possible to go with what is best for the learners).
Much of what you read for the rest of this book will also need to be filtered through how much of your course is synchronous and how much is asynchronous. For example, if your students are working adults that need maximum flexibility, you might decide to make your course entirely asynchronous. This would probably mean that you would not spend much time on tools that enable video conferencing. However, no matter what the mix of synchronous/asynchronous ends up being, you should keep in mind you are still dealing with humans. Your course designs will need to keep the human element in your course in mind while designing for either modality. One good resource to read about this topic is an article called “Bringing out the Human in Synchronous and Asynchronous Media for Learning” by Maha Bali.
Theoretical Foundations of Learning
Much can be said about the underlying theoretical foundations of learning. Many, many books and articles have been written on the topic, so this is not an area that can easily be skimmed lightly. However, it can be of benefit to your course for you to think through what your theoretical goals/desires/requirements are for your course, and then to design appropriately after clearly setting your expectations. Therefore, a basic overview is presented here.
Looking at learning as either instructor-centered or students-centered is a good place to start, but it can get much more complex than that. For the sake of space, we will expand this list to three possibilities:
• Instructivism: Knowledge transfer from an expert
• Constructivism: Constructed self-discovery (often guided by an expert)
• Connectivism: Networking with connections to gain knowledge or skills
Each is actually more complex than the provided definitions, and there are various other areas that fit in between, beside, and outside of these. These terms could also be considered basic power dynamics that describe who is in control of learning in your course.
Intersecting and sometimes paralleling these power dynamics are teaching methodologies for designing the course itself. Again, there are many of these that could be listed, but we will stick with a simplified list:
• Pedagogy: Often seen as a general word for any method or practice of teaching, an older way of looking at this is that the instructor is at the center of and in control of the transmission of what is taught.
• Andragogy: A methodology that draws on life experiences and knowledge of the learner (rather than the teacher) to form the basis for learning.
• Heutagogy: Self-determined learning that focuses on how to learn rather than what to learn.
Again, these are simplified definitions rather that specific descriptions that cover every aspect of these terms. The power dynamics and methodologies mentioned also tend to blend into each other as well. They can also be combined and arranged in a grid-like pattern to help you get even more specific about the design of your course:
Instructivist Pedagogy
Formal learning that depends on the instructor to dispense knowledge that is new to learners. Focused on content, video, standardized tests, papers, and instructor-guided discussions.
Instructivist Andragogy
Experienced learners are heavily guided through discussion activities to add to existing knowledge. Instructors guide learners through lessons learned by other experienced people in the field.
Instructivist Heutagogy
Probably a very unlikely design to attempt, but this would basically be an expert sharing information about where to learn about a topic. Contains mostly lists of resources and professional communities that learners can join into to learn more, as well as instructions on how to best interact with resources and communities.
Constructivist Pedagogy
Learners build upon existing knowledge and experiences by formally learning from more experienced others individually or as a group. Instructors create scenarios and activities for learners to reflect on what they know and construct new knowledge in their own ways. Writing, blogging, and reflective activities of all types are most common.
Constructivist Andragogy
Learners build upon existing knowledge and experiences to construct new knowledge either individually or as a group. Group work, open-ended reflection or discussions, and project-based learning are common types of activities.
Constructivist Heutagogy
Learners constructing a way to learn about a topic either individually or collectively as a group. Ill-structured problem-based learning, open ended group activities, and web searches focused on how to learn more than what facts to learn about a topic are possible activity types.
Connectivist Pedagogy
Learners working in a network in a formal sense to accomplish an ill-defined competency as created by the instructor. The instructor’s knowledge would be the main focus and driving force behind this design.
Connectivist Andragogy
The goal of learning is to work as a network in an informal sense to accomplish a competency that might be somewhat suggested by the course or instructor, but is ultimately determined by the group and based up expanding upon life experiences.
Connectivist Heutagogy
Learners working as a network to figure out how to become a learner about a topic. The instructor might create the avenue for connections and then become one equal part of the network. See the rhizomatic model of education as a possible example, where curriculum is constructed by the engaged learning community (Chapter 13).
This section and the above chart are adapted from a book chapter entitled “From Instructivism to Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings of MOOCs” (about MOOCs, but could apply to any online course as well – see list below), which would serve as a good resource to explore the overall idea in more depth. Keep this section in mind when looking at the section on “Clear Communication” and “Types of Communication” later in this manual, as it will continue this look at theory as applied to communication. For more resources on some of the theories touched on here, see:
• “From Instructivism to Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings of MOOCs” by Matt Crosslin
• “Learning -agogy Overload” by Matt Crosslin (list of other methodologies beyond the three above)
• “The Difference Between Instructivism, Constructivism, and Connectivism” by Terry Heick
• “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age” by George Siemens
• “Maker Education: Pedagogy, Andragogy, Heutagogy” by Jackie Gerstein
• “Heutagogy and Lifelong Learning: A Review of Heutagogical Practice and Self-Determined Learning” by Lisa Marie Blaschke
• “Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum” by Dave Cormier
Goals, Objectives, and Competencies
All courses set out to have learners learn something through a transfer of knowledge and/or skills. However, different teachers at different institutions will have different methods for how they teach that something. Once you know what you want your learners to learn, you need to start planning how you are going to teach it or how your learners are going to learn it, depending on where the focus of your course is. Creating well-written statements on how learning occurs will not only help you design your course, but also will help your learners understand what is going to happen in the course of learning.
Many words are used for these statements: goals, objectives, outcomes, strategies, competencies, etc. Some see many of these words as interchangeable. For the sake of this manual, we will focus on three:
1. Goal: A goal is a more general, broad statement of the overall intention of the course. There may be one for a course, or a list of a few. They can also be intangible and not measured by any standard. Goals can usually be accompanied by objectives or competencies.
2. Objective: An objective is a precise statement of how to specifically achieve a goal. Generally, what sets objectives apart from goals is that they provide a specific way to measure learning outcomes and student performance. Objectives tend to be more tangible and shorter in duration than goals while focusing on what learners need to know. They can be accompanied by competencies, or stand on their own, in support of course goals.
3. Competency: A competency is the ability to apply what has been learned to a function or task. Competencies are often more complex and higher level than objectives. They can work alongside objectives, or stand on their own, in support of course goals.
As an instructor, you may already have a good idea of the goals, objectives, or competencies you will use in your course. They may have been given to you by your institution or company. Or you may have never thought about any of them. Generally, you will want to have at least a draft of these written out before you design your course (they can, and probably will, change during the design process). On the other hand, you may want to let your learners determine the goals and objectives for the course (or even to map their own competencies as the course progresses). Even if that is the case, you will still want to be familiar with how to create goals, objectives, and competencies in order to lead your learners through the process. Much has been written on how to write effective goals, objectives, and competencies. We will only cover the basics here, but if you need to go more in depth, there are many resources online to look into.
The important thing to remember in writing goals is to not confuse them with objectives and competencies. Remember to keep them general and overarching for the course, but not so general that they basically just say “Students will learn _______ [topic of the course]”. Try to think of what students will learn rather than a list of topics. You can do this by looking at your course backwards – what will learners have accomplished by the end of your course? Focus on what learners will be doing rather than the topic. Make sure that learners can understand them (aka avoid jargon). For more details, see:
• “A Primer on Writing Effective Learning-Centered Course Goals” by Robert K. Noyd (DFB) & The Staff of The Center for Educational Excellence (CEE) US Air Force Academy
There are many different ways to structure objectives, but we recommend a good starting place is with the Behavior/Conditions/Criteria structure. In this structure, objectives should start with the behavior – what students will be able to do (“create a timeline of historical events that led to World War I”). Then add a condition – how they will be able to do it, usually added before the behavior in a written objective (“After reading the chapters on World War 1”). Finally, follow all of this with the criteria – the method for determining how they demonstrated mastery of the objective (“by correctly answering 70% or more of the questions on the World War 1 test”). Be sure to avoid unmeasurable words like “understand,” “know,” or “appreciation for” in the behavior; make sure that each objective feeds into the goal; and ensure that every goal has a good number of objectives to support it. If not, revise your goals and/or objectives. For more details, see:
• How to Write Learning Objectives that Meet Demanding Behavioral Criteria” by Bob Kizlik
Just like objectives, competencies can be approached and structured in many different ways. They are sometimes utilized in more standard learning situations, or can become the central structural feature of learning in competency-based learning. There are typically three concepts to keep in mind when creating competencies. First, competencies should be focused on the learner, rather than on the content or you as the instructor. Make sure that you are creating a way for learners to focus on their individual needs as they collaborate or work with others. Second, competencies should focus on outcomes over course structure. Many courses start with a “topic per week” approach and build out from there, but competencies may take more or less time than a week to complete. Third, competencies should be able to adjust and flex with the different individual needs of individual learners. Objectives tend to create one set of standards for all learners to attain in the same manner, whereas competencies tend to provide flexible structure for learners to personalize the learning experience to their needs and contexts. For more details, see:
• 3 Key Characteristics of Competency Based Learning” by Deb Everhart
Competencies tend to work best when situated in an overall context of competency-based learning. While there is disagreement over some of the specifics of competency-based learning, there are a few key concepts that generally tend to differentiate it from more traditional course structures. The biggest key concept is flexibility. Competency-based learning tends to allow learners to determine what exactly they are going to learn about a particular topic, how long they need to learn it, and how they will demonstrate that they have mastered the topic. Learners also typically do not advance until they have proven mastery, unlike traditional learning scenarios where all learners advance based on the calendar regardless of mastery. Additionally, class structures and organization as well as content or activities can be adjusted by individual learners to fit their specific social, cultural, and learning contexts and needs. For more details, see:
• What is Competency-Based Learning?” by TeachThought Staff
Alignment
Once you have created your goals, objectives, and/or competencies, keep these at the forefront during the entire course development. Everything that goes into the course needs to relate back to these.
• The course content (text and videos) and technology should support the goals, objectives, and/or competencies.
• The learning activities need to give learners a chance to practice what they need to learn through the goals, objectives, and/or competencies – as well as prepare them for any assessments.
• Any assessments should specifically measure each goal, objective, and/or competency.
When all of these items (course content, learning activities, and assessments) are aligned with the goals, objectives, and/or competencies, they will work to reinforce one another. Conversely, if any of these items are misaligned, it can lead to learner frustration. This may be realized if a learner says “The readings did not prepare me for the test.” What may have gone wrong if a learner says this? Consider this quote: “If you design assessments as an afterthought at the end of designing the instruction (a common but unfortunate mistake), you are likely to design the wrong content and the course activities and the assessments are likely to be far less meaningful or appropriate” (Shank, 2006). This is exactly what courses that are not aligned look like. You are giving learners puzzle pieces that don’t line up. It may be that the instructor created learning objectives but then chose content that they found interesting, but that was irrelevant to the objective. Then, they designed an assessment based on that misaligned content. Since the content was irrelevant to the objective, the assessment, in turn, is not going to evaluate whether the learner mastered the objective.
A good practice to ensure you are aligning your content is to create a course map. A simple table to show how each objective or competency is aligned with goals, content, technology, learning activities, and assessments will help visualize the alignment. An example table is provided below.
Specific objective or competency Course goal Content Technology Learning Activity Assessment
Enter one objective or competency per row. List the broad course goal(s) that the specific objective or competency relates to. List all content (text, video, etc.) that learners will use for this specific objective or competency. List any technology required for the course content that was listed. List any practice activities. For example, reading or watching the course content, or completing practice questions. List any assessments where learners will demonstrate their mastery of the specific objective or competency.
Openness
As you work through theory, goals, etc., one idea to also consider with your course is openness. Openness is often connected with MOOCs today, but the truth is that any course can be open or even have open elements. Even though the second “O” in MOOC is “Openness,” many don’t realize that it means more than “free” or “anyone can sign up.” Traditional online courses can also incorporate many aspects of openness even if the course itself is not considered “open.” In fact, many instructors like to include aspects of openness in their traditional online courses.
A course that is completely “open” means many things, including that the content is freely accessible for all (Rodriguez, 2013). What that statement means is that videos can be downloaded, PowerPoints used in videos can be downloaded, all learning materials to be used are available for free, all content is available from the beginning of the course, and learners still have access to the course indefinitely after the last course day. This can be a major paradigm shift for those that are used to teaching in a closed course online or face-to-face. The expectation is that anyone can access any part of the course at any time, and even in some cases re-use or remix the content in their courses. This would limit using expensive textbooks, tools, or websites that have commonly been used for years in education. This may also mean using open-source solutions outside of the ones offered officially on campus. The main idea to keep in mind is that if a course is considered to be “open,” there would be few restrictions on who can access any portion of it. This leads to certain freedoms and certain problems, as will be discussed in later sections.
However, if certain institutional limitations prevent complete openness, many courses can implement some aspects of openness as desired or allowed. This is up to the instructor (or course designer if there is someone designated for that role specifically), but just keep in mind to keep the course completely open if referring to it as a MOOC.
The major issue to consider in relation to openness is licensing and permissions. Certain forms of copyright are very restrictive, and therefore not completely “open.” For many, your institution or company will already have made decisions on how the content and activities (text, image, video, etc.) you have created will be licensed. For others, you may have some or total freedom to license the content and activities that you create as you like. If you decide to use any type of open license for your content and activities, this could increase the impact and spread of your content outside of the course, as well as make it accessible to more learners. Just keep in mind that materials put into closed LMS systems under “fair use” cannot be turned into open content without permission from the copyright holder of that material. For more information on open licensing, see the section in Chapter 8 on Open Educational Resources.
Accessibility
One aspect of openness that all courses must take into consideration, regardless of size or theory or where/how the course is offered, is accessibility. Certain learners have various considerations when interacting with online courses due to disability, socioeconomic situations, or any number of other factors. You may work at an institution or company that has staff to ensure your courses are as accessible as possible. If that is the case, then you must listen to everything they tell you to do with your course. Accessibility design is not only a good idea, it is usually also the law.
If your institution or company does not have a person or department to ensure that your course is fully accessible, it will be up to you to do so. Even if you have someone else to review your course, designing with accessibility in mind can typically save a lot of time in the long run. You will find that it is better to design your course right the first time than to spend a lot of extra time correcting accessibility issues later on.
Different tools have different accessibility standards that often evolve as technology changes. The best thing you can do is search for accessibility guidelines for the tool you wish to use (“accessibility standards for Word docs,” “accessibility standards for online videos,” etc). Also keep in mind the tools that your learners might use, such as screen readers. A screen reader is an assistive device that attempts to convey what is on screen to people with various sight and reading issues. Different screen reading devices have different abilities to convey what is on the screen, so try to keep tools like that in mind when designing course materials. Here are some general guidelines to keep in mind about accessibility (others will be covered in later chapters as well):
• Audio and Video: make sure to caption videos and provide downloadable transcripts for audio and video files. Closed Captions are optimal for video. See the Chapter on Videos for more details.
• Images: Always put a detailed description of the image in the “alt” box in your image editor or html code. Make sure you are not conveying course information only in a graphic. Your important content should always be in text. If your image is essential to the content, but too complex to summarize as alternate text, then you will need to look into how to make complex images accessible in the tool you are using.
• Color: Don’t use color alone to highlight or convey meaning. Remember that not everyone sees color the same.
• Color Contrast: Make sure there is sufficient contract between foreground and background colors, especially in text, to be easily readable by all. Low contrast make words harder to read. When in doubt, use a color contrast checker to be sure.
• Flashing/Blinking: Avoid flashing or blinking elements (especially blinking red text) at all costs. Flashing or blinking elements can cause a wide range of unsafe responses in people with various medical conditions.
• Headings: Don’t just use large bold text to divide up your content – use the appropriate Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. tags. If you don’t use headings, please consider doing so to organize your text for screen readers. Remember not to skip heading levels, and to use only one “Heading 1” per page.
• Lists: When making a list, make sure to use list tags or buttons to do so, rather than dashes, pluses, etc. This also helps screen readers.
• Links: Make sure the text you turn into a link actually gives an accurate description of where the link is taking the reader to. “Click here” really tells people nothing about the link, especially if they skipped to it with a screen reader.
• Tables: Do not use tables to organize images or content on a screen (this is popular with some designers to get images or text to look certain ways). Only use tables to communicate data in table format. Make sure to always use column headers when doing so as well – this also helps screen readers.
• Chunking: Break down long passages of text into manageable chunks of content on separate pages. Learners should not have to use the scrollbar on pages when viewing on average size screens.
• Forms: If you are creating a form online, make sure that the form elements are in the right order for screen readers. You can do this with the Tab key – just Tab through your form and make sure everything goes in order. Also make sure you can submit the form by pressing the Enter key. In fact, make sure that everything can work without a mouse (not everyone can use them). Make sure form fields have labels.
• Interactive Objects: Various interactive objects and tools that are being integrated into online learning also need to work completely with a keyboard. Whatever tool or software you use, make sure to check how accessible it is first.
• Equations/Formulas/Notations: Math and Science courses sometimes have extra accessibility issues due to the use of various symbols, formulas, and other elements. Make sure to look into something like MathML to make those elements as accessible as possible.
Depending on where you want to teach the course, or what tools you use, there may be other accessibility issues you need to look into. The list above is not an exhaustive or complete list, so be sure to do some research and check to make sure you are up to date on all accessibility issues that apply to your course. Here are a few places to start learning about accessibility:
• WebAIM has website design accessibility training, evaluation, and certifications that are also applicable to online courses as well.
• W3C also has an entire site dedicated to web accessibility – including lessons, guides, and validation tools.
• If you are not sure how to provide captions for complex images, this guide on captions can help give you some ideas.
• WebAIM also has a very good Screen Reader Simulation (along with other simulation tools) that helps you experience what it is like to use a screen reader.
How MOOCs Differ From Other Online Courses
MOOCs are can sometimes be very different from regular online courses, which in themselves are different from on campus face-to-face courses. You should have at least several years’ worth of experience designing and offering traditional online courses before offering a MOOC. However, even extremely experienced online instructors will find many new challenges to face in their first MOOC. Some basic differences include:
• Scale. MOOCs can have anywhere from a few hundred to tens and hundreds of thousands of learners. Instructors cannot have a goal of interacting with all learners. (Milligan, Littlejohn, & Margaryan, 2013)
• Intensity. MOOCs are often supplemental parts of the learner’s educational process. They don’t sign up to get a full college course and often don’t have that much time. (Milligan, Littlejohn, & Margaryan, 2013)
• Flexibility. While the content in MOOCs may be presented in a linear fashion, many learners may drop in and out or even start at any moment, therefore the course has to be able to withstand nonlinear learning paths. (McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010)
• Varied. Enrollment is open to anyone, so typical university requirements of pre-requisite knowledge are not a barrier to entry. Learners could be anywhere from complete newbies to industry leading experts. (Milligan, Littlejohn, & Margaryan, 2013)
With this in mind, there are several questions that you as an instructor should ask yourself before deciding to offer a MOOC. What goals do you have as an instructor that led you to choose a MOOC over other course formats? Is a MOOC the best option given those goals? What are your motivations for using a MOOC? Will a MOOC help or hinder those goals? With those questions in mind, consider what can and can’t be accomplished with a MOOC:
• MOOCs can: cover basic knowledge or a small amount of knowledge.
• MOOCs can’t: adequately cover as much content or as much depth as a for-credit college course.
• MOOCS can: lay the groundwork for creating a small collection of learners interested in exploring a specific topic.
• MOOCs can’t: create an instant community just because everyone signed up for the same topic at the same time.
• MOOCs can: bring together a very diverse group of learners.
• MOOCs can’t: make that diverse group of learners actually learn or be nice to one another just because they signed up.
• MOOCs can: challenge motivated learners to engage with the topic if they choose.
• MOOCs can’t: prove that everyone that said they learned the content actually did learn without cheating.
Many of these issues and differences stem from the openness of MOOCs. Open means much more than just being “free to anyone that wants to sign up,” as was examined in the previous section on Openness.
References
Blaschke, L. M. (2012). Heutagogy and lifelong learning: A review of heutagogical practice and self-determined learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(1), 56-71.
Hew, K. F., & Cheung, W. S. (2014). Students’ and instructors’ use of massive open online courses (MOOCs): Motivations and challenges. Educational Research Review, 12, 45-58.
Kop, R., & Fournier, H. (2011). New dimensions to self-directed learning in an open networked learning environment. International Journal of Self-Directed Learning, 7(2), 2-20.
McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., & Cormier, D. (2010). The MOOC model for digital practice. Retrieved from http://www.davecormier.com/edblog/wp-content/uploads/MOOC_Final.pdf
Milligan, C., Littlejohn, A., & Margaryan, A. (2013). Patterns of engagement in connectivist MOOCs. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 9(2), 149-159.
Rodriguez, O. (2013). The concept of openness behind c and x-MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Open Praxis, 5(1), 67-73.
Shank, P. (2006). To plan good instruction, teach to the test. Online Course Design: 13 Strategies for Teaching in a Web-based Distance Learning Environment, 8-9. Retrieved from http://hilo.hawaii.edu/academics/dl/documents/13StrategiesforTeaching.pdf | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/02%3A_Basic_Philosophies.txt |
While online courses could potentially cover any topic, your institution or company may have a specific niche within the online learning world that they focus on. Or you may have the freedom to cover any topic you like. Either way, there are several areas related to online course design that you should be familiar with before you propose and create a new course.
Quality Standards
Both regular online courses and MOOCs should be expected to be held to the same high quality standards as traditional in-person courses. This means that time and resources should be allocated to create the best possible course experience for learners. This includes, but is not limited to:
• Well-planned and organized course designs
• Completing all pre-planned course content and activities before the first day of class. You may want to design in some flexibility for certain parts of your course – just make sure this flexibility is intentional and not due to lack of planning. See the section on “Planning for Flexibility” for more details.
• Content that is well-written, fully edited, and professional in tone.
• Focused content that is not excessively time-consuming (if you have a lot of content, maybe consider creating an open textbook?).
• If creating a MOOC, all resources, material, tools, and textbooks offered for free along with the course.
• Use of Open Educational Resources (OER) where possible (see the chapter on “Open Educational Resources”).
• Professionally created graphics that enhance and add to the content; no distracting extraneous graphics.
• Use of well-written and edited scripts for all video production.
• Professionally recorded and edited videos.
• Captioning and transcripts for all video content.
• Professionally created video graphics, slides, and animations.
• Well-attended social media outlets.
• Consistent and frequent communication from course instructors.
• Timely response to participant concerns.
A note on MOOCs: even though MOOCs are offered for free, you cannot skimp on quality. These courses are broadcast to anyone in the world, and therefore serve as the visible face of your institution or organization for many that have never heard of it. Please ensure that all parts of the course are of the highest quality possible.
Quality Review
An important step in any creation process is the evaluation of the final product, or quality assurance; and this is true for course design as well. All online courses are generally expected to be held to the same high quality standard of traditional in person courses, especially at institutions that are accredited by any external accreditation group or board. This means that time and resources should be allocated to create the best possible course experience for learners.
What, or who, determines elements of a quality course? Rather than reinvent the wheel, a popular option is to utilize quality standards that have been developed by nationally recognized organizations, such as the Quality Matters Rubric or the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Quality Course Teaching and Instructional Practice Scorecard. Once you have decided which standards you would like to follow, it is important to implement them during course design, rather than checking for them at the end of course design.
Implementing quality standards into a course can yield benefits for both the instructor and student. For example, in regards to course design (layout, organization, and navigation), participants rated courses with high findability as a better overall experience. Students reported lower levels of self-efficacy and motivation after interacting with courses rated low in findability (Simunich, Robins, & Kelly, 2015). When it is clear to learners how to navigate the course, where to find materials, and how to submit assignments, learners have to ask fewer procedural questions and the course is easier to manage for the instructor. The instructor could even have more time to provide quality feedback to learners (of which learners crave) versus spending time answering procedural questions.
Some questions you will see addressed in popular quality standards are listed below. This list is a very high-level summary – there are many more details to consider within these topics. For example, the Quality Matters rubric has 43 standards and the OLC Scorecard has 97 standards.
Course Design
• Is navigation clear and logical?
• Are course materials organized well, with no clutter or distracting elements?
• Is the design of the course consistent from week-to-week?
• Is it easy for learners to find what they need?
Course Objectives
• Are all course objectives measurable?
• Is the course content and assignments aligned to the course objectives?
Clarity
As a note, clarity is an important component of online course design which will be covered more in Chapter 5. In contrast with in-person courses, online learners cannot seek immediate clarification for instructions that are not understood. A delay in clarity can cost online learners valuable time. Therefore, you will see many standards that reference being “clear” or “clearly stated”.
• Are course and institution policies clearly stated?
• Are learners given all course information at the beginning of the course?
• Is how to use the content clearly explained?
• Are assignment instructions and expectations clear?
• Is the overall course grading policy and grading for individual assignments clear?
Engagement
• Are opportunities for engagement with other learners, the teacher, and the content built in to the course?
Student Support
• Is information provided about the technology required in the course, as well as how learners can get help should technical problems arise?
Accessibility
• Has course content been formatted for accessibility?
Policies and Requirements
All online courses offered through any institution or company will be required to adhere to all applicable institutional or corporate course policies and requirements. There may also be a specific group in charge of regulating online course quality at your institution or corporation. But even if there is not one specific group in charge of regulating course quality for you, you are highly encourage to follow all suggestions in this manual and to seek out feedback from trained instructional designers. Additionally, you will be expected to know and adhere to all policies and requirements of any service that you utilize in your course (Blackboard, edX, Google, Facebook, WordPress, etc.). Please be sure to familiarize yourself with any service you wish to use before using them.
Your Course Design Team
Creating an online course can be a major undertaking that will require a large team of people. Unless your institution currently has anyone working on course design full time, your team will consist of people who are working on your course in addition to other duties. If your institution or company does not provide team members for you, you should consider recruiting from people whose normal job duties cover various aspects of online course creation (as their workloads allow). This team will include, but is not limited to:
1. Core Design Team:
1. All Course Instructor(s) and Subject Matter Expert(s) (if not the same people).
2. Instructional Designer(s) trained in learning theory to assist in designing content.
3. Graphic Designer(s) to create necessary graphics (most courses require at least a few).
4. Faculty and Administrative Personnel that may have a role in supporting, reviewing, and approving courses.
5. Library Support Personnel to help locate pre-existing resources for your course.
2. Media Creation Team (please see the video chapter section on the time requirements for video creation to ensure that you have recruited enough people with enough available time to create the amount of video desired):
1. Video Script Copy Editor(s) to assist in preparing scripts and transcripts.
2. Videographer(s) to professionally record videos.
3. Video Editor(s) to create final videos from raw recordings.
4. Video Graphic Creator(s) for any animations, graphics, slides, etc, you wish to have added.
5. UX Specialists and other Technical Positions for creation of any media elements that are not just text based (games, websites, etc).
3. Content and Design Assessment Team (see the “Design Assessment & Review” chapter for more details):
1. Content Reviewer(s) to provide feedback on content.
2. Design Reviewer(s) to provide feedback on the overall course design.
3. Quality Analysts such as course quality analysts, copyright reviewers, editors, and content specialists from the library.
4. Optional Team Members:
1. At least one Social Media Manager to run social media outlets behind the scenes (see the “Utilizing Social Learning in Online Courses” chapter for more details).
2. As least one Accessibility Specialist should review your course tools and materials for accessibility standards.
3. Guest Experts for videos or online sessions, if desired.
4. If you are running a MOOC or other course that needs advertising: Marketing Experts to spread the word about your MOOC.
Possible Hosting Platforms
Your institution or company may already have a platform (sometimes called “LMS” for “learning management system” or “CMS” for “course/content management system”) for hosting courses that you are required to use. For a traditional online course, these could be something like Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle. For a MOOC, that could be something like EdX or Coursera. Additionally, there are other options out there, including using open source platforms such as WordPress to host content. If you do not have one of these services as an option, there are a few possibilities to host content:
• WordPress: WordPress offers free services to anyone that wishes to set up a website at wordpress.com. Click here for more information on how to use WordPress as a classroom.
• Moodle: MoodleCloud is an affordable option for hosting a course in Moodle.
• Reclaim Hosting: If you want a flexible option to use WordPress, Moodle, Drupal, or any number of other open source programs, Reclaim Hosting is a good service made by educators for educators.
• Blackboard: Blackboard offers a free online course hosting service.
• Google Classroom: Google also offers a place to put classes online at google classrooms.
Please note that you will need to choose a platform that matches the openness of your course. If you want to run a MOOC or have open material in any online course, the closed nature of many LMS tools like Blackboard may not make them a good tool for offering open content or courses. On the other hand, if there are reasons you are choosing to limit access to your course to only those that register for it (like sensitive course content or institutional requirements), the open nature of services like EdX may not make them a good choice for your course.
Learning Analytics
One growing trend in education is the exploration of data that online learning tools generate in an analytical way. Whether you or your users realize it or not, everything that you do online is usually recorded in a database somewhere. This data has typically been locked away from everyone (except for the company that collected it), but that is starting to change.
Most of the tools that you can use in online learning – from WordPress to EdX to Canvas to Blackboard – will offer you the ability to see some kind of analysis of the data activity in your course/website account/etc. If you use that analysis to improve your course or influence your learners, those actions move into the realm of Learning Analytics. Your institution or company may require that you use analytics, and even provide deeper results from companies like Civitas. On the other hand, your institution or company may not even know this data exists.
The study of learning analytics is still a newer field with many unknowns. However, there is interesting work occurring in the field as it grows. For a good overview of the field, we recommend The Handbook of Learning Analytics edited by Charles Lang, George Siemens, Alyssa Wise, and Dragan Gašević. This handbook “is designed to meet the needs of a new and growing field. It aims to balance rigor, quality, open access and breadth of appeal and was devised to be an introduction to the current state of research.”
The most important concept to keep in mind about learning analytics is that the data being analyzed contains sensitive personal information covered by many legal guidelines. Ideally, you and your learners will be fully informed about what is collected, how it is collected, what is done with it after it is collected, and so on. Additionally, the ideal legal scenario is that you and your learners would choose to “opt in” to allowing this collection if you agree with having your data utilized in this manner.
However, the more likely typical scenario is that little clear information is given to end users about data collection, with users being put in the position of having to opt out of data collection (or even worse, have no way of opting out if they want to get into a course). If this is the case with the tools you use, we would suggest that you take the initiative to clearly communicate with learners everything you can discover about data collection in every tool you use, including how to opt out if they so choose. Data collection in education is a controversial topic, so it is best to be open and clear as much as it is possible within your context.
Many reasons exist for considering the ethical dilemmas within learning analytics. For example, looking at the data the wrong way could lead to profiling learners unfairly. Additionally, the algorithms used to create the analytics will carry with them the bias of those that created them. Learners are always unique individuals that can defy the classification systems that analytics utilize. For more information on these issues, as well as ways to ethically use learning analytics, see this article:
• “7 Ethical Concerns With Learning Analytics” By Jim Yupangco
Ethical Issues Related to Technology
Many tend to think of technology, algorithms, and analytics as neutral entities that do not have programmed assumptions, contexts, and biases in them. However, this is not the case. All software has been found to reflect, in small and large ways, the biases and assumptions of those that created it (VanderLeest, 2004). This does not necessarily mean that you should never use these tools, but you should think through what these programmed biases are and what they mean for how you use them in a course (as well as how and what you communicate about those tools to learners).
For example, “personalized learning” is a current buzzword in online learning circles, with many organizations putting large amounts of money into the concept. Those organizations have goals behind the money they put into their products, and biases for and against certain philosophical schools of thought. For instance, see this brief examination of some the ideas shaping personalized learning in some of the largest donors to the concept:
• “’Personalized Learning’ and the Power of the Gates Foundation to Shape Education Policy” by Audrey Watters
The way that personalized learning is being shaped may or may not disagree with your vision of learning, however, you should know how it is being shaped before using any tools connected to these organizations. You should also take those influences into account when utilizing tools and communicating about those tools to learners.
An even deeper ethical consideration to explore is how inequalities are part of the very fabric of the Internet itself. Some think of this in terms of a digital divide. A better concept to examine would be digital redlining: “the creation and maintenance of technological policies, practices, pedagogy, and investment decisions that enforce class boundaries and discriminate against specific groups.” This definition comes from this article that looks deeper into problems inherent in the Internet itself:
• “Pedagogy and the Logic of Platforms” by Chris Gilliard
Since this is an ever-evolving issue in education across hundreds of technologies, resources, websites, concepts, hardware, etc, you will need to do some searching for the specific tools and ideas you want to use in your course, or that pertain to your context. For instance, if you work in “for profit education,” you probably should familiarize yourself with the work of Tressie McMillan Cottom in LowerEd (although she also covers many other topics you should be aware of). The work of Audrey Watters at Hack Education covers multiple ideas and technologies in education from a historical critical lens. Chris Gilliard’s work in Digital Redlining and Student Framing is also a good place to start. For international views on technology issues, Maha Bali covers a wide range of issues that many in the West often fail to consider. Many others are out there, start following these four on Twitter and see who they quote there as well. Additionally, for a deeper dive into how biases are built into algorithms, see Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble.
References
Lang, C., Siemens, G., Wise, A., & Gašević, D. (Eds.). (2017). The Handbook of Learning Analytics. Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR).
Simunich, B., Robins, D. B., & Kelly, V. (2015) The impact of findability on student motivation, self-efficacy, and perceptions of online course quality, American Journal of Distance Education, 29(3). 174-185, DOI: 10.1080/08923647.2015.1058604
VanderLeest, S. H. (2004, June). The Built-in Bias of Technology. In Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference (pp. 1417-1427). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/03%3A_Institutional_Courses.txt |
Once you are familiar with online learning in general and the tools you will need, you will need to decide if a MOOC or a regular online course is the right choice for you. Once you have decided which the best choice is, the next step is to begin the official proposal process.
Proposals for New Courses
All proposed online courses will probably need to have the approval of someone before offering the course: a Director, a Dean, and/or a department head of the College or department to be offering the course. Online courses require extensive resources that must be covered by the instructor’s organizational oversight. Please have the proposal approved as you would any other courses through your department or company.
Ideally, a proposal for a new course will need to be submitted as soon as possible, at least one year before the course is offered. Minimum proposal lead time for shorter courses that are focused more on interaction (and therefore require less media production) could shorten the due date for proposals to six months.
Additionally, you will need to have already recruited a course design team as well as decided on which platform(s) to utilize in your course. If your institution or company does not offer these services for you, you should recruit from people you work with whose normal job duties cover various aspects of course creation (as their workloads allow). You may also seek out grants and teaching assistants to assist you as your department or college allows. The course design team should be noted on the proposal form.
Also note that a timeline for the creation of the course should be submitted with the proposal. In your proposal, you may also wish to include a reference to any quality standards you will utilize to evaluate the course. Online courses are generally expected to be completely ready to go by the first day the course is offered, so please plan to finish your design and pre-planned content and activities well before the first day of course (be sure to build in a few weeks at the end of the development process for quality review as well, depending on your review process). An orientation week before the course starts is a good idea for working out any kinks with your learners.
Creation of Approved Courses
Once a course has been approved, the creation process should begin immediately – within one week of the approval or less. This will include:
1. Assign tasks to various members of your team.
2. Create checkpoints with your departmental/organizational oversight to submit work in progress updates.
3. Begin video creation (since video can take a long time to create, this should begin as soon as the course is approved).
4. Begin creation of content.
5. Create social media outlets, hashtags, etc. (if left to the last minute, someone may take the username/tag/etc. you want).
6. Decide how the content created in the course will be licensed (see the chapter on Open Educational Resources for more details).
Within one month of approval, you should have at least one full module or week completed (including videos and graphics). This should be submitted to your departmental/organizational oversight or an instructional designer for review.
Within half the time between approval and when the course starts (ideally six months before the course begins), you should have at least half of the course completed (including videos and graphics). This will be submitted to your departmental/organizational oversight or an instructional designer for review. However, your departmental/organizational oversight or instructional designer may request more frequent updates for more complex courses.
One month before the course begins, everything for the course should be complete and ready to go. This should be submitted to your content and design reviewers for full review.
Any issues identified in the full review should be addressed by one week before the course begins.
Additionally, we recommend that sometime within one week before the course begins that you open the course for a test run with any interested learners to ensure there are no final issues.
Design Assessment and Review
The course development plan should include assessment and review of your course design. Your instructional designer should include this in the course design, but it may also require additional resources from you as the instructor. If you do not have internal quality standards to follow, you can utilize national quality standards, as referenced in the “Quality Review” section of Chapter 3, during both formative and summative assessments.
Formative Assessment is basically a review of the course content and design as the course is being designed. You should probably have at least one colleague review the content of your course several times to give you feedback on issues such as clarity, ease of navigation, content alignment, workload balance, and technical concerns. Additionally, the instructional designer will need to have at least one other instructional designer review the design of the course several times to provide feedback on the overall course design. One helpful suggestion for quality assessment is to first develop only one module or week of content and submit it for a formative review. This initial review should provide feedback in regards to the quality standards you have selected to follow. Then, take the feedback received and implement it as you continue the design of the course.
Summative Assessment is basically review of the course after it has been offered. This could consist of grades, participant feedback, or course data. Most of this will not magically appear, so you will need to plan for feedback as part of the design process. Course participant assessment techniques will be covered later in this book. Participant feedback can be gained from several sources, including Twitter feeds, pre- and post-course surveys, and forum posts. Course data can include all types of electronically collected information, from clicks on content links, to time spent on specific pages, to profile information. You will need to contact the course platform you use for specific details on what data is collected and how you access it.
Not only is course design assessment a good source for data in published papers, but it is also a good place to gain insight into how to update your course before offering it again. For example, you can review how well your student activities and assessments reflected the quality of the learning objectives based on what the results of summative assessment tell you. No course is perfect the first time it is offered, so updates and changes are expected after each offering. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/04%3A_Production_Timelines_and_Processes.txt |
What We Know Works
In general, there are many different ways to design online courses that work in different contexts, and many ways to design online courses that do not work in various other contexts. We are avoiding the term “best practices” here because online teaching and learning can vary in different contexts, making “best” a problematic term. We can offer a list of some things that we know will usually work better in most online courses:
• Spending time and resources to create a high quality learning experience (Lorenzo & Moore, 2002; Hayes, 2015).
• Creating lessons that focus more on active engagement and less on passive content consumption (Lorenzo & Moore, 2002; Hayes, 2015).
• If possible, especially in MOOCs, shorter course durations with simple, straight forward organization (Jordan, 2015).
• Less focus and time on videos to watch and/or text to read per week (DiCarlo, 2009; Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014).
• If possible, especially in MOOCs, one topic or module per week (Jordan, 2015).
• Completing the entire course design before the start date (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001). Many institutions and companies require this in order to allow time for quality review. You can build flexibility and open ended activities into your course, but the structure for that should be there before the courses starts (see the section on “Planning for Flexibility”).
• Utilizing networked learning and interactive activities (Siemens, 2005).
• Instructors that participate in the social media outlets and discussion forums (Mathieson & Leafman, 2014; Zheng, Han, Rosson, & Carroll, 2016).
• Listening to and responding promptly to participant concerns (Groundwater-Smith, 2008; Khalil & Ebner, 2014).
• Connecting content with current events and current life experiences of the learners (Cercone, 2008).
• Well written goals/objectives/competencies accompanied by content and activities that align well with them (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001).
• Clear communication for all aspects of the course (Warren & Wakefield, 2012).
Clear Communication
Speaking of clear communication, we should take a minute to highlight that clear communication is important for all aspects of education. Communication is a foundational element of educational theory (Warren & Wakefield, 2012); without clear communication, learners can feel confused and discouraged. Many different theories of communication exist; the important thing is to pick one that works and stick with it. For those that need some guidance, one suggestion is the Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions (LTCA) theory developed by Dr. Scott Warren from the works of Jurgen Habermas. LTCA theory basically breaks educational communications down into four communicative types:
• Normative communicative actions are those that communicate knowledge that has been socially negotiated through time, such as social norms or expectations for student activities. While these actions are often based on past experiences, they can also evolve through time.
• Strategic communicative actions are probably the most familiar educational communicative actions for most educators. These communicative actions occur most often through lectures, textbooks, and other methods where specific reified knowledge is transferred to the learner.
• Constative communicative actions are debates, arguments, and discourses that allow learners to make claims and counterclaims. Constative communication is also where social constructivism and connectivism connects with LTCA theory, as learners come to agreement over constructed knowledge through these communicative actions
• Dramaturgical communicative actions are those that allow for expression. Learners can reflect or create artifacts that express the knowledge they have gained as well as who that knowledge makes them as a person.
The important aspect of LTCA theory (or any other theory you choose to use) is to evaluate what you are trying to communicate in various parts of the course and then make sure to communicate effectively without confusing communication styles. For example, don’t set up a blogging assignment that would require students to use dramaturgical communicative actions and then create long, detailed instructions requiring learners to use strategic communicative actions.
For more information on LTCA theory, see the theoretical framework sections of the following articles:
• “Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions: A Mixed-Methods Twitter Study” by Jenny S. Wakefield, Scott J. Warren, and Metta Alsobrook
• “Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions: Improving Historical Knowledge and Cognition Through Second Life Avatar Role Play” by Jenny S. Wakefield, Scott J. Warren, Monica A. Rankin, Leila A. Mills, and Jonathan S. Gratch
Types of Communication and Interaction
Communication is an aspect of teaching that we all know happens, but many do not think fully through what that means. The types of clear communication you will want in your course will most likely flow from the underlying theories you subscribe to for the power dynamics and methodology of your course (see the previous “Theoretical Foundations of Learning” section). Looking across the literature, various researchers (Moore, 1989; Hillman, Willis, & Gunawardena, 1994; Anderson & Garrison, 1998; Dron, 2007; Wang, Chen, & Anderson, 2014) have identified at least 12 types of communication types that can happen in education:
• student-teacher (ex: instructivist lecture, student teaching the teacher, or student networking with teacher)
• student-student (ex: student mentorship, one-on-one study groups, or student teaching another student)
• student-content (ex: reading a textbook, watching a video, listening to audio, or reading a website)
• student-interface (ex: connectivist online interactions, gaming, or computerized learning tools)
• teacher-teacher (ex: collaborative teaching, cross-course alignment, or professional development)
• teacher-content (ex: teacher-authored textbooks or websites, teacher blogs, or professional study)
• content-content (ex: algorithms that determine new or remedial content; artificial intelligence)
• group-content (ex: constructivist group work, connectivist resource sharing, or group readings)
• group-group (ex: debate teams, group presentations, or academic group competitions)
• learner-group (ex: individual work presented to group for debate, student as the teacher exercises)
• teacher-group (ex: teacher contribution to group work, group presentation to teacher)
• networked with sets of people or objects (ex: Wikipedia, crowdsourced learning, or online collaborative note-taking)
Some courses will have one communication type for the entire class. Others will have a few types, while still others will have different types for each activity. Also, while some types of communication like “student-teacher” may lean towards certain power dynamics like instructivism, that does not have to be the only possibility. For example, student-teacher interactions could be constructivist if the student is teaching the instructor, or possibly even connectivist if a learner is bringing their instructor into a networked learning experience.
The important issue to think through is what kind of communication types you will need to accomplish clear communication in the power dynamics or methodologies you desire for your course, and then which communication types will you need for individual assignments in your course. For a discussion on applying power dynamics, methodologies, clear communication, and communication types to specific assignments, see the later section on “Connecting Activities to Theory and Communication”. Additionally, for a deeper discussion of the communication issues touched on here, see the communication sections of “From Instructivism to Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings of MOOCs” by Matt Crosslin.
Planning for Flexibility
Many instructors like to have a well-structured and planned out course, while others prefer varying levels of flexibility to change the course content, structure, and/or activities based on many factors (such as current events, flexible lesson schedules, learner interest, etc). When we refer to having a course completely designed and reviewed by the first day of class, this refers to all of the content and activities that you already know will be a part of the course. For some courses, this will be all of the content and activities. For other courses, this is more of a “plan” or “outline” of what could happen depending on various factors.
Planning for flexibility in your course can be challenging, but the benefits will often make up for the difficult parts. Mia Zamora and Alan Levine refer to this as building a “Course Spine” that outlines the major course elements, but leaves room to fill in details as the course progresses (Levine, 2018). Other ways of looking at this concept include “student-centered learning” and “problem based learning” depending on how the course is structured. Various ways to design your course to utilize these ideas will be explored throughout this book. Additionally, Chapter 13 is dedicated to more advanced course design methods that fall into these categories, such as Self-Mapped Learning Pathways and Rhizomatic Learning.
One thing to keep in mind: there is a difference between “planning for flexibility” and “I ran out of time, so let’s make this up at the last minute.” Flexibility should flow from what you want your learners to accomplish in the course, not from your lack of planning ahead. In many cases, planning a well-designed, flexible course design could take as much time (or more) as writing out traditional instructor-focused content and activities.
Humanizing Online Learning
A larger concept to keep in mind is the isolation that can occur to learners in online learning, away from the immediate contact created by being in the same physical location as other learners. Some learners may prefer this distance, while others may feel the effects of the isolation. The idea of “Humanizing” an online course is basically the process or creating ways to connect learners with each other and the instructors across the distance of online learning.
One helpful way to organize and think about humanizing online learning is through the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Arbaugh, Bangert, & Cleveland-Innes, 2010). CoI basically focuses on increasing three “presences” to help learners construct personal meaning in learning as well as to collectively confirm mutual understandings: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence.
Teaching presence is a large portion of what this manual is covering: designing and facilitating a course in ways that clearly communicates how learning will occur, effectively humanizing or increasing the presence of the instructor. Examples would include clearly defining expectations, creating avenues to encourage learner agency, and timely feedback to learners. One good way to make sure this happens is create a schedule for you to communicate with your learners, via email or other methods, and then make sure you stick to that schedule.
Social presence focuses on the learners in the course, helping them to see themselves as an individual “real person” that can actively and safely participate in the course. Many of these concepts are also covered in this manual. Examples would include drawing in participants, creating low-risk ways for them to express themselves, and establishing Codes of Conduct (see the chapter on “Utilizing Social Learning”).
Cognitive presence is a bit more abstract of a concept, but it basically covers looking at the entire learning process for ways to encourage students to think about their learning, reflect on that learning, and sharing their learning process with others. Examples would include encouraging learners to take ownership of their learning, building in reflection activities, and creating avenues for learners to share and interact with those reflections (for instance, by blogging).
For more information on CoI and Humanizing online learning, see these resources:
• The Community of Inquiry main website
• “Humanizing Online Learning” 2 week course by Michelle Pacansky-Brock
• Humanizing Online Learning and Teaching compilation edited by Whitney Kilgore
Synchronous Interactive Sessions
One possible way to foster teaching presence is to schedule time for synchronous interactive sessions during your course. This could include virtual office hours, live sessions, unhangouts, or other ways for you to connect with your learners virtually “in person.”
The basic idea behind these sessions is that you choose a time to meet, a synchronous service to utilize (usually one that is free to use and allows flexibility to use video and audio if you choose), and set some parameters for what will happen at the session. Will it be a teaching session where learners listen to what you have to share? Will it be a Q&A/Office Hours type of session? Will it be a group work/discussion session where learners interact with each other? Depending on how you want to structure the session, make sure your tool can handle the service you want to utilize.
Virtual Office Hours will typically be a time for learners to ask questions. This will typically involve scheduling a recurring time each week for people to come ask questions online. If you are teaching an online course, we strongly suggest you set virtual office hours. Most online chat or video tools will have a set of options that can handle the “one-on-one office hours” format, but if you want to have more of a group Q&A, you might want to use a tool that can handle multiple users at once. Also consider recording the sessions for those that can’t make it.
Live Sessions can be used for anything, from group discussions to online lecture sessions. If you are intending to broadcast information, you can use a tool that allows learners to watch more than interact (screen sharing is also a good option to make sure is available in the tool you utilize as well). If you want to field questions, be sure the tool you use has an option for that functionality (look for text chat, polling, and other interactive options). Again, consider recording the sessions for those that can’t make it.
Unhangouts are less structured sessions that allow learners to connect with each other as they like. This is more learner-centered that other sessions, but allows for more self-determined learning designs.
Online gaming and virtual reality are two emerging ideas for online interaction. Many have heard of Second Life, which in the past was used for more nuanced online interaction. Tools like Second Life are still around, and are sometimes used in online learning. These tools are not for every course or topic, but if you have a compelling educational idea for using them, you should explore the possibilities.
Some issues to keep in mind:
• Online synchronous tools can cause accessibility issues for some learners – keep that in mind when choosing tools.
• Make sure to think about what times would be best for your specific learners in your course, and maybe have alternate times for those that live in different time zones or that work various schedules.
• Make sure to record the sessions as much as possible for those that cannot make it for various reasons.
• As much as you want to encourage learners to turn on their cameras or identify themselves to help them connect with each other, make sure to leave open the option that learners can also be anonymous if they choose. Some learners are shy or have other reasons to not reveal fully who they are online.
• Try to communicate as clearly as you can about the session before it starts. What will be covered? Can you take a poll beforehand to see where students are? Should they come with one thing specific to share or ask? What will happen if the tool you choose to use crashes or doesn’t work?
• Make sure you offer a good reason for learners to be there. Don’t just repeat what is in a book or in the course already. Cover new material, have learners interact with each other, or do something that gives the learners something they can’t get in other areas of the course.
Some possible tools to use:
• Zoom: Zoom has become a popular video conferencing system. It has the flexibility to allow large numbers of people on a single conference call, giving participants flexibility and ease of use. The free version does have some limits if you are in a larger course that you should take into consideration:
• Skype: Skype is a popular program for making online phone calls, but it can also be useful for virtual office hours and smaller group discussions.
• MIT’s Unhangout: MIT’s Unhangout is “an open source platform for running large-scale, participant-driven events online.” Participants gather in a lobby and then are sent to breakout rooms to interact with each other.
• YouTube Live: YouTube Live took over for Google Hangouts on Air, with a focus on broadcasting live events. This is a good tool for broadcast (with some limited ability for questions from those watching), or for smaller online interactive meetings of 10 people or less.
• Institutional Tools: services like Canvas and Blackboard could have various tools bundled with them at your institution or company, so check to see what services you might already have access to. Your institution might also have other tools like Adobe Connect as well.
What We Know Does Not Work
Finally, we offer a list of some things that we generally know will not usually work well in most online courses, also known as “pitfalls to avoid”:
• Making your course content videos too long. People generally only have a 5-8 minute attention span. (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014)
• Having too many videos or too much content in each week. Participants generally don’t have time for a massive amount of content consumption, and they often don’t remember much of it if they just passively consume it. (DiCarlo, 2009; Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014)
• Creating too much of the course structure “on the fly.” Flexibility is always a good idea in teaching, but working on the main structure of the course design right before the course is supposed to go live can decreases quality considerably (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001). Remember – there is a difference between “planning for flexibility” and “I ran out of time, so let’s make this up at the last minute.” See the previous section on “Planning for Flexibility”
• Instructors that ignore social media or don’t even allow learners to set-up or utilize any social media avenues. Social media is one of the a few ways to increase “teacher presence” in courses. (Mathieson & Leafman, 2014; Zheng, Han, Rosson, & Carroll, 2016)
• Low quality content or video, or recording videos when a video is not necessary. Online course participants generally have higher demands on quality than in the past. (Lorenzo & Moore, 2002; Hayes, 2015)
• Complex structures with excessive numbers of modules and topics covered. You generally want to stick with one topic / module per week, with a streamlined, easy to follow structure – especially in MOOCs. (Jordan, 2015)
• MOOCs also have a few extra pitfalls to avoid:
• Replicating a full college course as a MOOC. Learners have varying reasons for taking MOOCs, from just wanting a preview of a topic to gaining a certificate. (Milligan, Littlejohn, & Margaryan, 2013)
• Long course duration. The longer your MOOC, the higher the dropout rate will be. Eight weeks is really the upper limit of MOOC duration, with 5-6 weeks being ideal. (Jordan, 2015)
Please realize that no course is perfect. You will probably not do everything that works and avoid everything that does not work in every course offering. The ideal is to look at the items on these lists as goals to strive for. For instance, your course is not going to fall apart if two of the videos go over 8 minutes long. We have just learned from experience that forgetting too many of the things that work or doing too many of the things that don’t work will cause more learners to drop out or even complain on social media or course evaluations.
Dealing with Student Issues
At some point in your course, you are going to run into learners that have some type of problem: they may not understand something, or have gotten behind, or any other common student issues. You should probably decide now how to react to issues. Some instructors tend to take an approach of catching and shaming learners that have issues. You may have read an article or blog post lamenting how many have grandmothers that pass away each semester, or how learners try weird excuses to get out of due dates, or how various life issues bleed into the class. These instructors usually take a very hard line stance that involves not believing learners.
Certainly some learners will lie at some point about something. However, creating an atmosphere that assumes this from the beginning will tend to add more tension than is needed in a course. We would generally encourage you to take a stance that gives learners the benefit of the doubt, showing compassion instead of suspicion.
A lot of this boils down to how you handle course assignments and deadlines. There may be some required assignments or assessments that are given to you by the institution. Others will be under your control. One way to deal with late work and excuses is to look at assignment grading as more of a conversation than a one-time “gotcha!” event. For example, allow learners to turn assignments in for early feedback before deadlines. Create avenues for learners that genuinely get behind to be able to catch up. Ask yourself: Are you more concerned with them learning the content, or learning a calendar?
To Grade or Not to Grade?
Of course, many student issues arise from various aspects of grading or assessment in courses. Many people work in institutions or companies that require grades. However, not everyone does, and even many places that require grades leave it up to the instructor on how to calculate those grades.
For several decades, many educators have been questioning the practice of grading (Kohn, 2011; Sackstein, 2015). Sometimes this is because the grades have to include things that have nothing to do with what the learner actually learned. A student that completely understands the concept of a lesson, but runs a few days late can potentially earn the same grade as the person that really doesn’t get the concept but follows all the technical instructions perfectly. Other educators object to how grades are a reflection of how well learners can game the grading system rather than learn the content. Still others object to the unnecessary competition that society creates around the highest grades, and the pressure that puts on learners. There are many reasons to find grades problematic.
But is it possible to have a meaningful class without grades? There are many different ways to look at this. Some instructors will allow learners to create the grading system for the class. Others will allow learners to grade themselves. Still others will abolish grades altogether and replace them with things like badges, certificates, and other forms of alternative certification (see the section on “Certification and Badges” for more information on that). There is a range of responses to the problems that many see with grades. If you are thinking of taking a different path with grading in your course, here are some resources to consider reading:
• “What’s the Problem with Grades?” by Alfie Kohn
• “Why I Don’t Grade” by Jesse Stommel
• “12 Alternatives To Letter Grades In Education” by Terry Heick
• “Ungrading My Class – Reflections on a Second Iteration” by Maha Bali
Whether or not you are going to grade your students, have them grade themselves, or go grade-less in your course, you will still need to take several issues concerning how you design your assessment (or your learners’ self-assessments) into consideration. See the Chapter on “Assessment and Grading Issues” for more details on those considerations. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/05%3A_Effective_Practices.txt |
In order to cross over from passive content consumption into active learning, you will need to make real-life activities the focus of your course content (Hayes, 2015). Activities can be discussions, interactive assignments, blogging, and social media participation – or could even involve learners themselves creating content and activities.
Platform-Specific Activities
Most course platforms have several categories of activities that range from standard online activities to innovative technology-driven interaction. The exact tools you have access to will vary based on the one you are using, but there are some that tend to be universal. Becoming familiar with these activities before you design will help you actively imagine where they could be utilized in your class.
• Discussions: Most platforms have a discussion tool, and they all tend to operate in similar fashions. However, if you desire to use discussion tools, you should become familiar with how the one for your specific platform works as some versions are different in some ways than the typical discussion tool.
• Problems/Questions: These tools often have different names, but the general idea is that they are basically online test questions. Sometimes these can be placed in the flow of content to add some interaction, or other times these are in a separate area as a standard “test.” These can also be used as informal or ungraded polls to gauge learner interest or feedback.
• Exercises and Tools: There are also usually several other tools that accomplish various interactive tasks. These include everything from internal blogs, to drag and drop images, to discipline-specific problems such as the periodic table tool.
Blogging and External Activities
Of course, you are also free to use blogs and other external sources in your course as either the main focus of connectivist learning or as a supplement to the content you create. See the chapter on “Social Learning” for more details on how create these types of activities. Your instructional designer should also be familiar with using these tools in an online course.
How to Choose From Various Similar Tools
[Adopted from “The Confusion Over a Little Thing Called Blog” by Matt Crosslin, published in the former MoodleZine Online Journal, July 2006]
When looking at the various tools that are available to you in a course, you will notice that there are many similarities between various tools. How exactly are blogs different from online journal tools or even discussion boards? When it comes down to it, many tools like blogs, journals, and discussion boards are all forms of personal publication that have similar core components:
• Genesis: something prods the need for the tool into existence. This prod may be the need to reflect on personal issues, or the need to start an online conversation.
• Input: there is always a place to type in what you want to say, and then press “Submit.” Any type of media can be submitted – text, audio, or video.
• Interface: The submission is viewed through an interface. This may resemble the reverse chronological reflection journals with feedback at the end format of blogs, or the typical chronological feedback format of threaded discussions, or any number of configurations.
• Feedback: sometimes a function for the truly brave (or the gluttons for punishment), there are often ways to receive responses from either the instructor or other learners or both. Whether it is getting grades from the instructor or arguments from strangers around the world – there is almost always an opening for something.
Of course, we still tend to see blogs, journals, discussion boards, and other tools as totally separate entities. This is because each one of them have a totally different focus. That focus determines how all of the above listed components end up functioning. Let’s look at a few examples:
For blogs, the focus is on the most recent input in a string of inputs. This means that the interface is going to display the entries reverse chronologically. This also means that the input device is going to allow for several entries. The feedback mechanism usually will only allow for comments on one specific input at a time, and related discussions will sometimes be confusing to follow because of that.
For journal tools, the focus is on the overall insight of the entry (or entries). This means that the instructor is usually the only one to be able to return feedback. Many times, the input and interface features are minimal or even non-existent (“just e-mail me a Word doc”), even though they can be well-developed in some tools like Blackboard.
For discussion boards, the focus is on the feedback to the initial question or comment (the genesis). This means that the interface will focus on how to display these responses in an easy to read format. Some discussion board tools obviously don’t spend very much time on developing this, but others do.
Ultimately, the differences between various tools may not matter for your desired assignment, or it may mean the difference between a confusing activity and a successful activity. The important take away from this section is to think through exactly what you want to accomplish with any given activity, and then find a tool to match your intended goals.
Renewable Assignments and Activities
The problem with many assignments and activities is that they are often locked away in password protected learning management systems. This can be good for privacy and safety reasons, but many learners want to have ways to show off the work that they do in class to others (including potential or current employers). While some portfolio systems exist to assist with getting content out of the “walled garden” effect of learning management systems, many of these are still more closed off than some learners would like. Some refer to these kinds of assignments as “disposable,” because they get turned in for class and then deleted once the course is removed or archived off of the system they were submitted to.
One way to deal with this issue is by creating open assignments or activities. These are activities that take place somewhere online, either on a public website or on a website that the learners control. Because of this distributed structure, finding learner’s work can be difficult unless a system is created for collecting these responses and resources. They are often referred to as “renewable” assignments or activities, in contrast to “disposable” assignments that often occur within the LMS. Some examples include having learners edit Wikipedia articles for accuracy, or blogging about their learning process. For more information and some ideas, see these resources:
• “Toward Renewable Assessments” by David Wiley
• “Opting for Renewable Assessments” by Jason B. Jones
• “Renewable Assignments: Student Work Adding Value to the World” by Christina Hendricks
The main focus of renewable assignments would be to create assignments for learners that allows them to add value to the world in some way. Since this value may look different to different learners in different contexts, one way to facilitate renewability is by creating assignment banks, the focus of the next section.
Assignment Banks
Due to the fact that online courses will draw in participants from different learning contexts, one idea to accommodate differing contexts is to create a flexible assignment bank for learners to choose from various assignment options. One innovative pedagogical approach that has the potential to work well in both MOOCs and traditional online courses is the utilization of assignment banks. Jim Groom’s ds106 (Digital Storytelling) course at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) serves as an early example of effectively implementing assignment banks into both types of courses. DS106 is free and open to participants across the globe while simultaneously functioning as a for-credit course at UMW.
One of the key features of this course, the assignment bank, allows students flexibility in their submission types by promoting learner choice through ten unique classifications (e.g. video, 3D printed, written, etc.) (DS106 Assignment Bank, 2016) and use of personal web domains (Groom, 2015). This lack of rigidity has the potential to stimulate creativity when compared to traditional, formulaic assignments. Another strength of the ds106 assignment bank is that the course compiles submissions in an open environment that is also available to future students. This can help develop online community over time and encourage investment in the course by students, both of which have the potential to increase engagement and retention (Groom, 2013).
Evaluating submissions through assignment banks can take place in a number of ways. For example, DS106 utilizes a public difficulty rating system of one to five stars, which students accrue when they complete a submission. Other courses might implement a cumulative point system. In this case, students could complete a number of assignments with different values to earn credit. The types could vary by depth of knowledge, length of time to complete, level of collaboration with peers, or a number of other factors.
Connecting Activities to Theory and Communication
In previous sections “Theoretical Foundations of Learning,” “Clear Communication,” and “Types of Communication,” we looked at how to determine power dynamics, methodology, and communication types for your course and course activities. This chapter has introduced various tools and ideas for activities in courses. It is now time to bring this all together to look at how to choose assignments for your course. This is not a very complex concept once you have examined all of the foundations, but many people will create online courses without putting much thought at all into it, and then wonder why they do not even come close to getting the results they desire from their courses. There are really four basic steps:
1. Determine the Main Power Dynamic for the Course (Instructivist, Constructivist, Connectivist, etc). Ask yourself “What is the main reason for the dynamic I selected?” and “What other power structures could also possibly be part of the course design?” It is okay to have mixtures of others, but thinking through that may make you reconsider the main one.
2. Determine the Main Methodology for the Course (Pedagogy, Andragogy, Heutagogy, etc). Ask yourself “What is the main reason for the methodology I selected?” and “What other methodologies could also possibly be part of the course design?” Again, it is okay to have mixtures of methodologies, but thinking through that may make you reconsider the main one.
3. Make a List of Every Type of Communication You Think Would Be Utilized in the Course (see the previous section on “Types of Communication and Interaction”). This may be a short list (or a list of one) or a long list. Then, next to each type of communication, write out the power structure and methodology you want to use with each type. Use this list to re-evaluate numbers one and two.
4. Create a Map of the Activities You Would Like in the Course. The final step is to start listing the activities (or activity ideas) that you want in the course. Then connect those with a communicative action (Normative, Strategic, Constative, Dramaturgical, etc – see previous section on “Clear Communication”). Connect each of those with a type of communication. Next, add the power dynamic and methodological match for each item in the list. This process may cause you to revise previous steps, or even the map of activities. Finally, match your activities to your goals/outcomes/competencies (and make sure there are no gaps), order the list, and begin plugging it into the course outline.
As you can see, this process requires a lot of looking at different parts and revising as analysis reveals missing elements or incorrect identifications. For example, a list of assignments may reveal that you desire to have mostly heutagogical networked activities where you previously identified instructivist pedagogical student-teacher strategic communication as your course structure. This should lead you to reconsider the overall structure of the course (or to redesign the activities to match the existing structure).
For a more detailed look at this process, as well as a helpful worksheet for the steps listed above, see “From Instructivism to Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings of MOOCs”
References
DS106. (2016). Assignment Bank. Retrieved from http://assignments.ds106.us
Groom, Jim. (2013, October 12). DS106 Assignment Bank 2.0 [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://bavatuesdays.com/ds106-assignment-bank-2-0/
Groom, Jim. (2015, August 13). Digital Pedagogy as Empowered Choice [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://bavatuesdays.com/digital-pedagogy-as-empowered-choice/
Hayes, S. (2015). MOOCs and Quality: A review of the recent literature. Retrieved from eprints.aston.ac.uk/26604/1/M...literature.pdf | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/06%3A_Creating_Effective_Course_Activities.txt |
In addition to activities, online courses also usually contain content. Content can be videos, text, webpages, and textbooks. While MOOCs are typically lighter in these areas than a typical online course, traditional online courses can also be light on content, while MOOCs can be heavy on content. This content can be external to the LMS platform, or hosted inside of it. Since we encourage a focus on active learning over passive consumption of content in courses, we also encourage you to consider the activities first and then add content to support those activities. However, whatever format your content takes, please realize that online course participants have come to expect high quality learning experiences (Hayes, 2015). Please make plans to have all pre-determined content completed and available to participants well before the first day of class.
Microlearning and Microcontent
Microlearning (or short bits of learning) is one type of instruction that works very well with online learning (Hug, 2010), especially with large informal online classes. Theo Hug (2010, 2012) defines microlearning as, “… [A]n abbreviated manner of expression for all sorts of short-time learning activities with microcontent” (p. 2268). Learners benefit from these shorter bursts of information rather than facing a wall of text while taking an online course. The advantage of microlearning is that students can decide what content they want to learn and just focus on that bit of information. This works well for students who are just interested in part of the content of the course, but may not be involved with the course as a whole.
To avoid cognitive load (Sweller, 1988), or loading students down with too much information all at once, consider breaking up curricular content into shorter chunks of content, or microcontent. Microlearning is the idea of taking your curriculum and grouping it in too much briefer units. Think about curriculum in terms of two main categories: text based content and multimedia based content. Multi-modal information might take the shape of audio or video, for instance, or a brief infographic or concept map (Semingson, Crosslin, & Dellinger, 2015). For instance, for audio-based learning, you can create and share micro podcasts that are one to five minutes in length. You might also consider making microcontent in the form of videos that are one to five minutes in length. The main recommendation here is to keep microlearning under five minutes in length, as described in other parts of this handbook.
For an example,see micro podcasts from Dr. Peggy Semingson on the audio platform SoundCloud.
Notice that these micro podcasts linked above are accompanied by a verbatim transcript for each micro podcast. We highly suggest that you write the transcript first and then do the recording of the micro podcast so as to avoid filler words when doing the recording. You can record micro podcasts using your mobile device with the built-in voice memo feature. Suggested platforms include SoundCloud, Audioboom, or Mixcloud. More details on this can be found in the “Creating Quality Videos” chapter later in this handbook.
Some ideas for using microlearning with assessment might include a two to three question quiz, following a bit of content such as a short video. You might also send students on a very brief web-based expedition to look for web-based content or information to share on a discussion board. The goal in this type of task is to keep time spent on learning short and brief; again, under 5 minutes is ideal.
To keep students active in their own learning, you might also consider having students create a short text-based response to a discussion prompt, or have students create a short podcast or video that is one to five minutes in length. This type of task give students agency over their own learning, yet is low stakes enough that it won’t take a lot of time to complete (in theory!). Encourage students to use their mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet, as a way to engage with microlearning and microlearning based tasks.
Other ideas to use microlearning and create professor-authored content for a course:
1. Mobile devices to create microcontent: Use your phone to take a picture of yourself to post on your LMS or CMS. You can use this for your profile picture or syllabus picture. Take pictures of landscapes in your city to include in course for a “local” look for online students to feel connected to the region. Click here for examples of such content. Then, have students do the same and post a picture of themselves, or something related to an aspect of the course content.
2. Use your smartphone to record a short video to post to your course. For example: “reminder” videos (1-2 minutes) that nudge students along with assignments. Also, provide commentary on real world applications as they relate to your course content. Include these as content in your course.
Text Content
Most LMS and CMS platform have very robust tools for creating content. You can also link to external websites for content, or designate an electronic or physical textbooks. We recommend choosing websites and books that are free to use, in keeping with the general idea of openness. There are many open educational resource services that offer a wide range of books and other open materials. We highly encourage you to use these resources for your course. See the chapter on Open Educational Resources for more information.
Most online content delivery platforms are linear in their presentation of content, so keep that in mind when designing content. Leaving the flow of content to skip around to another section can be difficult for some learners, so plan to keep all content and activities in a linear path as much as possible. This will come in handy when breaking large sections of content into manageable chunks. While you can have all content on one long page, scrolling down through that content can introduce scroll fatigue, causing your participants to lose focus (Gobet et al, 2001). Take advantage of the linear paradigm to create several smaller chunks of text intermingled with activities to help your participants engage more with the material.
However, don’t forget that you have the entire World Wide Web at your disposal, full of information and ideas. Why not send your participants out there to find the content for themselves and share it with one another through discussion forums or blog posts? Or you could even create more advanced learner-centered course structures to allow learners to map their own learning pathway. See the chapter on “Advanced Course Design” for more ideas in this area. Even though it can be helpful to many learners to keep your course linear, you can always encourage some learners to take a non-linear approach to learning if they find that helpful.
Video Content
Most online courses contain some portion of video content. Some even deliver all content though videos. We recommend having at least a few videos in your course. This will help your learners connect with you in ways they can’t through text alone. We have a few recommendations for video content in courses:
• Quality: Please keep video quality in mind, even in MOOCs. Even though MOOCs are free, learners are expecting high quality (Hayes, 2015). Low quality videos can cause some participants to drop out. You will need to find a way to utilize a high quality production facility, with professional quality microphones and cameras, as well as a monitor for displaying your script. And yes, you will need to use a script (see the chapter on video production for the reasons why even the best lecturers need to use a script).
• Length: Most people can only watch about 5-10 minutes in one setting. We recommend keeping each video around 3-6 minutes long (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014). If you need more time than that, then please consider breaking the content into multiple parts.
• Total Amount of Videos: This is an important consideration in MOOCs, but can also serve as a good guide for any course as well. Most MOOC participants are taking a MOOC in their limited spare time. If there are too many videos, even if they are less than 10 minutes long, learners will be tempted drop out. Remember that any one MOOC cannot substitute for a full college course. Learners will not be able to watch 1-3 hours of video in any given week. We recommend the weekly video limit being 30 minutes or less (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014). For traditional online courses, there can be more video, but please remember to not overload your learners with more than they can handle in a given week.
• Captioning: Learners with accessibility issues as well as those who do not speak the language that your course is delivered in must have captions and transcripts. These must be timed and downloadable. Additionally, any PowerPoints or handouts covered in the video should be available for download.
Hosting Video Content
Some LMS and CMS platforms will have options for hosting video content. Some will even have very specific requirements for offering video content. Others will not actually host videos, so you will need to use other services for hosting any videos you create. A few general tips on hosting videos:
• Open Video Hosting Service: In keeping with principles of openness, we generally recommend hosting your videos as much as possible on open platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, or other options. You will need to have an account with this service to host the videos you create. Once you upload your videos to your account, you can embed the videos into your LMS/CMS platform. Many of these platforms, such as Blackboard, EdX, and WordPress, support native YouTube embedding. Other services like Vimeo are not supported by all platforms, so be sure to check with both your LMS/CMS platform and the video hosting service you offer.
• Video Downloads: Some students have bandwidth limits or accessibility issues that makes video streaming difficult. Allowing your learners to download videos to watch later can help. This is optional, but highly recommended. Some video hosting services allow this, others do not. If not, you will need a website or other file hosting system that allows file storage and download. You will want to use a standard video format like MP4 if so.
• Transcriptions: These are often required by law in many places where your students will be taking your course, so please plan to provide transcriptions. This would be in addition to captioning your videos (see the chapter on video creation). Not all platforms allow this, while others allow transcriptions but require specific formats. For instance, the edX platform uses SRT files to provide captions and transcriptions. If available, we also recommend turning on the option that allows the transcript to be downloaded, as this will help more students with access issues. If not available, then we recommend uploading the transcript as separate file and adding a download link under the video.
• PowerPoints/Handouts: If you use slides or other material in your video, we also recommend uploading those so that learners can download and view while watching the video. Again, this helps some learners with accessibility issues.
Diversity in Content and Videos
Keep in mind that all content in video or text format will express a point of view that is based in the context of the people that created the content. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it may cause some confusion for those that come from a different social or cultural context (often referred to as “sociocultural”). Everything from our ethnicity to educational level to history to geographic location to personal interests to political views and so on combine to create unique sociocultural contexts. We all exist with these various circles, and those circles have their unique norms, social cues, etc.
Because of this, it is good to keep in mind the diversity of your learners when creating content. Don’t do anything outrageous or culturally insensitive, but take the time to explain things that others may not understand. Think through issues like:
• Do all the people in my examples or graphics look like me?
• What statements or images would not make sense to those living elsewhere?
• Am I looking at all issues from all angles, or just the ones I am familiar with?
• Do I express any of my opinions as facts?
Also be aware of the external content you are choosing. Does it primarily represent one or two sociocultural contexts? How could you change that? Are there ways you can involve your learners in content creation to expand diversity? See the later section on “Diversity in Online Courses” for more information and resources on examining sociocultural influences in your course overall, including the content.
Locating Open Educational Resources
Before diving into creating course content yourself, consider looking for content that has been created by others and shared openly for others to re-use. This type of content – whether it is text, images, videos, audio, books, or any kind of media – is commonly called “Open Educational Resources” (OER). The creator of that media has shared that media via permissions that allow you to use them in your course. In many cases, you are even free to re-mix and modify these resources as you see fit. Not finding the perfect text or video for a particular topic? Look into OER to see if you can mix together something that is a better fix.
Where do you find OER? You can usually search typical websites like Google, Flickr, YouTube, and other websites for open content (typically licensed under a Creative Commons license rather than traditional copyright). For a more in depth look at how to search for open text images, video, and audio content, see this guide:
• Find OER
Interested in creating your own OER? See the next chapter on Open Educational Resources for more details on licensing and open options.
References
Gobet, F., Lane, P. C., Croker, S., Cheng, P. C., Jones, G., Oliver, I., & Pine, J. M. (2001). Chunking mechanisms in human learning. Trends in cognitive sciences, 5(6), 236-243.
Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014, March). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of mooc videos. In Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning@ scale conference (pp. 41-50). ACM.
Hayes, S. (2015). MOOCs and Quality: A review of the recent literature. Retrieved from eprints.aston.ac.uk/26604/1/M...literature.pdf
Hug, T. (2010). Mobile learning as ‘Microlearning’: Conceptual considerations towards enhancements of didactic thinking. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning,2(4), 47-57
Hug, T. (2012): Microlearning. In Seel, Norbert M. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the sciences of learning (Vol. 5, pp. 2268-2271), New York, NY: Springer.
Semingson, P., Crosslin, M. & Dellinger, J. (2015). Microlearning as a tool to engage students in online and blended learning. In D. Rutledge & D. Slykhuis (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2015 (pp. 474-479). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Sweller, J., Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning, Cognitive Science, 12, 257-285 (1988). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/07%3A_Creating_Effective_Course_Content.txt |
The section on openness in the previous chapter touched on the concept of “open” as being more complex than just “free.” In a more formal sense, educational resources that are released openly are often called “open educational resources” (OER). But there is often more to OER being considered “open” than just price. The OER Commons define OER as “teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge…. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared.” Other organizations have slightly similar or different definitions than this – you can see a list of some here.
Why Go Open?
Many institutions and companies are pushing for an increased usage of open resources in their courses as this practice can help learners save on the costs of materials. This is usually accompanied by a push for instructors to create open resources as well. If you have the option to release your content as an open resource, there are also other benefits to doing so in addition to the savings for your learners. Your work and/or research as a professional would be available to a wider audience, gaining you increased recognition among colleagues. This wider audience could give you more people looking at your work to review and give feedback, improving quality and accessibility. This could also help spread the reputation of your institution or company to new areas or contexts. All of this helps you participate in the often-forgotten social responsibility of providing education for all. Open resources are a great chance to help your learners and many others in many ways.
What is an OER?
OER are typically created using the same tools as anything else – word processors, graphic editor programs, etc. No special new skills or tools are necessarily to create OER beyond what you already have been using to create course content or activities. Anything that you create in a course could become an OER: text, articles, books, graphics, videos, activities, assignments, assessments, games, etc. The difference between OER and typical resources are the permissions that you assign to the works you create. One popular way to look at these permissions is the 5R Open Course Design Framework by Lumen Learning:
• Retain: Other people have permission to make, own, and control copies of your resource.
• Reuse: Other people can use your resource in a wide range of ways (like in a class, a website, a video, etc.).
• Revise: Other people can adapt, adjust, modify, or alter your resource itself (for example, translating it into another language).
• Remix: Other people can combine your original or revised resource with other materials to create something new.
• Redistribute: Other people can share copies of your original resources, their revisions, or their remixes with others.
Of course, many people can already do this with many resources online. The difference with OER is that you give permission to do these through a specific open license.
Open Licensing
Most people are familiar with copyright, although probably not the details of copyright law. The main point of copyright is to protect the usage and distribution of original works of authorship, usually in favor of the creator of the work. Anything under copyright is designated as “all rights reserved.”
On the other end of the spectrum is public domain, where either the owner has released all rights, or the rights have expired. This is typically referred to as “no rights reserved.” Different countries, and even different states within various countries, will have varying copyright laws that address rights and public domain. Click here for an example of the differences with in the United States.
Between these two options resides the bulk of open licensing that is often referred to as “some rights reserved.” One of the most popular ways to license these works is through a Creative Commons (CC) license. These are a set of licenses that designate how you would like your work to be attributed, shared, and used (or not used) for commercial purposes. CC licenses are open, free to use, and popular with millions around the world. Also, it is important to note that CC works in parallel with copyright – you can still retain copyright while using CC.
Utilizing a CC license can help get your work out to more people. A brief review of the different CC licenses:
• Attribution (CC BY): Other people can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work (commercially or non-commercially), as long as they give you credit for your original work.
• Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY SA): Others people can remix, tweak, and build upon your work (commercially or non-commercially), as long as they give you credit and license their new work under the same terms.
• Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY NC): Other people can remix, tweak, and build upon your work (non-commercially). Their new work must also credit you and be non-commercial, but they don’t have to license their derivative works the same way you did.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY NC SA): Other people can remix, tweak, and build upon your work (non-commercially) – as long as they give you credit and license their new work under the same terms.
• Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY ND): Others can share your work – commercially and non-commercially – as long as your worked is credited to you and shared complete and unchanged.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY NC ND): Others can download your work and share with others as long as they give you credit, don’t change your work in any way, or use your work commercially.
Please note that the last two licenses (CC BY ND and CC BY NC ND) are not considered OER compliant because they do not allow works to be revised or remixed. If you are not sure which license to choose, or want help in choosing a license, see the CC License Chooser page for help:
Keep in mind that licensing does not just apply to text content. Images, videos, animations, and other creative works can also be offered through an open license. With all forms of media – especially video content – just remember to keep track of everything you use when creating the media. Not everything you use may be free to include in an open license. For example, if you use a famous song for background music in your videos, you won’t be able to release those videos as OER. Keep this is mind with graphics, music, sound effects, and other parts you utilize when creating video or media. There are vast libraries of license-free media that you can use if needed – just search for the type of license-free media you need. You may have to look at multiple websites to find exactly what you are looking for.
Sharing OER Beyond Your Class
Once you create your resource, you will obviously share it within your course. But if that was your end goal with sharing, you probably didn’t need to go the OER route. The next step is to consider how to get that resource out beyond your course.
The main issues you will want to consider are accessibility and platform. You will want to make sure that your OER meets accessibility standards, as well as working with the platform you want to share it on. For media-type works, you will probably consider media sharing websites like YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and others. Make sure to do some research to make sure there isn’t some less popular service that might be a better fit for your media type (for example, YouTube doesn’t allow users to download videos, so you will need to take that into consideration).
For some OER, you might want to upload your resources to your own website, or create a blog to publish them on. You may even want to host your videos on your own website. These topics are covered in the Creating Content chapter.
Of course, in an educational context, the focus of OER creation will be more on creating educational tools, modules, etc. rather than on individual media files. Some resources like the OER Commons can be better suited for building education specific resources in addition to just content. You can see a list of other resource options with an educational or multi-media focus on this page.
Designing Courses using OER
Building an online course entirely using OER is a challenging process, although there is a great wealth of different resources and textbooks available. Some of these resources, as stated previously, allow you to use or remix the chapters, assessments, etc., as necessary to create your course. Not every academic field or subject area has available OER. Sometimes you will want to (or out of necessity: need to) author your own OER. However, if you truly want to design your entire course using OER and not use a ready-made OER textbook with its accompanying materials, this can be challenging as well.
Additionally, if you are a proponent of a particular instructional design model, then outlining your course (which most models advocate) will be an important initial step that will guide the OER decisions that you will need to make. Decisions about what materials best serve students will be dictated by that outline. Also, deciding how you want to provide those materials, either embedded in the course, or through hyperlinks, etc., will also be important (see chapter 5 – Effective Practices).
One of the benefits of OER is the versatility of formats available; one downside is that using OER materials unlocks the possibility of change. Consider what would happen if you link to materials that become outdated… or even removed from the web. Because of this, you will need to review materials regularly to make sure links to materials aren’t broken. You will also need to consider what method of adding the material to your course will best benefit your learners:
• Direct Link. Directly linking to material is the easiest way to connect to OER, but the downside is that you frequently have to check each link to make sure they are still working.
• Copy and Paste. If you copy and paste materials into whatever hosting platform you choose, you now have the materials permanently placed within the course. This eliminates the need to worry about a link breaking due to missing content. However, you no longer have a link to the source content, so changes to the original material will not be reflected in your course.
• Embed Through Iframe. If you are embedding material using an iframe (which typically means utilizing a 3rd party source like a YouTube video), you don’t need to update the content because it is linked to the source directly. If there is a change in the material, the change will be automatically reflected on the course page. Many websites allow embeds, but not all do.
• Dynamic Connections. More complex methods of adding OERs are possible using JavaScript, LTIs, and other technical methods. You will need to follow the instructions of the provider of the material and your course platform to make these happen, and not all connections work well.
No matter which method you utilize, any/all OER material should be reviewed regularly for outdated information and appropriate permissions.
When building a course using OER, here are some main considerations you should keep in mind:
• Make sure the material is hosted on a reliable, stable website (websites like OpenStax and OER Commons that are less likely to be available today and gone tomorrow) and you understand the permissions associated with the material. Not all OER is the same (see the Open Licensing section above).
• Remember: not all material online is OER. For instance, not every YouTube video is considered OER. When it comes to permissions, one common gray area of understanding is the appropriate use of YouTube. Most YouTube videos do not carry a Creative Commons License. Those that are not CC licensed are not OERs. They are free to access and they can be linked to, but be sure to check your company or institutional policy before embedding into a course (even when utilizing a password-protected platform). Some companies or institutions might have a policy against YouTube embeds. This would apply to Ted Talks as well.
• The decisions you make about how OER will be used in your course and its placement in your course will often be dictated by the permissions associated with the OER.
• Consider how you can add variety with OER. Think about mixing it up in your course by using different mediums: video, textbooks, materials, etc. Here is a sample list of various types of OER available:
• Animations
• Assessments
• Assignments
• Case Studies
• Collections
• ePortfolios
• Learning Object Repositories
• Full Online Courses
• Online Course Modules
• Open (Access) Journal Articles
• Open (Access) Textbooks
• Presentations
• Quizzes/Tests
• Reference Materials
• Simulations
• Tutorials
• Videos
• Always check accessibility. Not all OER is accessible (see the section on “Accessibility” in Chapter 2 for more details). | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/08%3A_Open_Educational_Resources.txt |
Grading in Online Courses
Grading and assessment in learning is a complex subject that can (and often does) fill an entire book alone. It is also an area that all instructors with any experience in teaching know well. Grading can run the gamut from informal off the cuff questions thrown out spontaneously in class to gauge understanding, all the way to extensively controlled, proctored high stake tests.
To add to this complexity, every LMS and CMS system has slightly or majorly different ways to create and administer assessments. Your options may be limited to a few tools, or overwhelmingly complex in options. It is outside the scope of this manual to cover every single option of every tool, as there are too many to realistically cover, and they will change immediately after any list is completed. Instead, we will cover some issues concerning assessment and grading in general, giving a few ideas for better ways of approaching the concept of assessment. You may be teaching as part of program or company that has required tests or certifications that are beyond your scope to control. Therefore, this will be a brief examination of those scenarios that you can control.
Keep in mind that grading and assessment online is very different from grading and assessing in face to face classrooms. In face to face classrooms, there is much that you can do to tell if your learners are learning without giving a formal assignment or test. The immediacy of being in the same room with your learners allows you to gauge non-verbal clues, as well as allowing learners to ask questions in the moment. But when teaching online, you will need to find some way of determining what was actually learned by your learners. These are often referred to as “traces” or “artifacts.” Limitations and affordances of the platform you utilize will affect what these traces or artifacts look like. For instance, learners that are online will have access to the entire Internet while learning, making high stakes standardized testing problematic. Learners can just look up answers on the web (and proctoring tools that promise security are often easy to get around). Therefore, you might want to consider moving away from multiple choice tests and consider other more authentic ways of assessing what was learned.
Another aspect to consider when grading is the context of your course itself. For example, MOOCs will be assessed differently than smaller closed online courses. There would really be no way for an instructor to grade hundreds or thousands of papers in a MOOC, so if you are teaching a MOOC you would need to think of other ways to assess learning. Maybe multiple choice quizzes can be more of a “self-check” than a grade? Can those students that want to do projects utilize peer review if you give them a rubric to guide them? See the later section on “Testing Issues Specific to MOOCs” for more on this topic.
Also keep in mind that there could be other differences in how you create graded assignments – such as the difference between undergraduate and graduate courses, or the difference between training new employees versus re-training existing employees that need skills upgrades. In general, the more experience your learners will bring to your course (like in graduate courses, continuing education seminars, labor force re-skilling programs, etc), the more you will want to build on that existing knowledge and skills with more authentic projects than to transmit new information that needs to be memorized.
Earlier in this book, we discussed the decision to grade or not grade. Much of this chapter will be focused on those courses that have decided to grade. However, even in courses where the grade is more of a conversation, or students are grading themselves, the concepts covered here can still guide the creation of assessments in those scenarios. Additionally, even when you have your learners creating their own assignments, this section can help give you tips for how to guide your learners in that process.
Framing Learners
The first step in effective assessment is to take a good look at how you are framing your students. Does the way you design your tests frame them positively as co-learners or apprentices with you, or negatively as possible cheaters? Are you designing assessments that genuinely help with the learning process, or serve as a “gotcha!” for weeding out “weaker” students or those “not doing the work”? We would suggest taking a more positive look at your learners and their learning process, and designing your assessment strategy from that viewpoint.
Of course, there are students that are going to cheat. This happens in face-to-face courses, so of course it will happen in online courses. You will need to assume that learners can Google a lot of things while taking assessments. There are many companies selling monitoring devices or systems aimed at cutting down on cheating. Keep in mind these are not perfect – most students know how to fool them. Just do a search online if you don’t believe me: as soon as any company releases a new proctoring solution, there are soon videos online how to fool that new system. Some further thoughts on proctoring tools and student framing:
• “Shaming and Framing: Imagining Students at an Education Conference” by Chris Gilliard
Something to keep in mind is that learners who cheat do so because they have been given an assessment that is cheatable. In many ways, they are treating the test as a game to beat. This is the problem with standardized testing based on rote memorization: the answers are the same for everyone – and typically already on WikiPedia or some other website somewhere – so why do I need to memorize them in the first place? That is a good question to filter all of our course activities thorough: are students learning a skill and then just being tested on factoids about that skill? Is that really a good way to help them learn?
Types of Assessment
As previously mentioned, there is a long and ever-changing list of assessment tools and options. You are probably already familiar with many of them. While not an exhaustive list, here are some of the more common types of assessments you will see utilized in courses:
• Informal Polling: Usually used to gauge understanding in recent topics, or interest in future topics. These might be specific tools used to aggregate responses, or multiple choice questions utilized to collect more nuanced differences.
• Standardized Testing: These are the most common assessments, utilizing problem types such as multiple choice, true/false, matching, and other forms of standardized question formats. The answers are usually the same or similar for all learners, and tend to focus on rote memorization of facts or application of ideas to scenarios.
• Written Responses: This can take many forms, from open ended questions in a standardized tests, to comprehensive exams, to term papers. Learners may be required to remember a large amount of specific information, or to take what they know and apply it to problem-based scenarios.
• Oral Presentation: Learners either need to prepare a speech or other presentation for the instructor and/or other learners, or answer a series of questions correctly.
• Skills Test/Demonstration: When courses focus more on skills than information, often instructors will create some type of hands-on demonstration of skills gained.
• Activities: Any course activity can potentially be assessed in different ways, from discussion forums to blog entries to creative artifact creation (video, graphics, sound recordings, etc.) or any other work learners produce.
• Group Projects: Group projects are sometimes class activities, and at other times are assessments. These projects usually involve teams working together over a long amount of time to create a complex artifact or presentation.
• Portfolios/Cumulative/Capstone Projects: These are usually a collection of many assignments assembled over the entirety of the course (or multiple courses). These are often evaluated on not only the overall content, but also how they are presented or assembled.
Suggestions for Assessment Practices
Due to the large number of assessment options, it would take several books to cover them all. What we suggest is to determine what assessment plan would work best for your course, and then search for effective practices and tips on those specific options and tools. There are a few ideas we would suggest you take in to consideration before making decisions:
• Involve the learners as much as possible in the process of assessing their own knowledge or skills. The more they can take ownership of their learning process, the more they will learn. Don’t just look at how to involve them in the actual assessment, but in the design of what is tested or how learning is assessed overall.
• Don’t look at testing as a way to catch bad students or punish lazy learners. Many standardized tests fall into this category. Standardized tests can work as a way to help learners know what they should take away from a section of content. But that will work best if you give them unlimited attempts to take the test as a self-check-up.
• Build in ways for learners to give you feedback on any form of assessment, even required testing that you have no control over.
• Consider giving learners the option to determine how they can best communicate to you what they have learned. You might be surprised by their creativity. This requires some flexibility, but it also becomes more difficult for learners to cheat if every person is creating a custom artifact.
• Look at assessment as a conversation over time, not a one-time event. Can they turn in a rough draft of their paper or portfolio or project to you for feedback? If they get behind, are there pathways for them to get caught up?
• Make your job more focused. Some courses have so many discussion boards and tests and papers and so on to grade, that the instructors spend all of their time grading. Some grading rubrics get so complex that it takes forever to read, understand, fill out, and explain them. Focus your attention on what parts really needs to be assessed, and then focus on what you really need to know to fully assess. So much assessment can fall into the “busy work” category. This just burdens you and the learner.
• Where possible, focus on skills demonstrations, portfolios, and other more comprehensive forms of assessment. Have learners apply what they have learned, not just regurgitate factoids.
Standardized and Open-Ended Rubrics
Rubrics are a popular tool to use in grading online assignments. Some think they are a great way to standardize the grading process, while others think they are a way to stifle individual thinking in learners. This difference in opinion probably stems from the fact that some courses may need a more standardized approach, while others may need a more open-ended approach. Standardized rubrics can be seen as a more fair approach to grading by some learners that gives them a specific road-map for every part of an assignment. On the other hand, more open rubrics can save time and headaches, while allowing your learners to have some freedom and flexibility in their learning.
The most common way to design standardized rubrics is to have extensive details on each line of the rubric explaining what each point counts for, with several rows of criteria covering every aspect of each assignment:
Introduction / Topic 10 points: Student properly generates questions around a topic and introduces them fully. 5 points: Student generates questions and has a partial introduction. 2 points: Student is missing either introduction or topical questions. 0 points: Student has no questions or topical questions.
This method creates a strict roadmap that helps many learners. However, it also rarely allows learners to wrestle with what they want to do for an assignment. Additionally, there are many gaps that learners could fall into between point values or descriptions. These issues may not apply to all assignments, so you may find that a standardized rubric works best for your course design. Just keep in mind that these can be more time consuming to create and utilize from the instructor viewpoint.
Another way to approach grading issues is to take a more flexible, open-ended approach to creating rubrics. For example, try to have fewer rows that focus more on learners showing their knowledge than focusing on various assignment details like word count or assignment formats. Simply give the general area that will be graded, the parameters that you will look for, and a total number of points possible. Then leave an open slot for you to enter the points they earn in that area and a place for you to explain why you gave those points. For example:
Subject Knowledge Subject knowledge is evident throughout the project. All information is clear, appropriate, and correct. 20 (comment) (points earned)
This format can help you look at grading as more of a conversation than a final decree, especially if you allow learners to turn in early versions of assignments for formative feedback. However, keep in mind that learners may not be accustomed to this more open-ended approach, so you may cause anxiety if you do not scaffold them into this less structured approach.
Testing Issues Specific to MOOCs
Testing in a MOOC environment offers many unique challenges. The large number of students means that grading individual assignments is nearly impossible for most instructors. Some MOOC platforms will provide a number of self-grading options that can help in these situations. Additionally, you can create self- and peer-reviewed rubrics if that method will fit your design. There are also developments in the area of auto-graded papers that will analyze how you grade 100 papers, and then apply that logic to the rest of the papers. However, this feature is still in the testing phase.
The main concept to keep in mind is that MOOCs are open, and all participants will have access to the entire Internet when taking tests. This means that you do not want to design your tests as a big “gotcha” to catch learners that didn’t memorize the content. You will want to design the tests as a means to see if students can find the correct answer using whatever resources they can, and then indicate the correct answer on a test. Or, you may wish to design peer-reviewed assignments that aren’t based as much on correct answers as much as evaluating how well content has been applied. Finally, you can also create self-review rubrics that allow participants to reflect on their own learning in a deeper manner.
The main idea to keep in mind is that MOOC culture does not require an instructor to grade thousands of tests, papers, and forum posts every week. That would be unthinkable. So design your courses accordingly.
Certification and Badges
Many MOOC providers will offer certificates and / or badges to participants that complete their courses. Certificates and badges can be part of regular online courses as well. Typically these forms of reward are optional, meaning learners can still participate in a course even if they do not want to seek a badge or certificate. However, in many cases, badge or certificates are part of the official requirement to complete the course.
When badges or certificates are optional, keep in mind that some participants will want the certificates, and some will just want to learn the content for personal reasons. So you might want to have a certain set of activities for all participants, and then a special set of activities and / or assessments for those participants that are seeking certification.
In theory, anyone can use any tool to make a badge or certificate and send it to those that earn them. However, this could quickly lead to learners sharing these images with others that have not completed the work. Therefore, it is recommended to use a system that credentials secure badges and / or certificates in some ways. Usually, these are centralized spaces that allows you to create the credential and then serve as the gatekeeper to handing them out. Learners often have to create an account on the service to display their badges or certificates earned. If you are interested, here are some credentialing resources:
• Credly: free service for up to 500 badges.
• OpenBadges: widely accepted open credentialing system.
• Issuing OpenBadges.
• Badgr: free, open-source credentialing system. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/09%3A_Assessment_and_Grading_Issues.txt |
Video production is a time-intensive process that requires extensive planning and preparation. Please review the following sections to ensure that you have allotted enough time and resources to create the desired amount of video you would like for your course.
Timed Transcripts
In order to meet most online accessibility guidelines, you will need to have transcriptions (timed if possible) for every video you produce. Some video hosting systems require a specific type of transcript format for their system (such as SRT – a timed format that allows specific words to appear on the screen as they are being spoken in the video), while others will accept many different formats. Make sure to check with your video hosting service. You can always pay a transcription service to create transcription files from completed videos, but just keep in mind this can get expensive. One way to save time and money on transcriptions is to create your videos using the recommended guidelines below. These guidelines will help you create a professional video with a transcript already in hand to be quickly converted to any transcription format.
Time Estimates for Online Course Video Production
Pre-prep* Filming Processing †
Up to 10 minutes with no slides, graphics, etc. 5 hours 0.5 hours 1 hour §
Up to 10 minutes with 25% slides, no moving parts ‡ 5.5 hours 0.5 hours 2 hours
Up to 10 minutes with 50% slides, no moving parts ‡ 6 hours 0.5 hours 5 hours
Up to 10 minutes with 75% slides, no moving parts ‡ 6.5 hours 0.5 hours 8 hours
Up to 10 minutes with 25% moving parts* 8 hours 0.5 hours 8 hours
Up to 10 minutes with 50% moving parts* 9 hours 0.5 hours 16 hours
Up to 10 minutes with 75% moving parts* 10 hours 0.5 hours 25 hours
* includes creating scripts, gathering slides, providing documentation and content for moving parts, etc. All materials are required to be submitted in native digital format (i.e. no scans of handwritten content). Please see Script Creation Process below.
† processing time will vary depending on the quality of content provided from the prep stage. Estimates given are for high quality native digital formats.
‡ moving parts refers to self-revealing equations, animations, moving graphics, or anything beyond a static PowerPoint slide. There are no estimates for 100% because all videos need to contain some video of the speaker.
§ includes 0.5 hour for audio processing and 0.5 hours for video processing, this amount included in all estimates in this column.
The Importance of the Script Creation Process
The most time-intensive process for presenters is creating a script. But also the single most important prep is to prepare a script. This heavily impacts editing time for the final media. It also impacts how the students digest the material. It also impacts government-mandated needs for closed-captioning.
Impact on students: Research has shown that there is only a short duration of time (about 4.5 minutes), before students start to lose interest in the media and stop paying attention (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014). If this is true, why not capitalize on the value of a well-performed efficient presentation (devoid of digressions, mis-cues, fumbling over mis-placed slides, and tons of fillers like “Ummmm”)? All of these issues can be avoided if the presenter has a script, and performs the script with a degree of enthusiasm and engagement. With a script, it takes far less air-time to get a point across, than if the idea was presented ad-lib.
Impact on delivery: Often, the delivery of online media (especially when prepared using tax-payer dollars at state institutions) is required to be multi-channel, ie, close-captioning is often mandated for all audio tracks. If your subject matter is highly technical, it is far better that you (as the expert) provide a transcript of what is said, rather than having a transcript prepared by a third-party (who probably does not know your subject matter or your specialized terminology).
Impact on Editing: There are two extremes in editing the audio track of a presentation.
1. The audio is a scripted performance, and the performer has practiced the script a few times, and performs the script “on-camera” with relatively few errors or re-takes. A scripted performance usually results in a recording in which the presenter sounds knowledgeable, authoritative, and well-prepared. In a well scripted performance, the presenter delivers the material with a degree of dynamic enthusiasm. The speaker gains credibility.
2. The audio is an unscripted performance, in which the performer must conceive and present the material on-the-fly. Ad-lib performances tend to ramble, be disorganized, and have a speech register which is slow (because idea and terminology is being retrieved from memory, and this requires mental processing time – the performer tends to speak faster than they think, so the presentation slows down verbally to match the slow processing time that it takes to construct the discussion in the presenter’s mind). If the performer makes some verbal mistakes, then the performer will employ conversation repair mechanisms to re-direct the audience back to the corrected train-of-thought. These repair mechanisms involve louder speaking volume, change of pitch and speaking rate. (If the editor removes the mistakes, then the voice quality before and after the splice (where the mistake was removed) do not match, and the audience knows that a substantial edit has occurred. Also, in an unscripted performance, the presenter usually sounds distracted or unknowledgeable, unsure and un-authoritative, and dis-organized and un-prepared. The audience wonders why they are listening to someone who does not know the topic. Students wonder why they are required to submit well-organized assignments on time, when the instructor clearly is disorganized and doing things at the last minute. The speaker loses credibility.
In terms of production schedule, there is a trade-off in pre-production workload and post-production workload. Usually, the presenter is responsible for most of the pre-production workload, and the editor is responsible for the bulk of the post-production workload.
Script Creation Process
One highly recommended method for script creation is to pre-record the presenter delivering the material live (in class or into a Dictaphone device) to serve as raw content. This pre-recording is then transcribed, and then edited, to improve rhetorical organization (eliminate digressions and back-tracking or combine clarification question answers with original statements), to correct improper vocabulary issues, and to adjust the information density to match the requirements of potential on-screen video effects (this usually involves replacing minimal grammatical phrases (like pronouns or generic verbs like “do”, ie replace “if you do this” with “If you perform this calculation”)).
Please note that parts of the script preparation can be performed by persons other than the presenter. The presenter delivers a live-performance of the presentation, but can then hand off that recording to a GTA or transcription service to get a transcription, and then the GTA or the presenter can edit the script. The edited script is then given back to the presenter for review and practice. Therefore, it is possible that the presenter only be involved in about 2 hours of the 5-hour script-prep activity.
The rule of thumb is that live lectures usually distill down by 2/3 when converted to professional audio. Therefore, in order to create a video segment of up to 10 minutes, the following table will describe minimum estimates for pre-pre work:
Live performance raw content capture (lecture, etc) 0.5 hours
Transcription of raw content (can be sent to transcription service) 2.0 hours
Presenter edits transcription 2.0 hours
Presenter reads through edited transcription for practice 0.5 hours
Minimum Script Generation Time 5.0 hours
Also, as noted earlier, a complete script is much easier to convert to the required SRT format. For instructions on how to create SRT files yourself, please see this guide:
• “How to Create an SRT File” by Andrew Meer
In some cases, you may not have the ability to go through this entire process. In those cases, focus on what you can accomplish. Start by writing your script out in a conversational tone. Then read it out loud to time it and see who it sounds to you. Edit your script and read aloud until you feel you get it correct. Remove extra parts and rabbit trails that aren’t needed as you perfect it. Then practice with the final version a few times before recording it. Even if you think you are good at “winging it,” preparation and practice will make you sound more professional. Finally, look at suggestions for how to make good marketing or branding videos – these contain tips that will help any video script writing process. For one example, see:
• “How to Write an Awesome Video Script in 8 Steps” by Jake Kilroy
Audio Editing
At a minimum, the audio editor must listen to the full length of the recording. If the recording is absolutely clean, with zero edits required, then the audio editor spent 10 minutes “editing.” However, the typical scripted session will involve a small number of edits to correct for mis-pronunciations, stumbles, and page-turning, etc. As such, typically, 20% of the recorded scripted session is discarded. If the session is scripted, it is fairly easy to make splices that are “undetectable” in the final cut.
In contrast, if the session is unscripted (for example, lecture capture), typically, a very large number of edits have to be made to generate a final cut that is devoid of information errors, organization errors, speech errors, etc. As a result, typically, two-thirds of the unscripted studio session is discarded.
Overall Time Considerations
Therefore, to create up to 10 minutes of quality video, a minimum of 6.5 hours is required if no problems are encountered. However, the chance that there will be no issues is very, very small. Additionally, this is the estimate for straight video with no graphics, animations, self-revealing equations, etc. (see “Graphics and Video Preparation” below)
To put this into perspective, let’s compare to full in-person lecture capture. Consider a presenter going to class 3 times per week for one hour presentation for 15 weeks (a standard MWF one-hour lecture format). Let’s consider that it takes these 45 hours of unscripted sessions (contact hours) to deliver a course-load of information. That will require a total of about 540 man-hours to produce, and will yield only 15 hours of finished audio tracks.
On the other hand, if the presenter were to take those 45 hours of live-presentation time, and re-allocated them to 30 hours of script prep (enhanced by additional hours of GTA/transcription service involvement) and 15 hours of studio presentation, then this will require only 135 total man-hours to process, and will yield 12 hours of finished audio tracks (and these audio tracks will be higher quality – the presenter will appear to be better-informed, more authoritative, and better-prepared – that is, more professional, with higher credibility).
Thus, with scripted studio performances for audio of a standard course, there is approximately 400 man-hour savings. This block of 400 man-hours can be re-directed to providing more elaborate graphics for this course (or providing audio editing for 2 additional courses, or providing the audio editing for this course for 1/3 of the price…)
Graphics and Video Preparation
The graphics/moving parts portion of video creation is much more time-consuming, but typically, requires less presenter time. The presenter provides a bunch of raw materials to the media editor, and the media editor spends weeks and weeks building media. This impacts monetary budgeting and time-budgeting (to ensure the finished media is deployed on time). The chart at the beginning of this section demonstrates how the overall production time increases quickly with the addition of slides, animations, self-revealing equations, etc. However these graphics are important for illustrating points and examples and should not be left out just because of time considerations.
The difficulty in estimating time requirements for these additions is that complexity can vary greatly. For example, self-revealing equations look very simple when comparing the final product to computer animated graphics, but can take much longer to create due to the extensive needs of proper placement, spacing, and readability of each individual character. This process can also be slowed down by inferior raw material provided by instructors (for example, handwritten notes that are hard to read and not properly written out).
In order to ensure the best possible delivery of content with the least amount of wasted time, we recommend all materials to be created digitally in a native digital format (for example, graphics created in a graphics editor and not just a scan of a textbook page). If the media specialist can copy and paste high quality content right into the video editor program, this can save them and the presenter enormous amounts of time. It may seem like it is faster to write out a formula on paper than take the time to enter it in an equation editor, but if the media specialist has to call you and set up a meeting to clarify what doesn’t look right and then meet for an hour or more to clear up one equation and so on and so forth, you might actually cause more time in the long run by trying to save time up front.
Therefore, please sit down with your technical media consultant to go through all graphical needs to ensure you are using the highest quality creation method from the beginning. Even if it does turn out that they need to do a hand sketch to create a completely new animation from scratch (which is rare), at least they will have created their own hand sketch that they will understand from the beginning.
Licensing and Videos
Another issue to consider when creating your videos is how they will be licensed. For many people, your institution or company will already have made decisions on how the videos you have created will be licensed. For others, you may have some or total freedom to license the videos that you create as you like. If you decide to use any type of open license for your video, this could increase the impact and spread of your content outside of the course. For more details on open licensing (and licensing in general), see the chapter on Open Educational Resources.
References
Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014, March). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of mooc videos. In Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning@ scale conference (pp. 41-50). ACM. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/10%3A_Creating_Quality_Videos.txt |
You may have noticed that many online courses utilize social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. While there really is no one right way to utilize social media in a course, there are concepts and designs that work better than others. This section will cover some ideas and suggestions for social media usage in your course.
Designing for Social Learning
While there are many different ways to use social media in an online course, they generally fall into two different categories:
1. Official Communication: Announcements and other course communications are re-posted on various social media outlets in order to boost their signal with all learners, or to encourage interaction with these communications.
2. Social Interaction: Learners form connections on social media sites to ask questions, gain assistance from other learners, and possibly form future networking connections. These are less formal and easier to connect with than official course forums.
Additionally, some courses encourage participants to work on social media sites (such as blogs) to create content for the courses that is then submitted to other participants for peer feedback. Some courses (usually MOOCs, but not always) exist completely on social media outlets outside of an official Learning Management System. This form of learning is called connectivism, and MOOCs that are designed with this structure are referred to as cMOOCs (Siemens, 2005). For more details on this topic, see the section on Personal Learning Networks later on in this manual.
The key for designing for social media is to have a clear purpose for what you want to do and then to make sure that you stick with that method. If you are using certain social media outlets for official communication, then make sure this is clearly communicated in the design. If you want participants to use social media for interaction with other participants, then also make that clear. However, creating a long list of rules for using these social media outlets will usually have a chilling effect on informal usage, so avoid placing a large number of rules.
Please keep in mind that social media is not a safe place for everyone. Bullying and harassment are a major issue on all social networking sites, with most failing to do anything to curb any of it. Make sure to allow alternatives to social networking for your learners, including everything from using pseudonyms to using alternative, lesser-known services to not using any social networking websites at all. Additionally, if you are creating a course for a government owned entity such as a public university, you will need to carefully follow government guidelines for student privacy. For example, in the United States, state universities have to follow FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) guidelines in relation to utilizing social networking websites:
• Official FERPA Recap
• Example of FERPA at a Glance for Faculty from one college
• “15 Social Networking Safety Tips from Norton Security” by Emma Kavanagh
• “5 Do’s and Don’ts for College Students Using Social Media” by Jeff Greer
The instructional designer you choose for your course should have a background in all learning design philosophies, including social learning. Be sure to seek their advice for how to design for social learning within your specific course.
Social Networking Websites
Here are specific suggestions for using various popular social networking sites.
First of all, you will want to find a short, but easy to remember code name for your course that is available across all of the social media sites that you want to utilize in order to help participants find your outlets more easily. It could be something related to the course number, ie “econ101mooc.” Space is a premium on some sites like Twitter, so be sure to keep it as short as possible.
Twitter
Twitter can be a good site to broadcast quick announcements, ideas, relevant news articles, and links to full updates. Make sure your Twitter username is available, and make it match your course hashtag (i.e. “http://twitter.com/econ101mooc”). You can add a fuller course name in the settings. Also, make sure to update the avatar to match your institutional or company logos, and have a graphic designer create a header image that matches any other graphic art used for the course.
Twitter Hashtags
Conversations on Twitter usually revolve around hashtags. You can’t own these, but you do want to pick one that few people use in order to help keep the conversation focused on your course. Participants often search Twitter for course hashtags, so creating one that matches your courses Twitter ID (if you have one) will help put your official tweets in the search result. For example, you would check to see if “#econ101mooc” is used much, and if not – AND it is available as a username – use both of those.
Facebook Page
A Facebook Page (not group) can serve as another official channel for announcements, relevant web links, and other course communications. Your social media coordinator will need to create a Facebook Page with their account and then upgrade you and all other course instructors to group admins. You will want to use the same Page ID that you use for your Twitter username (i.e. “http://facebook.com/pages/econ101mooc”) for consistency. You can always make the display name more descriptive.
Facebook Group
While Facebook Pages tend to be more formal communication spaces, Facebook Groups are more focused on the members and therefore are more interactive. You can create a group in addition to the Facebook Page – some participants tend to favor one over the other for a range of reasons. As with Facebook Pages, you will also want to use the same Group ID that you use for your Twitter username (i.e. “facebook.com/group/econ101mooc”) for consistency. You can always make the display name more descriptive.
Google Account (Gmail, Google+, Etc)
As discussed previously, you may need a YouTube account and channel to host your course videos. It is usually a good idea to use the entire Google account that comes along with this. A Gmail account that matches your other social networks (i.e. “[email protected]”) could serve as a great centralized email for the course (especially in MOOCs). Creating a Google+ page for your course can also serve as an alternative for users that are not fans of Facebook or Twitter. All of these accounts connect and interact smoothly. They also interact with Google Hangouts.
Google Hangouts and YouTube Live
If you wish to have a live online session with at least one or more people in your course, Google Hangouts or YouTube Live are good options. A Google Hangout will allow up to ten instructors or guests to interact online, while YouTube Live will allow unlimited numbers of people to watch a streaming session live. These are then archived on your YouTube channel. Just make sure to do a test run before really using Google Hangouts or YouTube Live as the settings can be tricky. Also be sure to set up the Google Hangout or YouTube Live through your course Google+ page or YouTube account in order to keep everything connected.
WordPress Blog
As you can see, there are many social media outlets to keep track of. One way to connect with all of them is to create content on a WordPress blog. Content created on a blog can automatically be posted to Facebook and Twitter through behind-the-scenes connections (see the “Jetpack” extension for more on this feature). This would be a good way to post announcements – create them in WordPress, automatically post them to social media outlets, and then copy and paste the message into an announcement in your course platform.
Hootsuite, Known, and Other Social Media Managers
There are also several other sites that can help you manage multiple social media outlets. Hootsuite and Known are two of the more popular ones. Other services can also work well. There are also several mobile apps that can help – for example, the iPad Twitter app lets you connect several Twitter accounts in one app. Additionally, Facebook has a mobile app specifically for running pages.
Slack
Slack is a newer messaging system that has been growing in popularity recently. It is a good tool for group collaborations that need to be asynchronous in nature. Groups can also share files, videos, images, and other documents within Slack easily. Additionally, Slack can integrate with many other tools like calendars and messaging systems. Slack groups can be organized by channels that are designated for specific topics, groups, or other configuration.
Alternatives to Popular Social Networking Websites
Some or even many of your learners may object to using certain social media tools for many reasons. Some may feel it is not safe for them to have an online presence (often due to real life threats or other issues). Some may object to the ads in various services. Some may not like their personal data being sold to advertisers. These concerns are valid, and you will need to explain these issues clearly to all learners. Additionally, you will need to embrace alternatives for those that have concerns. There are different ways to address concerns:
• If learners want to be on social media but have concerns about their full identity being online (or maybe tied to specific contentious course content), then discuss the option of using a pseudonym instead of their real one. See “Should You Podcast Under Your Real Name, or a Pseudonym?” by Daniel J. Lewis (focused on podcasting, but applicable to any social media) for a good discussion of the pros and cons of using real names and pseudonyms.
• If learners are concerned about ads or data, they could explore other services with different polices than the popular services like Facebook or Twitter. For example, see “What are the Best Alternatives to Facebook?” with a chart on how various alternative services handle these issues. Or look into open-source alternatives like Mastodon.
• For learners that do not want to be on social media at all, create ways for them to complete course assignments in other ways. For instance, could they read other’s tweets and then email their responses to you, or post them in a close discussion board on your institutional LMS/CMS? This may not seem like an ideal solution to some learners, but it does respect the privacy of those that wish to stay off of social media. Some services will offer tools that will embed in courses – for example, Twitter offers a twitter hashtag search result widget that embeds web pages. Adding this in your course would allow learners to see Twitter activity without having an account. You will need to check with the service you want to use to see if this is possible, or search for third party possibilities as well.
Personal Learning Networks
Wikipedia describes a Personal Learning Network (PLN) as “an informal learning network that consists of the people a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from…. in a PLN, a person makes a connection with another person with the specific intent that some type of learning will occur because of that connection”. Connectivist MOOCs utilize PLNs as the main mode of course interaction, but they can also be utilized in any course. One of the benefits of connectivist learning is that participants retain control over their course work and can therefore display their accomplishments to anyone that they choose.
Many of the social learning tools mentioned above are typically used in PLNs. However, instructors should never assume that just telling participants to use these tools will encourage their usage. Lessons will need to be designed to specifically incorporate PLNs into the activities. Activities will need to encourage learners to post work to their social media sites, and then share the link with the course inside of the LMS/CMS platform. Additionally, instructors that are actively using the Twitter Hashtag as well as blogging about the course content will need to encourage participants to join in.
Additionally, a course hub of some type that pulls together participant blog posts, tweets, videos, images, and other work can help encourage learners to participant in social learning. A self-hosted WordPress blog with certain tools installed (see the “FeedWordPress” extension) can be one tool to create a course hub.
If you are interested in exploring these options for your course, be sure to find an instructional designer for your team that is familiar with connectivism and social learning. Further details on these topics are outside of the scope of this manual, but if you are interested in these topics, see the links below:
• Connectivism
• Sample Connectivist MOOC Handbook
• “Creating a Course Hub” by Alan Levine
Diversity in Online Courses
One of the benefits of moving into online learning is the ability to connect with a more diverse audience of learners that many face-to-face learning experiences tend to lack. When adding on top of that a layer of openness or social learning, the diversity can increase even more. However, even within smaller groups that may share ethnicity or location, there are still many sociocultural factors such as religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, and geographic location that will bring in different viewpoints, opinions, and life experiences.
The first step in embracing diversity in online leaning is for instructors and course designers to become aware of the influence that their own unique social and cultural contexts have had on their views. No matter who you are, your unique social and cultural contexts have influenced what you know, how you learned what you know, and how you want to teach what you know. This also means that those unique sociocultural factors place a filter or worldview on your teaching and communication that could be confusing to others from different sociocultural contexts.
We all believe that respect is a major foundation for teaching. Before we ask our students to respect each other’s unique worldviews, we should consider evaluating our worldview to see how it influences our teaching and interactions. There are many ways to evaluate your worldview to develop a sense of cultural awareness. If you need a place to start, one option is the Cultural Awareness Online Continuing Education Course. The audience for this self-paced lesson is nurses, but the awareness it fosters can help people in any field.
Once you have a good idea of how your worldview affects your course, it might be a good idea to review your content and activities for possible issues. Then you will need to develop a system to communicate your expectations of respect and interaction with the learners in the course. Analysis into the Bystander Effect (see “Social Media: The Modern Stage for the Bystander Effect?”) as well as the concept of “the wisdom of the crowds” (see “The Madness of the Crowds” by Tim Hwang) has found that people will generally stand by when they see disrespect or attacks happening online (or maybe even join in the attack where they might not have said anything if they were the only one). Therefore, course designers need to implement guidelines for respect for diversity in their courses. The next section covers this issue.
Safety Issues and Codes of Conduct
Courses offered through institutions or companies often are required to adhere to various honor codes or codes of conduct at all times. However, not all codes are enough to deal with safety issues in all courses, and some institutions do not have them. Additionally, MOOCs will attract many participants that are not officially bound by institutional codes because they are not under the authority of the institution. This can possibly create unique situations when dealing with harassment and bullying that happens online. As an instructor, your top priority should be to create a learning environment that is safe as possible for all learners. Several years of social networking has basically taught us that the community does not always necessarily rise up and expel abusers or defend victims (Brody & Vangelisti, 2016). You will need to develop a Code of Conduct to spell out how you expect participants to act in your course as well as what will happen if they violate the Code. Even though many online courses seem to be fairly safe for most learners, please be prepared to point out the Code of Conduct and enforce it if necessary.
A Code of Conduct should include at least the following components:
• Harassment free policy
• Description of what counts as harassment
• Description of what could happen to those that harass other participants (including you as the instructor cooperating with any legal action that might occur)
• An encouragement to report harassment
• A statement that declares these codes apply at all course related activities.
• Links to all Privacy Statements of all services recommended in the course (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Links to avenues of reporting abuse on any services utilized in your course (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
For more rationale, details, and examples of Course Codes of Conduct, please see the following resources:
• “Codes of Conduct 101 + FAQ” by Ashe Dryden – made for conferences, but also applies to courses
• “MOOCs and Codes of Conduct” by Matt Crosslin
• Example MOOC Code of Conduct
References
Brody, N., & Vangelisti, A. L. (2016). Bystander intervention in cyberbullying. Communication Monographs, 83(1), 94-119.
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/11%3A_Utilizing_Social_Learning_in_Online_Courses.txt |
Online courses have given learners across the globe a unique opportunity to learn outside of formal educational settings and in less supervised environments. The independent nature of this form of learning heightens the need for learners to have the tools to both initiate and manage their own learning. Moreover, as individuals engage with content, instructors, and fellow students exclusively online, an explicit focus on techniques meant to deepen the learning experience becomes increasingly important. All learners in both in-person and online courses are in need of effective skills and strategies to become aware of and self-regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Within physical classrooms, and even within smaller fully online courses, instructors can somewhat easily incorporate activities such as journaling and peer discussion intended to promote states of mind that foster deep reflection and perspective taking. As some courses grow to a massive scale, the task of promoting these qualities becomes much more difficult. One way of fostering these skills is by incorporating contemplation in your course.
Contemplation is the central focus of contemplative science — a growing multidisciplinary field aimed at understanding the mind-body systems through contemplative practices (Roeser & Zelazo, 2012). Mindfulness, a term quite popular among educators at the moment, is one construct that falls under the umbrella of contemplative science. Contemporary researchers define mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment, including thoughts and emotions, with acceptance, curiosity, and kindness (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mindfulness is an ancient idea with roots in different philosophies and religious traditions. Over the last century, mindfulness has been adopted globally and is now a widely used contemplative exercise.
Cultivating Mindful Awareness and Reflection
Mindfulness meditation trains skills by applying restraint on ordinarily uncontrolled mental or physical activities (Mind and Life Education Research Network [MLERN], 2012), encouraging the use of voluntary control in order to focus attention on certain objects (e.g., the breath) or thoughts (e.g., kindness to others). Schools throughout the United States are incorporating mindfulness meditation into educational curricula with the goal of enhancing self-awareness and self-regulation of attention, emotions, and behavior (Greenberg & Harris, 2012; MLERN, 2012). While mindfulness is readily criticized, the science supporting it is quite persuasive. Individuals who engage in mindfulness practice demonstrate reduced anxiety and depression (Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010; Holzel et al., 2013), lower stress (Baer, 2003; Creswell et al., 2016), improved attention skills (Becerra, Dandrade, & Harms, 2016; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Sedlmeier et al., 2012), increased self-regulation (Tang et al., 2007), and richer and more positive personal relationships (Carson, Carson, Gil, & Baucom, 2004; Coatsworth, Duncan, Greenberg, & Nix, 2010). Recently, researchers have shown that students who engage in mindfulness activities perform better academically, even in mathematics (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2015).
Mindfulness and contemplative science more broadly has been applied to the learning sciences in what is termed contemplative education. Roeser and Peck (2009) defined contemplative education as “a set of pedagogical practices designed to cultivate the potentials of mindful awareness and volition in an ethical-relational context in which the values of personal growth, learning, moral living, and caring for others are also nurtured” (p. 127). Contemplative education provides a specific set of practices designed to nurture mindfulness and intentional forms of being and learning. What’s necessary for contemplative education is a competent teacher (either a person or a set of teachings) and pedagogical practices embedded in experiential learning aimed at cultivating relaxed and concentrated states of awareness within learners. These practices are placed in a larger context of ethics and values such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and respect for others. Learning practices that fall under contemplative education include activities such as meditation, reflecting upon existential questions, being in nature, physical activities such as yoga or tai chi, and doing art (Roeser & Peck, 2009).
Examples of Contemplative Practices
One exemplary MOOC that focuses on contemplative education through mindfulness at scale is the edX course “Transforming Business, Society, and Self with U.Lab.” The lead instructor is Otto Scharmer out of MIT. Adam Yukelson is the co-instructor and lead designer for the course who has shared information and experiences of their students with me. The course began in January 2015 and ran for eight weeks, during which they had approximately 42,000 registered participants. During the first run of their course, which may or may not be due to their focus on mindfulness, they had the fourth-highest completion rate on edX. The majority of learners in their course have no previous experience with mindfulness.
The purpose of the course, as Mr. Yukelson stated, is “designed to help leaders at all levels in business, government, and civil society identify and shift the deeper patterns of thought that, when left unexamined, keep us re-enacting results in social systems that almost nobody wants.” This is where mindfulness and contemplative practices become crucial. Dr. Scharmer and Mr. Yukelson view mindfulness as one helpful method for suspending and letting go of patterns of thought. This suspension of typical habits of thinking opens up new possibilities of being.
The instructors begin by introducing the principles behind mindfulness primarily by focusing on the different ways one can pay attention. This serves as the basis for what many participants referred to as the most crucial element of the course—coaching circles. Coaching circles are peer-led, and use a seven-step process “case clinic” process. They teach the process through two instructional videos, then give participants a mechanism outside of edX to self-select into groups of 5-6. The coaching circles meet one hour per week, with each meeting focusing on one of the members. In some instances, a coaching circle consists of friends and colleagues and they meet in person, but many of the circles only meet virtually. The individuals in these groups typically do not know each other prior to entering the course and will set up their weekly meetings using Google Hangouts or Skype. Mr. Yukelson shared feedback from two learners from the MOOC.
“The connection with other circle members was personally transformative. Although I missed the first coaching circle call, I felt as though I had known the others my entire life…. My skepticism around the ability to connect in such a way melted. I realized it was not the medium [through which] I communicated, but how I showed up internally that made all the difference! This paradigm shift will stick with me for the rest of my life. After endless in-person and online ‘downloading’ sessions that went nowhere, this was as though a portal I never knew existed was opened completely. All I had to do was walk through it with the love and support of the others. I was so struck with ‘I am them’ and ‘they are me’.”
“I’ve never spoken to someone I don’t know on video as a first means of contact before, and after I overcame my initial shyness I found the experience empowering… Within an hour and a half our circle reached such a deep level of connectedness and trust, it was as if we knew each other since ages.”
In addition to coaching circles, the course also includes live sessions, conducted in livestream with a twitter feed on the side. The live sessions include a variety of contemplative practices including guided journaling and meditation. The full live sessions are 1.5 hours. The maximum number of unique viewers the instructors have had for a session is approximately 20,000. Many learners view the live sessions together in self-organized “hubs.”
In addition to the techniques utilized in the particular MOOC described above, there are various contemplative practices that can be incorporated into your course, whether it is a MOOC or a regular online course. The practices outlined below have been used in online classes which may be useful for any instructor. The activities outlined below draw from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindful Tech by David M. Levy, and Contemplative Practices in Higher Education by Daniel Barbezat and Mirabai Bush.
Mindful Breathing (3 – 6 minutes)
This activity serves as the building blocks for establishing present moment awareness. The practice is simple, but not easy. The focus of attention turns to the feeling of the breath moving in and out of the body. The mind will wander, but the practice comes in bringing attention back to the breath again and again. By doing this simple practice daily, students are strengthening their ability to pay attention. There are many smartphone applications and resources online that offer guided breathing practices. One that is available both on your phone and online is Stop, Breathe, and Think, which has been used in research studies involving the effects of mindfulness meditation on learning.
An example of the instructions:
“Adopt a posture that is both relaxed and alert. (Example: Sit upright in a chair, feet on the ground, hands folded in your lap, eyes either closed or slightly open). Begin attending to the sensations of your breathing. Identify a place in your body (stomach, chest, tip of your nose) where you can feel the physical sensations that arise as you breathe in and out. Notice when your mind wanders away from the sensations of the breath. Bring your attention back to the breath whenever your mind wanders.”
Deep Listening (10 minutes)
This activity is designed to bring in deep listening to daily life. In this activity, everyone finds a partner in the course. Then, one person speaks and the other listens in complete silence. The listener listens as carefully as possible, letting go of interpretations, judgments, and reactions, as well as irrelevant thoughts, memories, and plans. When the speaker finishes, the listener repeats as closely as possible what the speaker said. The original speaker sits in silence while the listener repeats this back to them.
Instructions: Find a partner. You are encouraged to connect with someone in your course, but you can do this with a family member or friend if you cannot find a class partner. In this exercise, you will take turns listening and speaking.
1. One partner will spend 3 minutes speaking about a course topic or an aspect of his or her life. Set a timer that will make a noise when the 3 minutes is up, avoiding looking at the time.
• This 3 minutes is devoted to the speaker. The listener sits in silence. If the speaker runs out of things to say, sit in silence. Whenever you have something to say, you may continue speaking again.
2. The listener should listen in silence. When you listen, give your full attention to the speaker. Be curious, but don’t ask questions while listening. You may acknowledge with facial expressions or by nodding your head. Try not to over acknowledge. You may feel an urge to coach, identify, chime in, or interrupt. This is normal. Just notice when this occurs and resist the temptation to act. Listen with kindness. When thoughts or emotions come into your mind, simply notice them and gently return your full attention to the speaker. If the speaker runs out of things to say, give him or her the space for silence, and then be available to listen when he or she speaks again.
3. After the alarm sounds, set the alarm for 1 minute.
4. Repeat what you have heard from the speaker. Simply paraphrase, don’t memorize.
5. After the alarm sounds, the speaker should take 1 more minute to clarify anything she feels was misunderstood by the listener. Again, one person speaks at a time in a kind and respectful manner.
6. Switch turns. Repeat steps one through five. Now the speaker is the listener and the listener the speaker.
7. Reflect on how it feels to be listened to so closely and what it felt like to listen deeply to another person. This can be a conversation lasting however long you prefer.
8. End by thanking the other person for listening.
Mindful Check-in (3 – 6 minutes)
This activity is designed to remind students to actually experience what is happening in the moment, rather than simply achieving goals and marking off to-do lists. Often there is too much emphasis on going through the motions rather than noticing what is going on with your mind and body. The exercise asks students to explore the breath and body, emotional states, and the quality of attention.
Instructions: Take a few minutes to answer the following questions.
What is the quality of your attention?
Are you focused or distracted? Take time to think about how you are attending to what is happening in the current moment.
What is the quality of your breathing?
Take a moment to notice the current rhythm and pattern of your breathing, but don’t attempt to change it. Is your breathing fast, slow? Are you holding your breath?
What is going on in and with your body?
Notice your heart rate and posture. How are you sitting, standing, or lying down? Are you comfortable? Notice any places of tension and any place you feel you can relax. It may be your cheeks, your shoulders, your eyebrows, or your chest.
What is your current emotional state?
Try to find a word to describe your current emotional state. Try to sense how you are feeling in this moment. Don’t place judgment on this feeling, just notice.
After you have gained familiarity with the asking yourself these questions, you can take time during your day to ask, “How am I feeling right now?”.
The Multitasking Exercise (20 – 30 minutes)
Use this exercise to pay attention to what you’re doing online. Notice your multitasking strategy. For example, when do you decide to switch from one task to another? Some of us respond to every interruption immediately, while others carefully limit the number of interruptions and respond selectively. By observing how you multitask, you will have the chance to see your strategy and make changes if you would like.
1. Download recording software.
• You can use any software available. At minimum chose a tool where you can see what is happening on your desktop, laptop, or mobile screen. Some options: RescueTime, Screencast-O-Matic, CamStudio, and Screencastify. If you choose not to download the software, you can attempt to notice your multitasking. Rather than writing down observations, you can turn on an audio recorder and speak your observations. A third option is to ask a friend or family member to observe you while you multitask. You can also to do this with a classmate, sharing screens, and observing each other’s activity while multitasking. Make sure not to violate anyone’s privacy from sensitive information on your screen if you are having someone observe you!
2. Multitask as you usually do
• Do this at a time of day and location when you’re certain to be dealing with multiple windows and applications, and possibly interrupted by other technology or face-to-face interactions. Record multiple sessions or just one.
3. Watch the video
• Observe what you are doing and feeling or have someone tell you what they observed.
4. Log what you observe
• Watch the recording immediately after the session to note any feelings from the recent experience. Take note of how you felt (breath, body, attention) during the different points. Pay attention to where you made choices to move to another activity or remain on one task.
• Example: “Facebook, paying bills, twitter. Knowing I’m being recorded. Noticing how many times I touch my glasses, moving my feet around. Facebook is open and lots of folks responding to something I posted earlier but choosing to stick with what I am doing so that I can complete it. Impatient while a photo uploads so switch to emails. New class registrant so switch to Excel. Take care of that task—feels good.”
5. Summarize
• Reflect on what you’ve logged. Write about the patterns you’re discovering. Which dimensions of your present experience were most salient? Were you able to notice the times when you did switch to another task? How would you characterize your multitasking?
6. Form personal guidelines
• You may notice changes that you want to make. For example, you may notice your shoulders are tense, breathing is shallow, brow is furrowed, and you want to pay attention to these signs of stress to relax your body. You may also want to change your multitasking behavior.
7. Share and discuss
• Share your multitasking experience with a classmate using the deep listening practice described earlier.
Journal Writing (5 minutes)
Writing in a journal is one of the oldest methods of self-exploration and introspection. A journal can help you live in the present moment, to cultivate awareness, and to bring in gratitude. Students are instructed to write about their experiences in the first person, without thought of another reader besides themselves. Students can write with pen and paper or on computer or tablet. Journaling differs from a keeping a diary, as a diary records daily events. Journal entries foster reflection of mental and emotional activities of the individual.
Instructions: Keep a daily journal (either handwritten or electronic). Each entry should be about a paragraph. Record your feelings, thoughts, sensations, and any related experiences. This is not an exercise to record what you’ve done. Think of it as a conversation partner to reflect on reactions to daily life. Some questions to consider asking yourself in your reflection: What troubled you today? What made you happy today? What is one thing you are grateful for today? What are you enjoying about your work? What are you enjoying about your family?
Deep Reflection (10 – 20 minutes)
This activity aims to give students silence while they deeply reflect on their goals and how they are spending their time. Students are encouraged to freely write answers to the following questions.
1. What matters here? Make a list of how you want to spend your time in this program. This might be going to class, studying, spending time with close friends, perhaps volunteering in your community or reading books not on any course’s required reading list. What matters to you?
• This question is about taking ownership for oneself in the world.
2. How do you spend your time?
1. Make a list of how you actually spent your time, on average, each day over the past week.
2. Match the list from question one to this list.
3. How well do your commitments actually match your goals?
• You may find strong overlap between the lists. Many people do not. How can you align your time commitments to reflect your personal convictions?
Conclusion
The ability to sustain attention and self-regulate with qualities of openness, curiosity, and respect are important for academic success and critical for getting and maintaining employment. The techniques designed to improve these abilities are only beginning to gain momentum in the classroom and, in addition, the scientific evidence supporting these practices continues to grow through educational research. What may work effectively in the physical classroom will require thoughtful adaptation and creativity by instructors in order to be deployed at scale. Some instructors like Dr. Scharmer and Mr. Yukelson are leading the way. It is clear that to explicitly focus on these qualities of being requires courage and humility from instructors. Contemplative practices, to the extent they have positive effects on learners, may also cause reciprocal effects between learners and instructors. To whatever extent learners grow in their awareness, reflection, curiosity, and respect for others, instructors stand to benefit greatly from this approach.
References
Baer, R. A. (2003). Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy/bpg015
Becerra, R., Dandrade, C., & Harms, C. (2016). Can specific attentional skills be modified with mindfulness training for novice practitioners? Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9454-y
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822
Carson, J. W., Carson, K. M., Gil, K. M., & Baucom, D. H. (2004). Mindfulness-based relationship enhancement. Behavior Therapy, 35(3), 471-494.
Coatsworth, J. D., Duncan, L. G., Greenberg, M. T., & Nix, R. L. (2010). Changing parent’s mindfulness, child management skills and relationship quality with their youth: Results from a randomized pilot intervention trial. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19(2), 203–217. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-009-9304-8
Creswell, J. D., Taren, A. A., Lindsay, E. K., Greco, C. M., Gianaros, P. J., Fairgrieve, A., … & Ferris, J. L. (2016). Alterations in resting-state functional connectivity link mindfulness meditation with reduced interleukin-6: a randomized controlled trial. Biological Psychiatry, 80(1), 53-61.
Greenberg, M. T., & Harris, A. R. (2012). Nurturing mindfulness in children and youth: Current state of research: Nurturing mindfulness in children and youth. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 161–166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00215.x
Hofmann, S. G., Sawyer, A. T., Witt, A. A., & Oh, D. (2010). The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 169–183. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018555
Hölzel, B. K., Hoge, E. A., Greve, D. N., Gard, T., Creswell, J. D., Brown, K. W., … Lazar, S. W. (2013). Neural mechanisms of symptom improvements in generalized anxiety disorder following mindfulness training. NeuroImage: Clinical, 2, 448–458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2013.03.011
Jha, A. P., Krompinger, J., & Baime, M. J. (2007). Mindfulness training modifies subsystems of attention. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 7(2), 109–119.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion.
Mind and Life Education Research Network (MLERN): J. Davidson, R., Dunne, J., Eccles, J. S., Engle, A., Greenberg, M., Jennings, P., Jha, A., Jinpa, T., Lantieri, L., Meyer, D., Roeser, R.W., & Vago, D. (2012). Contemplative practices and mental training: Prospects for American education. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 146–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2012.00240.x
Roeser, R. W., & Peck, S. C. (2009). An education in awareness: Self, motivation, and self-regulated learning in contemplative perspective. Educational Psychologist, 44(2), 119–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520902832376
Roeser, R., & Zelazo, P. D. (2012). Contemplative Science, Education and Child Development: Introduction to the Special Section. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 143–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2012.00242.x
Schonert-Reichl, K. A., Oberle, E., Lawlor, M. S., Abbott, D., Thomson, K., Oberlander, T. F., & Diamond, A. (2015). Enhancing cognitive and social–emotional development through a simple-to-administer mindfulness-based school program for elementary school children: A randomized controlled trial. Developmental Psychology, 51(1), 52–66. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038454
Sedlmeier, P., Eberth, J., Schwarz, M., Zimmermann, D., Haarig, F., Jaeger, S., & Kunze, S. (2012). The psychological effects of meditation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 138(6), 1139–1171. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028168
Tang, Y.Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., Sui, D., Rothbart, M.K., Fan M, & Posner, M.I. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(43), 17152–17156. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/12%3A_Mindfulness_in_Online_Courses.txt |
Much of what this manual covers so far would still fall under the category of traditional or standard online learning. Of course, don’t let terms like “traditional” or “standard” fool you – online learning is still relatively new in the larger picture of learning, and there is a lot we don’t know about it.
While there is no standard or threshold for what makes something “standard” or “advanced” course design, there are many ideas and structures (or lack of structure) that would be considered “cutting edge” or “experimental” by many. This chapter will briefly touch on a few of these that you can try in your courses. There are many others beyond these. If you can think of something that is outside of what is covered in this manual, but would be a good idea for your course – then search online to see if someone has already tried it. You might be surprised at what you find. For now, let’s take a brief look at several different ways to think outside of the standard course structure.
Self- Mapped Learning Pathways
This guide has covered many different ways of looking at learning, as well as many different philosophical ways of designing courses. You may be teaching a topic that clearly lends itself to one type of design or learning theory. If that is the case, then you have a clear path before you. However, you may be looking at the different options and thinking that there are several that may or may not apply, or that you have some learners that would appreciate different ways of approaching course content, or even learners with vastly different contexts that have vastly different educational needs. If that is you, then you may be wondering if it is even possible to accommodate such flexibility in your course without designing several different parallel courses.
One possible way to approach this is through a design method called Self-Mapped Learning Pathways (Crosslin, 2018; Crosslin & Wakefield, 2016). The basic idea was initially called a dual-layer approach, because it entailed having two layers to a course (Crosslin & Dellinger, 2015; Kilgore & Al-Freih, 2017). One was an instructor-led layer that followed a defined pathway through course content. The other layer was a student-centered layer that allowed learners to create their own pathway through the course content. Because “layers” implies a hierarchy, the concept of layers was changed over to “modalities” (Instructor Centered or Student Centered) that are both equally valid (Crosslin, Dellinger, Joksimovic, Kovanovic, & Gaševic, 2018). Learners can choose either modality or both at any point in the course, and then change that mix as needed at any time (figure 1). Thus, the learners map their own pathway through the course structure and content.
Figure 1: Theoretical Design of a Self-Mapped Learning Pathways Course
For example, a learner may come into a course, look at the instructor content and decide they are already familiar with it. They then decide to look at the content from their specific sociocultural lens by finding resources online. However, at some point, they run into something they aren’t familiar with, so they jump over to the instructor-centered content to find what they need to know. They see that there is an interesting discussion with the learners that are following the instructor-led path, so they also decide to participate in that, while blogging their own experiences on their website.Keep in mind that while this structure sounds like a fairly straight forward design process (left side of figure 2), the reality is that courses designed with this structure can (and often do) take on much more complex structures – full of different choices on the instructor-focused side as well as meandering options on the learner-focused side (right side of figure 2). On the right side of figure 2 below, the blue lines represent how the instructor-focused modality can still have different options and non-linear lessons. The red area represents the organically forming official options for learner-focused pathways, surrounded by the gray areas that represent the unofficial options that learners could choose to add to their pathway as they create and follow their learning map.
Figure 2: Theory Versus Reality of Self-Mapped Learning Pathways Design
Also consider how learners may take different pathways through the course design that are not straight (or even non-linear). For example, the left side of figure 3 showcases a meandering learning pathway, while the right side showcases how a learner might pick and choose various parts at different times. Your learning context may not allow for this much flexibility, but keep in mind these possibilities if you have that option.
Figure 3: Meandering and Non-Linear Learner Possibilities
The interesting flexibility behind this design is that it has options for beginners that just want to follow instructors, as well as options for experts that want to go deeper (and for those that fall somewhere in between the two). For more information on the structure, see these blog posts (mostly about MOOCs that implemented this design, but still applicable to any online courses in many ways):
• “Designing a Dual Layer cMOOC/xMOOC” by Matt Crosslin
• “Digging Into What “Choice” is in Customizable Modality/Dual-Layer” by Matt Crosslin
• “Every Choice is Awesome. Every Path is Cool When You’re in #HumanMOOC” by Matt Crosslin
Various research projects have looked into the pathway options learners have chosen in this model (Crosslin, 2016; Crosslin, Dellinger, Joksimovic, Kovanovic, & Gaševic, 2018), how learners have navigated autonomy in this model (Dawson, Joksimovic, Kovanovic, Gaševic, & Siemens, 2015), and the issues that various technologies utilized in designing for this model have cause learners (Rose, et al., 2015).
Creating a Learning Pathways Course
While at first glance, it might seem that this design methodology requires creating two completely different versions of the same course. However, the best way to look at the design process is not as two separate courses, but as one way to truly accomplish learner-centered self-determined learning. There are three overall steps to the process:
1. Create a set of competencies to guide the instructor-led modality and provide suggestions for the learner-centered modality.
2. Design the instructor led modality based on objectives that will accomplish the competencies.
3. Create suggestions and scaffolding for assisting learners with the transition from the instructor-centered modality to the learner-centered modality. This is where many learners will have the least experience, and therefore will need the most help.
The biggest thing to remember is that the key to this form of design, as with any learner-centered design methodology, is for you as the instructor to release control. This will mean that learners will need more time to adjust and map their own pathway. It also means you will need to not overwhelm yourself with grading on the instructor-focused modality. You will be answering a lot of questions and providing a lot of guidance, so make sure to build time in for that. Also keep in mind that this design methodology is not an “all or nothing” idea. You can take the parts of it that make sense for your course, or slowly ease yourself into it over several courses. Learning gets messier the more it moves away from centralized control, so get ready for flexibility if you decide to go down this path. Leigh A. Hall has written a series of blog posts on how she wrestles through these issues – a few sample ones are listed here:
• “Documenting Customizable Pathways” by Leigh A. Hall
• “Dual Pathways in Online Learning” by Leigh A. Hall
• “The Messiness of Online Teaching” by Leigh A. Hall
Objectives and Competencies
Both objectives and competencies have been covered in this manual already. You could actually switch numbers 1 and 2 in the previous three step process if you already have objectives and a full course. Just start with the objectives you have for a course and start converting those into competencies. A quick and imperfect way to start that is to remove the conditions and criteria from your objectives, just leaving the behavior to form the foundation of the competency. The main idea to keep in mind is that your competencies will still need to cover your topic well enough to still accomplish the overall goal of the course, but flexible enough to allow for alternate pathways (you might even consider letting your learners remix or rethink your competencies as their own). For a bit more detail on creating competencies out of objectives, please see:
• “Bridging Learners From Instructivism to Connectivism” by Matt Crosslin
Designing the Instructor-Focused Modality
The main thing to keep in mind when designing the instructor-focused modality is to keep it focused on the instructor. This doesn’t mean that you leave out any student group work or social interactive activities. Far from it – you need to make sure that this modality is a well-designed instructional pathway. Think of what you would do for learners that are completely new to the topic you are covering, and guide them down that path. Just remember that some learners may be coming in and out of this modality as needed, so be sure to avoid any long term repeating group work that could suffer from learners changing modalities. Of course, on the other hand, it can also be helpful to have groups step out into their own learning pathway together, depending on the course topic. Just remember that you don’t want to force learners into learner-centered or connectivist activities – they need to choose those options for themselves.
A quick note about assessment: grading projects and activities does become difficult when learners are creating their own pathway. Many of the suggestions of effective assessment covered in Chapter 9 would help here. Open rubrics can be one way to grade across modalities, especially if you focus on what the learners actually learned and not the format of how they proved their accomplishments. In this design modality, it is up to the learner to demonstrate what they have learned. They can do so by following your suggestions in the instructor-focused modality, or by creating a different artifact in the student-centered modality. So instead of focusing on page numbers and word counts, look at the competency itself and evaluate solely on that.
Scaffolding Learners to Self-Mapping
Most learners are used to following the instructor, so they might need help transitioning into mapping their own pathway. Learners will need to develop higher levels of self-direction and drive to be successful in a course designed like this. You will probably need to constantly remind them that they can take this level of control over their learning pathway, as well as answer questions about what you think about their ideas. Therefore, you should approach this design methodology as more of a conversation that opens up over time. You can help learners think through some of these issues by providing scaffolding and example ideas throughout the course. One example of this has already been covered in Chapter 6 in the section on Assignment Banks. Whenever you create an assignment in the instructor-centered modality, you can also list some alternative assignment ideas or artifacts to draw learners to the self-mapped pathway. Others have tried to add an element of games to their assignment banks by adding point values to assignments in the bank (see the next section on gamification). You can also create guides for other tools that learners could use, or even interactive maps of their options (click here for an example in one MOOC). Or, the platform you use might have learning analytics tools that can help you and your learners with scaffolding. For more details on scaffolding in this design scenario, see:
• “Visual Flow of Learner Tools in the Dual Layer MOOC” by Matt Crosslin
The biggest question with this design methodology is how does a learner create a learning pathway? There are probably many different ways to look at this issue, but one example is documented here:
• “Creating a Self-Mapped Learning Pathway” by Matt Crosslin
Gamification and Game-Based Learning
Using games in learning is not a new concept. Most of us have played learning games at least a few times in our education. However, many are not aware how diverse or developed the idea of games in learning is. From adding game elements to role playing to video games to simulations to virtual reality to text-based scenarios and on and on, there are many options for combining games and learning. However, as you read through this brief overview, please keep in mind things like accessibility and access. Not all learners have access to high level computing equipment, and others have accessibility issues with their eyesight or hearing or other issues that limit how they can experience some of these ideas. Please keep in mind those students when considering games in education, and make sure to keep your course activities accessible to all.
The intersection of games and learning is a large area that could fill its own book (and already has several times over). There are also differences between gamification, educational gaming, game-based education, and other terms. We will cover a brief overview here with links to more information if you would like to explore these ideas for your courses.
Gamification
In an education setting, gamification is the addition of game-design elements to an overall educational context. This could be anything from using stars or level-up game elements in place of grades, to educational quests, to game-based rewards systems in courses. This can be a simple and inexpensive addition to a course, or a complex and expensive design process. If you have ever experienced an element of a game that you thought might make your course more interesting, this is a great way to add it. For more ideas, see these articles:
• “4 Ways To Bring Gamification of Education To Your Classroom” by Suzanne Holloway
• “Gamification in Education” by Vicki Davis
• Gamification of Learning
Game-Based Learning/Educational Games
Game-Based Learning is exactly what its name states: basing education on one or more games that were either designed for education, or that have some kind of educational value (even if not designed specifically for education). Many people think “video games” when they hear of this, and while video games are a big part of game-based learning, it could also include simulations, problem-based learning, board games, re-enactments, or other non-digital means. Some teachers find and purchase games that are already designed for the purpose that they desire, while others attempt to build the games themselves or have groups of learners create games. This takes an extensive amount of planning (and possibly funding as well), but the rewards are typically very rich. If you are interested in this idea, see these articles:
• “The Difference between Gamification and Game-Based Learning” by Steven Isaacs
• “Game-Based Learning: What it is, Why it Works, and Where it’s Going” by Jessica Trybus
• Educational Game
Augmented/Virtual Reality
The concepts of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have been gaining a fair amount of attention recently. However, it is too early to see if they will become trends or footnotes in education. Historically they have both tended to require expensive equipment and design to create, but recent advancements in technology have turned most smart phones into AR/VR machines – sometimes with no added equipment, and other times with a cheap \$10 headset. The basic idea of augmented reality is that it is a technology that layers or augments digital content onto live video of the real world around us. Think of games like PokemonGo! or mobile apps that layer driving directions over live video on your phone. Virtual reality is usually a more immersive experience, typically cutting the user off from experiencing the real world while they are immersed into a video/audio 3-dimensional realistic simulation. Much of the work in the VR field seems to center on either simulation of experiences (virtual field trips to historical sites, nursing process simulations, etc) or more immersive passive experiences (go inside a working heart, watch gorillas in their native habitat, etc). More experimental ideas allow learners to create art in 3-D spaces, create their own AR apps, or build their own games in VR. This area is still new (and often inaccessible to many), but if you are interested, here is more to read:
• Virtual Reality for Education
• “Real Uses of Virtual Reality in Education: How Schools are Using VR” by Kelly Walsh
• “Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality In Education” by Leticia Lafuente López
• “Augmented Reality Brings New Dimensions to Learning” by Todd Nesloney
• If you want to think deeper about possibilities for immersion beyond simulation, we would recommend the work of eleVR
eXperience Play
Game-based Education and Gamification can seem overwhelming at first. If you are interested in games, but not sure where to start, one place to consider is the eXperience Play professional development website. Created by two educational gamers that you might have met showing off their games at various Ed-Tech conferences (Keegan Long-Wheeler and John Stewart), eXperience Play is “meant for anyone interested in building games to use in the classroom or wanting to facilitate student game development as part of their courses.” You can read through the lessons online, and begin experimenting yourself. These lessons teach you about text-based games in a free and easy to use program called Twine. This approach leads you through a method that is easy for even the newest of beginners to try, but creates games that are highly accessible to most learners. Take a look for yourself to start learning:
• eXperience Play
Mobile Learning
Mobile devices have gone from novelty to near necessity in a relatively short amount of time. Because of this, many have started to look into the educational opportunities these devices could afford. From consuming educational content anywhere that a learner goes, to designing learning activities that get learners to interact with the world around them using their phone as part of the exercise, there are many uses for mobile devices in learning (sometimes referred to as m-learning or mobile learning). However, please keep in mind that not all phones are the same, and not everyone even has a phone (no matter what you think you might observe around you). The first thing to keep in mind when considering mobile learning is what you will do for learners that don’t have access to phones, or phones with advanced features, or even phones without Internet access. Make sure to include options (or allow learners to create their own options) that are flexible for various levels of phone ownership. Also keep in mind that accessibility issues also apply to mobile content and activities as well – you will have students that have sight or hearing or other accessibility issues that will need to be considered in this area.
Mobile Content
One form of mobile learning is the creation or scaling of content or activities with the intent of having learners utilize it on mobile devices. This can be anything from creating mobile friendly versions of content or activities to creating specific smartphone applications (apps) that work natively on mobile devices. This is an area that most online instructors should be aware of, as in some parts of the world, mobile devices are much more common than laptops or desktop computers. With this in mind, the important questions to ask yourself are: does my content adjust to mobile devices? Do the video or audio files in my courses work on smartphones (and can they be downloaded to view in places that have poor network connection)? Are the activities you have in your course mobile friendly (some discussion forums, for example, don’t adjust to mobile devices very well)? Some LMS providers (as well as tools like WordPress) have been offering mobile friendly options – or even dedicated apps – for a long time. Your learners will benefit greatly if you know how those work, and how you might need to adjust content and/or activities for apps or mobile devices.
Using Mobile Devices in Context
Another way of looking at mobile learning is to utilize the capabilities of mobile devices within the context of learners’ everyday lives. For example, are they learning about architecture, and could take pictures of examples of architecture in the world around them? Are you studying weather patterns, and they could capture videos of weather examples? Can learners go on a museum tour and take notes on their phone as they walk through exhibits? Maybe they can meet with an expert in your field and record the interview on their phone? There are many possibilities, but the idea is for learners to use their devices to interact with the world around them as they go throughout life. You or your students could even venture into mobile app creation in a more self-determined learning method, as well.
There are a large number of possibilities when it comes to mobile learning. If you are interested in learning more about this area, here are some ideas for articles to look into:
• “M-Learning”
• “12 Principles of Mobile Learning”
• “The Ultimate Teacher’s Guide To Creating Educational Apps” by Jeff Dunn.
• This article suggests some expensive app builders, but there are free ones: “5 Simple Tools For Teachers To Create And Publish Apps Of Their Own”
Rhizomatic Learning
Rhizomatic learning is a learner-focused design methodology based on the guiding principle of “the community is the curriculum” (Cormier, 2008). Many educational models and contexts have been created through the years that allow learners to design and determine their own learning; however, many of these still contain some type of directive or oversight from the instructor. Others will focus on having some type of class voting system that will give learners some control to determine the course structure at the beginning, but then solidifies this design early on without allowance for change or individual variations for personal needs.
Rhizomatic learning is different from these other forms of learner-centered design in that learning is mapped by the learning community throughout the whole process, always with the ability to change or encompass variations for individual learners. As Cormier (2008) states, the “community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions” (para 13). This way of approaching education uses the rhizome as a metaphor because “a rhizomatic plant has no center and no defined boundary; rather, it is made up of a number of semi-independent nodes, each of which is capable of growing and spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits of its habitat” (Cormier, 2008, para 4).
In some ways, this may seem to be a way to create a course without planning. However, keep in mind that many learners may not be ready for this form of shifting-structure learning, so you may have to spend some time scaffolding learners into this model, possibly by utilizing self-regulated, self-directed, and then self-determined learning as stepping stones into rhizomatic learning. Sometimes it helps to have learners look at course goals and learning objectives as something more like “learning subjectives” that are their own self-determined goals.
A special note here: this way of learning may not work in all contexts for all topics. However, if you are interested in trying this idea out with your course, here are some suggested resources to help out:
• “Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum” by Dave Cormier
• “Rhizomatic Learning”
• “A Practical Guide to Rhizo15” by Dave Cormier
• “What is it Like to Learn and Participate in Rhizomatic MOOCs? A Collaborative Autoethnography of #RHIZO14” by Maha Bali, Sarah Honeychurch, Keith Hamon, Rebecca J. Hogue, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Scott Johnson, Ronald Leunissen, & Lenandlar Singh
• “How the Community Became More Than the Curriculum: Participant Experiences In #RHIZO14” by Sarah Honeychurch, Bonnie Stewart, Maha Bali, Rebecca J. Hogue, & Dave Cormier
References
Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum. Innovate 4(5).
Crosslin, M. (2018). Exploring self-regulated learning choices in a customisable learning pathway MOOC. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 34(1), 131-144. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.3758
Crosslin, M. (2016). Customizable modality pathway learning design: Exploring personalized learning choices through a lens of self-regulated learning (Doctoral dissertation). University of North Texas, Denton, TX.
Crosslin, M., & Dellinger, J. T. (2015). Lessons learned while designing and implementing a multiple pathways xMOOC + cMOOC. In D. Slykhuis, & G. Marks (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2015 (pp. 250-255). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Crosslin, M., Dellinger, J. T., Joksimovic, S., Kovanovic, V., & Gaševic, D. (2018). Customizable modalities for individualized learning: Examining patterns of engagement in dual-layer MOOCs. Online Learning Journal, 22 (1). 19-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.24059/olj.v22i1.1080
Crosslin, M., & Wakefield, J. S. (2016). What’s cooking in the MOOC kitchen: Layered MOOCs. TechTrends, 60(2), 98-101. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0036-5
Dawson, S., Joksimovic, S., Kovanovic, V., Gaševic, D., & Siemens, G. (2015). Recognising learner autonomy: Lessons and reflections from a joint x/c MOOC. Proceedings of Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia 2015, Melbourne, 117-129.
Kilgore, W., & Al-Freih, M. (2017). MOOCs as an innovative pedagogical design laboratory. International Journal on Innovations in Online Education, 1(1). http://doi.org/10.1615/IntJInnovOnlineEdu.2016015210
Rose, C. P., Ferschke, O., Tomar, G., Yang, D., Howley, I., Aleven, V., Siemens, G., Crosslin, M., Gasevic, D., & Baker, R. (2015). Challenges and opportunities of dual-layer MOOCs: Reflections from an edX deployment study. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2015). Gothenburg, Sweden. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/13%3A_Advanced_Course_Design.txt |
Now that you have successfully planned your course it is time to tell the world about it and get those enrollment numbers moving. For those in more traditional institutions and companies, this may just mean getting your course listed in the course catalog or company newsletter. However, for other courses (especially MOOCs), you might need to do a lot of the promotion yourself. For those that need to self-promote their course, here are some tips.
Grassroots Marketing vs. Mass Marketing
Marketing an online course is a delicate blend of two common marketing strategies:
Grassroots marketing is targeting your marketing efforts to a small group in the hopes that the group will spread your message to a much larger audience. Grassroots marketing of your course involves identifying your target audience, the individuals that are more likely to want to enroll in your course. For example, a course on web development would target individuals obtaining degrees or work in the fields of marketing, computer science or advertising. Additionally, you would send announcements or post on the message boards for publications that share your target audience. For the example web development course, it would be best to reach out to publications such as Smashing Magazine, Net Magazine, Computer Arts, and many others that can be found with a simple Google search.
Mass marketing is an attempt to appeal to an entire market with one basic marketing strategy. Mass marketing of your course is best described as casting a wide net to find those individuals that are not in the areas where your target audience is typically found. Using the previous web development course example, mass marketing is appropriate to reach those individuals that are interested in web development, but are in the psychology department or in the health sciences field that would never hear about your course through your targeted grassroots marketing efforts. Sending an announcement to university or company newsletters and purchasing advertising space in student newspapers to reach a diverse audience are a few ideas. Also, utilizing the institution or company that your course is connected to could yield satisfactory enrollment results as well. Work with your institution or company to help promote the course through the alumni office, university communications channels, and to the employee community through HR learning and training channels. Homepages, newsletters, bulletins, and alumni magazines can also reach those individuals that are hard to reach.
Utilizing Your Course Platform
If you are hosting your course through channels like Coursera or edX, USE THEM! Many course providers – especially those that offer MOOCS – have blogs that instructors can contribute to and publicize the benefits of their course to participants. Providers have the same goal that you do when it comes to your enrollment numbers and the quality of your course. With this common goal in mind, they can provide tips and information on how to market your course through your institution and other channels – as long as you look for them.
Social Media and Other Channels
Social media is a great marketing tool when it comes to spreading the news about products, services, and (now) MOOCS and other online courses. If you do not have a social media presence, then it is time to get one and build your network. Additionally, utilize the social media presence of your institution or company, along with the social media presence of your course provider.
If you have any connections to additional media outlets or other institutions, make sure to inform them about your course and include the links to your course wherever your biography appears: personal websites, departmental websites, social media profiles, and speaker agencies.
15: Conclusion
There are still many other issues that have not yet been covered. You might have noticed that this manual does not go much into overall processes to follow to create courses. While there are many out there (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001; Smith & Ragan, 2004), most of them that are some variation of the ADDIE method. ADDIE stands for the five steps that most course design processes typically go through: Analyze the need for a course, Develop the content and activity ideas, Design the actual content and activities, Implement the course (i.e. teach it), and Evaluate how well the course goes. Of course, just by reading through that list you can begin to see that design models can never be fully linear. Reliance on linear processes remains the problem of most design methods: design is messy and not linear. It also doesn’t stop because the course is being taught. However, many other resources have covered the design process very well, so if you need a general guide, those sources can be helpful.
At the end of the day, you will probably be the best person to lay out your own process for creating a course. Take the ideas you have learned here (or maybe refreshed your memory about) and just start somewhere. This manual follows the way that some generally follow when they create a course, but you may want to remix or reorder to fit your needs. Just keep your learners and their needs central to whatever process you decide to follow. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Creating_Online_Learning_Experiences_(Crosslin)/14%3A_Marketing_of_an_Online_Course.txt |
Preface: Yes, I Know That Expressivism Is Out of Vogue, But …
Lizbeth Bryant
Purdue University Calumet
Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom offers those of us with “Yes-But” syndrome a solution. I was reminded of this syndrome in a webinar in which Richard Johnson-Sheehan claims, “I think Chuck [Paine] and I are still process people despite some of the theoretical arguments for post-process. We still believe we are teaching students a writing process, and in a sense, genres guide us from the beginning of the process to the end.” Johnson-Sheehan and Paine explain and justify their decision to teach writing as a process with a “yes-but” approach: Yes, I know that in our growth as a discipline we have moved from a focus on writing as a process to the social and cultural factors that impact language in our electronic worlds, but I still teach writing as a process and assist my students with developing their processes.
Johnson-Sheehan, a scholar in rhetoric and composition, admits in 2012 that he knows this approach to writing has been trashed by scholars who have controlled our meta-narrative, but admits that he sees a need for it. I have faced the same struggle to justify how I teach writing and what I study. Colleagues have asked, “Liz, how can you still focus on teaching expressivism and voice when there are new theories to study?” That’s simple—I build new theories and practices into my meta-narrative of Composition Studies. This either/or epistemology doesn’t work.
But, composition scholarship leads us to believe that we “are” one or the other. In our scholarship one cannot “be” both/and because the significant scholars in our field have said that a social epistemic view of writing precludes an Expressive and Cognitive view of writing. However, as I work with the myriad of writers in my classes from first-year writing to graduate thesis writing, I experience writers thinking and composing in various paradigms. Havier from East Chicago struggles with translating his mixture of black dialect and Spanglish into Standard American English. When Paul asks me if he should include a piece of research and a quote in his report, I ask him to see his writing situation from the cognitive paradigm: “Does your audience need this information to understand and be convinced of your position?” Charmaine struggles to write the findings from her original research into the final drafts of her thesis. She asks, “Can I really tell philosophy professors how I think they should teach writing?” To assure her that this is what she is supposed to do, I draw on M. M. Bakhtin’s idea of writing as a conversation that she can join, and how voice has both expressive as well as social dimensions.
As a teacher and writer, I use various theoretical paradigms to give me different views of the phenomena of writing. Each of these theories is a slice of the writing pie—one aspect of this intricate, analytical, emotional practice we use to bring thought to language. One of these theories does not explain it all, so we keep studying writers and writing, trying to figure it out in its entirety.
Can we create a new metanarrative, one based in building on the theories of others? Certainly. We can view this phenomenon of writing that we teach, study, and practice as composed of the many theories and practices that have been and are being developed in our scholarship. This is the mission of Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom. Its writers and editors are building on Sherrie Gradin’s Romancing Rhetorics: Social Expressivist Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing from 1995 that theorizes a relationship between expressivism and social-constructivism (xviii). The problem with accomplishing this is that academia has been built on one-upmanship: if my theory is going to be given any credit, I have to trash the ones before me.
For example, James Berlin’s words in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” set up his classical “trashing” of expressive rhetoric. In closing his essay Berlin writes, “it should now be apparent that a way of teaching is never innocent. Every pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, is a set of tacit assumptions about what is real, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed.” He then reiterates the ideology behind cognitive and expressive rhetoric, and ends with his support of social-epistemic rhetoric in which, “social-epistemic rhetoric attempts to place the question of ideology at the center of the teaching of writing. It offers both a detailed analysis of dehumanizing social experience and a self-critical and overtly historicized alternative based on democratic practices in the economic social, and political, and cultural spheres. It is obvious that I find this alternative the most worthy of emulation in the classroom, all the while admitting that it is the least formulaic and the most difficult to carry out” (492). In the last sentence Berlin reminds every writing teacher that “a rhetoric cannot escape the ideological question, and to ignore this is to fail our responsibilities as teachers and as citizens” (493).
Here is the subtle yet evident belief that if teachers choose to employ a cognitive or expressive teaching practice, they have failed. Not wanting to be complete failures, one might employ the “yes-but” strategy: “Yes. I know that Berlin says this strategy is not good, but it certainly works in this class right here, right now.”
James J. Sosnoski labels these spaces for trashed theories as theory junkyards. We reach back into our theoretical junkyards to choose a theory and teaching practice that works for us in individual teaching situations, going to the “hard-to-reach basement shelves, boxes in attics, files, that our current word processors barely recognize” (Sosnoski 25). In my attic, I have blue milk crates of articles on student conferencing and archetypal criticism. My husband asks me each year if we can get rid of the crates because he’s tired of moving them; my department chair, the narratologist, tells me that no one does that type of criticism anymore: “Liz, come on, do you really believe that archetypes are passed down in our unconsciousness?” And I respond, “You know, I’m not sure about that collective unconscious, but I do know that I can teach The House on Mango Street from the perspective of Esparanza’s quest myth.” Here’s another yes-but justification for using tools that have been discounted and trashed.
Literary Criticism is also built on this pattern of trashing the current theory to propose the new. The New Critics burst onto the academic scene in the 1940s with their criticism of the biographical critics. Because the New Critics forbade the study of the author, they trashed the biographical critics. In “The Intentional Fallacy” W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley claim that it is a fallacy to determine the meaning of a poem by looking to the intentions of the author. Wimsatt and Beardsley argued that embedded in the poem are meanings that the well-trained critic can interpret. Through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the New Critics were in vogue until the Marxists, feminists, and new historians came along to tell us what was wrong with the New Critics and why they should be banished to the theory junkyard.
But if we stay with the theory junkyard, we trash many theories that explain how, why, when, and where writing happens. Each of the expressive, cognitive, and social-epistemic rhetorics, as well as Thomas Kent’s theory of hermeneutic guessing that moved us into the post-process movement, explains just one aspect of producing texts. The theories build to give us more insight into what humans do as they compose and what teachers do to build writers. Our theories build; they are not trash. And each time a theory is added, our pie gets larger and larger with many more slices for everyone when they need it.
The irony is that in the midst of this supposed trashing there is building. Richard Fulkerson’s study of composition at the turn of the twenty-first century reports on “the quiet expansion of Expressive approaches to teaching writing” (654). In 2005 Fulkerson offered his “metatheory” of composition scholarship in which he discerns that Expressivism is alive and well “despite numerous poundings by the cannons of postmodernism and resulting eulogies” (655).
Composition’s metanarrative is in need of a revision that integrates all that we have discerned about writing and the teaching of writing: a metavision of our field that encompasses the places we have been and the theories and rhetorics that we have practiced. And this is what the editors and authors of Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom offer us. Their classroom stories build a both/and metanarrative of composition as they theorize how the expressive practices are embedded in the social practices and how the social practices are imbedded in the expressive practices of writing and learning.
REFERENCES
Berlin, J. A. (1988). Rhetoric and ideology in the writing class. College English, 50(5), 477-494.
Fulkerson, R. (2005). Composition at the turn of the twenty-first century. College Composition and Communication, 56(4), 654-687.
Gradin, S. L. (1995). Romancing rhetorics: Social expressivist perspectives on the teaching of writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Johnson-Sheehan, R., & Paine, C. (2010). Teaching with genre: Cure for the common writing course. Retrieved from Pearson Online Professional Development Web site: http://www.englishinstructorexchange...-october-2010/
Kent, T. (1989). Paralogic hermeneutics and the possibilities of rhetoric. Rhetoric Review, 8(1), 24-42.
Sosnoski, J. J. (2002). The theory junkyard. In J. J. Williams (Ed.), The Institution of Literature (pp. 25-42). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., & Beardsley, M. (1946). The intentional fallacy. Sewanee Review, 54, 468-488. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/01%3A_Introduction/1.01%3A_Yes_I_Know_That_Expressivism_Is_Out_of_Vogue_But.txt |
Re-Imagining Expressivism: An Introduction
Tara Roeder and Roseanne Gatto
St. John’s University
It’s no secret that the term “expressivism” has been a divisive one in the field of composition and rhetoric. In order to avoid simply rehashing old debates, we began this project with the rejection of an overly simplified “social epistemic”/“expressivist” binary. Our goal here is to begin a new conversation, one in which established and emerging scholars united by a belief that the term expressivism continues to have a vitally important function in our field can explore the shape of expressivist theory, research, and pedagogy in the twenty-first century.
While our project undertakes the question of what it might mean to re-appropriate the term expressivism, an equally important one might be: why bother? As Peter Elbow himself writes in his contribution to this volume, “As far as I can tell, the term ‘expressivist’ was coined and used only by people who wanted a word for people they disapproved of and wanted to discredit.” As Sherrie L. Gradin points out in her groundbreaking book Romancing Rhetorics: Social Expressivist Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing (a book to which we are greatly indebted, and which in many ways began the conversation we are continuing today), “the expressivist emphasis on imagination, creativity, and process … has often resulted in a charge of anti-intellectualism” (1995, p. 7).
In an email exchange several of us participated in while working on this project, Peter Elbow raised a concern about the value of the term expressivism itself, along with the intriguing question: “Could it be an instance of disparaged people deciding to use the term of disparagement out of pride?” That certainly resonated with the two of us, who have indeed heard disparaging criticism from colleagues who view expressivism as outmoded, elitist, or uncritical. The term “expressivism” seems quaint, somehow; identifying as “expressivist” naïve. So while it makes sense to challenge the very use of the term, it also began to make sense that reclaiming it (or, claiming it for the first time, since it was, as Elbow reminds us, not “ours” to begin with) might be a gently subversive act. (Or a perversely ironic one?) Or, as Nancy Mack put it, “building on the term by attaching the word ‘critical’ is a rebellious action—and not just reactionary. How terms accrue meaning is Bakhtinian. We can only hope to appropriate the word momentarily and utter it with our accent.”
So it is with our accent that we offer this exploration of not only how the term expressivism came to mean, but also how it might come to mean anew. We believe that the best expressivist practices have always been about complex negotiations between self and other, and the dismantling of the “public”/”private” binary that still seems to too often haunt our conversations about writing and pedagogy. But we also want to push our theory and practice further, conceptualizing the ways in which our expressivist values inform our scholarship and our teaching in an increasingly corporatized educational system.
So what exactly do we value? Our contributors have no one, uniform voice or approach, and we think this is a good thing. We notice that when the two of us talk about teaching and writing, we spend a lot of time questioning handbooks and guides for the “novice” writer, where race and gender and class and sexuality are erased in the name of an increasingly ludicrous concept of “correctness.” We know we don’t believe in prescriptions or generalities; we believe in a localized, context-specific pedagogy where one size never fits all. And we fiercely value our students and the complex embodied knowledge they bring to our classrooms. We think that when their experiences are at the forefront of our classrooms, exciting thoughts, relevant research, and meaningful connections can take place via a variety of platforms, from handbound books to conversations to YouTube videos.
So what makes this “expressivist”? We are indebted to a tradition in which scholars such as Peter Elbow, Sherrie Gradin, Nancy Mack, Thomas Newkirk, Thomas O’Donnell, Michelle Payne, Lad Tobin, and Robert Yagelski have demonstrated the complex ways in which the “social” and “personal” are not two poles in a binary system. We are also indebted to the feminist maxim, “the personal is political.” We hope that this will be the beginning of a new discussion, one in which the complex interactions between self and other are contextualized in a way that values the individual circumstances of our students’ lives and the ways in which they make meaning of their experiences and interrogate the culture in which they live.
Our contributors focus on both how to position expressivism theoretically within twenty-first century composition studies, and how specific assignments and pedagogies can facilitate our understanding of what expressivist practices mean to our students and ourselves. While many of the essays share similar themes, and there is some overlap between the sections, we identified four major strands surfacing in our contributors’ work.
Section One, entitled “Critical Self-Construction,” complicates the notion that “personal” writing and “academic” writing occupy separate categories on some hierarchy of sophistication. It opens with Peter Elbow, who problematizes the very terms “expressivism” and “personal writing” that have so long been connected with his work. He questions what the term “personal” means, pointing out that when we are truly invested in “academic” topics, our own feelings, histories, experiences, and languages will inevitably shape our texts: “I may not be writing here about my sex life or my feelings about a sunset, but it’s a personal story nevertheless.” This insight sheds a meaningful light on the collective project we are undertaking here, one in which each contributor was compelled to become involved because of her or his own beliefs and experiences as teachers, writers, and thinkers.
Thomas Newkirk analyzes the sources of some teachers’ “discomfort” in the face of “personal” writing, exploring the complexity involved in responding to the traumatic and the moralistic in student texts. He also makes a powerful case against dismissing the “personal essay” through the words of his student Brianna, who reminds us that “by turning a blind eye to these types of [personal] essays, we might as well be turning a blind eye to literature itself.” Nancy Mack and Derek Owens also challenge the idea that writing about the self is necessarily a solipsistic or uncritical act. Mack looks at the critical function of memoir, a genre that allows writers and readers to question stability and essentialist notions of identity: “a critical memoir approach asks the writer to continually reconsider one’s own master narratives,” raising questions about how such stories “could be actively re-interpreted and revised to represent a newly constructed, more ethical truth.” Such an insight is exciting in the face of the kind of stereotypical “progression” Owens sees as characteristic in many composition courses: “One might picture the progression like some kind of game board—each student entering via their own unique paths and histories, engaging with them along the way, but ultimately everyone coming closer and closer to a common finish line where it’s not their ‘expressed’ personal histories that matter but, say, the way they marshal evidence, cite sources, make inferences, assemble claims. Establish authority.” The fact that personally meaningful work is, at its best, also “critical” work is evidenced by Owens’ own experience composing his memoir about his mother, a process through which he “became interested in the strangeness of memory and the slipperiness of identity.” Jean Bessette also stresses the “dynamic slipperiness of memory” in her contribution to this volume, exploring the ways in which feminist conceptions of memory as “necessarily social and discursive” can contribute to an enriched understanding of the ways in which asking students to write themselves is an inherently critical act, one in which we need to face head on static and limiting notions of what our experiences signify. Lea Povozhaev also tackles the tidy divides between “creative,” “personal,” and “academic” writing, pointing out that the diverse work of “children creating art, prisoners writing poems, and students writing” evidences the fact that creative acts can be “pleasurable, therapeutic, and educational.” The act of eschewing rigid generic distinctions can, our contributors evidence, be both liberatory and pedagogically useful.
Section Two, “Personal Writing and Social Change,” explores some of the multiple ways in which expressivist theory and practice are connected to larger political and social goals. For Patricia Webb Boyd, in a period when “many may feel unable to control their own lives, much less effect change in larger society,” the question at hand becomes: “How can we imagine creative alternatives where students and teachers can … see themselves as active participants in public spheres/discourses who can co-create change rather than be passive consumers?” Boyd sees the role of critical expressivism as one that encourages our students to feel connected to their own experiences, and thus to larger goals and communities. Daniel Collins, in his lyric collage, maintains that “expressivist writing theory … upholds the idea that to write is to discover oneself amidst an array of others.” It is through our students’ writing about their lived experience that they can forge connections to a larger culture, and begin to enact change. Scott Wagar and Eric Leake both focus on the relationship between expressivist practice and empathy. For Wagar, the goals of non-violence and recognition of interdependence can be facilitated through a pedagogy based on the insights of theorists such as Mary Rose O’Reilly, who asks “Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?” A fraught question, but one that is essential to the goals of critical expressivist pedagogy—a pedagogy in which we might “consciously re-frame our work in non-violent terms.” This is not to suggest that we “critical expressivists” have all the answers: as Eric Leake reminds us in his nuanced examination of the role of empathy in successful expressivist teaching, “a critical empathy continually reminds us that empathy is always at best a careful and purposeful approximation of another’s experience.” However, by working together with our students, we may find the kind of ground in which our empathy can be at once nourished and examined.
Section Three, “Histories,” provides valuable insight into the ways in which expressivist pedagogies and ideas have developed contextually. Maja Wilson instructively teases out the links between Berlin’s “battle with the expressivists and Watson’s battle with the introspectionists.” Her playful and salient piece urges us to locate our theories of composition on solid ethical territory, while providing insightful, contextualized readings of Berlin in light of John Watson’s theories of behaviorism. Chris Warnick’s essay takes up Karen Surnam Paley’s call to “research actual ‘expressionist’ classroom practice” by delving into materials from The University of Pittsburgh’s “Alternative Curriculum” of the 1970s, examining the ways in which the innovative program drew on expressivist philosophies, practices, and assignments. Warnick’s essay leaves us with a valuable call to continue the kind of archival research that will better allow us to understand the practical results of expressivist pedagogies. Hannah Rule explores the rich historical relationship between Romanticism and expressivism, arguing that particular “pedagogies and rhetorics are deemed untenable because they are labeled romantic or expressivist, or romantic-expressivist.” Rule’s essay complicates the neat divides between the various composition “camps” through a careful reading of both the Romantics and the “expressivists.” Anthony Petruzzi similarly looks to locate expressivist practice within a history of “critical conscience” as defined by Emerson, offering a nuanced reading of the role of pragmatism in the development of expressivist philosophy.
Our final section, “Pedagogies,” explores specific expressivist assignments and classroom practices in hopes of illuminating what exactly some of us do as critical expressivists. David Seitz questions the value of having our students “consume academic texts … and only reproduce their discourse and generic forms.” He instead offers assignments “supported by principles of place-based education and theories of genre as textual sites of social action,” exploring the ways in which students can use writing as a way to mediate between the expectations of the academy and their own sense of the cultures and communities they occupy. Kim M. Davis urges us to value the “intersection of community-based learning and critical pedagogy.” Davis’ ethnographic study of her students in Detroit perfectly illustrates the ways in which “personal writing became the vehicle to help bridge the connection between students’ lived realities regarding race and place and the critical pedagogy goal of multiculturalism.” Sheri Rysdam turns to the expressivist legacy of “low/no stakes writing” as she examines the ways in which low-stakes assignments have a particularly valuable function for emerging student writers. Jeff Sommers re-visits the concept of radical revision in concrete terms, drawing on his own students’ positive experiences with acts of meaningfully re-entering their texts and discovering the “rich possibilities open to them through revision.”
There’s no doubt that we and our students face new challenges as we move through the twenty-first century together. We certainly don’t have all the answers to the questions the writers in our courses will grapple with as they continue to make sense of their experiences, their educations, and the culture of violence in which they live. But we do hope that we can offer assignments, approaches, and responses that are worthy of them, and that enable them to make sense of their experiences and the world around them in meaningful, innovative, and self-directed ways.
Reference
Gradin, S. (1995). Romancing rhetorics: Social expressivist perspectives on the teaching of writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/01%3A_Introduction/1.02%3A_Re-Imagining_Expressivism-_An_Introduction.txt |
“Personal Writing” and “Expressivism” as Problem Terms
Peter Elbow
University of Massachussetts Amherst
When dispute about something goes round and round without resolution, it’s often a sign that the key term has too many unexplored meanings. I aim to show a kind of hidden ambiguity in “Personal Writing” and “Expressivism,” and show how this leads to confusion and bad thinking. First, I’ll explore the ambiguity in “personal writing.” Then I’ll explore “expressivism.” James Berlin said that personal writing—writing about the self—is the hallmark of expressivism and named me as a prime expressivist. I’ll try to explain why I and other so-called “expressivists” made a prominent place for personal writing but didn’t consider it better or more important than other kinds of writing.
Part I: Different Dimensions of Personal Writing
The term personal writing has caused needless argument and confusion because in fact there is no such thing as “personal writing” in itself. There are three different dimensions of the personal and they can be present in various combinations in any piece of writing. The topic can be personal or not; the language can be personal or not; and the thinking can be personal or not.
Typical personal topics are the feelings or experiences of the particular writer.
Typical personal language is everyday spoken, colloquial, vernacular, or low-register language and syntax.
Typical personal thinking makes use of metaphors, feelings, associations, hunches, and other such processes that are not systematic or disciplined.1
The Topic Can Be Personal—or Not
A personal topic might be “My Experiences with Revising” or “My Experiences in the Peace Corps in Haiti.” A striking example is Margaret Bullet-Jonas’ Holy Hunger, a penetrating account of her struggles with an eating disorder. Personal topics contrast with nonpersonal topics like these: “The Revising Practices of First-Year Students” or “How the Peace Corps Works” or “Conditions in Haiti after the Hurricane” or “Cultural Causes of Eating Disorders.” Essays on these nonpersonal topics might never treat the writer or her experience at all.
Obviously there is a continuum or spectrum between completely personal and nonpersonal topics. One example is common in journalism or magazine writing and some books: the writing is based on interviews and it almost floods the reader with the most deeply personal details of someone’s life, often using lots of personal language from the interviewee. Yet the writer remains completely hidden and uses no personal language in his or her own voice. Here’s another marginal case: a writer takes a seemingly personal topic—say his or her own alcohol use—and make it nonpersonal by taking a wholly detached, medical, or phenomenological approach. (Sometimes this is not so much a way of making the topic impersonal as using highly detached impersonal thinking or language for a personal topic.)
There’s a kind of hybrid between personal and nonpersonal that has become a recognizable genre in first-year writing courses: teachers have discovered that students often do a better job with “academic research”—e.g., eating habits or college study habits—if the writer also uses the paper to explore his or her own personal experiences in the area. Of course adults and professionals do the same thing. Jane Hindman, in “Making Writing Matter,” writes of the personal topic of her own drinking in an essay that’s also about the impersonal topic of human discourse and agency. Nancy Sommers, in “Between the Drafts,” writes of the personal topic of her own revising in an essay that’s also about revising in general. Keith Gilyard uses alternate chapters to focus on the personal and nonpersonal as a topic in Voices of the Self.
Though we thus see marginal or mixed topics, the main point bears repeating: the topic can be personal or not regardless of whether the thinking or language is personal.
The Language Can Be Personal—or Not
What is personal language? We usually call language personal if it uses slang or colloquial forms or an informal register. There’s a natural implied metaphor here of physical closeness and presence (a “metaphor we live by”): when someone gets very close it feels personal. What’s closest and most personal is a hug or embrace. Distance and absence feel more impersonal or formal. Colloquial language sounds like speech, and speech gives us more sense of the writer’s physical presence sitting next to us—more intimate and therefore more personal.
A word like “talky” feels more personal than “colloquial;” “figure out” than “conclude.” A certain number of teachers and academic journals ban contractions: contractions give the sound of speech; non-contractions give a sound less heard in speech. The first person “I” calls attention to the presence of the writer and presumably this explains the ritual prohibition against it in many academic situations—especially in science (APA guidelines to the contrary notwithstanding). “We” somewhat dilutes the stain of first person. The second person “you” calls attention to the reader as a person, and even that seems enough to be regarded as too personal for some academic writing. Because most of these features give a greater sense of presence or of contact between writer and reader, Deborah Tannen and other linguists call them “involvement” strategies.
The use of a question can make language more personal by implying conversational contact between writer and reader. Compare these two passages:
There is only a faint and ambiguous correlation between prostate cancer and a high PSA reading.
But how about PSA tests for prostate cancer? How much can we trust them?
Again it must be remembered that there’s no black/white dividing line between personal and nonpersonal language, but rather a continuum.
Personal language can be used for nonpersonal topics. The most obvious site is in much note-taking, freewriting, rough exploratory writing, and informal letter writing when the topic is wholly nonpersonal and perhaps scholarly—for example even some technical scientific topic. Email has increased the amount of personal language and personal thinking used for nonpersonal topics.
But do we find personal language in published writing about nonpersonal topics? If we look back over the last fifty years or so at newspapers, magazines, and nonfiction for a wide audience, we notice a general drift along the continuum towards more informal, personal registers in published writing. Such informality of language was often experienced as a violation of “proper standards for writing.” But popular nonfiction has come to use more and more personal registers—even about nonpersonal topics. Literary nonfiction in particular (for example in nature writing) often uses some of the more linguistically personal resources of fiction.
In The New Yorker—a magazine that’s always been fastidious about language—we find a growing use of informal colloquial language. Look at the first sentence in the second paragraph below:
There is nothing wrong with cars, TV sets, and running shoes. What’s wrong is the waste—chemicals, heavy metals, CO2—that’s produced when we make them, use them, and, eventually, throw them away. Eliminate that waste, and you eliminate the problem.
Right, and why not cure cancer while you’re at it? Last time we checked, waste—landfills, smog, river sludge—was the price we paid for a healthy economy. (Surowiecki, 2002, p. 56)
William Safire often took a conservative line about language in his New York Times columns, so it’s striking to see how much personal language he used for the nonpersonal topic of correct and incorrect language. His writing was often conversational, casual, first person, sometimes slangy. He celebrated the clash of registers and liked sudden swerves into the personal, especially in asides: “In the age of multiculturalism and interdisciplinarianism (there’s a new one), most of the nonscientific uses of the term have been pejorative.” In the same column, he started a section with a one-sentence paragraph: “You pay for good linguistic lawyering, you get it.” And he ends the section with yet a shorter paragraph: “I spell it tchotchki. Do I need a lawyer?”
Students often use informal language for impersonal topics even if they have been directed to avoid it. But teachers should note how often good writers in the world bring to bear personal language and personal thinking on nonpersonal topics—and that most of our students will do virtually all of their future writing outside the academy. Anne Herrington writes: “Failing to recognize the presence of [linguistic] rendering [of personal experience] in some academic writing—including writing within composition studies—contributes to dismissing its value in undergraduate writing” (2002, p. 233). A number of business genres, however, are notable for strenuously resisting personal language.
In published academic writing we also see a gradual slide toward informal language over the last fifty years. Changes might seem subtle if you are in the middle of them, but I gather that scholarly writing in, say, Spain and Germany retains a formality that has been abandoned here. On the other hand, it’s interesting to note nontrivial movement in the other direction toward a formal register in academic writing in our field. Essays from the early days of College Composition and Communication tended to use a more personal register than what we’ve seen since the field has worked harder at professionalism. Think about some of the essays by, say, Edward Corbett and James Corder—esteemed scholars who nevertheless pulled their chair up close to readers and talked fairly personally and directly to them. Also, older scholarship in English studies tended to follow a British tradition of scholarly writing that was slightly talkier than the more formal nonpersonal Germanic tradition in scholarship adopted in the academic world some time in the twentieth century. (Essays for a student audience are more likely to use more personal language, yet oddly enough, it can work the other way too. When Martha Kolln addresses other teachers in the instructor’s manual of her Rhetorical Grammar (1991, p. 15), she is willing to write more personally than she does to students: she talks personally about an anecdote from her life, but doesn’t permit herself this kind of informality in the book intended for students.)
When academics publish a talk or speech, they are likely to use more informal colloquial personal language (though I’ve often been asked by copy editors to remove such language when I’ve had a talk accepted for publication).
Nonpersonal language can also be used for personal topics. We often don’t notice impersonal language when the topic or content is blatantly self-disclosing. But most people are far more conservative about language than about ideas or content, and the language habits of writers are often especially strong. Training in academic discourse goes deep. Copy editors may weed out locutions in a personal or informal register that remain in the writer’s final draft. Consider Jane Hindman’s amazingly personal essay that also uses an experimental form: three different type faces for three different voices. It’s deeply confessional about personal matters that few are willing to address. Yet not much of the language itself is particularly personal; most of it is either standard edited English or even quite academic. I noticed only three exceptions: three short italicized paragraphs of inner speech dropped in at different points that use distinctly personal writing. For another example, Mary Louise Buley-Meissner speaks of a writer’s personal essay where “The word I appears twenty-nine times in thirty-four sentences, yet the self written into her text is voiceless, anonymous” (1990, p. 52).
The most striking example of nonpersonal language used for personal topics is illustrated when professionals like psychiatrists, psychologists, or doctors write professionally about very personal issues like sexuality or divorce—albeit the personal issues of other people. The topic is a very personal story, but the language will usually be in the rubber-gloved, nonpersonal register of their discipline.
Thinking Too Can Be Personal—or Not
What is personal thinking? The notion might seem counterintuitive and a few people might argue that thinking is only thinking if it follows rules of deductive logic. But the word “thinking” is not normally used so narrowly in English. Common parlance applies the term to a broad range of cognitive processes: metaphorical thinking, trains of feelings, story telling, illustrative examples or anecdotes, inferences based on association rather than strict logic, and perhaps even mere hunches. Andrea Lunsford speaks of how writing can make a space for intuition, emotion, and the body in writing and in the construction of knowledge—what Kenneth Burke calls the paralogical, to go along with the logical that has had a stranglehold on the teaching of writing (1998, p. 24). And feminists have written about how the term “thinking” has been too narrowly defined in ways that represent patriarchy (Falmagne).
A particular kind of personal thinking could be called narrative thinking. Jerome Bruner made his reputation and pretty much defined the field of cognitive psychology by defining thinking or cognition as the abstract process of forming abstract categories. But late in his career he wrote a notable and influential book, Actual Minds, arguing that narrative thinking is equally central in human thinking (1986). Anthropologists like Lévi-Strauss showed how myths are examples of vigorous thinking about large nonpersonal issues. Mina Shaughnessy praised Richard Hoggart and James Baldwin for their skill in using autobiography to do intellectual work (Bartholomae, 1980). See also the special issue of Pre/Text devoted to personal and expressive writing doing the work of academic discourse (Elbow, 1990).
Again, it’s obvious that there is an extended continuum between nonpersonal and personal thinking.
In addition, personal thinking is often applied to nonpersonal topics. Montaigne enacted and celebrated what can only be called personal thinking, even when his topic was nonpersonal (the education of children, for example). Because he actually invented the essay and named it with a word that means “an attempt,” many have argued that the essay itself is a genre with an inherent link to informal personal thinking. He associated what is “human” with what is not “ordered” by a strict (French) “method.” Naturally, much poetry too applies personal, intuitional, associative thinking to nonpersonal topics (for example, Wallace Stevens’ “The Idea of Order at Key West”).
Ken Macrorie made an important contribution to our field with his “I Search Essay,” showing countless students how to get more invested in serious research by bringing personal intuitive thinking to bear. And there has been an explosion of interest in creative nonfiction, a genre that often applies personal thinking to nonpersonal topics. William Safire liked to do policy analysis by pretending to get inside the feelings of public figures:
I am John Kerry, falling farther behind in the polls with only six weeks to go.
I’ve already shaken up my staff again …
The “fortunate son” business hasn’t hurt Bush—and I wasn’t exactly born in a log cabin. (2004)
When Nicholas Baker writes about the impersonal topic of punctuation he conveys lots of history and technical information, but his actual mode of thinking about it is often strikingly personal. And his language slides toward the colloquial and personal. Peter Medawar, Nobel prize winner in biology, writes eloquently about the difference between the associational and intuitive thinking that scientists use to figure out their hypotheses, and the nonpersonal disciplined form in which they typically present their findings. Nancy Sommers uses her feelings to help her think about the nonpersonal topic of revising. Jane Hindman thinks with her experience—noticing one feeling and then probing and waiting to find another feeling underneath it—in order to wrestle with the abstract nonpersonal issue of the degree to which the self is constructed by discourse. Fontaine and Hunter’s Writing Ourselves into the Story is one of various collections of essays that use personal experience for thinking about academic topics in composition.
Is this Differential Analysis Necessary?
This is not just an exercise in casuistic categorizing for its own sake (which might occasionally have been a temptation for Aristotle). I see the same practical consequences for this analysis as I argued in my discussion of five species of voice (1994b) and multiple species of academic discourse (1991). When people fail to notice that a single term is hiding multiple meanings, they often think carelessly and argue fruitlessly past each other: they are unconsciously assuming different definitions of personal writing, voice, or academic discourse.
For example, readers often assume that a text is personal because it is more or less dominated by, say, strongly personal language (what a reader might call “flagrantly personal”). They fail to consider the nonpersonal nature of the topic and even the thinking. This kind of misjudgment is particularly harmful when a teacher tells the student, “this is too personal.” The student is liable to try to push the thinking and the focus of the topic even further towards the impersonal—often making the essay ineffectively general and abstract. How much better if the teacher could have said, “It’s only your language that is too personal for this context.” It might even be that the essay would have been better if the student nudged the thinking and topic focus a bit more in the personal direction. By the same token, an essay might be almost embarrassingly self-disclosing in topic—but not in language or thinking. (I’d say that Jane Tompkins sometimes wanders in this direction.)
When teachers or other readers take enough care to notice, for example, the differences between personal elements among the three dimensions of writing, they also have a better chance of attending to their own personal reactions and engaging in careful thinking: “This paper really irritates me. I wonder why. Has it touched on a sore spot for me, or is there in fact a feature in the text that asks readers to experience something challenging or ‘in your face’?”
The kind of differential analysis I’ve been using here has led me to argue more generally for rubrics in teacher response and assessment (and sometimes even peer response). Readers who fail to distinguish among the dimensions of a text (e.g., thinking, organization, clarity of sentences, mechanics) often fall into snap holistic judgments. This kind of unthinking interpretation is particularly harmful when a paper is full of errors in grammar and spelling—especially grammar that a teacher unconsciously associates with “stupid.” Such a teacher fails to see many genuine strengths in the paper and therefore gives misleading and actually damaging feedback—or an invalid grade. Here’s a sad comment by an experienced teacher about a piece of writing by speaker of African-American English: “Only now can I really address the underlying thinking and understanding problems—because previously the writing was so atrocious that I couldn’t see them.” (I took this from a composition listserv.) In a comparable way, an entire essay can seem to be tainted for some readers because it embodies political or religious or cultural views that the teacher experiences as toxic.
Part II: My Relationship with Personal Writing and Expressivism
I wonder whether you noticed that my own writing throughout Part One is almost entirely nonpersonal—in topic, thinking, and language. Perhaps the language might be experienced by some readers as slightly personal because I avoided a “formal” or “high” register—and occasionally used “I.” But does that make it “personal”? I’d say no. Still, in the next section I want to let my writing be personal on all three dimensions: personal topic, personal thinking, and (fairly) personal language.
I’m not using Part Two merely as an illustration of the analysis in Part One. No; I’ve written this stylistically schizophrenic essay in order to enact my divided loyalties to personal writing. For I keep bouncing back and forth in my feelings about personal writing:
First bounce. I tried to keep anything personal out of Part One because I want you to assess it entirely in terms of the logic of its analysis. For example, when I pointed out how many writers mix the personal and nonpersonal in the same essay, I hope it was clear that I wasn’t expressing approval—just making an empirical claim in order to bolster my main analytic argument about how the different dimensions of the personal are separate and can be mixed.
Second bounce. But I know it’s impossible to make a purely rational disinterested argument that works entirely on its own logic. You could even say that it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend to do so. Any attempt to argue in this way will always be surreptitiously slanted by the writer’s position. This principle implies that we have a duty, as writers, to reveal our personal stake; to acknowledge that readers can’t assess our argument unless they know something about the position we write from.
I agree with this view in many situations. I get irritated with argumentative writing (especially by academics) where the writer pretends to be making a disinterested or objective case, yet that case is permeated by surreptitious personal feelings: the writer is secretly trying to settle a score with a critic, or trying to defend a pet theory that he himself has a big stake in, or trying preen his or her erudition, or salve a wounded ego. When an academic is good at this game, only readers “in the know” will see these backstage hidden agendas. Why do the conventions of academic discourse still reflect a pretense of objectivity, when academics themselves are so busy saying that objectivity is impossible?
Third bounce. Still, I want to push back against my argument in the second bounce. I’m deeply committed to the idea no one has an obligation to reveal themselves more than they want. One of the great glories of writing is that it permits us to disguise our voices or hide our feelings. An argument can be good or bad apart from who makes it or what the personal motivation might be. The anonymity that is possible through the technology of writing has made it possible for countless people, especially in stigmatized groups, to persuade readers who would not otherwise have listened to them. Just because perfect objectivity is not possible, that doesn’t mean that we can’t strive toward it and make good headway.
Fourth bounce. Still, any attempt I might make to hide behind impersonal writing was probably wasted on many readers, since I have come to be so widely identified with personal writing. In the early 1980s, Berlin defined me as a prime expressivist, and this characterization was widely accepted. So it’s not really possible for me to pretend to be disinterested.
So now I want to tell the story of my relationship to expressivism and personal writing. I will invite all three personal dimensions into my text. I may not be writing here about my sex life or my feelings about a sunset, but it’s a personal story nevertheless. The topic is personal: like most of us, I have personal feelings about certain “academic” topics. The thinking is personal too: it reflects not just my thinking but my feelings and intuitions and how my personal position influences my take on personal writing and expressivism. And so too, the language is fairly personal: it may not be slangy or “colloquial,” but it’s not far from my “vernacular”—the language that comes most naturally to my white middle class academic mouth. (Perhaps the language in Parts One and Two is pretty much the same: kind of halfway between personal and impersonal.)
*
When Berlin called me a poster boy for expressivism in the 1980s, he must have been thinking mostly about my Writing Without Teachers, published in 1973. For his later article in 1988, he also looked at Writing With Power (1985), but that book is remarkably impersonal compared to the 1973 book. So I will be referring here mostly to Writing Without Teachers in trying to figure out why I was so identified with personal writing.
Actually, there are two questions that need exploring: Why did Berlin and so many readers think that Writing Without Teachers itself was personal? And why did Berlin and so many readers think my goal in the book was to advocate or preach personal writing?
1. I don’t think the book was very personal, but I understand now why it was so often felt that way. Let’s look at the three dimensions:
Language. Not very personal, I’d say. Here’s a typical example. You’ll see “I” a number of times, but the word is not really very personal; it’s functioning as a generalized claim about people in general.
We all tend to believe in word-magic: if I think words, my mind will be tricked into believing them; if I speak those words, I’ll believe them more strongly; and if I actually write them down, I am somehow secretly committed to them and my behavior is determined by them. It is crucial to learn to write words and not believe them or feel hypnotized at all. It can even be good practice to write as badly or as foolishly as you can. If you can’t write anything at all, it is probably because you are too squeamish to let yourself write badly. (1973/1998, p. 70)
“I” is a called a “personal” pronoun, but it’s pretty clear in this passage that it refers not to me but to other people who have feelings different from mine. (I fear I’ve always had a weakness for overusing “I” and “we” in ways that are theoretically suspect—betraying a tendency to assume “we’re all alike.”) But despite all the “I”s in that passage, I’m struck with how seldom I used the word throughout the book.
Perhaps in 1973, my language might have struck academic readers as personal or speech-like, but I was trying to talk to a popular audience. When I wrote the book, I didn’t foresee that so many academics would read it. I had taught for almost twenty years, but had never been in an English department nor identified with the field of composition. It’s ironic that this least academic of all my books would be read more often than any of the others in graduate seminars.
Thinking. The thinking in Writing Without Teachers was indeed very personal, and I think that’s the biggest reason why so many readers experienced the book as personal. What interested me most, and still does, is thinking. (I’m hoping that my tombstone will read, “He loved thinking.”) I wanted to show that our thinking doesn’t have to be formal and impersonal or strictly logical when we work on nonpersonal or academic topics.
I was trying to describe the writing process as a personal process—and make my description informal too. I used lots of homely details from everyday life. At the conceptual center of the book were two homely metaphors: “cooking” and “growing”—idiosyncratic and personal. (My Oxford editor advised me to drop those metaphors.) At one point I used a kooky childish analogy for the mystery of the writing process: I asked readers to imagine a land where people couldn’t understand how to touch the floor with their fingers because the traditional belief was that one did it by reaching upwards. Thus their traditional process for floor-touching never worked. Yet there were a few people who had actually learned to touch the floor—by instinct or trial and error—but they couldn’t explain how they did it because their whole conceptual system was confused about up and down (1973/1998, p. 13).
After this book came out in 1973 I began to get a trickle of letters from strangers addressing me quite personally, as though they felt they knew me. I didn’t mind; indeed I felt kind of touched, but it’s always seemed a little curious. For I hadn’t revealed much about me in Writing Without Teachers. Yes, I acknowledged—quite briefly—that my interest and relationship to writing grew out of my own difficulties and struggle and even failure. But I told almost nothing of what actually happened—which was in fact a very personal story. Nor did I tell virtually anything about my life.
But though I didn’t let my life or my “self” show, I let my mind show. It was because my thinking was so personal that some readers felt they knew me. And why not? It turns out that when someone gives an accurate picture of their thinking processes—with all its idiosyncratic twists and turns rather than the neatened picture of thinking that writers often publish, especially academic writers—readers often feel they know the writer. (My wife once quipped that the book invited the reader into bed with me. But this had to be based only on my thinking. A fun idea: thinking as sex appeal?)
Topic. In Writing Without Teachers, I let my mind show, but my mind was not at all the topic of the book—nor my self nor my feelings. The topic of Writing Without Teachers was squarely nonpersonal: the process of writing. I used the book to tell people—obsessively—what they should do to make their writing go better. I may have started by acknowledging that I was making generalizations based on a sample of one, but even to the small degree that my experience shows, it was always a means to a nonpersonal end—generalizations of wider import. It wasn’t till 1998, when I wrote “Illiteracy at Oxford and Harvard” and also the Preface to 2nd edition of Writing Without Teachers, that I told my personal story of failing and then gradually figuring out a way of writing. Of course it was easier in 1973 to qualify as a flaming show off than it is now—especially in the light of the all the recent self-disclosure by academics.
In short it was not at all a “me me me book.” (Berlin wrote in 1982 that “expressionistic rhetoric” involves the “placement of the self at the center of communication” [p. 772.]) It was, however, a kind of “you you you” book. I couldn’t stop talking about what “you” should learn to do to make the writing process more successful and satisfying. Maybe this gave a kind of personal feeling to the topic. Of course I didn’t know anything at all about my readers, but maybe my strategy led them to think a lot about themselves. I guess by saying “you you you,” I was using an “involvement strategy.”
So was Writing Without Teachers a piece of personal writing? The question has no answer. It illustrates why we need the analysis I gave in Part One. The book was notably personal in thinking, but not personal in language, and mostly not in topic. The reception of the book as personal by so many readers confirms my hypothesis at the end of Part One: readers are sometimes tempted to ignore nonpersonal dimensions when one dimension seems strikingly personal.
2. Why did so many readers think my goal in the book was to advocate or preach personal writing? Why did Berlin consider me an archetypal expressivist—someone committed to writing about me, me, self, self, feelings, feelings—only what is internal? And why does he name me as the central figure of expressivism (1988)—a school he said is based on this premise: “Truth is conceived as the result of a private vision” (1982)?
In his later essay (“Rhetoric and Ideology”) he quotes my 1985 Writing With Power to argue that I “consistently” preach personal writing. But to make his case, he purposely misquotes me to pretend that my words champion personal, expressive, self-oriented writing when they are actually saying the opposite. Berlin writes:
This power [that Elbow advocates] is consistently defined in personal terms: “power comes from the words somehow fitting the writer (not necessarily the reader) … power comes from the words somehow fitting what they are about. [Berlin’s ellipses] (1988, p. 485)
Look at the words I actually wrote—by way of introducing two chapters about power coming from nonself:
... I think true power in words is a mystery.... In [the previous] Chapters 25 and 26 about voice, I suggest that power comes from the words someow fitting the writer (not necessarily the reader).... In [the following] Chapters 27 and 28 about breathing experience into writing, I suggest that power comes from the words somehow fitting what they are about. The words so well embody what they express that when readers encounter the words they feel they are encountering the objects or ideas themselves.... (280)
And if he had read the chapters these words were introducing, he would have found passages like these. First the epigraph by Basho:
Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one.
And then this passage in a subsection titled “A Warning about Feelings:”
But strong feelings in themselves, don’t help you breathe experience into words. In fact some of the worst writing fails precisely because it comes too much out of feelings rather than out of the event or scene itself—out of the bamboo. (1988, p. 334)
How can someone pretend to be a scholar and use manipulative ellipses to pretend that a passage fits his ideological thesis when it actually contradicts it?
I was angry and even hurt to see such an unscholarly distortion of my work. I’ve never recognized myself in his picture—nor the stereotypical pictures of the other main expressivists like Macrorie, Britton, and Murray. Indeed, I’d say that Berlin’s characterization of expressionism was harmful for the field. I considered trying to write back and argue against his reading, but whenever I’ve seen people do that, they always sound like wounded ineffectual whiners. One friend told me that I looked arrogant not to argue against Berlin in print—as though I didn’t deign to enter the fray—but I ended up feeling that it would have been futile; that the only constructive thing I could do was to carry on with my own work and not be deflected or thrown off course.
It’s intriguing that his picture of me and the field persuaded so many people in composition studies. His division of the field into one right school and three wrong ones somehow took deep root and finally became an almost universally unexamined assumption. (See, for example, Victor Villanueva’s “The Personal,” (2001, p. 52), and Greg Myers (1986, p. 64).)
But as I put away my anger at his wrong-headed picture of my work—and his rhetorical brilliance in making everyone accept his picture of the field—perhaps I can see how it happened.
In truth I was preaching personal writing—in a sense. That is, I was preaching freewriting (among other things), and that seems like mostly personal writing. Freewriting gives you no time to plan, and in its default exercise form there is no specified topic. In those conditions, people tend to freewrite personally. I guess he was hypnotized by what seems like the inherently personal nature of freewriting (it seemed much more controversial and dangerous than it does now).
But in preaching freewriting, I was preaching a process—a process designed to lead to any kind of product, not personal writing. Freewriting is a means to an end—to help you learn to write more fluently and easily and to find more words and thoughts. The process has no bias at all toward personal writing. In fact, freewriting as a process is not inherently personal. Many people use freewriting to explore completely nonpersonal topics. I’d guess that most of the freewriting I’ve done in my life (excluding journal writing) is nonpersonal in content (though using personal language).
Berlin quotes words from the opening of Writing Without Teachers about my goal in the book: “to help students become ‘less helpless both personally and politically’ by enabling them to get ‘control over words’”(1973/1998, p. 485). He pretends this means that the goal is personal writing and can’t see how that goal (as with freewriting) pertains to all kinds of writing, not just personal writing.
In fact, as I look back at Writing Without Teachers, I’m amused to notice how narrow and bookish were the examples of writing tasks that I tended to use. I think I spoke about an essay on the causes of the French Revolution. My editor at the time joked that even though the book pretended to be about writing without teachers, really I hadn’t yet learned to escape the classroom. I remember inserting, late, some examples of fiction, poetry, and memoir, but they were token examples. I knew nothing about that kind of writing; school writing was all I knew.
Of course freewriting often does lead to personal writing. But I’d say that my main goal in making lots of space for personal writing was to help inexperienced or timid writers take more authority over their writing: not to feel so intimidated by it and not to write so much tangled or uninvested prose or mechanical or empty thinking. The various dimensions of personal writing seemed to me then, and still seem, the most powerful tools for getting authority over writing and thinking in general. When we invite personal topics, we invite people to write about events or experiences that they know better than any reader—even the teacher reader. Thus they have more authority about the topic.2 And when we invite personal thinking, we invite people to develop ideas by following their own personal and idiosyncratic thought processes—using hunches, metaphors, associations, and emotional thinking. Most people can produce richer and more interesting ideas this way than by trying to conform to disciplined thinking untainted by personal biases and emotions. Of course disciplined thinking is also necessary, but as I argued, it needs to come afterwards in a writing process that consciously separates noncritical generating from detached critical judging.
*
When we invite personal language, we invite people to write by using whatever words come most comfortably to tongue—instead of always pausing, erasing, changing and worrying that they’ve probably used the wrong word. Of course I made it clear that one eventually had to turn around and criticize and edit many of one’s freely written words (“taking a razor to one’s own flesh” was one way I put it in another metaphor of personal thinking), but that critical process didn’t need to interfere with a happy and self-confident process of generating words and ideas.
I was also preaching the teacherless writing class. Like freewriting, it was designed to help people do all kinds of writing and it carried no bias toward personal writing. But like freewriting, the process itself must have seemed flagrantly personal: no teacher; no one with sanctioned expertise; people (often personal friends) sit around talking about the feelings and thoughts that come into their minds as they hear or read each others’ texts. Joe Harris complained that “the students in [a teacherless class] … do not seem to be held answerable to each other as intellectuals” (1997, p. 31). In this age of the internet and Wikipedia we can forget how unusual it was to propose a teacherless writing class in 1973. Perhaps it was asking too much of Berlin even in the 1980s to read carefully enough to see the that the teacherless peer process I laid out was quite disciplined and methodical—and not especially personal. For example, if a responder in a teacherless class talks about her feelings that occur as she reads a writer’s text, her topic is not her feelings; her topic is the writer’s text and what those feelings reveal about it.
*
In this second half of the essay, then, my point is that “expressivism” is a seriously misleading word. It has led countless people to skewed and oversimplified assumptions about a period and a group of people—for I think that what I’m saying here goes for Macrorie, Britton, and Murray too. I’d say that all of us defended and even celebrated personal writing in a school context where it had been neglected or even banned. But we didn’t call personal writing any better than nonpersonal writing. Unfortunately, the term expressivism has been sold and widely bought as a label for the essence of my work—and that of a whole school of others—allegedly preaching that students should always use personal language and thinking and take the self as the topic of their writing—and not consult any standard of truth but what they find inside.
I can’t remember that I (or Macrorie, Britton, or Murray) ever used the word “expressive” for our goal or approach in teaching writing. Of course Britton pointed out that “expressive language” shouldn’t be neglected in school over “transactional” and “poetic” language; Kinneavey spoke of “expressive discourse” as one of four kinds. But neither of them or any of the others, as far as I know, ever used the term as a label for people. They wouldn’t have spoken of a teacher or method as “expressive” or “expressivist.” As far as I can tell, the term “expressivist” was coined and used only by people who wanted a word for people they disapproved of and wanted to discredit.
Summing up the two parts of this essay, I see the two terms, “personal writing” and “expressivism,” suffering from different problems. “Personal writing,” as a single term, tempts one to assume that there’s a single kind of writing that can be so described—instead of recognizing how the personal and the nonpersonal are often mixed across three dimensions.
I’m afraid that “expressivism” is hopelessly infected by narrow and usually pejorative connotations. I don’t see any way to use the term validly. Historians of composition need to find more accurate ways of describing the views of the people it was pinned on. I’m not a historian, but I don’t see what’s wrong with the term “process.” We were all newly preoccupied with exploring the complex things that go on when people write and eager to help people become more consciously strategic in managing their writing process. I think we all had a new and heightened interest in invention, particularly in helping people take more authority over themselves as writers by writing more from the self—but not necessarily about the self.3
Notes
1. My analysis could be called Aristotelian. Aristotle loved to increase clarity and precision by dividing entities into sorts or parts or species. In past essays, I’ve found this strategy helpful for clarifying controversies about voice and academic discourse. I tried to reduce confusion and dispute about the concept of voice in writing by showing that there are actually five kinds of voice that can exist in a text: audible voice or intonation—the sounds in a text; dramatic voice or the sense of a person or character or implied author; recognizable or distinctive voice—a voice characteristic of a particular writer; voice with authority—“having a voice”; and resonant voice or presence. I applied the same strategy to academic discourse, arguing that we can reduce confusion and needless dispute if we notice differences between different species of academic discourse and always specify which kind we are talking about. For example, different disciplines use significantly different conventions and kinds of language (i.e., kinds of organization, reasoning, and what counts as evidence). Look even at the single discipline of English where there are significant differences among the conventions used in textual criticism, biographical criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, reader response criticism, phenomenological, and postmodern criticism. (Here’s an amusing but nontrivial difference: most literature teachers will consider a student hopelessly naive about academic discourse if he or she refers to Hemingway as “Ernest.” Yet if it’s a paper in biographical criticism, the usage can be perfectly appropriate.)
2. Bartholomae is interested in the dilemma of student authority over writing: the “central problem of academic writing, where students must assume the right of speaking to someone who knows more about baseball or ‘To His Coy Mistress’ than the student does” (1985, p. 140). He can’t seem to imagine that a student could know more about baseball than he—or if not baseball, then perhaps her father’s experience in Vietnam or her brother’s way of negotiating Asperger’s. He can’t seem to accept the possibility of inviting students to enter a rhetorical space where they have more authority than he.
3. But Tom Newkirk has hope for the word: “The term ‘expressionist’ may eventually serve us well. Maybe it has the same fate as “impressionism”—which was coined as a satiric term by the journalist Louis Leroy in reference to a painting by Monet” (personal communication, 2012).
References
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Berlin, J. (1988). Rhetoric and ideology in the writing class. College English, 50(5), 477-494.
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Harris, J. (1997). A teaching subject: Composition since 1966. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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Hindman, J. (2001). Making writing matter: Using “the personal” to recover[y] an essential[ist] tension in academic discourse. College English, 64(1), 88-108.
Kinneavey, J. L. (1971). A theory of discourse. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
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Kolln, M. (1991). Rhetorical grammar: Grammatical choices, rhetorical effects. Instructor’s manual. New York: Macmillan.
Lunsford, A. A. (1998). Toward a mestiza rhetoric: Gloria Anzaldua on composition and postcoloniality. Journal of Advanced Composition, 18(1), 1-27.
Medawar, P. (1982). Pluto’s republic. New York: Oxford University Press.
Myers, G. (1986). Reality, consensus, and reform in the rhetoric of composition teaching. College English, 48(2), 154-171.
Safire, W. (1999, February 21). On language: Need not to know. New York Times Magazine, pp. 18-19.
Safire, W. (2004, September 21). Inside Kerry’s battle plans. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 7.
Said, E. W. (1999). Out of lace: A Memoir. New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House.
Sommers, N. (1992). Between the drafts. College Composition and Communication, 43, 23-31.
Surowiecki, J. (2002, May 6). Waste away. The New Yorker, p. 56.
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Villanueva, V. (2001). The personal. College English, 64(1), 41-62. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/02%3A_Critical_Self-Construction/2.01%3A_Personal_Writing_and_Expressivism_as_Problem.txt |
Selfhood and the Personal Essay: A Pragmatic Defense
Thomas Newkirk
University of New Hampshire
There are many plausible reasons to dislike the personal autobiographical essay—and to refuse to teach it in a writing course. There is the sameness of the topics: eating disorders, deaths and traumas, challenges and successes. There is the predictable moralizing, what David Bartholomae has termed “sentimental realism,” with culturally accepted commonplaces employed as learning lessons. There is the mismatch between the personal essay and the kinds of writing expected in the university, where there is a limited tolerance for autobiographical narratives. Any program that stresses this genre risks the disdain of colleagues in more established disciplines. With composition already perceived as a feminized “soft” discipline, it can become doubly feminized (and intellectually vulnerable) by any taint of sentimentality, a term with a long historical association with women’s writing and reading. There is the understandable reluctance of teachers to take on any role that resembles psychotherapy and draws them into relationships that they feel unqualified to sustain. As Richard Miller has argued, there is a physiological unease involved in responding to writing (or speaking) that deals with trauma:
The bodily discomfort arises, I believe, because it is unclear, exactly what is being asked of those who are within reach of the speaker’s words: beyond saying, “I can hear you. I can see you,” beyond authorizing the speaker’s version of events, what can listeners do? What role can they play? (1996, p. 277)
And even Montaigne himself had doubts about the value of his essays for readers—what, after all, did the reflections of an unknown, retired lawyer matter? These reservations are shared by a wide swath of composition teachers, and I respect these concerns and would never endorse a program that imposed this genre upon them.
My focus in this essay is on a more profound philosophical challenge to the personal essay that was part of the “social turn” in composition studies in the 1990s, particularly the critiques of Lester Faigley, James Berlin, and David Bartholomae. I will focus on the detailed attention that Faigley gives to the personal essay in his book, Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Faigley examines a set of exemplary student essays (with teacher commentary) published in William Coles and James Vopat’s What Makes Writing Good. A majority of these essays seemed to embody values of an ideology that Berlin would call expressionism (often later altered to expressivism). The writers of these personal essays seem to be free agents, operating outside of culture, or systems of power, or genres; writing originates from a “self,” a uniform consciousness. The measure of “authenticity” was how honestly the writing represented or portrayed that self. And as Emerson claimed, the more truthful the writer is in representing this inner thought and experience, the more the expression speaks for others, the more universal it is.
The term “authentic,” according to Faigley, is fraught with problems. How, after all does a teacher determine if a piece of writing is “authentic;” how does the process of authentication work—are we speaking of accuracy of memory (which, as psychologists have shown, is altered with retellings)? Is it the expression of emotion? Is it a personal voice? Is it a stylistic preference of teachers? What is the touchstone, the stable pre-discursive self, that is the measure of authenticity? The term itself (like the term “natural”) disguises its own ideological and historical roots, the “unstated assumptions about subjectivity,” which Faigley tried to make explicit:
Modern American notions of the individual self derive in part from nineteenth-century liberalism and utilitarianism, which in turn drew on Thomas Hobbes’ theory of the atomic, self-interested self. The blend of economics and psychology in these notions of self remains evident in writing pedagogy ….
two notions of the individual are often conflated—the self-aware Cartesian subject possessing a unified consciousness and the “freely” choosing competitive individual of capitalism. (1992, p. 128)
Faigley suggests a criticism that James Berlin makes far more bluntly: that the expressivist pedagogies which promote the “free choices” involved in personal essay are complicit with capitalism which also promotes the free choices of the consumer.
From a practical standpoint, the personal essay presents students with a complex task—to speak about their experiences without the critical tools that would help them examine the discourse they are using. Consequently Faigley and Bartholomae claim that they ventriloquise, and echo the moral language of parents and coaches:
To ask students to write authentically about the self assumes that a unified consciousness can be laid out on the page. That the self is constructed in socially and historically specific discursive practices is denied. It is no wonder, then, that the selves many students try to appropriate in their writing are voices of moral authority, and when they exhaust their resources of analysis, they revert to moral lesson-adopting, as Bartholomae has noted, a parental voice making clichéd pronouncements where we expect ideas to be extended. (1992, pp. 127-128)
To critics like Faigley and Bartholomae, nothing could be more inauthentic (and one senses, irritating) than the moralisms that close down thinking and end many personal essays.
Finally, drawing on the work of Foucault, there is the question of intrusive institutional power—the ways in which practitioners of the personal essay, while claiming to grant freedom to the writer, are imposing a set of values and expecting students to reveal insecurities, traumas, family difficulties, health issues, and personal details of their lives. No trauma, no good grade. The personal essay becomes a form of confession, with the archetypal confession being the omnipresent “Shooting an Elephant.” In effect, Faigley wants to call the bluff of expressivist teachers: they claim to give “ownership” to the student, to give up authority to the student, yet by passing judgment on the authenticity of these personal accounts, they assume a power of surveillance that can be more invasive than the traditional pedagogies they originally opposed.
Faigley’s challenge, then, is a profound one. Proponents of the personal essay are revealed as naïve, as blind to the situated, social, ideological nature of language use. There is the troubled quest for an essential, pre-social “self,” for a language that is “free,” for a “voice” that is unique—even for writing in the absence of any sense of audience. This free space just doesn’t exist. Faigley and others argue that the “self” of expressivist pedagogy is a social construction, constituted by language and culture, located in history—and as Anis Bawarshi has argued in his brilliant book, Genre and the Invention of the Writer, even our desires are shaped by social genres (which also fulfill those desires).
The persistence of expressivist key terms like “voice” and “authenticity” represent, in Faigley’s views, a disciplinary problem in the field of composition studies—the failure to engage with the more satisfactory, generative, and defensible descriptions of writing as informed by postmodern theory. Hence the tendency to write the narrative of composition studies as a progress narrative, and to treat the “social turn” as a paradigm shift, a rejection of deeply flawed views of composing that could now be treated as a kind of historical artifact. The term “post-process” is emblematic of this view—a rhetorical move that casts expressivism as a discredited tradition, that must give way to a fuller, richer, more defensible view of writing instruction. In fact, the critique is profoundly ethical: the charge is that those who teach the personal essay engage in inappropriate and intrusive relationships with their students—and they promote an individualistic view of authorship that is naïve and ultimately disempowering.
In this essay I will attempt a defense of the personal autobiographical essay, drawing on a powerful line of psychological research, led by Martin Seligman and Stephen Maier, and more recently extended by Carol Dweck. This body of work examines the explanatory styles and attitudes of resilient, “healthy” individuals—and, I will argue, helps explain the enduring appeal (and psychological utility) of the type of essay writing that Faigley and others criticize—that which stresses individual agency.
We can begin with what I consider one of the weaker parts of this challenge to expressivism and the personal essay: the charge that it is easily appropriated by the powers of consumerism, since both associate identity with personal choice. This is, in the end, an argument from similarity, since it would be difficult to establish any solid cause-effect relationship. One might just as easily argue that the sophisticated awareness of the social construction of needs could also be co-opted by advertisers and marketers (the similarity is there too). In fact, it is very hard to predict how ideas will be taken up and used in other situations. To my knowledge there is no empirical evidence of a connection between expressivism and capitalism—it is sheer speculation. The only major study I know of that even attempts to trace the ways in which literacy practices contributes to career development is Jonathan Rose’s The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class, which among other things traces the reading histories of many militant leaders of the labor movement. These leaders were radicalized not by the indoctrination of Marxists (whom many found rigid and uninteresting) but from reading classic authors, particularly Charles Dickens, whose belief in personal altruism would seem at odds with the collective movement they would help build. George Orwell, in his magnificent essay on Dickens, describes a similarly complex act of appropriation and influence. There is no neat, clean, determinist, ideological line that can be drawn.
The claim of “surveillance” is similarly weak, and rests primarily on the rhetorical power of the term itself, evoking Foucault and Bentham’s panopticon. The problem has to do with the virtually unbounded way in which the term can—and has been—used. Is there any act of teaching or assessment that is not, in some form, an act of surveillance? Were my conferences with my children’s teachers not an act of surveillance? Monitoring is occurring no matter the genre of writing we assign: as teachers we ask for accounts of the writing process, we read drafts, we monitor the thought processes of our students. It is impossible to imagine the work of education (or participation in any social unit) without these forms of attention and assessment. So the fact of surveillance is a given (which I think is Foucault’s point). It is inescapable. The ethical question is the manner and purpose of the surveillance, and here the case needs to be made that a student writing about significant events in an essay, read and evaluated by the teacher, is likely to be personally harmful. I won’t deny that this is a possibility, though I would add that teachers can be insensitive working in any genre. Obviously, any teacher who feels uncomfortable responding to papers like the ones in the Vopat and Coles collection should not be assigning that kind of writing. I am not at all arguing that it should be a universal requirement. But on the other hand I have seen generations of teachers at my own university handle such writing with tact and sensitivity. I have read thousands of evaluations and the issue of surveillance is virtually non-existent in student accounts. It is raised almost exclusively by academicians criticizing the genre.
It is also tempting to respond to Faigley by challenging his linking of the personal essay and the “unified consciousness.” One could easily argue the reverse: associate the essay instead with the “fragmentation,” the deconstructive impulse of postmodernism. The essay is a perfectly fine vehicle for exploring the multiplicity, fragmentation, and constructedness of the “self.” The essay, as Montaigne deployed it, celebrated the instability and inherent irrationality of the self; human claims to be rational, were, in his view, a form of presumption and vanity. Human beings are too temperamentally volatile and self-interested, and language too imprecise, to claim steady rationality. In his long essay “An Apology for Raymond Seybond,” he has long satiric passages where he rebuts claims about human reason by citing evidence (much of it fabricated by Plutarch) about identical abilities in animals. Men praise their analytic ability to distinguish plant types; well, goats can do that too. And despite his claim in the famous address to his readers, that he would prefer to portray himself naked—as if self-presentation was a matter of disrobing—his project was clearly a complex act of discursive construction, one that he commented on frequently in his many additions to the original essays. In one addition he commented on his tendency to make additions:
My first edition dates from fifteen hundred and eighty: I have long since grown old but not one inch wiser. “I” now and “I” then are certainly twain, but which I was better? I know nothing about that. If we were always progressing toward improvement, to be old would be a beautiful thing. But it is a drunkard’s progress, formless, staggering, like reeds which the wind shakes as it fancies, haphazardly. (Montaigne, 1595/1987, p. 1091)
Montaigne resembles Laurence Stern in that he seems to push to the limits, even undermine the genre he is in the process of creating. There has been no more strenuous critic of “unified consciousness” than Montaigne, and the personal essay, with its openings for amendments and cycling back, became the vehicle for making this challenge.
Such a defense, though, would sidestep the objection many compositionists have concerning the personal essay. Simply put, the deep, and often amusing, skepticism of Montaigne’s essays bears little resemblance to the efforts of students. In the introduction to his collection, The Art of the Personal Essay, Phillip Lopate argues that the most successful essayists are either older, or like Joan Didion and James Baldwin, they assume, early on, an older persona—they have outgrown or abandoned beliefs in human perfectibility and distanced themselves from the assurances of true believers, heroes, and reformers. Yet in student essays it is precisely this belief in perfectibility, personal agency—this optimism—that regularly animates their essays (and often embarrasses their teachers). Every difficulty is a learning experience; every death a reminder of the preciousness of life. The “self” that is portrayed is not exactly a “unified self” but a progressive one, part of a constructed coherent narrative of self-development (the very kind of narrative Montaigne refused to write). Any defense of the personal essay needs to address this sensibility, this propensity for belief and affirmation that animates their writing. To defend the personal essay—as young students write them—entails defending this bias toward affirmation.
Faith, Optimism, and “Sentimental Realism”
Normal human thought is distinguished by a robust positive bias.
—Shelley Taylor
In 1896 William James published his great essay, “The Will to Believe” (which he later regretted titling, preferring “The Right to Believe.”) In it he debunks a view prevalent in his time: that beliefs should be the product of an objective and dispassionate review of the facts. To accept unsupported opinion is to be duped and we are to “guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence which may shortly master our body then spread to the rest of the town” (James, 1997, p. 74). Intelligence, according to this viewpoint, was strongly associated with skepticism, doubt, coolness, withholding affiliation. James turns the argument on its head claiming that even this position represented a form of belief—and that passion, commitment, and belief are essential in making the pragmatic tests of truth. The scientist’s passionate belief in an ordered, explainable universe is a crucial tool in helping him or her to extend that explanation. And if beliefs lead to mistakes, then “our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things”(1997, p. 19 ).
One of the glories of James’ career was his openness to the psychological utility of a vast range of religious beliefs, from mesmerism to Buddhism to evangelism—all of which he treated with elaborate respect. In the early 1970s, Peter Elbow reactivated this argument in his essay on the believing game, arguing that the academic culture held a bias against the functionality of belief, and a bias in favor of skepticism and critique which are often seen as the mark of perceptive thought and real academic work. By contrast, assertions of belief, whether based on a religious faith or a personal code, are often viewed within the academic culture as dogmatic, unsophisticated, simplistic; they are evidence that the student is “written” by his or her culture and helpless to push back against it. Students are victims of what James would call “dupery.” David Bartholomae, in particular, would claim that these assertions are usually nothing more than moral commonplaces that are passively absorbed by students, and handy for “wrapping up” their personal essays.
The capacity to self-monitor in matters of taste—to identify and resist the appeals of sentimentality—is part of the identity equipment of academics, particularly in the humanities (Newkirk, 2002). It is a form of cultural capital, an ingrained preference for the ironic, distanced, critical, and complex that, as Bourdieu demonstrated, serves to establish class distinctions. Even the poorly paid adjunct, teaching a literature survey, has the satisfaction that she can avoid dupery, that she is alert to the intellectual softness of sentimental appeals with the attendant clichés and commonplaces. As Suzanne Clark writes, few criticisms are as damaging as the use of the epithet “sentimental”:
The author’s rationality is in question, and so is the credibility of the argument. If you are the victim of a “sentimental” epithet, you have been excluded from the magic circle. It is as if your readers are too tough for you, and you are too much of a sissy for them …. (1994, p. 101)
Richard Miller has argued that these judgments and preferences are not purely intellectual; they are experienced bodily as forms of discomfort, even revulsion. There are a range of terms (including “taste” itself) which register this physical reaction, many dealing with oversweetness (“syrupy,” “sappy,” “saccharine”). A more dated term, “schmaltzy,” has the root meaning of rendered chicken fat, what one might imagine at the base of the stomach. Miller’s point is that our reactions to emotional autobiographical writing is often instant and visceral, experienced in the gut; our sense of taste is embodied, instinctive, and employed without disengaging from our own perspective (as our own theories of social construction would require of us).
The issue may not be whether a writer uses commonplaces, for all discourse communities rely on claims and commonly agreed upon warrants; this essay is littered with them. The issue is that personal essays of young students often employ a type of commonplace that jars or irritates (or nauseates) a type of reader. They run against an aesthetic; in their wholehearted affirmation, they position the writer in (and ask the reader to endorse) a discourse community of motivation and self-help, a place of coaches and graduation speeches that represents everything the academic reader habitually defines himself or herself against. It is not genuine thought but ventriloquism—the student being written by culture. This discourse of self-efficacy and optimism simply has no cultural capital for these readers.
Yet paradoxically, there is now abundant evidence of the psychological utility, even necessity, of the very narrative patterns—of uplift, and overcoming obstacles—that many writing teachers find so annoying and unthinking. In her book Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind, psychologist Shelley Taylor summarizes a range of studies to argue that an “unrealistic,” even “self-aggrandizing” view of the self has major positive benefits for personal happiness. This exaggerated sense of personal agency emerges so powerfully and quickly in early childhood that it is very likely “natural [and] intrinsic to the cognitive system” (Taylor, 1989, p. 44). Like the evolution of organs or immune systems, it may be hardwired to support the perpetuation of the species—as anthropologist Lionel Tiger has argued, “optimism is a biological phenomenon” (Taylor, 1989, p. 40). The key beneficial illusion is a heightened sense of being able to master one’s environment:
The illusion of control, a vital part of people’s beliefs about their attributes, is a personal statement about how positive outcomes will be achieved, not merely by wishing and hoping that they will happen, but by making them happen through one’s own capabilities. (Taylor, 1989, p. 41)
Of course, events are not in our control, and humans face trauma and tragedy. But even victims of terrible illness and loss are often able to derive meaning and benefit from their situation, perhaps working to inform or help others in their same situation. Or to find that their tragedy brings an existential clarity to their lives. Taylor quotes a 61-year-old cancer patient:
You can take a picture of what someone has done, but when you frame it, it becomes significant. I feel as if I were, for the first time, really conscious. My life is framed in a certain amount of time. I always knew it, but I can see it, and it’s made better by the knowledge. (1989, p. 195)
A commonplace, perhaps, but a profoundly functional one.
Taylor’s argument is supported by a line of research on “explanatory style” conducted by Martin Seligman and his colleagues. Explanatory style refers to the ways in which individuals account for the difficulties they face; for example whether they see themselves as victims or agents, whether they posit the cause as a pervasive personality flaw, and what kind of flaw. In effect, Seligman is looking at narrative patterns which have relevance for the ways students write about trauma and difficulty. He identifies three crucial dimensions of explanatory style:
Stability. Causes can be accounted for as stable in time (and thus likely to reoccur indefinitely) or they may be temporary and remediable.
Range. Causes may be perceived as a global trait of the individual (“I’m stupid,” “I’m not a people person.”). Or they may relate to a specific, local, and limited kind of problem or situation.
Locus. Causes can be seen as internal or external—as arising from purely individual failures or flaws in judgment or personal weakness, or as arising, at least partially, from outside circumstances.
According to Seligman a great deal rides on the kind of explanatory style an individual comes to adopt. The condition he has called “learned helplessness” is characterized by a particular pattern where people “explain bad events by internal, stable, and global causes and explain good events as external, instable, and local” (Seligman, 1988, p. 92). Success is the unstable result of luck; failure is the product of character. Marvin Minsky captured the spirit of this argument as follows:
Thinking is a process, and if your thinking does something you don’t want it to you should be able to say something microscopic and analytic about it, and not something enveloping and evaluating about yourself as a learner. The important thing in refining your thought is to try to depersonalize your interior; it may be all right to deal with other people in a vague global way, but it is devastating if this is the way you deal with yourself. (as quoted in Bernstein, 1981, p. 122)
Seligman’s research identifies the devastation Minsky refers to, the profound consequences—for physical and mental health—of the explanatory style associated with learned helplessness. In addition to a longstanding association with depression, researchers now believe that this explanatory style is an ineffective way of dealing with stress that compromises the immune system, leaving the individual susceptible to a range of infectious diseases. Not surprisingly, a “healthy” explanatory style is associated with increased motivation, persistence, and educational achievement.
All of which suggests a fundamental dilemma for academic readers. It is hardly surprising that young writers employ commonplaces of effort, overcoming obstacles, learning from difficulties, naming heroes and saints in their lives—that they construct their narratives as a form of heroic progression. There is now a huge body of research to document the benefits—even the evolutionary necessity—of such formulations. And as William James and Peter Elbow argue, this positive bias can be self-verifying. If a student believes that an obstacle like a failing a test is a learning opportunity (clichéd as that view is), she is likely to be more successful in gaining a benefit from it than someone who treats that failure as one more sign she is not good at the subject (a global reaction). Yet aesthetically these formulations in personal essays, as I have noted, frequently fail to satisfy, and even repulse, the academic reader who is gratified by an entirely different, more nuanced, ambivalent, ironic sensibility.
Student as Co-Theorist
To illustrate this dilemma I will quote extensively from a paper of one of my own students written early in a first-year course. The assignment which I call the “Right to Speak” paper requires them to pick a public issue on which they have personal experience that has caused them to have some viewpoint; the goal of the paper is to show how this viewpoint arises out of the experience. In preparation we read Sallie Tisdale’s “A Weight Women Carry” and “Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman’s Eggs,” an award-winning essay by Jessica Cohen. I also read aloud an essay on euthanasia in which I recount the last days of my mother’s life when she refused food and water for twelve days. I suggested additional topics, reminding them that they are all experts on their own education, and have a right to comment on it. One student, Brianna, chose to write about the cruelty and shunning she endured in middle school. The paper begins with a description of the bodily experience of depression she felt each day as she got ready for school:
The pain I went through those four years is nearly indescribable. Every morning I would wake up with a heavy chest. It literally weighed me down. My heart in particular would feel heavy and burdened. I could feel it struggle with every pulse. It was like my heart was forced to beat against its will. I could feel the disdain in its pounding, its unwillingness to keep going. In response to this weight my shoulders would slump forward, pulling the rest of my upper body down with it. My head hung low. My eyes drooped. It never ceased to astonish me how my emotional pain managed to manifest itself into physical mannerisms.
The main body of the paper is a description of a set of humiliating encounters in school.
I seemed to be the bearer of silence. I would go over to a group of kids who were laughing and giggling in order to play with them, and the giggling would immediately stop. I would ask some people to play something with me, and they would always have something to do. Recess time was the worst. I always seemed to try to join a game of four-square just a little too late, as there was never any room for another person ….
And I especially was never able to penetrate the wall of backs and shoulders of the kids standing around in a circle talking to one another. This left me standing alone against the school’s wall observing all the other kids at play, desperately wishing I could be them.
One particularly painful scene, so vivid in her mind that she had to interrupt her writing and cry when she was composing it, involved her not being chosen to help in a cooking project:
I remember one day during home base, a time during the day where each specific section gets together to talk about random nonsense, a girl named Susanna from another home base came in to announce she was baking cookies. Her home base teacher had told her that she could pick one friend to bake cookies with her. She asked all of us who wanted to be that lucky person. Of course, everyone raised their hands and eagerly began pleading to pick them. She ended up picking a girl named Megan, who immediately hopped out of her seat and ran to Susanna’s side. I sadly lowered my hand and gave Susanna a look of grief. She smiled at me and said “Hmmm, well maybe you can bake with me too, Brianna”. Before I could allow any sort of happiness ease my hurt body, Megan immediately straightened up, flung her eyes open, and involuntarily hushed “No! No!” in Susanna’s ear. She caught herself and slowly turned to look at me and gave me a nervous giggle.
My stomach sank so low it might as well have fallen to my feet. I had to try so hard to not cry in that moment. An intense, sharp pain stabbed into my heart and stomach. It hurt so much that I felt like puking for a split second. That was the first moment I realized how alone and unwanted I truly was. It had manifested before my eyes. I had never actually seen or heard anyone display their disapproval of me before. To this day, I still cannot look Megan in the eyes without thinking about the cookie incident. To this day, I feel the same stab in my heart and stomach when I think about it.
The rest of sixth grade and seventh grade continued on very much the same way. There were endless displays of “No! No!” detonating in my face every day. Whether it was a hushed giggle accompanied by a finger pointing in my direction amongst a couple of girls, the rumors about how I was a compulsive liar and ate lard for breakfast, or even the obese, ugly cartoon drawings of me that were left in my locker, it was made clear to me that my loneliness and pain would last for a long time.
She completely closed herself off from the rest of the world. “I was a bottle of thoroughly shaken soda pop just waiting to explode.” And in fact, near the end of the paper she describes cutting herself:
I took my razor from the shower and slashed my wrist with it three times. It felt good. The release of pain was extraordinary. I wanted to cut more. I wanted to go all up and down my arm, but I knew I would get caught cutting myself if I did that, so I stopped after three cuts. I carefully put my razor back in the shower, turned the water on, and washed away all the blood, snot, and tears, cleansing myself once more.
At this point her paper shifts abruptly to the insight or understanding she wants the narrative to convey:
While I never acquired scars from my razor-incident, I’ve never fully recovered from those four years. My body is still an open wound that I don’t think will ever be healed. And as much as I wish I had a happy and normal adolescence, I wouldn’t change the past even if I had the power to. While I will never fully recover from my trauma, I have taken away something so positive that it far outweighs all the negatives of my middle school experience: kindness and compassion. My agony has molded me into a far better person than I could have ever been had I not been so scorned and neglected.
During my four years of misery, I would think to myself if only they knew. If only they knew how I feel right now. If only they knew what happened behind closed doors, maybe they wouldn’t be so mean and cruel. I think about this every time I interact with a person. I don’t know their back-story. I don’t know the emotional baggage they carry around with them. All I know is that I need to be sensitive towards their feelings.
I think about the how complicated and intense my pain and emotional grief was, and all because people weren’t nice to me. It’s such a simple thing, really. Just be a good, kind person. Something as simple as a smile or a “hello” can brighten up someone’s day. And who knows, maybe that person really needs it. Because of my past, I am now able to possibly better someone’s future—a fair trade-off for my pain, I think.
In this final section we can see Brianna’s attempt to take agency and assert that she has made constructive use of this experience, while acknowledging that she still lives with the trauma of those years. One of her fears in writing the paper was that it would elicit “pity,” that it would receive an undeserved high grade “out of pity or awkwardness.” By claiming a positive outcome she finally becomes an agent in her own story; it is the pattern of explanation that Seligman and Taylor associate with a healthy resilient reaction to difficulty.
When, with her permission, I shared the paper with a group of teachers, one reaction was doubt about her claim that she wouldn’t “change the past” if she could because of what she had gained. I had kept touch with Brianna in the year since she was in my class, and knowing her interest in introspection and psychology, I invited her to respond to this concern about her paper. She wrote:
I suppose I would have preferred to avoid all that pain. Who wouldn’t? But I truly believe I would not be the person I am today had I not endured what I did. I firmly believe that every evil is accompanied with a good, and vice-versa. With all that pain came an incredible sense of sympathy and caring towards others. Yes, I am still hurting and not fully recovered (and may never be) be from my experience. I have been greatly impacted psychologically and it’s going to take a lot of hard work to be able to function as I would like to be able to. But this is balanced with a gift of compassion that I think more people in this world need. If that pain was what I needed to go through in order to attain this gift, then so be it, because that makes me one more person who will treat others the way they deserve to be treated and hopefully I can spare them some of the pain I endured.
In her commentary on this paper, she said that the process of writing was an “emotional rollercoaster,” and not one that brought her the sense of catharsis that she had hoped for. So I wanted to get her reaction to the question of whether this kind of writing should have a place in a writing course:
I completely understand where these concerns come from, and I can certainly appreciate them. But I think the purpose of (good) literature is to bring up these sorts of issues and topics; topics which are uncomfortable, topics that are important and relevant to many people, and topics which evoke strong emotions so that we may recognize and discuss them. The great thing about personal essays is that if some topic is true for one person, there is more than likely at least one other person out there who can relate and identify with that person, and therefore the topic is worth sharing and discussing. By turning a blind eye to these types of essays, we might as well be turning a blind eye to literature itself. Now obviously if a student or teacher is truly uncomfortable with this sort of thing, then guidelines or alternate assignments can be made. But I don’t think the personal essay should be dismissed from classrooms.
As a final question, I asked her if she saw any relationship between personal essay writing and the other writing that she had done in academic courses.
I absolutely believe there is a connection between this type of writing and the writings in other courses. This kind of writing is very personal and therefore may evoke strong feelings and emotions. One of the hardest things to do in writing, which is one of the challenges a personal essay presents, is write a well-written paper about a topic you are passionate about. In most cases when someone is passionate about a certain subject, they have so much to say that it’s difficult to discipline themselves into writing a paper that is coherent. This is a very critical skill to be able to achieve: to be able to release your emotions and take a step back to look at a subject from a disciplined and impartial point of view. This is a skill that is required in many, if not most, types of writing, such as persuasive essays or debates, or even analytical and critical papers. I would argue that this skill is one of the most basic and important skills to have in writing. The personal essay without a doubt exercises this skill, and therefore is very relevant to other types of writing.
This response situates Brianna in the complex debate concerning “transfer” from a first-year writing course. Her position seems to align with those who argue for the possibility of “far transfer” (Wardle, 2007): the capacity of learners to develop a meta-awareness of writing processes—in this case her sense of managing complex emotional material—that can be of use in writing assignments which do not closely resemble the personal essay.
Toward a Hermeneutics of Respect
But to return to “the nervous system.” This student paper can create a discomfort for writing teachers, and it is important to speculate about the source of that discomfort. I would argue that it does not arise from the personal material—which for the most part is handled with narrative skill, particularly as she describes the bodily sensation of her depression and exclusion. Her occasional use of metaphor is also compelling (“I seemed to be the bearer of silence;” “I was a bottle of thoroughly shaken soda pop just waiting to explode”). The reader’s discomfort does not arise from a concern about acting the therapist—the paper is clearly not asking for this. No, the discomfort most likely comes from statements like this:
If there’s one positive thing I took from middle school, it’s that you should be a kind person.
Or this:
While I will never fully recover from my trauma, I have taken away something so positive that it far outweighs all the negatives of my middle school experience: kindness and compassion. My agony has molded me into a far better person than I could have ever been had not been so scorned and neglected.
At moments like these, the writer locates the paper within a form of moral, even moralizing discourse that academic readers are often deeply suspicious of—and embarrassed by (“what would the comp director think of this?) This is the language of self-help, or therapy, or guidance counselors, or graduation speeches. Brianna clearly locates herself in this discourse at the end of the paper, where she quotes what she wrote in her senior yearbook four years after these events took place:
My life’s philosophy is a simple one, but extremely important. In my high school senior yearbook I leave with one very important message to all. I like to think of it as a summary of my entire grade school experience. Under my picture you will see the quote “Be nice to people—they outnumber you 6.6 billion to one.” True, no?
The academic reader is deflated by words like “simple,” “nice,” and “very important message.” Our mission, after all, is to disrupt the view that any life philosophy can be simple, or that morality can be reduced to such truisms. One reader of Brianna’s paper suggested that with more time and reading in a writing course, she would develop more “distance” on the topic. Yet she is writing from the perspective of five years, and in her comments a year after the paper was written, the moral core of her essay is consistent. It may be that it is the readers of this essay that want “distance”—because the essay puts them in too close proximity to a form of moral assertion that makes them uncomfortable, as if they have wandered into a meeting where they had hoped to listen to Joan Didion and they get Dr. Phil.
One way to respond to an essay like this one is to employ a hermeneutics of distrust, to treat the moral assertions of the paper as mere clichés and copouts; this is what David Bartholomae seems to do when he calls them “commonplaces.” In some of the earlier versions of a critical studies approach, as these commonplaces were viewed a form of “false consciousness,” a passive acceptance of cultural truisms that served dominant interests—a manifestation of James’ “dupery.” The task of instruction was to help students play the “doubting game”—to deconstruct or problematize these beliefs, to show their arbitrary constructed nature, and expose the political interests they serve. As should be clear by now, I am arguing that this approach would be counterproductive in the case of this essay; it would be to challenge its core, its very reason for being—and to dismiss the profound functionality of this “simple” belief system for the writer. It would be a form of violence and disrespect, a failure of imagination and empathy, an ethnographic tin ear. It would also be a failure to use the self-critical tools of cultural criticism that would ask readers to interrogate their own discomfort.
But this greater openness to these moral commonplaces does not mean that all the reader can do is say, “I can see you, I can hear you.” Like any discourse, “sentimental realism” can be performed well, and it can be performed poorly. Not all writers can write “in your face” scenes as Brianna has, or be as attuned to bodily response. The effect of her paper rests on this ability, as she says near the end, to reveal to readers the depth of distress that these too-typical middle school behaviors can create. At the same time there are perspectives missing in the paper: one teacher who read the paper asked why parents and teachers didn’t intervene (think of the clumsy move of Susannah publicly choosing a peer to do the cooking). Surely they bear some responsibility. I wished I had posed this question to her during our conference on the paper, so I asked her this question a year later in our email exchange. She acknowledged that her parents could have stepped in earlier, but she understood why her teachers didn’t:
I put on a really terrific front at school … they were SHOCKED when my mom told them that I was miserable in middle school. Even to this day, when I talk to them about it they are completely dumb-founded. They say things like “You were always so happy and bubbly all the time. I just can’t believe that you hated middle school so much.” So to be fair, my teachers didn’t have anything to pick up on and intervene in. But the bottom line is that people are responsible for their own actions. Besides, anyone who has experienced the public school system understands that it’s almost like its own separate society. You’re expected to deal with things on your own. Allowing for an adult to step in is like cheating or breaking the rules, and you are immediately coined as a target for bullying. While I would agree that adults should have stepped up, I would also argue that there shouldn’t have been the need to do so.
I regret that we didn’t explore this “front” in our conference because her descriptions of it might have heightened the pathos of her situation. In addition to enduring the shunning, she had to maintain a front that would keep the adults around her from guessing her distress. But she rejects as a digression the suggestion that she explore the responsibility of adults in this situation because it was the behavior of the girls, her peers, that is criticized. There should have been no need for adults to intervene. The more “mature” or sociological move to view the situation in a systematic way, spreading the blame to adults, would blunt her moral criticism.
I realize that papers of this kind raise anxieties among teachers, particularly those new to the profession, about crossing the line into being a therapist (although as Lad Tobin has written, we fool ourselves if we think this is a clear line). I don’t want to minimize this concern, but in my experience it need not be an obstacle. To begin with, students who choose write about traumatic issues are, almost without exception, not asking us to be therapists. They want us to be sensitive and curious readers who help them elaborate and explore topics they have chosen to write about. I will often begin my questions about their papers by saying that I respect them for taking on a difficult and emotional topic and that if any of my questions make them uncomfortable not to answer them—but almost invariably students welcome the questions. Michelle Payne comments in her study, Bodily Discourses, that allowing this kind of writing to be done in a course has the effect of normalizing the subject matter—it is not shameful, unspeakable. It can be the subject of a paper; writing is therapeutic by not being therapy, but normal school work. She writes: “It is especially important, I think, for women who have suffered bodily violence to believe a ‘unified, normal’ self is possible through writing in an academic context” (Payne, 1997, p. 206).
It is also important to remember that this essay is part of a sequence that led, as it does in many first year classes, to assignments that dealt with responding to reading and to research. An essay like this one can help a teacher in directing students to topics that can combine the personal and academic, building on what Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm call “identity markers.” In Brianna’s case, this paper clued me in to her interest in the psychology of distress, her fascination with the ways in which social stress is experienced bodily. In another paper she describes playing the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and finding the way of walking to convey her emotional stiffness. When she chose later in the semester to research panic attacks, which she also has experienced, I knew from her previous writing that this was a good topic for her (and it was a very successful paper). As Marcia Curtis and Anne Herrington argue in Persons in Process, the most engaged and committed undergraduate writers are those who have a personal stake in their academic subject; they are the ones who dismantle the personal/academic binary. And for me this essay was a key to helping Brianna do that.
*
Finally to the issue of power. One charge against the personal essay is that it can become solipsistic, so self-preoccupied and individualistic that the writer is powerless to appreciate or challenge systematic social evils. One thing academic language provides is a more powerful capacity to critique and challenge injustice. I would not deny this is sometimes the case (virtually every “travel” paper I have received fails in this way). But this argument can be turned on its head—that much of the writing in the “academy” insulates practitioners from the way rhetorical power actually operates in the wider culture. There would not be a need to argue for “public intellectuals” if most of us were good at public discourse. A dismissal of “sentimental realism” can alienate academics from the way writing (and narrative) functions in the wider culture—to commemorate, provide solace, entertain, persuade, inform. One can easily imagine a public function for Brianna’s essay—to help teachers be alert to the excluded child, or to make middle school girls aware of the pain that the ostracized girl can feel. While essays like Brianna’s may be therapeutic, they are also forms of public moral writing, as witnessed by the considerable popularity of “This I Believe” series on National Public Radio. To the extent that composition studies has embraced the public, non-academic uses of language, it should pay serious attention to the power of moral discourse like hers.
I personally experienced this removal from public discourse several years ago at an annual NCTE conference. Somehow I was on the “research strand,” which as anyone familiar with the conference knows is the kiss of death, a kind of consumer warning. A group of us were scheduled to present in a huge ballroom, and as the scheduled time approached it became clear that the panel outnumbered the audience—so we pulled together a few chairs in a pathetic huddle to make the session feel more intimate. In the session I was criticized by a prominent researcher for promoting narrative and descriptive writing, and not the more powerful “language of the academy.” I was, in effect, disempowering my students.
I remember thinking at the time, “If we and our language is so powerful, why isn’t anyone here?” For I knew in some other ballroom, my colleague Donald Graves would be speaking to an audience of over a thousand, which would respond enthusiastically to his humor, his stories of children in his study, his descriptions of their writing, and his ability to mimic conversations with these children. At times these stories had the weight of parables, exemplary stories. He would alternate from humor to pathos to indignation without any notes, and never losing his audience. And he changed the face of elementary education.
Who, I was thinking, really has a handle on the “language of power”?
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Critical Memoir and Identity Formation: Being, Belonging, Becoming
Nancy Mack
Wright State University
Critique can function as more than a scholarly pursuit; it can become a valued skill for surviving as an outsider within an academic context. Because universities are complex, largely reproductive systems, being a hard worker and following the rules does not necessarily lead to reward or even much notice. Increasing demands and multiple layers of political machinations foster disillusionment and alienation. Participating in programs, grants, and other initiatives only increases the perils, not to mention running the gauntlet of publishing and tenure. As egotistical as I may be, it is best to remember that the academic universe is not the only place fraught with crushing hegemonic pressures. Being a parent, teenager, or restaurant server all necessitate the ability to analyze the forces that impose limitations and subvert one’s agency to author ethical, answerable acts. Fortunately, critique has long been expressed through many productive means such as music, cartoons, jokes, parodies, postings on social media, clothes, hair styles, body art, gestures, and of course, various types of composing and writing.
This chapter forwards memoir as a writing assignment that can be informed by a critical notion of subject formation. The heuristic activities that I describe were developed for courses on different levels: first year composition, English education writing pedagogy, and several graduate seminars. Recently, I incorporated a few of these generative strategies into an online graduate course about critical memoir. After commenting on the constraints of theoretical taxonomies, a series of heuristic strategies are outlined to increase awareness of identity as a conflicted representation that is always open to revision through writing.
Troubling Taxonomies
Regretfully, labels reinforce power relations behind reified categories. Nevertheless, taxonomies may come in handy when trying to wrap one’s head around a huge amount of information during an introductory course about composition theory (Mack, 2009). A disclaimer always needs to be fronted when using such devices that taxonomies are cultural generalizations that in most cases rewrite history to benefit the reigning group. Fulkerson’s (1979, 1990, 2005) serial glosses relate an overly dramatic, progress-narrative of the field. A people’s oral history always varies from the official, printed versions, with some of the old timers choosing silence rather than the futility of constructing an alternative narrative. I merely wish to trouble the master narrative for the field by pointing out that the names commonly representing the theory camps in what is called Rhetoric and Composition should be contested. Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu (2010) astutely argue that these two words that represent the field itself deserve critique. We might question which term should come first and whether the “and” implies equality or mere addition. The names for individual theory groups did not precede the development of a particular perspective, nor did these labels emerge from individual scholars meeting as a group, voting on an identifier, and donning T-shirts with slogans to represent their mutual ideology. At the time that some of these camps supposedly came into being, I would have bet on totally different names as gaining popularity. For example, I would have suggested “transformative pedagogies” rather than the cumbersome “social epistemic rhetoric,” but James Berlin never requested my advice.
History is far more complex than any taxonomy can represent. Most scholars have careers that span decades with their positions developing if not taking twists and turns related to forces that may not be fully revealed. Proffering a new position will always come with great political risk and may indeed necessitate the Foucauldian moment of labeling others to create a somewhat undeserved distinction. Maybe the academic desire to coin a new concept leads to the emphasis on difference so we can offer a new and improved concept. Yet such stress on difference also may lead to categories that imply binaries and warring factions, even when they may not exist. Raul Sanchez comments on the need for a progressive cause and effect claim when forwarding a new theory:
We might even say that process theory was invented by postprocess theory in the same way that, according to Susan Miller, current-traditional theory was invented by process
theory …. In a sense then, to participate in a discussion about the relative merits of process and postprocess theories is to use the apparatus, to perform the same act of piety. More importantly, it is also to forego the opportunity to redefine the historical and theoretical terms by which writing will be studied. (2011, p. 187)
Even claims of members’ alienation or affiliation may be political projections. These fossilized monikers are hardly accepted team names that rally scholars under their banners to battle the opposition in disciplinary skirmishes. Taxonomies of theory groups are misrepresentations at best and divisive propaganda at worst. Our critiques should historicize such labels to make these groups more dynamic and even revisable.
Richard Weaver (1953) warns against an over-emphasis on theory god-terms. These potent terms are vague and therefore discount the complexities of the daily classroom experience. Patricia Harkin (1991) has forwarded a more grounded notion of teacher lore as employing multiple theoretical approaches in service of the teacher’s many responsibilities. Thus, a theoretically informed teacher might devise a writing course that draws from multiple approaches: traditional skills, process procedures, expressive needs, cognitive development, academic initiation, critical concerns, rhetorical demands, logical argumentation, genre practices, civic responsibilities, disciplinary knowledge, local imperatives, postmodern alienation, and real-world communicative activities. To make such determinations in curriculum design is not eclectic but rather dynamic in which multiple theories must interplay in a changing, local context. As someone who might be labeled as a practitioner, I am advocating for more theory to complicate our practices, rather than pitting one mythologized theory group against the other.
Critical Memoir and Identity Formation
I am somewhat surprised that the personal narrative survives as a writing assignment. Although students favor it, the personal narrative has been critiqued for promoting a naive notion of a singular, static, authentic self. Abandoning the personal narrative in favor of the combative, polarizing argument assignment seems to be in fashion in first-year college writing courses and has trickled down into high school assignment initiatives and the Common Core standards. Some teachers will even say that the personal narrative is too easy for students to write because it is organized chronologically while others would counter that using a familiar structure makes it possible to focus on other more important skills. The personal narrative has been condemned as everything from too emotive to too culturally scripted. While examining her teaching in a personal essay course, Amy Robillard reveals her disciplinary guilt:
Personal essay assignments become subject to the same by now well-honed critiques of personal narrative assignments. The personal narrative is too easy, uncritical. We shouldn’t assign personal narratives because we’re only inviting students to confess their most embarrassing experiences to us. We’re not therapists, after all. (Sharp-Hoskins & Robillard, 2012, p. 324)
I respect Robillard’s distinction between the personal narrative and the personal essay as a revision that comes from a more critical understanding of subject formation, including her own narrative of herself as the “good” teacher. From this article, both Sharp-Hoskins and Robillard model their critical reflection process: “We argue, then, that it is only by recognizing our own implication, our own attachments, in the economies of emotion that circumscribe us that we can begin to challenge the master narratives of the ‘good teacher”’ (2012, p. 333). Disciplinary critiques should motivate teacher scholars to interrogate and revise their assignments in an ongoing dialectic between theory and practice.
My revision of the personal narrative assignment derives from an eclectic mix of Russian cognitive psychology and critical theory. As a first generation college student, I cannot avoid thinking about students’ motives for enrolling in college courses. Most enroll in degree programs to make a change in identity, be it from local high school student to a more cosmopolitan college student, from one career to another, or more hopefully from one economic stratum to another. In his textbook about educational psychology for teachers, Vygotsky’s last subheading in the last chapter is entitled “Life as Creation”(1997). Vygotsky argues for a type of subject formation that is a social process throughout one’s lifetime that requires active participation it its creation. Thus, it is no surprise that for Vygotsky, self-regulation is about the development of metacognitive thinking versus controlling discrete behaviors. Self-regulation is about self-formation and becoming the person one wants to be within a given social milieu. Certainly, enrolling in college can be an act of agency to change one’s circumstances that implicates identity formation as a context for inquiry, reflection, and revision through writing.
To create what might be an artificial difference from the personal narrative, I have chosen to label this type of writing assignment a critical memoir. I started with Lucy Calkins’ (1986) delineation of narrative as what happened, autobiography as when it happened, and memoir as who it happened to and how that experience represents an important theme in that person’s life. As I became more versed in postmodern subjectivity, I started to think of memoir as constructed from multiple subject positions:
• The naive self who was present at the time of the experience.
• The subjective self who interprets the experience as the culture would suggest.
• The future self who imagines the person that the author wishes to become.
• The author self who negotiates among the other selves and constructs meaning (Mack, 2007).
Memoir encourages selectivity of experience, multiple interpretations, future orientation, and agency in representation. To push the memoir genre to become more critical, identity formation should be complicated further. Thus, writing activities should promote reflection about identity as being (Mack 2006)
• multiple in various cultural roles,
• conflicted by acts of accommodation, resistance, and opposition,
• temporal within larger historical and economic forces,
• materially situated in a local, dynamic space,
• embodied in emotionally-laden, lived experience,
• interpreted and co-created by society,
• mediated through language that is culturally ideological,
• developmental through continual maturation and education,
• revised by intentional and willful agency, and
• connected to literacies that are larger than the classroom.
This is indeed a tall order. In some regards a critical memoir approach asks the writer to continually reconsider one’s own master narratives, questioning the who, what, when, where, and why of the potential ways that the stories could be told. More than questioning whether the story is true are the questions about how the story functions and how it could be actively re-interpreted and revised to represent a newly constructed, more ethical truth. The emphasis on reflection in composition studies informs my desire to include critical interpretation in all aspects of memoir writing. Kathleen Yancey (1998) and Donna Qualley (1997) are both scholars who have emphasized reflection as primary to the composing process.
Critical Heuristics in Practice
The ten-week graduate course in critical memoir was structured around reading, writing, and reflection in three units: being, belonging, and becoming. The name for the being section of the course was influenced by Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “being-as-event” that describes the individual’s existence as an activity. In one of my favorite quotes about subjectivity Bakhtin makes the analogy to a rough draft in need of an ethically answerable deed to escape endless drafts in order to “rewrite one’s life once and for all in the form of a fair copy” (Bakhtin, 1993, p. 44). Writing critical memoir has the potential to be part of a Bakhtinian answerable deed as the writer decides what the memory means by selecting, examining, reflecting, and finally assigning meaning to it.
To return to Vygotsky’s notion of ontological development of life as a creation, adults often have moments when they dredge up the past in order to make sense of it. Perhaps the very moments when we do this are moments of identity crisis when we feel the need to revise our selves. Some may do this with a therapist who generally provides the interpretation while others will merely have an uncritical moment of nostalgia. For a memoir writing course, assigning meaning to memory can engage students in critical reflection. Although the teacher plays a powerful role in this reflection, we should not assume the therapist’s role of primary interpreter. Consequently, I did not micromanage students’ insights by commenting extensively on drafts or in lengthy individual conferences or emails. These strategies, although potentially effective, were not realistic for my intent or workload. My influence was primarily through the selection of the readings and the creation of a series of heuristics. These careful curricular decisions were my means for fostering the students’ reflections. My role as a reader was more one of praising their insights rather than forwarding my reflections on their experiences.
The critical reflection required for a re-interpretation of experience benefits from a stance of inquiry similar to ethnographic research in which patterns emerge from a process that is rich in phenomenological details and data. This ongoing hermeneutic inquiry should ideally happen before, during, and after each memoir writing experience. One student explained the inquiry into memoir this way:
As a writer, memoirs feel deeply personal, almost as if something that could exist without a reader. My understanding of the memoir has been challenged and expanded. Not only do I further appreciate the genre, but the process that must occur in the writing process. Unlike the academic writing process, the memoir writing process is much more an inner experience, requiring the writer to travel through remembrances, trying to find that which real memory is. Victor Villanueva first made me aware of the distinction between memory and remembrances. Memory requires more of a person, and is a process driven activity. It is not until more details and dialogue have surfaced from musing on a remembrance that a memory really begins to shape. Memories are the remembrances that we actually relive, nearly re-creating the experience. True memoir writing comes when that memory is recreated for the reader. I am still working to develop my memoir writing into reader-based prose. It can be emotionally exhausting to relive remembrances enough to actually meet real memory.
Activities not included here also focused on writing crafts such as details, characters, dialogue, and inner thoughts.
The “being” unit encompassed a wider notion of literacy. Students initially journaled in response to literacy memoirs with a working class focus by Laurel Johnson Black (1995) and Linda Brodkey (1994). Any selection of readings comes with a political agenda. I chose several readings that had a social class theme because class is a major issue for my students; however, I made it clear that students were not required to write about class issues. Also, I wanted readings that did not present tidy, simplistic literacy narratives like those that Jane Greer refers to as “conversion narratives” (2012) or Ishmael Reed critiques as “redemption” narratives (2012). In particular, Black presents a complex understanding of literacy through her value of working class language and the disconnect that her education has caused with her sister. As Patrick Berry proposes, the use of literacy narratives should “move beyond a singular focus on either hope or critique in order to identify the transformative potential of literacy in particular circumstances” (2012, iii). So, the question for the writer becomes how should the literacy narrative function within the individual’s unique identity formation.
I assigned a series of brainstorming prompts that first required students to itemize a wide range of literacy experiences throughout their lives both inside and outside of school. The prompts continued with questions about more complex functions of literacy for purposes of escape, friendship, entertainment, peace-making, status, curiosity, and rebellion against authority. Students were to note themes in their development as well as how literacy functioned for their families, friends, and multiple identity groups. Finally, students considered conflicts related to their literacy, including occasions when they were intentionally silent, refused to communicate, or chose not to become literate about something for a strong reason. Students also responded to other working-class academic memoirs from Dews and Law’s This Fine Place So Far From Home (1995). From the prompts and journaling students developed two ideas, drafted, and revised a literacy memoir about experiences that varied from childhood through adulthood. One student’s powerful memoir related the experience of being betrayed by a hate-filled, adolescent diary entry when it was discovered by an abusive stepfather.
The “belonging” unit was named from an article by psychologist Barbara Jensen (2012) in which she characterizes the difference between working and middle classes as “belonging” versus “becoming.” Jensen characterizes the working class sense of self as developing from childhood in close relation to others, as including or affiliating others whereas the middle class self emerges as separation from others, as negotiating or competing with others. Although I wanted students to consider class conflicts, I opened the heuristics to other types of identity groups.
This unit took longer to implement and involved many more heuristics than the previous unit. Multiple definitions of memoir, culled from several scholars, were presented. In addition to more readings from This Fine Place So Far From Home (Dews & Law, 1995), students read selections from Zandy’s Liberating Memory (1995) and from Rick Bragg (1997) and Paule Marshall (1983). After modeling my own overlapping identity circles related to gender, class, family, relationships, education, location, generation, health, interests, responsibilities, and career, students made their own webs. Another series of prompts invited students to record experiences with language and identity, such as feeling like an insider or outsider, taking a stand or making peace, being offended or offensive, and defending or inspiring others. Students answered a lengthy questionnaire that identified working class markers related to food, clothing, purchases, childhood, home, work, and school; and viewed a hidden class rules chart (Payne, 1996). Students placed life experiences on a graphic organizer, ranking them as accommodating, resisting, or opposing cultural norms. During revision students also read bell hooks (2012), Frank Dobson (2002), and Victor Villanueva (2004). Students had no problems with selecting topics from diverse identity groups and consequently wrote memoirs about race, music, alcoholism, religion, gender, and disability with only one student selecting social class. These memoirs were more complex than earlier ones. Accordingly, the previously mentioned student observed that social class is “a complex system with many layers and much ambiguity.”
The third unit about “becoming” springs from Freire’s use of “becoming” as a trope in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1973) for creating a critically conscious, future-oriented, literate identity. In a previous critical pedagogy seminar, I created an activity based on Friere’s concept of limit situation that guided students to trace moments of frustration to the larger social forces of oppression. Students frequently connected their procrastination in completing assignments with forces inherent to graduate education.
A positive and negative graph activity (Rief, 1992) assigned students to draw and annotate a time line of experiences in order to analyze critical patterns in their lives. Readings included Jacqueline Jones Royster (1996), Janet Bean (2003), and one of my articles (2007). An expanded limit situation heuristic engaged students in listing personal, professional, and writing goals. Students then selected one goal from each category and critically analyzed the forces that thwarted their progress. Limit situations were described as “physical needs, time constraints, financial problems, power obstacles (permission), social pressures (other people), institutional constraints (rules), historical patterns, and cultural biases.” Next, students imagined impractical and practical solutions for each goal and one small, immediate step that could be taken. The next activity, “Emotional Indicators of Stress,” requested that students think about social systems in which they had been unrewarded, ignored, given extra duties, trivialized, uninformed, left behind, rated poorly, given misleading information, or told lies. After some explanation of who benefits from this type of cultural hegemony, students tracked their recent negative emotions (rage, anger, passive-aggressive desires, frustration, silence, procrastination, fear, guilt, self-loathing, or despair) as a barometer for subtle forms of oppression. Next, a comparison was made to circumstances that elicit the opposite emotions. Finally, students proposed things that could be changed or that they did have power or control over such as their own reactions. This activity was influenced by my interest in economies of emotion, particularly the scholarship of Lynn Worsham (1998), Julie Lindquist (2004), Donna LeCourt (2004), Laura Micciche (2007), and Michalinos Zembylas (2005). Reading explications of emotional labor has helped me to acknowledge that feelings can be connected to agency in subject formation and pedagogy. In other words, critical analysis of emotion brings the potential “to think, feel, and act differently” (Mack, 2007, p. 22). The critical analysis process can begin with an awareness of a bothersome or intense emotion. Feminist scholar Alison Jaggar defines troubling emotions as “outlaw emotions.”
As well as motivating critical research, outlaw emotions may also enable us to perceive the world differently from its portrayal in conventional descriptions. They may provide the first indications that something is wrong with how things are. Conventionally unexpected or inappropriate emotions may precede our conscious recognition that accepted descriptions and justifications often conceal as much as reveal the prevailing site of affairs. Only when we reflect on our initially puzzling irritability, revulsion, anger, or fear may we bring to consciousness our “gut-level” awareness that we are in a situation of coercion, cruelty, injustice, or danger (Mack, 2007, p. 161).
To some extent I wanted students to view their outlaw emotions as an early warning system that alerts them to examine the oppressive forces that may be connected to these emotions.
After drafting a limit situation memoir, students completed a pronoun revision activity based on a presentation by Karen Hollis in which a paragraph is selected that contains the singular pronouns of I, me, or my that are revised to plural pronouns of we, us, and our. Students then pondered how their individual limit situation might be connected to the experiences of a larger group of people. The diversity of memoir topics seemed to widen as the term progressed. For the limit situation memoir, topics addressed family member’s rejection of educated vocabulary, deciding to leaving seminary, dealing with negative comments from a professor, accepting polygamy, financial problems with meeting social obligations, and negative comments about weight.
As part of the final portfolio reflection process, I shared my writing manifesto list and asked students to create one of their own, an activity I hoped would help students reflect on what they wanted their writing to be in the future.
When the only writing you do is school writing, the teacher controls all the assignments, topics, and deadlines. Finding the time, motivation, and support necessary to keep writing outside of school is incredibly difficult. It is as if every other part of our lives conspires to prevent writing. Many other parts of our lives cannot be delayed to give us time to write. What we can control is our attitude. A negative attitude can block all possibilities to write. If the writer cannot believe in the importance of his or her own writing, then nothing will get done. It is time to claim your writing for yourself, for your own projects, for your own purposes, desires and dreams.
In addition to reflective journal entries after each of the three essays, the portfolio cover essay assignment requested that students contemplate insights gained from writing their memoirs as well as themes that connected the individual pieces and their readings. Here are two excerpts from different students:
Both memoirs make a strong case for the claim that we must constantly reinvent ourselves while fighting against the societal forces that want us to adhere to dominant rules that may not benefit us.
Bell wrote about the price of an education. She argued that those who are less fortunate will be challenged with having to forget where they came from, wipe their memories clean of anything that is not fit for the educated elite. Unconsciously, I had already done this. If I was going to be successful in the world of academia, I had to learn to cover up my roots with the soil of the high-class. I had to forget that I came from a less than worthy background. I had to accept that education wasn’t a right for me, but a privilege. I had to come to terms with being neither black nor white, but instead the grey area that goes mostly neglected; the grey area that the minds of logic detest because it challenges their neatly organized world. I had to forget everything that brought me to where I was if I was going to continue to persevere myself and make my mark in the world.
Agency and the Critical Memoir
Regardless of the mode or genre, the teacher must create writing assignments that critically connect literacy to the student’s agency in identity formation. The traits that differentiate critical memoir from the personal narrative are primarily that the writing is more subtly nuanced and critically complex. The writing should open the author to the possibility of agency through the interpretation and representation of memory. The meaning of the memoir is revised from the student’s current vantage point of an increased critical awareness and projected towards a hopeful future, thus giving the author some degree of agency in shaping identity.
Discounting that the student has any agency in subject formation relegates literacy to functioning only in a most dismal manner. Vygotskian scholars Dorothy Holland and William Lachicotte make room for agency in identity formation that might open up discursive spaces to new variants:
People have to create selves that (in the metaphor of residence) inhabit the (social) structures and spaces (cultural imaginaries) that collectivities create, but they produce selves that inhabit these structures and imaginaries in creative, variant, and often oppositional, ways …. And, in the circuits of emerging communities of practice, innovation may play out and regularize the semiotic means for new identities and activities that lie beyond existing structures of power. (2007, p. 135)
This notion of creative variants is similar to Victor Turner’s discussion of liminal or in-between spaces in social structures that permit resistance and revision (1977). However, unlike essays, identities take a great deal of time and emotional energy to be revised.
Hope is important, but agency should not be located only within the writing itself. To make the larger connection between writing critical memoir and civic literacy might be too grand a claim. I do important work in the writing classroom, but my goal is more that of increasing critical thought rather than liberating anyone’s identity. I agree with Rochelle Harris’ insistence that emergent moments of critical thought can happen in students’ personal essays, autobiographies, and memoirs:
Before institutional, community, national, and/or global transformation come the personal commitments and experiences that motivate one to claim the agency necessary to begin social critique. The most important critical work emerges as students write about the places they have been, the experiences they have had, the books they have read, and the ideas they have pondered. This is one of the most revolutionary of critical acts—to transform and empower one’s own words as they are embedded in that most difficult of intertextual histories to negotiate, the history of one’s own life. (2004, p. 417)
I must remember that Freire cautioned that the classroom is dominated by the hegemony of the larger society and not really the “lever of revolutionary transformation” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 33). Education may not be the great equalizer for my students (or for me, for that matter), but it can help us to compose a more thoughtful draft in the endless revisions of ourselves and our lives.
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Vygotsky, L. (1997). Educational psychology. Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press.
Weaver, R. M. (1953). The ethics of rhetoric. Chicago: H. Regnery.
Worsham, L. (1998). Going postal: Pedagogic violence and the schooling of emotion. JAC, 18(2), 213-245.
Yancey, K. B. (1998). Reflection in the writing classroom. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Zandy, J. (1995). Liberating memory: Our work and our working-class consciousness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Zembylas, M. (2005). Teaching with emotion: A postmodern enactment. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/02%3A_Critical_Self-Construction/2.03%3A_Critical_Memoir_and_Identity_Formation-_Bein.txt |
Derek Owens
St. John’s University
The Personal-to-Professional Ladder
From the beginning one of the messages I got (as far as teaching first-year writing was concerned) was that pretty much one begins by “teaching the personal,” moves as soon as possible to the “analytical,” then closes with the “argumentative.” There might be other stops en route—”expository” and “persuasive” and the like could all get slipped in between the bookends. But the trajectory was clear: initially “allow” students to dip into their lives and experiences, with the goal of eventually moving away from all that “personal stuff” into realms more explicitly “academic,” “rigorous,” “scholarly.” Hook the initiates, in other words, by first “letting them” write about their lives and interests, the stuff that floats their boats. Once we’ve whetted their appetite though, shift gears. “Personal expression” gets left behind as analysis of other people’s texts takes center stage. “Dissection” and “critique” and “debate” move in where the personal has been evicted, or at least rendered secondary or subservient to the examination of artifacts, the elucidation of ideas located beyond the writer’s local experience. One might picture the progression like some kind of game board—each student entering via their own unique paths and histories, engaging with them along the way, but ultimately everyone coming closer and closer to a common finish line where it’s not their “expressed” personal histories that matter but, say, the way they marshal evidence, cite sources, make inferences, assemble claims. Establish authority. Enter into other people’s conversations.
Occasionally this “personal-to-professional” path was made quite explicit. In one place where I used to teach, a senior colleague and supervisor laughed disparagingly of how our freshmen were “so in love with their little stories” and needed to be “broken” of such self-indulgences. This was in marked contrast to the fairly progressive graduate program I was in during the late 1980s where considerable attention was placed on designing learning environments where students had the freedom to explore writing on their own terms. And yet even there, once we grad students got to our comps and the dissertation, the notion of incorporating or validating the “personal”—however much that concept had been valued in our conversations about students’ rights to their own languages—was regarded as risky and problematic. We were after all training ourselves to enter the profession; to not take seriously the genre conventions of the cover letter, dissertation prospectus, the manuscript, the job interview, would have been self-defeating.
I suppose what bothers me most of all is how seductive this one-directional ladder is. I know because I’m no stranger to it. I have in fact embraced it in the past and at times uncritically enforced it. I used to recommend it to faculty looking for suggestions on how to introduce writing at different stages of the semester. And this supposed progression—it really can be such a seductive little formula, no? I mean, there is a comfortable logic to it. Those early-in-the-semester “personal essays” can be such excellent icebreakers. Everyone gets to find out a tiny bit about each other, tell some “personal” stories. Students find it little easier to open up in their small group discussions, maybe even locate common ground. Then about a quarter into the semester the focus can turn to texts written by real, published writers, the classroom vocabulary turning to matters of “close reading” and “textual analysis” and “unpacking the text.” Then, after they graduate from this phase, students are channeled into the even loftier realms of argumentation, and new vocabularies are adopted about “claims,” “defining terms,” “evidence,” “anticipating counter-arguments.”
It’s not that any of the attendant topics or conversations that take place in this linear continuum is inherently problematic. What’s bothersome is the underlying assumption that one inevitably goes in through the Expression door, exits out the Critical door, and that these realms have to occupy rigid, separate geographies.
Of course what I’ve articulated here is a crude cartoon. I don’t personally know anyone who teaches a writing course exactly this way, slavishly marching through these realms in such predictable, lockstep manner. But I feel confident that this trajectory remains alive and well and largely implicit in varying degrees throughout writing curricula and textbooks. (If I’m wrong, we would probably see just as many courses demonstrating the inverse: students beginning with research papers, constructing arguments, analyzing texts, then wrapping up with “personal narratives.”)
I also realize that the terms and binaries I’m invoking here—personal/expressive vs. academic/critical—aren’t givens. Some in this volume, like Peter Elbow in his opening chapter, challenge the terminology altogether. Still, for me, these terms retain some cash value. Ultimately I don’t find either word meaningless or inherently pejorative; instead I want to bear in mind these are working fictions that point to distinct histories and perceptions, not intractable discourse conventions, and that it’s in their juxtaposition, their melding, where we find exciting opportunities for imagining writing.
I’m interested in how either end of the spectrum puts pressure on its alleged antithesis, pushing and pulling us to a more hybrid middle arena where “critical”
embodies the “personal,” and “expressive” eats the “academic”—to a point where the paired construction no longer reinforces either endpoint but actually calls them into question. A binary issuing a challenge for us to recognize the limitation of the very presupposed obligatory continuum. Ultimately this both/and construction—or more accurately, reflective process—calls to mind (for me anyway) the alchemical pairing of opposites referred to as the coniunctio, a reasonable metaphor, perhaps, to bear in mind as we explore the possible benefits of conjoining these two modes of inquiry.
From Mother’s Milk to Speed
Before unraveling that further let me take a detour into etymological terrain. There’s a richness of meaning in the root “express” that is absent in the manner in which the word is commonly invoked in our field. For while “expressive” in our compositional history has often been linked with, say, “personal,” “emotional,” and “uncritical,” a quick tour through the word’s history points to some interesting variations. An incomplete list, courtesy of the OED:
One of the earliest meanings of “express” is “to press out,” specifically to press or squeeze out milk from the breast. An organic, feminine connotation—although express here also means being forced out by mechanical means.
“Express” also means “to portray, represent,” linking it with rendering—and so in this way “expressive discourse” could, one might think, have something in common with the detailed description associated with, say, more clinical, scientific observations.
The term “beyond expression” is intriguing for it implies that “expression” is the endpoint, a culmination—as there can be no expression beyond expression. Expression thus as the final realm, a pinnacle of—well, expression.
“Expressionless” of course means “destitute of expression; giving no indication of character, feeling, etc.; inexpressive.” It means “expressing nothing, conveying no meaning.” Here expression is thus saturated with meaning, the source and conveyor of meaning—whereas expressionless equals absence. No meaning, in other words, without expression.
Expression is elsewhere defined as “to represent in language; to put into words, set forth (a meaning, thought, state of things); to give utterance to (an intention, a feeling).” Not only is expression thus meaning saturated, but is here the very creation of meaning—meaning conjured within language. And when it’s summarized as “To put one’s thoughts into words; to utter what one thinks; to state one’s opinion,” it comes very close to argumentation, the articulation of a position.
If the earliest roots of “express” carry vestiges of the feminine and maternal, embedded within the term are conventionally masculine connotations as well. For express also means speed, no dillydallying, no time to stop unnecessarily along the way. No pausing for reflection. Hence we have the express train, express delivery, express highway, express messenger, and even the express rifle.
It seems some in our field have chosen to define “expression” and “expressivist” and “expressionist” pretty narrowly. In composition such words have too often been indicators of naive exuberance, narcissism, lack of self-reflection.1 Interestingly, we have been much savvier about the term “critical.” While the OED tells us that “criticism” certainly means “the action of criticizing, or passing judgment upon the qualities or merits of anything; esp. the passing of unfavourable judgment; fault-finding, censure,” we’re quick to make clear to our students that it is not that kind of criticism we’re all about in the academy but rather critique as measured, thoughtful, transparent, honest introspection in the search for truth. Or something like that.
Why has our field been more willing to acknowledge the multiple meanings in the definitional aura surrounding “critical,” and not so much “expressive”? What is it about the “personal” that makes the academic so nervous?
Our (Not So Critically) Expressive Academic Discourse
Which brings me to my second short detour in which I feel compelled to highlight a contradiction we all know but which I don’t think gets acknowledged nearly enough: that, despite our professional tendency to reject the “personal” in favor of “objectivity,” academia, as a culture and a workplace, is as fraught with as much raw, personal, messy personal emotion as any professional community you can probably think of.
As academics we do an incredible job at portraying ourselves as dispassionate scholars privileging neutral objectivity and reasoned discourse and impartial rigor. More often than not we value the quantitative over the qualitative, “empirical data” over storytelling, measured debate over in-your-face finger pointing. But let’s be honest: we are no strangers to the most personal of the personal—as any Human Resources office, dean, general counsel, chair, and most faculty, adjuncts, and grad assistants can tell you. For while in our peer-reviewed journals we might (might) bend over backwards to effect a posture of measured balance—infusing our prose with obligatory phrases like “I would like to suggest” and “an alternative reading might” and “perhaps we ought to consider,” we are also people who are no slouches at throwing tantrums in department meetings, dissing colleagues, distributing ad hominem attacks in mailboxes, making students cry in the classroom, making our colleagues cry, crying ourselves in our offices, writing snotty emails, and sparring with colleagues in all manner of venues. Nor are we strangers to favoritism, paranoia masked as overconfidence, jealous petty exchanges, insults, one-upmanship, and character assassination. (It’s why, when academics read a novel like Richard Russo’s Straight Man, they know immediately a text like that has to be grounded in reality.)
I’m not saying the “personal” or “expressive” are synonymous only with these touchier emotions. Obviously much of our “expressive” discourse is also what we would consider laudatory, necessary, and worth celebrating—we are after all a breed of professionals who value academic freedom, speaking truth to power, and pursuing things like “truth” even when it disrupts various status quos. My point is that such more emotionally problematic “expressive,” “personal” iterations are alive and well in our academy, always have been, and that a more accurate and comprehensive assessment of “academic discourse” would have to include this richer, messier pool of discourse. To pretend that the discourses of academic culture aren’t in a great many ways inherently “expressive” just isn’t true.
An Alchemical Invitation
For me the challenge and appeal of “critical expressivism” is in its both/and implications. Alchemically, the coniunctio refers to the wedding of opposites, the bringing together of unlike materials or states of being in order to construct some alternate hybrid form or perception that, synergistically, depends upon yet is distinct from its components. For me the bridging of the “critical” and “expressive” domains ultimately leads us to a reflective process where, Uroboros-like, we continually cycle through both opposites to a point where the binary might be left behind and some other, more interesting, complex, queered understanding of introspection, and how it might be imaginatively conveyed, begins to surface. These conjoined twins push us to continually problematize and question our own positionality as we write—moving us to ask such questions as:
What’s my own personal, private investment in this? (and if there isn’t one, then, why exactly am I engaged in this writing act?) What does this writing task hold for me, personally, and how and why might I acknowledge (or conceal) the degree of that personal investment? Am I sufficiently subjecting my predilections to healthy skepticism, processing them through a critical filter, unwilling to leave anything to assumption? How far am I willing to critique my own ideas, and in the process regard my lived histories that have made them part of who I am? If the discursive arenas I seek to enter and participate within frown upon rhetorical markers others might characterize as too “personal,” or likewise too “academic,” how far am I willing to go to challenge the expectations of those audiences? When do I acquiesce? How might my concept of “the personal” evolve into something that resembles nothing like all the forms and genres typically, maybe pejoratively associated with that word? And same for “critical,” the “academic?” Most of all, how to write, and think through writing in ways that move outside both ends of this spectrum, that don’t reject either the “expressive” or the “critical,” but engage in a means of trying to make writing within (or outside—?) an arena where personal/academic, critical/expressive begin to drop their meanings, and no longer make all that much sense anyway?
What I like about the concept of the “critically expressive” is how it queers the binary, challenging each half by forcing them into the other’s arms. Comparable pairings (although, here, flipped) might be “personally academic,” “locally global,” “emotionally objective.” It’s interesting too that in such pairings one of these inverted twins is always the suspect term demanding validation, whereas its partner is typically assumed to be more appropriate. “Expressive,” “personal,” “local,” “emotional”—traditionally, in academic contexts anyway, such gestures have to be justified, excused, permitted. Allowances made. We feel we have to make good arguments for letting them through the door. On the other hand “critical,” “academic,” “global,” “objective”—these are assumed to be self-evident. Ultimately though it’s not condemning one side over the other, or even reversing this imbalance, but the invitation to create some wholly distinct third space through writing that I find appealing. An invitation leading, perhaps, to an understanding of writing as, say, art.
So how might this manifest in the classroom? When we find ourselves composing, verbally or in writing, “in the personal”—that is, self-consciously invoking
the autobiographical or the local or the personal or even the “emotional”—we might push ourselves and our students to consider never settling for “just” telling the story, venting, confessing, sharing. Not that there’s anything wrong with “just” doing any of that. But if the critically expressive is one of our interests, we’ve an opportunity before us to question the stories we would otherwise “just” tell (the classroom as a conversational, compositional realm distinct from, say, the dinner table or bar). It’s a space where we can expect ourselves to keep asking: so why that story? Why convey this personal account? What’s the motive behind this desire to share these emotions? What might be some of the as of yet unrealized stories percolating beneath this autobiographical rendering? In other words, not to simply be satisfied with the presentation of story for story’s sake, but provoked to keep cracking story open, unraveling and unpacking it.
On the flip side, when we find ourselves operating “in the academic”—that is, attentive to all that critical stuff like evidence, analysis, arguments, and the rest of it—we might seek to be more unabashedly up front about the personal, and maybe even private, motivations and concerns behind the ideas and decisions that grow out of this work. Here, the focus could also be on storytelling, but the stories behind our professional and research needs.
Many of us in composition studies do something like this already. Most of our journals are filled with articles where authors make no apologies for introducing their own autobiographical, “personal” accounts and motives. Still, I’m interested in what happens when we push ourselves further to the point where considering the personal as critical, and the critical as personal, becomes risky, startling, and maybe uncomfortable.
I did this recently in a book I wrote where I struggled to tell a variety of stories and pull together a bunch of research. The process was for me more painful, awkward, invigorating, and ultimately revealing than any other writing project I’ve undertaken. The book had its genesis in these so-called “recovered memories” my mother started to have in her early fifties—accounts of rather sensational abuse at the hands of grandmother. I wanted to tell these stories, which my mother passed along to me, but needed to present that telling within the context of something larger than “just” her childhood story. And so I found myself researching the history of the region in which she grew up—a weird section of central New York State. This historical mining unexpectedly led me back to the “personal” as I turned up accounts of long lost relatives on my mother’s side (including, I discovered, the leader of a religious cult back in the late 18th century).
After a while I realized, somewhat reluctantly, that I would also have to introduce some of my own childhood memories and photos in this narrative as a means of contrasting the horrorshow my mom experienced with the more idyllic childhood my mother, and father too, constructed for me and my sister. This was exceptionally hard for me. To shine a light on myself that way and be so revealing to an outside audience made me incredibly nervous. I was much more comfortable letting the focus be on my mother, dead relatives, and regional histories. As a result I learned that, while the “personal” and “expressive” are often assumed to be problematic in that they invite undisciplined, narcissistic navel-gazing, in truth a rendering of the intimate, the guarded, the innermost, can require no small degree of difficult reflection and self-critique in figuring out how to communicate all that to an invisible, imagined public audience. Being “expressive,” in this sense, for me, turned out to be way harder and weirder than any of the academic writing I ever did. Developing that kind of confidence in one’s work, one’s audience—it’s just scary.
As I worked through this business of bridging other people’s stories with my own, the focus of this book took on new significance. I became interested in the strangeness of memory and the slipperiness of identity. In doing research into accounts of child abuse as well as controversies surrounding concepts like recovered memory, I found myself realizing I had to rethink concepts like “childhood” and “trauma” from scratch. On top of all this I wanted to introduce as much photographic and visual “narrative” as possible—old photos and postcards—while messing around with the visual arrangement of text on the page in ways that might (if only to me) indiscreetly reflect some of the ideas housed within.
In the end it turned out to be the most difficult thing I’ve written and will likely ever publish. More than anything else I’ve tackled in writing, this manuscript represented more fully a sustained engagement with the merging of these two endpoints—the critical, and the expressive. Working within this hybrid, liminal realm now seems to me more challenging than self-consciously choosing to reside within either side. A both/and embrace that seems fraught with difficulties, but also unexpected surprises.
I make mention of my manuscript not because it’s how I’m pushing others to write. I mention it because it’s an example of what this whole critical/expressive coniunctio (or whatever metaphor you prefer) might point to. Ultimately I’m interested in classroom environments, and master’s theses, and dissertations, and published articles, where authors (and the faculty, directors, supervisors, editors, and readers who say yea or nay to the worthiness of such work, validating them or not) grant themselves permission to dive into and beyond notions of both “expressive” and “critical,” “personal” and “academic,” to a point where the writing manifests messily, curiously. “Of its own accord.” I’ve come to realize that I privilege discovery, even when it surfaces in odd and uncomfortable ways. Experimentation borne out of need and desire, not necessarily fashion or convention or tradition. Right now “critical expressivism” seems to me about as exciting a new concept as any surfacing within our field, opening up strange and startling new landscapes for composing.
Notes
1. And when I say “we” I include myself. Because—and here is my essay’s little mea culpa moment—I was often one of those who was too quick to assign pejorative connotations to “expressive” discourse. For the longest time I associated the word with sloppy exuberance, or loud relatives, or the constant barrage of egos run amuck on television and radio. Of course, my resistance to the “expressive” had more to do with my own discomfort with conveying the autobiographical—something touched on in this essay. So I failed to draw a distinction between the kind of obligatory, scripted expressionism one finds in, say, reality television and bad memoir writing and extroverted uncles, with the legitimately self-preoccupied explorations of first-year writers who have every reason to be fascinated with their lives, histories, minds, and emotions. Thanks, by the way, to the editors of this collection for providing me with an opportunity to figure this out. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/02%3A_Critical_Self-Construction/2.04%3A_Critical_Expressivisms_Alchemical_Challenge.txt |
Past-Writing: Negotiating the Complexity of Experience and Memory
Jean Bessette
University of Vermont
Early advocates of personal writing sought to use first-year composition to restore authenticity to students who must suffer a “plastic, mass-produced world” outside the classroom (Adler-Kassner, 1998, p. 218). In line with this objective, the rhetoric of early personal writing pedagogy is constituted by tropes of ownership, expression, self-understanding, and “authentic voice,” as the title of Donald C. Stewart’s 1972 expressivist textbook illustrates. Linda Adler-Kassner contends that, as a result of this goal of authenticity and ownership, expressivism “started with and centered around experience—defined as personal, private, individually felt understanding of the writer” (1998, p. 219).1 “Experience” however, was almost always framed in terms of the past. Expressivist Gordon Rohmann argued, for example, that it is in the nature of human beings to make analogies between “this experience and others” gone by; we “know anything in our present simply because we have known similar things in our past to which we compare the present” (1965, p. 111). For Rohmann and other expressivists, writing past experience—that is, composing with memory—was a means by which students could achieve the self-understanding expressivists sought.
More contemporary textbooks with calls for personal writing echo these early understandings of “individually felt,” authentic access to past experience, making it clear that the reliance of personal writing on the authority of memory persists. Robert Yagelski’s 2010 Reading our World: Conversations in Context,2 for example, asks students to write essays “based on memories of [their] childhood” or essays in which they “describe an important memory [they] have of [their] family” (pp. 80; 85). Assignments such as these often link memory writing with present identity, asking students to focus on a “particular aspect of [their] upbringing and how the place where [they] were raised might have influenced [their] sense of identity” (Yagelski, 2010, p. 85). When Yagelski asks students to write the past experience that has constituted them as individuals today, he treats experience as foundational in some way, as a stable referent students can access and articulate in order to better understand their present selves. These assignments invite the writing of narrative, chronological and linear in structure, because the memories often end up in the form of a story, bolstered by the authority of the writer’s experience.
This chapter takes a closer look at the “pastness” of the experience students of personal writing are asked to compose. When we refigure “experience” as “memory,” we emphasize the slipperiness of our perceptions of the past: the ways in which changing present circumstances reconfigure our sense of what happened. Lynn Z. Bloom explains that writing the past cannot be understood in terms of truth, except in Joan Didion’s sense of a subjective truth: the “truth of how it felt to me” (as quoted in Bloom, 2003, p. 278). But even Didion’s sense of a truth of feeling is undermined when, as Bloom puts it, “the writer’s vision varies over time and intervening circumstances” and when, “as we experience more of life and learn more ourselves and as the world itself changes, we come to understand events and people differently” (Bloom 2003, p. 286). Memory is dynamic and unstable, at odds with our attempts to grab hold of it in writing and make it permanent as a foundation for understanding our present selves. Such understandings of memory upset calls to represent experience as individual, authentic, chronological, and linear.
What becomes of expressivist writing when the pastness of experience complicates its foundational stability for present self-understanding? Rather than view the complexity of writing with memory as support for discontinuing the teaching of personal writing, I consider here how we might approach personal writing in a way that takes into account the dynamic slipperiness of memory. Writing memory with attention to its complexities is important work for students not only because they are already writing with memory in many composition classrooms but also because, as I will show, memory writing offers a unique opportunity for critical analysis of students’ social and political locations. As a feminist scholar, I offer in this paper a feminist pedagogical approach emphasizing strategies of alternative discourse as one way to address the complexity of writing with memory.3 Ultimately, by drawing theories of collective memory into conversation with feminist composition pedagogy, I hope to illustrate how this kind of memory writing might be taught and learned.
Before I describe a sequence of assignments and a course in which I attempted to put into practice my understanding of how writing with memory might best be approached in first-year composition, I will briefly articulate the theoretical perspective that informed the course. Historian and memory studies scholar David Lowenthal argues that we
select, distill, distort, and transform the past, accommodating things remembered to the needs of the present … Memories are not ready-made reflections of the past, but eclectic selective reconstructions based on subsequent actions and perceptions and on ever-changing codes by which we delineate, symbolize and classify the world around us. (1985, p. 210)
Lowenthal’s emphasis on the “subsequent actions[,] … perceptions,” and “ever-changing codes” that organize our memories underscores the elusiveness of our grasp on a pure reconstruction of our experience. But it also suggests a second, simultaneous focus for writers of experience to consider: not only the experience “itself” they wish to recall and reproduce in writing but the dynamic “codes” through which the experience becomes legible in the writer’s present structure of understanding. Historian Joan Wallach Scott’s understanding of experience resonates with Lowanthal’s. She objects to uncritical uses of experience because such uses preclude our critical examination of the ideological system in which the experiencer both enacts the experience and later recalls the experience. Instead of analyzing the workings of the system, the authority of experience reproduces the terms of the system, “locating resistance outside its discursive construction” (Scott, 1991, p. 777).
Lowenthal and Scott’s theorizations of memory articulate the mediation of our memories, the ways in which the experience itself and our subsequent memory of it are constructed by the “system” or “codes” through which we view the world. When we bring Lowenthal and Scott into conversation with composition scholars of expressivism, the difference becomes apparent between viewing memory as culturally situated and constituted and viewing experience as “personal, private, [and] individually felt,” as Adler-Kassner (1998, p.218) characterizes expressivism. Instead, Lowanthall and Scott’s theorization of memory shows it to be necessarily social and discursive. As Scott suggests, subjects are constructed discursively through the act and memory of experience, which in turn produces (not merely records) a particular perspective on the experience. This view can be seen as a critique of the individualism implicit in expressivism because it situates the self inextricably in the social and discursive world.
Memory can be described as “collective” because, as Maurice Halbwachs argued in The Social Frameworks of Memory, “the mind reconstructs its memories under the pressure of society” (1992, p. 51). Memories hang together in the mind of an individual because they are “part of a totality of thoughts common to a group” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 52). According to Halbwachs then, individual memories are not necessarily individual; they are produced in the social milieu of the group the individual identifies with. This social memory can “characterize groups” by revealing a “debt to the past” and expressing “moral continuity” (Klein, 2002, p. 130). Taken together, the implications of Lowenthal, Scott, and Halbwachs are that, when we set out to recount past experience, we must attend to the ways in which memories are formed with others in the present as a means of connection, group coherence, and a sense of shared past and future. I see their theorizations as a call to view experience not as such but rather for the social and discursive frames through which we understand the experience and the social (which is to say, identificatory) uses to which we put the experience—the ways we shape memories to fit those we believe we share with others, as a way of cohering more securely as a group.
If students of personal writing are asked to attend to the social, discursive forces and the present identificatory uses that might shape their memories, their approach to expressivism becomes “critical.” This attention to how “personal” memories are socially or discursively shaped in service of present identifications begs questions of power and agency. In what narrative forms do the experiences we remember take shape? How are certain experiences remembered and others forgotten? The ability to use a memory and to define for others its use is fundamentally related to historical distributions of power (Connorton, 1989, LeGoff & Nora, 1977). This tension between memory and forgetting reveals the past to be a dynamic, perpetually contested site, constantly open to varying degrees of fluctuation depending on the contingent power of the group in question. Memory is a dynamic, “processional action by which people constantly transform the recollections they produce” (Zelizer, 1995, p. 218). In sum, when we reconfigure experience as memory, the task of expressivism becomes decidedly social and decidedly critical.
Though “personal” memory cannot be extricated from present social forces, composing critically with memory is not without opportunities for agency. As Nancy Mack explains in her contribution to this collection, writing what she calls “critical memoir”
should open the author to the possibility of agency through the interpretation and representation of memory. The meaning of the memoir is revised from the student’s current vantage point of an increased critical awareness and projected towards a hopeful future, thus giving the author some degree of agency in shaping identity.
When we think of memory as dynamic, processual, presentist, and very much situated in the social and discursive world, agency is made possible when such complexity is both represented and interrogated in language. While conventional personal narratives are structured chronologically with a beginning, middle, and end and often conform to familiar plots, a presentist, processual, social, and discursive understanding of memory calls for a disruption of conventional structures. Because such structures can be understood as a present “system” or “code” that produces, rather than records, the experience, adherence to these conventions of narrative inhibit the simultaneous interrogation of memory’s social and discursive construction that makes identificatory agency possible.
Thus, writing with memory compels alternative rhetorical strategies to conventional personal narratives. My considerations of alternative discourse are inspired by Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie’s critical reading of Dorothy Allison’s creative nonfiction piece, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure. Ronald and Ritchie see in Allison’s memoir a “model for how to use language to survive and change one’s reality” (2006, p. 7). Allison’s work takes an unconventional form for writers to imitate, a “method of unfolding and holding on to the paradoxical relationships between fiction and fact, silence and speaking, certainty and doubt, cultural norms and taboos” (2006, p. 7). That is, for Ronald and Ritchie, the rhetorical strategies Allison employs allow her to accomplish seemingly improbable contradictions in the same text, which I reread here in the language of memory: to show through memory writing what is remembered and forgotten, what “was” and what present circumstances reconfigure, and to situate these potential contradictions in the context of “cultural norms and taboos” (that is, how they align with cultural expectations and where they transgress). The use of alternative discourse in writing memory may accomplish what Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford call “crimes of reading and writing,” the upsetting of normative conventions with the goal of facilitating “transformative agency” (2006, p. 17).
Taking my cues from these feminist pedagogues, I set out to design a pedagogical approach through which students might be taught to read for the rhetorical strategies used by writers of memory who employ alternative discourse, in order to then selectively imitate the strategies in their own personal writing. How do memory writers like Allison, or Susan Griffin, or Gloria Anzaldua, for example, grapple and rhetorically represent their past experience in the context of larger social and historical discourses? What do their particular choices in language allow them to think through that more conventional personal narratives do not? What alternative sentence structures do they employ? How do they position themselves vis-à-vis others, vis-à-vis “history,” vis-à-vis their memories, in language?
To examine how this work played out in my own classroom, I will describe how this project was undertaken with Susan Griffin’s creative nonfiction/memoir chapter, “Our Secret,” published in her collection Chorus of Stones (1993). “Our Secret” is a complex, fragmented essay, amalgamating and juxtaposing interpretations of Griffin’s memories of her family life with her interpretations of Heinrich Himmler’s family life. Himmler was the chief of the SS under Hitler during the Second World War—clearly an unlikely candidate and cultural context for a contemporary American writer to situate her own memories among. But Griffin does so in order to ask larger questions about where rage comes from, how it emerges and manifests culturally, and how acts of rage disseminate and influence others across time and place. Her inquiry into her own past unearths and analyzes the source of her acts of childish rage against her grandmother and leads her to compare own family’s strict childrearing practices to Himmler’s context of rigid, almost torturous German childrearing. She asks questions akin to more traditional expressivist writing: she wants to learn “how it is” that people—herself, Himmler, others—”become [them]selves.” But she does so in a complex mélange of personal and historical pasts, using her own memories to better understand larger historical happenings and vice versa.
In the classroom, I sought to help students see Griffin’s strategies for engaging with and problematizing the past. I designed discussion questions and writing assignments that asked students to attend to her particular rhetorical strategies for identifying and disidentifying with a larger cultural past. We read Griffin’s essay for the textual cues of her unique rhetoric of memory—her radical disruption of chronology, use of uncertain speculative language, and strategic shifts in perspective that emphasize the intersections of personal and cultural pasts. As a class, we looked for what “pieces” constituted Griffin’s fragmented essay and found it to be an interweaving of interviews; readings of diaries, photographs, and art; scientific facts; and her own familial memories into a tapestry of emotion, tragedy, and perhaps hope.
Looking more closely at particular paragraphs and sentences, we looked for textual cues that indicated how she represented the relationship between individual and collective memory. Students saw fragility and incertitude in her readings of others and her own pasts, revealed in particular choices of language that disrupted any sense of historical accuracy. For example, we focused on a passage in which Griffin describes an interview with a woman who witnessed the aftermath of a German concentration camp as a young child. In her description of the woman’s memory, Griffin’s language is initially assured, employing jarring imagery of concrete things: she saw “shoes in great piles. Bones. Women’s hair” (1993, p. 114). But immediately the woman’s memories are called into question: “She had no words for what she saw. Her father admonished her to be still. Only years later, and in a classroom, did she find out the name of this place and what happened here” (Griffin, 1993, p. 114). Students saw the certainty of the woman’s experience, represented by lists of objects, threatened by her inability to capture it in language; they saw, through careful close reading for rhetorical strategies in representing memory, that it was only through the later safety of sterilized classroom history that the woman could “understand” what happened.
In close-reading passages like these, students saw a kind of dual representation and interrogation.4 The woman’s memory is of a time when she had no words to understand her experience. The experience, as she can access it, is not foundational because it is only later in school when she realizes what happened—a delayed realization that becomes the foundation for her response to Griffin’s interview, and which may be understood as a “system” or “code,” in Scott and Lowenthal’s terms, through which the experience is constructed legibly. My students began to see the slipperiness of experience because Griffin sprinkles her tapestry with reminders that, though she speaks of and through various historical figures (from Himmler to her grandmother), it is always mediated through her own memory. The aforementioned interview, a form of evidence collection often validated by its claim to direct experience, is called into question when Griffin writes, “I give [the interviewee] the name Laura here,” (1993, p.114) suggesting that it is Griffin who controls the representation of “Laura’s” memory and that ultimately, it is Griffin’s memory to share. In-class close reading practice helps students see how individual memories are constructed retrospectively in different social environments, and that it matters how we represent memory in language, because to do so critically is to interrogate how memories get made and what present needs they serve.
In order to get students close-reading these kinds of rhetorical moves so they could later put them into practice in “personal” writing, I asked them to write an analytical essay first, in which they examined and evaluated the rhetorical strategies Griffin used to “write the past.” One student5 wrote that
Griffin keeps herself in the story as an ‘imaginer’ that tries to see how an event transpired. Perhaps this gives her an opportunity to include her own stories of childhood in comparison with Himmler’s. For instance, she details Dr. Schreber’s [German, WWII-era] advice on childhood parenting: “Crush the will, they write. Establish dominance. Permit no disobedience. Suppress everything in the child.” She then compares the childrearing acts with what she had gone through with her grandmother. She too was suppressed: “When at the age of six I went to live with her, my grandmother worked to reshape me … not by casual example but through anxious memorization and drill.”
This student is noticing how Griffin is able to incorporate her personal memories into a larger collective past: by remaining in the story always as an “imaginer” who looks through the same lens of inquiry at historical pasts as she does her own memories.
Another student wrote of rhetorical moves that allow Griffin to evade talking about the past “as though it had actually occurred” and instead allow her to “state them in a way that they were possibilities, using qualifying cues such as ‘did…?,’ ‘must have,’ and maybe,’ etc.” Between seemingly straightforward, traditionally historical statements garnered from interviews, photographs, art, and science, this student noticed that Griffin interjects with her own memory’s “I.” After definite claims like, “it is 1910. The twenty-second of July,” he noticed that Griffin extended into the imaginary, speculating that “his father must have loomed large to him. Did Gebhard lay his hand on Heinrich’s shoulder?” (Griffin, 1993, p. 118). “I can see him,” Griffin writes of the long deceased Himmler, but it is always, ultimately, herself she sees: through Laura, through her grandmother, through the mélange of fact and fiction that constitute her exploration and generation of the past. The student thought that “the fact that she has produced her own stories” formed a “biased view of Himmler and his childhood” but one that “generates a different perspective on the war and her relationship to it.” The student, in other words, was noticing how Griffin’s rhetorical strategies for writing the past produced something that other, more traditional strategies could not, despite the accompanying loss of “objectivity.” Griffin writes her memories but employs stylistic strategies to perpetually question the certainty of the claims to memory she makes. She situates herself in different perspectives and historical moments, destabilizing herself as a unified, prediscursive self with unmediated access to experience even as she interrogates the larger sociocultural structures that would make the events she remembers (the Holocaust, childhood abuse) possible.
After my students wrote essays analyzing the rhetorical strategies with which Griffin writes her personal past and situates it in a larger cultural/historical context, they were tasked with a project like hers: to write an experimental essay in which they situate and interrogate their own memories in relation to other historical figures and histories. I see this assignment as enacting what Toni Morrison calls the “willed creation” of memory writing (1984). Morrison’s use of the term “willed” juxtaposed with “creation” emphasizes how rhetorical choices in representing the past are inventive and painstakingly strategic, rather than a mere record of the past as it was. As Morrison suggests, “there may be play and arbitrariness in the way a memory surfaces but none in the way the composition is organized, especially when I hope to recreate the play and arbitrariness in the way narrative events unfold” (1984, p. 216). The writing of the analytical essay prior to the composition of the more “personal”/experimental essay helps students see that the rhetorical choices we make in writing the past facilitate or inhibit the critical expressivist work we can do.
I will close by describing one student’s response to this assignment, for which she was tasked to read her own memories through the art and life of a historical figure, as Griffin did with Himmler and other figures. My student, Dylan Gallagher, was to use the past of a historical figure to raise questions in inquiry into her own past, and to represent this inquiry experimentally: to use unorthodox form and “crimes of writing” to subvert conventional modes of historiography (Ede &Lunsford, 2006). She was to take seriously our discussions of Griffin’s stylistic subversions of form and the ways in which Griffin’s textual cues undermined historical (and memorial) accuracy in favor of a different project: a complex merging of history and personal writing, a powerful connection between the personal and the political, and a simultaneous interrogation of personal memory and cultural history.
Dylan chose her own unorthodox writer to read her memories against and through: e. e. cummings. Inspired by the visual of Griffin’s fragmented, italicized layout, Dylan incorporated images and fragments with her own inventive and imitative twist. She emulated a childhood letter from cummings to his mother that was handwritten with columns, horizontal and vertical writing, and hand-drawn pictures. Dylan replicated cummings’ visual layout, typing in columns and interweaving excerpts from his poetry and biography with analysis of her own memories. The strategies of speculation and sentence fragments she learned from Griffin stand out to me: buried in an opening paragraph of seemingly straightforward biography of cummings’ early life, she writes “I can picture his mother, Rebecca, looking at one of his letters and laughing at the lopsided drawings of elephants and dinosaurs and planets. At his scattered writing.”
But later strategies are of her own invention, inspired by cummings. Using the close reading strategies she learned in her analysis of Griffin, Dylan reads cummings, interweaving interpretations of his poetry with her memories. I quote her at length:
He did not shy away from writing about death or sex. Death has always been an uncomfortable subject for Many People. Many People refuse to acknowledge death and worms and ceasing to exist. But ee does not. He asks and answers the hard questions through a simple arrangement of words …
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. I like what it does,
i like its hows …
and possibly I like the thrill of
under me you so quite new (cummings 218)
The first time I had sex I was terrified and uncertain. I was full of questions, about how sex works, how it alters the relationship between two people and also about who I was. But more than that, I was excited. It was thrilling, losing my virginity. Independence is an odd thing to gain from sex. Often, I hear people feel an inappropriately strong attachment to the person with whom they lose their virginity. I experienced no such attachment. As ee describes. An initial attraction to a body, loving perfections and flaws, loving bones and skin, wanting to touch feel, know their body. The physical act of sex. The thrill. And afterwards,
nothing.
From Griffin, she learns to play with visual form (unorthodox layout and fragments), and she learns to amalgamate diverse materials to get at her own memory (she looks to letters, poetry, and biography).
But more importantly, she learns to read cummings’ history and work through her own memories, which has an apparent transformative effect. From Dylan’s own experience with cummings, a poet who is himself a part of the memories of her upbringing, she learns to play with the combinations of words, capital letters, and punctuation because something about the way he puts words together speaks “her”—but not a unified or static sense of self. The excerpt above implies that at first she was terrified, and then through the experience of reading cummings, she articulates a new memory, one that replaces vulnerable emotion with a detached tactile physicality she finds empowering. Afterwards, when the man’s body has left her side, she feels nothing and she fears nothing of the nothingness, unlike “Many People.” The past she arrives at is arguably subversive: using cummings’ life and work, she arrives at a memory that defies larger sociocultural expectations for what she, as a young woman, should feel. She rejects expectations for sentimentality and attachment through a “crime of reading and writing,” subverting conventional sentence structure and spatial layout. I read this as a kind of identity work with a feminist edge. She is putting pressure on the expectations of “Many People” and revising her memory from her initial recollection of “terror,” which Many People would expect, to a sense of detachment that might protect her from retrospective and future feelings of fear and dependence.
While Dylan’s and my other students’ writing was not “perfect” and while there were certainly some students who could or would not break out of conventional modes of personal writing, Dylan’s and other students’ essays revealed the ways in which writing memory with complexity is something that has the potential to be taught. Students can learn to write with memory to reveal a discursive self in motion, an understanding of a self as always shifting and multiple depending on the memory texts the writer comes into contact with and the present circumstances in which she finds herself. For Griffin, it was through representations of “Laura” and Himmler and so many others; for Dylan, it was through representations of cummings and his work. In the process of examining and imitating cummings’ life and work in unorthodox ways, she articulated a transitioned understanding of her own past—against dominant narratives of what a young woman should feel during and after physical intimacy. I want to suggest that Dylan’s work be read as a feminist memory, written through feminist means, in a way that does some justice to the complexity of writing with memory.6 Dylan uses cummings to write herself to an empowering memory of physical intimacy, simultaneously showing us her transformation such that we know this memory is not stable and foundational. It is something to be generated and used for strength in this moment, perhaps to be revised again and again as she continues to find herself in new present circumstances.
When we bring collective memory studies into conversation with feminist composition pedagogy,7 it becomes clear that memories sit in the intersection between the personal and the social, a location that is always political with real implications for individuals’ sense of their relationship to the world. This chapter has contended that memories’ location in the intersection between the personal and social is something that can be rhetorically represented and simultaneously interrogated, in such a way that students are called to attention to the role of pasts in their present lives and cultural locations. Unorthodox “crimes of writing” have the potential to help students represent the self that emerges from memory work as one that is as processual and collective as memories themselves and one with the critical potential to challenge the social and discursive frameworks that might be constraining their present senses of self. This chapter is a call to complicate experience, to disrupt traditional, narrative approaches to personal writing, and to help students learn to read and write for a more critically expressivist understanding of the intersections between personal and collective memory and identity.
Notes
1. Like Adler-Kassner, Wendy Hesford finds in expressivism a point of view that reads “autobiography … as a doorway to the apprehension of an original experience or an unchanging essence” (1999, p. 65). Instead, she advocates autobiographical acts that attend to the “social signifying practices shaped and enacted within … ideologically encoded” social and historical forces” (p. 64).
2. Yagelski’s is representative of textbooks that do not forefront personal writing as their central pedagogy but nonetheless incorporate assignments that ask students to write with memory, indicating expressivism’s subtle but enduring legacy.
3. I want to underscore that feminist pedagogy is only one way to approach the complexity of writing with memory, stemming from my own investments in feminist studies, which have, as the chapter will show, led me to experimental and alternative discourse. Feminist pedagogy and experimental writing may not be, I believe, the only way to address the problem of memory’s over-simplification, but they are the methods that inspired the assignment sequence I describe later in this chapter.
4. Students’ simultaneous attention to representation and interrogation resonates with Min-Zhan Lu’s problematization of experience. Lu argues that uncritical uses of experience, even in the pursuit of feminist goals, can work to subsume differences and essentialize gender as distinct from other cultural- or identity-based vectors of difference. Instead, she advocates a use of personal experience that works on both experiential and analytical levels to disrupt a “false notion of ‘oneness’ with all women purely on the grounds of gender” (1998, p. 242).
5. I cite three students in this essay. All three were from a recent first-year composition course at the University of Pittsburgh; the first two have allowed me to reference their work but preferred to remain anonymous, while the last, Dylan Gallagher, permitted me to use her full name.
6. Ronald and Ritchie write that a feminist pedagogy “locates theory and practice in the immediate contexts of women’s lives,” helping students move toward a “resistant, critical stance toward monolithic descriptions of discourse and gender” (1998, p. 219). Writing, through a feminist pedagogy, becomes an act of constant awareness of one’s particular location, working “among and between” analytical, experiential, objective, subjective, authoritative and local strategies. I’m contending that Dylan’s transformed memory does indeed take a “resistant, critical stance” toward expectations for her age and gender in its very movement “among and between” analytic and experiential, subjective and authoritative strategies: she is analytic and authoritative in her use and reading of cummings and subjective and experiential in her representation of a transitioned memory.
7. Marianne Hirsch and Valerie Smith attest to feminism and memory studies’ shared concern with the reception of a version of the past in the context of larger society forces. As Hirsch and Smith put it, “feminist studies and memory studies both presuppose that the present is defined by a past that is constructed and contested. Both fields assume that we do not study the past for its own sake; rather, we do so to meet the ends of the present” (2002, p. 12).
References
Adler-Kassner, L. (1998). Ownership revisited: An exploration in progressive era and expressivist composition scholarship. College Composition and Communication, 49(2), 208-233.
Allison, D. (1996). Two or three things I know for sure. New York: Plume Books.
Bloom, L. Z. (2003). Living to tell the tale: The complicated ethics of creative nonfiction. College English, 65(3), 276-289.
Connerton, P. (1989). How societies remember. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ede, L., & Lunsford, A. (2006). Crimes of reading and writing. In K. Ronald, & J. Ritchie (Eds.), Teaching rhetorica: Theory, pedagogy, practice (pp. 13-31). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann/Boynton.
Griffin, S. (1993). Chorus of stones: The private life of war. New York: Anchor Books.
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hesford, W. S. (1999). Framing identities: Autobiography and the politics of pedagogy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hirsch, M., & Smith, V. (2002). Feminism and cultural memory: An introduction. Signs, 28(1), 1-19.
Klein, K. L. (2000). On the emergence of memory in historical discourse. Representations, 69, 127-150.
LeGoff, J., & Nora, P. (Eds.). (1977). Constructing the past: Essays on historical methodology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lowenthal, D. (1985).The past is a foreign country. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lu, M. (1998). Reading and writing differences: The problematic of experience. In S.C. Jarratt, & L. Worsham (Eds.), Feminism and composition studies: In other words (pp. 239-251). New York: Modern Language Association.
Morrison, T. (1984). Memory, creation, and writing. Thought, 59, 381-390.
Rohmann, G. D. (1965). Pre-writing: The stage of discovery in the writing process. College Composition and Communication, 46, 111.
Ronald, K., & Ritchie, J. (1998). Riding long coattails, subverting tradition: The tricky business of feminists teaching rhetoric(s). In S. Jarratt, & L. Worsham (Eds.), Feminism and composition studies: In other words (pp. 217-238). New York: Modern Language Association.
Ronald, K., & Ritchie, J. (2006). Teaching rhetorica: Theory, pedagogy, practice. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann.
Scott, J. W. (1991). The evidence of experience. Critical Inquiry, 17(4), 773-797.
Yagelski, R. (2010). Reading our world: Conversations in context. Independence, KY: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Zelizer, B. (1995). Reading the past against the grain: The shape of memory studies. Critical Studies in Mass Communication,12, 214-39. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/02%3A_Critical_Self-Construction/2.05%3A_Past-Writing-_Negotiating_the_Complexity_of_.txt |
Essai—A Metaphor: Writing to Show Thinking
Lea Povozhaev
Kent State University
An “essai” writer responds to the world with a sense of dynamic responsibility. Her task has roots in the European enlightenment and can be understood as a means to critical, personal, and socially relevant writing. My notion of essai (the word means “an attempt” in French) comes from the sixteenth century French essayist Michel De Montaigne who wrote essays to better understand who he was. He wrote in response to ancient philosophers, and he, like them, reflected upon the meaning of one’s own life, found in a felt-sense of personal experiences within socially situated realities. His thinking was critical and deep, and it went so far as to inform him on how to live and die. Montaigne valued honest inquiry above word play and verbosity and considered himself a gentleman more than a scholar. For Montaigne, writing was for self-knowledge and understanding of human nature. Consequently, his writing was to actualize improvement in himself and society. In an “essai,” one demonstrates self-awareness in the context of socio-cultural situations within which one lives. For example, this article arises naturally from my work as a writer and teacher with the ever-present inquiry: Why write and why teach students to write? From my experiences writing and teaching writing, I find composition is a tool towards understanding social issues in personal ways. I argue that students of composition should be invited to write essais in which they compose first-person life narratives of embodied experiences in the world.
To illustrate my point, allow this small essaistic indulgence. I write true stories of my experiences in a multicultural family, raising three children, and exploring issues of faith. I teach composition at a large state university where I am completing studies for a doctorate in English. As I study writing philosophies and practice pedagogy, the question of why I write merges with questions on the importance of writing for students of various backgrounds studying a range of subjects with different jobs in mind. I consider students’ real lives, busy with work and families, as I also teach writing at a community college. Some of my students are adults who have returned to earn their long-awaited college degrees. Particularly adult students alert me to the need (and their ability) to see meaning-making as central to composition. Purpose tends to motivate students to carve out the time and exact the necessary patience from their busy lives and engage in the task of essai writing. I relate with students at this community college ten minutes from my husband’s host-family, with whom we have been living since last Christmas. I understand the push-pull of returning to school and fighting to earn a degree with academic objectives and balance family life. I am motivated to write and enter a public conversation when the subject matters in particular ways to my life. For example, researching vaccinations and writing essays on alternative medicine in the face of rising health costs and threats of increasing bodily toxicity. Answers seem further away the deeper one probes and attempts to understand; however, the care deepens and, ultimately, one asserts a stance as knowledge is gathered (both life experiences and facts).
Writing has been a way to locate myself in time and to contextualize others’ lives around me by the concrete act of words on a page. Time seems fluid as I live in an old castle on a hill with extended family. My children swim in a pool where once I first met their father. I have composed essays to understand where I am, and why I’m here. By essai writing, my personal life intersects with my academic life and there is liberty to become self-aware, to construct meanings, and to articulate the purposes emerging in a present vision of life. In addition to temporality, writing can be a resource for increasing wellness by lessening isolation and seeking understanding as one’s personal realities are made public. Furthermore, individuals writing essais learn to evaluate socially situated meanings, which they may wish to challenge against their own embodied realities. In the process of realizing one’s own positions on issues, an essai writer pays critical attention to details of others’ arguments. By so doing, an essai writer becomes more conscious of herself as well as others.
For me, an essai writer analyzes aspects of life and constructs meanings for the benefit of self and others. An essai writer engages others with the passion she encounters in writing to understand relationships among aspects of life that might otherwise have seemed unrelated. Accordingly, an essai moves from close-up-and-personal, divulging details of one’s own life, to academic and scholarly, whereby one relates to others’ ideas and extends them. In addition, one develops notions and continuously connects the personal and the social to render a cohesive and coherent essai. A composer of the essai aims to push past the obvious and delve into the deeply meaningful, and one is ultimately surprised by understandings gained through writing that relates personal experiences to social issues researched.
Essai writing can be pragmatic, particularly for students of composition, because it is a non-foundational approach to writing that enables a critical, searching spirit and invites students to construct personally relevant meanings within the social contexts of their everyday lives. Composing essais can be in line with Deweyian philosophy as an experimental, hybridizing act that extends students’ thoughts and experiences with others. Furthermore, when students develop greater understanding of their own lives, and learn to compose essais that relate this knowledge, their critical thinking and writing skills develop alongside their sense of confidence as intellectuals.
My approach to writing the essai comes from a pedagogical philosophy in line with critical social expressivism. In order to further discuss the benefits in teaching composition with the inclusion of essai writing, I turn now to an account of scholars whose basic pedagogical principles are expressivistic and whose notions lead us to critical social expressivism.
A History of Re-figuring Expressivism
Harkening back to ancient Rome, composition was the capstone of a classical education, “helping students make a smooth transition of the ‘play’ of the classroom and to the ‘business’ of real-world civic action” (Fleming, 2003, p. 109). Language informed students’ identities and was a source of power. Ancient rhetors argued for social action in civic arguments at court or in the arena where they aimed to persuade the masses. An argument was structured by one’s personal style, including word choice, arrangement, and narrative accounts. There was then, as there is now, a dialectic of form and expressiveness. Today, with my proposal for writing essai, one communicates his or her perception of self and relationship of self with the world. An essai is not only a genre but a way of thinking, and a way of demonstrating thoughtfulness by writing.
John Dewey understood that academic work required a balance of one’s attention on what was near and what was more distant. His work has been used by figures such as Janet Emig, Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy, Thomas Newkirk, Lad Tobin, and Donald Jones to refigure the social climate of composition studies. Like Dewey, they understood that “to be playful and serious at the same time is possible, and it defines the ideal mental condition. Absence of dogmatism and prejudice, presence of intellectual curiosity and flexibility, are manifest in the free play of mind upon a topic” (Dewey, 1916, p. 224). Dewey explained at the turn of the century how the self and the world were not separate but necessary for one another. He shook loose the rigid boundaries set around personal versus social concerns and suggested pragmatism serve as the loop hole, the means to a negotiated end. According to Deweyian philosophy, what worked in practice took precedence over, even validated, theory. Therefore, Dewey and his followers perceived the social and the personal as cooperative, and “experience, knowledge, and habits of good living” (Dewey, 1916, p. 224) governed educational practices. In this way, nested dualisms, or concepts that appeared mutually exclusive, blended and overlapped into complementary forces. For example, Dewey’s educational philosophy was a flexible, constructive endeavor:
Dewey’s educational goals focus on the development of certain habits and dispositions rather than on the acquisition of a fixed body of knowledge or belief. He maintains the world is changing. He calls it “unstable, uncannily unstable” (Experience and Nature, Dewey, 1958, p. 38) … Dewey wants students to develop flexibility or ‘intelligence’—the ability to respond to novel situations, access their culture’s resources, reshape their plans, and take positive residue from these experiences. Of course this critical and constructive process must be done, if it is to be moral, in cooperation with others. (Fishman & McCarthy, 1996, pp. 346-347)
With a non-foundational approach to education, the context and the individual within the situation were important. In fact, Dewey advocated active learning or a “reconciliation of tensions between the self and its surroundings” (1916, p. 19). In the writing classroom, this meant personal narrative because the personal experience transitioned into a dialogic, social activity as others related and reacted. In the field of composition, proponents of Deweyian philosophy have argued for the effectiveness in using personal narrative writing in the classroom.
Perhaps the most influential proponents of Dewey’s theories written in the field of composition were Fishman and McCarthy. They revisited criticisms of expressivism that proclaimed the movement “dead.” Fishman defended expressivism against the notion of the isolated writer. He supported Peter Elbow’s use of expressivist pedagogy as a means to better understanding one’s self and, ultimately, society. Considering expressivism as rooted in German romanticism, Fishman explained that personal experience was not used for isolation but to identify with one another and restructure community. Elbow and the German romanticist Johann Gottfried Herder suggested writing was a social connection. In eighteenth century German romanticism, people sought unity through diversity. The people didn’t trust one another and constructed a social contract to ensure protection: the trade of liberty for protection. The contract united the personal and social—Elbow and Herder suggested we write to understand our own thoughts and to communicate with society, continually reshaping and reforming our social worlds (Fishman, McCarthy, 1998, p. 648).
Neo-expressivists or pragmatists such as Thomas Newkirk, Lad Tobin, Karen Paley, and Michelle Payne examined writing and writing pedagogy from a non-foundationalist perspective. They advocated use of the personal narrative for pragmatic reasons, but their focus remained predominantly social. Personal narratives were a pragmatic way to develop writers. Newkirk discussed students’ autobiographies, or essays, as narratives of development. Erving Goffman’s notion of “presentation of self” supported Newkirk’s belief that students strived to formulate their ideas, experiences, and understandings into acceptable form through their writing. As Goffman suggested, “in all public performances … we selectively reveal ourselves in order to match an idealized sense of who we should be” (Tobin, 1993, p. 4). Writing personal narratives was viable, explained Newkirk, because students saw themselves as learners, revised beliefs, learned narrative conventions of literature, celebrated self-discovery, and developed critical thinking skills (quoted in Payne, 200, p. xxi).
Newkirk supported the narrative of development, derived from Montaigne, that was challenging and exploratory, open to inconsistencies that demonstrated critical analysis of the self and world. Personal student writing was criticized for cornering the teacher into the role of counselor, but Newkirk pointed out that students who confess their intimate realities want to share, and through the act of writing they become consoled. Students want to have their experiences treated as normal, and their texts allow them this right. Personal narratives were criticized for their emotionality, but Newkirk affirmed the importance of emotion in real life. While there is a place for emotion in personal narrative, he also addressed the need for reason and ethos. The most persuasive writing stems from personal, emotional concerns that are examined reasonably and presented credibly.
Tobin argued that emotion and relationships were essential in the writing classroom. The most effective pedagogical approach depended upon the students’ and their teacher’s interactions. A writing teacher is not a counselor, but feelings needn’t be omitted from writing because of the fear of role confusion:
By attempting to edit feelings, unconscious associations, and personal problems out of a writing course, we are fooling ourselves and shortchanging our students. The teaching of writing is about solving problems, personal and public, and I don’t think we can have it both ways: we cannot create intensity and deny tension, celebrate the personal and deny the significance of the personalities involved. In my writing courses, I want to meddle with my students’ emotional life and I want their writing to meddle with mine. (Tobin, 1993, p. 33)
Tobin addressed the expressivist shift of teacher authority, correcting the faulty assumption that teachers got out of the way so students could just write. Rather, he argues that teachers were still the center of decentered classrooms and the stakes were even higher with personal narrative and conferencing, which gave the teacher more authority. Tobin suggested the real key for student-teacher success was to develop good relationships.
Like Tobin, Karen Paley worked with elements of expressivism and constructed a philosophy which proved useful for her. Paley called herself a social-expressivist and argued that expressivism included, but was not limited to, narratives in which a writer focused on personal experiences. A writer used first-person and could isolate his or her individual consciousness; however, a writer could use first-person and write about social issues without mention of the individual writer’s thoughts and feelings, experiences and understandings. Paley’s re-assessment of expressivism justified criticisms of the movement’s strictly personal focus. She called her notion of the personal essay “psychosocial” and argued that it could communicate social significance—not that it must or should, but that it could (2001). Paley’s pragmatic distinction opened the personal narrative genre to the social, while not forcing the social into it indefinitely. To her, personal narratives often represented gender, class, family, and ethnic group matters. Accordingly, personal issues were social, and social issues were personal.
Picking up on the potential of personal narratives, Michelle Payne examined personal narratives that explored physical pain, and surmised that we “stop seeing emotion, pain, and trauma as threatening, anti-intellectual, and solipsistic, and instead begin to ask how we might, like therapists, feminist theorists, and philosophers, begin to recognize them as ways of knowing” (2000, p. 30). The body, she argued with reference to Foucault, was not only a representation of the personal but a composite of the social. The body was “not our own anymore. Or, at least within the academic discussions of the body. It is more text than substance, more a product of language than a corporeal presence” (Payne, 2000, p. xxi). We did not need to fear personal writing, but, rather (as Foucault argues), we should consider the implications of deviant identity, emotion, power, and discipline suggested by writing about the physical body.
The Essai and Critical Social Expressivism
I propose teaching writing with the essai, following the above conversation on the development of critical, social expressivism. My conceptualization of the essai extends the various discussions above by drawing together aspects of these effective, pragmatic arguments on using personal writing in the academy. For example, my notion of the essai incorporates Newkirk’s narrative of development within which one explores and analyzes one’s self and the world (Tobin, 1993, p. 4). Writing an essai, one works from a similar pedagogical impulse as proposed by Newkirk and Tobin who argue that emotion, reason, and ethos inform writing (Tobin, 1993, p. 33). Furthermore, Tobin argues that teaching writing effectively depends upon teacher-student relationships (Tobin, 1993, p. 34). Teaching the essai can foster positive, responsive relationships by the teacher’s invitation (by assignment) for students to compose on personally significant and socially relevant topics. Additionally, essai writing can be therapeutic as one realizes that one’s personal life relates with others and is, therefore, socially significant. While Paley notes that the personal essay can communicate social significance (2001), so can the essai, even if the tone is highly personal and even intimate. Essai writing can demonstrate an awareness of the body as it moves and thinks within the social situations of life. Furthermore, the act of composing an essai necessitates awareness of the reader. A writer of the essai pays critical attention to how she writes so that another can understand what is personally important to the writer; therefore, it is even more essential for an essai writer to achieve clarity because the message is valuable on both a personal and social level. Additionally, an essai writer evaluates the messages she arrives at from the process of writing and, ultimately, must determine if it is pre-essai writing or personally relevant and socially significant and therefore worth submitting to another.
Within a critical social expressivist pedagogy, using the essai to teach writing in freshman composition is ideal. Essais might bridge the gap between play and rigor in a freshman composition course where students are expected to assimilate within a new academic culture. Using students’ own lives as material for inquiry teaches them early on in their academic careers to self-reflect and apply critical thinking to their real lives. However, despite the effectiveness of the essai in drawing together the personal and the social and inviting students to critical reflection, three false assumptions relegate personal narratives to creative writing classrooms: serious writing is void of playfulness; emotion hasn’t a place in academic discourse; and private is irrelevant in public institutional settings. However, writing with a spirit of playfulness can motivate the writer. And a challenging intellectual task is to write one’s emotions in a controlled and exacting manner. Furthermore, emotion, whether cloaked or exposed, is always a part of communication, as it informs one’s positions and leads one to reason in particular ways. When one develops an ethos and reasons alongside emotional claims, one develops an essai.
Though school essays have diverged from essai’s original attempt to think critically and construct meanings with personal relevance, scholars such as Graham Badley harken back to Montaigne by his reflective essaying model for higher education. For Badley, as with Montaigne, essai writing is a process where students try out opinions and test responses, reflect on ideas, and develop valuable relationships with others. Badley’s reflective essaying model is “the free and serious play of mind on an interesting topic in an attempt to learn” (2009, p. 248). He bases this definition on four assumptions: that there is academic freedom, that the university is a safe place to be serious and playful, that reflection is useful for students and teachers who respond to questions, and that the process of composing an essay is an attempt to learn (Badley, 2009, p. 249). In Badley’s model, learning occurs as writers interpret experiences and reconsider previous interpretations. The writer’s objective is to convince an audience that his or her reflections are plausible and to convince another that his or her ideas are useful and even valuable (Badley, 2009, p. 251). The reader and writer together determine what constitutes use and value. Badley’s model illustrates that essai writing is social and personal because meaning is made by the construction of relationships whereby the student initiates learning and acts upon necessary impulses and needs. Moreover, by clearly seeing the relationship between the personal and the social, students learn to invest in social concerns and mature past solipsistic and immature thinking “only of me.” Importantly, the personal and the social are in relationship.
James Zebroski presents Mikhail Bakhtin’s argument that many voices inform one’s thoughts and this “accentuates the plurality of a text and the push-pull, center-seeking, center-fleeing forces of the word” (1989, p. 35). Because meanings in an essai can be constructed within relationships between readers and writers, my argument lies beyond the debate of personal versus social impetuses for writing. Instead, composing the essai implicates the individual writer with the writer’s audience and, thus, “the author gives [ideas] to the world, neither as a work wholly original, nor as a compilation from the writings of others. On every subject contained in them, he has thought for himself” (Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, quoted in Ferguson, Carr, and Schultz, 2005, p. 20). Consequently, essai writing can be personal, social, and cognitive.
Some may still argue that my interpretation of the essai’s personal, I-voiced, anecdotal narrativist nature belongs with creative writing. But academic and creative writing have the similar objective of clear, concise, and, ultimately, persuasive writing. By composing an essai, students might learn to reason, present emotion, and demonstrate a trustworthy ethos. Of course, a writer learns to write appropriately for a given audience, and a coffee house reading is not the same as a graduate seminar for which one presents an essay. However, there is more benefit in teaching composition students to write essais than funneling them into an academic vacuum within which the five-paragraph essay becomes a formula for thoughtless composition.
At first glance, academic writing may often have different expectations from creative writing. However, as Carini demonstrates through work with children creating art, prisoners writing poems, and student writing, creative acts can be pleasurable, therapeutic, and educational (1994). It is not my intention to define the many genres and objectives for writing. Instead, writing as “verbal habits and dispositions oriented to public effectiveness and virtue” (Fleming, 2003, p. 110) is not a form but a way of perceiving and responding with words. Writing to more carefully consider and reconsider things, including one’s own experiences, is academic and real-to-life.
An essai is like creative writing and school essay writing, but can be more than both because it is a way of illustrating one’s thoughts by details and scenes, as well as research and representation of others’ ideas. Importantly, the writer’s response to his or her own life and the writer’s response to scholarship is what can set the essai apart from other forms of writing and makes it a form that shows one’s thinking. Janet Emig observes: “all student writing emanates from an expressive impulse and that they then bifurcate into two major modes,” which she calls “extensive” (interactive, writer and situation) and “reflexive” (contemplative, personal meaning-making) (1967, p. 130). An essai can blend these dichotomies through the vein of writing to show thinking of one’s own life as well as of others’ lives and social issues pertinent to the writer’s time and place. The in-between place of the essai serves as a spine and holds together the extending frame that explores and expresses meaning.
Gregory Light distinguishes between creative writing and essay writing and differentiates between surface understanding where students reproduce conceptions and deeper grasping where students transform conceptions. Light argues that when the essay is essentially about another’s argument, and not the student’s own, the writing can be unreflective and mechanical (2002, p. 258). The goal of an essai is to move past filler words and borrowed thoughts and to demonstrate understanding in specific, personally relevant ways.
Students often find the jump between high school and college writing intimidating. They seem to understand that more is expected of them, and that “better” writing is supposed to result. However, the expectation in much of college writing seems to be a confident rhetorical sense of self. And yet, one’s voice is always changing and being found. Diane Glancy argues that one writes as one is written by “circumstance and environment” to make use of one’s self as a “found object” (quoted. in Adrienne Rich, 1993, p. 206). In order to make use of one’s self as a found object, one must inquire and rethink the familiar. One learns to examine things near and far, and to believe that in the process of seeking to understand relationships among aspects of life, meanings will emerge.
*
An essai is an attempt to understand and should be used as such. I view it as essentially a process and not a finished product. Carini argues that students are composing a sense of themselves, and, therefore, professionals who use writing in such a way could treat these attempts as “thinking spaces” in which students think through “images, ideas, form and media” (1994, p. 53).
However, after the rigors of drafts, conferences, and peer work, instructors often expect students’ essays to be polished. I submit that teachers might shift their focus instead on how well students express what has happened to them personally, information and ideas related to larger societal concerns, and meanings derived from reflecting upon that relationship between one’s experience and socially relevant issues. Teachers might evaluate work based on how well students have demonstrated the degree their subject holds personal relevance.
Students entering academe contribute to discourse communities by writing their own cultures into existing frames. Through the more experimental, intuitive processes that go along with the essai, we might convey that intellectual rigor is worthwhile because it transcends the classroom. Using the essai can allow students to connect personally to socially relevant issues, respond with confidence, and speak to society in important ways—beginning with the college writing classroom and reaching past it.
References
Badley, G. (2009). A reflective essaying model for higher education. Education + Training, 51(4), 248-58.
Carini, P. (1994). Dear sister bess: An essay on standards, judgment and writing. Assessing Writing, 1(1), 29-65.
De Montaigne, M. (1580/1958). Essays. (J. M. Cohen, Trans.). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Emig, J. (1967). On teaching composition: Some hypotheses as definitions. Research in the Teaching of English, 1, 127-135.
Ferguson, S., Carr, L., & Schultz, L. (2005) Archives of instruction: Nineteenth-century rhetorics, readers and composition books in the United States. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fishman, S., & McCarthy, L. (1998). John Dewey and the challenge of classroom practice. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Fishman, S., & McCarthy, L. (1996). Teaching for student change: A Deweyan alternative to radical pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 47, 342-364.
Fleming, D. (2003). The very idea of progymnasmata. Rhetoric Review, 22, 105-118.
Light, G. (2002). From the personal to the public: Conceptions of creative writing in higher education. Higher Education, 43, 257-276.
Nystrand, M. (1989). A social-interactive model of writing. Written Communication, 6(1), 66-85.
Paley, K. S. (2001). I-writing: The politics and practice of teaching first-person writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Payne, M. (2000). Bodily discourses: When students write about abuse and eating disorders. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Rich, Ad. (1993). What is found there, notebooks on poetry and politics. New York: W.W. Norton.
Tobin, L. (1993). Writing relationships: What really happens in the composition class. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Zebroski, J. (1989). A hero in the classroom. In B. Lawson, S. Ryan, & R. Winterowd (Eds.), Encountering student texts: Interpretive issues in reading student writing (pp. 35-48). Urbana, IL: NCTE. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/02%3A_Critical_Self-Construction/2.06%3A_Essai_-_A_Metaphor-_Writing_to_Show_Thinking.txt |
The (Un)Knowable Self and Others: Critical Empathy and Expressivism
Eric Leake
Texas State University
The common rap against expressivism is that it is solipsistic, endeavoring to give clear expression to a personal voice speaking an individual truth. In this understanding of expressivism the social and constitutive qualities of language are largely ignored in favor of personal revelation. James Berlin aligns what he calls “expressionistic” rhetorics with Platonism and later also psychoanalysis and depth psychology (1987). I also align expressivism with psychology, but in this case current understandings of empathy from developmental and social psychology. I do so in order to propose an understanding of critical expressivism that builds upon critical empathy to examine personal understanding and identity within a network of social and affective connections.
Any description of expressivism can be problematic because, like current-traditional rhetoric, it is a category created to encompass a constellation of more and less disparate approaches that share some key features. As Peter Elbow notes in this volume, there are relatively few who claim to be expressivists. The label is more commonly placed on others and other approaches in a pejorative sense. The diverse nature of those approaches is recognized by Berlin, who proposes a spectrum of expressionists, with the “anarchists” of a completely uninhibited writing on one end, and on the other “the few that are close to the transactional category—especially to epistemic rhetoric” (1987, pp. 145-146). Those few include Ken Macrorie, Donald Murray, and Elbow. As Berlin describes their brand of expressivism:
These rhetoricians see reality as arising out of the interaction of the private vision of the individual and the language used to express this vision. In other words, in this view language does not simply record the private vision, but becomes involved in shaping it. The unique inner glimpse of the individual is still primary, but language becomes an element in its nurturing. This brand of expressionistic rhetoric finally falls short of being epistemic … because it denies the place of intersubjective, social processes in shaping reality. (1987, p. 146)
The role of language in this description adds a social element to what is otherwise solipsistic. Language is the “shaping” and “nurturing” element of the private vision of that deeper individual. I am not as certain as Berlin that intersubjective and social processes are not already here in the shaping function of language. Critical empathy offers a way to employ the personal to inform the intersubjective and social. Indeed, the social qualities and questioning of the personal in its assumptions and limitations is vital to the practice of critical empathy. This is what needs to be added to an expressivism as described by Berlin: more awareness and questioning of those social elements and an examination of the relationships between the personal and the social in forming that not-quite-so-private understanding of others as well as oneself.
In this chapter I use theories of perspective-taking and critical empathy to argue for a critical expressivism that moves beyond the limited personal that Berlin identified as common to expressionist rhetorics. Berlin’s characterizations are useful in providing a rough map of the historical disciplinary terrain and in providing terminology for discussing topographical differences. But an updated understanding of both critical expressivism and empathy provides a more accurate mapping of the epistemological and rhetorical work of the personal. Some of these features were already inherent in the work of Elbow and others, as Berlin notes. Critical empathy makes clearer the social and affective dimensions of a working critical expressivism. It calls for a critical voice that questions the circumstances of its own speaking. A critical expressivism, rooted here again in psychology and critical empathy, offers a social critique of that otherwise personal voice, its privileges and assumptions, while recognizing that no voice is purely individual, just as no language is a language of one’s own. The vital questions asked in a critical empathy concern social relations, power differences, affective connections, and commonalities and differences. Critical expressivism through critical empathy fosters a voice that speaks in order to simultaneously ask these questions. It uses knowledge of oneself—and an ongoing critique of that knowledge—to better understand and communicate with others about one another and the world.
Perceiving Self and Other
I begin with theories of identification and perspective-taking as a way to establish how processes of empathy are always concerned with the tensions and questions of knowing about the self and others. Personal knowledge, in this critical sense, is always more than personal. The tension between self and other in processes of empathy, and the tendency to shift between those perspectives, reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1945/1994) notion that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function” (p. 520). Processes of empathy may attempt to keep both self- and other-centered perspectives in mind at the same time. The relation of these processes, as with definitions of empathy itself, varies according to theorist. Some define empathy to include only other-oriented perspective-taking (Coplan, 2011), while others define empathy more broadly to also include self-oriented perspective-taking (Hoffman, 2001). While I align myself with the broader definition, a review of both types of identification and the tensions between them helps demonstrate how a critical empathy might productively foreground such tensions within a critical expressivist framework.
Developmental psychologist Martin Hoffman defines what he calls “self-focused role-taking” as “when people observe someone in distress [and] they may imagine how they would feel in the same situation” (2001, p. 54). For Hoffman, this involves a similarity in affective experience—essential to his definition of empathy as “an affective response more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own” (2001, p. 4)—because “if they can do this vividly enough, they may experience some of the same affect experienced by the victim” (2001, p. 54). Hoffman’s emphasis here is on people in distress, but the same process can apply to other situations and affective states. He offers self-focused role-taking as a way to imagine how the self would feel in the other’s position. This applies one’s own experiences and background, as well as the narratives and interpretations that one carries to another affective state and circumstance. The focus remains throughout on how the self would feel if the self were in that other’s position. In contrast, Hoffman’s “other-focused role-taking” occurs when “on learning of another’s misfortune, people may focus directly on the victim and imagine how he feels; and doing this may result in their feeling something of the victim’s feeling” (2001, p. 54). Hoffman allows only that one may feel “something” of another’s feelings. Other-focused role-taking is much more limited and more difficult than self-focused role-taking because one can only have partial and largely imagined access to another’s affective states and what another makes of those affective states. At the same time, however, other-focused perspective-taking may provide greater insight into the causes and consequences of another’s affective state (Matravers, 2011). The limits of knowledge about others is also at the core of philosopher Amy Coplan’s emphasis on other-oriented perspective-taking. Self-oriented perspective-taking, she argues, “leads to a type of pseudo-empathy since people often mistakenly believe that it provides them with access to the other’s point of view when it does not” (2011, p. 12). It follows that “one of the benefits of drawing attention to the distinction between self-oriented and other-oriented perspective-taking is that perhaps some of us will begin to stop assuming that we ‘get’ the other’s experience, when we do not.” (Coplan, 2011, p. 12). While self-oriented perspective-taking may contribute to a stronger affective response, other-oriented perspective-taking requires more active imaginative and affective regulation and results in a stronger differentiation of an otherwise blurry boundary between affective states and knowledge among self and other. Other-focused role-taking can be less susceptible to biases, which are always a risk of empathy, and more amenable to critical processes. This is one of the benefits of a critical empathy, the acknowledgement and questioning of one’s own assumptions.
The sometimes blurry and problematic nature of that boundary between self and other in identification and perspective-taking is evident in the many types of biases inherent in processes of empathy. These include egocentric biases, false empathies, and biases of proximity and familiarity. Of particular interest here is Hoffman’s notion of “egoistic drift” (2001), which illustrates the slippery nature of empathy and the tendency to slide in empathy toward the more comfortable and familiar. Egoistic drift occurs when within the process of empathy one’s attention begins to shift away from an other-focused perspective and more toward one’s own affective experience of empathizing. The irony is that the very process of identification that drives empathy can at the same time sever empathy as the observer responds more affectively to his own memories and associated affected states, which are initiated at the observation and perspective-taking of another. Egoistic drift and associated biases demonstrate how empathic identification is constantly in flux, shifting between self and other and among memory, situation, and affect. There is the constant risk of slipping into egoistic drift or, for the sake of avoiding egoistic drift, losing the affective power and accuracy of empathy. Identifying with another is also identifying with oneself and always at risk of slipping further adrift. This is the paradox of trying to see the world of another through one’s own eyes. It requires, as Martha Nussbaum argues, “a kind of ‘twofold attention,’ in which one both imagines what it is like to be in the sufferer’s place and, at the same time, retains securely the awareness that one is not in that place” (2003, p. 328). Here again in the idea of a “twofold attention,” which Nussbaum borrows from Richard Wollheim, is a reminder of Fitzgerald’s notion of a first-rate intelligence as applied to rhetorics of empathy. That twofold attention is exactly the work of a critical expressivism through critical empathy. In acknowledging the implied paradox of identifying simultaneously with self and other, it asks that we see the world with twofold attention. This is an important shift, because in applying a twofold attention one is compelled to ask questions of relation and purpose that may not otherwise be so obvious or demanding. There is a sense, then, that like any paradox, that of empathic identification with self and other points through its seeming contradictions to greater insights into processes of understanding self and other in the work of critical expressivism.
The Personal as Communication and Belief
Empathy’s communicative importance is well established in the work of Carl Rogers. He argues for empathy in contrast to more competitive and judgmental moves in communication. Rogers finds the major barrier to communication to be “this tendency to react to any emotionally meaningful statement by forming an evaluation of it from our own point of view” (1961, p. 331). Without using the word “empathy” here, he proposes a communication strategy that nonetheless is very much grounded in empathy:
Real communication occurs, and this evaluative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding. What does that mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about. (1961, pp. 331-332)
Rogers’ work on empathy is based upon the relationship between therapist and client in a clinical context. Although Rogers is not concerned with the rhetorical use of empathy—and even rejects the role of empathy in the employ of argumentation—he does offer much of use in defining empathy and its communicative and epistemological potential. Rogers focuses on empathy as an emotional perspective, as a means of understanding, and as potentially transformative in how it can change people and their interpersonal relationships. He understands empathy to be a powerful position of listening. Rogers’ influence and his attention to empathy have had a significant influence in rhetorical theory. Elbow, for example, similarly offers his believing game as a positive alternative to the traditional doubting game. Elbow has come to see the believing game as the core of his work. He describes it as
the disciplined practice of trying to be as welcoming or accepting as possible to every idea we encounter: not just listening to views different from our own and holding back from arguing with them; not just trying to restate them without bias; but actually trying to believe them. We are using believing as a tool to scrutinize and test. (2009, p. 1)
Elbow’s believing game differs from Rogerian rhetoric in important ways—the reference to “not just trying to restate them without bias” (2009, p. 2) is one of those—but more importantly it includes a process of empathy. The move to not only understand other points of view but to try to believe them is at its heart an exercise in empathy; it is an attempt to enter as fully as possible into another’s perspective and even another’s experience of holding that perspective. Elbow recognizes that such a move has cognitive, phenomenological, emotional, and physical qualities. In an earlier draft of his contribution to this collection, he advises that one “eat like an owl,” which means “just listening and swallowing and even trying to believe their (other’s) experiences no matter how odd they seem.” He adds that “writers should trust that their organism will automatically let go of what’s useless or misleading and benefit from what’s useful.” The idea that writers should trust their organism is a nod to ways of thinking beyond the purely cognitive to include the emotional and physiological, as empathy pushes people to do. This is not to reduce Elbow’s method to purely trusting your gut. Elbow stresses the methodical nature of the believing game as a form of critical inquiry into the value of ideas, all of which is based upon the practice of empathy in a critical expressivist framework.
Empathy occupies a central position in how we imagine and come to understand ourselves and others, and both self- and other-oriented perspective-taking rely upon some degree of personal knowledge. In self-oriented, the empathizer or observer is imagining him or herself in the position of the other and drawing from experiences and emotions analogous to the context and conditions of the observed. In other-oriented perspective-taking, the observer still must draw upon his or her own experiences in attempting to imagine the state of the observed. Philosopher Derek Matravers allows that a person may move beyond personal history to experience empathy even in regard to emotions that he or she has not previously experienced personally by empathizing “face to face with another who is experiencing some strong emotions, or describing some situation with strong emotion” (2011, p. 28). In these cases, emotions in empathy may be recalled from one’s past emotions and experiences in self-oriented perspective-taking and may be experienced personally through direct engagement with the emotions of another. In either case, the personal recollection or immediate personal experience of the emotions becomes a necessary part of empathy.
As evident in Rogers, Elbow, Matravers, and elsewhere, empathy uses the personal constructively as a route to knowledge about oneself and others. This incorporation of the personal differs from that characterized as solipsistic. When Berlin describes expressivism as concerned only with self-calibrated truths, private and incommunicable to others, he may be accurately describing some types of personal writing, but seems to be lumping together the merely personal with the possibly critically so. As Elbow argues in this volume, there are many ways that writing may be personal in topic, in language, and in thought. I would add empathy or perspective-taking to Elbow’s list of personal ways of thinking and writing. It is an employment of the believing game when one imagines, in self-oriented perspective-taking, “what if I were myself in that other person’s situation?” Or, in other-oriented perspective-taking, “what if I were that other person in that other person’s situation?” To attempt to experience and know these positions is a cognitive, affective, and bodily move toward belief, understanding, and communication. In these ways and others critical empathy is a personal mode, one that uses personal imagination, experiences, and knowledge in order to arrive at greater understanding of self, others, and society. This is a different use of the personal than inward-gazing self-discovery. And yet empathy as a personal mode remains a liability because of its inherent assumptions and biases, as illustrated in the concept of egoistic drift. This is why a critical empathy, one that questions its own understanding, is such an important component of a critical expressivism.
The Necessary and Constant Critique of Empathy
Although scholars in the humanities have recently seized upon empathy as perhaps best representing the hopes, values, and social purposes of a liberal arts education, empathy itself is not without useful academic skepticism and criticism. Amy Shuman calls for a critique of empathy in the circulation and telling of other people’s stories. She finds liberatory possibilities via empathy in critiquing dominant narratives, even as “empathy is always open to critique as serving the interests of the empathizer rather than the empathized” (2005, p. 18). Empathy may be a way for some tellers to claim ownership, knowledge, or privilege over another’s story. At the same time, Shuman notes that stories need to travel beyond their owners in order to accomplish cultural work. This is part of the paradox, Shuman writes, because: “Empathy is one of the failed promises of narrative, but in that failure, it provides the possibility of critique and counternarrative, providing whatever redemptive, emancipatory, or liberatory possibilities narrative holds” (2005, p. 19). Processes of empathy are both promise and failed promise. But just as the liabilities of empathy can prove to be a productive asset, so can the failed promise allow some redemption through the possibilities of counternarratives. The primary question that needs to be asked, as Theresa Kulbaga has argued, is “empathy to what ends?” (2008, p. 518). This gets to the rhetorical and epistemological purposes of empathy and helps raise further questions about the relationships between empathizers and the empathized. Explaining her idea of a critique of empathy, as well as the possibilities of empathy, Shuman writes
Empathy offers the possibility of understanding across space and time, but it rarely changes the circumstances of those who suffer. If it provides inspiration, it is more often for those in the privileged position of empathizer rather than empathized. Storytelling needs a critique of empathy to remain a process of negotiating, rather than defending, meaning. The critique of empathy, and the recognition of the inevitably failed promises of storytelling, avoids an unchallenged shift in the ownership of experience and interpretation to whoever happens to be telling the story and instead insists on obligations between tellers, listeners, and the stories they borrow. (2005, p. 5)
A critique of empathy foregrounds the relationships among those who are involved with the story, its provenance, its telling, and its rhetorical and social application. Shuman’s critique of empathy is also a way to guard against the erasure or removal of the other within processes of empathy. The critique of empathy is an attempt to maintain the positive social potential of empathy as a means of understanding and as a mover to action, even while guarding against the liabilities of empathy. In their criticisms of rhetorics of empathy, Kulbaga and Shuman are not discounting empathy but are arguing for a more reflective and responsible understanding and use of rhetorics of empathy.
They are not alone in pushing toward a more critical empathy. Those who advocate for some form of critical empathy do so because of how empathy functions, how it is situated socially and culturally, and how the questions of a critical empathy can themselves help us negotiate larger issues. I borrow the term “critical empathy” from Todd DeStigter, who credits the idea to Jay Robinson. Critical empathy, as DeStigter defines it
refers to the process of establishing informed and affective connections with other human beings, of thinking and feeling with them at some emotionally, intellectually, and socially significant level, while always remembering that such connections are complicated by sociohistorical forces that hinder the equitable, just relationships that we presumably seek. (1999, p. 240)
DeStigter’s definition is notable for being both hopeful and realistic. He, like Shuman, is proposing a form of critical empathy that seeks to fulfill the promise of more just relationships while maintaining awareness of the severe limitations and complications that are always part of that empathic seeking. DeStigter’s critical empathy is of additional value because it focuses upon the context of empathy as always situated within sociohistorical forces, just as critical expressivism should always recognize an already social self. This brings attention to the circumstances that inform and limit rhetorics of empathy and the differences in social positions among those involved.
DeStigter defines empathy as a way of thinking and feeling, which is in line with how Nussbaum as well as many psychologists, including Hoffman, define empathy. Such definitions of empathy align with a contemporary understanding of empathy from cognitive neuroscience as including processes of both mirroring (purely affective) and imaginative reconstruction (directed cognitive) (Goldman, 2011). In a similar way, Kristie Fleckenstein argues that the thinking and feeling aspects of empathy uniquely situate empathy for reflective and rhetorical work. Fleckenstein writes, “As a complicated mixture of affect and rationality, empathy lends itself to deliberative discourse—to negotiation, debate, and persuasion—in the public sphere and serves as the foundation for social justice” (2007, p. 707). Fleckenstein is responding here to Matthew Newcomb’s essay on compassion in the rhetoric of Hannah Arendt, who defines compassion as purely affective and as creating silences and impeding discourse. Newcomb argues against Arendt that a “Critical compassion can note the issues of appropriating the stories of others and question the need to actually feel like the other” (2007, p. 128). Fleckenstein supports this position in her argument for empathy as already involving thinking; we do not have to rely upon a critical compassion in order to open that rhetorical and evaluative space in empathy. She cites ideas of “realistic empathy” and “critical affirmation” as illustrating the feeling and thinking elements of empathy and the critical roles empathy plays in deliberative discourse. As Fleckenstein writes, “Whether we call it empathy, compassion, realistic empathy, critical affirmation, or critical empathy, the experience of sharing another’s suffering is essential to deliberative discourse, to negotiation, and to persuasion in the public sphere” (2007, p. 714). Critical expressivism would be in good company here. A definition of critical empathy such as provided by Fleckenstein better allows one to acknowledge the interplay and tensions that always exist in thinking and feeling with others and the ways those may be used to arrive at judgments and actions.
Employing critical empathy also enables one to better question and acknowledge differences in economic, political, social, and cultural positions. These are elements of the “complicated sociohistorical forces” that DeStigter mentions. Among the greatest liabilities of processes of empathy is how it can enable the elision of these differences as one individual empathizes with another. Kulbaga already has pointed to this problem in rhetorics of empathy in the case of relatively more privileged Western readers enjoying identification with less privileged others without also reflecting upon the significant differences in experiences and positions. Min-Zhan Lu proposes “critical affirmation,” a term she borrows from Cornel West, as a form of literacy in which reading and writing are employed for the following goals:
(1) To end oppression rather than to empower a particular form of self, group, or culture; (2) To grapple with one’s privileges as well as one’s experience of exclusion; (3) To approach more respectfully and responsibly those histories and experiences which appear different from what one calls one’s own; and (4) To affirm a yearning for individual agency shared by individuals across social divisions without losing sight of the different material circumstances which shape this shared yearning and the different circumstances against which each of us must struggle when enacting such a yearning. (1999, p. 173)
Lu proposes these critical affirmation practices in response to how the personal is abused politically. Hers is a reflective approach that allows acknowledgment and revision of one’s own affective responses. Critical affirmation is affirmative, hopeful, and politically progressive in the ways in which it allows the building of coalitions based upon the shared yearning for individual agency. And, crucially, Lu’s critical affirmation is critical because it is always keeping affirmation—or empathy—from overreaching by foregrounding historical, material, and situational differences. Critical affirmation is most applicable to how we read and write one another’s stories, which serve as our sites for empathy and as exercises in critical expressivism. Perhaps it is most critical in how we read and write our own stories. As Lu writes, “I join others to mark writing, especially personal narratives, as a site for reflecting on and revising one’s sense of self, one’s relations with others, and the conditions of one’s life” (1999, p. 173). Lu is arguing for critical affirmation as literate and rhetorical practices that bring one’s life and relationships continually into reflection and potential revision. This reads to me as the best possible critical expressivist work, similar to that proposed in this collection by Nancy Mack in her idea of the “critical memoir.” I add to these practices rhetorical questions, posed by Kulbaga and Shuman, best represented by the question of empathy to what ends? Likewise, we might ask in the practice of critical expressivism, expressivism to what ends? By foregrounding questions of social positions, differences, and the ends of empathy, a critical empathy guards against risks of appropriating the experiences of others, especially to validate or serve one’s own interests.
The tensions in empathy and expressivism require critical practice because of the inherent instability of any moves to empathy or understanding and expression of self. Critical practices necessitate questions about the limits of knowledge and differences in experiences and situations; how empathy and personal writing, often in the form of stories, are positioned, how they function, and what their results are; how emotions, reflections, and evaluations interact; and what the personal and social effects of these processes are. These are fundamentally epistemological and rhetorical questions that deal with our relations to one another. Because critical empathy demands such questions, these inherent liabilities can be seen as an asset. Critical empathy and critical expressivism push us to ask the questions that we already should be asking. I draw here from the argument of Dennis Lynch, who contends that the necessary move to a critical reflection is among the best reasons to return to the study of rhetorics of empathy. As Lynch writes, “I do not wish to treat empathy as the master concept of rhetoric, nor will I defend empathy against the serious questions that have been raised about it as a practice. I will argue instead that empathy is rhetorically productive not in spite of but because of the dangers to which it is prone” (1998, p. 7). Those dangers push us toward employing a critical empathy that in turns requires us to be more reflective generally of personal questions of epistemology, differences, and relations. A critical empathy continually reminds us that any knowledge of self and others is always at best a careful and purposeful approximation of perspectives, situations, and experiences through the lens of the self.
References
Berlin, J. (1987). Rhetoric and reality: Writing instruction in American colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Coplan, A. (2011). Understanding empathy: Its features and effects. In A. Coplan, & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives (pp. 3-18). New York: Oxford University Press.
DeStigter, T. (1999). Public displays of affection: Political community through critical empathy. Research in the Teaching of English, 33, 235-244.
Elbow, P (2009). The believing game ormethodological believing. The Selected Works of Peter Elbow. Retrieved from http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/41/
Fitzgerald, F. S. (1994). The crack-up. In P. Lopate (Ed.), The art of the personal essay (pp. 520-532). New York: Anchor. (Original work published 1945)
Fleckenstein, K. (2007). Once again with feeling: Empathy in deliberative discourse. JAC, 27(3/4), 701-716.
Goldman, A. I. (2011). Two routes to empathy: Insights from cognitive neuroscience. In A. Coplan & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives (pp. 31-44). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hoffman, M. L. (2001). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kulbaga, T. A. (2008). Pleasurable pedagogies: Reading Lolita in Tehran and the rhetoric of empathy. College English, 70(5), 506-21.
Lu, M.-Z. (1999). Redefining the literate self: The politics of critical affirmation. College Composition and Communication, 51(2), 172-194.
Lynch, D. A. (1998). Rhetorics of proximity: Empathy in Temple Grandin and Cornel West. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 28(1), 5-23.
Matravers, D. (2011). Empathy as a route to knowledge. In A. Coplan, & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives (19-30). New York: Oxford University Press.
Newcomb, M. (2007). Totalized compassion: The (im)possibilities for acting out of compassion and the rhetoric of Hannah Arendt. JAC, 27(1/2), 105-133.
Nussbaum, M. (2003). Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Shuman, A. (2005). Other people’s stories: Entitlement caims and the critique of empathy. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/03%3A_Personal_Writing_and_Social_Change/3.01%3A_The_%28Un%29Knowable_Self_and_Others.txt |
Communication as Social Action: Critical Expressivist Pedagogies in the Writing Classroom
Patricia Webb Boyd
Arizona State University
In his highly influential essay “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class,” James Berlin positions expressionistic rhetoric as a “romantic recoil from the urban horrors created by nineteenth-century capitalism” (2009, p. 674). In the early twenty-first century, we face a new set of horrors based in a sense of imminent threats from both domestic and global forces along with strident concerns about the influence that our government is having on individual lives. In this time, many feel unable to control their own lives much less effect change in larger society. Academics have responded to the problems of modernity by constructing theories that emphasize the importance of language in constructing reality and the need to critically analyze our social and material conditions. As compositionists have taken up these postmodern goals, they have, as Diane Freedman points out, eschewed expressivism, positioning it as a supposedly “naïve acceptance of the notion of a rational, coherent and unified ‘self,’ a notion critiqued by postmodernists and thought to inhere in all personal writing” (2001, p. 206). Instead of focusing on the importance of the self as a counter to problematic social conditions, postmodernists argue that the expressivist individual actually “conspire[s] in the replication of a capitalist/consumerist hegemony responsible for various forms of political, social, and economic oppression” (O’Donnell, 1996, p. 423).
How can we imagine creative alternatives where students and teachers can, as Paul Markham suggests, see themselves as active participants in public spheres/discourses who can co-create change rather than be passive consumers waiting for others to “fix things”? Giving importance to individual experiences and beliefs is an important step in this process. Critical expressivism highlights that the individual is not a fixed or unchanging entity, acknowledging the role that culture plays in individuals’ identity and identifications. As Sherrie Gradin argues, social expressivism (her version of critical expressivism) “suggests that all subjects negotiate within the system; they act and are acted upon by their environments. In order to be effective citizens and effective rhetorical beings, student must first learn how to carry out the negotiation between self and world” (1995, p. xv). In order to carry out these connections between the individual and the world, though, “a first step in this negotiation must be to develop a clear sense of one’s own beliefs as well as a clear sense of how one’s own value system intersects or not with others, and how finally to communicate effectively” (Gradin, 1995, p. xv). So, students need to begin with their own experiences in order to be active participants in the larger society.
Critical expressivism suggests that it is through individual experiences that commitments are made, stances are taken, responsibility is assumed and actions are advanced—not through an ephemeral, relative subject position that can easily be seen as objectified by social structures. The more ephemeral and fragmented we see ourselves, the less ability we feel we to have to transform things. Further, the more fragmented we feel, the less connection we sense to communities around us. Feeling connected to communities is an important aspect of transforming the issues that face us today. Feeling disconnected from the self translates into particular views on the power (or lack thereof) of one’s ability to act as well. Too often, people feel disempowered to change any of the problems they see in the world, thinking that the problems are too large and must be changed by someone else.
These feelings are also translated into beliefs about communication. Too often students see discussions and writing as empty exercises that have no ability to change social situations. Critical expressivist practices can help us challenge these views of communication. Instead of seeing communication as empty exercises or as tools to only analyze social texts rather than change society, students can learn to see writing—and social discussions—as social action—i.e., a way of being an agent in public discourses. When students realize their words matter and can have impact on social action (and can even be social action), then they become more aware of how important it is to take responsibility for their words and the work those words do in their communities and the lives of people.
Critical expressivists’ emphasis on individual experiences illustrates the importance that those experiences play in one’s interactions in the world—including the political and social problems that face us domestically and globally. Instead of seeing the individual as an isolated, monolithic entity whose sole intent is to search for inner truth, critical expressivists demonstrate that the individual is situated within larger social experiences. Eschewing the importance of individual experiences as postmodernism does fails to acknowledge the important work that a fairly stable concept of the individual plays in the beliefs we have; our lived realities of who we are and how we engage with others; and the actions we take and their impact on others. Even as they recognize the durable quality of the individual, critical expressivists are aware (and work to teach students to be aware of as well) that these beliefs and actions are socially situated and constructed over time. Learning how we learned and developed those beliefs and how they have solidified over time is an important step in building public voices that help us become active agents in public arenas, both of which are important practices in critical expressivist classrooms. We need to see both the “stable” self that is somewhat durable across time and recognize how it is constructed to be durable and the consequences of that durability.
In this chapter, I analyze how critical expressivist pedagogies can help students learn to incorporate individual experiences into education in order to create public voices that provide them with agency in public arenas. Critical expressivism focuses on “conditions of language use,” not “studying private truths” (O’Donnell, 1996, p. 437). By doing so, critical expressivism can help students learn to situate their own experiences and personal narratives within larger social arenas and take responsibility. Students can become more responsive to their audiences and more responsible for their words so that they can see the ways communication is more than just an empty exercise. Students can “become invested as writers when they realize that being articulate when something is at stake … is what launches individuals into public life” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 444). Communication can be social action.
The Importance of Personal Experience
and Personal Genres
Postmodern critics argue that expressivists define the individual much like the modernist individual: eternal, universal, rational, coherent, unique, and authentic (Judd, 2003, p. 489, Freedman, 2001, p. 206). Berlin argues that for expressivists, reality resides “within the individual subject. While the reality of the material, the social, and the linguistic are never denied, they are considered significant only insofar as they serve the needs of the individual” (Berlin, 2009, p. 674). In Berlin’s estimation of expressivism, the external world serves as material for the individual to “understand the self” (2009, p. 674) and “awaken in readers the experience of their selves” (2009, p. 675). He argues that expressivism denies “’the place of intersubjective, social processes in shaping reality. Instead, it always describes groups as sources of distortion of the individual’s true vision, and the behavior it recommends in the political and social realms is atomistic, the individual acting alone’ (2009, p. 146)” (quoted in Paley, 2001, p. 190). Other critics insist that expressivist rhetoric and pedagogy focus “upon personal growth while ignoring the social setting of the specialized skills and bodies of knowledge,” thus emphasizing “a naïve view of the writer … as possessing innate abilities to discover truth” (Fishman & McCarthy, 1992, p. 648).
This definition of the individual leads to problematic views of the solutions to the world’s problems. Berlin argues that for expressivists, the solutions to the problems of a commodified culture are supposedly found through re-experiencing the self. For expressivists, the only hope in a society working to destroy the uniqueness of the individual is for each of us to assert our individuality against the tyranny of the authoritarian corporation, state, and society. Strategies for doing so must of course be left to the individual, each lighting one small candle in order to create a brighter world (Berlin, 2009, p. 676-677).
Donald Judd shares Berlin’s critique of expressivist solutions to the current social problems, describing a class project on homelessness that had only minimal success. Although students were awakened to new ways of thinking about homelessness through discussing their personal beliefs on homelessness, Judd claims expressivist practices left students “ignorant of larger social forces which play fundamental roles in the eviction of the homeless” (Judd, 2003, p. 77). Judd argues that because it focuses only on individual’s reflections on social issues, expressivist teaching “offers little guidance on how to think more critically about homelessness and many other important social issues” (2003, p. 76). Judd insists that focusing on individual responses to problems—a practice he attributes to expressivism—leaves students floundering to find solutions.
Interestingly enough, although Judd agrees with Berlin on some accounts, he argues that Berlin offers an overly simplified definition of the individual used by expressivism. Countering Berlin’s argument that expressivists see the “self as ‘universal, eternal, authentic … that beneath all appearances is at one with all other selves’” (Judd, 2003, p. 489), Judd shows how, in actuality, for expressivists “the self goes through changes in its interactions with other selves and with the world. The self is neither universal, eternal, nor autonomous” (Judd, 2003, p. 63); instead expressivists argue that the self is shaped by other people and institutions (2003, p. 71). And he is not alone. Many critics have illustrated that branches of expressivism like critical expressivism draw on an individual that is not “monolithic, centered or rational” (Gradin, 1995, p. xv). In fact Sherrie Gradin argues that the expressivist individual is one who “confronts one’s own beliefs and examines her interaction with culture [and] is particularly plural and decentered because the self is constructed differently in various times and in multiple classes and cultures” (1995, p. xv). Critical expressivists highlight the way the individual builds connections with communities in which the individual is situated, valuing both individual experiences and social relationships.
This process of building relationships can be facilitated by genres that have been traditionally labeled “personal” and have been critiqued by postmodernism. These genres can help students become more engaged in the classroom and their worlds because they encourage students to start with their own experiences, and then negotiate between them and different worlds. Freedman writes of “the capacity of personal classroom writing … to negotiate the divide college students often feel between school and work or school and home, their writing and their caring, their knowing and their being” (2001, p. 199). When students begin with their own experiences, they can feel empowered in institutional settings that can often be alienating, and they can find a public voice that gives them agency. Students begin to see the ways that various institutions and various identities/identifications have shaped their actions (and inactions) and have caused them to feel powerful or powerless in particular situations. Writing about these instances can help students understand the causes behind their actions (or inactions), help them feel passionate about these life experiences, connect them to others through these analyses, and lead them to take different kinds of actions out of those new realizations.
As Freedman insists, “students are unavoidably bringing their personal lives into their academic work, the classroom space, and their conversations with teachers and peers” (2001, p. 200). Drawing on those experiences in both the kind of discussions they have and the kind of writing they do are useful ways for students to learn what is at stake in their communications. Starting with personal experiences and locating them in larger social contexts is a center stone of critical expressivism practices that help students learn they are “supposed to have something at stake” in their learning. As Danielewicz argues, there are two key results of personal writing genres: “students learn that they are supposed to have something at stake in writing an argument, academic or otherwise” (2008, p. 421) and “students who do write when something is at stake are participating in public discourse; they expect something to happen as a result of writing” (2008, p. 421). Both of these benefits highlight why the genres typically denigrated as “personal” hold much value for students and our classrooms.
The next section discusses two examples that illustrate the way critical expressivist pedagogies in the classroom can help students be responsive to audiences and take responsibility for their words and actions. They show the ways that discussions and writing in personal genres can help students start with personal experiences in order to create authoritative public voices that make them active participants in public arenas.
Examples of Critical Expressivism at Work
Example 1: Curriculum as Conversation and Discussion
Class discussions and conversations are one crucial way that students can learn to be responsible language users. Instead of seeing them as “just” discussions, critical expressivist pedagogies can turn class discussions into moments where students take responsibility for their words in a community and learn to place their own experiences within larger social contexts. Once students see how their ideas have been shaped, they realize that their ideas are not “givens” but have been produced and can, thus, be changed and transformed. Classroom discussions and the curriculum the teacher establishes can be a starting point for this kind of change.
The narratives students bring to the classroom should be an important part of the class curriculum. In “What Is Public Narrative,” Marshall Ganz argues that we make sense of the world through three types of stories: story of self, story of us, and story of now. The story of self “communicates who I am—my values, my experiences, why I do what I do;” the story of us “communicates who we are—our shared values, our shared experience, and why we do what we do;” and the story of now “transforms the present into a moment of challenge, hope, and choice” (Ganz, 2008, p. 1). All three steps are important in critical expressivist classrooms because the story of us cannot be built without a thorough knowledge of the story of self and the story of now, which leads to civic agency and action, requires both of the other two stories.
Making these stories a central part of the class situates the curriculum as a conversation rather than a merely a presentation of information (Shields & Mohan, 2008, p. 296). Carolyn Shields and Erica Mohan advocate for curriculum as conversation that focuses on “teaching students to ask about other perspectives, and to question, reflect, critique, and challenge” (2008, p. 296). This approach requires that instructors honor “each student’s unique experiences in the sense-making conversations of the classroom” (Shields & Mohan, 2008, p. 296) in order to “ensure that a greater range of student experiences is considered valid and valuable as a basis for learning” (2008, p. 296). Thus, classroom conversations should honor students’ experiences and situate them in larger social contexts as a way of making sense of what is happening in the world, just as Ganz’s three types of stories encourage students to do. Creating the curriculum as a conversation means the students’ stories and sense-making are the basis of the class, but these experiences are situated within a questioning of, reflecting on, and challenging of other perspectives—connecting the story of self and story of us, ultimately moving toward a story of now that can be filled with hope and choice.
Thomas O’Donnell’s article “Politics and Ordinary Language: A Defense of Expressivist Rhetorics” (1996) provides a good example of how class discussion can use the story of self, story of us, and story of now to create curriculum as conversation that helps raise students’ awareness of the way their views are situated within larger social contexts. He describes a class discussion on whether health insurance should pay for alcoholics’ rehabilitation treatment—a discussion that, interestingly enough, quickly turned into a debate about what “free will” meant. The discussion pivoted around the question of whether alcoholism was a disease or a choice. If students saw alcoholism as a disease, then they thought that alcoholics should be given treatment, just like any other sick person. If, however, students thought that alcoholism was a “free will” choice that one made, then they did not think that health insurance should pay for that choice. Instead of an abstract discussion of public policy, the class discussion quickly turned to a story of self in which they discussed what “free will” meant to them and where they learned that term; then because they were discussing their perceptions within the classroom, they had to take responsibility for their word use and be responsive to their audience. Through deep engagement with their peers in the classroom discussions which were situated in curriculum as conversation (not curriculum as information transmission), they were participating in the story of us. They began to learn the culture’s shared values and shared narratives about “free will.” The story of now came into play when students realized those larger cultural narratives of “free will” (in which they played a part) had an impact on the actions taken by public policy makers and health care agencies as well as on those whose lives were directly affected by those decisions. They realized that narratives of “free will” and other such concepts directly shaped people’s lives and were not abstract terms that meant little beyond personal opinion. These concepts were based in public narratives that could create despair or could be challenged and questioned to create hope and choice.
O’Donnell’s class demonstrates that critical expressivist teaching does offer students help in sorting through public issues, thus challenging critiques like Judd’s who argues that students in expressivist classrooms are offered “little guidance on how to think critically” (Judd, 2003, p. 76). Discussions like the one on health care that centered on multiple socially-constructed definitions of “free will” illustrate that “it makes little sense to see the expressivist move to the personal as emerging from an inordinate confidence in the capacity of individuals to apprehend untainted truth” (O’Donnell, 1996, p. 432). The point of the class discussion was not to find the one “true” meaning of “free will” and therefore the “right” policy; instead, the point of the discussion was to explore the impacts of language use and the importance of being responsible for one’s language use. In O’Donnell’s class, the group helped individuals sort out their assumptions about “free will” and consider the impact on public policy. The conversational nature of the curriculum focused on students’ stories of how they learned the terms and shifted those conversations to considering how the community used the various narratives to construct policies and who was served (and not served) by those policies. Knowing what stories they are a part of will help students realize the impact of the public narratives. Realizing this, according to Paul Markham in “You Don’t Know Where You’re Going until You’re on the Way There: Why Public ‘Work’ Matters,” can help them create public narratives—“a discursive process through which individuals, communities, and nations construct their identity, make choices, and inspire actions” (2011, p. 6). Critical expressivist pedagogies that center on the importance of drawing on multiple narratives in class and establishing the curriculum as a conversation can help students take responsibility for their words and to see their communications as actions that have impact—that matter.
O’Donnell’s class illustrates that expressivist principles can help students enter into public discourse in a way that makes them engaged and active citizens rather than passive dupes of institutional structures, as Berlin and others want to position them. How students use language and to what effect becomes the main focus in critical expressivist classrooms, not the solipsistic analysis of the self, as critics of expressivism claim. Students in critical expressivist work need to connect to their audiences and to be responsive to and responsible to their audiences for their words to have impact and to create a powerful public voice. Students focus on the communities they are located within, they begin to contextualize their views within difference, and they work to build intercontextual connections to be responsive to and responsible to their communities and audiences.
Example 2: Writing Personal Genres/Creating Public Agency
Critical expressivist pedagogies shape class discussions in ways that teach students about taking responsibility for their language use and studying the impact that use has on the communities in which they are located. Critical expressivist pedagogies can also teach students to achieve similar goals through writing—to help them become “invested as writers” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 443) and create public voices in their writing. In her article “Personal Genres, Public Voices,” Jane Danielewicz advocates for teaching personal genres that have too often been short-sightedly critiqued as “solipsistic indulgent exercise[s]” (2008, p. 439) and “private, confessional discourse[s], personal catharsis” (2008, p. 440). In an analysis of her seminar course called “Reading and Writing Women’s Lives,” Danielewicz illustrates how students can draw on personal genres to create public voices. In the process of writing personal genres like autobiographies, students can learn the process of being responsive to their audience and being responsible for their words. They can learn to write multiple versions of their stories and multiple tellings of the “I,” thus seeing that there is not one true inner “I” revealed through writing, that interactions with their audiences powerfully shape their tellings, and that personal stories are powerful material for creating public agency.
Danielewicz asserts that writing in personal genres does not mean that the self written about is solipsistic, or that the topics written about are only personal. In her class, the first drafts of the personal genres focused on religion, family drama, sexual orientation, cherished hobbies and were written in very writerly-based prose, presenting one version of the “I” and one particular retelling of the experience. While these were “personal” stories, they were also common experiences, ones that contained “issues that concern us all”—“surface[ing] organically,” even though public issues were not assigned, and even in their first drafts (2008, p. 443).
As Danielewicz points out “when students write their own autobiographies, a two-way process is at work: first, they identify and articulate their distinctive positions, and second, in writing for a public audience, they come to terms with how to represent themselves and then must contend with how audiences respond” (2008, p. 436). Students begin writing to express their experiences, but through discussing their work in small peer groups and learning about genre conventions, their goals for their work shift to connecting with the audience, wanting the audience to understand the individual’s experiences. In order to do so, they have to be responsive to how the audience reacts to the telling of the story and the “I” that is constructed through that telling. The small groups, then, help students locate the individual in larger social contexts and lead to changed motivations for writing. Danielewicz disagrees with critics like Berlin who “reduces the dialectic in expressionist editorial groups to one function: ‘to enable the writer to understand the manifestation of her identity in language through considering the reaction of others—not, for example, to begin to understand how meaning is shaped by discourse communities’” (Paley, 2001, p. 191); instead, she found in her class that critical expressivist peer response groups have a significant impact on an individual’s understanding of how their identities—their “I’s” are individually situated and socially constructed. These kinds of groups help students understand how their representations of themselves impact their audiences and shape their possibilities for agency and effective public voice.
Jackie, one of the women Danielewicz studies in her article, is a good example of how writers can use personal genres to create a public voice that gives them agency and authority in public spheres. More importantly, perhaps, Jackie is a great example of how writing personal genres can help students learn “more effectively than any book they might read the truth of the hard, theoretical claim that identity is constructed by institutions, groups, and other social forces” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 443). Jackie’s first draft of her autobiography expressed strong resentment and anger toward God and toward her family whom she felt pushed religion on her when she was growing up. Through extensive small group peer responses, though, Jackie realized that the way she represented the “I” in her first draft alienated her audience. It was through the small group work and through studying the genre of autobiography that Jackie came to see that in order to connect to her audience, she had to rewrite the outpouring of emotion included in her first draft since her representation of that emotion that was off-putting to her audience. She had to step back—in her thinking and writing—to analyze the original situations she included and rewrite them so that her audiences understood “the origins of ‘the outpouring of shocking and offensive rhetoric’ or her life as ‘a trained monkey,’ descriptions that were included in her early draft” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 430) of her autobiography. In order for her work to be relatable to a larger audience, she needed to understand how her audience responded to her language use and the impact it had on her ability to achieve her goals in her autobiography She had to learn to construct an “I” that was situated in a larger social context. She positioned herself as one writing with “authority, knowledge, convictions, and self-consciousness about issues that concern us all” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 443) rather than presenting an “I” giving an angry diatribe. As she made these revisions, she clearly felt she had much at stake in writing. “Her portfolio letter states the case with conviction: ‘I adore this piece and I hope that the readers I hope that the readers can connect to it as much as I do’” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 434). Instead of seeing her autobiography as a personal expression of feelings or as an empty exercise, Jackie hoped her writing made a difference to a public audience. She felt her writing made a difference—at least she hoped it did, that it somehow changed her audience. This is a powerful outcome from a class assignment. As Danielewicz asks: “How often do our first-year writers ‘adore’ an essay? That achievement alone—recognizing and valuing a powerful piece of work—is significant. But I’m most impressed with that Jackie’s criteria for success include a consideration of whether or not ‘the readers can connect to it’” (2008, p. 434). She truly wanted to make her assertions of “I” relatable to the collective—to make her “I” a “we.”
It is clear, then, that Jackie wrote her way into an authoritative, agentive voice that responsibly connected to an audience to help her position her stories within a larger social context, not to better understand her “inner” self but to understand how the self is socially constructed by engagement with others and how one’s representation of self is never unmediated or “pure.” Her revisions show that voice is not an internal truth but is instead socially constructed, based on responses from and responsibility to audiences. Personal genres as used in critical expressivist pedagogies help students learn more about public issues. Genres like autobiographies can help them understand relationships between self/other/institutions/world (Freedman, 2001, p. 199; Danielewicz, 2008, p. 442). Danielewicz argues “experiments that involve writing different versions of the self lead to growth, to knowledge of public issues, and to authority. Writing about one’s own or another person’s life makes the stakes personal, therefore immediate, tangible, even urgent” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 442). In fact, Danielewicz contends “we (and our cultures, communities, families) need such assertions of self, such articulation of differences, as a way to fight against the depersonalization and homogenizing effects of globalization” (2008, p. 439). Instead of conspiring to replicate “a capitalist/consumerist hegemony responsible for various forms of political, social, and economic oppression” (O’Donnell, 1996, p. 423), critical expressivist practices can help students fight oppression by seeing the ways they can take actions in our current cultural moment. Unlike critiques that personal genres are empty exercises (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 442), it is clear that they can help students actively engage with social issues and develop public voices that make them active participants in public arenas. If students realize that something is at stake when they write, they become more invested and may, perhaps, see writing as social action (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 443-4). Drawing on critical pedagogies like these, we can help students learn to be responsible language users in public spheres.
Concluding Thoughts/Story of the Article
Near the beginning of this article, I asked if we could imagine creative alternatives that could help students position themselves as active voices in public discourses. I suggested that an important step in the process is valuing individual experiences and beliefs. Throughout the chapter, I have illustrated some of the ways that critical expressivist pedagogies use individual experiences to help students become more responsible language users in public discourse. So, if we return to that question now, I hope I have presented a few useful ideas.
I recognize the paradoxical nature of this chapter: I am advocating for incorporating individual experience into academic and other kinds of work in both writing and discussion, and yet there is not one bit of evidence of my individual story here. I have also encouraged including personal genres into academic and other kinds of writing, and yet there is not a stitch of autobiography or autoenthography or auto-anything in this article. And to be honest, it didn’t even occur to me to include it in the chapter until I was writing the 27th out of the 50th draft of this piece (numbers are approximate)—I was trained well in traditional academia.
In an effort to answer some of the calls I have made in this article, I want to tell some of the stories of this article—to foreground the motivations, beliefs, values, and hopes that drive this article. Ganz’s story of self, story of us, and story of now help me do so.
Story of Self
My motivations for writing this piece come from a strong belief: The individual matters! By this, I do not mean to suggest that I am resorting to a “naïve acceptance of the notion of a rational, coherent, and unified self” (Freedman, 2001, p. 206); nor am I suggesting that the individual is “insular, confined or private” (Danielewicz, 2008, p. 440). I am suggesting we need to examine the work that ideas like “self” and “individual” play in people’s lives. Many people find it important to have a “ground” to stand on—a sort of foundation that they can rely on in this world, and that ground can come from many places. Yes, it’s important to realize that the “ground” changes over time and that we learned that “ground” through social experiences. Nevertheless, a sense of identity—i.e. being an individual—does important work in people’s lives. Susan Hekman argues that “selves must necessarily experience themselves as coherent identities, historically located and contingent, but enduring through time” (2010, p. 299). It is the both/and that is appealing to me, that I believe in, and that attracts me to critical expressivism: stablity and contingency.
Just as I passionately argue that the individual matters, I just as passionately insist that pedagogy matters—that composition is a valid and valuable field and that critical expressivism is an important part of teaching. I am disturbed by the divisiveness I sense every time I go to meetings where those who identify themselves loudly as “rhetoricians” work actively to distance themselves from “teaching.” Many moons ago, Stephen North said that the field was suffering because the Researchers didn’t value the Practitioners, the Philosophers didn’t value the Researchers, and so on (1987). All too often I see this same struggles occurring today. My lived experiences in departments that too often feel that rhetoric and theory is privileged over teaching and composition (although I realize that teaching is not the only thing that scholars of composition study). I have lived through many meetings where I alternately felt like sinking in my seat, somehow feeling ashamed to value teaching, or standing up on the table shouting “Teaching matters!” I have lived—and sadly continue to live—a sense of alienation as “the” composition person in an area where Rhetoric is privileged.
My first passion and interest in higher education is teaching and writing about teaching. That’s why it was so important to me to contribute to this collection. I believe in students. I believe in studying learning. I believe it’s important to study teaching. I believe that the divisiveness in our departments and our own areas is corrosive. I like how Karen Surman Paley puts it: “I am not asking naively, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ but rather I am saying, ‘Let us look more carefully before we write each other off.’” (2001, p. 197). That is precisely what North urged us to do in 1987. I believe books like this can help move us toward that. These are core personal beliefs I bring with me to the writing of this chapter, to the conversation.
Story of Us
“Our stories of self overlap with our stories of us …. A story of us expresses the values, the experiences, shared by the us we hope to evoke at the time” (Ganz, 2008, p. 12). The “us” being invoked in this collection is the kind of teacher I want to be—the kind of compassionate, critical, thinking, reflective teacher (person) I want to be. It is an “us” I want to use to help shape my story of self because we are collectively constructing a community of values and experiences that help our students, communities, and worlds. The “collective identity” being constructed here across the articles is one I wish to be a part of. The overlap of my story with this collective “us.”
“Like the story of self, [the story of us] is built from the choices points—the founding, the choices made, the challenges faced, the outcomes, the lessons learned” (Ganz, 2008, p. 12). I see this book as a story of us, covering all of these ideas (explicitly or implicitly)—beginnings, ongoing choices, perpetually changing outcomes, ever blossoming lessons. It is a story in which I feel welcomed, not isolated. It is a story in which teaching is valued.
Ganz says the story of us requires one key storyteller, “an interpreter of experience” (2008, p. 12), but I suggest that we are all storytellers. We are all serving a critical leadership function in interpreting “the movement’s new experience” (Ganz, 2008, p. 12). That is a central part of this book’s story seen through the emails we’ve shared, the engagements across articles, the nature of the “collective” part of the edited “collection.”
Story of Now
This is the hardest of the three stories: “A story of now articulates an urgent challenge—or threat—to the values that we share that demands action now. What choices must we make? What is at risk? And where’s the hope?” (Ganz, 2008, p. 13).
While I do not think one writing class can change the world, I do believe that one writing class can help students become stronger language users and can learn that language can be an important part of social action. Words have impact; words can make things happen; words do things; words are action. Students can/should take responsibility for their words. Students can/should be responsive to their audiences. Instead of seeing writing assignments as, well, assignments, they should/can see them as actions that matter—as tasks that matter.
But some writing matters more than others. Part of our responsibility as teachers is to make sure the writing we have them do and the discussions we have them participate in matter. It is also our responsibility to help them see how they matter and to realize that they won’t matter to every student in the same way. We can’t assume that they should see the world the way we do and that they should take the stances we do—i.e. take on our political views or political agendas.
But we do face a collective sort problem—i.e. a view that someone else somewhere else should fix the problems that plague us. In “You Don’t Know Where You’re Going until You’re on the Way There: Why Public ‘Work’ Matters,” Paul Markham summarizes it well. He argues that we must “re-imagine citizenship for the twenty-first century” (2011, p. 4). Challenging the “customer service mentality” where we wait for someone else to serve us and fix our problems “requires more than policy change alone—it requires a cultural change, a new civic imagination. This new kind of everyday politics emphasizes the creative role of citizens and their ability to solve a wide variety of complex public problems” (Markham, 2011, p. 4). That emphasis on “a new civic imagination” and “the creative role of citizens” is something that there is an urgent need for. However, there is certainly not one path to fulfilling that need. And there is definitely not one political agenda that will achieve that goal.
Likewise, there is not one writing method or approach that best prepares students to learn the kind of creative problem solving that sort of citizenship will/does require. Valuing individual experiences and situating them in larger social contexts—larger social narratives—will, however, be a crucial part of it. And critical expresssivism can be an important part of that process, as I have argued. Critical expressivism can, thus, be an important part of the story of now. Ganz writes: “In a story of now, we are the protagonists and it is our choices that shape the outcome” (2008, p. 13). The choice/action does not need to be huge/monumental, but it must be specific and hold a vision. When making choices, Ganz points out, “It can begin by getting that number of people to show up at a meeting that you committed to do. You can win a ‘small’ victory that shows change is possible. A small victory can become a source of hope if it is interpreted as part of a greater vision” (Ganz, 2008, p. 13).
What we need is small steps and new stories to tell about those steps—exactly what this article has allowed me to do, to consider: what do I want for my students? For our classrooms? For our educational institutions? For our communities? For our nation? While hope may seem like a vague and abstract concept, Ganz insists that “it is a strategy—a credible vision of how to get from here to there” (2008, p. 13). We all have that hope. This collection has allowed me (us?) to make a space for vision and hope in our academic pursuits. The story of now—the hope of critical expressivism.
References
Berlin, J. (2009). Rhetoric and ideology in the writing class. In S. Miller (Ed.), The Norton book of composition studies (pp. 667-684). New York: W. W. Norton.
Danielewicz, J. (2008). Personal genres, public voices. College Composition and Communication, 59(3), 420-450.
Fishman, S., & McCarthy, L. P. (1992). Is expressivism dead? Reconsidering its romantic roots and its relation to social constructivism. College English, 54(6), 647-661.
Freedman, D. P. (2001). Life work through teaching and scholarship. In D. Holdstein & D. Bleich (Eds.), Personal efects: The social character of scholarly writing (pp. 199-219). Logan, UT: Utah State Press.
Ganz, M. (2008). What is public narrative? Retrieved from New England Grassroots Environmental Fund Web site: http://wearesole.com/What_is_Public_Narrative.pdf
Gradin, S. (1995). Romancing rhetorics: Social expressivism on the teaching of writing. Pourtsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hekman, S. (2010). Private Selves, public identities: Reconsidering identity politics. Penn State Press.
Judd, D. (2003). Critical realism and composition theory. New York: Routledge.
Markham, P. (2011). You don’t know where you’re going until you’re on your way there: Why public “work” matters. Journal for Civic Commitment, 17, 1-17.
North, S. (1987). The making of knowledge in composition: A portrait of an emerging discipline. Pourtsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
O’Donnell, T. (1996). Politics and ordinary language: A defense of expressivist rhetorics. College English, 58(4), 423-439.
Paley, K. S. (2001). The social construction of “expressivist” pedagogy.” In D. Holdstein & D. Bleich (Eds.), Personal effects: The social character of scholarly writing (pp. 178-198). Logan, UT: Utah State Press.
Shields, C. M. & Mohan, E. J. (2008). High-quality education for all students: Putting social justice at its heart. Teacher Development, 12(4), 289-300.
Warnock, T. (2003). Bringing over yonder over here: A personal look at expressivist rhetoric asi action. In T. Enos, K. Miller, & J. McCracken (Eds.), Beyond postprocess and postmodernism: Essays on the spaciousness of rhetoric (pp. 203-216). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence/Erlbaum Press. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/03%3A_Personal_Writing_and_Social_Change/3.02%3A_Communication_as_Social_Action-_Crit.txt |
From the Personal to the Social
Daniel F. Collins
Manhattan College
We live, think, and write between baby steps and master theories, where the richness, confusion, tragedy, violence, and joy of life rush at us where we are and await us where we go.
—Robert L. Davis and Mark H. Shadle
“We are all learning to live together.” So reads the banner hanging in the prototypical classroom depicted in the graphic introduction to teaching, To Teach: The Journey, in Comics, by William Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner. Good teaching prompts students to engage the surrounding world. Such engagement commences by honoring each student in the room, each voice, each person.
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We are all learning to live together. So evoked President Barack Obama in his January 2011 Tucson speech after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others. “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” the President advised (2011). Learning to live together, we check our ideas and their expression through others.
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We are all learning to live together. Mary Rose O’Reilly describes her composition pedagogy in the same intertwining of the personal and the social. O’Reilly asks students to begin writing in the personal, because such a stance honors their voice and provides them an opportunity to write from who they are, what they know, and what they want. Her pedagogy concludes in the social, or the communal, as students write for an audience, and this audience informs what they say and how they say it. Writing to find one’s voice, O’Reilly argues, “defines a moment of presence, of being awake, and it involves not only self-understanding, but the ability to transmit that self-understanding to others. Learning to write so that you will be read, therefore, vitalizes both the self and the community” (2009, p. 58). By encouraging writing as the expression of the inner world, O’Reilly escorts students from the idiosyncrasies of the personal to the checks and balances of the social. “It seems important,” O’Reilly writes, “that many opposing communities exist in balance, polishing each other up like rocks in a river bed, with the friction of daily contact” (2009, p. 11).
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We are all learning to live together. This is the feeling and tenor of the writing classroom I try to construct and implement, a classroom set to up to explore writing from personal and social perspectives. This collage—an homage to the writers and teachers that inform my practice—attempts to articulate the ways in which personal and social dimensions of writing are embedded in expressivist thinking. Writing, Sherrie L. Gradin describes,
is an act of the whole being; it is through reflecting, questioning feeling, experiencing, reasoning, and imagining that writers become writers. While this might seem an ambitious and ideal approach to writing instruction, I would argue that it is such an ideal that we need to hold to fully educate students in a system that often denies the emotive, creative, and imaginative aspects of the intellect. (1995, p. 57)
For Gradin, expressivism has always been an exploration of self and social world, a form of inquiry and discovery; expressivism has always been about the construction of meaning, about the development of self through a concern for voice and lived experience.
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Robert Yagelski asks writing teachers to uphold writing as an ontological act: “When we write, we enact a sense of ourselves as beings in the world. In this regard, writing both shapes and reflects our sense of who we are in relation to each other and the world around us. Therein lies the transformative power of writing” (2009, p. 8). While Yagleski upholds the act of writing over any product, the transformation of self and world enmeshed in writing as an ontological act mirrors an expressivist impulse to write in two specific ways. First, Yagelski endorses “the capacity of writing to enhance an awareness of ourselves and the world around us, both in the moment and over time” (Yagelski, 2009, p. 16). Second, Yagelski acknowledges the transformative qualities of writing as “it opens up possibilities for awareness, reflection, and inquiry that writing as an act of textual production does not necessarily do” (Yagelski, 2009, p. 7). The act of writing, from Yagelski’s perspective, affirms the need to compose one’s story in meaningful ways and provides the means through which to develop a need to reckon with the self through the act of writing. Expressivism reinforces these same dimensions.
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Expressivist writing theory, it seems to me, upholds the idea that to write is to discover oneself amidst an array of others. It honors the importance of the student engaging and making sense out of the world. Expressivism grew from personal uses of language to using language to engage others. “Personal modes of writing,” Peter Elbow argues, “help writers take more authority over their writing: not to feel so intimidated by it and not to write so much tangled or uninvested prose or mechanical or empty thinking” (2002, p. 16). Randall R. Freisinger agrees, arguing that an academic neglect of the expressivist function of language impairs the cognitive development of students simply because students remain alienated from writing by a strict emphasis on academic writing (1980, p. 162). Sherrie Gradin seeks to redress this neglect by reminding her readers of these social dimensions of expressivism:
I envision a social-expressivism where the best of both expressivism and social epistemic theories are practiced: students carry out negotiations between themselves and their culture, and must do this first in order to become effective citizens, imaginative thinkers, and savvy rhetorical beings. Learning to enact these negotiations means first developing a sense of one’s own values and social constructions and then examining how these interact or do not interact with others’ value systems and cultural constructs.” (1995, p. 110)
Freisinger argues that the end result of the expressivist impulse is no less than connecting personal experience and voice to an expansion of the student’s conception of the world (1980, p. 164). We are all learning to live together.
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bell hooks offers a productive definition of voice from a social perspective: “Coming to voice is not just the act of telling one’s experience. It is using that telling strategically—to come to voice so that you may also speak freely about other subjects” (1994, p. 148). Part of hooks’ instruction here is the direction of student attention to the voices of others. hooks’ sense of self-understanding has both personal and social dimensions: “A personal definition of self aids, and is indeed necessary in, the development of an awareness of one’s socially defined interactions with others” (1994, p. 166). In other words, writers come to know themselves through their actions as social beings. Without a voice, Gradin argues, students may be unwilling to begin important work: “understanding what their beliefs are and where they come from in terms of their own experiences, so that they can see how their value systems might differ from others’” (1995, p. 119).
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An expressivist classroom can become a transformative community, one that embeds personal discoveries in social engagement (Fishman & McCarthy, 1992, p. 659).
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“We believe that all learning is autobiographical and passionate,” Robert Davis and Mark Shadle confess (2007, p. 9). Davis and Shadle go to great lengths to paint themselves as composition traditionalists upholding the sanctity of academic projects and academic discourse even as they work to extend (and undo) the purview and parameters of both. “We do not think that being the best of academicians is the end point for students or the most useful manner of being. Instead, we hope that students will be intellectuals pursuing pressing questions and fertile mysteries, who can engage, and change, the rhetorical and actual situations of their lives” (Davis & Shadle, 2007, p. 3). Davis and Shadle offer a useful distinction here: writing from the self versus writing about the self (see, too, Elbow, 2002, p. 18): expressivist writing begins from the self, from the personal experiences and observations of the writer. But the writer is not separate from larger social contexts, and so the writing process does not end until such inquiry is used in the making of meaning for the writer and for others.
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Peter Elbow considers expressivism as a form of discourse that addresses the ways in which interested parties engage other interested parties, all the while identifying (and checking and modifying) our individual and collective stakes in the matters at hand. Elbow endorses the intellectual tasks of “giving good reasons and evidence yet doing so in a rhetorical fashion which acknowledges an interested position and tries to acknowledge and understand the positions of others” (2002, p. 148). Self in a world of others—we are all learning to live together.
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Stephen M. Fishman and Lucille Parkinson McCarthy argue that Peter Elbow “hopes to increase our chances for identifying with one another and, as a result, our chances for restructuring community” (1992, p. 649). Expression, then, becomes about both self-discovery and social connection (Fishman & McCarthy, 1992, p. 650). Both goals rest in the clarification of meaning embodied in the act of expression, acts designed to help us engage our sense of selves and of others (Fishman & McCarthy, 1992, pp. 650, 652).
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Ken Macrorie writes, “All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth” (1985, p. 15). Macrorie values writing as truth-telling: “a connection between the things written about, the words used in the writing, and the author’s experience in a world she knows well—whether in fact or dream or imagination” (1985, p. 15). Such truth-telling overrides the perceived importance of academic discourse, which rings so false and pretentious to Macrorie that he gives it another name: Engfish. Engfish, according to Macrorie, prevents the telling of truth and promotes the telling of lies (1985, p. 14). Instead of Engfish, Macrorie promotes the use of natural, authentic, alive voices, voices that recount and recreate experiences using concrete facts and details to produce meanings for readers (1985, p. 34).
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Macrorie identifies three resources at hand for any writer. First, the writer has her experiences from which to draw. These experiences can and should acknowledge the ways in which the thoughts and feelings of others have impacted the writer. Second, the writer has her writing skills, those rhetorical strategies used to speak in an authentic voice to connect with her readers. Third, she has her writing group, this circle of others to be used to hone the writing, the practice of writing (Macrorie, 1985, p. 74). “Good writers meet their readers only at their best,” advocates Macrorie, indicating a concern for audience that is generally downplayed in discussions of his work (1985, p. 35). This concern for audience seems fundamental to the ways that Macrorie’s work is about the impact of writing on its readers.
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Robert Yagelski offers three important points relating to the act of writing: “the experience of writing is an experience of our being as inherently social; it is the experience of the interconnectedness of being” (2009, p. 14); writing “is an act of the self becoming more fully present in the world at the moment of writing” (2009, p. 13); and writing can be a profound act of self-awareness, a deepening of understanding of the self as a being in the world (2009, p. 15). “Writing is therapeutic not because it is the catharsis of confessing,” argue Davis and Shadle, “but because writing about topics that writers are passionate about can help transform lives” (2007, p. 72). The ontological act of writing favors an expressivist emphasis on imagination, creativity, and process.
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Mary Rose O’Reilly asks her students to enchant themselves with their writing, through their writing (2009, p. 54). To be enchanted suggests that the work will be engaged, completed, relished. One danger may be that that students simply fall in love with their stories. I don’t simply want student narratives, stories about their lives. I want well-written narratives, crafted compositions about who they are and who they want to be. Meaning made by meaning shaped. Ander Monson helps me out here, in a passage I distribute to my students for discussion. Forgive the lengthy quotation:
But I still don’t want to read what most people have to say about themselves if it’s just to tell their story. I want it to be art, meaning that I want it transformed, juxtaposed, collaged—worked on like metal sculpture, each sentence hammered, gleaming, honed …. The action of telling is fine: kudos for you and your confession, your therapy, your bravery in releasing your story to the public. But telling is performing, even if it seems effortless …. With years of reflection on that story and how it can be shaped as prose (and how its shape changes from our shaping it, reflecting on it), given audience and agents and editors, rhetoric and workshop and rewriting for maximum emotional punch—given the endless possibilities of the sentence on the page, I expect to see a little fucking craft. I guess I want awareness, a sense that the writer has reckoned with the self, the material, as well as what it means to reveal it, and how secrets are revealed, how stories are told, that it’s not just being simply told. In short, it must make something of itself. (Monson, 2010, p. 13)
Yes, writing should move and surprise; it should teach its readers and writers something new.
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Bristling against the personal narrative, Ander Monson attempts to articulate his concerns: “These writers presume—and doubtlessly been told, perhaps in workshops, perhaps by me—that their stories, finally, matter in themselves. Still, I see something in these also-rans: they might serve to matter if explored further, with style, an angle, some kind of action working as a countermeasure against the desire of the I to confess” (2010, p. 16). Against this backdrop, Monson argues the need “to tell a compelling story, but also to examine that compelling story and the act of storytelling through the prose, to let the sentences get some traction and complexity, to generate friction against what is being told” (2020, p. 17). Yes, through their writing, writers explore their relationship with others and with the social and cultural conditions that inform their writing. And through their writing, students develop a conscious linguistic shaping toward purpose and effect.
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“I am learning to consider what my students can do with their knowledge,” offers Ken Macrorie in his book A Vulnerable Teacher (1974, p. 111). Increasingly discouraged about the lack of student engagement in the classroom, Macrorie sought to create ways that students could engage classroom texts through their experiences. Classroom teaching became concerned with the mutual illumination of course texts and student experiences. “When my students and I are learning most powerfully, we are ever remembering where we came from. And so there is some living going on in our learning place” (Macrorie, 2010, “Preface”). No longer bored, Macrorie and his students began to surprise one another, if only because they do not know what others might say aloud to the class. Macrorie’s practice becomes an invitation to self-reflection and self-scrutiny in a community of others doing much the same work. With no monopoly on knowledge, students and teachers alike use their experiences to offer insight into course materials and then use course materials to reframe their understandings of the world (Macrorie, 2010, p. 79). Students come to value their own experience and their insights into these experiences.
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Our courses fail, Macrorie argues, when we deny students their lives (Macrorie, 2010, p. 13). Macrorie’s sharp reminder indicates the need to ask students to connect their lives to the classroom. By making actual feelings, thoughts, and experiences significant to the ways in which students and teachers engage each other in the classroom, vulnerability becomes an important ingredient in the construction of knowledge. This is a vulnerability not based on fear and weakness—which would be simply another form of trampling on students (which is probably worse than simply ignoring them)—but a way of exercising their power as thinkers, writers, and people.
References
Ayers, W., & Alexander-Tanner, R. (2010). To teach: The journey, in comics. New York: Teachers College Press.
Davis, R. L., & Shadle, M. F. (2007). Teaching multiwriting; Researching and composing with multiple genres, media, disciplines, and cultures. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Elbow, P. (2002). Exploring problems with “personal writing” and “expressivism. The Selected Works of Peter Elbow. Retrieved from http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/16
Elbow, P. (1991). Reflections on academic discourse: How it relates to freshmen and cColleagues. College English, 53(2), 135-155.
Fishman, S. M., & McCarthy, L. P. (1992). Is expressivism dead? Reconsidering its romantic roots and its relation to social constructionism. College English, 54(6), 647-661.
Freisinger, R. R. (1980). Cross-disciplinary writing workshops: Theory and practice. College English, 42(2), 154-166.
Gradin, S. L. (1995). Romancing rhetorics: Social expressivist perspectives on the teaching of writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Harris, J. (2006). Rewriting: How to do things with exts. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Macrorie, K. (1974). A vulnerable teacher. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden.
Macrorie, K. (1985). Telling writing (4th ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Monson, A. (2010). Vanishing point: Not a memoir. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf.
Obama, B. (2011, January 14). The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/01/obama-in-tucson-full-text-of-p.html
O’Reilly, M. R. (2009). The peaceable classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Yagelski, R. P. (2009). A thousand writers writing: Seeking change through the radical practice of writing as a way of being. English Education, 42(1), 6-28. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/03%3A_Personal_Writing_and_Social_Change/3.03%3A_From_the_Personal_to_the_Social.txt |
“Is it Possible to Teach Writing So That People Stop Killing Each Other?” Nonviolence, Composition, and Critical Expressivism
Scott Wagar
Miami University
Can we say that our pedagogies are not about expressivist writing or about entrance to the academy but about learning how to live?
—Michael Blitz and C. Mark Hurlbert
Perhaps what I am encouraging … is Inner Peace Studies, which asks Who am I? Am I at peace with who I am? Who are these other people? What is the nature of community? What do they believe, and why? Is it possible for us to work together?
—Mary Rose O’Reilley
A small, quiet movement within composition studies, focusing on connections between nonviolence and the teaching of writing, was arguably established by Mary Rose O’Reilley’s 1993 The Peaceable Classroom, in which O’Reilley asked “Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?” In O’Reilley’s wake have come works such as Michael Blitz and C. Mark Hurlbert’s Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent Age (1998) and essays by compositionists such as Sara Dalmas Jonsberg and G. Lynn Nelson. Such attempts to link composition and nonviolence have often been characterized by advocacy of what might be termed an expressivist approach to writing pedagogy. And yet a primary element of the notion of nonviolence is, of course, the relationship between self and other. How, then, could expressivist writing, with its focus on the personal, possibly lead to less violent ways of being in society? Below, I attempt to explain this seeming paradox by arguing that attempts at nonviolent composition provide signal examples of critical expressivism (a term I want to embrace, at least in the present context)—an approach foregrounding writing that is simultaneously based on personal experience and intimately connected with how individuals relate to one another.
Nonviolence, the Personal, and the Social
To locate the origins of nonviolent sympathies within rhetoric and language studies, we might go at least as far back as Kenneth Burke, whose early cold war Rhetoric of Motives is offered as a small gesture “to counteract the torrents of ill will” he observed in the world of his time, sentiments that drove him ever more to believe “that books should be written for tolerance and contemplation” (1969, p. xv). Burke takes pains, for instance, to point out the irony of war, “that ultimate disease of cooperation:” a thousand instances of rhetorically induced coordination must occur to make a single destructive martial act possible (1969, p. 22). Elizabeth Ervin argues, meanwhile, for the impact of Wayne C. Booth’s World War II experiences on his development as a rhetorical theorist, and quotes a late piece of his writing: “human love, human joining, ‘critical understanding’ as a loving effort to understand—that has always been at the center [of my endeavors]’” (Booth, as quoted in Ervin, 2003, p. 190). But in the contemporary era of composition and rhetoric, O’Reilley’s The Peaceable Classroom is probably the best-known work explicitly focused on nonviolent English teaching, and not only because of its very quotable articulation (borrowed from Ihab Hassan, one of O’Reilley’s graduate-school professors) of the “Is it possible … ?” question. Much of the book’s impact stems from O’Reilley’s honesty about her life, about the situatedness of her perspective on nonviolence, and about her failures. Relatable yet provocative, and endlessly quotable—“bad teaching … is soul murder” (1993, p. 47)—the book follows O’Reilley’s attempts to enact a pedagogy of nonviolence, from the beginning of her career in the Vietnam era up through the then-recent first gulf war. The primary foundational element of her pedagogy is teaching personal writing (in perhaps all three of the senses articulated by Peter Elbow in this volume) to her students: “First of all, as teachers in the humanities, we encourage students to explore the inner life” (1993, p. 32). But—and this point is crucial in a discussion of critical expressivism—O’Reilley insists that
our second goal should be to help the student bring his subjective vision into community, checking his insights against those of allies and adversaries, against the subjective vision of the texts he studies, and in general against the history of ideas. The classroom, then, must be a meeting place for both silent meditation and verbal witness, of interplay between interiority and community. (1993, p. 32)
She goes on to write that “finding voice [in writing]—let’s be clear—is a political act … it involves not only self-understanding, but the ability to transmit that self-understanding to others. Learning to write so that you will be read, therefore, vitalizes both the self and the community” (1993, p. 58). Preemptively asking the question her reader might be formulating—“What Does This Have to do With Nonviolence?”—O’Reilley argues that “war begins in banality, the suppression of the personal and idiosyncratic” (1993, p. 59) and in linguistic abstractions such as “sacrifice” and “glory” (drawing on terms taken from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms) (1993, p. 60). Abstractions have their place, she notes, “particularly in manipulating broad areas of cultural consensus,” but “before we buy into an abstraction, we need to know what we think” (1993, p. 60). Here again she writes of the connection between the personal and the communal, but in this case, rather than focusing on how the community must bring the individual vision into check, O’Reilley reverses the argument: socially-constructed, and possibly dangerous, abstractions must be checked against individual perspectives and experiences.
Claims about the importance of the individual viewpoint for nonviolence are also advanced in Michael Blitz and C. Mark Hurlbert’s 1998 Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent Age. Blitz and Hurlbert suggest that their work “is one attempt to peel away some theoretical abstractions so that we might better understand the personal and culture implications of what each student is telling us, the uniqueness of each student, of each life. No one encounters violence or peace in general. The experience of each is always unique” (Blitz & Hurlbert, 1998, p. 21). With Blitz and Hurlbert, unlike in The Peaceable Classroom, samples of personal experience-based student texts make up a sizable percentage of the book; it is this direct inclusion of student writing that perhaps most distinguishes Letters for the Living as a “composition” work (despite her interest in the teaching of writing, O’Reilley might be said to identify more as a literature scholar and poet than a compositionist). The book, however, is similar to O’Reilley’s in a couple of key ways: it foregrounds a writing pedagogy that asks students to bring their subjective experiences into conversation with a community; and it is itself written in a highly personal style, although structured mainly as a chronological transcript of an ongoing email exchange between the co-authors. Blitz and Hurlbert muse about the role of violence—and peace—in their students’ lives as well as their own. The three main textual threads running through the book—the authors’ messages to each other, their students’ writing (mostly embedded in the email message texts), and the jointly-authored commentary in between—add up to a more intense version of the familiar back-and-forth between student writing and researcher commentary often seen in composition studies literature. In some sections, the effect is soothing, as these two friends trade late night messages. But in any given chapter, the reader is never far from a jarring personal account from a student: a neighborhood murder, family violence, a friend’s suicide. In this sense, Letters for the Living embodies its twin subjects: the violence of students’ worlds and the world at large, and the moments of peace that Blitz and Hurlbert maintain are possible to find in our lives as well as in our students’ writing and our own.
This focus on peace, not just violence, and on the personal also distinguishes another notable contribution to this conversation about composition’s possible relationship with nonviolence: a 2000 special issue of English Journal, entitled “A Curriculum of Peace,” that emerged in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Though English Journal is primarily aimed at secondary school instructors, this issue includes contributions from college compositionists Sara Dalmas Jonsberg, Marsha Lee Holmes, and G. Lynn Nelson, among other university instructors. (Sadly, of course, prominent college shootings such as those at Virginia Tech would soon take place after this issue appeared.)
Nelson insists that a “personal story” must be at the heart of any attempt to work toward peace through teaching writing: “Deny me my stories, as the modern dominant culture does, and I will eventually turn to the language of violence” (2000, p. 43). Indeed, he insists that his writing classes and workshops at all levels are built around variations on the simple injunction, “tell me a story” (2000, p. 45)—but, citing O’Reilley’s concept of “deep listening,” he also emphasizes the importance of fostering audience attentiveness in those classes. That is, stories do not achieve their full value when they are mere expression; they have to be heard, not just told, and in the classroom this means that a community of listeners must be constructed, including students and the instructor. So the personal cannot be disconnected from the social.
Jonsberg, meanwhile, invokes this connection in her own way, insisting on the importance for nonviolent teaching of respecting what each individual student brings to the classroom and to her or his writing and reading. Respect in this context is
born of understanding first the source of a reader’s unique vision—seeing that there are reasons behind a particular reading of a text, reasons of experience, gender, religion, cultural, and/or linguistic background. With that introspective understanding comes an awareness that others will read differently, out of their experiences and genders and religious training and so on. (2000, p. 30)
The “unique vision” of the individual, then, can be simultaneously honored for its own value and understood as a perspective to which social factors make an absolutely crucial contribution. Further, “introspective understanding” leads not to self-absorption but to knowledge of a commonality with others: other people are different, paradoxically, for the same reasons I am “myself”—because of personal experiences and a mix of socializing elements.
Jonsberg thus follows O’Reilley, Blitz and Hurlbert, and Nelson in arguing for a pedagogy that gives pride of place to the stories and voices of individual students, without in any way discounting the importance of the social (that is, fellow students and the teacher, but also the world at large). Below, I offer pedagogical possibilities in presenting a small toolbox of projects and practices that might aid the composition instructor inspired by nonviolent principles. But first I want to point out another of Jonsberg’s arguments that highlights a second key commonality in the work of many compositionists of nonviolence. Jonsberg suggests provocatively that “WHAT we teach doesn’t matter half so much as HOW we teach it. WHO we are, what values we model, has far more effect on our students than the words they may read or hear” (2000, p. 28). For Jonsberg, a posture of absolute respect and acceptance on the teacher’s part is critical; she strives for a classroom where “all members are welcome in the fullness of their being” (2000, p. 30). Nelson’s valuation of deep listening seems to arise from a similar place. O’Reilley bluntly argues that the “adversarial stance” (1993, p. 30) of many traditional teaching methods leads to “academic brutalization” (1993, p. 31), and that the little things we do matter, down to our comments on student papers: “rude and demoralizing labeling of student work” is one example of how students are “insulted, bullied, and turned into objects,” planting “seeds of violence. It follows, therefore, that the first step in teaching peace is to examine the ways in which we are already teaching conflict” (O’Reilley, 1993, p. 31).
Teacherly Reflection
But how can we conduct such an examination? O’Reilley’s and Blitz and Hurlbert’s longer texts point toward an answer: as teachers we should reflect with seriousness and honesty on our own lives, considering how they connect to and influence what we do in the classroom. Blitz and Hurlbert claim in their introductory chapter that “writing and living and teaching are not separable. As you will see, our lives are in this composition [Letters for the Living] as our students’ lives are in their compositions” (1998, p. 2). And indeed, even though their book is overwhelmingly focused on their experiences with their writing students, a reader also witnesses the two teachers wrestle with fears for their own children; relate stories of troubled visits to dying hometowns; and recall quiet moments when they sat peacefully as friends, staring into the night. These details are offered not gratuitously but as part and parcel of Blitz and Hurlbert’s project of wondering how they might help their composition students navigate violent landscapes; one gets the impression that these teachers are better able to sympathetically encounter their students’ writings by reflecting on their own values, goals, and experiences vis-à-vis peace and violence. Their work, then, grows out of a desire to “stop pretending that that our real lives are secondary or irrelevant to the work of teaching” (1998, p. 2). O’Reilley, for her part, has followed up The Peaceable Classroom with two similarly personal and candid volumes (1998’s Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice and 2005’s The Garden at Night: Burnout and Breakdown in the Teaching Life) focusing on teachers’ lives as they relate to the classroom. In the view of these compositionists of nonviolence, critical expressivism isn’t just for our students; it’s for us too. Any teacher who’s been unable to banish from her head a negative comment from a student evaluation, or been troubled for days afterward about a testy exchange in the classroom, knows that our teaching hours influence our non-teaching ones. But a moment’s thought will reveal that the influence runs in the other direction as well, and the critical expressivism of Blitz and Hurlbert and O’Reilley’s own writing helps us consider some of the connections between violence, nonviolence, and what we bring into the classroom from outside it.
Part of what we bring into the classroom, of course, is our personal sense of highest meaning and purpose, of our connection with the rest of the universe and how we might act to deepen that connection: what I will call our spirituality. In considering the history of nonviolence, we do a disservice to figures such as King and Gandhi if we forget how entwined their spiritual ideals were with their commitments to turning the other cheek. Of the compositionists of nonviolence, O’Reilley in particular is unabashed about the influence of her spiritual beliefs and practices, to the point where Peter Elbow, in his foreword to The Peaceable Classroom, classifies the book’s subfield as spirituality (xi). Earlier, I cited O’Reilley’s claim that “finding voice [in writing] … is a political act”—but here I want to note her parallel claim, given equal weight in the text, that “finding voice is a spiritual event” (61), the province of prophets; and a “prophet, or a prophetic writer, calls us to a higher standard of what we could be. That’s simply a prophet’s job description” (62). In this view, the spiritual and the political are as tied together as the personal and the political: an individual’s spiritual experience—which may be triggered by finding voice in writing—gives rise to a call for the betterment of the community. Certainly, O’Reilley seems to suggest that this pattern holds for her. Each of her books on the teaching life is substantially concerned with her experiences as an eclectic mix of Quaker, Buddhist, and Roman Catholic, and how these traditions motivate her to be a particular kind of person, writer, and teacher (a nonviolent one, among other things). She notes in The Peaceable Classroom that her purpose in highlighting her spirituality is not to forward “dogma” but instead to foreground the importance of “discipline: a way of being-in-time that these traditions propose” (73). Variously referred to by O’Reilley as contemplation, deep listening, presence, mindfulness, or being awake, such discipline—which for O’Reilley is particularly influenced by the teachings of the Vietnamese Zen practitioner Thich Nhat Hanh1—helps a teacher to actually be there with students, paying full attention in the given situation: in the classroom, during office hours, while planning class or commenting on papers.
“Spirituality” in this sense, then, involves not so much a set of beliefs as a set of practices and ways of understanding, and relating to, others and the world. For O’Reilley, we know that the frameworks of Buddhism, Quakerism and Catholicism feed these ways of being. Blitz and Hurlbert are quieter about their relation to established spiritual traditions, though Hurlbert occasionally quotes the wisdom of a rabbi neighbor, and fondly remembers the “peace be with you” of the Catholic masses of his childhood. But in any case I think that we can see, in these teachers’ deep concern for student well-being and their intense personal reflection, a commitment to the same values that spirituality-in-education proponent Parker J. Palmer approvingly attributes to O’Reilley in his foreword to Radical Presence: “seeing one’s self without blinking, offering hospitality to the alien other, having compassion for suffering, being present and being real” (ix). When Blitz and Hurlbert ask in Letters for the Living, “what if … peace depends upon a constant, incremental, local, personal vigil?” (1998, p. 56), they seem not far from the mindfulness-based notion of “being peace” forwarded by Thich Nhat Hanh in books such as Being Peace and Peace is Every Step. And at the same time they hint at why their pedagogy is based on personal writing: the “local, personal vigil” is what they encourage in their students’ experience-based compositions, and exemplify in their own prose in Letters for the Living.
Nhat Hanh’s notion of interbeing also seems worth mentioning here; it’s the idea that every seemingly separate thing in the universe is in fact, from a certain perspective, connected in a web of interdependence. For example, the computer keyboard I’m typing on wouldn’t exist without the sun and soil that helped grow the food for its designers; or without the ancient creatures whose compressed remains created the raw material for the petroleum-based keys; or without the inventors of the letters represented on those keys; and so on and so on. According to Nhat Hanh, to really understand the theory we have to be able to see its truth at an intuitive level, not just logically. But I think understanding it logically can still be valuable for a project involving composition and nonviolence. As teachers and scholars of language and writing, we have little problem accepting a similar theory about texts: any given book, for instance, is written in an alphabet the author did not create, using a language of words with rich histories and ever-shifting meanings, and indebted to myriad other texts and thinkers—either implicitly or explicitly—in its allusions, quotations, adherence or lack thereof to genre conventions, and so on. So we may be especially well-positioned to accept a theory of interbeing. Our familiarity with Burke’s notions of rhetorical identification and consubstantiality may also help us appreciate a perspective highlighting connection. It’s important that we not understand interbeing in a manner that denies the existence of difference.2 Rather, in the Buddhist tradition of embracing paradox, we see that from one perspective things are separate, whereas from another (perhaps more profound) viewpoint they’re inextricably connected. My point here is that if one of our operative frameworks—or terministic screens, to use Burke—as teachers is a perspective of interbeing, we may be bolstered in our efforts toward nonviolent teaching: simply speaking, we come to understand that hurting others means, at a fundamental level, hurting ourselves. And it’s not hard to see the connection with critical expressivism, if by this term we mean the notion that in writing (from) the self we must inevitably encounter, and consider our relationship with, others and society. As Blitz and Hurlbert suggest, quoting Nel Noddings, “We need to create curricula which include ample ‘opportunity to study response, beauty, and almost mystical interdependence’” (1998, p. 83).
The purpose of this discussion of spirituality is not (necessarily) to call for teachers to take up any particular reflective practice (e.g., meditation, contemplation) but to point out spirituality’s importance in one of the most frequently cited texts (The Peaceable Classroom) among compositionists of nonviolence, as well as to show how certain spiritual perspectives align with both a nonviolent stance and a critical expressivist one. More broadly, my focus on teachers’ spirituality is one way of calling attention to the importance compositionists of nonviolence place on the value of deep listening to students and to committed, continuing self-scrutiny on the part of instructors; for those so inclined, a discipline of personal spiritual practice may help support such attentive teaching and honest self-reflection.3 Those for whom the notion of “spirituality” feels problematic may, of course, draw inspiration from other wells and frame the values underlying their commitment to nonviolence in different terms—“humanist,” “feminist,” “progressive,” or something else.4 Similarly, in what follows, I include pedagogical suggestions that might be understood as spiritual by some, but simply secular by others.
Working Toward a Composition Classroom
of Nonviolence
To this point I’ve written mainly about the philosophical perspectives informing attempts at nonviolent composition. Here I’d like to talk a bit more practically, discussing possibilities for assignments, activities, and classroom practices drawn from or inspired by the work of compositionists of nonviolence as well as by the notion of critical expressivism. Obviously, composition is taught in a wide variety of contexts, and my suggestions encompass first-year as well as advanced composition courses, themed and non-themed courses. This examination is certainly far from comprehensive and interested readers are, of course, encouraged to consult cited works for further information.
Longer Assignments
If we strive to work toward peace in our teaching of composition, we might ask students to write about violence and nonviolence explicitly, or we might ask them to focus on these issues in less direct ways. In attending to the personal and the local when thinking about where peace, and violence, reside, Blitz and Hurlbert detail a project that asked students to reflect upon and research various aspects of their cities and neighborhoods and compile a collaborative class “book.” For the first part of this assignment (the focus of an entire chapter in Letters for the Living), Blitz’s students, most of them based in New York City, corresponded with Hurlbert’s rural Pennsylvania students to describe their respective cities and neighborhoods and their lives there. Blitz and Hurlbert write, “in every case” students reported this letter-writing aspect of the course as their favorite (1998, p. 96). The potential value of such a place-based approach for students’ critical rhetorical understanding is articulated by David Seitz elsewhere in this volume. Further, a local approach is in keeping with the work of some writers in ecocomposition, a subdiscipline that seems allied with composition and nonviolence; for instance, Derek Owens offers a “place portrait” assignment (2001, p. 30) designed to help students think about their immediate environments. Ecocompositionist Christian R. Weisser, meanwhile, asks students to write a paper about their “relationships with non-human others” (2001, p. 92), an assignment certainly relevant to present purposes since a robust vision of nonviolence would extend to nonhuman animals as well as the natural world at large.5
Compositionist Michael Eckert, author of “Writing for Peace in the Composition Classroom,” asks students to think more directly about peace and violence as well as about the role of rhetoric in both when he assigns a paper focusing on “personal argument style” in which “students tell a story about a time when they personally tried to make peace” (Writing for Peace). Marsha Lee Holmes, arguing that meeting violence head on is an effective strategy for understanding and ameliorating it, suggests having students focus on their experiences with violence in popular culture such as music, television, and film. Citing Ann E. Berthoff, Holmes believes that such an approach is pedagogically effective because it “begin[s] with where they are” (as quoted in Holmes, 2000, p. 105), calling on texts with which students are intimately familiar to allow for deeper thought about students’ relationships with those materials and with the various kinds of violence they represent (physical violence, to be sure, but also mental violence as well as racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like).
Informal Writing
Perhaps unsurprisingly, O’Reilley is an unabashed fan of freewriting, which for her specifically means “automatic” writing or writing without stopping or editing, not just informal writing in general. Sometimes calling it “prewriting,” O’Reilley (1993) cites the practice as one of the key “tool[s] of nonviolent discipline in the writing class” (p. 43). She goes so far as to suggest that in outlining “what we now think of as a process model of teaching writing,” early freewriting proponents “Macrorie, Elbow and their colleagues were laying out, I believe, a pedagogy of nonviolence” (pp. 38-39); in other words, modern composition, with a focus on process almost a given, is in some ways inherently a nonviolentist enterprise. For O’Reilley, freewriting moves students away from being “generic products” formed by years of conformist socialization: “in prewriting … we begin to listen to voices inside. They may surprise us” (p. 44). So far, so expressivist. But characteristically, O’Reilley goes on to connect interior and exterior: the inner voices accessed through freewriting may also “surprise the world, which badly needs new ideas” (p. 44). However, she does not believe in surprising the world with raw freewriting, preferring to employ some type of intermediate “‘focus’ exercise that allows the reader to revisit the material, shape, amplify, cut, explain, and edit … thus, we teach both appropriate sharing and appropriate restraint” (p. 51). Journals, long a mainstay of composition courses, could serve well as a medium for such “sharing” in a course working toward nonviolence, motivating regular writing practice and self-reflection—on the part of teachers as well as students.
Readings
The appropriate role of writings generated by authors other than the students in the class has long been debated in composition; although it’s probably safe to say that most composition classes include outside readings, the issue is worth raising again in the context of a critical expressivist pedagogy of nonviolence, at once concerned with students’ personal stories and with an outside “topic” (nonviolence/peace). However, the seeming conflict need not be. Students can certainly respond from experience to outside readings, and these could be texts with or without overt nonviolent perspectives; in fact, the argument could be made that a critical expressivist approach would—or should—by definition put students’ own experiences into dialogue and tension with existing texts and cultural conversations. O’Reilley reports that her “peaceable classroom” experiment began with a literature course on War and the Modern Imagination featuring authors such as Hemingway and Vonnegut (1993, p. 20); as mentioned, Holmes calls on familiar texts from students’ pop-culture experiences; and Blitz and Hurlbert’s Interstate Neighborhood Project occurred in the context of the two teachers’ research writing courses, where students were responsible for finding and using outside sources. However, teachers can expect challenges—for instance, Blitz and Hurlbert (1998) report rather glumly on a widespread failure in their students’ work that semester to “make connections between the insights they created about their own lives during the letter writing in the first half of the semester and their research” about their neighborhoods detailed in the final class book project (p. 128). Eckert (Writing for Peace), for his part, details two assignments built mainly around outside texts: one asks students to research a “peace hero” (e.g., Jane Addams) and to write a Rogerian-style encomium about that figure for a skeptical audience; while the other requires a comparative-contrastive argument about two literary representations of “nonviolent sentiment.” Though these projects lack overt expressivist elements, we can certainly imagine that they might be modified to include experiential input from students, including in accompanying writer’s-letter-type reflections.
Classroom Practices and Perspectives
What other practices and attitudes might characterize a writing classroom of nonviolence? Another standby of many classrooms, the peer-response group, is likely to be one. O’Reilley (1993) writes:
I think the writing group—as envisioned by contemporary writing theorists—functions specifically as a peacemaking strategy: it encourages us to listen to each other and figure out ways of criticizing without inflicting terminal injury, and it helps us learn to accept criticism without rancor. The writing group forces us to stake out the terrain between our own and other people’s view of reality; hence, it reinforces both personal identity and the sense of relationship to a community. (p. 33)
Blitz and Hurlbert (1998) summarize their teaching style thusly: “A workshop pedagogy: an organic, creative, socially responsible pedagogy” (p. 138). So yet again, in this view, critical expressivism and nonviolent pedagogy are understood as intertwined.
There is also the question—hinted at above in Eckert’s “peacemaker” assignment—of how to approach the concepts of rhetoric and argument themselves with students. Although some scholars, such as Sally Miller Gearhart (1979), have provocatively suggested that “any intent to persuade is an act of violence” (p. 195), others, such as Barry Kroll (2008) and Richard Fulkerson (2005), have proposed that we instead re-envision rhetoric in different, more peaceable terms. Kroll, in a 2008 College Composition and Communiation article, introduces writing students to possible parallels between the martial art of aikido—which focuses on meeting physical attacks with minimal force and an intention to do no harm—and more harmonious ways of arguing with adversaries; he suggests that taking such a rhetorical approach may be akin to “practicing the art of peace” (p. 468).6 Fulkerson, meanwhile, surveying feminist critiques of argument, wonders if rhetoric could be reconceptualized as “partnership rather than battle” (and, relevantly for a discussion of critical expressivism, notes that his attempts to encourage students in this direction include requests for personal experience as part of their research-based arguments).7 Teachers seeking shorter activities along these lines might ask students to play around with metaphor in the vein of M.J. Hardman (1998), who has suggested possible alternatives, drawn from realms such as gardening and cooking, to violent and war-based metaphors; for instance, “This is a battle over principles, not just opinions” can become “This is rooted in principles, not just opinions” (p. 43) and “You can’t mount a successful attack if you’re afraid to speak up” can be reconceived as “You can’t have a gourmet meal if you’re afraid to turn on the stove” (p. 45).
Finally, as I’ve pointed out, many compositionists of nonviolence make persistent cases for the importance of our quality of attention with students, and even mundane pedagogical practices can take on new meaning when viewed through this kind of lens. In her fellow teachers’ meetings with students, O’Reilley (1998) witnesses deep presence, respect, and a gift for cultivating students’ own understanding of their experiences: “I see my colleagues practicing this patient discernment as seriously as any Zen master, though they may call it simply draft conferencing” (p. 3). I’m enamored of the idea of using a “back-and-forth” attendance-keeping sheet for every student: each class session, the sheets are distributed, and each student signs in on her or his sheet with some kind of very brief note or question to the teacher, either formal or informal. The instructor collects the sheets and writes a very brief response to each student before the next class, when the cycle begins again. The response process can take as little as five minutes per class for the teacher, and a written dialogue between the student and teacher is established for the entire semester, ideally fostering a greater sense of connection.8 Other daily practices matter too: in Letters for the Living, Blitz and Hurlburt (1998) quote a holiday card from a former student, Jeremy, who shares the good news of a new job as a Youth Division caseworker, noting that in his employment interview he cited Blitz as the teacher who “made the most serious impression” on him during college. Jeremy at first found “weird—almost corny” Blitz’s daily practice of greeting the class by saying “I’m glad you’re here.” But Jeremy “started to admire” the practice because he “could tell [Blitz] meant it,” and he emphasizes the practice’s importance to other students by recounting the time Blitz forgot to greet the class and was prompted by “that girl in the front” of the room. “So you see,” the student concludes, “you made a difference to me and so I want to wish you happy holidays and God bless you” (pp. 65-66). Surely all of us can work at making at least this kind of difference as teachers.
Conclusion
Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
My goal here has been to highlight some of the core claims of compositionists of nonviolence, and in so doing to argue that notions of nonviolence in composition and critical expressivism can be mutually illuminating. Although I agree with much of what these teachers have to say, I don’t mean to present their ideas unproblematically. It’s worth noting that Blitz and Hurlbert and O’Reilley in particular do not sugarcoat the accounts of their attempts at the peaceable teaching of writing. But for my part, in the limited space of this essay, I’ve largely played Elbow’s believing game, and I’ve certainly left unaddressed many concerns that might be raised about appropriate goals for teaching writing, politics and religion in the classroom, and issues of terminology raised by Elbow himself in this collection. So too has the lack of space prevented me from sufficiently examining the influence of feminist, virtue, and care theorists on pedagogies of nonviolence. And more activism-oriented critical pedagogues and purist proponents of nonviolence may feel that the approaches discussed here don’t go far enough in the direction of social action and explication of nonviolent philosophy. Certainly, these are all points worthy of discussion.
On a more positive note, readers may have noticed that many of the suggestions here don’t necessarily lead us very far astray from where we already are in terms of the philosophy and practice of teaching writing. This, then, is another of my goals: to show what we’re already doing right, and to hearten writing teachers by suggesting that many mainstay activities of our classrooms can be seen as peaceable (and critical expressvist) if viewed through the kind of lens offered here. I’m pointing out, in other words, that we might consciously reframe our work in nonviolent terms. I want to appeal finally to Jonsberg’s notion of a “hidden curriculum of peace” (p. 31) in which there might or might not be overt mention of nonviolence but behind which there’s certainly a reflective teacher, searching within—and allowing students to do the same—in order to foster connections without.
Notes
1. English educators who have read bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress will recognize Nhat Hanh’s name since she, like O’Reilley, identifies his philosophy as foundational for her, both personally and as an educator.
2. Since I’ve mentioned Burke here, I’d like to point out (especially in the context of a conversation on nonviolence) that we’ve been reminded by scholars such as Krista Ratcliffe (2005) of the importance of keeping difference firmly in mind when we invoke notions of identification; if we neglect difference, we may neglect those most marginalized or othered by it. In his essay elsewhere in this collection, Eric Leake similarly considers some of the complexities and paradoxes inherent in concepts of identification and empathy as they relate to self, other, and difference. I also want to acknowledge that contemporary “spirituality” as a construct has come under criticism for reasons related to questions of self and other: individualistic spirituality, increasingly privatized and unmoored from institutions such as churches that have traditionally been concerned with social justice, may breed quietism and narcissism and allow injustice and inequality to grow. In fact, this line of argument—advanced in works such as Jeremy Carrette and Richard King’s 2005 Selling Spirituality—has definite parallels with some of the most well-known claims against expressivism in composition studies. It’s well worth noting here, however, that Carrette and King single out Nhat Hanh as a contemporary spiritual figure who bucks this narcissistic trend, instead advocating a socially-engaged spirituality.
3. Those for whom a discussion of spirituality qua spirituality resonates may wish to investigate the interesting and continuing conversation on this topic within composition and rhetoric. Among the sources I’d recommend would be the edited collections The Spiritual Side of Writing (1997), The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life (2000) and Presence of Mind: Writing and the Domain Beyond the Cognitive (1994); College Composition and Communication articles by Ann E. Berthoff et al. (“Interchanges: Spiritual Sites of Composing,” 1994) and Gesa E. Kirsch (“From Introspection to Action: Connecting Spirituality and Civic Engagement,” 2009); and numerous essays from the Journal for the Assembly of Expanded Perspectives on Learning (JAEPL), such as Briggs, Schunter, and Melvin’s “In the Name of the Spirit” (2000).
4. As scholar Ursula King (2008) notes, “some people may … reject the language of spirituality, but may nevertheless espouse what one might call spiritual values through commitment in their lives to care and concern for others, or to such values as social justice, work for racial and gender equality, or for peace making in their communities” (p. 111).
5. Weisser (2001) also calls for the development of an “ecological self” (Weisser 86) in scholars’ conceptions of identity, suggesting that ecology be taken not just as a metaphor for writing and knowledge but considered literally to include all aspects of our environments. In an assertion easy to link with Nhat Hanh’s interbeing, Weisser writes, “ecological selves perceive their interconnection with others and comprehend the degree to which their own identities are inseparable from the non-human world—a recognition that the material world ‘out there’ is part of our identity ‘in here’” (p. 86).
6. Relevant to my earlier arguments here, Kroll (2008) repeatedly notes the importance of spirituality in the development and practice of aikido, finally suggesting in his concluding paragraph that more peaceable ways of arguing are in line with aikido’s insistence that “physical goals and ethical/spiritual ideals are enacted simultaneously” (p. 468).
7. Somewhat ironically, however, Fulkerson (2005) is quoted by Chris Warnick elsewhere in this volume referring to arguments against expressivism as “poundings at the cannons of postmodernism” (p. 655, as quoted in Warnick). It’s worth pointing out that the article Warnick cites shows that Fulkerson doesn’t ally himself philosophically with expressivism despite his advocacy of first-person accounts of personal experience in student argumentative writing.
8. Thanks to C.J. Opperthauser for introducing me to this idea.
References
Berthoff, A. E., Daniell, B., Campbell, J., Swearingen, C. J., Moffett, J. (1994). Interchanges: spiritual sites of composing. College Composition and Communication, 45(2), 237-263.
Blitz, M., & Hurlbert, C. M. (1998). Letters for the living: Teaching writing in a violent age. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Brand, A. G., & Graves, R. L. (Eds.). (1994). Presence of mind: Writing and the domain behind the cognitive. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Briggs, L., Schunter, F., & Melvin, R. (2000-2001). In the name of the spirit. Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, 6, 20-28.
Buley-Meissner, M. L., Thompson, & Tan, E. B. (2000). The academy and the possibility of belief: Essays on intellectual and spiritual life. (Critical education and ethics). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.
Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Carrette, J. R., & King, R. (2005). Selling spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. New York: Routledge.
Eckert, M. (n.d.). Writing for peace in the composition classroom. Retrieved from Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict 1999-2000 Web site: http://jspc.library.wisc.edu/issues/1999-2000/article5.html
Elbow, P. (1993). Foreword. In M. R. O’Reilley, The peaceable classroom (pp. ix-xiv). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Ervin, E. (2003). Rhetoricians at war and peace. In T. Enos, & K. D. Miller (Eds.), Beyond postprocess and postmodernism: Essays on the spaciousness of rhetoric (pp. 181-196). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Foehr, R. P., & Schiller, S. A. (Eds.). (1997). The spiritual side of writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Fulkerson, R. (2005). Composition at the turn of the twenty-first century. College Composition and Communication, 56(4), 654-687.
Fulkerson, R. (1996). Transcending our conception of argument in light of feminist critiques. Argumentation and Advocacy, 32(4).
Gearhart, S. Miller. (1979). The womanization of rhetoric. Women’s Studies International Quarterly, 2, 195-201.
Hardman, M. J. (1998). Metaphorical alternatives to violence—Report from a workshop. Women and Language, 21(2), 43-47.
Holmes, M. Lee. (2000). “Get real: Violence in popular culture and in English class. English Journal, 89(5), 104-110.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Jonsberg, S. D. (2000). A place for every student. English Journal, 89(5), 27-34.
King, U. (2008). The search for spirituality: Our global quest for a spiritual life. New York: Bluebridge.
Kirsch, G. E. (2009). From introspection to action: Connecting spirituality and civic engagement. College Composition and Communication, 60(4), W1-W15.
Kroll, B. M. (2008). Arguing with adversaries: Aikido, rhetoric, and the art of peace. College Composition and Communication, 59(3), 451-472.
Ratcliffe, K. (2005). Rhetorical listening: Identification, gender, whiteness. (Studies in rhetorics and feminisms). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Nelson, G. L. (2000). Warriors with words: Toward a post-Columbine writing curriculum. English Journal, 89(5), 42-46.
Nhat Hanh, T. (1987). Being peace. Berkeley, CA: Parallax.
Nhat Hanh, T. (1993). Interbeing: Fourteen guidelines for engaged Buddhism. Berkeley, CA: Parallax.
Nhat Hanh, T. (1991). Peace is every step: The path of mindfulness in everyday life. New York: Bantam.
O’Reilley, M. R. (1998). Radical presence: Teaching as contemplative practice. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
O’Reilley, M. R. (2005). The garden at night: Burnout and breakdown in the teaching life. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
O’Reilley, M. R. (1993). The peaceable classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Owens, D. (2001). Sustainable composition. In C. R. Weisser, & S. I. Dobrin (Eds.), Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical approaches (pp. 27-37). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Palmer, P. J. (1998). Foreword. (1998). In M. R. O’Reilley, Radical presence: Teaching as contemplative practice. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook.
Weisser, C. R. (2001). Ecocomposition and the greening of identity. In C. R. Weisser, & S. I. Dobrin (Eds.), Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical approaches (pp. 81-95). Albany: SUNY Press. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/03%3A_Personal_Writing_and_Social_Change/3.04%3A_Is_it_Possible_to_Teach_Writing_So_T.txt |
John Watson Is to Introspectionism as James Berlin Is to Expressivism (And Other Analogies You Won’t Find on the SAT)
Maja Wilson
I was in the Yale archives for the first time, reading the correspondence of early behaviorists John B. Watson and Robert M. Yerkes, and I couldn’t stop sneezing. A venerable looking scholar next to me, inspecting ancient manuscripts with a magnifying glass, moved to the back of the room. Apparently, I was allergic to history.
My very present problems had brought me to the archives: as a high school teacher, I had felt oppressed by the system of high stakes standardized testing mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The stated intent of NCLB was to promote equity, but the effects of testing seemed to be quite the opposite. Despite the modern rhetoric of equity associated with testing, I wondered if the original intent behind the creation of standardized tests foreshadowed the disastrous effects I saw playing out in schools.
I knew that the first large scale standardized test in the United States—the Army Alpha Test (AAT)—had been created by eugenicists and used to promote their causes. Robert M. Yerkes, an avowed eugenicist, had helped create and administer the AAT during both World Wars. His assistant, Carl Brigham, published A Study of American Intelligence in 1923, in which he argued for “selective breeding” to preserve the integrity of the “Nordic race.” The AAT had revealed, according to Brigham, that southern and eastern Europeans had scored lowest on the test.
Brigham’s book fueled growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, and was used by Harry Laughlin, appointed by a House committee as an “expert eugenics agent,” to propose and pass the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which targeted eastern and southern Europeans. While Brigham renounced his position in the 1930s, he helped to transform the AAT into the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
The troubling origins of standardized testing were well known. I was at the Yale archives because I suspected there was more dirt to be dug up. I had a hunch: Besides creating inequity, it seemed to me that standardized tests were oblivious to (or disrespectful of) the experience of teachers and students. I had seen that dismissal of teachers’ experience in the rationale for the “research-based” educational agenda that went along with the tests (see Institution of Education Sciences) and I wondered if I would see evidence of this dismissal of individual experience in Yerkes’ theoretical orientation toward his work.
There were over 200 boxes of Yerkes’ papers, manuscripts, and notes, so I thought I’d look first in the correspondence between Yerkes and his friend and colleague Robert B. Watson, the father of behaviorism. In my view, Watson’s work with infants couldn’t have been undertaken if he took infants’ experiences seriously.
Watson was famous for his research on primates but also for his popular child-rearing book, The Psychological Care of Infant and Child, in which he argued that, “mother love is a dangerous instrument” (1928, p. 87). The book, written in 1928 “with the assistance” of his wife, Rosalie (she was not given a proper byline), was based on Watson’s infant experiments. Watson was interested, among other things, in knowing if he could condition fear in infants. He systematically conditioned his young test subject, an eight-month-old boy (“Little Albert”) naturally unafraid of any animal, to be afraid of a fuzzy bunny, and, by association, a fur muff and a furry-faced Santa Claus (1928, pp. 23-30). He proudly presented this research in The Psychological Care of Infant and Child as proof that parents (and, specifically, mothers) are to blame for children’s fears, laziness, and neurosis; furthermore, in Watson’s estimation, no parent knows how to be a good parent, and his work in behaviorism was the answer.
How could Watson live with himself as he systematically instilled fear in Little Albert? Was this simply the case of a researcher’s natural enthusiasm in the days before International Review Boards? Or was there something particular about Watson’s mindset, assumptions, or theoretical orientation that engendered callousness? Had Watson spoken of these experiments to Yerkes? Did Yerkes share Watson’s mindset or assumptions? I felt that Yerkes, imposing standardized testing on hundreds of thousands of soldiers and then generations of schoolchildren, was somehow akin to Watson, instilling fear in a baby—at least in the sense that I suspected each man of a certain blindness to his test subjects’ experiences.
As I paged through letter after letter, I found myself slipping—like a traumatized infant myself—into the world of early twentieth century American psychology, a world of artifacts and conversations that bewildered me: descriptions of rat mazes; blueprints for a stimulus boxes large enough for dogs and monkeys (Letter to Robert Yerkes, October 17, 1912); Watson’s description of his experimental work with babies (Letter to Robert Yerkes, October 12, 1916); Yerkes’ repeated attempts to get Watson to leave the advertising work he did at J. Walter Thompson Company in the 30’s and return to the laboratory; Watson’s request in 1919 for Yerkes to send three hundred blank Army Alpha test booklets and blanks to The Gilman School, at which his youngest son was a student (Letter to Robert Yerkes, March 29, 1919); Watson’s objection to Yerkes’ use of the multiple choice test in his primate research (Letter to Robert Yerkes, May 12, 1916); and a debate about the battle between the behaviorists and introspectionists (Watson, J., Letters to Robert Yerkes, April 7, 1913; October 27, 1915; November 1, 1915; October 24, 1916). I suspected that my sneezes weren’t just a physiological reaction to the dusty pages I was leafing through, but a fear of becoming lost in this historical rat maze.
I knew nothing of primate research, nothing of introspectionism, and I was beginning to forget why I had come to the archives in the first place. Finally, it was Watson’s mention of Edward Titchener that reoriented me. But instead of returning me to the problems that had sent me to the archives in the first place,1 Watson’s full-fledged behavioristic ire at Titchener and the introspectionists led me to a problem that had plagued me as a student of composition studies: James Berlin’s full-fledged social epistemic ire at Peter Elbow and the “expressionists.”
John B. Watson’s Battle Against Titchener
and Introspectionism
I first caught on to Watson’s battle against Titchener in a letter from Watson to Yerkes in 1916. In this letter, Watson refers to a slight disagreement he is having with Yerkes regarding the future of behaviorism. Watson summarizes Yerkes’ position: that psychology should continue on its current track, as defined by Titchener and the introspectionists, and Yerkes and Watson’s shared interest in behavior should be absorbed into physiology or biology. Watson strenuously objects to this separation, asserting his unwillingness to leave psychology in Titchener’s hands.
To understand these disagreements—between Watson and Yerkes and between Watson and Titchener—I needed to understand Titchener’s view of psychology, which had preceded Watson’s. I turned to Titchener’s 1898 A Primer of Psychology, which begins with a definition of psychology.
The Meaning of ‘Psychology.’—The word ‘psychology ‘ comes from the two Greek words psyche, ‘mind,’ and logos, ‘word.’ Psychology therefore means, by derivation, ‘words’ or ‘talk about mind.’ (1898, p. 1)
Titchener defined mind not as an object inside the body that either holds or does things to thoughts and feelings, but as “the sum” (1898, p. 5) of thoughts and feelings. In Titchener’s view, “we must not say that mind ‘has’ thoughts and feelings; but that mind is thoughts and feelings” (1898, p. 6). If mind is thoughts and feelings, not an object, then the only way to study mind, the only method of the psychologist, is to look inward and talk about thoughts and feelings—introspection. To Titchener, then, psychology’s subject was mind and its method was introspection.
The method of introspection had been used by Titchener’s teacher, the German philosopher Willhelm Wundt, who had had created one of the world’s first psychology laboratories in 1879. Because Titchener himself was interested in distinguishing psychology from philosophy and from the work of his teacher, he went to great lengths to make introspection an objective process that took several years of training: “only by looking inward can we gain knowledge of mental processes; only by looking inward under standard conditions can we make our knowledge scientific” (1898, p. 32).
But introspective psychology still depended on an individual’s description of his private experience, an admittedly subjective basis for a field that Titchener claimed should be more objective and scientific. Titchener’s approach to this problem began with implementing rigorous training for each introspector—he called them “Observers”—consisting of a series of standardized introspection exercises: For example, observers in training were instructed to describe what they experienced when listening to certain tones or when exposed to various lights. Titchener invented several instruments for standardizing these exercises himself, including a “sound cage,” a mesh of wires surrounding the head connected to a telephone receiver designed to give each Observer practice in pinpointing the exact location of an auditory stimuli. In Class Experiments and Demonstration Apparatus, Titchener proposed a standard set of instruments for all psychology classrooms:
whenever possible, we should call on the class to do psychology for themselves. The demonstration apparatus which I have in mind are, then, apparatus which shall subserve this latter purpose: apparatus that shall standardise the conditions for such introspections as the lecture-room and the lecture-hour allow. (1903, p. 440)
Titchener considered Observers themselves to be highly trained scientific instruments, and he bemoaned psychology’s great disadvantage in its ability to share results and instruments across space and time. In the external sciences, scientists could easily ship specimens and the conclusions of their experiments to other interested scientists. But to facilitate the sharing of results and specimens in psychology, the inner science, Observers themselves would have to be shipped at great expense and inconvenience (1909, p. 278).
Still, the knowledge gained by Titchener’s Observers was not scientific, objective, or standard enough for John Watson. Other philosophers and psychologists had critiqued Titchener’s methods and aims—including the philosopher John Dewey, under whom Watson had studied at the University of Chicago at the turn of the century—but on far different grounds than Watson would. In his 1891 textbook, Psychology, Dewey outlined a transactional objection to introspection:
When introspective analysis begins, the anger ceases. It is well understood that external observation is not a passive process … We shall see hereafter that there is no such thing as pure observation in the sense of a fact being known without assimilation and interpretation through ideas, already in the mind. This is as true of the observation of the facts of consciousness as of perceiving physical facts. (1891, pp. 8-9)
Dewey took no issue with introspection as a psychological method, but simply pointed out that observation is never objective. Watson, however, claimed to find Dewey’s ideas altogether incomprehensible, proclaiming in 1936 that, “‘I never knew what he was talking about then, and unfortunately for me, I still don’t know’” (Watson, quotedin Cheney & Pierce, 2004, p. 14). We can imagine Watson pausing and winking at his audience—unfortunately for me. After living with almost a century’s accumulation of behaviorist influence in everything from advertising to educational policy, we can, of course, wink back—unfortunately for us.
Dewey’s colleague, the psychologist William James, also took issue with some of Titchener’s ideas. He didn’t discredit introspection as an appropriate method for accumulating psychological knowledge, but he disagreed with Titchener’s assumption that mind was composed of elementary mental processes and that the goal of introspection was to discover and describe them. In “On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology,” James objects to “mental atomism,” which he refers to here as “the traditional psychology”:
The traditional psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows around it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. (1884, pp. 16-17)
But Watson wasn’t interested in Dewey’s inherently subjective observations or James’ “free water of consciousness.” While James’ objection to Titchener’s mental atomism led to a conception of experience that influenced Husserl and other phenomenologists (Schuetz, 1941, p. 442), Watson’s objections would extend to the very concept of consciousness itself—along with purpose, value, and meaning.
Watson had come to believe that mind or consciousness was a religious, medieval construct, unworthy of scientific inquiry. In a private disagreement about the topic with Watson in 1915, Yerkes suggests that perhaps “there should be encouragement given those who are willing to make use of it [introspectionism]” even as they continued their own behaviorist project. Watson counters two days later with what at first seems like a mild, conciliatory reply, suggesting that the two men, in fact, disagreed about very little (Letter to Robert Yerkes, November 1, 1915). But, as Watson points out in his next breath, the small area of disagreement that remains is actually the crux of the matter: introspection depends on the concept of consciousness, which is no more a scientific concept than the soul.
In other words, Watson didn’t just disagree with the method of introspection, but with the very construct on which the method was based—consciousness itself. He thought it best to leave the soul and its secular counterpoint, consciousness, to religion; if philosophy wanted to take it up, then psychology must separate wholly from philosophy and study behavior alone. In fact, “religion,” along with “mediaeval tradition” and “philosophy,” headed the list of insults that Watson was most likely to employ in putting down Titchener and his introspective philosophy. Consider how he uses these terms in the opening four sentences of Psychology from the Standpoint of the Behaviorist, published nine years after Watson’s small disagreement with Yerkes:
Mediaeval Tradition Has Kept Psychology From Becoming a Science.—Psychology, up to very recent times, has been held so rigidly under the dominance both of traditional religion and of philosophy—the two great bulwarks of mediaevalism—that it has never been able to free itself and become a natural science. Chemistry and physics have freed themselves. Zoology and physiology are now in the process of becoming emancipated. (1924b, p. 1)
In the following six pages of the book, Watson characterizes psychology’s concern with mind and consciousness with these phrases:
The Old Psychology of Mind and Consciousness
… deistic idol already fashioned and worshipped (vii) … crude dualism … theological mysticism … mediaeval tradition … religion … philosophy … mediaevalism … soul … so-called states of consciousness … phenomena of spiritualism … not objectively verifiable … no community of data … mental curiosities … introspection … serious bar to progress … failed to become a science … deplorably failed … it would not bury its past … hang onto tradition … will not bury their ‘medicine men’ … subjective subject matter … (1898, pp. vii-3)
For all of his emphasis on objectivity, Watson presented his own ideas in an emotionally charged narrative. In Watson’s story, psychological medicine men such as Titchener had been sacrificing science and truth on the altar of mediaeval philosophers. His stimulus-response experiments would arm psychologists with objectively verifiable data that would bury these psychological medicine men, emancipating psychology once and for all. Freed from the hocus pocus of mind and consciousness, Watson would help Man—including the military, parents, advertisers, and teachers—finally get control of his actions. (Or, rather, the actions of others.)
For those who cut their teeth on Freudian psychology, it might be tempting to note here that Watson had chafed under the rearing of a strict fundamentalist mother who expected him to become a southern Baptist minister (Buckley, 1989, p. 5). We might see his string of associations—from mind (“a concept as unscientific as the soul”) to religion (a “serious bar to progress”) to mother love (“a dangerous instrument”)—and understand his disposal of the first two as his own attempt to “become emancipated” from his mother. But that would be to put Watson on Freud’s couch, a place he would never voluntarily lay his own head (not to be confused with his mind!).
Instead, Watson’s definition of psychology—its subject, its methods, and its goals—is inextricable from his rejection of Titchener’s. In the first lines of the article in Psychological Review (which would later be referred to as the Behaviorist Manifesto) Watson sets his definition directly in opposition to Titchener’s:
Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods … the behaviorist … recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorists’ total scheme of investigation. (1913, p. 158)
Everything about Titchner’s psychology is dismissed here in one fell paragraph: introspection has no place; behavior is all that matters; and since both man and beast exhibit behavior, the study of animal behavior belongs with the study of human behavior.
To psychologists who believed in the study of mind or consciousness, two major assumptions made the study of animals irrelevant to the study of humans. First, animal mind or consciousness, if it existed at all, was too different from human consciousness to be of use. Second, introspection was the only method of studying mind; introspection involved speaking or writing, and animals couldn’t speak or write. (They could, however, as Yerkes would try to prove, take multiple-choice tests!) But in rejecting consciousness, Watson disposes of the first major assumption separating human and animal study. In rejecting introspection as a method, he disposes of the second: animals (or humans, for that matter!) need not talk at all to be of interest to psychologists, who should only be concerned with behavior.
In redirecting psychology’s gaze from mind to behavior, Watson didn’t just open the door to animal studies—which is why he met Yerkes, who studied primates—but he also redefined psychology’s application and goals. In Titchener’s psychology, an understanding of an individual’s thoughts and feelings had a crucial role to play in ethics, and he went so far as to assert, “Psychology is the foundation of ethics” (1898, p. 296). Titchener saw ethics as general laws that must be determined from the particular “facts of life” (1898, p. 296). He recognized that these facts of life are different in different societies, not to mention different for different individuals, so ethics must be sensitive to these differences. One way to assure such sensitivity was to use the insights of psychology—drawn from the experience of individuals—as an ethical check on the laws of ethics.
The same concern for individual differences in relation to generalizable laws is evident in Titchener’s discussion of the application of psychology to pedagogy:
The problem of pedagogy is to lay down rules or norms of education … the abstract “child” of psychology does not exist for education, not “the child,” but real children, Katie Jones and Tommy Smith. Psychology cannot deal with Jones-ness and Smith-ness, but only with child-ness. Science, indeed, can never be “applied” offhand. (1898, pp. 298-299)
While Titchener acknowledged that psychology is a science that generalizes, the method of his science—the description of an individual’s thoughts or feelings—led to his concern for the interaction of generalizations and individual experience. In other words, a science that made experience its special province had a special interest in how the application of that science affected individual experience.
The reverse was true in Watson’s science: a psychology that dismisses mind, thoughts, feelings, and consciousness as central constructs showed little interest in the effects of its application on individual (human) experience. Watson’s views on the application of psychology to education show none of the caution and respect for individual experience we see in Titchner’s discussion of “Smith-ness” and “Jones-ness.” To Watson, learning was a change in behavior in response to a stimulus, a process that is the same for Katie Jones as it would be for John Smith as it would be for a rat. Later, B. F. Skinner would take Watson’s position on the connection between rats and humans even further, leading Arthur Koestler to write in 1964 that, “for the anthropomorphic view of the rat, American psychology has substituted the rattomorphic view of man” (pp. 560).
Without an introspectionist’s grounding in the experience of the individual, Watson had no qualms about proclaiming the goal and application of psychology as the “control of behavior,” which very quickly came to mean, in practice, the control of individuals. While early critics of behaviorism attacked Watson’s lack of attention to states of mind or consciousness on moral grounds, they perhaps underestimated the potential power of behaviorism to do what Watson says it would: to control behavior.
In 1929, Watson and William MacDougall, a British psychologist, published their debate about behaviorism in The Battle of Behaviorism. MacDougall wasn’t opposed to behavioral studies: As he reminded Watson at the outset of their debate, MacDougall himself had been calling for psychologists to attend to behavior a full ten years before Watson began his first behavioral studies of infants. In fact, MacDougall called himself “The Arch-Behaviorist.” But MacDougall objected to Watson’s focus on behavior to the exclusion of concepts such as “‘incentive,’ ‘motive,’ ‘purpose,’ ‘intention,’ ‘goal,’ ‘desire,’ ‘valuing,’ ‘striving,’ ‘willing,’ ‘hoping,’ and ‘responsibility’” (1929, p. 69). He worried about the effects of a psychology that ignored such terms:
I submit to you the proposition that any psychology which accepts this mechanistic dogma and shapes itself accordingly is useless, save for certain very limited purposes, because it is incapable of recognizing and of taking into account of the most fundamental facts of human behavior … If all men believed the teaching of the mechanical psychology (and only beliefs that govern action are real beliefs) no man would raise a finger in the effort to prevent war, to achieve peace or to realize any other idea. So I say that the mechanical psychology is useless and far worse than useless; it is paralyzing to human effort. (1929, pp. 69-72)
On one level, MacDougall was strikingly wrong: the application of behaviorism (the control of behavior through the use of conditioning was immediate and widespread. On another level he was strikingly right: behaviorism was most famously used to not to further individual human interests, but to control individual humans in the interests of political and economic power.
The application of behaviorism for the purpose of controlling individuals to further the interests of political and economic power played out most distressingly through Yerkes’ involvement in the war effort and Watson’s involvement in advertising.
In April of 1918, Yerkes was called to an “Informal Conference on Morale” with the Assistant Secretary of War and the Chief of Intelligence to apply the work of psychology in creating a “systematic plan for stimulating and sustaining morale of troops” (Report of Informal Conference on Morale, 1918). It is worth noting that, in general contemporary usage, morale connotes a happy (or unhappy) individual emotional state. But in the first half of the twentieth century, the military definition of morale emphasized collective action (behavior): “the psychological forces within a combat group that compel its members to get into the fight” (Grinker & Spiegel, quoted in Manning, 1994). In this formulation, “psychological forces” may or may not have anything to do with emotions, much less happiness. What matters is group behavior: if the group is compelled to action, its morale, by definition is high. If it hesitates or refuses to get into the fight, its morale is low.
Of course, as MacDougall might point out, the experience of the soldier whose morale is in question matters greatly. MacDougall had treated victims of “shell shock” in the British army during World War I. Unlike some of his colleagues who used “disciplinary” treatments, which were “behavioural”—“electric shocks, shouted commands, isolation and restricted diet”—MacDougall’s treatments followed “psychotherapeutic lines,” emphasizing recalling the traumatic experience and discovering its individual meaning to the patient (Howorth, 2000, p. 226). This treatment wouldn’t just help the soldier get “back into the fight,” but would also help society figure out if the war is worth its experiential and psychological toll. But that toll—for instance, the years of depression, anxiety, and nightmares that my grandfather suffered after serving in WWII—would mean nothing in the behaviorist’s schema of morale, since my grandfather was able to “get back into the fight” shortly following several injuries and a Purple Heart.
Yerkes’ behaviorist influence on the American military’s discussion of morale could be seen a month after the first meeting of the Conference on Morale when the group met a second time. The title of the group changed slightly: “Conference on Control of Morale” (emphasis added). Yerkes’ report on the “Scope of the Problem,” frames the problem in behaviorist terms, citing a “great variety and complications of conditions affecting morale” (emphasis added), asserting that “the problems are in the main those of human behavior” and so the appropriate person to study such problems is one “who has the ability alike to predict reactions and to properly relate methods of control to military requirements and needs” (emphasis added). In other words, Yerkes framed the problem of morale as a behavioral one, offering the behaviorist psychologist as its solution.
The group consciously drew on the German system of propaganda as a model for their recommendations, viewing morale as a lifelong process of patriotic conditioning. Approvingly reporting the Germans’ use of school as a tool of propaganda and their use of “furloughs and rewards” (positive reinforcements) with soldiers, the group began to plot a comprehensive system to control of morale from the ground up. Yerkes credited his work with this group, and the multiple-choice test he devised to sort and reward recruits with promotion, with helping to win the war (Gould, 1981, p. 224).
Yerkes’ application of behaviorism to the military may have helped to win the war, but MacDougall implied that “human effort” would involve the effort to end war. Even if the majority agrees that the war is a good cause, the experiences of those actually participating in the war cannot be dismissed unless, as Watson’s behaviorists held, their behavior is all that matters. If it can actually be attributed to him, Yerkes’ success in controlling soldiers’ morale by focusing solely on their behavior and the conditions shaping that behavior likely confirmed MacDougall’s fear: behaviorism at the expense of mind and consciousness is paralyzing to human effort.
Ten years later, Watson would leave the imprint of behavioral psychology on advertising (and generations of consumers) through his work for the J. Walter Thompson Company. In Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism, Kerry Buckley argues that before 1910, advertisements emphasized rational appeals to consumers (1989, p. 138). Watson used his behaviorist techniques to condition consumers to associate products with emotions:
Advertisers, [Watson] cautioned, must always keep in mind that they are selling “more than a product.” There are “idea[s] to sell—prestige to sell—economy to sell … It is never so much as dry, solid, or liquid matter” … in one carefully controlled experiment funded by the J. Walter Thompson agency, Watson found that smokers with definite brand preferences could not distinguish one brand of cigarettes from another. This reinforced Watson’s conviction that the marketing of goods depended not on an appeal to reason but upon the stimulation of desire. (139-41)
Watson’s large-scale experimental test on consumers (i.e. advertising campaigns) was just an extension of his test on eight-month old “Little Albert.” Just as he conditioned Albert to associate the rabbit with a loud noise, Watson encouraged advertisers to condition consumers to associate the product with prestige and love, or to associate the lack of a product with fear and rage. While Watson claimed to have been capable of reconditioning Little Albert back to a state of fearlessness (his mother removed him from the study before he could do so), there would be no attempt to “recondition” the public back to their senses. The application of behaviorism to advertising, which took place after MacDougall’s debate with Watson, would confirm MacDougall’s fears that the application of behaviorism would be useless in terms of serving “human purposes.”
The Researcher Pauses to Daydream …
Several battles had indeed been fought in those archived letters and texts, and the corpses of human purpose, mind, and consciousness littered the dusty pages. It was a heartbreaking spectacle to witness, and my vantage point of nearly a century didn’t make it much easier to bear. I began seeing the behaviorists’ initials on everything about my life I felt to be lonely or controlling. Standardized tests? R. M. Yerkes. Consumer culture? J. B. Watson. Computer grading programs? R.M.Yerkes + J.B.Watson 4-Ever.
Though I had found some of Titchner’s work amusing, and agreed with Dewey’s point that introspection changed the emotional state under observation, I felt a kinship with the introspectionists. I mourned the loss of Titchner’s respect for “Smith-ness” and “Jones-ness” and the influence of behavioristic systems of standardized testing and educational research that had come to shape schools. I had a new explanation for my sense of alienation as a teacher; I had descended from the losers of Watson’s war.
A lost cause always drives me to desperate mental (if not behavioral) measures. I imagined calling for a National Day of Introspection. Individuals all over the country would stand up and introspect—rising from wheelchairs in nursing homes, climbing on top of desks in schoolrooms, walking out of cubicles in office buildings, stepping from cars in the rat maze of suburban sprawl—all of us standing to boldly speaking the sum of our thoughts and feelings, our consciousness, our mind. The fact that no one would listen would be irrelevant. We would be rising from the carnage, asserting that Watson had won the battle but not the war, that we would not be controlled, that mind mattered.
I knew the image teetered on the edge of insanity, but it made me feel better, so I let it linger. I was looking around me, wondering if the gentleman at the table next to me, texting with one hand and tapping the mouse of his computer with the other hand, would be willing to introspect as a subversive act. I suspected not. Who would join me? I ran through my list of family and friends. As a graduate student, I had so few friends left that I skipped directly to leading figures in the field of composition studies I’d been living with for the past years. Peter Elbow? Definitely. Donald Murray? To be sure. Jane Emig? Hell, yeah! James Berlin? Pshaw. Never in a million years.
That’s when it hit me—my thesis, the result of my hours of scholarly research: James Berlin was a behaviorist. James Berlin was a behaviorist? The words were so entirely absurd that they couldn’t possibly have come from me. They must have infected me from without, and the only way to rid myself of them was to figure out what they meant. It was either that, or start embroidering National Day of Introspection t-shirts.
The “Expressionists” as Introspectionists
I was proceeding with a working thesis—James Berlin was a behaviorist—which I almost completely rejected. Without a doubt, James Berlin would have shared Professor MacDougall’s distress at the exercise of power at the expense of human interest. Ira Shor’s pedagogy, which Berlin admiringly describes in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” (1988), is based in a rejection of the consumerist culture that Watson helped create through his work in advertising. Berlin’s work is suffused with an ethical sensibility completely lacking from Watson’s.
Still, something felt true about my fantastical thesis. I backed up to the most reasonable image in my research-induced fantasy: the picture of Elbow, Murray, and Emig, publicly and subversively introspecting with me. This part of my daydream proved both simple and supportable: Elbow, Murray, and Emig were, in some important way, like Titchener. The comparison held up when I placed a passage from Titchener’s psychologoy textbook next to a passage from Murray’s 1970 article, “The Interior View: One Writer’s View of Composition”:
A mental process is a process which can form part of the experience of one
person only … Not only does the mental process go on inside of you, it is so entirely inside of you that you are the only person who can ever get at it and observe it. (Titchener, 1989, pp. 9-10)
And,
At the moment of writing the writer has a fundamental aloneness … I have found that at the center of the process I am alone with the blank page, struggling to discover what I know so that I can know what to say” (Murray, 1970, p. 22)
Each man put the experiences of an individual at the center of his work. In fact, as I re-examined the works of Murray and Elbow, I realized that they, along with other leaders of the writing process movement, had built an entire theory and practice around introspection—their own, and their students’.
The fact that Murray, a columnist for the Boston Globe, would write about his writing in 1970 was not entirely remarkable. Writers had written about their experiences of writing long before he did, and his published work is peppered with their insights: in The Interior View alone, Murray quotes no less than 10 authors who write about their writing, including Goethe, Spender, and William Carlos Williams. What was remarkable, perhaps, was that Murray was not just writing as a writer, but as a writing teacher, and he was beginning to construct a theory of how we compose and how we could teach composition from his introspection and the collected introspection of generations of great writers.
Surely, as Tom Newkirk points out, some of the practices Murray advocated—conferencing, regular discussion of student writing, daily writing—had been practiced by Barrett Wendell in the late 1800’s (Newkirk, 1994, pp. 88-89). But Wendell’s theory of composition was not grounded in his observations of his own writing practice; instead, he describes “elastic general principles” that are “observed by thoroughly effective writers” (Wendell, 1891, pp. 2-3). While he does focus on thought and emotion, asserting that they are “the substance of what style expresses” (1891, p. 4), he never describes how a writer manages to compose from those thoughts and emotions.
Wendell is perhaps more comfortable introspecting—observing and narrating his thoughts and feelings—as he reads an example of good style; his discussion of style includes a lengthy (and quite moving) description of how Robert Browning’s style in “Grammarian’s Funeral” (1891, pp. 8-11) affects him. He builds a theory of composition, in a sense, around his observations of himself as a reader: I observe coherence when I read x, a great poem, and therefore, that poet must have observed the principle of coherence. His advice to writers, then, is to observe the principle of coherence, and his job as a writing teacher is, in part, to describe the principle of coherence and its effects on a reader.
Murray calls this approach the “exterior view of writing, principally examining what has been written or studying patterns which have evolved by the analysis of what has been published” (1970, p. 21). He doesn’t dismiss this view as useless, but explains his own view differently: “I do not see writing from the exterior view but from within my own mind and my own emotions as I try to write every single day of my life” (1970, p. 21). Murray’s attention to his own experience—like Titchener’s almost a century earlier—leads him for a concern of the experiences of his students as individuals:
There is no one way to write and there is no one way for the student to learn to write. We must accept the individual student and appreciate his individualness …. ultimately he [the student] has to learn the process for himself. (1970, pp. 24-25)
Three years later, Peter Elbow would publish Writing Without Teachers, in which he warned readers that his advice to writers is based on his own experience:
Though much or all of this may be in other books—some of which I have probably read—it seems to me my main source is my own experience. I admit to making universal generalizations upon a sample of one. Consider yourself warned. (1973, p. 16)
Elbow’s generalizations are the product of his introspection about his writing process. He describes how he came to the practice of freewriting: when he got stuck while writing, he would,
… take out a fresh sheet of paper and simply try to collect evidence: babble everything I felt, when it started, and what kind of writing and mood and weather had been going on. (1973, p. 18)
Similarly, when Elbow successfully broke through his writing block,
I would often stop and try to say afterwards what I thought happened. I recommend this practice. If you keep your own data, you may be able to build your own theory of how you can succeed in writing since my theory of how I can succeed may not work for you. (1973, p. 18)
Elbow didn’t just introspect in order to arrive at the principles that student writers must observe: he proposed a form of introspection as the means by which each individual student writer might “learn the process for himself” (1973, p. 15).
Ten years after Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers, Murray would suggest in Teaching the Other Self: The Writer’s First Reader that the point of the writing conference was not to examine the student text, but to interact with the introspecting student—the “other self” created by the student’s introspection. Murray claimed that the writer must be his own reader, and that in reading his own writing, he forms two distinct selves: the first self who writes; and the “other self” who reads, counsels, advises, and navigates the territory mapped out by the writing for the first self. The other self also introspects: “the other self articulates the process of writing” (Murray, 1982, p. 142).
Lest we confuse an articulation of the process of writing with a purely behavioral description of what the writer does, Murray assured us that the teacher must first acknowledge and respond to the writer’s descriptions of his feelings as he writes (1982, p. 145). The writer needs this other self to develop and grow, and the teacher can help make this growth possible simply by encouraging, expecting, and listening to the other self speak.
From Introspection to Freud: Layers of Self
Despite my fear that Watson had littered the pages of history with the corpses of mind and consciousness, introspection was clearly alive and well in the 1970s and 1980s, at least in composition studies. Introspection might have fallen out of vogue in the wake of behaviorism, but the “interior view” of the introspectionists had survived and been nurtured elsewhere while it waited for Elbow and Murray to surface anew as spokespersons. While writing process movement founders such as Murray, Elbow, and Emig never drew directly on Titchener’s work or mention the method of introspection, they drew consciously on Freud’s work. Three years after Murray proposed nurturing the student writer’s “other self,” Janet Emig described the multiple selves—or multiple layers of self—that must be attended to by the writing teacher. Her version of Murray’s “other self” had a Freudian twist: the writing teacher must nurture the student’s unconscious self.
Rather than dividing the writer into two separate selves as Murray did, she divided the self into layers. These layers first take the form of skin in her opening startling and wonderful image of the writer who has dutifully produced “the conscious student theme” (1983, p. 46):
the theme seems to have been written from one layer of the self—the ectoderm only, with student involvement with his own thought and language moving down an unhappy scale from sporadic engagement to abject diffidence. (Emig, 1983, p. 46)
Emig quickly drops the skin analogy—we hear nothing further about the ectoderm or endoderm—but in this line, she vividly plants the idea of the layered self, some of the layers exposed on the surface, and some submerged underneath. It was a small leap to Freud’s concept of the conscious and unconscious self, and the related (though not strictly interchangeable) constructs: the id, ego, and super-ego.
Freud never viewed the conscious or unconscious as having different locations within the body in any literal sense. But popular imagination did. Even now we talk of “uncovering” our unconscious thoughts, of “peeling the onion” of our selves in therapy, of repressed or recovered memories which implies a place where the forgotten memories have been stored, held under the surface, hidden from our conscious self, which lies at the surface. Emig was not a Freudian scholar, and did not cite Freud in “The Uses of the Unconscious in Composing” (1964) so she was likely working with this popular understanding of the spatial division of the conscious and unconscious selves.
Like Murray, who wanted to see a shift from the “exterior view” of composition to the “interior view,” Emig argued that traditional writing instruction doesn’t allow the student to “consult this [unconscious] part of the self” and “conspires against his inwardly attending” (1983, p. 46). She discusses how author Rudyard Kipling personified the “unconscious part of the writing self into daemons” (1983, p. 49) and how Amy Lowell described dropping a simple topic for a poem “into the subconscious much as one drops a letter into the mailbox. Six months later … the poem … was ‘there’’” (Lowell quoted in Emig, 1983, p. 52). Writing teachers needed to encourage inward attending—journeys to the unconscious—if students were to write papers that went beyond (or below) the “surface scrapings” produced by a traditional overemphasis on the surface of the self—the control of the conscious mind.
Five years after Emig’s “The Uses of the Unconscious in Composing,” Murray would make his plea for the role of procrastination in composing on the grounds that procrastination allowed the subconscious to do its work. In Write Before Writing, he describes why writers procrastinate:
They sharpen well-pointed pencils and go out to buy more blank paper, rearrange offices, wander through libraries and bookstores, chop wood, walk, drive, make unnecessary calls, nap, daydream, and try not ‘consciously’ to think about what they are going to write so they can think subconsciously about it. (1978, p. 376)
To Murray, Elbow, and Emig, one legitimate subject of composition studies was the writing self, and that self was divided: into the writing self and the other self; into the unconscious or subconscious and conscious; or into the id, ego, and super-ego. Emig and Murray emphasized the subconscious mind, unconscious mind, or the id as a corrective to the overemphasis in traditional writing instruction on the conscious mind. Just as the concept of self (or “selves,” or “layers of the self”) was central to the work of early writing process pioneers such as Murray, Elbow and Emig, consciousness (not in the Freudian sense), or mind had been central to the work of introspectionists such as Titchener. And this comparison provided me the bridge to my otherwise absurd claim that James Berlin was a behaviorist. To use an analogy that would never show up on the SAT: John B. Waston is to Titchener as James Berlin is to Murray, Elbow, and Emig.
Like Watson, who rejected the concept of consciousness and thus the central concepts of introspectionists like Titchener, James Berlin would reject the self at the center of Murray, Elbow, and Emig’s version of composition studies. Berlin’s criticism of the self in the late 1980s boils down to his view that the self—as a private space—does not exist, and the self that does exist cannot be trusted in the way that Elbow, Murray, and Emig trust it.
Berlin’s critique of this private self begins with a discussion of the concept that Berlin would put at the center of his composition theory and practice: ideology. Drawing from Theborn’s interpretation of Althusser’s definition of ideology, Berlin establishes his working definition of ideology as “economic, social, and political arrangements” (1987, p. 667), which privilege certain groups and their interactions with each other and the material world. He “situates rhetoric within ideology” (1987, p. 667), which means that he sees rhetoric as advancing instead of mediating various ideologies.
Berlin labels the rhetoric of Elbow and Murray as “subjective” or “expressionistic.” He labels Emig’s work in The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders as “cognitive rhetoric,” but ignores her “Uses of the Unconscious in Composing,” which would probably have qualified her for membership as an expressionist. In Rhetoric and Reality, he identifies the focus of Elbow’s expressionistic rhetoric:
His emphasis, like that of all the expressionists considered in this section, is on the “I,” on defining the self so as to secure an authentic identity and voice. This type of expressionistic rhetoric focuses on a dialectic between the individual and analogy as a means of getting in touch with the self. (1987, p. 153)
While Berlin acknowledges that Elbow and Murray’s version of expressionistic rhetoric was actually a protest against the dominant political and pedagogical ideology and practice of the mid-twentieth century, he asserts that their focus on the individual perpetuates a naïve understanding of the self that undermines its own potential for changing dominant political and economic inequalities.
Berlin claims that expressivism’s focus on discovery of the self is problematic in two ways: it doesn’t acknowledge the ways in which the self has been formed by ideological forces, so it often replicates dominant oppressive ideologies; and a focus on individual self-expression can be appropriated by the dominant ideology because it leads to only individual resistance (1987, p. 676). Individual resistance is impotent; a rhetoric that doesn’t lead to collective action, in Berlin’s mind, supports hegemony.
Here to save the day is social epistemic rhetoric. In Berlin’s description of social epistemic rhetoric, knowledge results from the dialectic between a person, the social group in which the person is acting, and the “material conditions of existence,” all of which depend on language because they are “verbal constructs” (1987, p. 678). Furthermore, language—in which all three elements of this dialectic are grounded—is itself the result of social construction in discourse communities, so the individual is never really an individual. In essence, the “self” or knowledge or idea that the student in an expressivist classroom is discovering and expressing is actually the product of social construction and ideology. According to Berlin, ideology is inescapable but “must be continually challenged” so as to reveal its economic and political consequences for individuals … (1987, p. 679). In Berlin’s opinion, the only rhetoric prepared to continually challenge and reveal ideology is the social epistemic.
Pedagogy based in a social epistemic rhetoric, then, starts by showing students the ways in which they have been constructed by their social, economic, and political realities in ways that make them feel powerless. Then, it attempts to help them work towards “a social order supporting the student’s “full humanity” (Berlin, 1987, p. 680). Berlin describes Ira Shor’s interdisciplinary study of the hamburger as an example of social epistemic pedagogy. Shor’s class used economics, history, health sciences, sociology, English, and philosophy in order to analyze the modern rise of the hamburger and its effects on students’ lives. According to Shor, the only goal worth considering in a classroom is the goal of “liberated consciousness” (Berlin, 1987, p. 682).
Berlin’s critique of expressivism is curious, on many levels. None of the expressivists he critiques would oppose several of his main assertions: that language is social; that different teaching practices express different ideologies; that one of the goals of writing instruction is liberation. But despite these major areas of agreement, there is something incredibly aggressive about Berlin’s treatment of the expressivists. Like Watson’s Battle of Behaviorism, in which Watson is determined to advance behaviorism at the expense of introspectionism, Berlin is engaging in an act of warfare against the expressionists. This is hard to see, at first, since Berlin’s writing comes across as completely rational, academic, and disinterested.
But his attitude is revealed in the one metaphor that manages to invade his otherwise sterile prose. Held up next to the writing of the expressionists, Berlin’s writing is almost completely stripped of metaphor and analogy—no surprise, since he associates metaphor and analogy with the expressionists. But one recurrent metaphor stretches throughout Berlin’s Rhetoric and Ideology, a more polemic essay than his (relatively) descriptive categorization of various influences on writing instruction in Rhetoric and Reality. The metaphor, embedded in the word “camp,” is undeveloped in the text but central to Berlin’s attitude in the text: the image of a battle between Berlin and the expressionists belies Berlin’s academic, rational, reasonable tone. Berlin’s “camps” are not separate but happily co-existing summer camps on opposite sides of the same lake, with expressionists sunbathing on one shore and social epistemics drinking bug juice on the other. Instead, they are the camps of opposing armies, bunkered down and strategizing against one another. Or, at least, Berlin is bunkered down and strategizing against the expressionists; he is looking to defeat them.
Berlin’s aggression seems contraindicated. In an ethnographic study of expressivist writing classrooms conducted in 1994 at Boston College, Karen Surman Paley (2001) found how the writing in these classes resists the divisive categories imposed by Berlin. The “expressivist” instructors she studied invariably moved students beyond the personal in ways envisioned by the social epistemics. Furthermore, Paley visited the class of Patricia Bizzell, whom Berlin labels a social epistemic, and describes the ways in which Bizzell’s focus on the social led to personal, autobiographical writing (2001). In other words, the focus on the individual Berlin ascribes to the expressivists and the focus on the social that Berlin ascribes to the social epistemics do not work against each other in practice, although he set them apart in theory.
Furthermore, Emig, Murray, Elbow, and Berlin ultimately have the same goal—to escape manipulation of the dominant ideology when that ideology works against the “human purposes” MacDougall so eloquently defended against Watson’s focus on behavior. But Berlin’s ire at the expressionist is perhaps not rational, and may be rooted in an unconscious reaction to the unconscious self, the very construct he derides in the expressionists’ work. Thus, my absurd sub-thesis: Berlin is a man uncomfortable with the unconscious. Yet, for all his attempts at consciousness and control, he cannot escape the unconscious: his ire at the expressionists is as much a gut reaction against their embrace of the unconscious as a conscious criticism of their theory or pedagogy.
While Emig never cited Freud, it may be useful to examine his description of the id in New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis when trying to understand Berlin’s response to the unconscious:
we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations …. It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organisation, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle. (1989, p. 91)
The beginning of Berlin’s discomfort is the preverbal nature of the unconscious. The unconscious is beyond and before language, in Freud’s formulation, and we can describe it only by analogy. We know it only through its metaphoric manifestation through our dreams and in our feelings—our non-verbal reactions to events and people. But Berlin wants to believe that knowledge doesn’t exist without rhetoric—“there is no knowledge without language.”
In Emig’s view, the unconscious, or id, knows things, not necessarily knowledge that comes through or from language, and in using the unconscious in composing, students can find a site of invention—a place to generate or discover knowledge. For example, my daydream—the image of Elbow, Murray, and Emig’s participation in my National Day of Introspection—was an example of my subconscious invention. To mix Amy Lowell’s unconscious mailbox analogy with Elbow’s cooking metaphor, I dropped my research on Watson and the introspectionists into the mailslot, let it mix around and simmer with my previous discomfort about Berlin’s attitude toward the expressionists, presto! Out came my daydream, the image of Murray introspecting and Berlin refusing, which was a preverbal thesis of sorts. That preverbal knowing, or image-knowledge, quickly turned to words when I meditated on it.
But Berlin’s second, more urgent point of contention is with the idea that the id “produces no collective will” (1987). The collective will that interests Berlin, of course, is a collective resistance to the dominant ideology. However, Berlin forgets that Freud’s complementary concept—the super-ego—could be viewed as the individual’s internalization of the dominant ideology. Emig is just as interested as Berlin in overcoming the damaging aspects of the super-ego, or dominant ideology, but, unlike Berlin, she sees the id as immensely useful in this quest.
In Emig’s view, the super-ego does damage on two fronts, and the use of the id can be used to correct both. First, the super-ego speaks in stale, flat, cliché. The id can provide fresh image and language to counteract these dead expressions. Secondly, and more to Berlin’s point, access of the id can point to differences between the values of the dominant ideology internalized by the super-ego and the needs of an individual human being which are contained in the id. Let’s consider an example from the Vietnam War, which played a major role in shaping Murray, Emig, and Elbow’s views of on the role of authority in the classroom. A male student’s super-ego may have internalized all forms of societal authority, including the authority of the draft. But, in an expressionist classroom, that student might be invited to listen to his unconscious, in a journal, or through freewriting, perhaps. He might find that his id is uncomfortable with the war. He might move to Canada or become a Quaker or even become an activist. Listening to your unconscious, then, for the expressionists, can be the first step in political action—individual or collective action.
But Emig’s use of the id to escape ideology is frightening to Berlin, who views the presence of “desire” in the id as problematic. In Althusser’s work, which Berlin relies on quite a bit, desire cannot be trusted, since ideology creates and structures desire. Thus, desire itself and all inner life is unreliable and cannot be trusted. While the expressionists and Berlin both want to escape manipulation of the ideological forces that abuse power, Berlin’s distrust of the unconscious makes him suspicious of the expressivists. Emig sees the unconscious as a means of escaping the dominant ideology, but Berlin actually sees Emig’s means of escape as a trap door. The only alternative, then, is for Berlin to consciously escape manipulation. There is nothing to trust, in Berlin’s world, except social epistemic rhetoric, which helps him escape himself. He has consciously divorced himself from his id, and divorces himself from anyone who hasn’t. The expressivists’ acceptance and use of the id is not only naive, but dangerous, a trap door.
Berlin’s criticism of the expressivists for failing to privilege collective over private action is the most distressing part of his critique. Elbow, Emig, and others protested Berlin’s critique on the grounds that they are, quite obviously, interested in political action. But what concerns me most in Berlin’s emphasis on collective action is what it reveals about his own attitude toward individual experience: in dismissing the value of an individual act of conscience, he expresses a disregard for the value of that individual’s experience.
Berlin’s dismissal of private acts of conscience points to a similarity between Berlin and Watson. Watson rejected consciousness, mind, and individual experience, and his dismissal of experience as a theoretical construct made him callous to the experience of the people whose behavior he would try to control—including Little Albert and generations of consumers. In a surprisingly similar way, Berlin’s dismissal of the value of the private self on theoretical grounds makes him callous to the experiences of those who take private stands against the dominant ideology. While the conscientious objector who moves to Canada instead of organizing a protest on Washington doesn’t make any discernable difference in the dominant ideology, his private act of conscience certainly makes a difference in his own experience of his life, and this difference matters—to him, and to the people who love him. Berlin’s inability to concede that private experience matters is disturbing, given his ethical stand on matters of ideology.
In the end, my absurd, unconsciously constructed thesis both collapses and stands. Berlin was never a behaviorist. But there are startling similarities between his battle with the expressivists and Watson’s battle with the introspectionists. Berlin’s ideological critique of the expressivists, for all its ethical posturing, suffers from the same problem that plagues Watson’s critique of the introspectionists: his dismissal of the value of an individual’s private experience—perhaps grounded in his own unconscious discomfort with the unconscious—leads him to dubious ethical territory. As Titchener reminded us, ethics must be based in a concern for the experience of an individual. Berlin’s social epistemic theory cannot be ethically grounded if it wages war on expressivism; the two “camps” need to make love, not war.
Notes
1. I eventually returned to this dismissal of experience in my dissertation: Writing Assessment’s “Debilitating Inheritance”: Behaviorism’s Dismissal of Experience. (Doctoral dissertation). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
References
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Berlin, J. A. (1988). Rhetoric and ideology in the writing class. College English 50(5), 477-494.
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Buckley, K. (1989). Mechanical man: John B. Watson and the beginnings of behaviorism. New York: The Guilford Press.
Cheney, C., & Pierce, D. (2004). Behavior analysis and learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Emig, J. (1964). The uses of the unconscious in composing. College Composition and Communication, 15, 6-11.
Emig, J. (1983). The web of meaning: Essays on writing, teaching, learning, and thinking. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton Cook.
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Howorth, P. (2000). The treatment of shell-shock: Cognitive therapy before its time. Psychiatrist Bulletin, 24, 225-227.
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Manning, F. (1994). Morale and cohesion in military psychiatry.” In F. D. Jones (Ed.), Military psychiatry: Preparing for peace in war. Retrieved from Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General Borden Institute Web site: https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/...atry/MPch1.pdf
Murray, D. (1970). The interior view of composing: One writer’s philosophy of composition. College Composition and Communication, 21, 21-26.
Murray, D. (1982). Teaching the other self: The writer’s first reader. College Composition and Communication, 33, 140-147.
Murray, D. (1978). Write before writing. College Composition and Communication, 29, 375-381.
Newkirk, T. (1994). The politics of intimacy: The defeat of Barrett Wendell at Harvard. In T. Newkirk, & L. Tobin (Eds.), Taking stock: The writing process movement in the ’90s (pp. 115-132). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Paley, K.S. (2001). I-Writing: The politics and practice of teaching first-person writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.
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Titchener, E. (1898). A primer of psychology. Norwood, MA: Norwood Press.
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Watson, J. (1913, April 7). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 984, New Haven, CT.
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Watson, J. (1915, October 27). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 986), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1915, November 1). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 986), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1915, November 9). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 986), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1916, October 12). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Means Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 987), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1916, October 24). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 987), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1916, March 31). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 987), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1916, May 12). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 987), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1919,March 29). [Letter to Robert Yerkes]. Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 988), New Haven, CT.
Watson, J. (1924a). Behaviorism. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Watson, J. (1924b). Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.
Watson, J. (I) (1928). The psychological care of infant and child. New York: W.W. Norton.
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Wendell, B. (1891). English composition: Eight lectures given at the Lowell Institute. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Yerkes, R. [Letter to John. B. Watson.] Yale University Archives (Robert Mearns Yerkes papers, Box 51, Folder 986), New Haven, CT. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/04%3A_Histories/4.01%3A_John_Watson_Is_to_Introspectionism_as_James_Berlin_Is_to_Expr.txt |
Expressive Pedagogies in the University of Pittsburgh’s Alternative Curriculum Program, 1973-1979
Chris Warnick
College of Charleston
James Berlin’s account of 1960s-era expressive pedagogy is over twenty years old, but it continues to inform scholarship in composition and rhetoric. Despite the critical reappraisal of Berlin’s histories in the wake of the field’s archival turn, some scholars continue to cite Berlin’s taxonomy of rhetoric and pedagogy, and the place of expressive pedagogy within it, to analyze the field’s history and future. In describing what he sees as a dearth of archival histories on twentieth century writing instruction, David R. Russell observes that Berlin’s “book remains the most-cited treatment of the 20th century” (2006, p. 258). Richard Fulkerson draws extensively on Berlin’s tripartite classification of the field in “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Using overblown rhetoric similar to that Maja Wilson observes in Berlin’s critique of expressivism (see her contribution in this volume), Fulkerson concludes “that expressivism, despite numerous poundings by the cannons of postmodernism and resulting eulogies, is, in fact, quietly expanding its region of command” (2005, p. 655). But as Karen Surman Paley and others have pointed out, Berlin’s conclusions about expressivism rest on evidence found in textbooks and published research and ignore actual classroom practice. According to Paley
it is unfortunate that Berlin … does not seem to have tested his theoretical conclusions against actual “expressionist” classroom practice. If he had, he might have seen a range of pedagogies, some more overtly sociopolitical than others, depending on the comfort level and belief system of the teacher. (2001, p. 22)
This essay takes up Paley’s call to research “actual ‘expressionist’ classroom practice” by examining materials from an experimental first-year program at the University of Pittsburgh known as the Alternative Curriculum, which ran from 1973 to 1979.1 While the Alternative Curriculum archive provides an incomplete picture of classroom practices, syllabi, student papers, newsletters, and other program documents upset the generalizations of expressivism made by Berlin and others. Specifically, program documents reveal that teachers and students adopted personal writing strategies for purposes other than self-knowledge. Students, for example, engaged in personal writing activities to experiment with alternative writing styles, to build a group identity as members of the program, and to critique American higher education and its marginalization of alternative learning programs such as the Alternative Curriculum. The purpose of journal writing within the program was not always “to capture one’s unique, personal response to experience,” as Berlin contends (1987, p. 152); instead, students practiced journaling to complete writing activities that stressed audience, revision, and genre. Perhaps most importantly, teachers in the program who drew from expressivist theory—especially economist David Bramhall, who taught a journal writing course that used a chapter from Ken Macrorie’s telling writing—led courses that in practice challenged expressivist assumptions about personal writing.
The Alternative Curriculum Program
The Alternative Curriculum, a first-year program that eventually accepted sophomores as well, was part of a larger general education reform package at Pitt that itself was a response to student and faculty unrest (see “Arts”; Levenson; Marbury; Tiernan). A letter sent to new students in 1975, signed by AC core faculty as well as graduate and undergraduate assistants, identifies ten objectives of the program, among which are a “self-designed curriculum,” “learning from the inside-out and by practice,” an “open environment; learning outside the classroom,” and “finding one’s own purpose for learning.” After several failed attempts to start the program, the AC opened its doors in 1973, enrolling 150 students, 130 of whom were selected through a lottery process with another 20 selected based on interviews with faculty (Kambic, 1974, p. 2). Program announcements indicate that students were assigned to “core groups” consisting of fifteen students and one faculty member. During the first weeks of the semester, groups met to reflect on the nature of education and to discuss their learning goals. According to letters sent to prospective students, there were assigned readings for these group meetings, which included popular texts on alternative education—including How Children Fail and Freedom and Beyond, by John Holt, and Summerhill, by A.S. Neill. Students were also expected to attend what were called “offerings,” lectures given by faculty and community members who spoke on their area of interest or expertise. These offerings, which covered such topics as “Black Autobiography and the Liberal Experience,” “The Physics of Music,” “A Revolution in Catholicism,” and “Change in Education and the Social Order,” were intended to raise questions, issues, and methods that students could pursue in their work throughout the term.
After this initial period, students were responsible for completing four “learning projects” each semester, and these projects could take the form of a group workshop (led by either a faculty member or another student), an independent study, or fieldwork. Students did fieldwork at local public radio stations, area hospitals, and daycare centers; they conducted independent studies on “Labor History,” “Basic Calculus,” and “Drawing and Design;” they undertook workshops addressing prison reform, children’s literature, and writing. Students did not receive letter grades for these learning projects; instead, by enrolling in the program students agreed to take a block of up to fifteen credits each semester on a “credit/no entry” basis. In consultation with a faculty member, students drew up a learning contract in which they outlined the purpose and shape of their particular learning project, and the corresponding faculty member would comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the project.
Former AC faculty member Dan Tannacito characterized the program’s overall goal this way: “one could say that the program set out to let students define how to envision an alternative way of life within but opposed to the dominant cultural and educational model.” Writing played a vital role in students’ attempts to imagine the “alternative way of life” spoken of by Tannacito. According to Tannacito, “students wanted to learn how literature and writing were an asset in their lives. They had experienced them as an imposition, via schooling.” Students in the program did not write themes, as they might be expected to do in other first-year writing courses, but they did learn traditional genres of academic writing, such as lab reports, research papers and literary criticism. However, faculty in the program also allowed students room to explore alternative forms of writing. Tannactio explained, for instance, how he regularly assigned forms of writing other than the essay. “The main forms of writing that I asked of students,” he told me, “were journaling, note-taking, and creative writing. Sometimes, we asked people to write letters and arguments related to public issues that were being debated or in the local news. There were also community-based writing tasks.”
Tannacito’s comments suggest that at least some AC faculty had a lot in common with expressivists. They, too, wanted students to learn how writing could play a meaningful role in their lives as thinkers and citizens, and they imagined that one way to reach this goal was to teach personal, reflective forms of writing. More importantly, though, Tannacito’s comments reveal that expressive practices such as journaling and creative writing assignments sometimes took place alongside or as part of public and politically-oriented writing projects, which runs counter to Berlin’s claim that expressivist classrooms encourage students to find their voice “not through the happening or the political confrontation” (1987, p. 152), but through private reflection.
Expressivist Practices in the Alternative
Curriculum
Expressive practices and values surfaced in the AC in a variety of ways that both uphold and resist common generalizations made about expressivist theory. Syllabi, workshop announcements, evaluations, and other documents illustrate that students practiced journaling, freewriting, drafting, and revision. Writing courses were run as workshops, with students sharing and evaluating one another’s writing. Students compiled portfolios to document the work they did to complete a workshop or fieldwork project and wrote reflective papers describing what they learned from this process. Some of the program’s writing courses taught texts and methods directly associated with expressivism. For example, a fall 1976 program newsletter advertises a workshop based on Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers. According to the advertisement, the workshop
is geared towards strengthening the ability to write, even when you’re “not in the mood,” and learning to constructively criticize the works of others and hopefully your own. Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow is used as a guideline. Each workshop session is started off with ten minutes of free writing, after which the group is broken into smaller groups to read and discuss what people have written that week. All types of writing are encouraged.
As the text of this advertisement illustrates, students were encouraged to approach peer review, an important aspect of expressive pedagogy, as a critical and rhetorical practice. Students are prompted to “constructively criticize” each others’ work, not simply “check for the inauthentic in the writer’s response,” which Berlin describes as the purpose peer review serves in expressivist classrooms (1987, p. 152).
While it remains unclear how important peer review was in the program as a whole, journaling appears to have been a widespread practice. Documents in the archive suggest that the purpose of journaling wasn’t always “to capture one’s unique, personal response to experience,” as Berlin argues was the case in expressivist classrooms (1987, p. 152)—although this type of writing did take place. For example, a September 1974 handout written by physics professor John Townsend titled “Learning Strategies and Tactics: A guide and discussion promoter for students in the Alternative Curriculum” recommends journal writing as an effective learning strategy: “Keep a journal. Because the AC is not tied to specific courses, keeping a journal helped students last year to provide a continuity and a record of events that was valuable to have at year’s end. It also gives you practice in expressing yourself by writing.” A document listing projects completed during the 1973-1974 academic year corroborates Townsend’s comment. Among the projects listed are “Self-evaluation; discussions, journals and essay,” “Working for the University Times; a journal and essay,” “Apprentice movie projectionist; a journal,” and “Becoming a volunteer fireman; a journal and essay.” Townsend’s advice and projects such as these suggest that one function journals served in the program was for students to document their experiences and to generate ideas for more finalized projects that weren’t necessarily personal in nature.
Instead of earning letter grades, students received descriptive comments from an AC faculty member who was responsible for overseeing the project. As part of the evaluation process, students wrote brief descriptions of the projects they completed. These descriptions sometimes took on the shape of reflective personal essays in which the student described what they learned from this project. One such example is an activity description by an unnamed student discussing her writing workshop. Stating that she “found a number of outlets for exploring the uses of writing,” the student lists the different writing activities she completed, which included “a description of AC for the University Course Selection Bulletin,” “an introductory letter to AC for high school seniors,” and “articles for the AC newsletter.” She goes on to describe how, alongside these projects, she also wrote a journal:
I’ve been keeping a journal, for no one but myself to “get at” my confusions, to clarify my idea(L)s, and to record the changes within me in an outward form. I read Dave Bramhall’s packet on “Keeping a Journal” with great fervor. Rereading excerpts from my journal I now realize that my life is disintegrated; the experiences each day, the forces which are playing important roles in my life, and my real-imaginary wishes all blend into one whole. Writing is becoming more of a natural expression for me. I am choosing it and using it in many ways and I now see why I always will.
The type of journal writing the student describes here is intensely personal. According to her, the journal is “for no one but myself” and it serves to capture the writer’s complex self, its contradictions, beliefs, and changes. At the same time, though, the student claims the process of keeping a journal was among a set of writing activities that helped her understand the rhetorical nature of writing. By stating that “I am choosing it [writing] and using it in many ways,” this student seems to have an emerging awareness of “how meaning is shaped by discourse communities,” knowledge Berlin claims expressive pedagogy ignores (1987, p. 153).
There were occasions where journal writing within the program took on more of a social dimension. An article in the October 1974 issue of the program’s newsletter, which was designed and written by students, discusses students’ plans for an Alternative Curriculum magazine. The article indicates that there was some debate about what shape this magazine should take and one “idea calls for a community journal in which people, workshops, offering presenters can contribute on a day to day level. We may choose to keep the journal in epic form (a continuous “poem” or story of experiences).” The author of the article appears to prefer this option because she argues that a collective journal would enable students to better process their coursework: “We would begin to use retrospection. So very much is happening all the time. If we take some time out to write/think about it, somehow it all begins to make sense.”
It’s unclear how this debate was resolved or whether a magazine was ever produced; no copies exist in the archive and individuals I interviewed didn’t recall it. However, students and faculty who participated in a field trip to New England-area experimental learning programs in the spring of 1975 did compose a collective journal that sounds similar to the one described in the program newsletter. According to a memo written that same year to Robert Marshall, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Tannacito and Bramhall proposed that interested faculty and students visit the Inner College at the University of Connecticut, Goddard College in Vermont, and other institutions. They hoped to consult with John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, and other educational activists. Estimating a total budget of roughly \$3,000, Tannacito and Bramhall state the trip would result in a 30-minute film and journal recording the fieldwork. No record of the film exists, but a copy of the journal, titled Total Bus, does survive. The journal includes over thirty anonymous entries that range from one-paragraph personal reflections to three-page reports that explain the history, structure, and purposes of organizations the group visited. An example of the latter is this excerpt from an entry on the New Haven Women’s Liberation Center:
The center has been in existence for about 5 years. It is not a Yale organization and most women that come to the center now are not Yale students. “The New Haven Women’s Liberation Center developed out of small meetings between friends working on political issues in New Haven in 1968-69. These meetings soon grew and attracted 30-60 women every Sunday evening, including a number of Yale graduate and undergraduate women.” (NHWLC) The center is funded by donations monthly pledges [sic], \$5.00 fees from women joining the Connecticut Feminist Federal Credit Union and a current \$2,000 NIMH grant.
Passages like this one, which cites the group’s research, suggest the group imagined the journal to serve public, as well as private, needs. The research trip members conducted and wrote about in the journal could be used by leaders in the Alternative Curriculum and other institutions across the campus, especially Pitt’s Women’s Center, to evaluate their organizations and generate new ideas. Journal entries such as this one further complicate the characterization of expressive writing as merely personal or at best quasi-public.
An Economist Teaches Ken Macrorie
The course documents I examine in this section dramatize what happens when any set of pedagogical theories—be they expressivist, current-traditional, or social-epistemic—gets deployed by specific teachers in specific classrooms with specific students: elements of these theories are accepted and followed while others are ignored, misread, challenged, or revised. David Bramhall, a political economist who helped found the AC and often served as the public face of the program, led a workshop in the first two years of the program entitled “On Keeping a Journal,” which included among its readings a chapter on journal writing from Macrorie’s telling writing.2 Bramhall’s course is concrete evidence that expressivism influenced the work of faculty across the curriculum. This influence can’t be described in simple terms, however. The course syllabus and sample student journals suggest that Bramhall appropriated certain aspects of Macrorie’s pedagogy while disagreeing with or misreading others. Specifically, Bramhall’s advice to students about journal writing echoes what Macrorie states about the importance of “oppositions,” but Bramhall, who imagines the purpose of journaling differently than Macrorie does, also seems to misread Macrorie’s point about “telling facts.”
The course syllabus contains only one sentence that references Macrorie directly, but other passages in the document allude to points Macrorie makes in telling writing. For example, the course description ends with this paragraph that touches on, without naming specifically, Macrorie’s idea of “oppositions:”
So, try it. Don’t feel you have to write every day, but when you have an idea, an impression, an experience, a new way of seeing something (or yourself), write it down in a real paragraph so you can recapture it later. Argue with yourself when you feel yourself divided about something. You can always rethink and write new feelings about a past entry—you’re not committed forever to a first impression. But let go some, be honest with yourself, and have fun with it!
Macrorie begins an earlier chapter on “oppositions” with this definition:
Strong writers bring together oppositions of one kind or another. Kitchen language and elevated language, long and short sentences, fast and slow rhythms. And what they choose to present from life—whether it be object, act, or idea—is frequently the negative and the positive, one thing and its opposite, two ideas that antagonize each other. (1970, p. 71)
According to Macrorie’s definition, opposition may be created through style or content, the latter of which seems to be more important to Bramhall. His advice to “Argue with yourself when you feel yourself divided about something” sounds similar to Macrorie’s idea of opposition being created by “two ideas that antagonize each other” (1970, p. 89).
The only direct reference Bramhall makes to Macrorie in the syllabus is this summary of the chapter on journal writing: “I guess the main thing stressed in the MacCrorie [sic] chapter included here [“keeping a journal”] is to write concretely—and to write thoughts and feelings rather than mainly a record of actions.” Here Bramhall seems to be alluding to what Macrorie calls “telling facts,” concrete images and details that portray a writer’s realization of a feeling or idea. Macrorie recommends the following steps for creating “telling facts”:
when you have to mention anything in order to tell a story or make a point, force yourself to put down the name of that thing if it has a name, or to show it in its particular setting or doing its thing particularly. Don’t say you pushed the throttle and the motorbike did its thing. Give the name of that thing and the sound and fell or smell, or whatever you can. (1970, p. 35)
For Macrorie, “telling facts” are important to journal writing for an additional reason: they allow the writer to get meaning from their journal entries upon subsequent re-readings (1970, pp. 122-123). It’s interesting to note, however, that Bramhall appears to distill this concept down to the commonplace advice “to write concretely,” which doesn’t capture the imagistic nature of Macrorie’s “telling facts.” Additional evidence in this passage—Bramhall’s phrase “I guess the main thing stressed in the … chapter” suggests Bramhall is uncertain about his reading of Macrorie, understandable given his professional training is in economics, not writing.
The most significant point at which Bramhall’s syllabus diverges from Macrorie’s approach is when Bramhall explains the purpose of journaling. Unlike Macrorie, who argues that “all good journals observe one fundamental: they do not speak privately” (1970, p. 123), Bramhall tells students they can share their journals with others after the fact, but they’ll have more success keeping a journal if they think of it as private. (See Daniel Collins’ essay in this collection for a further explanation of the social dimension behind Macrorie’s pedagogy.) The journal, according to the course description, “is your continuing dialogue with yourself—that’s the purpose and you won’t make it if you try to write it for anyone else—a teacher, posterity, or even a loved one.” It remains unclear whether this disagreement with Macrorie was conscious on Bramhall’s part. Especially given his summary of Macrorie’s chapter, it could be that Bramhall overlooked or misunderstood this part of Macrorie’s argument, and/or it could be that this sense of the journal as an engine of private reflection better fit Bramhall’s teaching philosophy, which was described in a profile of Bramhall that appeared in the fall 1974 issue of the AC Newsletter. An important aspect of Bramhall’s pedagogy, according to the unnamed student writer, is reflection: “Finally there is reflectiveness. Dave feels we must keep looking at the process of learning, and at what is happening to human relations.” Even though the latter part this comment suggests that there was a social dimension to Bramhall’s teaching, it appears that an even more important goal of Bramhall’s teaching was to have students better understand themselves as learners, which could help explain the syllabus’ definition of the journal as a “continuing dialogue with yourself.”
The course file also contains model student journals that Bramhall distributed to the class, and these texts further reveal the complex manner in which Bramhall appropriated Macrorie’s work. This is especially the case with the first journal in the file, which was written by an unnamed young woman enrolled in the program during its first semester. The journal consists of a handful of entries, all of which focus on the writer’s attempt to figure out who she is. One particular entry discusses the writer’s realization that she has no discernible self:
I want to write something about myself but I don’t know what because I don’t know myself. I’m not even sure I have a “myself” any more at this point. Right before I went home for Thanksgiving I felt as though I really had things straight in my mind and that I was happy with me. Maybe I was justified in feeling like that for a few days because I really did think I had my head together. But now I know I’m wrong. There is no “me.” “Me” is a lot of other people’s ideas, opinions and gestures. I am what I want other people want me to be.
A later entry from the journal shows the writer expressing more self confidence, although it remains unclear whether she’s come to any greater understanding of who she is, other than that she wants to be happy: “I am fighting. Sometimes I think the other side is getting the better of me, but I won’t lose. I can’t. Because if I don’t win, I’ll die. And I don’t want to die. A dead person cannot be happy. I want to be happy and I will. Today is the first day I’m going to be alive.”
Absent from this writer’s journal, or at least those excerpts Bramhall shared with the class, are any “telling facts.” Instead of recording images, descriptions, or quotes that capture her self-doubt, these passages present a string of declarative sentences that simply state the writer’s predicament (“There is no ‘me.’” “I want to be happy and I will.”). And even though these passages follow Bramhall’s advice “to write thoughts and feeling rather than mainly a record of actions,” they don’t follow his suggestion “to write concretely.” The reasons behind the writer’s self-doubt remain unclear, and nowhere does she explain why she has a new understanding of herself or what she will do exactly “to be alive.” Bramhall’s syllabus suggests that this writer’s journal, along with the others he distributed to the class, serves as a model for students. “They help to show how different journal styles may be,” he writes. But this student’s journal doesn’t always seem to match up with Bramhall’s own approach to journal writing.
My intention in pointing out this inconsistency is not to criticize Bramhall or the unnamed student writer. Instead, I cite these examples because they illustrate my larger point that we are unable to fully determine the exact pedagogical practices that emerge from expressivist theory—or any theory, for that matter. If we are to understand the myriad ways an important pedagogical theory (or rather, set of theories) like expressivism informed classroom practice, more archival research needs to be done on 1960s-era classrooms and programs, including those, like the Alternative Curriculum, that existed separately from English departments.
Notes
1. In his essay included in this collection, Peter Elbow similarly claims that historians of the field “need to find more accurate ways to describe the views of the people [expressivism] was pinned on.” I agree with Elbow, and this essay attempts to answer his call. I am aware that my reliance on the terms “expressive,” “expressivist,” and “expresivism” in this essay could be read as problematic because they potentially re-inscribe the simplistic attitude toward expressivism I seek to contest. However, I use these terms because they frame the field’s long-standing debate about pedagogies involving personal writing (another term Elbow complicates in useful ways). In analyzing the complexities involved whenever any theory is adapted to classroom practices, this essay can be read as a first step toward Elbow’s goal of eliminating the word “expressivism”—and the assumptions that surround it—from our historical lexicon.
2. Other readings included excerpts from Henry David Thoreau’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s journals; The Education of Kate Haracz: Journal of an Undergraduate, which was originally printed in a 1970 issue of Change magazine; and a chapter from Barrett Mandel’s Literature and the English Department that examines students’ journal writing in an Honors drama course. Mandel had previously taught at Pitt and had worked alongside Bramhall on curriculum reform.
References
Alternative Curriculum Records. (1973-1979). University of Pittsburgh Archives, Archives Service Center, University Archives, Pittsburgh, PA.
Arts and sciences review committee reports open hearing findings. (1970, January 19). The Pitt News Microfilm.
Berlin, J. A. (1987). Rhetoric and reality: Writing instruction in American colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Fulkerson, R. (2005). Composition at the turn of the twenty-first century. College Composition and Communication, 56(4), 654-687.
Haracz, K. (1970). The education of Kate Haracz: Journal of an undergraduate. Change in Higher Education, 2(3), 12-26.
Holt, J. C. (1972). Freedom and beyond. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Holt, J. C. (1964). How children fail. New York: Pitman.
Kambic, M. (1974, March 4). Unusual class prepares frosh. The Pitt News Microfilm.
Levenson. (1969, May 27). Bramhall talks course review. The Pitt News Microfilm.
Macrorie, K. (1970). Telling writing. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden.
Mandel, B. J. (1970). Literature and the English department. Champaign, Il: National Council of Teachers of English.
Marbury, D. (1969, October 22). ASRC: Curriculum innovation. The Pitt News Microfilm.
Neill, A. S. (1977). Summerhill: A radical approach to child rearing. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Paley, K. S. (2001). I-writing: The politics and practice of teaching first-person writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Russell, D. R. (2006). Historical Studies of Composition. In P. Smagorinsky (Ed.), Research in Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of Change. New York: Teachers College Press.
Tiernan, D. (1969, June 10). Houston, four others join Bramhall, ASCRC. The Pitt News Microfilm. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/04%3A_Histories/4.02%3A_Expressive_Pedagogies_in_the_University_of_Pittsburghs_Altern.txt |
Hannah J. Rule
University of South Carolina
To take up the idea of critical expressivism is to insist upon complexity, contradiction, revision, and expansion, rather than reduction, dismissal, and simplification. Being critically expressivist too then involves a stance toward how we shape disciplinary histories. Current-traditional, expressivist, social constructionist—these are meant to signal broad and sure shifts in the foundations of writing pedagogy and disciplinarity. While these camps might render a telos or progress narrative, they at the same time inevitably diminish practice and concepts. There is imprecision in monolithic terms—expressivism, social constructionism, the personal, the social, romanticism—because, as Peter Elbow writes in this volume, these broad terms conceal their multiplicity. Equally unproductive, the terms are often wielded as weapons, as instruments of reduction and dismissal. As this essay works to point out, pedagogies and rhetorics are deemed untenable because they are labeled romantic or expressivist, or romantic-expressivist. This essay works to complicate these alliances.
Over time, composition scholars have found both resonance and dissonance with romanticism. While some have found romantic influence a reason to dismiss certain practices or pedagogies, still others have drawn upon the romantic period to invigorate our conceptions of expressivism. Finding the British romantic period a productive historical site, in this essay I suggest that nuance can be brought to understanding how expressivism, through romanticism, might understand language as “personal.” Through the canonical text on language in the Romantic period, Wordsworth’s Prefaces to Lyrical Ballads and theories of language circulating in the romantic period, I offer a means of seeing romantic—and by extension, expressive—language and expression in a novel way. Establishing connections between Wordsworth’s Prefaces and the work of Peter Elbow make it possible to understand that language emanates not from the radically isolated individual (as the most familiar cultural understandings of romanticism would have it), but from immersion in the physical world. Understanding romantic-expressivist language in this way illuminates under-theorized aspects of language in the expressivist tradition, including the role of the physical body in writing, as well as the role of sense experience, presence, and physical location. Most significantly perhaps, this rereading complicates the field’s often obsessive disavowals of the idea of voice in writing. Finally, this reimagined romantic conception of language brings productive complication to the most familiar and over-simplified divides between expressivism and constructionism, a goal of many contributors in this volume.
Reading Romanticism for Composition Studies
Since its disciplinary beginnings, composition studies has forged curious links to romanticism. Linda Flower, for example, in her textbook Problem-Solving Strategies for Writers, defines her problem-solving view of writing in opposition to what she deems a particularly romantic version of invention. The romantic model of writing, exemplified by Coleridge’s “Kubla Kahn,” she suggests, posits writing as effortless, mysterious, and as the domain of genius. Wanting to emphasize “learnability,” Flower defines her rational, problem solving approach as the only reasonable alternative to Coleridge’s (and by extension, romanticism’s) seeming creative mysticism, its “myth of inspiration” (Flower, 1989, p.41). Accepting Coleridge’s conception of writing, after all, would mean the writer isn’t able to learn to write at all. For Flower, Coleridge, and romanticism more broadly, is big trouble for invention and big trouble for writing instruction.
Tethered to familiar romantic cultural tropes of original genius, mysticism, and inspiration, Coleridge, and more generally familiar “romantic” conceptions of writing, have become sites against which some compositionists have defined our disciplinary pursuits. Among the most familiar of these voices include Richard E. Young, who works to separate rhetoric’s pursuits from a particularly resonant word on theories of Romantic invention, vitalism. “Vitalist assumptions, inherited from the Romantics,” Young matter-of-factly states,
with [their] stress on the natural powers of the mind and the uniqueness of the creative act, leads to a repudiation of the possibility of teaching the composing process, hence the tendency of current-traditional rhetoric to become a critical study of the products of composing and an art of editing. Vitalist assumptions become most apparent when we consider what is excluded from the present discipline that had earlier been included, the most obvious and significant exclusion being the art of invention. (2009, p. 398)
Vitalist influence for Young is then simultaneously romantic and detrimental to rhetoric’s pursuits. Both Flower and Young offer shorthand conceptions of romantic ideas that they assume endure in culture, influencing writing students and teachers of writing. Moreover, they define this romantic influence antithetically to the pursuits of composition studies. From this viewpoint, to purport pedagogies or rhetorics inflected with romantic assumptions is to be backward—as Young says, romantic-vitalist assumptions put focus on products and take us back to the debunked, product-centered days of current-traditionalism. Indeed, as Hawk points out, composition scholars have most often used romanticism as “a category … in the discipline for identifying and excluding particular rhetorical practices” (Hawk, 2007, p. 1). Quickly naming a concept in composition studies “romantic” has then, on one hand, become shorthand in composition studies for dismissal and obsoletism.
On the other hand, though, and often working to problematize these quick links, many compositionists have conversely found the romantic period a fruitful site for contextualizing and expanding some of our disciplinary concerns. Berlin, Hawk, Fishman and McCarthy, and Gradin, to name a few, bring complexity and dimension to the relationship between composition and romanticism primarily through close readings of primary romantic texts and figures. James Berlin, for example, in “The Rhetoric of Romanticism” questions the grounds on which Young and others have made “Romanticism—and, by implication Coleridge—responsible for the erosion of rhetoric as a discipline” (1980, p. 62). Berlin close reads the primary texts of Coleridge to arrive at the conclusion that “many of the objections made to Coleridge’s view of rhetoric would be rendered nugatory if those making them would realize that Coleridge does not demean rhetorical activity in favor of the poetic” (1980, p. 72). The close reading of primary romantic texts and figures reveals productive insights on the nuance of Coleridge’s considerations of rhetoric and poetic. Byron Hawk performs similar, sustained close readings in order to understand differently the traditionally romantic concept of vitalism. Though he includes Coleridge on the way, Hawk reworks romantic influence by contextualizing vitalism in a history much longer than just the romantic period, extending it toward complexity theory (2007, p. 259). His book complicates the often-easy ways romanticism gets linked to composition. The result of these “closer looks” at romantic texts and ideas is a more nuanced understanding romantic writers and cultural ideals and an invigorated concept in composition. For Hawk, a more nuanced conception of vitalism opens space for him to reimagine pedagogy that fits “our current electronic context and the complex ecologies in which students write and think and situates these practices within a contemporary vitalist paradigm of complexity” (2007, p. 10). While there has been a habit of using romanticism to undermine certain schools of composition thought, romanticism can be equally generative, bringing new light to pervasive questions or conventional composition wisdoms. In the broadest sense, in this essay, I continue this productive act of looking back to romanticism to question the tacit ways in which expressivism has been tenuously linked to certain thin versions of romanticism.
Like vitalism, expressivism has garnered strong connections between composition and romanticism; naming expressivism “romantic,” scholars have attempted to make it out of time, untenable, and passé. Lester Faigley, for example, implicitly weaves expressivism with romanticism in “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.” Faigley describes expressivism exclusively in romantic terms: expressivist and romantic figures become advocates of the other, such that romantic figures somehow anticipate and embody tenets of expressivist pedagogy. Faigley narrates these implicit connections by first naming Rohman and Wlecke “instigators of a ‘neo-Romantic’ view of process;” Peter Elbow is described as subscribing to the romantic theory “that ‘good’ writing does not follow the rules but reflects the processes of creative imagination” (1986, p. 530). And paradigmatic romantic figures make arguments about expressivism: “at times Wordsworth and to a lesser extent Coleridge seem to argue that expressivism precludes all intentionality” (1986, p. 530). In this way, Faigley’s description of expressivist rhetoric doesn’t argue for its romantic inflections, but makes this connection implicit. In his later work (Faigley, 1992) questions expressivism especially on its theorization of subjectivity,1 finding it out of sync with the reign of postmodern subjectivity which, like other social constructivist-leaning compositionists, pushes him toward seeing language as shared social material rather than the domain of the individual. Here, yoking expressivism to romanticism ultimately becomes, as it did for Flower and Young, a means of undermining expressivist rhetorics.
Faigley finds the romantic-expressivist notion of selfhood problematic and ultimately finds ground for favoring social constructionist formulations of self and language. As Chris Burnham writes, “Faigley argues that expressivism’s romantic view of the self is philosophically and politically retrograde, making it ineffectual in postmodern times. Further, expressivism’s concern with the individual and authentic voice directs students away from social and political problems in the material world” (2001, p. 28). Burnham encapsulates how expressivism is most often defined against social constructionism. Expressivism, this broad juxtaposition tends to go, constructs a coherent self with a radically unique voice, while constructionism recognizes fragmented subjectivity and the sociality of language.
The link of expressivism to romanticism is, I suggest, in part from where this oversimplified binary emanates. Theories of language and selfhood tend to sharply divide constructionism from expressivism on the basis of expressivism’s implicit links to versions of romantic theories of language and expression. Berlin—in spite of the nuanced way he understands romanticism and rhetoric—illustrates these connections; Gradin notes that Berlin is “almost single-handedly responsible” (1995, p. 2) for the divisions observed in contemporary rhetorics of expressivism, social constructionism, and cognitivism. As Berlin categorizes rhetorics and their histories in Rhetoric and Reality, he first links “expressionist rhetoric” emergent in the era of progressive education with “Brahminical romanticism” (1987, p. 73), a rhetoric devoted uniquely to the individual. From this perspective, in romantic-expressionistic rhetorics “the writer is trying to express—the content of knowledge—is the product of a private and personal vision that cannot be expressed in normal, everyday language” (1987, p. 74). In this description, romanticism, expressivism, and the idea of private language are consolidated. Later in his history Berlin writes that expressionistic rhetoric, or what he calls the “subjective rhetoric” of the 1960s and 70s,” held the
conviction that reality is a personal and private construct. For the expressionist, truth is always discovered within, through an internal glimpse, an examination of the private inner world. In this view the material world is only lifeless matter. The social world is even more suspect because it attempts to coerce individuals into engaging in thoughtless conformity. (1987, p. 145)
Berlin again emphasizes that in expressivist rhetorics, language and expression are thought to emanate from within the individual. Expression is deemed to be radically individual, unique and avoiding (or ignoring) influence from both the material and, by extension, social world. Berlin, ultimately an advocate of social constructionism, is quick then to explain how this inward-turned paradigm “denies the place of intersubjective, social processes in shaping language” (1987, p. 146). Put more plainly, social constructionists accuse expressivism of understanding language as individual, a private language that is supposed to be true and radically unique. Social constructionists, by contrast, see language as the province of the social group and thus there can be no purely personal truth or unique expression.
Taken together, Faigley and Berlin are constructionists who define themselves against expressivism on the issue of from “where” language emanates. Patricia Bizzell too echoes this distinction when she discusses the difference between outer and inner directed theorists:
one theoretical camp sees writing as primarily inner-directed, and so is interested more in the structure of language-learning and thinking processes in their earliest state, prior to social influence. The other main theoretical camp sees writing as primarily outer-directed, and so is more interested in the social processes whereby language-learning and thinking capacities are shaped and used in particular communities. (1992, p. 77)
Associating expressivism with romanticism enhances this divide. In the next section, I reread romanticism to complicate our sense of romantic expression.
Rereading Romanticism: Wordsworth’s Prefaces to Lyrical Ballads
This essay argues that romanticism can be an illuminating historical period for composition studies, laden as it is with theories of creativity, language, and subjectivity. In particular, as some compositionists have already demonstrated, taking a closer look at romantic texts complicates the dichotomy between expressivism and social constructionism. Steve Fishman, for example, aligns the writings of Elbow and German Romantic philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, suggesting ultimately that “it was the social reform dimension of German romanticism that inspired expressivism” (1992, p. 647). This revised lineage provides a means of understanding expressivism’s relation to the social. Fishman suggests that Herder and Elbow “stress the integration of personal life and public expression,” understand expression as “the start of our dialogue with others,” and are “critical of the exclusionary quality of academic discourse” (1992, p. 651). Fishman’s comparative reading of Elbow and Herder leads him to understand both romanticism as a movement and Elbow as an expressivist figure in a new light: neither romanticism nor expressivism should be seen as asocial; instead, the emphasis on the individual’s relation to the broader political and social community. In this way then, Fishman eases the dichotomy between expressivism and constructionism, understanding the focus on the personal as implicitly a focus on the social.
So too does Gradin, in her book-length second look at romanticism, seek ways to ease the divides between expressivism, feminism, and social constructionism. To accomplish this, like Fishman, Gradin revisits romantic primary texts primarily to see within romantic philosophies an investment in the social. Unlike Fishman however, she turns to highly visible figures from the English tradition, particularly Wordsworth and Coleridge, as she suggests that these figures “were much more directly influential on American educational thought that were the Germans” (Gradin, 1995, p. xvii). Overall, Gradin finds a productive thread running from romanticism to expressivism especially in the romantic theories of imagination (1995, p. 38) and in the ways romantics theorized education (“the importance of the individual; the importance of personal experience; and an emphasis on activity as opposed to passivity” (1995, p. 36)). Like Gradin, I turn back to a familiar romantic, William Wordsworth, but with a different goal. In theories of language from the period and from the pinnacle statement on language in the period, Wordsworth’s Preface(s) and Appendix to Lyrical Ballads, I question the easy assumption that romantic-expressivist language is thought to emanate from the interior of the unique, isolated individual. Instead, the Prefaces suggest that language and meaning is found in of the sensuous world of physical experience. Following Fishman and Berlin’s reading of Coleridge, depth and insight can come from careful micro-focused reading.
In order to glean from Wordsworth’s Prefaces a novel way of understanding romantic expression, it’s helpful to contextualize his work in conversations about language’s origins popular in this period. In the eighteenth century, language became a philosophical “problem.” Inquiries into the nature and the origin of language, including the relationship of physical, worldly things to language, accumulated. According to Hans Aarsleff, “language study” in this period “even when called philology,” was not merely a matter of knowing the forms, syntax, phonology, historical relationships, and other aspects of particular languages. It involved questions of wider significance. What, for instance, was the origin of thought? Did the mind have a material basis? Did mankind have a single origin? (1967, p. 4). Considerations of language in the romantic period were also an opportunity to consider mind, thought, being, and knowledge. In these theories, many hypothesized a physical, embodied basis for language in early human interactions and interactions with the physical environment.2 This broad sense that language has physical and material bases, provides the central premise of the work of Horne Tooke, the most important and popular language theorist in the period, to advance what would become a popular (Aarsleff, 1967, p. 73), provoking, lightning-rod text.
Tooke’s Diversions of Purley published first in 1786, reissued in 1798 and released with a second volume in 1805 (dates which correspond with Romanticism’s heyday) posits the most simplified version of language which argues that both language’s origins and contemporary language systems are based in the material world. Completely undermining arbitrariness and fully embracing empiricist sensation, Tooke’s “linguistic materialism” (McKusick, 1986, p. 12) deploys elaborate etymologies to show how words are immediately the signs of material things and concepts or what he calls “abbreviations” of them. Says Aarsleff, “Naming is the essence of language as Tooke had shown by tracing all words via etymology to the names of sensible objects” (1967, p. 94). Etymological analysis shows how parts in words correspond to the way we associate our physical experience with these things in the world; for example, Tooke offers “bar” as example meaning “defence,” and then goes on to explain that a ‘barn’ is a covered enclosure, a ‘baron,’ a powerful man, ‘barge,’ a strong boat, etc. (Tooke, 1847). This simple idea that “all words can be reduced to names of sensations” was quite popular and tapped into some of the major concerns of the moment. In claiming that language is implicitly connected to physical experience in the world, Tooke’s pervasive and popular thoughts on language carried many implications for romantic thought. One such implication is language’s relationship to education. If language is out there in the material world, and not the domain of mind and education, rationality is dislodged from its centrality in matters of thinking and speaking. Olivia Smith helps articulate this implication for education as she states, “if sensation and feeling are the basis of vocabulary and all modes of thought, then experience and perception become reputable forms of knowledge and can no longer be described as essentially different from rationality and abstraction” (1984, p. 213).
Taking up the popular interest in language, Wordsworth’s famous poetic experiment, Lyrical Ballads, with its explanatory prefaces and appendix, founds Romanticism as a movement. As is commonly remembered, recited in fact, Wordsworth’s Advertisement to the 1798 Lyrical Ballads describes the poetry collection as an experiment as to “how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.” And thus, language becomes central, but not so central, to Romanticism as a literary movement. I say, “not-so” as an acknowledgement to the fact that while language is the experiment so touted, it is not what is often considered “revolutionary” about this text. Rather in more conventional readings of Romanticism, feeling seems to overshadow language’s sensuousness. However, especially in light of Tooke’s theory—published and republished as it was just before Wordsworth’s first publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798—Wordsworth’s Prefaces participate in the origin of language debates by arguing that expression suited to poetry should be saturated not with the unique emanations of the genius poet, as is often thought, but instead this expression should reveal the physical, inhabited world of the speaker.
One place to see Hooke’s theory of language reflected is in Wordsworth’s articulation of his experiment in the 1802 preface. Here Wordsworth shifts the terms of his language revolution to “a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation” and “a selection of language really used by men” (Preface to 1802). I want to here really lean on that new phrase “vivid sensation” and link it to Tooke’s theory of language. Wordsworth advocates for language that emerges in relation to physical, material, natural encounters. Rather than language being abstract, poetical language should emerge from context, sensation, and feeling. Moreover, as Gradin’s work details, Wordsworth had particular liberatory ideas about education and the social classes. For his poetic experiment, he focuses on “low and rustic life” as the subject and speakers of many of his poems. Wordsworth focuses on the lives of the “rustics” as a poetic ideal because, he writes, “in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer more emphatic language” and because “such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived” (Preface to 1802). Like Tooke, Wordsworth believes that expression should not be trained, rational, and abstract; which is to say in another way that poetry should no longer follow neoclassical rules. Instead, expression should emerge from lived experience; facility with language and expression comes best from those who can “hourly communicate” with the physical world.
The Appendix to the 1802 Lyrical Ballads too dramatizes Wordsworth’s theory of romantic expression. To begin, Wordsworth thinks back to the origins of poetry first stating, “The earliest Poets of all nations generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men” (Appendix to 1802). By contrast, he sees in his immediate predecessors the mechanization of poetic language. These poets produce language without the influence of sense experience:
desirous of producing the same effect, without having the same animating passion, set themselves to a mechanical adoption of those figures of speech, and made use of them, sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied them to feelings and ideas with which they had no natural connection whatsoever. A language was thus insensibly produced, differing materially from the real language of men in any situation. (Appendix to 1802.)
Wordsworth’s poetic experiment is in this way a critique of poetic expression that fails to rely on physical sensation and physical experience with the world. He wants poets to express language having a “natural connection” to one’s real, lived experience in the world. He is against “a language … thus insensibly produced” (Appendix to 1802), against language that’s hollow and abstracted. This phrase—“insensibly produced” language—echoes Tooke’s theory of language. Wordsworth aligns with Tooke by understanding language as emergent from the world of experience, sense, and feeling. Wordsworth’s “rustics,” close to nature and “hourly communicat[ing] with the best objects from which the best part of language originally derived” (Preface to 1802) become the expressive ideal. This theory of romantic language and expression, as shaped by close readings of Wordsworth and Tooke, sees words as fundamentally “out there,” accessed through physiological sensation and feeling. Rather than assuming that romantic expression as isolated and inward-looking, this second look at the most canonical of Wordsworth’s thinking shows instead that expressive-romantic expression looks decidedly outwardly, toward first-person, embodied, sense experience, as if writers were “standing in a landscape of language” (Smith, 1984, p. 215).
Rereading Expressivism: Another Lens for “Voice” in Writing
By taking this second look at romantic theories of language, the “expression” in expressivism can look substantially different. By expanding on the tacit link that Berlin and others have made between expressivism and romanticism through close reading of a canonical romantic text, some of Berlin’s foundational and lasting assertions about expressivism denying the social and valuing the inwardness of unique expression could be challenged. For one, this rereading of Wordsworth goes some distance in undoing certainty about the supposed inwardness of language in romantic philosophies. It is useful also to cut through these binary impulses more directly by applying Wordsworth’s romantic theory of language directly to a still percolating debate about the idea of voice in writing. I want to expand the possibilities for understanding language and voice, and ultimately then, expand our senses of the “expressivist tradition.”
There are few more vexed concepts in composition, and in expressivism more specifically, than voice. Linked to this concept are debates about subjectivity and selfhood, structures of power, and theories of language. Most stable about this concept seems to be its unrelenting persistence and imprecision. As Peter Elbow writes in Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries, critiques of voice “seem valid, yet voice stays alive, even in the most “naïve” forms that have been the most powerfully critiqued” (2007, p. 3). Darcie Bowden, among the most vociferous critics of the voice metaphor, echoes this ambivalence: “the permutations and varying conceptions of voice, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, make voice difficult to completely support or to completely reject as a useful metaphor for textual analysis or for pedagogy” (1999, p. vii). Voice has become a key site for debate in liberatory, feminist, expressivist, and multicultural rhetorics, as “voice is a pivotal metaphor in composition and rhetoric studies [as it] focuses attention on authorship, on identity, on narrative, and on power” (Bowden, 1999, p. viii). While voice in general endures as a concept, there are nonetheless voices in the field that, like Faigley, understand voice as matter-of-factly untenable in our current postmodernist, poststructuralist framework. Mimi Orner, for example, scrutinizes the idea of voice in liberatory education rhetorics, claiming plainly that “calls for ‘authentic student voice’ contain realist and essentialist epistemological positions regarding subjectivity which are neither acknowledged specifically nor developed theoretically” (1992, p. 75). Voice, under this critique, implies stable identity and personal language. Writes Orner, “discourses on student voice are premised on the assumption of a fully conscious, fully speaking, ‘unique, fixed, and coherent’ self” (Orner, 1992, p. 79). Bowden, on similar theoretical grounds, argues that voice has lived past its usefulness as her whole book rests on the “assumption that that there can be no such thing as voice, that it was a metaphor of particular historical moment, and that that moment has passed” (1999, p. viii). The idea of voice in writing becomes most vigorously critiqued when voice is said to reveal a unique individual and when language is thought to reveal the self, each accusations leveled at expressivist voice in general.
Keeping Wordsworth’s desire for expression to be saturated with experience in mind, we can understand Peter Elbow’s concern with voice as a concern with physical reality and experience; that is, voice in Elbow and more broadly across expressivist thinking, can be understood not as transcendent personal truth or unique expression, but instead as alive, embodied language that sounds like a real human person is speaking. Using Wordsworth’s romantic theory of language as a backdrop highlights Elbow’s concern with the physical body, the spoken voice, and attention to contexts for speaking.
To begin seeing this physical nuance in expressivist voice, I look back to Elbow’s 1968 essay “A Method for Teaching Writing.” This essay describes Elbow’s experience helping conscientious objectors writing petitions to avoid the draft. Much of how Elbow talks about voice and expression in this essay is echoed in how Wordsworth talks about poetic language in his Prefaces. Central to this essay is Elbow’s concern for writing that is “alive” (1968, p. 122). Evidence of life in written language is, for Elbow, “when words carry the sound of a person” (1968, p. 122). Like Wordsworth, then, Elbow emphasizes the importance of language sounding true to one’s lived experience, the words uttered in the experienced world—or as Wordsworth might say, the “real language of men in any situation” (Appendix to 1802). Moreover, Elbow explicitly values language connected to experience, explaining that “everyone does have a ‘word-hoard’: a collection of words that are connected to his strong and primary experiences in the world—as opposed to words which (putting it inexactly) are only connected to other words” (1968, p. 120). With a focus on language relating to physical experience in the material world, Elbow here cites Vygotsky’s Thought and Language on the difference between spontaneous and scientific concepts. Just as Elbow briefly explains, spontaneous or “everyday” concepts “are the meanings of words of everyday language, which a child uses in everyday life/interaction, while scientific concepts are the ones the child masters during systematic instruction of basic knowledge” (Temina-Kingsolver, 2008). Implicit then in Elbow’s suggestion of writer’s “word-hoards” is the idea that language has an explicit connection to worldly experience, aligning with the romantic-expressivist conception of language as having a material, physical basis.
There is much made about how expressivism falsely supposes that one can access through language a transcendent self or personal truth. Mimi Orner, writing on voice in liberatory rhetorics, argues that “calls for student voice in education presume students, voices, and identities to be singular, unchanging and unaffected by the context in which the speaking occurs” (1992, p. 80). In “A Method for Teaching Writing,” an essay that could be categorized under liberatory rhetorics, Elbow moves away from this side of the voice concept, explaining again more of a concern with physical bodies in the real world. Elbow writes:
but I am not talking about intimate, autobiographical “self-exposure” when I talk of “revealing a self in words.” Writing in words which “reveal the self” has nothing necessarily to do with exposing intimacies—undressing. For I am talking about the sound or feel of a believable person simply in the fabric of the words … the most impersonal reasoning—in lean, laconic, “unrevealing” prose—can nevertheless be alive and infused with the presence of a person or a self. (1968, p. 123)
Elbow here is very clear that he’s not interested in personal truths or confessions, but with getting words on the page that are saturated with experience, words that come out of the body, not ones conceived of in a purely intellectual way, not from that tissue of words only connected to other words.
There is certainly more to say about Elbow’s takes on voice across his work but in this 1968 essay it becomes very clear that voice has fundamentally to do with the body and sense experience. But this embodied basis for voice is somewhat under-theorized in Elbow’s own considerations and the more general ways voice circulates as a concept in our field. In his most recent, extensive consideration of physical voice too, Vernacular Eloquence, Elbow only seems to narrowly suggest that his interest in the speaking voice and the natural pacing of intonation units has something to do with the body and with language being connected to the physical world. Sounding a lot like Wordsworth in the Prefaces, Elbow’s mission in the book is to shift the paradigm of literate culture: “our culture of literacy functions as though it were a plot against the spoken voice, the human body, vernacular language, and those without privilege” (2012, p. 7). But only in one section does Elbow attempt to consider the implications of embodiment theory. Occasionally, he will make mention of the embodied nature of language, such as, “our longest and usually deepest experience of how words carry meaning involves felt bodily experience, not just intellectual understanding” (2012, p. 252). Beyond this though, the voice in expressivism has remained mostly disembodied. Putting new focus on romantic primary texts reveals a way to understand romantic expression as experiential and physical. Rereading romanticism in this way helps us disrupt the sticky sense that expressivism is about radically unique self-expression and even that language is the domain of each individual. Rather, another version of romantic expressivist version of voice only really asks that writer’s “put their body where their words are” (Elbow, 2012, p. 253).
Elbow has tirelessly reexamined voice in his own thinking, as well as in the thinking of his critics. This view of voice as seen above encapsulates Elbow’s most recent emphasis on voice as spoken, lived, and embodied. And this embodied dimension of voice seems to be something Bowden can agree with Elbow on. Bowden takes a whole chapter of her book to “detach the literal voice from the metaphorical one” (1999, p. 82) and demonstrate the usefulness of this to reading practices: “the only useful application of voice may stem from an understanding of how the literal voice operates in reading” (Bowden, 1999, p. 83). Bowden’s chapter in support of literal voice has her sounding very much like Elbow in her recommendations to enlist the spoken voice for interpretation and revision. Bowden writes: “reading aloud helps writers and readers tap into their aural imaging, and understand at a visceral level the rhythms, contours, and tones of a written text” (1999, p. 97). Amidst the restless ground of voice then, Bowden, Elbow, and Wordsworth find a common ground in the idea that written expression has a basis in the embodied and physical voice.
A rereading of romanticism highlights a way of conceptualizing voice and language in the expressivist tradition in a way that emphasizes its physicality, rather than its inwardness. This in turn complicates the easy ways expressivism is divided from social constructionism. Romantic theories of language value first-person experience, but experiential and sense experience instead of uniqueness or transcendence. Moreover, looking back to romanticism provides another, under-theorized way of considering language that can also disrupt the expressivism/constructionism binary.
The romantics conceived of language and meaning as fundamentally embodied and material. Wordsworth and Tooke’s romantic theories of language create an under-theorized connection from romanticism to composition. This emphasis can be linked to current work in composition. For example, Sondra Perl’s conception of felt sense would be a site at which language is understood as a physical act. Working from the philosophies of Eugene Gendlin, Perl’s conception of felt sense “calls attention to what is just on the edge of our thinking but not yet articulated in words” (2004, p. xiii), a view that there is meaning, located in the body, prior to and informing of language. Perl suggests “that language and meaning are connected to inchoate, bodily intuitions” (2004, p. xvii). Perl ends up nodding to an expressivist tradition here too, positing the physical body as a site of fresh and “true” expression. Tapping into felt sense in this way echoes expressivist practice in which the body’s “natural” rhythms might resonate with lived experience. This embodied view of language is further elaborated in the work of Lakoff and Johnson. Metaphors We Live By kicks off their exploration of the embodied foundations of language, demonstrating that metaphors aren’t specialized language but have implicit physical dimensions. Johnson, in his book The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, writes “an embodied view of meaning looks for the origins and structures of meaning in the organic activities of embodied creatures in interaction with their changing environments” (2007, p. 11). Much more than a cognitive engagement with language, Johnson suggests, “meaning reaches deep down into our corporeal encounter with our environment” (2007, p. 25). Johnson here echoes Wordsworth’s concern for “hourly communicating” with the physical world. If we see language as having a physical basis, the product of embodied human beings inhabiting a material world, how might we understand voice, expression, identity, and authorship differently?
Conclusion: Revising the Divides
If composition studies can be neatly divided into camps, paradigms, and pedagogies, there certainly will be some generalizing that doesn’t hold true in all cases. Expressivism, a historical time period and a set of informing orientations, certainly takes its fair share of overgeneralizing. As a complement to these broad disciplinary stories, we also engage in work on the micro-level, calling into question the way these broad camps divide us. As Hawk says, “counter-histories can always be drawn, and new groupings of texts, events, and practices can always be articulated. The goal of such a historiography is not simply to arrive at a more accurate image of the past but to create a particular affect in the present” (Hawk, 2007, p. 11). Looking back to romantic theories of language brings another more complex dimension to voice, expression, and the mythos of personal language that often sticks to conceptions of expressivism. While the broadest strokes tend to come from critics of expressivism, this revisionary move can even shift the grounds that expressivist advocates may stake for it. Chris Burnham for example describes “expressivism’s strength” as “its insistence that all concerns, whether individual, social, or political, must originate in personal experience and be documented in the student’s own language” (Burnham, 2001, p. 31). This is a familiar refrain about expressivism. But in the context of Wordsworth, how we understand “personal experience” and the “student’s own language”—some of the most essential ways we have to talk generally about what expressivism is—is different. Personal experience, then, is not necessarily personal writing or self-expression, but writing infused with physical experience out in the world—first person experience, in other words, that doesn’t lead necessarily to one’s own singular language. Rather than seeing expressivist language as personal, unique, and transcendent, romantic texts make available a way of seeing language and expression as having fundamentally a material and embodied basis.
If language can be conceived as neither the domain of the individual or purely the social group, then some of the deepest divisions between constructionism and expressivism are eased. Especially as constructionism has branched off in our current moment to a focus on networks, location, situatedness, and material systems in ecological, post-process, and spatial theories, a revised sense of romantic-expressive language as material and embodied draws attention to a writer’s always shifting physical location and relation with the world.
Notes
1. In Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition, Faigley “questions the existence of a rational, coherent self and the ability of the self to have privileged insight into its own process” (1992, p. 111).
2. Three essayists who considered the origins of language were Thomas Reid, Lord Monboddo, and Condillac. Thomas Reid thought that in language there are artificial as well as natural signs, and “particularly that the thoughts purposes, and dispositions of the mind have their natural signs in the face, the modulation of the voice, and motion and attitude of the body” (McKusick, 1986, p. 11) and without this natural meaning located in the body, “language could never have been established among men” (McKusick, 1986, p. 11). For Lord Monboddo, the process of language learning should begin with the natural, embodied signs and meanings and “only by means of them can the learner become oriented within the much larger class of conventional signs” (McKusick, 1986, p. 12). Condillac, by contrast, pushes the origins of language out in to the physical world. These thinkers’ explanations of language’s relationship to sense experience demonstrate the pervasiveness of this embodied, experiential view in the romantic period. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/04%3A_Histories/4.03%3A_Rereading_Romanticism_Rereading_Expressivism-_Revising_Voice_.txt |
Emerson’s Pragmatic Call for Critical Conscience: Double Consciousness, Cognition, and Human Nature
Anthony Petruzzi *
University of Massahussetts Boston
Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James and John Dewey, in various keys, develop a philosophy of pragmatic naturalism that articulates the continuity and inter-animation between human experience and nature. By the time Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1855, Emerson’s work as a natural philosopher had already led him to a general understanding of the evolutionary continuity between simple and complex forms of life: “the fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudimentary forms, and rose to the more complex, as fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling place; and that the lower perish, as the higher appear” (1983, p. 1033; also pp. 175-176; 668-669; 945). James and Dewey both started their work by focusing on psychology and evolution—exploring the ways that mental activity is connected to our physical nervous system. They argued that the brain is continuous with the body as part of their critique of the traditional philosophical dualism between body and soul. Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald note, “Emerson foreshadows not only the pragmatism of Peirce, James and Dewey, and others, but the studies of cognition and literacy that have influenced composition studies so profoundly in the last thirty years” (1998, p. 56).1
Joan Richardson places pragmatism’s studies of cognition in a Darwinian context: “the signal, if implicit, motive of pragmatism is the realization of thinking as a life form, subject to the same processes of growth and change as all other life forms” (p. 1). Human cognition is located in our animal nature; our minds are embodied (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, pp. 16-44; Unger, 2007, pp. 136-137; Herrnstein Smith, 1997, pp. 46-47). As Richardson notes, “James learned from Darwin and from Emerson to consider not only language but thinking, too, as a life form constantly undergoing adaption and mutation” (p. 8). For Emerson, the brain is continually expressing these adaptions and transformations. Some, like Descartes, claim our minds are eternal “souls” and our brains are merely mechanical (Doidge, 2007, pp. 213). Others such as Emerson and the classical pragmatists claim that “because the history of nature is characterized in” the brain (1983, p. 548; also see Pierce, 1955, p. 359) our mind/soul must be understood in terms of natural science: the evolutionary and cognitive patterns of instincts, habits, beliefs, affects, attention, moods, classifications, and imaginations constitute various historically sedimented and yet evolving cognitive abilities.
For Emerson and the classical pragmatists, persuasion must understand, explore, and use cognitive patterns to effectively alter others’ beliefs. In order to understand the materiality of persuasion, Emerson identifies two patterns in the human mind—two evolutionary forces or instincts, one centripetal and the other centrifugal. They form our double consciousness, one private and one public, which are locked into an “irreconcilable antagonism” (Emerson, 1983, p. 174). The inter-animation of these “two poles of nature” (Emerson, 1983, p. 173) provides “a certain self-regulated motion, or change” (Emerson, 1983, p. 457). The human conscience is constituted in the space between the centripetal and centrifugal forces that inter-animate one’s double consciousness of private and public mind. The two evolved cognitive tendencies are survival instincts: self-protection, a conservative, centripetal force;2 and self-projection, an expansive, innovative, centrifugal force.3 The call to conscience emerges and sways between the two poles of nature, between the two instincts, where a social and individual psychology emerges with the same biological and cultural plasticity and ameliorative properties as the rest of nature.4
Emerson articulates the two primary forces of nature’s self-regulation—self-protection and self-projection—which occur in the human brain as two contrary instincts more persistently and clearly than the other classical pragmatists. “No [hu]man” Emerson states, “can continue to exist in whom both of these elements do not work” (1983, p. 176). However, he admits, to establish a “harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces” (1983, pp. 174; 549; 628) would make “an impossible whole.” In The Conservative, Emerson identifies this “primal antagonism” as “the two parties that divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation” (1983, p. 173). Human politics, throughout civic history, demonstrates how we strive to hold society together in “an impossible whole” (Emerson, 1983, p. 175). Self-protection is the centripetal force that conserves tradition, “the actual state of things” (Emerson, 1983, p. 174) and the individual’s everyday public understanding of one’s world. In the self-protecting mode, one’s discourse and understanding is embodied, limited, partial; while it does have some truth value, it also has false values; but it remains useful because in this mode of being-in-the-world, we are conditioned to operate in the known limits of the state of things (Emerson, 1983, p. 176-177). This “existing world is not a dream … but it is the ground on which [we] stand, it is the mother of whom [we] are born” (Emerson, 1983, p. 177). We are thrown into the existing world and it provides a conditioned ground for us to thrive. As Emerson states: “we are encamped in nature, not domesticated” (1983, p. 552).
Self-projection is the centrifugal force that pushes us from our center, our grounding in endoxa (everyday public knowledge), opening an individual’s understanding to different understandings of one’s world. In the self-projecting mode, one’s discourse and understanding is incarnate, expansive, and ecstatic; its force pushes us up from the ground of the actual so that the private mind emerges from self-protective modes of thinking imposed on it by public embodied discourse to imagine new possibilities for being-in-the-world. Neither feature of double consciousness, the private or the public, is otherworldly; rather, they exist in a transitive network down to the molecular level: “All things are in contact; every atom has a sphere of repulsion” (Emerson, 1983, p. 585). The sphere of attraction and repulsion, of closing one’s self off from possible threats to one’s being and opening one’s self up to new possibilities for being, is at the heart of the undomesticated antagonism.
Self-protection is the centripetal adaptive instinct to defend tradition and the status quo—to conserve the beliefs and knowledge of the present order. It does not domesticate us because it is compensated by self-projecting instinct to change and transform ourselves and our relations to the environing world. These “strange alternation[s] of attraction and repulsion” (Emerson, 1983, p. 503) are tendencies or patterns of nature nurturing; they sway between the withdrawing (self-protection) and arrival (self-projection) to disclose the partiality of truths, which are not calculable, not measureable. The polarities are always already embodied in human discourse, cognition, and experience, and, for Emerson, indicative of how the brain/mind physically operates according to tendencies of human nature. The self “can not live without a world” (1983, p. 254), Emerson claims, because it is a necessary platform that resists our instinct to expand outwards, to be self-reliant, to imagine and project ameliorations for one’s future.
One’s imagination emerges in the gravitational force that sways between the private and public minds or selves—what Dewey calls the “inner and outer vision,” when “possibilities are embodied … that are not elsewhere actualized” (1980, p. 268). Imagination is not isolated from the environing world, nor is it a faculty of mind, self-contained and separate from history; it is a cognitive and communicative act: “Expression of experience is public and communicating because the experiences expressed are what they are because of experiences of the living and dead that have shaped them” (Dewey, 1980, p. 270). Self-expression is a most human behavior, opening our habituated public self to “an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience” (Emerson, 1983, p. 256). The call of conscience emerges in the inter-animation of private integrity—“nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind” (Emerson, 1983, p. 261)—and public care for one’s world. Conscience calls the private mind from submersion in the public mind, and recalls our desire for self-reliance—to imagine, project, and innovate towards a better state of things (Emerson, 1983, p. 174; Dewey, 1922, pp. 106ff). Self-projection is the imaginative reformation of the self and existing reality.
Contrary to Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish’s claims—that there is no conception of critical self-awareness or self-consciousness that is not “at once impossible and superfluous” (Fish, 1989, pp. 463-464; also see Rorty, 1991b, pp. 211ff), I argue that the “axis” upon which a classical pragmatist theory of persuasion turns is a “call to conscience,” which discloses critical self-awareness as a cognitive event that is directed by care and attention, imagined by thinking and disclosed by action that is ameliorative. Emerson and the classical pragmatists—James, Pierce, and Dewey—are important interlocutors for the field of rhetoric and composition, even though in most classification schemas of the field, their work has not been fully explored. I focus on three cognitive features that Emerson and the classical pragmatists describe—classification, imagination, and the plasticity of the mind—that are particularly useful for understanding how classical pragmatism is affiliated with rhetoric and composition. On the one hand, we will see how critical conscience is the way human beings interact with their environment at specific moments, not a faculty of mind, or a permanent state of critical awareness. And, on the other hand, I propose an interpretation of pragmatist rhetoric that has substantial differences from what Steven Mailloux calls, “a rhetoricized version of contemporary neo-pragmatism” (1998, p. 56). Rather than focusing on conventions and beliefs, as do the neo-pragmatists, the classical pragmatists focus on why affective reasoning and imagination are both persuasive and expresses truth: as Dewey notes, reasoning “must fall back upon imagination—upon the embodiment of ideas in emotionally charged sense” (1980, p. 33). My claim focuses on three aspects of human expressivity—classification, imagination, and plasticity—explicated by pragmatism’s cognitive science; which can lead rhetoric and composition to a less antagonistic relationship with critical discourse—legitimating research that focuses on individuality, self-expression, and mindful being-in-the-world.
Cognition and Classification
Classical pragmatists were at the forefront of cognitive psychology to contextualize the continuities between humans, as beings embodied in the world, and nature. The continuities include, but are not limited to, these three cognitive features—classification, imagination, and plasticity—which offer us useful, albeit narrow, examples that contribute generally to pedagogy, and specifically to rhetoric and composition, so, as James puts it, we can “make our nervous systems our ally instead of our enemy” (1992, p. 140). For James, classification is a feature of “our organic mental structure” that was produced accidentally by evolutionary variation, “then transmitted as fixed [a] feature” (1955, p. 851). As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson note, “every living being categorizes … food, predators, possible mates, members of their own species, and so on” (1999, p. 17). Culturally and socially, classification is central to organization of human institutions, particularly education and generally to the organization of intellectual history. As Mike Rose aptly notes, classification schemes both “sharpen [our] own abilities to systematize what [we] study, and to develop a critical awareness of the limitations of classification schemes” that we are submerged in (1989, p. 139).
From a rhetorical point of view, classification starts as an invention strategy divisio, the division into categories or classes and then becomes dispositio, the effective arrangement of ideas that structure an argument. As Frank J. D’Angelo argues, rhetorical topics are “differentiations of basic mental processes that have evolved over thousands of years” (Judd, 2005, p. 81. From a cognitive point of view, classification is a phenomenological/hermeneutical act that psychologically is both private and public: we understand everything in term of its structure. We understand it as a danger, as a food source, as something that matters or not, as something to care for, or not. According to Patricia Smith Churchland, “prescientifically, we classify things on the basis of their gross physical and behavioral similarity, or on the basis of the relevance to our particular needs and interests.” (2002, p. 124 ). In a scientific context, classification schemes order “the reality behind appearances” according to specific principles that “have an effect on perceptual recognition” (Churchland, 2002, p. 129). In either case, classification structures how the brain understands something as-something: we must know something as-something before we can understand or make statements about it (Heidegger, 1996, pp. 139ff). What one perceives depends upon either one’s needs and interests or one’s sense that there is a pattern that organizes what is perceived.
Classification, in the public sense, is the process of surveying a field of objects to discern and thematize patterns, to identify and distinguish and therefore to define or redefine the topic. This is useful for cognition because it frames and structures one’s argument in relation to the categories created by the topographical map. In the public mind,5 the classification becomes part of social and institutional power—i.e. in higher education, it is used to control what and how a subject is taught.6 How does one teach composition in the university? Is there one theory of composition that works most effectively? Should pedagogy focus on the product or on the writing process? Questions like these exist because our minds are embodied; cognitive operations like classifying are structured by how bodies/minds have evolved, therefore structuring our everyday understanding of the order of things.
Emerson was fascinated by natural science, especially how the cognitive ability of the human brain uses classification schemes to advance factual knowledge.7 Emerson intends to give an “account, which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world” (1983, p. 634). Emerson’s knowledge of neural networks was up to date for his time; he was aware of Galvani’s discovery that nerves operate on electrical energy and he hypothesized that the mind uses electrical, and therefore physical, force to shape and animate the mind. The interaction of a brain/mind shapes both the mind and world: “Every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of the mind …. The whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the poles or points where it would build” (Emerson, Essays 1983, p. 964-965).
Classification is closely related to imaginative cognition that is necessary in the natural sciences, as well as the humanities: “Science does not know its debt to imagination” (Emerson, 1929, vol. 8, p. 10). Emerson argues that classification is a cognitive activity, a “tyrannical instinct of the mind” (1972, vol. 2, p. 23): “it is the perpetual effort of the mind to seek relations between the multitude of facts under its eye, by means of which it can reduce them to some order” (1972, vol. 2, p. 22). Emerson identifies classification both as an instinct and as one of “the actions of the intellect” (1972, vol. 2, p. 25) because it discloses unexpected resemblances and common origins between things that, at first, appear unrelated (1972, vol. 2, p. 27).
For Emerson, classification creates a vocabulary that becomes part of the private and public mind, an antagonistic discourse within our double consciousness. The instinct to classify is natural and useful; yet, it has a double edge because as it becomes commonplace knowledge of the public mind, we lose sight of the fact that we are part and partial of an organic system that continually changes:
A nomenclature, a classification used by the scholar as a help to the memory, or a bare illustration of his present perception of the law of nature, the memorandum only of his last lesson, and, in the face of it, merely a makeshift; merely momentary; a landing place on the staircase, a bivouac for a night, and implying a march, a progress [that] becomes, through the indolence or absence of mind, a barrack, a stronghold, an obstacle; in which the man settles down immoveable, insane, obstinate, mistaking his means for his ends … and requires your respect to this whimsy as to truth itself. (1972, vol. 3, pp. 129-130)
Emerson and the classical pragmatists describe classification in a way that is useful to argumentation, persuasion, and pedagogy of composition because it is based on understanding our human nature—how our brain/mind actually works. For classical pragmatists, every time one classifies, one encounters the sway of “doubleness” between its usefulness for the private mind and its dangers for the public mind.
Dewey agrees with Emerson, classification is one of the various instinctual organizational tendencies that circumscribe all mental activity:
To classify is, indeed, as useful as it is natural. The indefinite multitude of particular and changing events is met by the mind with acts of defining, inventorying, and listing, reducing to common heads and tying up in bunches. [These acts] are performed for a purpose. [But we often lose sight of the purpose] to facilitate our dealings with individuals and changing events. Our thought [becomes] hard where facts are mobile; bunched and chunky, where events are fluid and dissolving. The tendency to forget the office of distinctions and classifications, and to take them as marking things in themselves, is a fallacy. (1992, p. 131)
Dewey’s stipulation that classification does not represent things in themselves echoes Emerson’s description of how self-protection works to turn contingent classifications into fixed truths.
Our environment forces us to pay attention to an array of “indefinite multitude of particular and changing events” (James, 1992, p. 227); also, we use systems of classification to assess the amount of attention we need to spend on a given object. In other words, in order to create opportunities to self-project, to take advantage of changing events, decisive classification is necessary. As Herrnstein Smith notes
human beings have evolved as distinctly opportunistic creatures and that our survival, both as individuals and as a species, continues to be enhanced by our ability and inclination to reclassify objects and to “realize” and “appreciate” novel and alternate functions for them—which is also to misuse them and to fail to respect their presumed purposes and conventional generic classifications. (1988, pp. 32-33 also see pp. 122-123)
Lakoff and Johnson give a concrete biological example of how classification allows us to function in the world opportunistically:
Each human eye has 100 million light-sensing cells, but only about 1 million fibers leading to the brain. Each incoming image must therefore be reduced in complexity by a factor of 100. That is, information in each fiber constitutes a “categorization” of the information from about 100 cells. Neural categorization of this sort exists throughout the brain. (1999, p. 18)
Most of our cognitive categorizations come from how our bodies function in our environment. These are mostly unconscious and when we are in stable environments, we tend to rely on them to speed decision making processes; however, in environments that are unstable we tend to more carefully examine objects, sometimes creating new classifications.
Elizabeth Flynn argues that the received view of romanticism/expressivism is a form of “anti-modern” discourse or rhetoric: “Since individuals are unique and since perceptions of reality are entirely subjective, scientific knowledge has very limited authority, and the ability of scientific projects to lead to valid or reliable truth claims is questioned” (1997, p. 542). Flynn is correct that romantics and expressivists, like classical pragmatists, critique the modernist drive to calculation and commodification of nature. Yet, while romantic writers are generally considered to be reacting against the modernist quest for certainty, for objective truth typified by modern science, these critiques do not mean that every expressivist rejects natural science tout court. Many expressivists—Goethe, Thoreau, and Emerson, to name a few—actually embrace the useful applications of new facts that natural sciences disclose. Emerson notes that the human brain becomes impatient when confronted with
a multitude of facts; it aims to find some pattern or reasoning to set them in some order. Classification is one of the main actions of the intellect …. every theory of science, every argument of the barrister, is a classification, and gives the mind the sense of power in proportion to the truth or centrality of the traits by which it arranges. (,1972, vol. 2, p. 25. ).
Imagination, Use, and the Conduct of Life
The endless passing of one element into new forms … explains the rank which the imagination holds in our catalogue of mental powers. The imagination is the reader of these forms.
—Emerson
Descartes’ claim—that our minds are disembodied, not physical and that our brains are material objects, merely things—has a dramatic effect on how imagination has been classified in modernity. He claims imagination does not produce “entirely certain and indubitable” knowledge (1968, p. 95). Therefore he rejects imagination (and emotion) as essential components of rationality or human nature (1968, pp. 151-152). Rhetoricians tend to agree with Descartes that the expression of affect and imagination is not a cognitive activity, and while they are not separate from the mind, they are separate from the social realm: “key terms [of Romantic rhetoric] are solitude, spontaneity, expression of feeling and imagination—all quite opposed to the rhetorician’s concern for society, planned discourse, communication, and moving the will through reason and passion”; the received view reduces “expressivism” to a “soliloquy, not an argument, and … reflection not action” (Bizzell & Herzberg, 2001, p. 995).
The received view claims that “expression of feeling and imagination” is opposed to the rhetorical goals of “reason and passion;” however, pragmatists do not make the foundation lists move by appealing to “reason” because that implies the imagination is an innate faculty like reason and passion. Neither the idea of antecedent thought nor the social constructionist denial of our biological human nature explains how our experiences of the world are inseparable from our conceptualization of the world (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 509). As Lakoff and Johnson argue, the metaphoricity of language is fundamental to the “sensorimotor inferences” that minds use to perpetually search for relations in order to classify things, to describe emotions, concepts, and percepts in terms of similitude (1999, p. 555). Classical pragmatists understand imagination as a natural part of our cognitive network. “Imagination uses an organic classification” (Emerson, 1929, vol. 8, p. 29) that is part of our self-projecting instinct: “imagination expands and exalts us” (Emerson, 1929, vol. 8, p. 29). Imagination moves us from the embodied realm of self-protection; it brings us to new ways of living in the world; “imagination animates” (Emerson, 1929, vol.8, p. 29).
Imagination is not a solitary or quietist concept for the classical pragmatists: “Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination” (Emerson, 1929, vol.1, p. 271). Neo-pragmatists Rorty and Unger argue that pragmatism and romanticism are not opposed because both give priority to the imagination rather than to reason (Rorty, 2007, pp. 105ff).8 “Imagination,” says Unger, “does the work of crisis without crisis [showing] us how we can turn what we have into something else” (2007, pp. 61-62). Emerson, like Dewey notes, “imagination [is] a perception and affirming of a real relation between a thought and some material fact” (1929, vol. 8, p. 29).9 The imagination is not a discrete faculty of a static brain; rather, it is the use of materiality, the transformation the material world to ameliorate environing conditions. The power of eloquence is that one uses the materiality of language “to report the inner man adequately to the multitudes of men, and [to] bring one man’s character to bear on all others” (Emerson, 1972, vol. 3, p. 349).
While many assume that Emerson’s first work, Nature, announces a uniquely American iteration of romantic idealism which is monological, others understand the book’s lasting contribution as being the first to articulate a pragmatic “doctrine of Use.”10 The imagination is important to Emerson; yet, in terms of priority, he emphasizes use over either imagination or reason: “the imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world” (1983, p. 34).11 Emerson’s “doctrine of Use” is a central principle shared by pragmatists, “neo” or classical. He analyzes the materiality of “brute nature,” and how nature educates the brain/mind “in the doctrine of Use, namely, that a thing is good,” and has being only so far as it serves “the production of an end” (1983, p. 29).
For Emerson, the doctrine of use is “the axis on which the frame of things turns” (1983, p. 747). As Emerson and Unger note, sudden moments of crisis force humans into revising their commonplace beliefs (Emerson, 1929, vol. 7, p. 92). The imagination, according to Unger, “does the work of crisis without crisis” (2007, p. 61). As in moments of crisis, imagination provokes the self-protection instinct, and releases energy that powers our imaginative performances and our conduct in implementing them as caring acts in the world. Emerson argues that nature does not serve any single or multiple ends; nature follows an ecstatic structure of circular movement that tends to produce redundancy and excess, focused on momentary ends that are always superseded by new ends, and therefore open to modification and transformation (Herrnstein Smith, 1997, pp. 38, 46, 49). The imagination expresses possible new ends and communicates its fundamentally social dimensions: “the heart of language is not ‘expression’ of something antecedent, much less expression of antecedent thought. It is communication; the establishment of cooperation in an activity in which there are partners, and in which the activity of each is modified and regulated by partnership” (Dewey, 1958, p. 179).
Rorty is correct that pragmatists explicate the universal dispositions and tendencies of human minds in terms of the exigencies of the existential context. As Emerson notes, the exigency of each generation resolves “itself into a practical question of the conduct of life” (1983, p. 943). These dispositions and tendencies provide the means for a “comprehensive and persisting … standardization of habit” that orders all “social interaction” (Dewey, 1958, p. 190). For Emerson, the “worst feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, of the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, really show very little relation to each other, never meet and measure each other” (1983, pp. 205-206). Concrete understanding of the environing world—which attunes to its use and takes protective care of it—is human conduct based on the desire for stability and consistency. The individual mind (self), which uses imagination and reason to self-project, to create, and to communicate new possibilities in the world, renews habituation and the conduct of life. Renewal happens because nature has various forms of compensation to maintain the balance between self-protection and self-projection. If society privileges the concept of materialism, then idealism emerges as compensation, and so it is with concepts like the one and the many, reality and imagination, identity and difference, stasis and change, reform and conservation, or, subjective and objective. In the run of everyday life, the double consciousness shows little relation to each other. It is, as we see below, the call of conscience that connects the private mind and the public mind.
Compensatory behavior does not emerge from “a single and all-at-once beginning,” but from the natural evolutionary pattern of fits and starts, composition and decomposition, and from an excess of ends, the ecstatic culminations of “incessant beginnings and endings,” which animate nature (Dewey, 1958, p. 97-98; Emerson, 1983, pp. 120-121; Poirier, 1992, p. 54-55). The human brain/mind reflects nature’s propensity for “calculated profusion”: “the craft with which the world is made, runs also into mind and character of” human beings (Emerson, 1983, p. 550). Peirce calls the brain/mind “organized heterogeneity”—which, nonetheless, has “extreme complexity and instability. It has acquired in a remarkable degree of a habit taking and laying aside habits” The laws of the brain/mind are “so fluid a character as to simulate divergence from law” (Peirce, 1955, p. 359-360).
The brain/mind is, as Pinker says, a complex and interactive media that is attuned to the world. It uses all of its unpredictability in order to adapt to and reorganize the world; evolution produces a basic design for relatively stable habits of mind (1997, p. 32). In other words, the innate aspects of human nature are “what all minds have in common, and how minds can differ” (Pinker, 1997, p. 34). The mind has various organizational tendencies that circumscribe species-wide mental activity: “Simple logic says that there can be no learning without innate mechanisms to do the learning. Those mechanisms must be powerful enough to account for all kinds of learning that humans accomplish” (Pinker, 1997, p. 101). But these mechanisms are not, a priori, knowledge: “Saying that the different ways of knowing are innate is different from saying that knowledge is innate” (Pinker, 1997, p. 315). The claim that the human brain has sets of habits, or internalized adaptations, characterized by reflexive actions or instinctual reflexes, should not be confounded with claims that human nature has an unalterable or essential nature, or biological determinism, as is crudely articulated by Social Darwinism or by the more modern notions like genetic determinism, or that the brain is a modular and ‘hard-wired’ computer-like machine (Unger, 2007, pp. 131-133).
There is continuity between nature and the dispositions acquired that have evolved into brain/mind (Dewey, 1980, p. 29). Some neo-pragmatists, like Rorty, claim the lack of intrinsic, genetic or evolutionary human nature does not make human existence a relativistic “abyss.” The traditional interpretation of Emerson, which often acknowledges his repeated claim, “there are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile” (1983, p. 403), is coterminous with Rorty’s non-foundation position. The only way it would not be synonymous is if one erroneously assumes “abyss” somehow implies a bipolar, other-worldly ideal or stable universal, which Dewey disputes: Emerson “finds truth in the highway … in the unexpected idea …. His ideas are not fixed upon any Reality that is beyond or behind or in any way apart” (1980, pp. 27-28) from the natural world. Rorty’s argument, however—that there is an “absence of an intrinsic human nature”—is not supported by evidence from contemporary cognitive and biological science (1991a, p. 132). All mental development or learning depends upon the deconstruction of useless neurons and reconstruction of useful neural networks. Current neutral studies show that each human brain has “100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections” (Ratey, 2002, p. 18). Many unused connections die during a development stage called ‘pruning’ and “new connections grow, again depending on which are used and which are not” (Ratey, 2002, pp. 34-47). Therefore, a) the concept of innateness can only hold meaning in terms of potentialities, and b) the tabula rasa theory can only hold meaning in terms of reconstructing what we are born with, not simply inscription on a blank slate by experience. As Lakoff and Johnson state, “the traditional innateness versus learned dichotomy is simply an inaccurate way of characterizing human development, including linguistic development” (1999, pp. 507-508).
Dewey clarifies how human nature contains “regularity” without resorting to static universals:
Since nothing in nature is exclusively final, rationality is always means as well as end. The doctrine of the universality and necessity of rational ends can be validated only when those in whom the good is actualized employ it as a means to modify conditions so that others may also participate in it, and its universality exist in the course of affairs. (1958, p. 120)
Dewey, like James and Emerson, argues, “nothing in nature is exclusively final” (1958, p. 120), including things like the brain/mind, which were thought to be static and unchanging, like truth or the self (James, 1992, p. 287). Imagination and classification are cognitive behaviors adapted from the plasticity of nature; both cognitive behaviors are useful insofar as they “incarnate themselves in action.” Thinking is for use; it frames, animates, alters, and ameliorates both the private or public mind; Emerson, 1929, vol. 12, pp. 18-19).
Plasticity and Human Nature
Whilst we converse with truths as thoughts, they exist also as plastic forces.
—Emerson
The third cognitive disposition that Emerson and the classical pragmatists analyze, which makes humans capable of experiencing moments of critical conscience, is an inherent evolutionary plasticity both in the human brain/mind and in nature. Darwin’s evolutionary discovery—that species have no foundational point of origin but emerge, reconstructing themselves and in effect deconstructing those that cannot or do not change—is fundamental to pragmatic naturalism. This structure of “continual decomposition and recomposition” (Emerson, 1983, p. 656; 1929, vol. 8, p. 213) is fundamental to the ways classical pragmatists think about the world—not as a telos intended to culminate in stable fixed object with a predetermined origin and end—but as an endless creative production of infinite ends. All organisms in nature change without logical end or goal; evolutionary changes emerge randomly and yet conservatively. Usefulness is the architect of the human mind. If a structure in the brain is not useful, it wastes away; yet, if it is useful, it is maintained even if new structures get added to face later challenges. As Wolf Singer notes, “the architectures of brains evolved according to the same principles of trial, error, and selection as all other components of organisms. Organisms endowed with brains whose architecture permitted realization of functions that increased their fitness survived and the genes specifying these architectures were preserved” (2011, p. 98).
As James argues, “our fundamental ways of thinking about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors, which have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent time” (1975, p. 83). Our most primitive ways of thinking can be traced back the reptilian brain, or the paleo-mammalian brain which maintains the old structures but adds the limbic system, memory and emotion, and the neo-mammalian brain, which maintains both and adds abstract thinking and planning abilities.12 Taken together, we have a triune brain (Ratey, 2002, p. 10), what James calls an “additive constitution” (1975, pp. 82-83). The cognitive and physical changes in the brain follow the evolutionary process. Plasticity works both at the historical/evolutionary scale and the contingent individual scale: “changing your pattern of thinking also changes the brain’s structure …. Activities that challenge your brain actually expand the number and strength of neural connections devoted to the skill” (Ratey, 2002, pp. 36-37). Cognitive science now understands the brain can repair certain injuries, rewire itself by relearning, for example, how to speak after a stroke. We now know that the act of learning can rewire certain parts of the human brain; sustained and mindful learning causes neurons to link and then fire at the same time (Doidge, 2007, p. 63). After the neurons wire together and fire together the brain becomes more efficient (Doidge, 2007, p. 67); the more we learn (an essential survival trait) and the faster we think, act, and react to environing conditions.
As Pinker notes, “neural plasticity is not a magical protean power of the brain but a set of tools” that indicates the complexity of human nature (1997, p. 100). Some parts of the brain are not plastic, and even in childhood, our most plastic developmental period, plasticity has real limits. However, plasticity also explains why persuasive discourse must focus on habits, moods, and beliefs (rather than logic and evidence)—because the brain/mind can learn to change how it thinks, but generally only adapts to change by gradually retuning its disposition to a topic or issue. The self-protecting instinct conserves so that change is resisted: “we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs as we can” (James, 1975, p. 83). James states
the moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led to the fundamental properties of matter …. Organic matter, especially of nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity … so that we may, without hesitation, lay down as our first proposition the following, that the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity of the organic materials of which their bodies are composed. (1955, p. 68)
Plasticity is the brain’s ability to change according to environmental conditions, circumstances, and experiences. It is essential for learning and developmental processes, and for recovery from injuries. While the most active period of plasticity is between the ages of three and ten, the brain maintains a level of plasticity throughout its existence (Ratey, 2002, pp. 35-47). New changes are carried forward through the variety of useful adaptations and transformations (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 43). Evolution discloses that the human brain is “far from being a freely instructable tabula rasa” (Singer, 2011, p. 100). As Dewey argues, “reformers, following John Locke, were inclined to minimize the significance” of instincts and dispositions in order to emphasize “the possibilities inherent in practice and habit acquisition” (1922, p. 106).13 While Locke attempts to describe a more plastic vision of humanity by arguing that all human brains are potentially and equally unlimited—depending upon the social or phenomenal experience inscribed upon them—it has left us a legacy that ignores how human nature develops from important interactions between biology, instincts, and the environment. Wilson, in On Human Nature, argues: “the human mind is not a tabula rasa, a clean slate on which experience draws intricate patterns … The accumulation of old choices, the memory of them, the reflection on those to come, the re-experiencing of emotions by which they are engendered, all constitute the mind” (Wilson, 1979. pp. 67). Like Pinker, Wilson argues that Locke’s description of human nature as a tabula rasa misrepresents human nature and excludes biological evolution, which has thoroughly integrated into the human organism sets of instinctual, reflexive, and innate behaviors, some of which are interactional, some socially determined, and some that are determined by genetics. For Pinker, the “blank slate” is only partially true: in some cases, social experience does inscribe and construct human practices in a purely situational and contingent manner. His objection centers on their denial of biological and evolutionary forces, some of which are intrinsic to all species and some of which emerge in specific interactions with the environing world.
Some neo-pragmatists, like Rorty, argue there is no such thing as human nature because any description offered is either another set of justifications or another effort to reinscribe metaphysical dualisms and create a foundation outside of a human life-world through a non-linguistic access. According to Rorty, “Dewey spent half his time debunking the very idea of ‘human nature’” (1991b, p. 211). However, other neo-pragmatists, like Herrnstein Smith and Unger, agree with the classical pragmatists’ understanding that common tendencies can shape the brain, mind, and cognition, without over-determined universalism. Unger argues that innate human nature does not require metaphysical foundations or dualisms: “we associate innateness with constraint. However, our most significant innate faculty is a structure for out-reaching and rebuilding all structures” (2007, p. 132). Unger identifies the recursive process of the brain as the fundamental habit of mind that powers the imagination—the instinct of surprise and to invent. To survive, the mind must be able to make cognitive moves that it has never made before (Unger, 2007, p. 68). The call to conscience is an instinctual care for one’s world—conduct attempts to create ameliorating and imaginative reconstructions.
Herrnstein Smith and Unger agree with the classical pragmatists that human nature exists and includes innate components—while guarding against the “first generation” of cognitivist claims (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 75-76)—which claims the brain works like a computer, has an innate modular structure, and is “hardwired,” stable, unchanging (Unger, 2007, p. 131). As Unger notes, the brain is an open system “subject to the enrichments and transpositions resulting from the plasticity of the brain” (2007, pp. 131-132). This openness includes rethinking the way innate aspects of the mind actually produce the ability to self-project. The brain’s plasticity, they argue, allows for constant adaptation and reorganization—connecting the contingent existential conditions to how we know and what we do (Dewey, 1966, pp. 336-338).
Herrnstein Smith notes, “plasticity of belief is obviously advantageous and indeed necessary for any creature that survives, as humans do, by learning …. the countertendency—that is, mechanisms that foster the stability and persistence of beliefs—would, under a broad range of conditions, also be necessary and advantageous. We are, it seems, congenitally both docile and stubborn” (1997, pp. 50-51). These two instinctual tendencies, stability and plasticity, provide us with cognitive power to imagine new or ameliorating possibilities that can arise either in moments of crisis (Unger, 2007, pp. 61, 112, 130, 132) or in moments of imaginative self-projection. On the other hand, they provide us with “cognitive conservatism,” the instinctual act of self-protection—both individual and social.14 Herrnstein Smith notes, it “is not merely the tendency to hold fast to one’s beliefs but to incorporate into them whatever comes along and, often enough … to turn what might otherwise be seen evidence against one’s beliefs into evidence for them” (1997, p. 51). Human nature, like nature itself, grows not from “a single and all-at-once beginning” but ecstatic culminations of “incessant beginnings and endings” (Dewey, 1958, pp. 97-98; Emerson, 1983, pp. 120-121).
The classical pragmatists (and neo-pragmatists Herrnstein Smith and Unger) apply evolutionary adaptions to deconstruct the Mind/Body binary, arguing that human nature exists as shared, evolved tendencies to certain temperaments, habits, and dispositions. They understand science as a method of inquiry into nature’s regularities and tendencies—without claiming that human nature is a static essence operating from discrete and static faculties of mind. Human nature is configured by the species’ interactions in the environing world. As beings-in-nature we produce culture and the arts, including eloquence and argumentation (Dewey, 1922, p. 16), through ecstatic moments of imagination that allow an individual to momentarily step out from habituation. Moments of critical conscience and nonconformity to social conventions are both possible and necessary.
The Call to Critical Conscience
The failure of critical consciousness is a failure without consequences since everything it would achieve—change, the undoing of the status quo, the redistribution of power and authority, the emergence of new forms of action—is already achieved by the ordinary and everyday efforts by which, in innumerable situations, large and small, each of us attempts to alter the beliefs of another.
—Stanley Fish
We only insist that the man meliorate, and that the plant grow upward, and convert the base into the better nature.
—Emerson
The call to conscience reaches across both social realms of preserving and transforming society; it operates on the level of individual citizens whose best thought allows for democratic and ameliorative cultural critique. As James describes it, social evolution is caused by the interaction of the individual, who bears “the power of initiative and origination” of change, and the public or social environment that has the “power of adopting or rejecting” original ideas to reform and change society. The self-projecting instinct is necessary to balance the self-protecting instinct, which tends to conformity, passivity, and fixity of a public everyday understanding of one’s world: “the community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse [to change] dies away without the sympathy of the community” (James, 1992, pp. 629-630).
Both Fish and Rorty argue against a form of critical consciousness that leads to emancipation or freedom (Fish, 1989, p. 332; Rorty, 1991b, p. 211ff). For Rorty, a pragmatist utopia should be based on “narratives of increasing cosmopolitanism, though not narratives of emancipation.” Rorty’s utopia is “not one in which human nature has been unshackled …. [t]here is no human nature which was once, or still is, in chains” (1991b, p. 213). Unfortunately, Rorty frames emancipation or freedom in terms of over-determined universalism. Dewey makes a different claim, arguing that emancipation “designates a mental attitude rather than external unconstraint of movements” (1966, p. 305). Dewey does not claim to free individuals from human nature, but rather to develop democratic societies that promote intellectual freedom.
While Fish and Rorty deny that “critical consciousness” is possible because they deny that human nature exists, classical pragmatists articulate a melioristic call to conscience framed around democratic political processes that provide a context for cultural critique. The “human condition,” Emerson states, is tied up in “old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge;” the way to untie the knots is to propound double consciousness: the oscillation between the public and private mind (1983, p. 966). Critical thinking extends the narrow understanding of existing conditions by projecting into the truly practical realm of the unknown. For Emerson, the public mind of everyday understanding is “a comatose tendency in the brain” (1929, vol. 11, p. 300). As Dewey states it:
men [sic] must at least have enough interest in thinking for the sake of thinking to escape the limits of routine and custom. Interest in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, in thinking for the sake of the free play of thought, is necessary then to the emancipation of practical life—to make it rich and progressive. (as quoted in Brinkmann, 2013, p.96).
Critical conscience, according to Unger, shortens “the distance between the ordinary moves” we make in everyday life, which are unconscious and operate within established habits and limits, and “the exceptional moves by which we redefine these limits” (2007, p. 57). We can ameliorate and liberate “individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy” (2007, p. 56) shrinking the distance “from context-preserving and context-transforming activities” (2007, p. 57). The power of thought to transform the world—the “choosing and acting” of the mind—provides the context for what Dewey calls emancipation. Emerson states it this way: “so far as a [hu]man thinks, he is free” (1983, p. 953). Thinking that is self-projecting is based on futurity. Thinking ends in ameliorative action: it is “an actual alteration of a physically antecedent situation in those details or respects which called for thought in order to do away with some evil” (Dewey, 1916, p. 31).
For West and Rorty, Emerson’s style of writing is “culture criticism” (Rorty, 1982, p. xl; West, 1989, p. 36).15 Cultural criticism is not a discrete analysis or evaluation of literature, intellectual history, moral philosophy, epistemology, or social problems; rather, “all these things mingled together into a new genre” (Rorty, 1982, p. 66) defy “disciplinary classification” (West, 1989, p. 9). Emerson’s position outside of academic institutions allows him to evade and “strip the profession of philosophy of its pretense, disclose its affiliations with structures of powers (both rhetorical and philosophical) rooted in the past, and enact intellectual practices, i.e., produce texts of various sorts and styles, that invigorate and unsettle one’s culture and society” (West, 1989, p. 37).
James and Dewey both refer to the same passage in Nature: while “crossing a bare common” Emerson experiences an ecstatic union with nature in which he emerges from the public conventional external way of understanding, to a living incarnate sense that humanity’s “life currents” are given by the material world (James, 1992, p. 856). As Dewey states, “every individual has grown up, and always must grow up, in a social medium …. He lives and acts in a medium of accepted meanings and values” (1966, p. 295). These values are embodied beliefs that shape his mind; therefore the idea that a mind is isolated and singular is impossible: a “self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things is incarnate in the life about him, the self is not a separate mind building up knowledge anew on its own account” (Dewey, 1966, p. 295).
Persuasion is a form of cultural criticism that “flourishes in free countries” (Emerson, 1929, vol. 8, p. 112) and is most noticeable during moments of social crisis (Emerson, 1929, vol. 8, p. 119). Unger argues that imagination transfers to moments of everyday life the call to conscience that emerges in social crisis. If the call to conscience can be heard in everyday practices then a critical inquiry can occur in every “account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world” (Emerson, 1983, p. 634). It therefore becomes the duty of each individual to become more fully free; concomitantly, each individual has a public duty to make “laws just and humane … and with the simple and sublime purpose of carrying out in private and public action the desire and need of mankind” (Emerson, 1929, vol. 11, p. 538). Finally, the pragmatic theory of “double consciousness” represents the “incessant” role that human nature plays in “the formation of the speculative man or scholar” (Emerson, 1983, p. 747). As Emerson notes, in the United States, the power of eloquence to persuade and suddenly expand the public mind is privileged:
here is room for every degree of it, on every one of its ascending stages, —that of useful speech, in our commercial, manufacturing, railroad and educational conventions; that of political advice and persuasion on the grandest theatre, reaching … into a vast future, and so compelling the best thought and noblest administrative ability that the citizen can offer. (1929, vol. 8, p. 132)
By focusing on Emerson’s psychological and cognitive understanding of “double consciousness … of [our] private and public nature” (1983, p. 966), I offer a counter-history to the received view about Emerson’s pragmatic understanding of eloquence. His focus on biological and cognitive aspects of the brain/mind leads us to recognize his affiliations with James and Dewey, and to see that pragmatism has an inherent call to critical conscience, which is embedded in the hopeful sense that continual democratic cultural critique brings with it amelioration and social change. For Emerson and other pragmatists, eloquence is a means to provoke ameliorating social action in a democracy. Democratic persuasion, as a call to conscience, describes the sway between personal and public as the space where self-reliant behavior demonstrates that critique is a form of attending to one’s world with care. Change entails persuasion directed at the private duty of each individual to care for what Emerson calls the “secular … evolution of man” (1929, vol. 11, p. 299). Care is a demonstration of our duty to use new knowledge practically, for the purpose of becoming more fully free, and our public duty to make “laws just and humane … and with the simple and sublime purpose of carrying out in private and public action the desire and need of mankind” (Emerson, 1929, vol. 11, p. 538).
Expressivism
The field of composition and rhetoric is arguably dominated by “social constructionist” interpretations, which, as Steven Pinker argues in The Blank Slate, have become hegemonic in social sciences and humanities (2002, p. 6). As Xin Liu Gale notes, social constructionists base much of their theory on neo-pragmatist philosophers (1996, p. 18), especially the work of Richard Rorty. Typically compositionists assume that Rorty’s philosophy articulates a “social constructionist” position. Olson is startled because “Rorty does not recognize the term social constructionism as referring to any intellectual movement that he is aware of” (1988, p. 1). In another context, Rorty aptly argues the claim that everything that is socially constructed is “hopelessly misleading” (2007, p. 115). Rorty claims classifying all objects as “social constructs” detracts from the debate over “the utility of alternative constructs” (1999, p. 86).
Berlin traces expressive rhetoric “to Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and its ultimate source is to be found in Plato” (1987 p. 71).16 Emerson, like Peter Elbow and others, is categorized by social constructionist taxonomies, like James A. Berlin’s, as an expressivist.17 Berlin’s position simply recapitulates the received literary view of Emerson, what Thomas G. O’Donnell calls “expressivist bashing” (1996, p.423 ), or what Michael Lopez calls the “anti-Emerson tradition (1996),” epitomized by W. Ross Winterowd’s “Emerson and the Death of Pathos” (1996).18 In the received view, Romantic rhetoric based on Kantian or neo-Platonist idealism is committed to “an epistemology that locates all truth within a personal construct arising from one’s unique selfhood [and] prevents these expressionists from becoming genuinely epistemic in their approach” (Berlin, 1987, p. 153). While there have been many articles that have defended Elbow against what O’Donnell calls the “common but false assumptions about expressivist epistemological orientations” (1996, p. 424); also see Donald C. Jones, Sherrie Gradin, Stephen Fishman and Lucille Parkinson McCarthy (1992 and 1995), Kathleen O’Brien, Philip P. Marzluf, and Kristi Yager), only Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald defend Emerson’s position in this dispute, which is particularly odd given the resurgent interest in literary and philosophical studies in Emerson’s contributions to pragmatism19 and the emergence of a neo-pragmatist “school” of rhetoric.
Yet Emerson argues that knowing is not a subjective state of mind; rather it is an activity, an event in service of use: “my metaphysics are to the end of use ….
There is something surgical in metaphysics as we treat it” (1929, vol. 12, p. 13). Imaginative discourse is useful and social because it releases and increases the interactions between interlocutors and the agency of individuals. Emerson’s description of the uses of eloquence and argumentation appropriately integrates the social and personal process in which individuals participate in coming-to-know truth and work to apply those truths to provoke political change.
Notes
* Editors’ Note: Anthony Petruzzi passed away while writing this chapter. We are grateful to his family and friends for making sure his work was able to be included here.
1. Mark Bauerlein also argues that the classical pragmatists develop their ideas around a conception of mind: “in the writings of Emerson, James, and Peirce [there is] a close relation between method and mind” and their pragmatic ‘method’ develops from “a sophisticated model of cognition” (1997, p. 5).
2. James says, “We find this mode of protecting the Self by exclusion and denial very common … All narrow people entrench their Me, they retract it, from the region of what they cannot securely possess” (1955, p. 201).
3. Self-projection is what James calls self-seeking, one “of our fundamental instinctive impulses”: “by self-seeking we mean the providing for the future as distinguished from maintaining the present” (1955, p. 198).
4. As a discipline, Psychology separates from Philosophy in the mid-19th century. Robert Danisch aptly notes, in Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric, that James and Dewey both wrote key texts and played significant “roles in the burgeoning science of psychology” (2007, p. 5). Current discussions of pragmatic rhetoric exclude Emerson, who, of the three, is the only practicing rhetorician; Crick and Danisch’s recent books suggest that pragmatism helps us to retrieve a sophistic, proteagorian, rhetoric for the 21st century. Neither book distinguishes classical pragmatists from neo-pragmatists, who tenuously claim that pragmatism is postmodern sophistry (Mailloux, 1998, pp. 1ff; Smith, 1988, p. 86; Crick, 2010, pp. 14 and 22ff; Danisch, 2007, pp. 7ff).
5. Emerson has several terms for what I am calling the “public mind”; he refers to it as “the universal mind,” “the mind of humanity,” and “the absolute mind” (or what Dewey would call the continuity that interanimates nature’s power and “the constitution of things.”
6. Carol Synder puts it this way:
all too frequently students merely rehearse categories and repeat standard distinctions. The absence of argument in these papers suggests that students typically misunderstand the provisional status of classifications and their dependence on disciplinary conventions, tending to regard them as though they were as reliably permanent …. What such writers need, it seems clear, is a more challenging introduction to division and classification, one that can at once spur the interest that makes for engaged, purposeful writing and promote a better understanding of division and classification as scholarly tools. (1984, p. 209)
7. Classical pragmatists understand that the brain, consciousness (or mind), and language are evolutionary adaptions; they have what Pierce calls “the scientific attitude” (1955, p. 42ff); evolutionary science is a method they use to define pragmatism as a new form of philosophical cultural criticism (Dewey, 1958, p. xvi). The classical pragmatists all considered themselves, as Pierce states, driven by the “impulse to penetrate into the reason of things” (1955, p. 42) through scientific inquiry; however, they want alternatives to modernist claims, which creates a dualism between subject-object, that truth is only valid when disclosed objectively by a neutral and impartial observer.
8. For Rorty, Emerson and the classical pragmatists are also strongly linked together because of their emphasis on self-reliance and their support a uniquely American form of social democracy (Rorty, 1991a, p. 2).
9. Emerson continuously emphasizes the importance of seeing relationships:
A [hu]man does not see … that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly, but method, and an even web; and what comes out was put in …. In the human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. (1983, p. 1065)
10. Lopez notes, “in essay after essay Emerson further elaborates and refines his fundamental perception of a universe in which all varieties of relationships … may be defined in terms of our capacity to use or be used” (1996, p. 57). For Lopez, Emerson’s most mature exposition of his “new gospel of pragmatism” is most clearly articulated by the final sentence of Representative Men: human beings can continue to evolve and realize life “first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use” (1983, p. 761).
11. Contrary to the received view, it is hard to reconcile statements like this and claim that Emerson is a romantic exponent of solipsistic self-expression and asocial political action.
12. Both human consciousness and language are relatively new evolutionary adaptations, generally thought to have developed between 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Language is an innate or fixed action (not taught) mechanism; for example, speech is a universal human instinct, while literacy, whether reading or writing, universally needs to be taught to each individual. Speech is important for the survival of the species; it is specialized practice that gives an advantage to the species. Through the continuity of thousands of generations, the species undergoes an adaptation that became instinctual, but language demonstrates not just continuity but wherever the species is found we find a random plurality of diverse, contextual, contingent variations practiced. It is this unity within plurality that is central to pragmatist ontology.
13. Locke’s original intent was, probably, to challenge the political structure of his day, which was based on the notion that human nature was unalterable and the political order, the divine right of kings, was based on this foundational principle.
14. Similarly, Pinker argues that an ethic of morality runs across all human emotions to provide stability and plasticity. He claims there are two streams of morality: an ethic of autonomy, which frames judgments about individuality, their interests and cares, and an ethic of community, which frames judgments about following social conventions, deferring to authority, and duty towards tribe, nationality, or political affiliation (2002, p. 271).
15. For Cavell, Emerson prefigures post-modern positions:
We are by now too aware of the philosophical attacks on system or theory to place the emphasis in defining philosophy on a product of philosophy rather than on the process of philosophizing. We are more prepared to understand as philosophy a mode of thought that undertakes to bring philosophy to an end, as, say, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein attempt to do, not to mention, in their various ways, Bacon, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Marx, Kierkegaard, Carnap, Heidegger, or Austin …. Ending philosophy looks to be a commitment of each of the major modern philosophers” (1991, pp. 129-130).
16. To Berlin’s credit, in Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges, he reverses his interpretation of Emerson. Berlin rejects the received view that Emerson is a neo-Platonist who claims that truth is a “private vision” (1988, p. 15). Berlin states, “I am convinced that those who find in Emerson a rhetoric of self-expression are mistaken, even though this reading may be used in support of modern expressionist rhetoric” (1987, p. 55). However, Berlin’s later of Emerson’s work has been ignored because his argument that Emerson is a “post-Kantian” (1987, p. 48), who finds the “ground of reality is the ideal” (1987, p. 46), does little to counter the clichés that frame Emerson as a Romantic.
17. Lopez states
I am not suggesting that the familiar features of the Transcendentalist Emerson are not there or that are merely critical constructions imposed on him. They are there …. The problem is … this way of approaching him leaves out radically contradictory tendencies, tendencies that seem to me not only equal but ultimately greater in extent and importance. (p. 9)
For Patterson, “Emerson’s writings exhibit a consistent pattern of contradiction that is fundamental to his critical reassessment of democratic values” (p. 5).
18. Roskelly and Ronald aptly describe Ross Winterowd, as a typical critic of Emerson and romanticism; his response, in general, is “less well articulated and more stereotypical” than received view: “He defines romanticism in predictably traditional ways” (1998, p. 36). They reinterpret and defend Expressivism and Romanticism from the oversimplifications of the social constructionists.
19. By 1988, Michael Lopez, who does an excellent job of summarizing previous scholarly interpretations of Emerson (1996, pp. 19-52), states that the “major, current trend in” Emerson scholarship is “de-transcendentalizing” his work (p. 77).
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Place-Based Genre Writing as Critical Expressivist Practice
David Seitz
Wright State University
In response to students’ changing literacy practices within the digital age in contrast to the traditional expectations of academic print literacy, many first year writing programs have rejected expressivist approaches to teaching academic reading and writing. Instead, these programs tend to emphasize rhetorical analyses of written and visual texts, especially in the first course of an academic writing sequence. As economist Robert Reich pointed out, our global knowledge economy requires this focus on analysis. He identified the need for symbolic analysts who “wield equations, formulae, analogies, models, and construct categories and metaphors in order to create possibilities for reinterpreting and rearranging” the deluge of textual and visual data (quoted in Johnson-Eilola, 2004, p. 229).
Yet too often conventional rhetorical analysis relies more on having students consume academic texts (or public criticism in the form of op-ed pages) and only reproduce their discourse and generic forms. Rarely do these approaches aim to mediate the culture and languages from students’ communities as a major pedagogical goal. So most often students remain alienated from an academic identity and purpose in these courses. As a graduate professor on the periphery of our official writing program, I hear from frustrated new graduate student teachers who wisely come to identify this problem with the program’s suggested assignments. The first course in our program focuses more on analyzing advertisements and commentary pieces. Yet the program’s most inexperienced teachers, unequipped with a more expansive pedagogical toolkit, inevitably revert to teaching conventional academic forms rather than creative critical inquiry.
As an alternative to these conventions of textual analysis, another smaller group of teacher-scholars have stressed rhetorical approaches through multigenre projects. As Tom Romano, Nancy Mack, Cheryl Johnson and Jayne Moneysmith, and Robert Davis and Mark Shadle have shown, multigenre pedagogy can definitely foster students’ creative inquiry. While I admire much of these multigenre approaches, particularly the work of Romano and Mack, they tend to use genres to help students understand complexities of research writing (Romano, Mack, Davis and Shadle) or argumentation (Johnson and Moneysmith). In contrast, I wanted to draw on genre pedagogy to focus on analysis to meet our writing program’s outcomes for the first semester writing course in ways that might be more internally persuasive to our students. In my upper-level undergraduate rhetoric course, students learned to analyze discourse by rewriting political commentaries in other genres and then analyzing the rhetorical effects of their choices (see Seitz “Mocking Discourse”). Now I wanted to create a similar approach to analysis that could motivate and engage most first year writing students.
In this chapter, I will show how the genre writings project in my first year writing course, supported by principles of place-based education and theories of genre as textual sites of social action, helps create a more inductive approach to rhetorical analysis focused on students’ languages and values. In contrast to conventional rhetorical analysis of a text, the students analyze the rhetorical choices they make when they compose in diverse genres that respond to the rhetorical situations of local place and community. I believe this approach can help open up a dialectical space through a process of “purposeful mediation” between academic rhetoric and collective rhetorics of local place. Through this approach, students often invest more in the process of their analysis, analyzing what they have accomplished rhetorically through their genre writings.
Goals, Assignments, and Interviews
from a Place-Based Writing Course
To better show my motives for the rhetorical moves within this project, what follows are the key goals of this course which I designed in accordance with a place-based genre writing pedagogy, an overview of the assignment sequences, and a look at genre connections drawn from interviews.
Course Goals
Students were expected to foster and articulate critical analyses of everyday rhetoric within social and historical contexts. They were also expected to gain awareness of how any place could be analyzed in relation to three conditions: community bonds, local history, and global influences. And I wanted students to understand how written, oral, and visual genres help enact, respond to, and complicate these three connections.
Sequence of Assignments
Throughout the course students were required to research and write an “Interview Analysis Paper.” I wanted them to identify connections between place and community, and develop a genre writing for each of these connections (i.e. community bonds, local history, and global influences). Finally, they were to analyze rhetorical situations of their genre writings and their connections.
In my course, students conducted ethnographic interviews about how a place or community has responded to change. The students’ choice of place could be a neighborhood, town, or workplace. I borrowed this emphasis on change from Julie Lindquist’s own writing course on place, which helped inspire my own. By emphasizing change, the interviews tended to focus on how the interviewee drew upon the collective rhetorics of the place and community to respond to physical and historical forces as well as the changing rhetorical influences on the place and people. These forces and influences might come from outside groups and institutions, such as the decision to move NCR (National Cash Register, a home industry in Dayton Ohio), to Atlanta. Or they might have come from smaller groups inside the larger community, such as efforts of rural towns to revitalize their downtowns during the recession in a global economy. But the project also allowed for students to demonstrate when the place and community had not changed and how, why, and to what effects. In this manner the project left open the possibility of social affirmation and critique (see Seitz, 2004). We cannot assume before ethnographic research how the interviewee and others in the community view change and stability within this place. Through the work of the interview analysis paper, students then locate three connections from their interviews that respectively address community bonds, local history, and global influences related to this place or community.
Genre Connections Drawn from Interviews
With regard to community bonds, some of the possible connections could be specific actions people conducted in order to create ties or social networks; specific common traditions, values, and beliefs that brought individuals together; or issues that related directly to the well-being of the local place and its residents. As for the local history of the place and community, these might be major events taking place in the community or place during a specific period and which resulted in some change. These could be political, economic, newsworthy (at least, in the eyes of the community members), or historical—that is, referencing the history of particular groups within the community. And where global influence was concerned (whether considered from state, national, or international perspectives), students were encouraged to explore the political, economic, technological, or cultural influences on the place and community.
For instance, Chelsea Presson interviewed her uncle, one of 15 remaining employees at NCR (which he describes now as a ghost office). From her interviews and analysis paper, she identified the community bonds of strong employee relationships that NCR once nurtured through company programs and abandoned over ten years before the decision to move the company. For the local history, she emphasized the deterioration of NCR’s long-standing support of Dayton’s communities and small businesses. And for the global influences, she focused on the impact of the national economy that acted as the backdrop for NCR’s decision to move. This analysis encourages an historical and global perspective toward the local place. Moreover, rather than the course providing pre-packaged issues, most students come to see that any place or institution is both sustained and impacted by these three connections.
Then for each connection they have identified from their analysis, the students write a text in a non-academic genre that responds to a local rhetorical situation they learned about in their interview research. This approach helps develop greater rhetorical facility (one of the main Writing Program Administrators’ outcomes) expanding beyond academic genres in the larger knowledge economy. I provide the students with a vast list of possible genres to choose from, but also suggest they consider what genres community members would more likely write, read, and watch as well as what genres outsiders (state, national, international) whose actions affect this place would write, read, and watch. Through in-class activities, I get them to consider how their genre choices can help show something about each of their three connections. In this way, the activity gets students thinking about how genres enact the social roles and situated action tied to their three genre connections. Students need to also consider the rhetorical situation (considerations of audience, purpose, stance, genre, and medium/design), as defined by Richard Bullock’s Norton Field Guide to Writing (2009) for each genre connection. When they must consider the fit of the genre choice to rhetorical situation, they begin to analyze the affordances of each possible genre choice.
So for community bonds, Chelsey composed an email dialogue between a surviving Dayton NCR employee and one who moved to the new Atlanta office, elaborating in detail on their past exploits in better company times. For the local history, she took on the voice of a Dayton restaurant owner in the city paper, addressing concerns of small business bankruptcies in Dayton since the pulling out of NCR and General Motors (supported by data drawn from secondary sources). And for the global influences connection, she took on the sunny authoritative tone of NCR CEO Bill Nuti in a slickly designed company newsletter assuring employees that the economy was turning around compared to previous recessions.
The students also had to incorporate secondary sources in the text and footnotes of their genre writings to help them relate the local situations they enacted to similar concerns of other communities (or workplaces) and larger issues at the state, national or international level. For teaching strategies of incorporating research from secondary sources in genre writings, I have learned much from Nancy Mack’s scholarship and pedagogy. Finally, as a metacognitive reflection, the students analyze and articulate all these rhetorical choices in an extensive cover letter.
When I designed this course, I knew I wanted students to address place as a generative theme, but I hadn’t read much on theories of place-based pedagogy, which is mostly a rural K-12 movement. Now I look back at the students’ projects over four years of classes and see how much these theories support my approach.
Premises of a Critical Place-Based
Writing Pedagogy
Illuminate the concept of Intradependence (of place, community, and self).
—Paul Theobauld
Support sustainability of civic life at local levels (not migratory culture and rhetoric).
—Robert Brooke
Examine, celebrate, and critique the literacy practices that create local knowledge, culture, and public memory.
—Charlotte Hogg
Foreground connections to global, national, and regional development trends that impact local places.
—David Gruenwald
Robert Brooke has asserted pedagogical approaches of place-based education share common ground with the tradition of expressivist pedagogies that explore self and society (2003). As defined and articulated by Paul Theobauld, place-based education should illuminate the concept of intradependence, the connected relationship of place, community and self. To seek intradependence means to “exist by virtue of necessary relations ‘within a place’” (quoted in Brooke, 2003, p. 7). Brooke claims “Theobauld wants an education that immerses learners into the life of human communities while they are still in school, thereby teaching the practice of civic involvement” (2003, p. 6).
Most of the students who work on this project in my class begin to practice forms of intradependence when they choose to interview their grandparents about the losses of a viable, walkable downtown life; their parents about the relationship of their workplaces to their home communities; people with institutional roles in the town, such as teachers, coaches, or ministers, about the local effects of demographic shifts; or people in professions that motivated some students, such as law enforcement and nursing, where they learn about the positive and negative impact of new technologies on employee interaction in these workplaces.
Brooke rightly maintains that writing classes which emphasize rhetorical forms and argumentative strategies regardless of local cultures and community issues encourage a migratory culture that disconnects the self from place and does not support sustainability of civic life at local levels. “As educators,” Brooke writes, “all of us are implicated in the destruction of small communities” 2006, p. 147). Most American education now serves to create an “identity not linked to a specific place, community, or region but instead to the identity of the skilled laborer, equipped with the general cultural and disciplinary knowledge that will enable the person to work wherever those skills are required”; paraphrasing the naturalist writer Wallace Stegner, Brooke stresses how this kind of migratory living can lead to “harsh exploitation of natural and cultural resources—if you don’t plan to live somewhere more than a decade, it doesn’t matter in what condition you leave it in” (2003, p. 2).
Instead, Brooke, along with other place-based educators, calls for imagining an education that fosters regional identity of “civic leadership, knowledge of heritage, and stewardship” (2006, p. 153). “It is at the local level where we are most able to act, and at the local level where we are most able to affect and improve community” (Brooke, 2003, p. 4). While the place-based genre writing project in my class doesn’t lead to immediate civic action, it does make students think more about establishing a regional, rather than solely migratory, identity within their acts of writing.
But as Charlotte Hogg’s scholarship on rural literacies suggests, along with that of her colleagues Kim Donehower and Eileen Schell, place-based education needs to critique as well as celebrate local narratives of place. Hogg’s research of Nebraskan women’s roles as informal town historians highlights alternative narratives in contrast to the more patriarchal models of the agrarian movement which emphasize the self and the land and tend to neglect the everyday practices of towns that sustain local community. Hogg reminds us the goal is better models of cultural sustainability rather than preservation of a particular version of the past: “local narratives are not static artifacts for preservation, but openings for delving into questions of power and representation” (2007, p. 131). Moreover, the project in my course supports David Gruenwald’s call for a teaching approach that is “attuned to the particularities of where people actually live, and that is connected to global development trends that impact local places” (quoted in Hogg, 2007, p. 129).
In the course of this project, the interview analysis activities help most students move toward the kind of analytical complexity suggested by Hogg, Gruenwald, and other scholars of critical pedagogies of place. The scaffolding of the interview analysis activities, along with other analysis activities using readings and movie clips, encourages students to discern social patterns and tensions from their interviews related to a community’s cultural values and responses to change.
For example, Zachary Rapp comes from a working class town in southern Ohio. As a proud high school athlete, he wanted to interview his basketball coach. In the course of his analysis, Zach zeroed in on an unexpected tension within the school and town community. Zach’s coach explained specific ways this working class community deeply supported the athletics programs as a source of community pride. But he also referred to the teachers’ frustration over poor funding and repeated failed levies. In his interview analysis paper and then his genre writings, Zach had to wrestle with another side of this multifaceted story that he had not encountered before. As he began to question the commitment of his neighbors to the full education of the town’s children, he certainly considered issues of the town’s greater sustainability and the larger national issue of funding for education. But he also recognized, and wanted to explain the daily sacrifices that families made for the children’s athletics, and he wanted to celebrate that story, especially in contrast to the attitude of outsiders that his town was a wasted dangerous place which he claimed was part of its local history from the viewpoint of neighboring towns with greater wealth.
In this regard, Zach took up the dialectical positions that Charlotte Hogg encourages—to both celebrate and critique the literacy practices that make up public memory of small town life. While the interview analysis paper gave Zach a genre form to address the significance of both perspectives within an academic frame, the genre writings gave him the opportunity to isolate and emphasize the voices and genres that both supported and challenged the cultural values that made up these aspects of the town’s civic life. So Zach writes in the voice of an injured local college athlete in a college application essay to show the community bonds forged at the town football games. He addresses the local history of rumors perpetuated by neighboring towns through a series of email exchanges between a prospective resident who asks a longtime volunteer booster about the town’s darker reputation. The booster’s replies speak to the town’s working class pride. But Zach also writes in the voice of a newspaper editor from a neighboring city paper that urges this local community to put as much emphasis on academic funding in their public schools as they do athletics.
So when students’ rhetorical choices of genres (and their purposes and audiences) derive from the ethnographic analysis of these three connections to a local place or community, the students tend to better understand genre as situated social action. As with the place-based pedagogy, I had not read deeply into rhetorical theories of genre when I designed the project. Now I see how these theories support a view of students inhabiting roles and situations they have researched first hand from their interviews.
Premises of Rhetorically-Based Theories
of Genre
Genres serve as keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community
—Carolyn R. Miller
The work of Carolyn Miller, Charles Bazerman, Catherine Schryer, Amy Devitt, and Anis Bawarshi, among others, reminds us that genres work to perform situated social actions and relations, enact social roles, frame social realities, and mediate textual and social ways of knowing and being. When we learn genres, we learn to inhabit “interactionally produced worlds” and social relationships, recognize situations in particular ways, and orient ourselves to particular goals, values, and assumptions.
Apart from the genre pedagogy created by Devitt, Bawarshi and Reiff (2004), many teachers emphasize genre as forms, rather than situating the writing of various non-academic genres within the study of place and community. Rhetorical genre theorists instead view genres, such as a community newsletter or a company brochure, as “sites of social and ideological action” (Schreyer, 1993, p. 208). As Bawarshi sums up the importance of genres, “they embody and help us enact social motives, which we negotiate in relation to our individual motives; they are dynamically tied to the situations of their use; and they help coordinate the performance of social realities, interactions and identities” (2004, p. 77). Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff have stated that the term “discourse community” and the relationship of subjectivity to discourse community remain too vague. Instead, along with Miller, Bazerman, and others, they argue that it is the process of genres (within various modalities) that “organize and generate discourse communities” (2003, p. 550) and shape strategies of social action within these rhetorical situations.
In my course project, the interview process and the three connections help to physically situate the cognition required to know what genres might be appropriate at what points in time and space within the local rhetorical situation. Because students encounter the use of various written genres in their interviews and in actual community contexts, they are exposed to genres not only as individual forms but as what rhetorical genre theorists call systems of genre sets. As a result, they must consider what affordances particular genres might offer within the range of appropriate genres in a given system that can best demonstrate the perspective of each chosen connection. As Anne Freadman and other rhetorical genre theorists have argued, the acquisition of genre knowledge includes “uptake”—knowing which genre to use based upon the rhetorical moves of earlier genres in a given system. While my first-year writing students do not explicitly study this genre knowledge or truly embed themselves in the practices of a community’s genre systems in ways that lead to full acquisition of genre knowledge, through this project they are more likely to see genres as more than just forms and conventions, and as the “lived textualities” that enact relationships and power relations within community bonds, local histories, and global influences.
Katie Shroyer came to understand these intersections of power relations and genre knowledge over the course of her project. Katie interviewed her mother, a pastor of a local branch of the Christian Family Fellowship Ministry. To show the connection of local history, Katie composed a eulogy for John Shroyer, her grandfather, the founder of the local ministry. In this text, the speaker recounts the specific ways John Shroyer helped build the social environment of the congregation over forty years. What strikes me here is how much her purpose resembles the rhetorical view of epideictic rhetoric—that is, the speech itself is meant to develop identification and persuasion to the values of the larger congregation. To address the connection of community bonds, she took on the voice of her mother in the Ministry newsletter which is distributed to numerous communities. The article addresses the growing movement advocating for home fellowships in small groups compared to the greater anonymity of megachurch models. In her cover letter, Katie claims that this particular genre of the newsletter serves “as a bonding agent” to these different communities, developing a series of “mini support systems.”
To examine global influences, Katie refers to a conflict between her mother and the leader of the Fellowship within a semi-formal business letter. As the church has expanded since the days of her grandfather, it has pursued international outreach. To encourage this national and global outreach, the leader has encouraged the production and distribution of service teachings on CDs. Katie’s mother repeatedly challenges what she sees as the impersonality of this approach and instead argues for the necessity of physical interpersonal relations in fellowship. Taking on the role of a Congregationalist in Bristol, England, Katie writes a letter to persuade Pastor Shroyer, her mother, to visit their fellowship, so they can gain much more than they can with her CDs. Now, to some composition scholars, this may not seem a strong critical rhetorical move, but to me it does suggest efforts to consider sustainability of the fellowship in the midst of global and technological change. I would also suggest that because the project allowed Katie to demonstrate the strengths of this fellowship community, she was probably more willing to reveal dissent in the church with regard to change as well. Moreover, Katie clearly chooses these genres, in her words, “to serve as keys to participate in the actions of a community,” and she analyzes these rhetorical choices very well in her cover letter.
Finally, I believe this teaching approach follows in an expressive tradition because it’s about mediating identity and addressing places as communities, however flawed, and recognizing a range of agency within these communities. This pedagogy also draws on assumptions of critical teaching in that students must examine power relations within local communities and their relations to larger global influences.
Genre writings can mediate academic and public rhetorics tied to place and community, thereby creating a dialectical space. The students’ interview papers mediated an academic analysis with the interviewee’s voice, which spoke from a collective rhetoric of place and community often tied to the student’s sense of self. The students’ genre writings translated academic insights of cultural, historical and socio-economic analysis into genres and voices of public rhetorics, often situated in place and community. And finally, their cover letters translated the implicit rhetorical analysis behind the creation of their genre writings into explicit demonstrations of analytical choices and use of secondary sources.
In these ways, genre writings can act as a mediating force between the cultures and communities outside and within academe as students analyze place and change from academic perspectives, and then re-integrate those perspectives into the language and genres of public communities. In this sense, my use of the term “translate” is only partially accurate because when we move between these public and academic rhetorics, there is no direct correspondence of meanings—just as when I plug in a French phrase into a digital translator, I will not receive an absolutely English equivalent. So while I do see the process as a kind of partially accurate set of translations, the term mediation suggests a more dynamic fluidity that often takes place. In the process of this project, students gained experience mediating identities, communities, genres, and rhetorical assumptions and strategies—rhetorical experience that can hopefully serve them well in their communications outside the classroom, in their dealings with academic writing, and possibly well into their future lives.
References
Bawarshi, A., & Reiff, M. J. (2010). Genre: An introduction to history, theory, research, and pedagogy. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press and Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse.
Bazerman, C. (1997). The life of genre, the life in the classroom. In W. Bishop & H. Ostrom (Eds.), Genre and writing: Issues, arguments, alternatives (pp. 19-26). Portsmouth NH: Boynton,.
Brooke, R. (2006). Migratory and regional identity. In B. Williams (Ed.) Identity papers: Literacy and power in higher education (pp. 141-153). Logan, UT. Utah State University Press.
Brooke, R. (2003). Introduction. In R. Brooke (Ed.). Rural voices: Place conscious education and the teaching of writing (pp. 1-20). New York: Teachers College Press.
Bullock, Ri. (2009). Norton field guide to writing. New York: W.W. Norton.
Davis, R. L. & Shadle, M. (2007). Teaching multiwriting: Researching and composing with multiple genres, media, disciplines and cultures. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Devitt, A., Bawarshi, A., & Reiff, M. J. (2004). Scenes of writing: Strategies for composing with genres. New York: Longman.
Devitt, A., Bawarshi, A., & Reiff, M. J. (2003). Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities. College English, 65(5), 541-558.
Freadman, A. (2002). Uptake. In R. Coe, L. Lingard, & T. Teslenko (Eds.), The rhetoric and ideology of genre: Strategies of stability and change (pp. 39-53). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.
Gruenwald, D. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3-12.
Hogg, C. (2007). Beyond agrarianism: Toward a critical pedagogy of place. In K. Donehower, C. Hogg, & E. Schell (Eds.), Rural literacies (pp. 120-154). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press.
Johnson-Eilola, J. (2004). The database and the essay: Understanding composition as articulation. In A. Wysocki (Ed.), Writing new media. Theory and applications for expanding the teaching of composition (pp. 199-236). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Johnson, C. & Moneysmith, J. (2005). Multiple genres, multiple voices: Teaching argument in composition and literature. Portsmouth, NH.
Lindquist, J. (2006). ATL 150: Mapping community spaces. Retrieved from Michigan State University Web site: https://www.koofers.com/michigan-state-university-msu/atl/150/
Mack, N. (2006). Ethical representation of working-class lives: Multiple genres, voices, and identities. Pedagogy, 6, 53-78.
Mack, N. (2002). The ins, outs, and in-betweens of multigenre writing. English Journal, 92(2), 91-98.
Miller, C. R. (1994). Genre as social action. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric (pp. 23-42). Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.
Presson, C. (2009). Genre writing project. Unpublished manuscript, Department of English, Wright State University, Fairborn, Ohio.
Rapp, Z. (2010). Genre writing project. Unpublished manuscript, Department of English, Wright State University, Fairborn, Ohio.
Romano, T. (2007). Blending genre, altering style: Writing multigenre papers. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton.
Schryer, C. (1993). Records as genre. Written Communication, 10, 200-234.
Seitz, D. (2011). Mocking discourse: Parody as pedagogy. Pedagogy, 11(2), 371-394.
Seitz, D. (2004). Social affirmation alongside social critique. Who can afford critical consciousness?: Practicing a pedagogy of humility. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Shroyer, K. (2010). Genre writing project. Unpublished manuscript, Department of English, Wright State University, Fairborn, Ohio.
Theobauld, P. (1997). Teaching the commons: Place, pride, and the renewal of community. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/05%3A_Pedagogies/5.01%3A_Place-Based_Genre_Writing_as_Critical_Expressivist_Practice.txt |
Multicultural Critical Pedagogy in the Community- Based Classroom: A Motivation for Foregrounding the Personal
Kim M. Davis
Oakland Community College
Composition is a complex, ever-changing field of study that owes its existence and continued growth to its link to the writing courses that almost all students must take as they enter the academy. Because of how these required courses are situated in the academy, theories and practices about student writing are constantly re-evaluated, causing multiple areas of focus. According to Richard Fulkerson in his article “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century” (2005), the current work in the field revolves around the following axiologies (or theories of value): (1) critical/cultural studies, (2) expressivism, and (3) procedural rhetoric.
The critical/cultural studies axiology is a major movement in the field marked by attention to cultural issues and/or the sociopolitical critique of critical pedagogy, which Fulkerson claims can supplant attention to the teaching of writing (2005, p. 659-660). In this approach, “the course aim is not ‘improved writing’ but ‘liberation’ from dominant discourse” (Fulkerson, 2005, p. 660). The expressivism axiology is about consciousness-raising and coming-to-voice, with a focus on more personal writing in which “many of the traditional features of academic writing, such as having a clear argumentative thesis and backing it up to convince a reader, are put on the back burner” (Fulkerson, 2005, p. 666). The axiology that pertains to the more traditional features of academic writing is procedural rhetoric, which includes focus on argument and students’ adoption of academic discourse (Fulkerson, 2005, p. 670).
Although Fulkerson’s axiologies are important for understanding current theoretical and pedagogical controversies in composition studies, I take somewhat of a departure in terms of how he has set aside the discussion of personal writing versus academic writing. I contend that the rise of critical/cultural goals actually reconfigures this debate in certain contexts. In particular, much contemporary interest in personal writing versus academic writing can be tied to community-based writing courses, also referred to as service learning courses. This chapter explores how community-based courses, when linked to critical pedagogy and multicultural goals, raise questions about the type of writing students should be asked to produce, personal or academic (Herzberg, 1997; Rhoads, 1997).
The intersection of community-based learning and critical pedagogy is an example of Fulkerson’s claim that the field has embraced a focus on critical studies. This convergence is viewed as an optimal strategy for promoting students’ engagement with critical course objectives because real-life experiences serve as catalysts for learning. As Cynthia Rosenberger in “Beyond Empathy” claims, “consensus exists in the literature that service learning is action and reflection integrated with academic curriculum to enhance student learning and to meet community needs” (2000, p. 24). In particular, Rosenberger argues community-based learning resonates with Freire’s problem-posing concept of education; she contends that problem posing education “has the potential to help students construct knowledge about economic and social complexities, and with this knowledge, to begin to entertain alternatives to the present reality” (2000, pp. 41-42). In this way—if the context of the community-based classroom is used inductively to help students explore alternative ways of knowing—critical pedagogy can be introduced without reinstating the banking model of education that Freire denounces by setting up an “I know” and “you don’t know” binary (Dobrin, 1997, p. 141). In Constructing Knowledge, Sidney Dobrin argues that “like most of the theories that come to composition, Freire’s theory of radical pedagogy creates tensions when converted from theory to practice” (1997, p. 139). More specifically, Dobrin questions applications of critical pedagogy where “teachers seem to appropriate the very agency they claim to wish to return to students by prescribing a particular set of values as to what and how students should think ‘critically’” (1997, p. 141). Instead, Dobrin encourages attention to the context in which teaching takes place, encouraging a more culturally-centered form of writing instruction (1997, p. 145).
Combining context and content as a pedagogical strategy, Robert Rhoads argues for a cultural studies approach to community-based learning to promote the postmodernist charge to foster dialogue across difference, which exemplifies Fulkerson’s claim that the field has turned to cultural studies. Rhoads calls for students to develop an ethic of care that results from an exploration of the self in relationship to diverse others. He argues that “fostering a sense of self grounded in an ethic of care is a necessity as our society becomes increasingly diverse and diffuse” (1997, p. 2). This approach falls under what Thomas Deans argues is the reigning “social perspective” in the field of composition students and which provides the theoretical reasoning for the growth of community-based programs (2000, p. 9). It is a perspective which, according to Cy Knoblauch and Lil Brannon, “presumes that American citizens should understand, accept and live amicably amidst the realities of cultural diversity—along axes of gender, race, class, and ethnicity” (1993, p. 6). More specifically, according to Gregory Jay in “Service Learning, Multiculturalism and the Pedagogies of Difference,”
service learning reinforces the necessity that students analyze their own ethnoracial and cultural identity formation, becoming consciously aware of how their identity affects others and how their perception of others is shaped by their identities. The experiences of cross-cultural collaboration promoted by service learning encourage such reflection, which is done formally in directive writing assignments and online postings or through a variety of student-centered projects. (2008, p. 260-261).
Students’ reflexive writing, informed through a Freirean lens situating action and reflection as praxis, is, as Jay contends, at the heart of community-based initiatives because it provides students with opportunities to think critically about them/us binaries and other culturally specific issues they encounter in their community contexts. However, questions about the type of reflexive writing students should be asked to produce in community-based writing classroom is why I maintain that the context calls for a renewed discussion about personal writing versus academic writing.
Three theorists whose work raises question about the type of writing students should be asked to produce in the community-based writing classroom—personal or academic—are Robert Rhoads, Bruce Herzberg, and Linda Flower. On opposite sides are Rhoads and Herzberg. Rhoads advocates a theoretical lens that involves personal reflection and explores the self and the self in relationship to the social (1997, p. 4). Herzberg, on the other hand, argues that the use of more traditional, abstract academic writing in lieu of personal, reflexive writing is necessary to promote students’ critical thinking about sociopolitical issues (1997, p. 58). However, it is Flower’s work that suggests a more nuanced approach. Her noted research mentions students’ assignments based on hybrid genres that include personal, academic, and community discourses. Although the focus in the field on her work has primarily been regarding hybrid texts that university students produce collaboratively with community members (Flower, 2003; Flower, 1997; Deans, 2000, p. 132), her scholarship hints at a type of student writing that is both reflexive and critical in ways that address the claims of both Rhoads and Herzberg.
While I do not dispute the value of having students produce more traditional academic writing, I do believe Herzberg’s movement away from the personal in students’ writing in connection with community-based learning limits the possibilities of critical pedagogy by not taking into account changing definitions of academic writing. First, a movement away from the personal in the experience and a return to the abstraction of academic discourse (Bizzell, 2002) could minimize an important claim about the impact of community-based learning; i.e., it promotes an understanding and critique of the self in relationship to a larger community (Flower, 1997; Rhoads, 1997). Secondly, the type of writing Herzberg describes as academic discourse, particularly when it is defined as working with the works of others (Bartholomae 2003), can be produced without the exclusion of the personal. Peter Elbow opens this collection with a discussion of the complexity—and dare I say expansiveness—of what is considered personal writing. According to Elbow, there is a continuum associated with personal writing in which the “topic can be personal or not; the language can be personal or not; and the thinking can be personal or not.” In Elbow’s claims, I hear the openness of Deans’ assertion about community-based writing classrooms. According to Deans, the “options available for writing about the community are almost without limit, ranging from the personal/affective to the social/analytical” (2000, p. 104).
The following sections in this chapter are based on a larger study that explores the efficacy of using an expanded notion of personal writing—one that foregrounds the personal yet contains elements of more traditional academic texts—in four sections of a community-based classroom with a multicultural approach to critical pedagogy (henceforth referred to “multicultural critical pedagogy”). The progression of writing assignments throughout each term prepared students to produce end-of-term projects that reflected personal yet academic writing. Using Elbow as an inspiration, sudents initially wrote personal “thinking” texts in which they explored their reactions to the site; shifting to a more Bartholomae-inspired approach, they then produced more traditional academic texts about the works of others before moving to the creation of the hybrid texts that were both personal and academic. I undertook a study of the students’ texts as artifacts of the type of work that gets done in the writing classroom and to support the claim that writing that foregrounds the personal is essential for providing students with opportunities to work through the emotional issues of border crossing.
I focus on students’ texts because, according to Susan Wells in Sweet Reason, pedagogy can be understood as the production of particular texts; “what students write provides us with a way to think about the knowledge that we are creating with them” (1996, p. 219-20). To set the groundwork for my study, I collected and coded four semesters’ worth of students’ papers, although I ultimately focus on two semesters since external factors at the community site for the other two semesters fundamentally changed the overall scope of my classroom and context. Nevertheless, to get a sense of what all students wrote for all key assignments before honing in on just two terms, I entered extended excerpts from 266 student essays so that I could sort and review the content of their texts by assignment. I then created coding categories based on Thomas Newkirk’s work on performative responses, and Rochelle Harris’ concept of inductive “emergent moments;” I then noted all references to race as this was central to my sense of a multicultural critical pedagogy. I subsequently re-analyzed student essays to look for specific features in these areas and entered information into 342 new data fields.
I touch upon the specifics of this intense process of data coding and analysis because of two driving rationales that underlie my study. First, I wanted to conduct an analysis that went beyond a theoretical debate about the efficacy of personal writing versus academic writing, especially as it relates to the multicultural course goal. Secondly, I wanted to look at the impact of an enactment of critical pedagogy given what instructors actually have at the end of the term—students’ writing—against the temporality of a college semester. It might not be possible over the course of a fifteen-week term to see the emergence of a student version of a Nelson Mandela or César Chávez. What is more likely to occur is social change at the incremental level as “small, fleeting, [and] local” moments” that represent the tinkering of progress in the lives of both teachers and students (Gallagher, 2002, p. 87).
Given the site of my study—the Greater Detroit area—I recognized that the exploration of issues of race and place issues could not be fully unpacked within the scope of a single semester. The narratives of negativity about Detroit and its African-American residents are deeply entrenched, and it was not easy for students to discard ingrained messages. Still, the process of constructing personal texts about such prevailing negative sentiments opened up the possibility of incremental changes in the students’ perceptions of the other. I contend that their racialized narratives allowed the students to create critical distances between themselves and their constructed beliefs in such a way that those beliefs became open for investigation and potential change. As Patricia Web Boyd claims in her chapter in this collection, “students need to begin with their own experiences in order to be active participants in the larger society.” Their experiential, personal texts provided them with opportunities “to see how the personal already intersects with and is embedded within cultural narratives, to study how their texts write them as they write the texts, and to understand how they name the world around them” (Harris, 2004, p. 405). As an assent to the Freirean claim that the world must be named before it can be changed (2003, p. 88), the study in this chapter investigates how personal writing helped students name their struggles with border crossing as part of the community-based program.
Before the Study: A Question of Ethics
Before moving to the specifics of this study about a multicultural enactment of critical pedagogy in a community-based classroom, I think it is necessary to address an ethical question tied to such an initiative: is it ethical to take students to communities they may otherwise not wish to enter under the guise that doing so might eventually help them become more civic minded? Because the Greater Detroit region in which my study was conducted is highly segregated, why should White university students be forced to interact with African-American middle schools students? University students might have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo (Bickford, 2002; Trainor, 2002)—the racial distance separating them from the African-American students and also marked by economic disparity. And what about the middle school students? Should they be forced to interact with university students who may view them as charity cases, individuals who are sub par by virtue of their race and economic standing (Bickford, 2002; Himley, 2004)? According to Beverly Tatum, a psychologist who explores racialized identify development, African-American youth can display hostility toward Whites in response to their growing awareness of racial inequalities (1997, p. 60). Thus, should either of the student groups be placed in a setting in which any group could be hostile toward the other? As Deans asserts, “Many teachers are wary, and rightly so, of the dangers of community service, and in particular the habit of casting individuals and communities in the uneven roles of ‘server’ and ‘served’” (2000, p. 21).
Answers to these questions are important and reflect that community-based learning always entails risk. While focusing on the answers to these difficult questions via exhaustive theoretical and philosophical deliberation could “ultimately lead to intellectual detachment, fatalism, or paralysis” (Deans, 2000, pp. 23; 24), I nevertheless believe that ethical issues should be considered and addressed on a case-by-case basis with the understanding that “perfect balance, perfect dialectic, perfect consideration will ever be elusive” (Deans, 2000,p. 24). Yet, I also believe any possible ethical issues regarding the project explored in this study should be subsumed under compelling reasons for implementing community-based learning within the context, a highly segregated region of the country. As Tatum and Thomas Sugrue both claim, segregation is costly, and any effort to address its effects is worth pursuing. Tatum makes the following statements about the impact of racial distances on White individuals in general:
When I ask White men and women how racism hurts them, they frequently talk about their fears of people of color, the social incompetence they feel in racially mixed situations, the alienation they have experienced between parents and children when a child marries into a family of color, and the interracial friendships they had as children that were lost in adolescence or young adulthood without their ever understanding why. (Sugrue, 2005, p. 14)
While Tatum calls attention to these general intangible costs, Sugrue, a native Detroiter and historian, focuses on the more identifiable impacts of racial segregation in the greater Detroit area. He argues the distance between Whites, African Americans, and other racial groups translates into separate but not equal school systems and “limits the access of many minorities to employment opportunities, particularly in predominantly White areas (largely rural and suburban areas) that have experienced rapid development and economic growth over the last half century” (1999, p. 6). Given these costs of segregation, community-based initiatives are important programs because of their attempts to help collapse them/us binaries between university students and community members. Although these programs cannot completely eradicate a history of separation and inequality that is reflected in the lives and minds of both groups, they represent a small and positive step toward a more socially just society. Additionally, the pedagogical cost of possibly grappling with a few ethical issues in a community-based classroom pales in comparison to the cost of doing nothing. In the context of pervasive regional segregation, the primary question of ethics should not be about issues that arise within the community-based classroom; the primary concern should be whether or not it is ethical to do nothing to address this social problem although doing so can be emotionally taxing.
A Study About Personal Writing
and Border Crossing
In the context of a qualitative, ethnographic research study I conducted in Detroit, Michigan—where racial segregation is the norm—personal writing became the vehicle to help bridge the connection between students’ lived realities regarding race and place and the critical pedagogy goal of multiculturalism. For two and a half years that began in January 2002, I participated in a community-based initiative in which intermediate writing students worked with Detroit middle school students as part of an after-school program. For my first term in the site, I was merely as a participant observer, studying the dynamics in preparation to teach and looking for possible areas of research. When I began teaching in the site, the community-based school was a charter institution associated with the university. During my last two terms, the school underwent a change in location, administration, and student population as its classification shifted from that of a charter institution to a Detroit public school. Because of this shift, which created a fundamentally different community site, my research focuses on my last two semesters, Fall 2003 and Winter 2004.
The writing that university students produced was tied to a semester-long ethnographic project that included a range of assignments that began with personal writing, moved to more traditional academic writing, and ended with a hybrid genre which included elements of both academic writing and personal writing but foregrounded the personal. David Seitz presents this type of ethnographic student research as particularly effective when using a multicultural critical pedagogy in urban settings. According to Seitz
many critical writing teachers in urban schools design their teaching practices on a process of “defamiliarizing the familiar,” making the familiar strange, urging students to look at experience through sociological or anthropological lenses. This approach can be persuasive especially for urban students who have experienced various forms of sociocultural conflict. (2004, p. 67)
The text used to help the university students conduct their research, H. L. Goodall’s Writing the New Ethnography (2000), presents a type of ethnographic work that foregrounds critical thinking about one’s own positioning—i.e., gender, race, ethnicity, social class, regional particularities, etc.—and how that positioning affected interpretations of various cultures and contexts.
Because my ethnographic study centers on students’ texts as a key data source for artifacts of the pedagogy, I relied on the work of Charles Bazerman, Thomas Newkirk, and Rochelle Harris to inform my methodology. To better understand the efficacy of instruction in critical pedagogy along with personal writing and academic writing, I synthesized their approaches so that I could evaluate students’ texts in terms of how the moves in those texts represented possible changes in thinking and how those moves correlate to the type of writing students produced, both personal and academic. Bazerman’s work was useful for viewing pedagogical strategies and texts as exerting influence upon students’ writing. Newkirk’s and Harris’ scholarship was useful for investigating elements within students’ texts that reflected, or did not reflect, pedagogical goals.
In particular, I used Bazerman’s concepts of genre systems and genre sets that he outlines in What Writing Does and How It Does It (2004). Within the ethnographic research of a classroom, Bazerman claims analyses of genre systems (pedagogical practices and the flow of course documents) and genre sets (the specific course documents) can help one see “the range and variety of the writing work”; “how individuals writing any new text are intertextually situated within a system and how their writing is directed by genre expectations and supported by systemic systems”; “the effectiveness of the total systems and the appropriateness of each of the genred documents in carrying forward that work”; and “whether any change in any of the documents, distribution, sequence, or flow might improve the total activity system.” (2004, p. 326). Regarding the work in this study, the combining of Bazerman’s concepts of the genre system and the genre set of a classroom were used as a method to analyze how the differences between pedagogical texts and practices and the contexts of the writing classrooms and the community-based setting impacted students’ writing.
While Bazerman’s work was useful for analyzing the systemic factors of the classroom on students’ writing, I used Newkirk’s and Harris’ work to investigate what took place within students’ writing to hint at how they grappled with the course’s multicultural goal of border crossing. Newkirk’s work in The Performance of Self in Student Writing (1997) was used to analyze the choices students made in their writing that reflected the critical pedagogy aim of multiculturalism. Confronting issues of race, ethnicity, etc., can be an emotionally loaded undertaking in the writing classroom (hooks, 1994; Jay, 2008; Trainor, 2002), and it has been argued that personal writing allows students to make the emotional connections necessary to reflect upon and process moments of border crossing (Kamler, 2001; Micciche, 2007; Rhoads, 1997).
Newkirk, a proponent of personal writing, identifies performative responses in students’ texts that reflect the possibility of progressive movement or personal development (1997, p. 22), which in the case of this research, is movement toward a more critical, multicultural worldview. He identifies several performances of the self frequently present in students’ personal writing: the “turns,” also known as before-and-after conversion narratives; expressions of emotion; student optimism; heroes and antiheroes, or testimonials (for the living) and eulogies (for the dead); and pleasure, or more specifically, hedonism. Of the performances that Newkirk identifies, it is two—the “turns” and optimism—that are relevant to this investigation. Turns are before-and-after conversion narratives that show “the writer as someone open to the potentially transforming effect of a life sensitively encountered” (Newkirk, 1997, p. 13). Optimism is a youthful belief in the “ability to transform the disagreeable” (Newkirk, 1997, p. 42). I coded student essays looking for these turns as part of a critical pedagogy aimed at student movement toward more multicultural awareness and border crossing. Although these turns in students’ writing might otherwise be easily dismissed (Newkirk, 1997, p. 10), a reading of students’ texts through the lens of critical pedagogy counters such a stance.
To investigate students’ texts for the critical pedagogy goal of movement toward critical consciousness, I used Harris’ concept of “emergent moments.” The term “emergent moments” “names the point at which the personal, the critical, and the rhetorical intersect in a text, a point at which the student can hold multiple perspectives simultaneously and reflexively,” “allowing them to become authors of their own experiences, to resist or revise cultural narratives, and to see opportunities to critique and transform themselves and the cultural systems around them” (Harris, 2004, p. 403). Or stated another way, it is at that textual moment when students consider themes and/or see issues as part of larger cultural realities. I analyzed students’ texts for the “emergent moments” that represented responses to the pedagogical goal of critical consciousness as critique of issues tied to the community site.
The story of the community that constitutes the setting of the course is one of segregation. The Detroit metropolitan area is one of the most segregated areas of the country, and as a result, many individuals live in isolated pockets of racial groups. Regarding the community-based writing course, this segregated region 1) affected who entered the writing classroom and, in particular, the lived experiences of those students in relationship to the curricular goal of critical pedagogy, and 2) was central to the systemic issues embedded in the course design, i.e., the selection of the site, course readings, and course assignments.
Often, these community-based experiences represented the first time many of the university students had sustained contact with individuals who were African American. Although Wayne State University is located within the city of Detroit, which has a large African-American population, its student body does not reflect the demographics of the city (about 80% of Detroit’s population is African American, but over 70% of Wayne State’s student population is not (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008; WSU Student Profile, 2006). Many of the students who attend the university come from surrounding counties that are predominantly White. Or in a few cases, they come from communities that are non-White but also non-African-American; for example, the greater Detroit area includes enclaves of racially segregated communities of Middle Eastern and Hispanic peoples.
This racial segregation is exacerbated by a prevailing sentiment portrayed repeatedly in local media: Detroit is a “bad place to be” and its African-American residents are to be feared. Because of this, it was advantageous to enact a cultural studies approach to critical pedagogy that provided writing students with an opportunity to address these emotional commonplaces. About 74% of the student participants, or 17 out of 23, included negative statements about Detroit in their beginning-of-the-term assignment in which they explored their initial reactions to the community site. The six students who did not do so included four of the six African-American students, all Detroit residents, and two other students who attended European schools during their middle school years. The following comments made by a White male student in a beginning-of-the-term assignment exemplifies the impact of anti-Detroit messages that are a part of the daily realities of regional residents:
I thought, there was no way I was going to a public school, and especially in downtown Detroit. That’s where all the black people live. I had heard many stories about the danger in such urban neighborhoods, and I wasn’t about to put myself in any situation like that. Not only that, but I didn’t have anything in common with these people. Even the color of our skin wasn’t the same. I don’t listen to hip-hop music and I can’t even understand the idioms they use, or their slang. I had heard many stories where black people were considered illiterate and lazy. Most of them were thought to be involved in criminal activities and don’t value family, honesty and respect. Women are viewed as objects of sexual satisfaction and are often abused. As I was told, the neighborhoods that these people live in, after a while, would turn into slums or ghettos. In their families, in quite a few instances, children don’t even know their fathers. Even their style is different from what I am used to. They like flashy gold or platinum chains, bright color clothing and like to wear hats and have different hairstyles. As some White people believe, they are supposed to be inferior to them and, as in the past, they should be restricted to a separate territory, in order to be controlled.
This excerpt may seem like an exaggeration to anyone who is not familiar with the greater Detroit area, and those who are teachers of college writing might immediately want to question the student’s sweeping generalizations regarding African Americans. However, few who live in the region would discount the reality that many, if not all, of the perceptions or misconceptions that this student holds are expressed by many individuals who live in and around the city of Detroit. While I do call attention to this phenomenon as it relates to students’ comments in their essays, I am not doing so to reify the dichotomies, or the them/us barriers, between students and community members. Community-based initiatives are designed to challenge and ideally change such dichotomies (Rhoads, 1997; Trainor, 2002). Rather, I underscore students’ statements about Detroit in recognition that the pervasiveness of the perceived dichotomies between the city and its suburbs impacted what students wrote about the community-based experience.
Harris claims critical work can occur in such personal texts about topics and issues that are significant to individuals because “the texts we choose to write are important sites to understand the self, the world, and culture” (2004, p. 402). She focuses on the “composing and recomposing of reality and the self through language that happens in personal essays, autobiographies, and memoirs—to name a few genres” as critical work necessary for developing Freirean praxis (Harris, 2004, pp. 402; 405). From Harris’ perspective, critical pedagogy is implicitly personal because “a person has first to move to a knowledge of the world being named for him or her and then do the intellectual and emotional work necessary to rename his or her world” (2004, p. 405). In the critical classroom, then, storytelling becomes a medium for change (Harris, 2004, p. 407). Because of the widespread negative sentiments associated with place and race—inner city Detroit and its African-American citizens—students’ established beliefs and/or emotional responses were not overlooked but elicited, regardless of whether the responses were positive or negative.
Without opportunities to explore negative emotional responses, Jennifer Seibel Trainor claims that white students in particular might resist a multicultural-based critical pedagogy where whiteness is essentialized in discussions of racism and class. White students are presented with a worldview that situates them, solely by virtue of birth, “as perpetrators of injustice who must be taught to disavow whiteness” (Trainor, 2002, p. 634). In such instances, Trainor argues, many students will “read multicultural texts about difference in essentialist and, thus, defensive terms” (2002, p. 642). Instead, educators should be critically aware of this unintended outgrowth—e.g., essentialized whiteness and an “angry white identity”—and provide space for discourse that allows white students to structure identities outside of a limited rhetorical framing (2002, p. 647).
The progression of writing assignments throughout the term, from personal to academic to hybrid, which included elements of both but foregrounded the personal, was essential to providing students with opportunities to work through the emotional issues of border crossing. It was necessary for students to begin at the personal juncture of emotion as a route to engagement with the site and the course content related to the multicultural course aim because, as Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio claim in “We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education,” minimizing the emotional aspects would have been “encouraging students to develop the sorts of knowledge that inherently do not transfer well to real-world situations” (2007, p. 9).
The move to more traditional academic writing (i.e., article summaries and annotated bibliographies) as an exploration of issues that grew out of students’ ethnographic investigation of the community-based context was key to helping
students develop broader worldviews regarding sociocultural issues. It gave them practice with what David Bartholomae identifies as academic writing, i.e., the ability to “work with the past, with key texts … with others’ terms … with problems of quotation, citation, and paraphrase” (1995, p. 66). Bartholomae argues that producing such writing helps students adopt an insider stance that reflects “the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse” of the academic community (2003, p. 623). While having students write both personal and more traditional essays were central to carrying forward the work of the term as part of the classroom genre system (Bazerman, 2004), it was the hybrid genre that students used in their final project that most helped them consider the complex work of border crossing that was embedded in the multicultural, critical pedagogy course goal.
In my analysis of students’ final projects, I used Harris’ identification of “emergent moments” of critical praxis, reflection and action (Freire, 2003, p. 79). I looked at that textual moment when students consider themes, see issues in their texts as part of larger cultural issues but with recognition that the “emergent moment “cannot be imposed (although it certainly can be facilitated)” (Harris, 2004, pp. 403; 413)—an important claim given the inductive process of ethnographic writing and meaning making. Sometimes they were brief glimpses of students’ critical thinking embedded in longer narratives. However, these moments are worthy of analysis and consideration as part of a progressive process of change; they reflected Newkirk’s “optimistic turns” that hinted at possible steps toward change. As Chris Gallagher claims, mainstream critical pedagogy calls for grand, sweeping gestures of change, but this is not the stuff of everyday writing classrooms (2002, p. 87). In “the unpredictable and messy terrain of pedagogy, we are not likely to find many grand moments of social transformation, but we are likely to find important (though small, fleeting, and decidedly local) moments” (Gallagher, 2002, p. 87). Thus, I looked at the students’ essays for “emergent moments” of critical thinking as a way to investigate the efficacy of a multicultural critical pedagogy.
From my analysis of students’ essays from the Winter 2004 term, I focus in this chapter on the essay of 47-year-old Eva. Her entire essay is about the interpersonal connections made, and not made, during the term as she explores the distance and hostility between the university students and the middle school students and the ways in which she believed university students contributed to the environment.
Eva wrote two distinct drafts of her final project because she was initially hesitant about whether she had the license to write about the emotionally charged atmosphere she perceived in the community-based site. Eva stopped me after one class session and asked if she could write about the problematic, interpersonal dynamics of the after-school class. I recorded some of our conversation in my fieldnotes for the day:
Eva wanted to write about the racial divide that had occurred this term between the middle school students and the non-African-American Wayne Students. We had talked the previous week about the topic. I communicated to her that she had an excellent topic; she just needed to go ahead and make the analysis she alluded to in her first draft.
She was hesitant to set up the dichotomy between her and the other non-African-American university students. It was as if doing so, even in her paper, would be politically incorrect … Why did she feel silenced in her desire to express this racially-related dynamic? Had she previously been silenced? Was she oppressed (Freire)? Had she not had the experience of presenting her own voice in text?
Because Eva had difficulty putting her positionality in the beginning of her paper, the text was choppy and disconnected. It seemed as if she felt compelled to maintain a distance from the issue, from the text.
I talked to Eva about the discussions we had earlier in the term about positionality and the ethics of ethnography versus what could be considered the more traditional, anthropological telling of the other. “You have to put yourself on the page. If you talk about your positionality, your age, your race, how they affected what you saw and how you reacted to the setting, then I think it will be easier for you to move into what you really want to talk about,” I stated.
“You mean I can go there?” she grinned, tilted her head.
“Yes, you can.” I smiled in reply.
“Alright!” Eva smiled ecstatically, “You told me I could, so I’m going there.”
Eva’s response to my statement that she could write about what she felt was problematic affirms Barbara Kamler’s claim that “to be authorized by the academy to write about one’s life is a powerful and often startling experience for university students” (2001, p. 157). Her initial hesitancy about addressing a sensitive topic reflects that, given her age, Eva more than likely attended school at a time when academic writing comprised a constructed worldview that spoke “through an academic persona who is objective, trying to prevent any emotions or prejudices from influencing the ideas in the writing” (Bizzell, 2002, p. 2). Nevertheless, Eva did revise her essay to take a more personal and ethnographic stance. Following is an extended excerpt from her text:
I have been privileged to mentor in the [after-school program] with several bright enthusiastic African-American middle school students … I intend to investigate information on the mentor/students relationships that I observed at [the middle school] …. There are four African-American female mentors. Our ages range from 20-47. We all seem to be straight-forward, generous, and thoughtful. These three characteristics impacted our roles as mentors and we seem to have a good rapport with the students. The students like us. There are several male/female White mentors. While listening to their conversations, it seemed evident that they all live outside of the city of Detroit. They reside in the Tri-county area, namely the suburbs. There is one mentor who is always making some negative comment about Detroit and the people that they see on their way to UPS. He is a White male mentor who always seems to have the right answer and is occasionally humorous. He would talk quietly and could draw other White mentors into his conversations. However, when a Black mentor intervened, he would draw up and be quiet. I threw a flag up in my mind and I thought, “He needs to be watched.”
I spend a lot of time tutoring urban Black students. I am very much attuned to the interaction between the young middle school students and the mentors …. The middle school students … need to be monitored by their mentors; otherwise I’ve noticed that the whole time spent in the session [the middle school students] will be playing games and listening to, or watching, videos on the computers …. As I observed throughout the room, some [middle] students, especially some male students, were isolating themselves from their mentors, mostly by being preoccupied on the computers.
I overheard this conversation with two male middle school students as they were waiting for their mentors … “I know he does not like me. I don’t know why we have to do this. I could probably show him more about the computer than he can show me. He never does anything. They don’t even talk to us. He probably doesn’t even know my name.”… As I turned to observe the mentor that they were discussing, it was the White male mentor, the White male that always had the right answer and was occasionally humorous. And then my flag went up. Maybe, I thought all parties involved were having a culture shock reaction …
I believe the students felt the mentor’s communication skills represented a problem. As I observed the mentor, the mentor never approached the students with a “hello.” He always waited for the instructor to tell everyone to group up with [their] mentees … Although, there were no African-American male mentors, I believe they would have settled for one of us. Maybe the students thought the mentor was not willing to work and was afraid to ask questions because they were Black. Maybe the students thought that he was going to make it hard for them and try to set them up to fail. When I looked at the mentor, I thought, “Where was his sense of humor, the I’m the man kind of attitude?” His facial expression was like, “I really don’t want to be here.”… I noticed a vicious cycle had taken place that had pitted the two male students against their mentor. It seemed like they were never going to resolve their differences. I believe that until the mentor begins to see his problem and seek out a solution, he will continue to engage in a struggle interacting with Black students.
Many problems attributed to “Children of Color“ are actually the result of miscommunication at school and other people’s children struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics of inequality plaguing our system (Delpit, 1995) …. The person in the role of a mentor, especially if the person is from another ethnic and cultural background, must be keenly aware of the miscommunication that can result from cultural diversity. Every effort must be made to keep communication open and free from prejudice …. I made a promise to myself to share this information with the White mentor especially if he planned to teach in a predominantly Black school district.
This excerpt from Eva’s essay shows her attempts to make sense out of the hostility and distance between university and middle school students that persisted throughout the term. Her reasoning explores the reality of the racially segregated region in which the university and middle school students reside. Her essay also demonstrates the course’s pedagogical goal of having students produce texts that could be called hybrid, including elements of the personal and the academic. Eva cites Lisa Delpit and others in her argument about ways to create connections with African-American youth. Throughout Eva’s essay is the theme that the interpersonal distance between university and middle students was problematic for her, particularly given the reason why she had returned to academia: to become a teacher.
Eva’s move to critical consciousness—echoing Freire’s praxis, “the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (2003, p. 79), or the “emergent moment,”—happens at the end of her essay when she claims, “I made a promise to myself to share this information with the White mentor especially if he planned to teach in a predominantly Black school district.” In this claim to action is praxis; she has seen the impact of the interpersonal and often hostile distance and is willing to take action against it if faced with a similar situation. What Eva produced is an essay in which she immerses herself in ways that clearly foreground her personal connection to the middle school students. For example, she begins her essay by recounting what she believes are the personal characteristics that she and the other three African-American university students possess: “We all seem to be straight-forward, generous, and thoughtful.” She then spends the bulk of her essay explicating why she and the other females were liked by the middle school students and some of the White university students were not. Eva’s essay demonstrates a central claim regarding enactments of critical pedagogy: emotions matter. As Laura Micciche reminds us, “emotion matters drive motives for action, speech, judgment, and decision-making” (2007, p. 105), important elements given a pedagogical goal of student movement towards a consciousness that leads to change. The absence of emotional connections can lead to objectified analyses of critical issues that are more intellectual games than potential steps toward individual or collective action (Barnett, 2006, p. 361).
Given these assertions about emotion driving action (Micciche, 2007; Barnett, 2006), it is not surprising that Eva’s essay ends with a claim to individual action. She maintains she will take future action against “miscommunication that can result from cultural diversity.” I believe this action was arrived at inductively because Eva was able to establish an emotional connection to her essay topic. Because Eva felt strongly about what she had observed, she was willing to take the writerly risk to tell her story, one that I believe was aided by the fact that students throughout the term were invited to write in a genre that foregrounded the personal. As Jane Danielwicz claims in her essay, Personal Genres, Public Voices, “writing in personal genres fights alienation (common to academic pursuits from the student’s point of view) and instead promotes connectivity: ‘You are a part of this world’” (2008, p. 443). Eva took the risk to express her desire to be a change agent because of her experiences in the community-based course in which multicultural critical pedagogy had been enacted. Her response hinted at ways in which she could promote border crossing in diverse settings.
A Few Final Words
Emotions matter in general regarding all learning but are particularly central when course content asks students to do the socially complex work of border crossing. As Immordino-Yang and Damasio claim, “emotion-related processes are required for skills and knowledge to be transferred from the structured school environment to real-world decision making because they provide an emotional rudder to guide judgment and action” (2007, p. 3). Thus, in a community-based-writing classroom or any writing classroom in which multicultural critical pedagogy is implemented, students must be given an opportunity to write in ways that allow them to be emotional. Reflexive, personal writing allows students to emote about their experiences of border crossing and construct themselves as influencing, and being influenced by, contexts. When elements of academic writing are added in such texts where the personal is foregrounded, the end result is a hybrid text where emotions meet critical concepts and students are given an opportunity to move from having knowledge about difference to making real-world, incremental steps toward embracing difference.
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5.03: The Economy of Expressivism and Its Legacy of Low
The Economy of Expressivism and Its Legacy of Low/No-Stakes Writing
Sheri Rysdam
Utah Valley University
Nothing makes evident the inextricable link between writing and the social quite like teaching college writing. The ways in which differences in expectations and outcomes can sometimes be attributed to social class are often easily ignored by educators and administrators. Used purposefully, however, expressivism can be a pedagogical approach that helps support poor and working class students who otherwise are often told that they are “underprepared” or not ready to fully participate in college. Though the popularity of expressivist composition pedagogy as an overarching pedagogical theory has been out of favor by some for well over a decade, the value of an important component of expressivist pedagogy—the practice of low-stakes freewriting—remains. Consequently expressivist pedagogy can help struggling students find success in the writing classroom.
That expressivism has the potential to help support poor and working class students might come as a surprise to some, given the predominant arguments against it—namely that it is classist, favoring an upper and middle class aesthetic. Linda Adler-Kassner, for example, writes that expressivism is about “the achievement of individual success and satisfaction” (1998, p. 211). She continues, stating that “expressivists implied that writing would help students unearth their genuine selves” and could “fulfill their own needs and desires for self-understanding” (1998, p. 218). However, Adler-Kassner also admits that expressivism risks taking for granted a familiarity with what we might describe as middle class academic discourses where students are commonly afforded the luxury of experimenting with self-exploration and discovery. Students who are not already familiar with such educational environments may not feel they can afford to “find” themselves. For them, finding a job might be more important that finding one’s “self.” Nevertheless, done well, expressivism has the potential to forge intellectual connections between the personal, political, and economic.
To invoke an economic metaphor, we might imagine that expressivism has a certain laissez-faire quality to it. In a more conventional, current-traditional classroom, teacher intervention might be compared to government regulation, and the proliferation of student writing seen as equivalent to capital gain. But in an expressivist approach, student writing is less regulated by the instructor, just as the capital gained in a laissez-faire economic model is usually unregulated by the government. What I wish to do now is illustrate several examples of more prescriptive, current-traditional approaches that resemble the former, followed by contrasting expressivist examples that illustrate the latter.
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Using economic metaphors to describe educational models is not novel. Paulo Freire did it most notably, reminding us that an educational experience is an economic experience, both literally and metaphorically. Indeed, it is impossible to engage the concepts of literacy and deficit thinking in education without evoking Paulo Freire’s apt metaphor for traditional education as a “banking” model of instruction. In Freire’s metaphor, the teacher makes a deposit of information into the student, who is then richer for having received it. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire claims that the “banking” concept works like this: “the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” (1993, p. 53). In this model, students are not taught critical analysis, but are instead taught to memorize and regurgitate.
Although compositionists have significantly revised the outcomes of the composition classroom, in many current-traditional writing classes there is still an emphasis on grammar and form at the cost of relevance and meaning for the writer. While critical literacy and inclusion are often valued in the field of composition in theory, the practice does not always play out. A deficit approach to writing pedagogy still abounds. Freire writes, “the capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed” (1993, p. 54). He continues, “the banking concept of education, which serves the interest of oppression, is also necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects” (1993, p. 58). Freire reminds us that while education has incredible emancipatory potential, students can also be oppressed in educational institutions. Current-traditional modes of composition pedagogy all too often resemble the “banking concept” Freire describes.
Mina Shaughnessy was not the first scholar to argue for pedagogies of inclusion that seek to help students not acclimated to academic writing, particularly those from poor and working class backgrounds. Shaughnessy’s work paved the way for recognizing that the voices in diverse student populations belong in and enrich the classroom environment. In Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing, Shaughnessy concludes by stating, “teaching [students] to write well is not only suitable but challenging work for those who would be teachers and scholars in a democracy” (2003, p. 317). Yet as much as Shaughnessy’s work fueled an interest in basic writers, and critiqued practices that exclude certain populations, her work is not unproblematic. In a critique of Shaughnessy’s approach to basic writing, Joseph Harris points out the seeming contradictions between her practice and her theory (1996). For example, in Errors and Expectations (1977), Shaughnessy actually recreates many of the practices of exclusion that she otherwise condemns; five of her eight book chapters are focused on traditional conventions: “Handwriting and Punctuation, Syntax, Common Errors, Spelling, and Vocabulary.” Despite her introduction, which makes it very clear that Shaughnessy is writing about students who are very new to higher education, much of the book reinforces dated “skills and drills” notions of teaching writing. Harris claims that “Errors and Expectations … argues for a new sort of student but not a new sort of intellectual practice. It says that basic writers can also do the kind of work that mainstream students have long been expected to do; it doesn’t suggest that work be changed in any significant ways” (Harris, 1996, p. 79). So while Shaughnessy argues for inclusion, she does not make the crucial move to inclusive pedagogical strategies associated with critical literacy, alternative discourse, or appeals to the student’s right to her own language.
Nor are such inconsistencies relegated to the past. Deficit thinking is still a prominent part of current-traditionalist pedagogy. For example, a popular textbook used for introductory composition courses, They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (Graff, G., & C. Birkenstein, 2009), follows a deficit approach to writing instruction. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein send the message that academic writing is a mysterious process that many students do not already know, one that must be taught to the student because their current way of writing is unacceptable. They provide fill-in-the-blank templates for academic writing, like the following model:
In discussions of X, one controversial issue has been _____. On the one hand, _____ argues _____. On the other hand, _____ contends _____. Others even maintain _____. My own view is _____. (2009, p. 222)
Graff and Birkenstein’s templates include some of the most common rhetorical moves made in academic arguments. In the introduction, Graff and Birkenstein write, “often without consciously realizing it, accomplished writers routinely rely on a stock of established moves that are crucial for communicating sophisticated ideas” (2009, p. 1). Later they write, “less experienced writers, by contrast, are often unfamiliar with these basic moves and unsure how to make them in their own writing” (2009, p. 1). As a result they seek to convince student writers that they lack the proper knowledge to make these rhetorical patterns found in academic writing, thus likely making students distrustful of their own writing processes. And since many of the students Graff and Birkenstein have in mind might be from diverse populations, their current-traditionalist model seeks to naturalize and homogenize student writing. The negative effects of their claim that college writing is mysterious, and that new college students are underprepared, hardly seems worth the potential benefits.
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In contrast to these current-traditional perspectives, Peter Elbow claims that the composition classroom should be a place where students get comfortable with the processes of writing. He wants students to experience writing for its empowering potential, which is how he experiences writing. Elbow writes, “I get deep satisfaction from discovering meanings by writing—figuring out what I think and feel through putting down words; I naturally turn to writing when I am perplexed—even when I am just sad or happy; I love to explore and communicate with others through writing; writing is an important part of my life” (1995, p. 489). From this one can glean that teaching conventional form and grammar is not necessarily as high on Elbow’s list of pedagogical priorities as sharing and communication. In one of his discourses with David Bartholomae, he tells him, “I simply want to intervene much less than you do” (Elbow, P., & Bartholomae, D., 1997, p. 507). Elbow wants to intervene less in students’ writing as a way to empower and encourage. In my experience, intervention unfortunately often comes in the form of finding errors and making and heavy-handed corrections—teacherly activities that can do very little to encourage and inspire thinking and writing. Elbow explains how he encourages students, writing that “the most precious thing I can do is provide spaces where I don’t also do their thinking for them” (Elbow, P., & Bartholomae, D., 1997, p.508). Elbow continues: “students easily distrust their experience, and we do harm if we try to ‘correct’ them about their own experience” (Elbow, P., & Bartholomae, D., 1997, p.509). Elbow wants students to learn to trust their knowledge and experience. And it has been my experience, both personally and professionally, that students who are new to academia are particularly vulnerable to distrusting their own experiences, their writing, and even their way of speaking.
Ultimately, what I find most valuable about Elbow’s expressivism as a counter to deficit thinking is that his pedagogy does not assume students, especially those who are new to academia, are empty receptacles for knowledge or too unprepared for college writing. In this way, Elbow’s contribution to the field provides us with potentially revolutionary possibilities, and has potential emancipatory power for students. The message of a pedagogy of freewriting asks students to begin writing and believes that all students can make valuable contributions, wherever they are, in their lives and educational journeys. Elbow’s approach is more about helping students express themselves through writing and not about teaching them about how bad their writing is and how much they need to change.
For those who are concerned with the inclusion of diverse student populations, Elbow’s argument is appealing. Clearly, Elbow gets satisfaction from writing and that resonates with many teachers of writing. However, Elbow’s approach is not without limits. While it can be especially inclusive for poor and working class student populations in that it allows these students to enter the academic conversation sooner, some argue that it actually favors middle and upper-class students who are already competent at reflection and generating ideas and writing. Not only has Elbow argued for low-stakes writing, he actively argues that being a “writer” and being an “academic writer” are not only two different things, but that they are also at odds with each other. Here is what he admits: “I choose the goal of writer over that of academic” (1995, p. 490). He writes, “If my goal is to get them [students] to take on the role of academic, I should get them to distrust language” (1995, p. 495). It is clear that Elbow resists traditional, academic modes of writing, but he makes many compelling points that provide practical approaches to being more inclusive.
Because freewriting asks students to start writing immediately, they can never be too “underprepared” to begin. Students begin writing—now. Not only can expressivism be used as a means for understanding social class as it plays out in college-level writing, but it can work to address the corporate, capitalist economic models that are increasingly at play in today’s educational systems. Since finding pedagogical ways to support diverse student populations is crucial for a democratic educational model, I argue that there is still something to be learned from a critical expressivist pedagogy. Expressivist pedagogies can provide models that allow for the academic success of diverse student populations, offering a counter to the deficit models found in current-traditional practices. Expressivism is less obsessed with how “underprepared” students are for college (especially students from diverse, nonacademic backgrounds) and is more concerned with the idea of facilitating writing, as well as intellectual liberation, for all students.
*
Concepts taken from expressivist practices—like freewriting, as well as much of the emancipatory language of expressivist rhetoric in general—continue to flourish in composition instruction today. Self-discovery, personal voice, and expression are all tropes one finds circulating in the discourse of expressivist pedagogy. In expressivism, the practice of writing can be viewed as a metacognitive process that allows students to think through ideas, change their minds, and think about process. Like other methods of writing instruction, expressivism promotes a reflective and recursive approach.
Admittedly, in many expressivist pedagogies, attention to an audience can be de-emphasized; students use writing for their own means, as a way to understand their own thinking. A critical expressivist model cannot ignore the economic realities of the educational institution, and perhaps more importantly, the educational realities of students’ lives. Victor Villanueva writes that students may rightly be interested in “literacy of the kind that leads to certification, access to high school, maybe to college, the middle class” (1997, p. 633). As much as enlightenment and self-discovery might be the personal pedagogical goal for some teachers, in the end, those teachers are always still constrained by the institution or “the demands of the local chair, or university president” (Villanueva, 1997, p. 635). Students, especially those who are new to college culture, are often still interested in writing, thinking, and speaking in a way that might provide the opportunity for upward mobility if they should so choose to climb. While teaching form and academic literacy cannot be ignored, some aspects of expressivism, like low-stakes writing, can meet the demand for increasing students’ academic literacy, while simultaneously valuing the multiple discourses and knowledge they bring to the classroom. This is especially important for those students who do not already have the kinds of literacy that may be conducive to class mobility and success in college.
After all, the personal, the academic, and the economic are always simultaneously at work in the composition classroom. In James Ray Watkins’ book, A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies (2009), he argues that the evolution of a student’s “sensibility” is a sensibility that can be taught, and the writing classroom is one place where that can occur. Watkins writes, “students come to college, the cliché goes, to get a well-paying, secure job; professors teach, in contrast, in order to create critical thinkers and effective democratic citizens” (2009, p. 116). For some students, economic concerns of class mobility and employment are unavoidable realities to their academic experience. Other students might not have the luxury of a time-consuming contemplation and reflection traditionally associated with higher education. Either way, the experience is always also an economic one. If institutions of higher education are unable to achieve change, and “if we do not begin to confront the dominance of economics over democracy,” then Watkins argues that “we will increasingly find only the most middle-class students in our classroom” (2009, p. 164). Without some awareness of the status models that are formed in English studies, poor, working class, and first generation students will likely be further alienated in the classroom.
Today’s expressivism is not about ignoring the economic, the academic, nor the audience. While it can be about discovering the personal through the act of writing, it is not only about emphasizing self-expression of emotions. Instead, it can be a way to teach students how to use writing as a tool for thinking and a way for students to learn how to generate writing and familiarize themselves with acts of writing. A new expressivist approach to writing instruction might require teachers to develop strategies that allow a lot of classroom space for low-stakes writing and give students opportunities to get used to the process of writing, which can be especially important for poor and working class students. This is not to neglect form altogether. In fact, as teachers allow this process of expression in class, they can also begin to provide feedback to students and begin to teach form and genre and other rhetorical moves that will be conducive to the academic success of a diverse student population beyond the first-year composition classroom. This occurs while some elements of form (those necessary for learning the kinds of literacies that might lead to future success) are still taught in the classroom. That way, even if a student is not already familiar with the various modes of academic rhetoric, they can still experience success producing writing and improving writing through practice and exposure to academic texts.
An expressivist position in writing instruction is all about a desire to encourage students to trust themselves and get comfortable with writing. In this model of writing instruction, students learn to trust the writing process and trust that it can be a useful way to develop their thoughts. Expressivists like myself might see the They Say/I Say model as perpetuating student fears that their writing is not already good enough, that they are unprepared, and that there are secret templates that must be mastered for success in college writing. If students learn to distrust their writing, or “distrust language” in Elbow’s words (1995, p. 495), then they might be less likely to turn to writing as a mode of communication, developing thoughts, or as a creative outlet. This potential injury to students’ relationship to writing is not conducive to perpetuating student comfort with writing or the ability to turn to writing as a safe place to work through thoughts.
Ultimately, the field of composition employs a diverse population of teachers, with their diverse approaches to pedagogy and theory. I like that diversity. It allows individual teachers to teach to their strengths, while considering the goals and political climates of their institutions. In that regard, no one prescriptive “how to” works for all teachers of composition. Though it has problematic interpretations, expressivism ought not be thrown out. In my own teaching, I emphasize the kind of low-stakes writing that Elbow promotes, where students are able to generate writing—to get familiar with and used to writing as a mode of creative and intellectual expression.
Some students come to college for the improved job possibilities, some to climb the social ladder, and some to stay for the life-changing process of receiving a higher education. Deficit thinking, which sees students as empty receptacles that must be filled with the ideologies of the teacher, administrator, institution, and culture of higher education, surely disempowers students and fails to value different ways of writing, thinking, and approaching problems. At the same time as a teacher I want to be careful to work toward empowering my students, especially poor, first-generation, and working class students. I want to teach a kind of critical literacy, while simultaneously teaching some traditional approaches to composition that seem to be in accord with students’ educational goals—whether those happen to be personal enlightenment, or having a successful career beyond higher education.
References
Adler-Kassner, L. (1998). Ownership revisited: An exploration in progressive era and expressivist composition scholarship. College Composition and Communication, 49(2), 208-233.
Elbow, P. (1995). Being a writer vs. being an academic: A conflict in goals. College Composition and Communication, 46(1), 72-83.
Elbow, P., & Bartholomae, D. (1997). Interchanges: Responses to Bartholomae and Elbow. In V. Villanueva (Ed.), Cross-talk in comp theory (1st ed., pp. 501-509). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum.
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2009). They say/I say: The moves that matter in academic writing (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.
Harris, J. (1996). A teaching subject: Composition since 1966. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
National Council of Teachers of English. (1974). The students’ right to their own language. College Composition and Communication, Fall, XXV, (n.p.). Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/nctefiles/groups/cccc/newsrtol.pdf
Shaughnessy, M. P. (2003). Diving in: An introduction to basic writing. In V. Villanueva (Ed.), Cross-talk in comp theory. (2nd ed., pp. 311-317). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Shaughnessy, M. P. (1977). Errors and expectations: A guide for the teacher of basic writing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Villanueva, V. (1997). Considerations for American Freireistas. In V. Villanueva (Ed.), Cross-talk in comp theory (1st ed., pp. 621-637). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Watkins Jr., J. R. (2009). A taste for language: Literacy, class, and English studies. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/05%3A_Pedagogies/5.03%3A_The_Economy_of_Expressivism_and_Its_Legacy_of_Low/No-Stakes_.txt |
Revisiting Radical Revision
Jeff Sommers
West Chester University and Miami University
Although various aspects of the writing process have been studied extensively
of late, research on revision has been notably absent.
—Nancy Sommers
In my high school days we wrote papers once and handed them in once.
—Carmen, first-year writing student
Even as post-process theorists charge process pedagogy with ignoring context, erasing social differences and social forces, their own research similarly effaces writers and scenes of writing … [and they] don’t mention revision practices.
—Nancy Welch
I asked them [my students] about revision, and they were stumped …
—Nancy DeJoy
I never appreciated revising because in my past experiences I didn’t revise.
There was only editing …
—Bart, first-year writing student
Revision over the Decades
Over the years, I have told many students that “there is no great writing, only great rewriting,” and I decided to begin this essay with that quotation, wishing to give it the proper attribution. What I have discovered, however, is that it is not entirely clear whose words these are. The leading contender seems to be Justice Louis Brandeis, but my most recent search uncovered variations on the theme of the primacy of revising ascribed to Nabokov, Tolstoy, Oates, Michener, Dahl, Crichton, et al. This next citation, however, is accurate: “Teaching writing is teaching re-writing” (Fulwiler, 1992, p. 190).
The need to teach revision to student writers has not lessened over the years as the epigraphs to this essay, drawn from three decades, suggest. Nancy Sommers’ study described student revision practices of the time as “scratching out,” “marking out,” and “slashing” (1980, pp. 380-381). Toby Fulwiler described his students’ revision practices at that same time in terms similar to Sommers’.
All too often, students in first-year composition and fourth-year literature alike believed that revision meant shuffling around a few commas on last night’s paper before handing it in. While this generalization does disservice to serious students writers, it remains true for many who completed our classes with far less language proficiency that we had hoped for. (1982, p. 100)
I was in the composition classroom during that same period of time. Thanks to the expressivist theorists of the 1970s and 1980s, I had become convinced that teaching revision was vital, given that my students, by and large, seemed unfamiliar with that stage of the writing process. As the 1990s began, Donald Murray made the observation that
“Revise,” we command, and our students change some of the punctuation, often trading new grammatical errors for old; choose a couple of long words they don’t really know from Roget to “profound it up” as one of my students said; misspell a number of words in a more innovative way; catch a few typos; and pass back essentially the same paper. It is all they know. (1991, p. vii)
In the mid-1990s I was in my fifteenth year of full-time teaching at Miami University Middletown (Ohio) and had been emphasizing revision in my writing courses as part of a portfolio approach to writing instruction. I decided to find out whether the emphasis on revision in my first-year writing courses had had any impact, so I compiled a list of 85 former students who had taken my first-year writing course anywhere from four to fourteen years earlier to survey them about their experiences and recollections. My list was not random: I deliberately chose memorable students, the ones whom I felt had “gotten it.” I received a 29% response rate: twenty-five students completed my survey. The fourth survey question read, “What specific activities in which you participated as a student in freshman composition stand out in your memory? Why?” Despite the open-ended nature of the question, 36% (9) students identified revision as a memorable feature of the course. Their comments were intriguing in that they did not describe their revision process so much as their affective reaction to revising. One student commented, “of the various writing habits I acquired … the habit of revising my work has proven to be the most valuable,” and then she discussed how the habits she had developed persisted after graduation. Another student wrote that the course
made me feel okay about rewriting … For some reason I had this other mistaken belief that people should be able to write perfectly, and that all writers had this inherent talent to choose words. Never once did you make me feel stupid … You simply suggested a better way. Sometimes I agreed and sometime I didn’t, but no matter what, it was okay either way.
A third student wrote that, “the positive experience I received from freshman comp was the ability to learn how to revise. Also, I became extremely confident in my writing.” Another student, however, one who later became an English teacher herself, made a telling comment when she wrote, “I like the fact that we used THE WRITING PROCESS and were guided through each phase, rather than rushed. Re-vision was seeing the writing’s meaning come to life.”
The conclusion I draw from this survey, in retrospect, is that some students who had come of age in the 1980s and early 1990s were receptive to an emphasis on revision as a complex and vital activity because they had previously had, as Sommers, Fulwiler, and Murray assert, a very limited sense of what revision could be. By the end of the 1990s, Nancy Welch was advocating that the process movement’s methodology itself for teaching revision was in need of revising. She too looked back to the 1970s and 1980s and noted that there was not much research done into revision. She also observed, however, that while post-process theorists leveled a critique at process pedagogy for “ignoring context, erasing social differences and social forces, their own research similarly effaces specific writers and scenes of writing.” In sum, these post-process theorists, she pointed out, “don’t mention revision practices” (1997, p. 24).
And, indeed, throughout the next decade of the 2000s, commentary continued to suggest that revision, if taught and studied at all, was not presented as a complex and vital activity but more as a mechanical cleaning up of faulty prose. Lisa Costello has recently reviewed revision articles of the decade and reports that research appears to focus on collaboration, on contrastive studies with experienced writers, and on ESL and tutoring. She concludes that “a survey of recent literature on revision … suggests that teaching individual revision might still remain an ‘afterthought’ except as it applies to remedial or struggling writers” (2011, p. 154).
The difference between the discussion of revision and writing in the most recent decade and the discussion of the 1980s and 1990s may be that the new “millennial generation” of college students itself has come under fire. Mark Bauerlein points the finger at students who rely upon electronic chat and no longer care about capitalization and spelling, who do not expect writing to be clearly composed and coherent, and who spend more time playing video games than reading books (2008). While I find Bauerlein’s jeremiad unconvincing thanks to its shrill exaggerations, I also note that his observation that the millennial generation of students brings a new set of challenges to the writing classroom is worth considering: contemporary students may not, in fact, have a limited conception of revision so much as a limited interest in it. In a quite different take from Bauerlein’s, Andrea Lunsford argues that college students now may, in fact, be writing more and with a greater awareness of audience than the students in the previous decades, thanks to social networking and electronic media. However, she also reports that college students’ writing errors have not changed over the past twenty-five years. The inference I draw is that the majority of the “life-writing,” in Lunsford’s phrase (Haven, 2009), that contemporary students are doing does not necessarily have as its goal the kind of complex and polished final texts expected in the academy. Notably, Lunsford does not say anything about revision and what role it might play in the “life-writing” of the students in the Stanford study.
Nancy DeJoy’s research also tends to confirm that revision, for many students in the 2000s, was not even on the radar. DeJoy analyzed more than 600 student placement essays in response to this prompt:
The faculty of our first-year writing program is busy preparing for your arrival, and you can help by writing an essay in which you explain your strengths as a reader and writer. Conclude by stating both what you will contribute to your first-semester Critical Writing, Reading and Researching class and what you hope to gain from that class. (2004, p. 26)
DeJoy listed two dozen responses in the essays that explored what the students hoped to contribute (2004, p. 33) and 546 responses to what they hoped to gain from the course (2004, p. 35). Not a single student referred to revision by name as either a potential contribution or a hoped-for gain.
The silence about revision continues. Rebecca S. Nowacek’s 2011 study of transfer of learning concludes that “good writing is not a skill that can be extracted from the complex social contexts for writing and applied unproblematically. Rather, writing knowledge is actually a complex constellation of knowledges and abilities linked together by a writer’s understanding of genre” (p. 100). She continues by discussing “writing processes and analytical approaches” that the students she studied had learned and transferred into other situations, “most often to their invention process” (2011, p. 100). This section of the book does not refer to revision. Nowacek refers to invention on six other occasions in her book, offering several examples. By contrast, according to the book’s index, revision is not mentioned once in the study.
A New Path: Reconciling Post-Process
and Process Pedagogy
The larger question may be where does that leave process pedagogy? Lad Tobin’s take is that the fundamental beliefs of the writing process movement included the idea that “a premature emphasis on correctness can be counterproductive” (1994, p. 7). And Fulwiler, a decade after his earlier observations, argued in the 1990s that after twenty years of both teaching writing and writing professionally himself, “I have come to believe that knowing when, where, and how to revise is the greatest difference between my own good and bad writing as well as between the practices of experienced and inexperienced writers” (1993, p. 133). But by the end of the 1990s, a post-process approach to teaching composition had begun to hold sway. Robert Yagelski’s view, however, is that process and post-process approaches are not “entirely incompatible” and that teachers “still routinely speak of planning, drafting, and revising—terms that suggest individual agency—in our conversations about writing and teaching writing” (1994, p. 204). He explains why this language is still useful because “the idea of composing as a process is a powerful way to understand what writers actually do.” The composing process, he continues, “makes simple the complicated activity of writing. It allows us to talk about, study, and teach writing in ways that make the complexity of the act manageable” (1994, p. 205). Of course, post-process theorists’ criticism of process pedagogy suggests that it offers too simplistic a view of a complex set of processes, but Yagelski, I believe, has something valuable to contribute in his final sentence—process provides tools to make discussions of writing “manageable.”
Nancy Welch agrees that process pedagogy offers something of value in that it presents revision through the concept of dissonance that provides the starting point for revision. She objects, however, to a view of dissonance as a “problem to be corrected” (1997, p. 30) and confesses to being “troubled by constructions of revision that emphasize craft, technique, tidying up, and fitting in” (1997, p. 6), later defining the form of revision to which she objects as “the systematic suppression of all complexity and contradiction” (1997, p. 135). In other words, she wants to find a pedagogy that encourages dissonance, feeling that process approaches do not. In such a critique, Welch echoes James A. Reither’s earlier concerns that “composition studies does not seriously attend to the ways writers know what other people know or to the ways mutual knowing motivates writing—does not seriously attend, that is, to the knowing without which cognitive dissonance is impossible” (1985, p. 622). These are powerful—and persuasive—arguments. But the recent history of teaching writing/rewriting is rooted in process pedagogy, and to be more specific, in what has come to be known as expressivism, and expressivist pedagogy has long offered an approach to teaching revision that requires dissonance rather than attempting to squelch it.
Post-process critiques of process, Yagelski says, “problematize the notion of ‘individual’ or ‘subject’ as often conceived in expressivist discussions … ,” but he concludes that “these critiques of expressivism have less to say about the composing process per se than about the political implications of particular ‘expressivist’ approaches to teaching that process” (1994, p. 207). To Nancy DeJoy the shift that James Berlin’s groundbreaking work encouraged was a “methodological move” away from teaching writing “mastery” to teaching “analysis” (2004, p. 51). DeJoy sketches out an ambitious and exciting pedagogy that involves her writing students in rethinking the composing process, in a sense redefining invention, drafting, and revising into rich, complex acts. However, by emphasizing analysis over mastery, her approach does not offer concrete, usable strategies for less experienced writers so that they might engage in productive revision of their drafts in progress.
Yagelski, Welch, and DeJoy work diligently to find a path that does not set up process and post-process as antagonistic models of writing instruction. Welch and DeJoy in particular seek to offer enriched approaches to understanding and teaching revision in opposition to the spare and underdeveloped models familiar to many students. But, as I hope to show, some “expressivist” approaches to teaching revision are entirely compatible with postmodern notions of the writing process and do indeed offer a rich conception of revising, one that emphasizes the value of dissonance.
A New Familiar Path: Provoking Revision
Nancy Welch’s concept of “getting restless” is also designed to promote a complex, complicated, and problematized form of revision, but the voices of expressivist teachers had also been advocating a richer conception of the role of revision, before Welch’s book was published in 1997. Kim Korn, in an essay that appeared in the same year as Welch’s book, advocated teaching revision as “an act of invention rather than editing” (1997, p. 88) through the use of “strategies that encourage us to step out of our writing comfort zones” (1997, p. 89). Years earlier, Donald Murray had asserted that “Writers are born at the moment they write what they do not expect and find a potential significance in what is on the page” (1991, p. ix), and both Toby Fulwiler and Wendy Bishop were advocating revision pedagogies designed to shake up student writers. Fulwiler’s Provocative Revision (1992) and Bishop’s edited collection Elements of Alternate Style: Essays on Writing and Revision, which presents her concept of “radical revision” (1997), offered an expressivist-derived approach that encouraged students to work toward mastery of revision by unsettling their more routinized approaches to rewriting as editing.1
What Fulwiler and Bishop present is an assignment that calls upon students to revisit a completed essay, requiring them to reconceive of the piece by revising it in a major way. Fulwiler outlines four processes that might be employed to provoke a new text related to but different from a previously-completed text; he terms them “adding” (expanding the scope of the piece), “limiting” (narrowing the focus of the piece), “switching” (finding a new perspective for the piece, e.g. switching from first to third person), and “transforming” (changing the genre of the piece, e.g. transforming a narrative into an argumentative essay). Bishop requires her students to produce a “radical revision” of a completed text, accompanied by a reflective commentary on the experience of revising the draft. Her assignment suggests that students consider changes in voice/tone, syntax, genre, audience, time, physical layout/typography, or even medium as a means of producing a radical revision.
I have found Fulwiler’s and Bishop’s presentations convincing and have been using them, on and off, ever since first learning about them. Most recently, I have used the radical revision assignment in the early part of my semester2 to conclude a unit of the course that focuses on teachers. We read about teachers, we brainstorm lists of the qualities of good teachers, we analyze video clips of teachers at work in fictional films. The students then write a paper about a memorable “teacher” (as they define the term) in their own lives. I use the topic because first-year students are experts when it comes to this subject, having had a lifetime of experience in dealing with teachers. Once this paper has been completed, the course shifts into a discussion of revision, wherein the students become self-consciously aware of the process of revision through assigned readings.
In a similar fashion, Nancy DeJoy designs her first-year writing course to invite students into the discussion of the writing process that has been ongoing in the composition field. At one point, she observes that in focusing on the role of audience, there are key essays in the field that the students ought to read (2004, p. 29). Although she does not make a similar claim about revision essays, I want to make that assertion. So my classes begin a discussion of revision by reading Nancy Sommers’ study contrasting the revision practices of experienced and student writers (1980) and discussing the students’ own backgrounds in revision in contrast to the student writers and experienced writers in Sommers’ study. I then assign the radical revision and present an overview of possibilities by sharing Fulwiler’s four processes with examples. Like Bishop, I include several reflective pieces in conjunction with this process, and I would like to focus on those reflections as a means of making a point about what the students gain from engaging in a radical revision assignment.
At the end of the semester, the students produce a final letter to me in which they are invited to reflect on the activities and experiences during the course that they found meaningful. In the last three semesters in which I taught first-year writing, 190 students completed this letter. I find it striking that eighty-three of them (44%) chose to discuss the radical revision as a key experience in the course. Korn claims that the radical revision assignment provides an opportunity for writers to gain “thoughtful insights” not only into their own composing processes but also into their “motives and choices” as writers. The letters in my course often illustrate such insights.
For example, one young woman remembers that the radical revision prodded her into experimenting with the structure of her writing.3 She says,
When the class was assigned the radical revision, I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to see that there are ways to move away from the five-paragraph essay format. Going from assignment one to assignment two helped me open my eyes to the fact that I was being close-minded and that there are other options for my writing … Changing my essay to a letter of nomination forced me to write to a new audience: to the person who would be choosing whether my nomination deserved the award.
It is hard to say which decision came first: a new purpose, a different audience, or a new genre, but her commentary makes clear that she has become quite aware of how those decisions moved her away from her previous comfort zone of the five-paragraph form.
Another student focuses on how the radical revision assignment affected her belief system about revision
Before taking this course, I believed that revising a paper meant to fix grammatical and punctuation errors. Now, I agree with the credo statement “I believe revising helps a writer step back, look at the paper from a different perspective and make changes …” For assignment number two, I revised my paper from being a narrative to a letter. The narrative just told the reasons why my teacher had good qualities and had stories to support them, but in the letter I explained why these qualities made my teacher deserving of an award.
This student has not only transformed the genre of her essay, but she has switched her intended audience of readers, and the dissonance of these transformations has produced a change in her conception of the possibilities available in revising.
I also required students to compose a Writer’s Memo to accompany each radical revision, a metacommentary on the new draft. These reflective pieces reveal the impact of the radical revision on the students’ understanding of the writing process. One student had transformed her personal essay into the first chapter of a hypothetical self-help book. Her memo explains why. “I have a very hard time writing personal things … it is really hard for me to talk about myself in my writing.” The self-help book approach resolved her issues by sharing the same information about her influential teacher (she had chosen Buddha) by couching the discussion in terms of how readers might benefit from his teachings instead of revealing her own personal experiences.4
Several students chose to transform their personal essay tributes to a favorite teacher into more public pieces of writing, learning along the way how choosing a genre and audience can affect the impact of a draft. As Daniel Collins writes elsewhere in this collection, “the writer is not separate from larger social contexts, and so the writing process does not end until such inquiry is used to in the making of meaning for the writer and for others.” One student converted a personal narrative into a newspaper feature story about her teacher and described one of her major changes as reconfiguring her introduction. She chose to incorporate “quotations” from her teacher, primarily remembered as favorite comments the teacher had made, in order to give the new version the sound of a human interest feature story, demonstrating her understanding that readers of newspaper articles have expectations of the genre, expectations that she felt it important to meet.
Harlan’s narrative essay became a commencement speech. “By doing this,” the memo reveals, “I still shared memories, but directed them in a way that showed everyone how great a teacher she was and how she helped me grow as a student … I selected this approach because I knew she was a great friend to many students in my grade. I felt that this would have been a good tribute to her and a collective farewell.” While the genre has changed in this radical revision, it is important to note that the author has also learned that a single piece of writing can have multiple purposes.
In a similar move, Wanda decided to revise her narrative about her favorite instructor into an open letter addressed to younger students at her old high school, the intent of which was to encourage them to take classes with this fine teacher.
The organization of this paper works better because as a student, I could determine which traits were more important to other students than other traits. Therefore, I could organize the paper from less important traits to most important traits. It worked better than in the last paper because my audience was clearer so I could really organize my paper in a way that would be interesting to students.
For Wanda, the radical revision had led to her exploring organizational patterns and considering herself as a member of a specific discourse community: present and former high school students.
For at least two other students, the radical revision increased the complexity of the writing task as they faced decisions about which of their two teacher essays to include in our final course portfolio. Brady decided to transform his film review of a recent movie about a teacher into a report written by the school’s principal that collected several first-person eyewitness accounts of a controversial incident documented in the film. He notes “I think that this paper shows the personality of the characters better than the first [paper] … because it’s easier to show personality through what a person says than it is to explain their personality … I think that the first paper does a better job of showing my analysis of the movie.” Brady has made a discovery about the complex relationship of genre, audience, and purpose through his radical revision; the revision has not simplified his writing task, but actually complicated it as he has realized that there are both advantages and disadvantages to his revision decisions.
Natalie also experienced the problematic outcome of radical revision. She began by writing a personal essay about a teacher with whom she had had a complicated relationship. The teacher was a leader in the transcendental meditation (TM) community in the student’s hometown, but she was, at the same time, a difficult and challenging person with whom to have a personal relationship. In her radical revision, Natalie chose to rewrite her personal narrative as an imagined obituary for the teacher in the local paper. “I went from writing an essay to writing an obituary, and I went from writing to, well, an audience of whom I wasn’t too sure … but which I think ended up being my fellow classmates, to an audience of two communities [the TM community and her hometown].” She describes how she did “a little research” by reading a number of obituaries, but then she concludes,
An obituary can be a hard thing to keep interesting! The only thing that I didn’t get to express is my negative feelings and criticisms of Kathy, simply because it’s not right to be negative in an obituary. That was the only thing that didn’t work as well. I almost felt like I wasn’t telling the whole story, because I was leaving out that entire side of my opinion of her.
Natalie’s reflections make clear that she did not experience revision as how to “correct moments of dissonance” (Welch, 1997, p. 6), but instead ended up facing a difficult choice between two pieces that do different things better (and worse) than one another.
These students’ testimonies show how engaging in radical revision required them not only to wrestle with the challenges of reconceiving their previously finished work but also encouraged them to consider how they wanted to define revision and how they chose to learn to deal with its limitations. Nancy DeJoy objects to students’ “consuming and applying heuristic processes they had no part in developing” (2004, p. 62), but these students, I want to argue, have indeed developed their own heuristic processes for revision.
Being Critically Expressivist
The examples I have shared demonstrate that radical revision often encourages students to move away from personal writing into more overtly public writing: newspaper stories, commencement speeches, open letters. In several cases, moves like this led students to engage with the politics of public education and the challenges of writing in a situation where the balance of power resided with the readers. Interestingly, these students had all chosen to write about a memorably bad teacher. Carlee changed her narrative about how a teacher had let her down into a personal letter directly to that teacher. Her Writer’s Memo comments on the challenges in this revision: how can she be honest yet still encourage the reader—her former teacher—to read her entire letter? She strikes upon the idea of first praising some of the teacher’s methods and then offering advice, showing that she cares about her successors as students in the teacher’s class. This approach, she writes in her memo, “gave me the ability to offer suggestions on how she could improve her negative teaching qualities.” The radical revision forced her, in other words, to strategize rather than simply venting her feelings, as she had done in the original narrative.
Several other students chose to write formal letters to administrators, voicing their concerns about a teacher’s ineffectiveness. One memo explains her thinking:
Since my new audience would be my teacher’s boss I was able to instill a purpose in my writing. Before I felt that my paper lacked a true purpose. I confused many of my ideas into one paper and therefore the paper had no direction. With this paper I was able to give it a purpose, that purpose being to initiate a revision of the way teachers can behave with their students on school trips off of campus. I want my reader to do something about what happened to me on my trip so that no other student can feel this way again.
Once more, however, the task has been more complicated than her first narrative paper was—a story that emphasized her hurt feelings in a somewhat rambling manner. The tone of the new piece is a tricky one lest she alienate her reader and thus undermine her purpose. This student’s experience reminds of comments made by Daniel Collins, elsewhere in this collection, who writes, “expressivist writing theory, it seems to me, upholds the idea that to write is to discover oneself amidst an array of others. It honors the importance of the student engaging and making sense out of the world.” I see this student explaining how her revision was borne out of an enhanced understanding of her ideas in the context of the larger world that included her anticipated reader, an “other” whom she wished to convince. This “engaging and making sense out of the world” was prompted by the radical revision assignment.
I find Nancy Welch and Nancy DeJoy persuasive when they argue for a more nuanced and problematized conception of revision and of teaching revision. Their theoretical arguments are convincing. Welch urges that “border-talk” between process and post-process pedagogies needs to take place in teaching revision (1997, pp. 163-164). The radical revision assignment, I contend, represents that border talk. Radical revision offers the possibilities of presenting revision in the richer, more complex ways that Welch and DeJoy advocate. In fact, Welch’s descriptions of how revision is enacted in her classroom sounds like a description of the radical revision assignment (1997, p. 165).
What I want to argue is that less experienced writers may not yet understand all of the rich possibilities open to them through revision.5 The “first phase model” of composition instruction, what DeJoy terms “process pedagogy”(2004, p. 4), offers an opportunity to experience revision in writing so that it can be applied in the way that she advocates. DeJoy’s empirical data (2004, pp. 34-35) show that the students’ placement essays had very little to say about revision, and she later discovers a similar silence when she directly asks her students questions about their revision knowledge (2004, p. 74). DeJoy’s notion of “revision” is about a way of thinking—assuming that writers are always “revising the world” by presenting their ideas about the world (in the Burkean sense of joining a conversation and changing it by doing so). To learn to revise texts, however, requires an attention to developing a series of texts, and that is what process pedagogy offers. The radical revision assignment, born out of an expressivist approach to writing instruction, provokes students into discovering that “finished” texts may not be “finished” at all and can be “refinished” into new texts. By being so provoked, students also experience a conception of revision that means more than mere fiddling with commas and word choices, preparing them to continue learning what a rich, complex, and rewarding part of the writing process revision can be.
Notes
1. It’s noteworthy to point out that Welch’s book does not cite either of these sources.
2. I chose Bishop’s terminology because it seems very direct in telling students what is expected of them: they will produce a second paper that is different while clearly growing out of their first paper. They are not to produce an entirely different text that is only tangentially related to the first—which is not a revision at all—but a recognizable version of the first paper that has been “radically” changed.
3. This student expressed her delight in discovering that the five-paragraph formulaic structure she had learned in high school was not the only effective way to organize a piece of writing. Because she had decided to change her first draft, a traditional five-paragraph theme extolling the virtues of her favorite teacher, into a letter nominating that teacher for an award, she realized that she had to focus on her new readers: the awards committee. That realization freed her to ignore the prescriptive five-paragraph approach, instead concentrating on building a strong and convincing argument for her candidate.
4. Thomas Newkirk notes a potential resemblance between the “traditional, teacher-directed classroom” and pedagogies that rely upon social constructivism and cultural studies (1997, p. 89) and attempts to reclaim personal narrative for the first-year writing classroom, offering an analysis of what expressivism still has to offer in a social-constructionist composition environment. Expressivist classrooms often began with personal narrative, but my initial assignment merely asks the students to write about a memorable teacher. More often than not, this general prompt leads to narrative writing, most likely because it is familiar to the students and because they want to explore a personal relationship, for good or ill, with a specific teacher. I deliberately leave the assignment rather open-ended, however, because I expect the radical revision will lead students to re-examine their initial choices anyway. And it does so—their reexaminations have led students to incorporate self-reflection into personal experience, explore other points of view, modify their purposes, and, as was the case with the self-help book and other examples to follow, even leave personal narrative behind altogether. My examples illustrate a point that Nancy Mack makes elsewhere in this collection when she argues that “writing should open the author to the possibility of agency through the interpretation and representation of memory.” In the open-endedness of my original assignment, I would argue that I follow an expressivist pedagogy, and in the required metacognitive reflection that follows, I would argue the assignment presents the students with opportunities to exercise agency by interpreting their own representation of memory.
5. See Lea Povozhaev’s “Essai—A Metaphor: Perception of Possibilities and Writing to Show Thinking” in this collection. Povozhaev argues that “the critical, searching spirit of pragmatism encourages trying new things,” offering a different path to a similar conclusion reached in this essay.
References
Bauerlein, M. (2008, March 14). Eight reasons why this is the dumbest generation. Retrieved from Boston.com Web site: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/gallery/dumbestgeneration/
Bishop, W. (1997). Elements of alternate style: Essays on writing and revision. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bishop, W. (2002). Steal this assignment: The radical revision. In C. Moore & P. O’Neill (Eds.), Practice in context (pp. 205-222). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Costello, L. A. (2011). The new art of revision: Research papers, blogs, and the first-year writing classroom. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 39(2), 151-167.
DeJoy, N. C. (2004). Process this: Undergraduate writing in composition studies. Logan, UT: Utah University Press.
Fulwiler, T. (1993). A lesson in revision. In W. Bishop (Ed.), The subject is writing: Essays by teaches and students (pp. 132-149). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann.
Fulwiler, T. (1992). Provocative revision. The Writing Center Journal, 12(2), 190-204.
Fulwiler, T. (1982). Teaching teachers to teach revision. In R. A. Sudol (Ed.), Revising: New essays for teachers of writing (pp. 100-108). Urbana, IL: ERIC/NCTE.
Haven, C. (2009). The new literacy: Stanford study finds richness and complexity in students’ writing. Stnanford Report, 12 October. Retrieved from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/o...ch-101209.html
Korn, K. H. (1997). Distorting the mirror: Radical revision and writers’ shifting perspectives.In W. Bishop (Ed.), Elements of alternate style: Essays on writing and revision (pp. 88-95). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers-Heinemann.
Korn, K. H. & Bishop, W. (1997). Two instances of the radical revision assignment. In W. Bishop (Ed.), Elements of alternate style: Essays on writing and revision (pp. 172-174). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers-Heinemann.
Lunsford, A. (n.d.) Our semi-literate youth? Not so fast. Retrieved from Stanford University Web site: Retrieved from https://ssw.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/OPED_Our_Semi-Literate_Youth.pdf
Murray, D. M. (1991). The craft of revision. Ft. Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Newkirk, T. (1997). The performance of self in student writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers-Heinemann.
Nowacek, R. S. (2011). Agents of integration: Understanding transfer as a rhetorical act. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Reither, J. A. (1985). Writing knowing: Toward redefining the writing process. College English, 47(6), 620-628.
Sommers, J. (2011). Reflection revisited: The class collage. Journal of Basic Writing, 30(1), 99-129.
Sommers, N. (1980). Strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers. College Composition and Communication, 31(4), 278-388.
Tobin, L. (1994). Introduction: How the writing process was born—and other conversion narratives. In L. Tobin & T. Newkirk (Eds.), Taking stock: The writing process movement in the 90s (pp. 1-14). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers-Heinemann.
Welch, N. (1997). Getting restless: Rethinking revision in writing instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers-Heinemann
Yagelski, R. P. (1994). Who’s afraid of subjectivity? The composing process and postmodernism or A student of Donald Murray enters the age of postmodernism. In L. Tobin & T. Newkirk (Eds.), Taking stock: The writing process movement in the 90s (pp. 203-217). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers-Heinemann.
Appendix: Radical Revision Assignment Sheet
Assignment #2 (Radical Revision)
What’s Expected?
For this assignment, please produce a radical revision of Paper #1. This revision will count as a separate assignment. For example, let’s suppose that for paper #1 I’ve written an essay about my most influential teacher, my high school 11th grade English teacher. I could continue to work on that paper (Assignment #1), telling some new stories about my experiences that show the reader why I hold the opinion that I do. For Assignment #2, however, I might transform that essay into an editorial for the journal that I edit in hopes that it would influence teachers, I might build on it by interviewing some of my old classmates to see what they think about our old teacher, I could limit my topic by focusing entirely on a single interaction I’d had with my teacher as I wrote a major term paper, or I could switch the essay into a third-person description of his teaching prowess. Any one of those four papers would be sufficiently different to count as a radical revision while still being recognizably about the same specific topic, my old English teacher, so I’d now have two different papers on a closely related topic. In your case, you’ll have to pick either Asst #1 or Asst #2 for a final grade just before our midterm break.
For suggestions on how to transform your first paper into something sufficiently new to count as Assignment #2, check the Radical Revision Powerpoint. The genre for this paper is up to you: essay, letter, diary, editorial, film critique, etc.
Length requirement: 3 or more pages
Memo #2 (250 words)
1.How is this paper radically revised from your original paper? Why did you select this approach instead of another one? What other radical revisions did you consider?
2.What works better in this paper than in the original paper? What doesn’t work as well? Why? What genre is this paper and has that changed from your first paper?
3.What is your purpose in writing this paper? That’s another way of asking, “What are your readers supposed to get out of reading your draft?”
4.What questions do you have for me about your draft? (Remember: No yes/no questions … ) | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Critical_Expressivism%3A_Theory_and_Practice_in_the_Composition_Classroom_(Roeder_and_Gatto)/05%3A_Pedagogies/5.04%3A_Revisiting_Radical_Revision.txt |
Becoming a Learning Designer
Ellen D. Wagner
Editor's Note
Because of the close connection between these skills and the discipline of instructional design, many of the chapters in this book refer to the profession as instructional design, and professionals as instructional designers, even though many, like Dr. Wagner, prefer the term learning designer. The actual name of the discipline is continually evolving, as Dr. Wagner addresses in this chapter.
Learning design is the name of the professional practice that, in the views of many education, training, learning, and development professionals, is a next iteration in the evolution of the craft dedicated to creating, producing, evaluating, and improving resources and experiences that help people and organizations learn more and perform better.
A learning design is a creative pathway, with steps along the way, that guides someone from a point of introduction to a permanent change in knowing, doing, or being. By naming learning design as the focus of our collective activity, we make the declaration that our focus is on learning enablement, regardless of where, when, or with whom our design efforts will be taking place. Designs may revolve around the creation of a course, programming an application, or producing a webcast. Resources being designed as catalysts to induce learning may be as small as an element in a presentation or as big as an immersive environment.
Learning design consists of an amalgamation of several contemporary design traditions actively used within current teaching, learning, training, and development professions. As learning designers, we have profound opportunities to develop conditions, strategies, resources, tools, and platforms that will keep learners engaged and inspired. We can help people make new connections and meanings, spark new interests, and develop new abilities so that new learning will occur.
In order to understand what learning design is, it is helpful to understand its precedents and how they are related to each other. In this chapter, I will first describe several of the most notable precedents. From there, we will consider some of the current professional expectations for learning designers in the contemporary learning and development marketplace. I will then reflect upon some of the big variables shaping “Learning Designer Identity.”
Instructional Design
Perhaps the most familiar of learning design’s earlier traditions is instructional design. Instructional design (ID) is a foundational part of the profession dedicated to systematically improving the learning and performance outcomes of individuals completing a deliberate course of study. Originally, instructional design described a practice of creating lessons and courses. In this context, design is describing an activity or set of activities that result in a documented set of specifications for creating a lesson or a course. Follwing are the steps designers take when designing lessons or courses:
1. Assessing Content for the Course: What needs to be covered?
2. Assessing the Learners: Who is taking this course? What will they need to know and do? How will you know if they have accomplished those things?
3. Creating a Design Document: What needs to happen for this course to become real?
4. Asking What Needs to Be Developed: Who is going to produce it? How much will it cost?
5. Implementing the Design: What is needed for the lessons to be offered, for the students to respond, and for the course to be completed?
6. Evaluating the Design: Did the lessons work? How do you know? How could it be better?
At the end of this process, the designer would end up with a design document. This serves as a specification to guide the construction of a course. Design documents are a great way to review how you solved your design challenges—what worked and what didn’t work. They are important instruments for formative review and essential for summative review. A design document also forms the basis for a professional portfolio that will serve as evidence of your work over time. It is your record of how you communicated your plans for what needed to get done, both to yourself and to your stakeholders.
Over time, the term instructional design has also come to be used as an overarching term for any formal activity undertaken when designing and building learning resources or experiences, formal or informal. This causes some confusion when it comes to creating job titles for people working in the learning and development field in various capacities. Instructional design positions continue to represent a good percentage of today’s jobs in the learning and development industry by virtue of the industry’s emphasis upon the creation of digital courseware and digital virtual environments, especially after COVID-19 school and work closures in the spring of 2020. This is the case even for positions which may not actually be engaged in designing or developing formal learning programs, lessons, or courseware.
Additional Resources
For more information on the history of the instructional design approach, refer to the Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology textbook available on EdTech Books, particularly the chapters on programmed instruction by Molenda and instructional design models by Dousay. Students might also appreciate perusing back issues of the Journal of Applied Instructional Design.
Instructional Systems Design
Given that so many learning experiences transcend instruction and must address bigger contextual consideration, sometimes the activities associated with this practice are described more broadly as Instructional Systems Design (ISD), where a significant nod is given to the impact of the broad conditions under which course, content, and experience conceptualization, as well as prototyping and production will be taking place. ISD is based on a process model for managing the establishment of a system within which instruction is a component. ISD calls for the following:
• Assess the needs and support requirements of target audiences and determine needs for the content presentation.
• Design for interventions or create solutions to improve outcomes, including baselines and methods for instructional measurement.
• Create development specifications: How will this solution be constructed?
• Create implementation plans: How will we get the new system to work? How will we engage learners?
• Determine formative and summative evaluation plans: How will we know if it is working? How will we make our revisions? How will we know if all our efforts have been worth it?
Depending upon the degree to which a program may feature multimedia or web technology systems as a part of their practice, one may still find practitioners of instructional technology—even though many using the moniker “IT” in 2020 are more actively engaged in the practices associated with information technology, the domain of enterprise computing, network management. In education and training, instructional technology is the place where one finds learning management systems, learning content management systems, knowledge management systems and, increasingly, platforms and programs that enable the tracking and analysis of resource use and user performance data.
User Experience Design
Another major set of influences upon the learning design profession have come from the world of User Experience Design. Since the mid-1990s, web browsers brought the World Wide Web to life and as web technologies and service platforms such as content and learning management systems became a more active component in systems developed for sharing, delivering, and distributing content, courses, and experiences. From this evolution, User Experience (UX) Design emerged as a field that has explored and influenced design considerations for how a website, online product, or digital product user would experience a product.
Coined in the mid-1990s by Donald Norman during the time when he was vice president of advanced technology at Apple Computer, UX describes the relationship between a product and a human. Back then, Norman argued that technology must evolve to put user needs first—the opposite of how things were done at the time. It was not until 2005 that UX gained mainstream relevance as 42 million iPods were sold that year and the mass market experienced great design at scale. Not long after, job descriptions and expectations shifted from putting information online to tailoring the online experience to the needs of end users. The field of User Experience Design had been born (Kilgore, 2016).
Additional Resources
For more information on UX design, see the chapter by Earnshaw, Tawfik, and Schmidt (2018), or their full open access book on the topic at https://edtechbooks.org/ux.
Design Thinking
The need for better user experience with technology hardware and software was undeniable in the 1990s and 2000s as tech systems, platforms, and tools evolved from being tools for the technologically proficient to being tools that were intuitive enough for “regular folks.” As the focus on considering user experiences shifted product design, a set of processes and design approaches known as “Design Thinking” grew popular.
The Interaction Design Foundation noted that Design Thinking emphasizes developing an understanding of the people for whom products or services are being designed (Dam & Siang, 2020). It helps develop a sense of empathy with the user. Design Thinking helps by continually questioning the problem, assumptions, and implications. Design Thinking is useful for tackling ill-defined or unknown problems, by reframing the problem in human-centric ways, developing many ideas in focus groups, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. Design Thinking also involves ongoing experimentation through sketching, prototyping, and testing new ideas.
All variants of Design Thinking embody similar principles which were first described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial (1969). The Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, also known as the d.school, was at the forefront of applying and teaching Design Thinking.
The five-phased model developed by the d.school to explain Design Thinking included the following steps:
• empathize with users
• define users’ needs and problems, along with your insights about those needs and problems
• ideate by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions
• prototype to start creating solutions
• test solutions
These five phases are not necessarily sequential. They do not have to follow any specific order and can occur in parallel and be iteratively repeated. They are offered as an overarching conceptual framework.
Additional Resources
For more information on Design Thinking approaches, see the chapter by Svihla in this book, along with a similar chapter on agile design approaches by Cullen.
While Design Thinking does not address the requirement of designing for learning products, services, or experiences, per se, the recognition of the relationship between experiences that can engage and inspire, and conditions that must be present for learning were recognized in the early days of World Wide Web development.
Learning Experience Design: Unifying Design Traditions
While many informal discussions around learning experience began happening in the mid-2000s[1], Niels Floor and his colleagues in the Netherlands began actively exploring Learning Experience Design (LXD). They met in 2012 to unify the principles of UX Design with learning principles and instructional design principles, even if some of those ID principles might not necessarily be used to create direct instruction (N. Floor, personal communication, February 20, 2019). Where UX designers' responsibilities would include designing prototypes and wireframes, graphic and visual design, constructing user journeys or flows, collaborating with subject matter experts, and carrying out qualitative usability tests (Rosala & Krause, 2019), learning experience designers would bring a focus on rich multimedia experiences, learning outcomes, and performance improvement metrics.
Kilgore (2016) noted that LX designers develop experiential, multi-layered, complex, and contextual courses and lessons that do not necessarily end when a course closes. These experiences aim to provide learners with enhanced engagement, retention, affordance, and overall a more memorable learning experience. This requires advanced skills in planning, production, development, design, and a clearer understanding of modern learners and learning trends than what is required for more traditional instructional design undertakings. LXD appears to be less dependent upon both supporting the infrastructure of technological systems and upon formative and summative evaluation than more traditional ID and ISD practices have purported to be.
Learning Engineering
In recent years, learning engineering has emerged as a practice with the potential to serve as a strong complement to learning design. Learning engineering focuses on using data analytics, computer-human interaction, modeling, measurement, instrumentation, and continuous improvement to optimize learning and learning decision-making. It offers a renewed focus on formative evaluation and on experimentation in the learning workflow.
Learning engineering started to emerge as a new field of interest in the mid 2010s with the increased popularity of MOOCs, which served student populations in the hundreds of thousands in a single course. Suddenly, there were opportunities for conducting “big-data” research and analyses—the scope of which had only previously been available to commercial business analysis firms or to customers of online services. Furthermore, now “big data” were available to educational researchers, meaning that educational research was no longer confined to social science methods based on small sample sizes or random-controlled trial studies. Instead, machine learning, deep learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence could be applied to research on course-related behaviors, achievements, retention, persistence, and completion patterns. Initial contemporary interest in learning engineering began at institutions hosting MOOCs such as Harvard, MIT (EdX), and Stanford (Udacity, Coursera). Carnegie Mellon University had maintained an engineering-as-problem-solving tradition since the 1960s. Their Simon Institute openly licensed CMU’s Open Learning Initiative products in 2019 for educators to bring continuous improvement to classroom instruction (Young, 2019). This was a nod to encouraging continuous improvement and classroom experimentation as an open education practice (OEP) associated with learning engineering and empirical education.
Learning engineering’s first appearance can be traced back to 1966, and, as with Design Thinking, is attributed to Herbert Simon. At the time, Simon was a professor of Computer Science and Psychology in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at what was then the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was asked to give a speech (later published as an article) at the Presidents Institute at Princeton University. In this speech, “The Job of a College President,” he took higher education to task for its approach to institutional management and operation: “Comparing colleges with other organizations, one sees that their most striking peculiarity is not their product, but the extent to which they are operated by amateurs. They are institutions run by amateurs to train professionals” (Simon, 1967). Among his suggested strategies for making colleges and universities more professional settings for teaching and learning, Simon believed there might be value in providing college presidents with a learning engineer—an expert professional in the design of learning environments.
As Simon envisioned this role, the learning engineer would be an institutional specialist with several responsibilities related to optimizing university productivity. Specifically, they would be responsible for working collaboratively with faculty to design learning experiences in particular disciplines. They would also be expected to work with administration to improve the design of the broader campus environment to facilitate student learning and faculty improvements. They would also be expected to introduce new disciplines such as cognitive psychology, along with learning machines and computer-assisted instruction (remember, this was 1966), to various disciplines on campus.
Simon and his colleagues instilled a tradition of linking research and measurement of results to the improvement of teaching and learning on his campus. Continuing in his tradition, a center was named for him at Carnegie Mellon to harness his vision for a cross-disciplinary learning engineering ecosystem.
With recent 2019 announcements from Carnegie Mellon University describing the Simon Institute’s plans to open-source their huge collections of digital learning software, there has been much excitement that this will be a catalyst for encouraging interest in continuous formative improvement in direct instruction, learning, and performance support. There is hope that these efforts will have both direct impacts on learning engineering and indirect complementary impacts on learning design practices going forward.
Current Demand in Learning Design Still Calls for Instructional Designers
The term learning designer is still not being used broadly in the learning technology industry. For the most part, job postings continue to seek instructional designers. Dr. Jane Bozarth, Director of Research for the Learning Guild, reported that “In what was no surprise at all, I found the term Instructional Designer encompassed an ever-expanding, soup-to-nuts array of tasks. The title has become a catch-all for anything related to creating, launching, delivering, or even facilitating instruction in any capacity, and at any level of complexity” (Bozarth, 2019).
In a 2019 report from the eLearning Guild, Bozarth noted that in 2014 when applying for ID jobs, instructional designers were expected to be able to do the following:
• Conduct needs analyses
• Conduct task assessments
• Write learning objectives
• Know the ADDIE process
• Understand supplier management
• Use desktop publishing
• Create graphic designs
• Use authoring tools
• Create with PowerPoint
• Produce and manage live & recorded webinars
• Support the training database
• Work with subject matter experts
• Create instructor-led training
The eLearning Guild’s 2019 review shows even more skills lumped into the ID job skill category (Bozarth, 2019). In addition to the list above, postings for jobs focused primarily on instructional design included a desire for expertise in
• Video production and editing
• Audio production and editing
• Web design/HTML5
• Game design/badges
• Dashboard creation
• Digital products
• Mobile app design
• Social and collaboration tools
• Assorted learning platforms
• Data analysis
• Content curation
• Augmented, virtual, and mixed realities
On top of this was the overlap between titles. Designer and developer were often used interchangeably. This is supported by eLearning Guild membership data. Many of those employed as instructional designers say their work actually entails doing “a little of everything,” while those with more task-specific job titles (like multimedia developer) say they spend a lot of their time engaged in instructional design.
Some large technology company HR departments continue to vacillate on whether to classify instructional design positions along with technical communication positions (a fine job classification if you want to be a technical communicator, less so if your design and interactive technology skills are about to be relegated elsewhere). Some IDs are expressing interest in learning engineering job titles, thinking that it may bring a stronger recognition of technical skills back to a job that has been held hostage by job descriptions that, in their worst iterations, have become catch-all positions for “all tech duties as assigned.”
Apart from the job stress of trying to wear a dozen hats, Bozarth has noted that the role confusion about what it is that IDs should do or ought to be doing makes it very difficult to pin down essential competencies (Hogle, 2019), educational and other background requirements, and correlating salary. “Calling yourself a learning experience wizard on Twitter probably isn’t helping,” Bozarth confides, “but calling yourself an instructional technologist, and being able to explain what that means, might” (2019).
Establishing a Learning Designer Identity
What we should remember from Bozarth’s breakdown of instructional design job skill expectations is that the position descriptions advertised on job sites such as LinkedIn and Glass Door are generally defined by hiring managers. Hiring managers are always interested in getting the most out of their hiring dollars. While we must certainly pay attention to what the job postings say a company is looking for, the learning design profession also has a responsibility to articulate what we expect from our colleagues. Let us consider learning design with our own professional identity in mind. If we establish our own vision of what we expect from our fellow practitioners of learning design, this will help set expectations for what we want from one another in our work together. The following is a suggested list of expectations for collections of knowledge that we would expect qualified learning designers to obtain.
1. Understanding of Human Learning. We should expect each other to be familiar with the major schools of thought that explain the phenomenon of human learning. Whether we gain our understanding through the study of learning sciences, or through studies of human cognition, human behavior, or some combination thereof, we need to have an appreciation for the myriad explanations for how people learn. Furthermore, we need to appreciate the degree to which learning is likely to manifest in the wide varieties of conditions, both formal and informal, that can elicit learning responses. We will need to know about the steps, stages, and processes that constitute the various phases of learning. We need to understand how learning outcomes may change under different conditions, and how conditions change in different populations, at different ages, under different kinds of support structures.
2. Understanding of Design. We should have a basic understanding about what design is. Because design is a creative process, there are many different ways that a design process may manifest. However, there are currently two major schools of thought related to how design processes are categorized.
Schools of Thought Models
One school of thought, called the Rational Model, tends to follow a sequence of stages or steps as a means of problem solving. The Rational Model proposes that
1. Designers attempt to optimize a design candidate to account for known constraints and objectives.
2. The design process is plan-driven.
3. The design process is understood in terms of a discrete sequence of stages.
Instructional design process models, such as the Dick and Carey model, the ADDIE model, and the ASSURE model, are all examples of rational process models. Much of instructional design and instructional systems design work over the years has been led by the development of rational process models.
The other common school of design thought is called the Action-Centric Model. The Action-Centric Model suggests that
1. Designers use creativity and emotion to generate design candidates.
2. The design process is improvised.
3. No universal sequence of stages is apparent – analysis, design, and implementation are contemporaneous and inextricably linked.
Both rational models and action-centric models see design as informed by research and knowledge. However, with the action-centric model of design, research and knowledge are brought into the design process through the judgment and common sense of designers—by designers "thinking on their feet"—more than through the predictable and controlled process stipulated by the rational model, which is presented as a more formal approach toward hypothesis testing ("Design," n.d.).
While action-centric models have not generally been part of the instructional design and ISD tradition, they have been more commonly found in settings where experience design, learner experience design and Design Thinking process models are used. With their focus on serving the needs of learners first, the newly emergent fields of open pedagogy (e.g., Jhangiani & Biswas-Diener, 2017) and open education practices (A. Gunder, personal communication, December 30, 2020) are likely to use action-centric design process models as a central part of their orientation.
This shift away from rational process models, especially at a time when learning engineering is likely to provide “data science cover” in post-COVID remote learning explorations, is likely to bring about interesting opportunities for dialogue.
With these key foundational pillars in place, learning designers will continue developing skills in analysis and evaluation, communications and media arts, creative learning design and production, and research and measurement.
Analysis and Evaluation
Much of our work will consist of figuring out how to organize information so that it can be easily understood. Sometimes we may need to determine if what we are dealing with is an information problem, or a performance problem. Sometimes we might need to determine if it is a problem for some but not all. Will people be best served with training? Might they be better served with performance support tools? Where and when will they need it?
Understanding techniques of needs assessment and content and task analysis will be essential. So will reviews of literature, knowing how to build a survey, and conducting market analysis. Formative and summative evaluation can help us determine whether or not the designs we provide will achieve the results we hope to achieve.
Communications and Media Arts
Effective communication is central to the role and function of learning design. We are often the people working with subject matters and learners, to help translate complex expertise into more easily understood, step-by-step procedural pathways. Creative arts, including writing, graphic arts, photography, videography, and web design are among the means of expression we have at our disposal for translating ideas and actions into words, images, recordings, and code strings.
Learning designers will find that the time spent developing good writing skills will serve them well. Regardless of the specific role, or the sector in which one is working, writers will always find their skills needed for a wide variety of tasks. These tasks may include, but not be limited by, writing scripts and screenplays; press releases and public relations documents; opinion/editorial articles and columns; research reports; executive briefing documents; grants; professional presentations; and professional articles. The more that one moves away from rational process models and depends on action-centric models that are produced in the moment, the more likely we are to depend upon project documentation to guide progress.
Media professionals will also discover the same value for time spent developing skills in digital photography and videography production and post-production skills. From still images to complex, multi-layered 3-D immersive environments, we can use visual representations to help extend understanding in profound ways.
Creative Learning Design and Production
Learning how to work as members of a team is an important part of being a learning designer. Production teams bring together groups of individuals who can bring a learning product from concept to product. For example, a relatively small learning product team producing web products may need a product manager, a graphic artist, a programmer, a writer, a web designer and an evaluator. These teams come together with a shared design document guiding the production of each stage of development.
Research and Measurement
One of the likely outcomes of the increasing number of enterprise technology systems (including web conferencing, LMS, SIS, ERP and other similar platforms) is that it is more likely that student/user data is collected within these systems. As a result, the expectations that these data are going to be used in future learning design scenarios is already on the rise. Learning designers may find it beneficial to increase competence in statistical and machine learning skills. Test item development and creation of measurement instruments will be a key skill.
Conclusion
The role of a learning designer has continued to evolve to make room for emergent technologies and frameworks. Always the goal has been to design the most effective learning using all theories, processes, or technologies at our disposal. In the modern version of the field, there are simply more of these theories, processes, and increasingly advanced technologies to assist us. Understanding how various design disciplines can inform our work as learning designers is both intimidating, but also exciting. This is a discipline where one never ceases to learn new skills and ideas. We can never be stagnant as a field and must increasingly improve our ability to learn from and collaborate with designers from a wide variety of backgrounds.
This book focuses on using design to create learning by focusing on key principles and various helpful processes, but most importantly, it focuses on the praxis or application of ideas in practice. Embracing the praxis inherent in action-centric design will help you develop a design identity that will bring you success in your work—no matter what your official job title or design context may be. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/01%3A_Understanding/1.01%3A_Becoming_A_Learning_Designer.txt |
Designing for Diverse Learners
Susie L. Gronseth, Esther Michela, & Lydia Oluchi Ugwu
Designing educational programs and curricula involves developing understandings of the learner and instructional environment characteristics that could impact learning success. While there may be some commonalities among learners, it is important for designers to recognize that there will likely be a great diversity of learning preferences, abilities, and experiences that learners will bring to a course or other learning experience. Rose (2015) remarked that the notion of an “average” learner is a misnomer, and learner diversity (rather than uniformity) is actually the norm. When learner variability is not addressed in a design, it is inevitable that many learners will experience obstacles to their learning, limiting the effectiveness of the learning experience for them and inducing additional costs in time and resources to make adjustments and accommodations (Brinck, 2005). Planning for learner variability from the outset is therefore a valuable step in the design process that can lead to more robust, accessible, and impactful designs. Being able to plan for diverse learners begins with developing empathetic understandings of the characteristics in which learners will vary. This chapter first describes ways that instructional designers can become familiar with the diverse needs of target learners and then offers recommendations for next steps in implementing inclusive design practices as part of curricular planning.
Recognizing Learner Needs
Learners vary along many different dimensions, with a learner’s profile as “individual as DNA or fingerprints” (Rose & Strangman, 2007, p. 388). In general, people have different preferences and habits for how they approach learning that are worth noting in the design. Some learners may have specific disabilities that can impact how they absorb, process, and express information. Disabilities can affect sensory areas such as vision, hearing, speech, and motor control. They can also be characterized by neurodiversity in that there are distinct differences in an individual’s neural networks involved with cognitive processes that impact how learners attend to, organize, and remember information. Learners may have varied needs in their social-emotional tendencies, which can drive how they work in groups, initiate and sustain engagement through the learning process, and create meaningful connections with content. It is also important for designers to recognize learner diversity in linguistic proficiency and cultural backgrounds that can play into how learners bridge their prior knowledge with new learning and the kinds of scaffolds and tools that could enable learning success.
Further, the use of technology as part of instruction and learning can pose challenges to ensuring equal access among learners. Digital educational materials and tools can introduce accessibility and usability issues. For example, some learners may use screen readers or closed captioning to review content; some learners may use voice-command, keyboard navigation, or gestural movements to interact with digital applications. When instructional designs do not support these varied means of access and interactivity, learners will experience barriers to being able to fully engage and benefit from the instruction.
Educational programs that require the use of specific technology equipment for access of computer-based instruction can be met with barriers to obtaining the equipment in parts of the world that have limited financial resources or under-developed infrastructures. For instance, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU, 2018) reports that just under half of households worldwide have a computer in the home. Similarly, web-based instruction is often dependent on learners having sufficient bandwidth through which to access the materials and activities, and this is not yet available in some areas. In the Americas, for example, about 70% of broadband subscriptions in 2017 reported access 10 Mbit/s or faster (ITU, 2018), which is generally sufficient speed for streaming video and making fast downloads. However, in least developed countries (LDCs, as designated by the United Nations according to their low socioeconomic development and Human Development Index ratings), access to high-speed Internet is not as prevalent. In 2017, 30% of broadband connections were at very slow speeds of less than 2 Mbit/s, which would make content streaming and course material downloads quite difficult. Designers can simulate slow internet in a variety of ways to understand how this impacts their learners.
Therefore, it is important in instructional design practice to recognize such elements and characteristics of the target learners and learning environments that relate to how learners will access, participate in, and show what they have learned through the instruction. Planning strategically to enable learners to navigate learning pathways that best meet their needs may involve greater investment of designer attention, time, and resources at the front-end. However, accessibility is necessary, and workaround solutions and accommodations are often costly and can have social implications that make them less than equal access for all learners.
Intentional effort in developing empathetic understandings of target learners during initial design phases can support more sustainable implementation of the educational program. This approach is characterized as universal design (UD), or designing for all people. UD “defines ways of thinking about and designing environments and products that work for the greatest number of people possible” (Null, 2014, p. 12). Robert Mace coined the UD term, noting that UD is “a process, rather than an achievement” (Story et al., 1998, p. 2). Applied to education, UD involves designing instruction that will be usable to the greatest extent possible by the target learners. The design should facilitate equitable use, offering equivalent means of access and engagement for learners with diverse abilities, and flexible use, providing options that accommodate varied learning preferences and abilities (Story et al., 1998). Thus, designing for diverse learners yields great benefits. Harris (2018) provides an example from nursing education, “Implementing UD concepts in nursing classrooms which support equity and inclusion of students with diverse learning needs is a practical and sustainable alternative to granting reasonable adjustments to students on a case-by-case basis” (p. 180).
Developing Empathy in Design
Designers of all types, and especially novice designers, can be somewhat self-centered. This is not to say that they are selfish, but they can be self-referential, reflecting their own needs, experiences, and preferences in their designs rather than those of the learners. For example, Molenbroaek and de Bruin (2006) related the story of a hearing aid designer who fit the shape of his designed hearing aid to the comfort of his own ears instead of those of older people who would actually wear them. This created great frustration for those who purchased the hearing aids when they found that they could not find a comfortable fit in their ears. (For more examples, search for “bad design style” or read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.)
So, too, in designing for education, attempts at universally designed instruction can fail to meet the actual needs of the learners. While self-referential design can certainly be used as a starting point, designers should not stop there but continue to develop empathic understanding for the target learners who will be using their designed materials. Empathic understanding is not binary, that is, it is not simply present or absent; rather, it is a skill that can be developed and deepened over time through experience and effort. As Brinck (2005) related in the book Cost-Justifying Usability, the investment of time and attention will be well worth it.
There are many ways that instructional designers can build empathic understanding for target learners. Fila and Hess (2015) described five techniques often used by instructional designers. First, designers can directly observe learners, both within the target learning context and in related places beyond. By watching how learners interact with environments, tools, and problems, designers can see barriers and points of confusion, as well as learner-initiated workarounds and strategies. Another technique is for designers to directly interact with sample target learners. Face-to-face, phone, and email conversations can lead designers to ask pointed questions that can help them learn more about the learner’s experiences. Having a conversation with someone close to a target learner can also yield insights, such as discussing learning needs with parents of young target learners.
Designers may also project themselves into the viewpoint of a target learner in order to envision what his/her experience within the planned instruction might be like. To do so, designers can imagine how learners with various characteristics and abilities would experience the exercise, activity, or lesson and where they may encounter barriers, misalignments, or other frustrations. Finally, designers can simulate participation by piloting drafted designs and materials to gain understanding for how learners may experience interacting in the learning context.
Tools for Understanding Target Learners' Experiences
For example, Dr. Temple Grandin uses a simulation technique when designing livestock facilities to build understandings for how to improve the designs for the users (Raver, 1997). Her ability to empathize with the reactions of livestock have made her an international expert on designing humane animal processing plants.
Applying Empathy in Design
Empathic understandings of target learners can then be applied to design parameters, such as how content will be communicated to learners through the designed instructional experience, how learners will practice concepts and skills during a lesson, or how learning will be assessed formatively and summatively. As designers generate ideas for these parameters, they can integrate their empathic understandings of the target learners with expectations and requirements from stakeholders and the realistic constraints of available resources and the target learning environment. See Table 1 for a sample of learner characteristics, potential instructional barriers, and supports that can be built into a learning experience.
Table 1
Non-Exhaustive List of Potential Considerations, Barriers, and Supports
Considerations
Potential Instructional Barriers
Supports
Hearing difficulties
• Video
• Podcasts
• Screencasts
• Lecture
• Captions (complete and synchronized)
• Interpreters
• Audio transcripts
Vision difficulties (such as low vision and color blindness)
• Presentation materials and demonstrations
• Printed texts
• Color use in presentations
• Tasks requiring color differentiation
• Audio descriptions of visible motion on a video
• Zoom functionality
• Screen reader accessibility
• Braille alternatives
• Image alt-text
• Designations other than color for conveying key information
Physical mobility difficulties
• Using a mouse
• Physical requirements
• Inaccessible spaces
• Stairs and platforms
• Keyboard accessibility
• Furniture rearrangement for increased mobility
• Varied seating options
Information processing difficulties
• Assessment time limits
• Extensive, complex tasks
• Language comprehension
• Technical jargon
• Remove time limits
• Chunk information
• Support strategy development (small goals, organize tasks, more deadlines for smaller sections)
• Flexible schedules
• Use simple language and/or provide vocabulary support
Language differences
• Spoken language
• Written language
• Collaborative activities
• Writing tasks
• Idiomatic language
• Translation tools
• Vocabulary instruction
• Captioning
• Transcripts
• Starter text for writing
Low Internet bandwidth
• Slow loading of large files (video, audio, images)
• Poor connections for real-time interactions
• Multimedia streaming limitations
• Provide alternatives to video
• Reduce image file size
• Have options for asynchronous participation
• Mobile-friendly interface
• Chunk content in smaller sections
Cultural differences
• Gender roles or relationships between genders
• Power differences between students and instructors
• Concepts of authority and respect
• Behavior expectations
• Collaboration with knowledgeable stakeholders
• Guided group collaboration structure and specified roles
• Communicated expectations
• Examples of expected contributions and activities
• Connections between learner culture and new content
Digital literacy
• Tasks requiring technical skills
• Navigation of online environments
• Learning curve for digital tools
• Frustration or discouragement
• Specific instruction or tool tutorials
• Emotional support and encouragement
• Time and scheduling guidance
• Just-in-time help desk support
Learner voice can be a valuable contributor to applying empathy in design. Checking in with learners and giving them a chance to respond to the design throughout the development process will likely result in meeting pertinent needs and avoiding miscommunications and misinterpretations. This can be done through formal and informal presentations of a drafted design to learners for feedback and further suggestions. Thus, instructional design is an iterative process of continual refinement through such feedback loops and checks for congruency and alignment across components of a module or educational program.
To illustrate how empathy can be applied in the instructional design process, two cases will be described. First, a case mentioned in Meeks, Jain, and Herzer (2016) related how medical students with color blindness experienced difficulty in histology courses when they were asked to identify microscopic structures, as the slides used to depict these structures were often stained using red or green colors that tended to obscure some key distinguishing features. The instructors addressed this barrier by converting the slides into grayscale, which enabled all students to view the structures. Thus, a recommended practice in designing instructional materials is to use shapes, labels, or other means to differentiate elements in illustrations, graphs, and other visuals, rather than color only. Doing so will facilitate a more universally designed experience for target learners.
A second illustrative case is from the Industrial Design program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Students in this program are coached to build empathy for users of their designed products and then use these empathetic understandings to refine their designs. One strategy that they use is to explore what it feels like to intentionally impair each of their senses and attempt to use their designs in representative home, school, and public spaces. This pushes them to develop insights regarding users who may have specific sensory impairments and how they may experience use of the design in varied environments. The design students also team up with non-design students who have both visible and invisible disabilities to review and pilot their drafted designs. Doing so allows them to build empathy through the interactions and dialogues with their team members, then they incorporate their user experience insights into future revisions (McDonogh, 2015).
Design Approaches to Address Learner Variability
Differentiated Instruction (DI)
Since learner variability is the norm rather than the exception, it is important that designers incorporate instructional approaches that will meet the needs of individual students and optimize their capacity to learn. One such approach is differentiated instruction (DI). Stradling and Saunders (1993) defined differentiation as “the process of matching learning targets, tasks, activities, resources and learning support to individual learners’ needs, styles and rates of learning” (p. 129). This means incorporating flexibility in the modes of learning, types of provided resources, and assessments in order to respond to specific learner differences. Instructional designs can be differentiated in content, process, and product (Tomlinson, 2017). Each of these dimensions will be discussed in further detail.
Differentiation of content involves varying the concepts and skills students will learn. While engaging in instructional planning, designers may work alongside subject matter experts or instructors to identify learning goals and outcomes for a course. Within the goals and outcomes, there can be variance in the levels of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that learners could be expected to gain from the course. For example, the content can be differentiated into concrete and abstract concepts, and students could be provided with a range of options (additional links, supplementary material, multimedia) to access learning materials and to work at their own pace. A pre-assessment could be used to gauge prior content mastery among learners and identify areas of additional needed support. Pre-assessments may also be used to determine learner readiness levels, interests, and learning preferences (Tomlinson & Allan, 2000). Gaining insights into learner interests and learning preferences (including preferences regarding individual/group work, personality traits, and internal/external motivators) will enable appropriate matching of course design to these learner characteristics. A pre-assessment can be in written form (such as a survey or test), or it can take the form of one-to-one interviews, focus groups, or demonstrations.
Differentiation of process refers to the varied ways that students make sense of learning materials and take ownership of their own learning. For a designer, it means factoring in activities that are engaging and intellectually challenging and that lead students to practice and apply targeted concepts and skills. Some examples are problem solving, mind mapping, and reflective journaling. What learners create through such activities, that is, the products of their learning, can also be varied. Products should demonstrate knowledge and skills that learners have gained from a course, but they can be in various forms, such as written, physical demonstration, spoken performance, or a video compilation. Designers can develop performance expectations to guide learners to incorporate critical thinking and connections to real-world applications through their products.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) calls for a flexible approach to learning that supports all students. Similar to the tenets of Universal Design mentioned earlier, UDL aims to minimize barriers for learners as part of the design of curricula and learning environments so that they are accessible to as many people as possible. UDL involves building in flexibility into the curricula from the outset instead of retrofitting and adapting inaccessible curricula after the fact (Meyer et al., 2014).
It is worth noting that UDL differs from DI because it provides learners with multiple options to pursue self-directed learning whereas DI is often more instructor-directed.
Differences Between UDL and DI With Katie Novak
The UDL framework contains three key principles:
• Provide multiple means of engagement that stimulate interest and persistence in learning, thereby producing learners that are purposeful and motivated;
• Provide multiple means of representation so that content is delivered in varied formats, enabling learners to become resourceful and knowledgeable; and
• Provide multiple means of action and expression in which learners can show their developing knowledge in varied ways, supporting them to become strategic and goal-directed (CAST, 2018).
Each principle has guidelines and checkpoints that detail implementation strategies.
To access the UDL framework, visit http://udlguidelines.cast.org/.
Hall, Strangman and Meyer (2003) offer four steps for implementing UDL in the planning and delivery of curriculum: set goals, analyze status, apply UDL, and teach the UDL lesson. When setting goals, it is important to establish the context for the instruction. Designers may need to consider, for example, if target goals would need to align with state or organizational standards. Designers can also consider if the methods that students use to accomplish the learning goals can be separated from the goals themselves. For instance, a goal that requires students to “write a paragraph about how the circulatory system works” may be reframed to prompt learners to “describe a complete cycle in the circulatory system,” which would facilitate flexibility in the means that learners could achieve that goal.
Analyzing the status of instructional materials involves evaluating the methods, materials, and assessments that will be used, considering their accessibility and flexibility in the ways that students engage and demonstrate their learning and identifying potential barriers. UDL can then be applied to elements of the instruction wherein potential barriers and opportunities for flexibility have been identified. Ultimately, the intentional flexibility in the UDL approach to design is aimed to position learners to be more self-directed and self-regulated, as learners are provided options for their learning pathways that align with their individual needs.
So, how might that look in practice? To provide multiple means of engagement, students are provided with tools that enable them to take ownership of their learning. Challenge levels should match their readiness, and there should be built-in opportunities for mastery-oriented feedback. This could begin with a well-designed syllabus that clearly states learning goals and objectives, course expectations and structure, information on how to navigate the learning environment, methods of assessment, and options for participation. Learning environments should support varied navigation and control methods that are accessible to all learners. Designers may also consider incorporating checkpoints that can help learners chart their progress in a course and provide opportunities for feedback and self-reflection after completing a unit of study.
Providing multiple means of representation offers learners options to customize the display of information, make sense of language and symbols, and enhance their levels of comprehension. Course materials can be presented in a variety of formats to provide varied means for students to connect with the content. Materials may be customizable, enabling learners to adjust text size, color, contrast, etc. and access content in varied forms, such as video, interactive simulations, audio, and text-to-speech.
In providing multiple means of action and expression, designers can incorporate planned flexibility in learner response options, navigation, access to tools and assistive technologies, forms of communications, and demonstration of learning. One strategy to achieve this is to maintain uniformity in the design of the content, both across functionalities and through consistency of visual appearance. Another strategy is to offer multiple options for learners to demonstrate their mastery of the content, such as through text, mind maps, audio, and video.
Culturally Relevant Education
Culturally relevant education is built on the premise that culture is an essential component of students’ learning, as instructional practices, curriculum, and modes of assessment that are couched in “mainstream ideology, language, norms, and examples often place culturally diverse students at a distinct educational disadvantage” (Howard, 2012, p. 550). Culturally relevant education is characterized by several frameworks, including culturally responsive pedagogy, culturally relevant teaching, and culturally congruent teaching. It is empowering to students intellectually, socially, politically and emotionally by using culturally relevant frameworks to convey knowledge, abilities, and attitudes (Ladson-Billings, 2009). Consequently, a culturally relevant education recognizes the culture, attributes, and knowledge that ethnically diverse students bring to their learning experiences and uses those resources to maximize their learning (Howard, 2012).
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy With Irvine, Gay, & Gutierrez
The question then becomes, how can instructional methods and materials be designed for cultural relevancy to learners, especially those on the fringes of dominant culture? An initial step for designers is to develop cultural sensitivity through becoming familiar with target learner interests, core values, traditions, modes of communication, and backgrounds. Knowledge about the learners can then be strategically integrated into plans for instructional methods and materials (Gay, 2002). To help learners see the relevance of instructional materials to themselves, instructional resources can be situated within the cultural and ethnic contexts of the target learners. Designers can incorporate materials and activities that reflect multiple voices and perspectives rooted in the personal experiences and cultures of the learners. Learner autonomy can be enhanced through the provision of varied options for expression. For example, learners can be provided an array of materials and activities to choose those that are relevant to their backgrounds of experience. Designers can also plan for ways that learners can share personal experiences as they are related to course topics, creating meaning-making opportunities.
Conclusion
Universally designing instruction involves recognition and intentional planning for components and features that often do create accessibility challenges for learners so that all learners can access and engage in learning experiences equitably. As learners vary in their characteristics, preferences, and experiences, so do the approaches through which designers can develop empathetic understandings and incorporate flexibility to meet diverse learner needs. This chapter offers an initial look into these strategies, and designers are encouraged to revisit these strategies in the instructional design process so that they can anticipate variability in their target learners and address this variability strategically.
Activity/Exercise Ideas
1. Explore built-in accessibility features. There are built-in accessibility features in many of today’s tools that support varied vision, hearing, mobility, and learning needs. Explore the built-in accessibility features of one of the following:
1. Mac OS: https://edtechbooks.org/-suAu
2. Windows: https://edtechbooks.org/-dpZm
3. iOS: https://edtechbooks.org/-HRy
4. Android: https://edtechbooks.org/-xSo
5. Chrome OS: https://edtechbooks.org/-haKY
6. Other Google tools: https://edtechbooks.org/-rCsZ
2. Share in a discussion board post, blog, video post, Tweet, etc. about what you learned in your exploration of the built-in accessibility features. Did you find any that you would like to use in the future?
3. Experience accessibility of digital resources. Choose a website, app, or program, and access it in a different way than you usually do. For example, you can use some of the built-in accessibility tools from Activity #1, such as trying to do research through an online library website using a screen reader and voice-input (such as VoiceOver and Dictation on MacOS). You could also try navigating around a course site using keyboard-only (no mouse, touchscreen, or touchpad). Or, you could try using a web application on a mobile device that you usually access via laptop/desktop computer. Spend about a half hour accessing the digital resource in one or more different ways and then reflect on your experience. How accessible was the resource for the means that you accessed it? What did this experience prompt you to think about in regards to your own design of digital educational resources? Create and share a summary of your experience and related thoughts as an audio clip, discussion board posting, graphic (could include screenshots or sound clips), etc.
4. Observe universal design. Spend 30-60 minutes observing people using universally designed features in different contexts, such as the automatic door openers, ramps, buses, playgrounds, water fountains, food service centers, libraries, etc. What do you notice about who is using them and how? Collect pictures of examples and non-examples of universally designed features around campus. How might these impact people with different needs?
5. Using technology to implement UDL. Choose a guideline (see http://udlguidelines.cast.org/) associated with one of the UDL principles and find a technology tool that supports the implementation of the guideline. For example, you may find a tool that supports the guideline "recruiting interest" under the principle of engagement. How would the tool optimize individual choice and autonomy, optimize relevance, value and authenticity, and minimize threats and distractions?
6. Create accessible materials. Use the Accessibility Evaluation and Implementation Toolkit (AIET) to evaluate and improve accessibility in one of your own Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, a WordPress website, or a Canvas module. Use the links in the checklist to identify accessibility barriers and then resolve all errors.
Resources
• Accessibility Resource List from Designers for Learning based on “POUR” - Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust recommendations related to website accessibility.
• Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain by Zaretta Hammond offers tools and recommendations for applying CRT into instruction.
• Dive Into UDL by Kendra Grant and Luis Pérez provides a UDL self-assessment and a variety of resources to explore UDL more deeply.
• Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is an annual event in May that focuses on the design, development, and usability of technology for users around the world.
• Inclusive Learning Network of ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) provides professional learning opportunities and resources on inclusive design and technology.
• National Center on Accessibility Education Materials (AEM) provides resources and technical assistance on producing learning materials that meet accessibility standards.
• Techniques for Empathy Interviews in Design Thinking is a resource with ideas for how to set up and conduct exploratory interviews with potential learners.
• The UDL Toolkit is a collection of UDL resources for teachers, coaches, and instructional leaders.
• UDL-IRN (The Universal Design for Learning Implementation and Research Network) provides resources and professional learning opportunities to connect with other educators and designers regarding implementation of UDL.
• UDL Progression Rubric by Katie Novak and Kristan Rodriguez provides specific examples of UDL practices across the three principles of providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/01%3A_Understanding/1.02%3A_Designing_for_Diverse_Learners.txt |
Conducting Research for Design
Daniel R. Winder
Every field of expertise has elements that need to be investigated, and regardless of the discipline, how you discover evidence for learning is very similar. In this chapter I will present common issues I have encountered in the field of instructional design when planning a research study. This is followed by discussion of when and how to use certain research methodologies. Finally, I will discuss how to conduct research and report results.
When and How to Use Research Methodologies
Novice researchers will often limit themselves as only being a qualitative or quantitative researcher. In practice, the nature of the question will dictate the most appropriate research method that should be used. In addition, using mixed methods often yields stronger results. For example, survey teachers about what to cut or reduce in a curriculum, then follow up with focus groups to yield stories and experiences that explain the survey numbers.
When to Use Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
Qualitative methods generally seek to answer questions that center around experiences that involve understanding values, beliefs, perceptions, emotions, culture, growth, paradigm shifts, processes, taboos, morality, reasoning, and acquiring learning. In short, the more a question centers around “the human experience,” the more it lends itself to qualitative means which gather rich experiences, stories, and examples. An example of qualitative research could be using grounded theory to develop a new theory of language acquisition by analyzing data from journals, portfolios, and focus group interviews of persons learning a new language.
Quantitative methods generally seek to answer questions that center around how much of something has been acquired such as knowledge, behaviors, or attitudes. Experiments, correlations, causes, and descriptions are often the reasons why how much of something is being measured. An example of experimental research is when a pilot program is compared with an existing instructional program to measure the effect of different instructional treatments on how much students learn. An example of correlational research would be the effect of parental involvement on GPA. The hypothesis of such a study may be that higher parental involvement will correlate with higher GPA. An example of a causal research study is the effect of dogmatic political preferences on macro-moral reasoning abilities. Perhaps the assumption is that dogmatic political party views may inhibit one’s ability to morally think through all aspects of social issues. An example of descriptive research is when a researcher describes how many hours of homework 7th grade math teachers give per week.
General Steps to Qualitative Research
Identify Your Bias
The first step in qualitative research is to identify your biases via reflective means. Reflexivity activities help a person go through a meta-cognitive process of identifying their preconceived notions, judgements, and values that may influence the research project. This can be as simple as journaling your thoughts about a research topic. This video clip explains some qualitative research methods with a few examples. There is a great description of reflexivity about eight minutes into the clip.
Plan the Research
The second step begins by writing a problem statement and research question. Once these and variables of interest are identified, an important part of the research plan is to design interview or observation guides. This may involve designing interview or observation guides. Guides take various forms such as a checklist, a standardized open-ended interview guide, or an informal guide. A few tips in designing the guide are to a) have colleagues review questions or guide, b) pilot test your questions or guide, c) check for leading questions or leading interviewers or observation bias, and d) be open to scrutiny.
During this phase, plan reliability and validity measures are
1. Credibility (internal validity). Credibility of the research can be established via triangulation, prolonged contact, member checks of data or analysis, saturation, reflexivity, and peer review.
2. Transferability (external validity). The generalizability of the research can be enhanced by using thick descriptions and variation in participant selection.
3. Dependability (reliability) is established by extensive audit trails and using triangulation. Subjectivity audits are used during the data collection process to evaluate how a researcher’s presence, questions, or biases may be impacting the research.
4. Confirmability is established with reflexivity and intra- or inter-coder reliability.
Gain Entry
The third step is to gain entry with the group or individuals the researcher is studying. This involves gaining trust, understanding the culture and environment, and helping the participants feel at ease. The amount of time and effort here depends on many factors such as the sensitivity of the topic and whether the researcher is taking a cultural native approach or acting in an apparent authority role. To further explore this concept of gaining entry, read this article.
Collect Data
The fourth step is to collect data. This can be done via observation, interviews, focus groups, open-ended surveys, and journals. During this phase, be prepared to adjust your thinking and be aware of your bias. Gather existing data and artifacts also. Because this is the step where the most mistakes are made, below are some additional practical tips and tools for qualitative data collection.
Observation
The most common ways to observe are live, virtual, recorded video or audio files, or a combination of the three. A rubric or observation guide can be designed to focus observation on certain concepts or phenomena. The benefit to live observations is the ability to view holistically all the nuances, expressions, non-verbal cues, and visual or auditory expressions that are not captured by other methods.
The benefit of recording video or audio files of observations is the ability to review them multiple times during transcription and analysis. One great tool for video observation is GOReact, where a pre-specified codebook can tag live or pre-recorded video files when coded phenomena occur.
Focus Groups
A focus group is one of the most common methods of qualitative research. Focus groups are group interviews with less than 10 persons. These persons are usually intentionally selected (e.g. students who meet certain demographic characteristics). Focus groups work well when participants feel non-threatened and permissive. They are effective because the interplay between participants can stimulate other’s thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, etc.
Because of the ease of gathering these small groups, some researchers mistakenly use focus groups when other methods would be more appropriate. For example, novice researchers may gather a focus group and proceed to ask the group survey-like questions rather than gather rich descriptive experiences, stories, and thoughts. Another common mistake is that researchers default to focus groups for topics best answered by individual interviews; for example, asking an online cohort about their group cohesion in a focus group setting presents a situation where participants may give socially desirable responses (individual, confidential interviews may yield more truthful responses).
Common Mistakes in Focus Groups: Communication Errors
The most common mistake for focus groups (and individual interviews) are communication errors from the interviewer which hinders responses such as:
• Restating too often. In teaching situations and normal friendly discussion, restating is a great communication skill. However, in interviewing, it’s not always a great method, especially with a novice researcher who can’t tell when they are putting words in participants' mouths. For example, if you are interviewing a group to find out opinions on a particular LMS platform and they say, “It feels so isolating,” a great follow-up to get more out that concept is to ask, “Can you tell me more about that?” or “Can you think of a story or experience that illustrates that isolated feeling?” In a focus group, it is best to seek clarification from the participants with additional questions, stories, experiences, or elaboration rather than assume you know what they mean.
• Leading the witness. Some interviewers inadvertently revert to their bias and ask leading questions.
• Overly emotional responses from the interviewer. Remember, you are an interviewer with a beating heart, but not a counselor or therapist. You don’t have to validate or comment on everything or nervously giggle at comments when humor is not intended.
• Not qualified to discuss. Interviewing about content for which you are not qualified (e.g. impacts of mental illness, causes of anxiety, marriage counseling issues, or any other topics that most often involve a trained professional).
Common Mistakes in Focus Groups: Failure to Control for Groupthink
Groupthink is when one person in the group shares an opinion or thought and the group finds it hard to break away into any other vein or divergent thinking. Sometimes, there is an actual group consensus. Other times, it’s groupthink. Discerning between the two takes experience. Some common indicators of groupthink are that a few people are not talking or give trite agreements (“what she said”). Discern if the persons not talking or tritely agreeing are just less articulate, or don’t want to share their contrasting views. You may have to curb bold or strongly opinionated persons who may seek to bully or monopolize the group. For example, “Let’s hear from someone who hasn’t shared yet” or “Hold your thought for a minute while we hear from…”.
To control for groupthink, first introduce the session with some ground rules for an open discussion (and repeat many of these introductory rules throughout):
• There are no right or wrong answers.
• In this group, it’s okay to disagree and still be friends. If everyone is saying their experience was great, but for you it was horrible, you need to speak up so all perspectives can be heard.
• It’s safe to be positive or negative, better or worse. Explain to participants that saying something positive does not make them a better teacher or student. Similarly, saying something negative does not make them a worse teacher or student.
• It’s okay to remove the filter between the brain and tongue, just for 45-60 minutes in this focus group. “Don’t worry if you are saying it right or wrong, just say what you experienced.”
• Distance yourself as the researcher from the product. For example, “I didn’t create this company or this training so however you feel about it won’t affect me.”
To control for groupthink during a focus group, use the following suggestions:
1. Have participants write out thoughts or stories before the interview begins. Refer back to these in the interview if groupthink emerges. Did anyone write something different?
2. Invite contrast throughout the interview by asking, “Did anyone have a different experience that I need to hear?” or “Have you or someone you know had a different experience?”
3. If the groupthink is very strong, use hypotheticals, such as “What type of person would have had a different experience?” or “Could someone have a different experience? Why or why not?” Follow up by asking, “Did any of you experience that at all?”
4. Employ indirect questioning. Indirect questioning seeks to control for socially desirable response sets. For example, if you were asking about a program designed to remove racial biases, there may be a strong socially desirable response set. To remove the social context, you could ask, “If you were to describe how well this program runs using an analogy of a car, what kind of car would it be? Why?” or “If this program were a TV show, what genre would it be? Why?” With indirect questioning, the goal is to remove persons from a contextual response set by asking about the program indirectly. This can control the parroting response set by making respondents think and respond in a new context about similar issues, impressions, or values, without having time to prepare a socially desirable response. The result is insights with some contextual limitations.
5. In conclusion, ask, “What do you want to make sure I heard from you?” (I often have participants to write this down). Or ask, “is there anything I should have asked but didn’t?”
Ethnography
Ethnography is a method of study that educational researchers adopted from anthropology. For example, a researcher may be a participant or observer in an online class and may conduct several interviews and focus groups. They may write about the setting, social implications, typical and best behavior, and seek a perspective from several groups (parents, teachers, students, administrators, etc.). The researcher could also report about the tensions between groups, or even explore power struggles within groups.
Analyze the Data
The fifth step is to analyze the data. After qualitative data is collected and cleaned (such as removing identifying names or using codes for participants instead of names), it is important to go back to your original questions and study plan. Although you can adapt and explore interesting concepts that emerge, it is also important to keep your focus on your original questions. Thoroughly explore the data and be open to new concepts, but do not be sidetracked by all of them. Word maps may help initially to see what phrases or concepts are prevalent.
In qualitative analysis, all artifacts are loaded into a software such as Delve (https://delvetool.com/), Quirkos (https://edtechbooks.org/-hVz), Dedoose (https://www.dedoose.com/), or MAXQDA (https://www.maxqda.com/) . The researcher then creates a codebook. A codebook is a list of concepts, behaviors, actions, thoughts, etc. that summarize themes in a group of qualitative data (such as responses to open-ended questions). My initial code book will also contain the original research questions. If you are working with a group of researchers you should make sure you all agree on the codebook and use it consistently when analyzing your data (often called “interrater reliability”—see this training for more information).
Common Mistakes in Analyzing Qualitative Data
• Failure to focus the codebook on the research questions.
• Failure to identify proximal relationships (e.g. math division, anxiety, and home support are all close together). For example, if less anxiety and parental involvement are often near each other in participant comments there may be a connection there.
• Myopic analysis—overly focusing on a powerful story that is not a generalizable trend.
• Failure to make your findings defensible by employing validity and reliability measures discussed in the second step (credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability).
Report Findings
The final step is to report the findings. A good report involves the research question or problem statement; background, theory, and lit review; the study design; presentation of the data with rich descriptions; and an explanation of the data or findings. You can present findings in chronological order, or by theme, frequency, or rich narratives such as in a case study. To learn more, see this lecture: https://edtechbooks.org/-FNEs.
Common Mistake in Reporting Qualitative Data: Extrapolation Error
A common mistake is a tendency to want to extrapolate an ancillary finding into a generalizable trend. For example, a researcher may say, “I was talking to a student at lunch today and they mentioned… This is something I’ve heard many times.” When a researcher makes a generalizable error, they are often including a finding that was never asked for, planned to explore, or agreed upon. The anecdotes are often not related to the initial research purposes.
The danger of making such anecdotes into general findings is, in reality, it was only a few powerful stories from a few isolated interviews. These powerful stories should not be ignored, and can be explored further, but one should ask if the anecdotes alone are sufficient to represent a generalizable trend. For example, in one study, an educational administrator in Africa asked for a budget to buy a gun to scare the lions away from the school. Although this was an impressive story, it was not an administrative issue mentioned in any other program. However, all programs mentioned power or internet outages and lack of technological resources.
In summary, researchers who have planned, collected, analyzed, coded, and reported data from qualitative research understand that the benefits are rich descriptions and understanding concepts or phenomena in depth and context. However, a drawback is the significant time and resources spent in transcribing, reading, organizing, coding, analyzing, and reporting. In addition, the amount of information gathered is usually very focused and can be limited in scope. For this reason, many chose to use quantitative methods.
General Steps to Quantitative Methods
Quantitative research begins by developing an understanding of an instructional problem and possible theories to solve the problem. The key elements of this step involve knowing much of the background of a product or problem and identifying a client’s needs.
Write a Problem Statement and Research Question
The result of a good review of literature is to be able to write a good problem statement. A well-written problem statement will bring up past research or needs that lead to an instructional design question, then lead naturally into defining the scope of the questions that will be answered in the study. Here is an example of a problem statement for teachers that are simultaneously learning a foreign language and teaching skills:
Research shows that when second language learners seek to achieve multiple learning objectives within a second language, the acquisition of those multiple learning objectives may be impeded due to increased cognitive load and learning anxiety.
The problem statement is general enough to be read by top administrators and specific enough to narrow down the project scope. The research question builds on the problem statement to define the specific questions of the study plan. Here is a sample research question from the previous example:
Does separating instruction of teaching skill training from language acquisition training affect student’s: a) teaching skills, b) language acquisition, and c) foreign language learning anxiety when three pilot groups are compared with three control groups and baseline historical data?
Writing a Research Question
"I didn't have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one instead." Mark Twain
This is applicable when writing a problem statement and research question(s). It is more difficult to be concise than verbose.
Another approach to writing a research question is to operationalize one’s theories into a hypothesis. A hypothesis usually involves an if–then statement and defines the variables of interest. For example, if I use metacognitive strategies in my reading curriculum, then students will more efficiently learn to read at a 5th grade level. It is quite easy to turn a well-written hypothesis into a research question. For example, if I use metacognitive strategies in my reading curriculum, will students more efficiently learn to read at a 5th grade level? In this phase, there will be some operationalization of terms here such as efficiently, 5th grade level, and identifying some specific metacognitive strategies.
Develop a Study Plan
Once a research question is designed and variables are operationalized, it’s time to develop a research plan. A good research plan builds on the problem to be solved and further operationalizes variables to be studied and controlled for.
The Study Plan Matrix
At this point, the client and instructional designer can create a study plan matrix as shown in Table 1 (based on the prior example of language acquisition):
Table 1
Sample Spreadsheet
Research Question(s): Does separating instruction of teaching skill training from language acquisition training affect learners'…
Method or
Instrument
When will data be collected and by whom?
Analysis
…teaching skills?
Teaching assessment (existing internal instrument)
Teaching assessment administered at 6 practice teaching sessions, one per week, filled out by a trained rater receiving the teaching.
Independent samples t-test or Chi-Square to compare pilot and control groups.
One sample t-test to compare pilot with baseline data.
ANCOVA to control for Self-efficacy score.
Interviewer will undergo reflective journaling to identify bias prior to interviews. Interviews, observation notes, and focus group data will be transcribed and analyzed via MAXQDA to identify main ideas and themes. Coded comments will be rated by two raters and inter-rater reliability statistics reported. Participants will check focus group findings.
Cronbach’s alpha on each scale will be reported for internal validity.
…language acquisition?
Opic (existing instrument)
Opic language assessment administered during the last week of the program by trained test proctors. ACTFL categories reported by testing company.
…language learning anxiety?
Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (FLAS) with Self-Efficacy Scale, prior language self-report items, and focus groups.
Pilot & Control—FLAS Survey Monday of week 2. FLAS Survey Wednesday of week 3. Two 60-minute focus groups for pilot only—1) end of English instruction, 2) last week of language instruction (focus group will have the top 50% of language scores in one focus group, bottom 50% in another).
Incoming and exit survey questions—existing internal survey.
The study plan matrix operationalizes the study in a clear way. Instruments from the literature review are specifically identified. Analysis methods are clearly spelled out. In addition, the study plan will involve agreed-upon methods to control for extraneous variables and employ accepted reliability and validity measures to control for threats to validity. A good study plan can also control for scope-creep—when a research project is either ill-defined or a client attempts to pork barrel the project so as to make it much larger than it should be or was originally agreed upon. The study plan can be the basis for a business requirement document—a document that spells out timelines, cost, and deliverables for a client.
Data Collection
Sampling
Sampling is how one determines the selection of participants in a research study. Sampling methods result in a selection of a subset of a population. Random sampling methods (everyone in a population has an equal chance of being selected) aid in the ability to generalize one’s sample to be representative of an entire population. For example, all fourth graders in the district are put into a random sample generator and 400 of them are randomly selected to be representative of all 4th graders in the district. Non-random sampling is when decisions such as researcher judgment or convenience determine one’s sample. For example, selecting all fourth graders at the particular school at which one works. Differing methods have benefits and drawbacks but the ultimate goal in all sampling methods is to seek a representative sample of a population. For a simple explanation of types of sampling and their advantages and disadvantages see: https://edtechbooks.org/-hcm.
Experimental Research
The simplest type of experimental research is a single treatment and a single observation. Various designs seek to control for threats to validity (to learn more about how each design controls for threats to validity see https://edtechbooks.org/-Woh). The following chart shows various types of experimental designs.
Table 2
Experimental Designs (R = random selection, X = experimental treatment, O = observation)
1. One-shot case study
5. Posttest only, control group design
X O
R X O
2. One-group, pretest–posttest design
R O
O X O
3. Time-series design
6. Solomon four-group design
O O O O X O O O O
R O X O
4. Pretest-posttest, control-group design
R O O
R O X O
R X O
R O O
R O
Survey Research
Surveys are a very common method of data collection and a great tool to use when the question you are seeking to answer can be easily responded to in categorical selections or written comments. For example, asking about the frequency of a known behavior, how well students like a method of instruction, how well they agree or disagree with statements about an instructional treatment, or conscious perceptions potential learners have about their learning environment or teacher. Essentially, questions about what or how much of something are great candidates for survey research. For example, how much do you agree or disagree with the following statement(s) about your instruction, or, how often did your teacher follow up on your homework? An open-ended item might be as simple as: “Explain your rating.” Because surveys are so common, I will offer greater depth on this method of data collection.
General Survey Writing Tips
The following tips will help you design a better survey:
Pilot test. Test your survey out with 5-10 typical responders. Use a think-aloud protocol, where you ask people to say out loud what they are thinking when completing the survey. Conducting a pilot test will identify a majority of any usability or misinterpretation issues you will need to fix with your survey. In addition, asking 30 respondents to reply before sending it to all 1000 can give you a good idea of how your categories are performing. You may find a ceiling or floor effect for several items (all participants are selecting the highest or lowest category). This may be grounds for removing an item or revising it to be more discriminatory. However, it may also serve as a confirmatory item.
Review sample survey output files. If you respond to a few surveys and then review the output file, it can save you hours in data clean up later because you see how you can most effectively change the format for later analysis. For example, perhaps the output file has data from the same respondent on different rows. Or perhaps you notice where survey logic accidently skipped over a section that was not intended to be missed. Sometimes embedded data is not being properly gathered. Categorical responses could be in text format rather than numeric. In addition, you can test the import of your selected output file into your statistical software of choice. Part of that import may help to determine if the data is appropriate for your study plan. For example, linear regression may not be appropriate for nominal data. Nominal logistic regression may be a more appropriate analysis method (for a further discussion of regression, see: edtechbooks.org/-nWXt). Sometimes seeing the data can help inform whether your method of analysis is appropriate.
Do not gather what you do not need. Do not waste valuable survey response time in gathering already existing information. For example, many organizations, conferences, or workshops have participant information already gathered. If the organization has the appropriate data-sharing agreements in place, you can embed prior gathered demographic information and only verify its accuracy.
There are various types of items. Most survey software will offer multiple choice (a, b, c, d), Likert scales (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), semantic differential items (agree–disagree), ranking and ordering (place the highest on top), dichotomous (true–false), and open-ended items. For a discussion of when to use these differing items see https://edtechbooks.org/-yUXF. For an item writing workshop or lecture from the author, see: https://edtechbooks.org/-vgvS.
Establish criteria to measure and align your items to each criteria. For example, if you are using a survey for an implementation study, establish what teachers and students must do for a successful implementation. Then write items for each criteria identified. I use a spreadsheet for this. Here’s a simple sample of criteria and items in an implementation survey design.
Table 3
Sample Survey Criteria
Definition of Effective Implementation of Canvas
Survey Question Type
Question Stem
Teachers ensure students have technical abilities to use Canvas.
Agree–
disagree
1. I was adequately trained on how I should use Canvas.
Teachers introduce the course resources and refer students to them throughout the unit. Teachers are not having to provide direction for locating assigned activities.
Agree–
disagree
2. After initial training, there was no need to ask a teacher for directions on how to use Canvas.
Students know and feel Canvas will help answer their questions.
Agree–
disagree
3-5. I knew I could go to Canvas to find answers to my questions about:
3. class scheduling
4. class preparation
5. assignment due dates
Avoid leading items. For example, “How easy was it to use the app?” is a leading item because this assumes it was easy to use. A better way to word the item would be, “Rate your experience with the app” (then use categories like 1 = easy to use, 5 = difficult to use, etc.).
Avoid double-barreled items. Double barreled items ask about multiple elements. For example: Rate your experience regarding class preparation and knowledge of due dates. It is better to separate these into two distinct items.
Use a common stem to avoid repetition. When several items or options begin with the same words, use a single stem and put the items or options beneath it or in a survey matrix. Here’s an example of a stem with a multiple choice item
What determines a person’s eye color? Their parent’s genetic…
a. centrioles
b. chromosomes
c. organelles
Use the right categories. There is a tendency to default to the categories your software provides, but the software may not always give you the right options. For example, the default may be a 1-5 scale but a 1-10 scale may be more appropriate based on participant responses. Or the software may give a numerical scale or a preset categorical scale, but a unique categorical scale should be developed for the audience or topic. For example, in one survey I created for teenagers, I took several days interviewing teens and testing categories to get the right “teen-speak” categories that they could effectively use to differentiate their level of belief in certain topics.
Timing. For volunteers, survey gathering should only be a few minutes. For employees that are required or strongly encouraged to take the survey, you can create a survey somewhat longer (7-10 minutes), while still respecting people’s time. Test the time it takes to respond to your survey as part of your pilot. In addition, consider the time your survey will launch. When persons are busy and overloaded, they will not respond as well. For example, if you launch a survey at the same time HR requires a 60-minute online module, fewer people will respond.
The survey invitation. The survey invitation is just as important as the survey itself. Often, people will receive survey invitations in an email. Your email should include a brief description of the survey, the time it will take to respond, a deadline, who is asking for the information, how the information will be used, as well as any guarantees of confidentiality or anonymity. If there are any rewards for survey completion, how to collect the reward should be specified. The most obvious thing the invite should include is a working survey link with an option to cut and paste the link. During the data collection period, several follow-up invitations should be sent. Depending on the nature of the data collected and decisions to be made, it may be worth the effort to seek out non-responders via phone interviews, additional invites, or paper surveys to compare their responses with prior responders. Generally, your first responders are more positive than non-responders.
Sampling. Sampling methods should be employed to avoid oversampling or survey burnout. For example, if your population is 10,000 ready respondents, consider a random sample of 300-400 persons, especially if you are conducting several surveys throughout the year for this population. Survey sampling websites can help you determine the appropriate sample size. If a ready sample is not available, a researcher can pay persons to take the survey or use social media or snowball sampling methods to find their target audience (see prior section on sampling).
As efficient as surveys are, they are not the best method for questions that require complex explanations or for studying multiple overlapping concepts in developing fields. For example, a researcher may be seeking to design a user interface for an app or may be forming a theory where grounded theory methods would be more appropriate.
Statistical Analysis
There are four main types of quantitative analysis: descriptive, causal, experimental, and correlational (predictive). Descriptive analysis describes your data in a summary form. The mean score, a histogram, a standard deviation, frequencies, and skew are all examples of descriptive statistical data. Most often, descriptive data is used to determine the appropriate type of further analysis. For example, if your data is highly skewed, you would use a different correlation technique than simple correlation (r). This introduces the concept of a statistical decision tree. A statistical decision tree helps a researcher make the right decisions about using the appropriate methods for analysis. Click here to see an image of a statistical decision tree or here for a computerized model.
Analyzing Group Differences (Causality and Experimental Analysis)
T-tests are used to compare differences in two groups, most often the mean (average) difference of two groups. Essentially, all statistical tests are measuring whether differences are due to more than chance alone. The assumption behind comparing two differing tests are that some experimental treatment caused the differences; in instructional design, usually the designed curriculum or tool is assumed to be causal.
The most common t-test analysis is an independent samples t-test. This type of test compares two different samples on a common measure. For example, online and live student’s final test scores in a course are compared. A paired samples t-test analysis is used when you have two measurements on the same person (or thing). For example, a pre- or posttest where student one’s pretest score is compared with student one’s posttest score. A third type of t-test is a one-sample t-test. This compares the mean of a single group with a known group. For example, comparing a current cohort’s attitudes towards learning math with baseline historical data from prior years.
But how do you analyze differences in samples when there are three or more groups? You could perform several different t-tests, but this can become very complicated when there are several groups. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) analyzes mean differences among several samples and yields similar statistics to t-tests to show differences are more than due to chance alone.
Analysis of Covariance is similar to ANOVA but seeks to remove the effects of known variables. ANCOVA can also be used when simultaneously analyzing categorical variables and continuous variables and how they affect a third variable. For example, suppose you are testing three different curricula, but you cannot assign students at random. To control for this lack of random sampling, you administer a pretest score. The pretest score is a very strong predictor of your posttest score. With ANCOVA, if the relationship between a pretest and posttest score can be statistically quantified, the effects of the pretest level can be controlled to examine the overall effect of the three curricula (essentially seeking to remove the impact of pre-existing knowledge).
Analyzing Relationships (Predictive Analysis)
Correlational research seeks to examine relationships between two variables, such as the relationship between the amount of books read and five paragraph essay scores. Often, the goal is to find predictive relationships (e.g. those who read 5 books a month are likely to have 3 times higher scores on 5 paragraph essay scores than those who read 1 book a month).
The simplest of relationships is a linear relationship, or a line. As one variable changes (increases or decreases) another variable changes in a consistent manner (increases or decreases). Pearson’s r is used with simple continuous data (foreign language anxiety scores relationship with language acquisition scores). Spearman’s rho is used with rank order data (rank in graduating class relationship with rank on the SAT). Phi coefficient is used with dichotomous categorical variables (Instagram account or not and retired or not).
Regression statistics measure the relationships between many variables. Linear, or simple regression produces a best fit line for prediction between two variables (e.g. score on one test and score on a second test). Multiple regression is when a dependent variable is predicted by many or multiple variables (amount of time studying, days in class, and pretest scores all predict final exam score). There are many specialized types of regression models used in predictive modeling and to exhaust them all would be a much larger paper, but linear and multiple regression are the most common types of regression models used in instructional design research. To learn more about correlational, predictive, descriptive, and experimental research analysis, enroll in a quantitative research methods course.
Common Mistakes in Quantitative Data Analysis
Following are the most common mistake in quantitative data analysis:
1. Inappropriate sampling. For example, too small of a sample, not using a random sample when the analysis method requires it, and over generalizing about all persons in a group when only a sub-population of the group was sampled (a.k.a. extrapolation error).
2. Inappropriate methods. For example, using Pearson’s r for correlation with rank order data. Or, using a simple t-test when the data is highly skewed and a Wilcoxon method is more appropriate. A statistical decision tree can help you avoid this mistake.
3. Failure to report descriptive statistics. Novice researchers may jump right into their analysis or report of their findings without explaining why a method was chosen or not chosen. A simple qualifier in your analysis such as, “A histogram showed the data was not normal. Therefore assumptions of normality were not met and XYZ method was chosen for analysis,” would suffice.
4. Failure to review and clean data. Your data must be in the right format for the statistical package you choose to use. Therefore, reviewing data, often in spreadsheet form, or reviewing the first few lines in your statistical package can help you see if the variables are all aligned with the data, if they are consistently coded, and if you are analyzing all or just some of your data.
5. Miscoding variables. Most statistical packages allow for some transformations or computing of variables. For example, strongly agree to strongly disagree could be recoded as 1 through 5. Or a total score can be computed with several or all of the variables. When recoding, be consistent. If 1 = strongly disagree on one variable, it should be consistent throughout the dataset. It’s always good to double check when transforming data or recoding data.
6. Failure to account for missing data. Novice researchers often forget to decide how to account or code missing data. Others mistakenly treat missing data as a 0, and the results can be inaccurate.
Reporting Research to Stakeholders
In academic research, you report to a committee, usually with differing opinions, preferences, and specialties. In business, industry, and government, reporting is not very different. Learning what your stakeholders are interested in and how they prefer reports is important. For example, if they prefer visuals in the forms of graphs, charts, and process flowcharts, create those. If they prefer quantitative data (such as means, standard deviations, correlations, regression lines) over qualitative data (stories, experiences, and personas), then it may be worth reporting such data. However, most stakeholder groups are diverse enough it is often best to include several differing types of reporting, visuals, tables, flowcharts, diagrams, and rich experiences and stories.
Often, a persona of a typical person in a group or subgroup illustrates poignant areas of findings. For example, one client wanted research to identify who applies to teach for them. After analyzing data from 1500 applications, we created the following persona:
This is Sophia. Sophia is a Latin American Studies Major, with a Spanish Minor. She currently does not have a job but is looking. One of her friends suggested a job at [your organization]. She is bilingual and has just returned home from abroad in a Latin American country. She loves [the organization’s] environment and mission and is always looking for opportunities to share what she has learned, especially with new language learners. Statistically, Sophia’s persona is the most likely to apply to [your organization].
After the reports are presented and, data is shared and reminded, do not take it personally if the findings are not immediately acted upon or if every recommendation from the committee or research team is regarded. It often takes time for organizations to act upon new findings, and organizations are often juggling many initiatives. Often, researchers are not involved in strategic planning, so if your research findings are not immediately acted upon, there may be a strategic plan for acting on them at a later date or there may be other more pressing needs to address for the organization.
In one office I worked for, we had a phrase we used to describe a concept of waiting to share findings: “Don’t share the wine, before the time.” A common mistake of researchers is to share their findings before they have been fully gathered or analyzed. For example, the first 100 of 300 replies are analyzed and the most common finding is that students are enjoying the new LMS. However, there are still 200 responses left to code and analyze. Suppose the other findings differ but the findings have already been shared or reported as positive. And no matter how many times you say “this is preliminary data,” all a stakeholder hears is a fact.
Conclusion
This chapter is an introduction to research that can be useful to inform design decisions. The tools of research in instructional design are similar as the tools of research in most other disciplines. Once the basic principles of research are mastered in one setting, it is easier to begin using them in others.
Even though there is a science filled with appropriate and inappropriate research decisions, there is also an art to research. With experience, a researcher sharpens their research skills and knowledge of when to use which method to a point where they see the art in the science, and the science in the art. As a researcher, I enjoy this process of aiding an organization or client in the art of discovery. Among my colleagues, I often joke about researchers being a special type of breed. We are curious by nature, so curious, that it leads us to almost crave discovery. And, in my opinion, that is why you will find the most curious minds are always engaged in research. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/01%3A_Understanding/1.03%3A_Conducting_Research_For_Design.txt |
Determining Environmental and Contextual Needs
Jill Stefaniak
Because instructional design emphasizes facilitating learning and improving performance, instructional designers must begin by acquiring necessary information about their learners’ educational journeys. Needs assessment can assist instructional designers to make recommendations and design appropriate solutions (both instructional and non-instructional solutions) that will assist their learners in translating what is taught to their successful implementation.
The purpose of a needs assessment is to identify the gap between the current state of performance and the desired state of performance (Altschuld & Kumar, 2010). This gap in performance is what then becomes the need. While needs assessment can be a powerful and informative tool, the instructional designer cannot get lost in analysis and delay their design work (Stefaniak, Baaki, Hoard, & Stapleton, 2018). They need to be able to work within the scope of their design space, rely on the resources they have available to them, and make decisions to the best of their knowledge.
This chapter will address how validating needs and contextual factors influencing learner performance can be accounted for in instructional design to ensure the transfer of learning in real-world contexts. It will also demonstrate how information gathered from needs assessment can be leveraged to identify and develop the necessary scaffolds to manage the learning experience.
Exploring the Intersection Between Needs Assessment, Needs Analysis, and Instructional Design
Richey, Klein, and Tracey (2011) defined instructional design as “the science and art of creating detailed specifications for the development, evaluation, and maintenance of situations which facilitate learning and performance” (p. 3). If we were to dissect this definition, I would point out that instructional designers are responsible for the following: (1) creating detailed specifications; (2) conducting evaluations; and (3) maintaining of situations that facilitate learning and performance.
The information that a needs assessment yields provides the details and specifications needed for an instructional designer to create an instructional product that is customized and accounts for the unique needs of the learning audience. It also provides benchmark data regarding the current level of performance (or situation) that the instructional designer and their team can evaluate and compare after instructional interventions have been designed and implemented. Instructional designers and the team members will also be better positioned to monitor the instructional delivery and transfer of knowledge to the job or desired application if they have been presented with sufficient data concerning these phases.
It is important to differentiate between needs assessment and needs analysis as they are not synonymous with one another but are often used interchangeably. Needs assessment is the process of gathering information to determine whether there is a gap between the current state and the desired state. This gap yields the need. Needs analysis is the process of further investigating the situation to understand why this gap exists in the first place. The data that is gathered during the needs assessment is analyzed to determine what is contributing to or causing the gap (Kaufman & Guerra-Lopez, 2013).
Needs assessment and needs analysis provide an opportunity for an instructional designer to develop instructional materials that can have a meaningful impact on their learning audience. In more cases than not, when instructional designers are brought onto a project, the solution (need) has already been decided:
• We need to design an online degree program
• We need to design a safety course for incoming employees
• We need to design a team training course for the hospital staff
If you look closely, you will see that each of the above-mentioned statements contained the word need. Whether it is your client or a supervisor, the need has already been decided. Another caveat is that there are a lot of times where the need has been decided with no needs assessment ever having been conducted (Peterson & Peterson, 2004). Oftentimes when this occurs, the instructional designer begins work on their tasks only to find that they have a lot of unanswered questions:
• Why are the learners experiencing this problem?
• How will they use the instruction after training takes place?
• How will we know if they are implementing what they have learned in their actual jobs?
• How do we know that the instruction we have designed is doing what it was meant to do?
• Has the organization tried this type of instructional method in the past?
• What is the rationale for proposing online instruction?
• Are we sure that instruction is going to solve the problem?
• Is there a subject matter expert that we can speak with to provide some more guidance on what the learners need?
All of these questions are very specific and unique to the learning audience of a project. Some of these questions may be related to the instructional environment while others may be looking ahead to how learners will be expected to transfer this knowledge to a real-world setting (i.e. the classroom, a job).
Regardless of what needs assessment model may be referenced, a typical assessment will consist of five-steps: problem identification, identification of data sources, data collection, data analysis, and recommendations. Table 1 provides an overview of each of these steps. While these steps are usually completed linearly, the individual who is conducting the needs assessment needs to continue to modify the problem and identify additional data sources as more information is uncovered during the assessment. With that in mind, the needs assessment process is very similar to the instructional design process in that both processes are recursive.
Table 1
Overview of needs assessment process
Needs Assessment Step
Description
Identification of Problem
This step is typically completed in consult with a client (or the individual(s)) requesting instructional design services. During this phase, the purpose of the needs assessment (the problem) is identified for the instructional designer to begin gathering data to address the gap in performance.
Identification of Data Sources
Once the problem to be explored has been identified, instructional designers must identify data sources that will help them better understand the situation. Instructional designers must gather data that will help them explore the situation from multiple angles. Examples of data sources include, but are not limited to, task analyses, direct observations, focus groups, interviews, document analysis, reviews of existing work products, and surveys.
Data Collection
This phase involves the instructional designer gathering data based on the data sources that were identified in the previous step.
Data Analysis
Once data collection is complete, the instructional designer begins to analyze all data to identify patterns and factors contributing to the problem identified at the beginning of the assessment. Depending on the findings from the data collection and analysis phases, the problem may be modified to be more consistent with the actual situation as depicted by the data.
Recommendations
Upon identifying patterns contributing to the problem, the instructional designer makes a list of recommendations to present to their client. These recommendations are typically prioritized according to the severity of need and level of urgency.
Figure 1 provides an overview of how needs assessment and needs analysis can help leverage instructional design practices to support the transfer of learning. Conducting a needs assessment provides the instructional designer with the opportunity to contextualize their project. It provides them with an opportunity to gain insight into things they should include in their designs, as well as things they should consider to avoid. Regardless of the situation, a needs assessment will help an instructional designer identify or verify the project needs. This is especially helpful when the needs have already been identified without the guidance of a needs assessment.
Needs analysis also aids the instructional designer by providing some context as to why these needs exist in the first place. If learners are facing recurring challenges completing a particular task, instructional designers should understand the causes so that they can account for these issues in their designs. By developing a better understanding of factors that contribute to or inhibit the transfer of learning, instructional designers will be able to develop a more realistic approach to the instructional solution. It will also provide them with the opportunity to determine if certain non-instructional interventions are needed to support the transfer of learning.
The Role of Context in Needs Assessment
Needs assessment is recognized as being an important component of the instructional design process (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, Morrison, Ross, Kalman, & Kemp, 2013; Smith & Ragan, 2005; Cennamo & Kalk, 2019); however, it often tends to be minimized to focus more on learner analysis. Contextual analysis is also a term that is used synonymously with needs assessment in a lot of instructional design literature. A seminal piece written by Tessmer and Richey (1997) suggested that contextual analysis should account for factors influencing performance in the orienting, instructional, and transfer contexts. Figure 2 provides an overview of the more common factors that influence each of these contexts. Tips for how to address these three contexts will be discussed further in this chapter. By addressing these factors in instructional design practices, designers put themselves in a better position to design experiences that were relevant to the learning audience.
While contextual analysis aims at understanding the learner’s work practice, needs assessment further delves into identifying, classifying, and validating the needs of users as they pertain to the context (environment). It is imperative that a designer fully understand the intricacies and nuances of the context (environment) so that they can design a prototype that addresses particular contextual factors that may support or inhibit the transfer of learning into the real-world environment (Smith & Ragan, 2005). These factors, both good and bad, ultimately influence the instructional designer’s design.
While there are different types of analyses that an instructional designer may be required to employ during a project, it is important to recognize that while they are all different, they are not mutually exclusive. While each has different foci, all of these foci fall under the needs assessment umbrella.
Table 2
Overview of analyses an instructional designer may utilize to inform their design
Method of Analysis
Description
Resources and Studies for References
Needs Analysis
Analysis that occurs after a needs assessment has been conducted to understand the root causes contributing to a problem.
Brown (2002)
Crompton, Olszewski, and Bielefeldt (2016)
Dick and Carey (1977)
Stefaniak et al. (2018)
Stefaniak, Mi, and Afonso (2015)
Contextual Analysis
The process of analyzing factors that may contribute to or inhibit knowledge acquisition and transfer of learning.
Arias and Clark (2004)
Morrison, Ross, and Baldwin (1992)
Perkins (2009)
Tessmer and Wedman (1995)
Environmental Analysis
The process of focusing on the impact that the learner may have on the environment outside of the organization such as customers, competitors, industry, and society.
Lowyck, Elen, and Clarebout (2004)
Marker (2007)
Rothwell (2005)
Tessmer (1990)
Learner Analysis
The process of capturing an in-depth understanding of an instructional designer’s learning audience. Demographic data, prerequisite skills, and attitudinal information are typically gathered to inform the instructional designer.
Baaki et al. (2017)
Dudek and Heiser (2017)
Öztok (2016)
Stefaniak and Baaki (2013)
van Rooij, S. W. (2012)
Task Analysis
The process of conducting direct observations of individuals performing job-related tasks and documenting in a step-by-step fashion. Task analyses are done to help instructional designers design instruction that is aligned with how the job will be performed in a real-world setting.
Jonassen, Tessmer, and Hannum (1998)
Militello and Hutton (1998)
Schraagen, Chipman, and Shalin (2000)
Table 2 provides an overview of the various types of analyses that may be used. Examples of instructional design studies that have explored these topics in more detail are also included for reference. A commonality among all of these analyses is that they typically involve collecting data from multiple sources to gain a better understanding of the situation. Out of all of the analyses listed in Table 2, needs assessment is most often the most time-consuming because it requires instructional designers to identify appropriate data sources, collect data, conduct data analysis, and consult with their client on recommendations for moving forward. Direct observations, document analysis, interviews, focus groups, and surveys are all examples of the types of data collection tools an instructional designer may utilize when conducting an analysis.
The use of the above-mentioned data sources has been used to inform the development of learner personas in instructional design (Anvari & Tran, 2013; Avgerinou & Andersson, 2007; Baaki, Maddrell, & Stauffer, 2017; van Rooij, 2012). With more emphasis being placed on user experience design practices, more attention is being placed on who our learners are as opposed to generalizing the learning audience. Learner analyses and contextual analyses are complementary in that both yield data that will inform the other. Environmental analyses add an additional layer by focusing on the impact that the learner may have on the environment outside of the organization such as customers, competitors, industry, and society (Rothwell, 2005).
The Reality of Instructional Design Work and Needs Assessment
While I would love to see every instructional designer be an advocate for needs assessment and push back when clients or supervisors present need statements with no assessment validating that the identified needs warrant instruction, the reality is that most instructional designers will have a hard time arguing the need to pause a project and conduct a thorough needs assessment (Hoard, Stefaniak, Baaki, & Draper, 2019; Stefaniak et al., 2018). Needs assessments are conducted; but often because the client has recognized the importance of needs assessment before approaching an instructional designer to work on a project. It is also important to note that a needs assessment is only as good as the data that is collected.
Table 3
Needs statements and further inquiries
Client Need Statements
Instructional Designer Inquiries
We need to design an online degree program.
How are courses currently being offered?
What is the market for online instruction?
What is the rationale for moving towards the development of an online degree?
We need a new learning management system.
How are training materials currently being stored?
What features are used in the existing LMS?
What features are needed?
How are the instructors and students currently using the LMS?
We need to design a safety course for incoming employees.
What do incoming employees need to know about safety upon starting a new job?
What incident(s) occurred that suggests there is an immediate need to create a safety course?
What other training courses are incoming employees expected to complete?
What does this mean for the instructional designer? Recognizing that the absence of a thorough needs assessment is a common issue in our field, there are strategies that instructional designers can employ to gather additional data and information relevant to the project they have been assigned.
If a client has decided to conduct a needs assessment, it is important for the instructional designer to participate in framing the needs by asking appropriate questions. Table 3 provides an overview of examples of needs statements and questions an instructional designer can ask to gain further clarification of the situation. Like most projects, there are varying degrees of complexity an instructional designer can delve into when addressing needs assessment (Rossett, 1999). The amount of time and resources that an instructional designer can apply towards gathering additional data for a project will ultimately determine the scalability of the level of analysis that is completed (Stefaniak, 2018; Tessmer, 1990).
Just because a client or a supervisor may not allocate the time or funding needed to support a needs assessment, that does not mean that the instructional designer has to abandon the idea altogether. At the very least, there are key components that an instructional designer should address during an initial intake meeting with the client or kick-off meeting with the instructional design team. Table 4 provides examples of different steps instructional designers can take if they were to scale a needs assessment project.
Table 4
Scalability of instructional design needs assessments
Level of Scale
Tasks
Low (1–2 weeks)
• Review existing training materials.
• Review documents explaining job processes.
• Meet with a subject matter expert (in the organization) to provide guidance on content that should be emphasized in the instructional product.
• Obtain an overview of the learning audience by the client.
Medium (1 month)
• Review existing training materials.
• Conduct observations of employees performing job tasks.
• Update existing task analyses.
• Meet with individuals that represent multiple levels of authority within the organization related to the instructional project.
• Obtain an overview of the learning audience by the client.
High (several months)
• Review existing training materials.
• Review strategic planning documents.
• Meet with individuals that represent multiple levels of authority within the organization.
• Conduct observations of employees performing job tasks.
• Update existing task analyses.
• Conduct interviews and/or focus groups to understand factors that are inhibiting the transfer of learning.
• Triangulate information from multiple sources to understand patterns contributing to or inhibiting employee/learner performance on the job.
Table 5 provides an example of a form that instructional designers can use to gather the data they need to ensure their instructional design work is contextually relevant to the learners’ needs. This form is not meant to be an exhaustive list of questions instructional designers should ask at the beginning of a project; rather, it is intended to help instructional designers spark conversation with their client about the contextual factors and needs of the project that should be addressed throughout the design. Depending on the information provided in the intake form, instructional designers will decide whether a detailed task analysis is required to understand specific tasks expected of the learning audience.
Table 5
An example of an instructional design intake form
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN PROJECT INTAKE FORM
Date:
Client:
Instructional Designer:
Project Name:
PROJECT OVERVIEW
1. What is the purpose of the project (instructional need)?
2. What is the scope of the project?
3. Learning platform (i.e., face-to-face, blended, online)
4. Overarching course goal
5. Learning objectives
6. What level of importance is the training? (i.e., severe, moderate, mild)
LEARNING AUDIENCE
1. Who is the intended learning audience?
2. What are the learners’ experiences with the project topic?
3. What challenges do learners typically experience with this topic?
4. What are the learners’ overall attitudes toward training?
5. What information will the instructional designer have access to regarding the learning audience? (i.e., job observations, meetings with learners, work products, interviews, etc.)
INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT
1. How will the instruction be delivered?
2. How will learners access the material?
3. What is the length of the course?
4. What are the learners’ roles during instruction?
5. What is the instructor’s role during instruction?
6. What types of assessment need to be included in the instruction?
TRANSFER (APPLICATION CONTEXT)
1. How soon after the training will learners apply their newly acquired skills?
2. What are the anticipated challenges with applying these new skills in a real-world environment?
3. What resources are available to support learners during this transfer phase (i.e., job aids)?
4. Who is responsible for monitoring learners with transference?
EVALUATION
1. How and when will the instructional training be evaluated for effectiveness?
2. Who will be responsible for conducting an evaluation?
3. What methods of evaluation will be used to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of the instruction?
OTHER COMMENTS
Conclusion
To adhere to Richey et al.’s (2011) definition of instructional design encompassing the facilitation of learning, instructional designers must task themselves with gathering as much information as they can to understand the contexts that their learners will experience (i.e. the learning and transfer contexts). Not only is it necessary for the instructional designer to understand the instructional environment, but they must also have insight into how their learners will apply the knowledge obtained from instruction and apply it to a real-world setting. The purpose of this chapter is to provide instructional designers with an introduction to the potential that needs assessment offers instructional designers and provide some strategies and tools that can be applied to an instructional design project regardless of the context. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/01%3A_Understanding/1.04%3A_Determining_Environmental_and_Contextual.txt |
Conducting a Learner Analysis
José Fulgencio & Tutaleni I. Asino
As mentioned at the outset: designing a course that best fits the needs of learners requires both an understanding of who the learners are, as well as actual efforts to evaluate and understand their needs. The chapter reviewed both conceptual issues that concern learner analysis as well as practical approaches you can use to analyze actual learner needs.
Because of this, learner analysis is an important aspect of the instructional design process. It is important to remember that learners are not empty containers in which knowledge can simply be poured. They have experiences through which they understand the world and through which they will understand or evaluate the instruction. In this way, learning is a process that involves change in knowledge; it is not something that is done to learners but instead something that learners do themselves (Ambrose et al., 2010). Hence, “consideration of the learners’ prior knowledge, abilities, points of view, and perceived needs are an important part of a learner analysis process” (Brown & Green, 2015, p.73).
Although various scholars may use different verbiage, broadly, a learner analysis can be understood as the process of identifying critical aspects of the learner, including demographics, prior knowledge, and social needs (Adams Becker et al., 2014), and “is characterized as an iterative process that informs vital instructional design decisions from front-end analysis to evaluation” (Saxena, 2011, p. 94) by customizing the instruction to the previous knowledge of each individual learner so that the learner controls their own learning and has a deeper understanding of the classroom material (Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman, 2009). For example, an instructor teaching a biology master’s program can expect learners to have a solid foundational knowledge of biology. At an undergraduate level however, the instructor may expect students to have a somewhat limited understanding of biology. The instructor will also have to take into consideration the learner group characteristics such as first-generation students, international students, adult learners, and learners with accessibility needs (e.g. requiring note-taking accommodations and extra time on exams), all of which may influence teaching of content, distribution of content, and pace of content distribution in the classroom. Another characteristic is the learning preferences within the group of learners, such as whether they prefer and respond better to small group learning, hands-on experiences, or case studies.
Much has been written about learner analysis, in terms of definition and the process by which it can be accomplished. However, regardless of the definition advanced, what is important to discern is that through a learner analysis, the learner contributes to the instructional design of the course and miscommunications between the learner, instructor, and course goals are identified (Adams Becker, 2014; Dick et al., 2009; Jonassen et al., 1999; Fink, 2013). A learner analysis ensures that the learner benefits from a productive learning environment that can leave a lasting impact on their lifelong learning (Adams Becker et al., 2014; Dick et al., 2009; Jonassen et al., 1999; Fink, 2013).
The focus of this chapter is on how to conduct a learner analysis. This process often includes identifying learners’ characteristics, their prior knowledge, and their demographics, all of which are key factors to consider when designing a learning environment (Adams Becker et al., 2014; Dick et al., 2009; Jonassen et al., 1999; Fink, 2013). Demographics include the environment in which the learner lives and works, ethnicity, accessibility to technology, and educational background. Other factors—such as motivation, personal learning style, and access to content—also play a role in how individuals learn (Adams Becker et al., 2014; Dick et al., 2009; Jonassen et al., 1999; Fink, 2013).
The chapter begins with explaining the components of a learner analysis, describing reasons for a learner analysis, and providing a learner analysis worksheet. The next section of the chapter explains an area that the authors believe is often not discussed when writing about learner analysis: the ethics of working with learners, developing personas, and experience mapping. The last section of the chapter includes a learner analysis design project to enable the reader to put into practice some of what is covered in the chapter.
Components of a Learner Analysis
When designing learning environments, there needs to be a birds-eye view of the entire process from who the learner is, the environment, background of the learner, and the goal of the learning environment. An educator cannot make assumptions about learners based on the educator’s experience. The following are key factors of the learner analysis to consider.
1. Learner Characteristics
Understanding the characteristics of learners can help shape the design of the course. For example, if your class is an executive-level course for Fortune 500 high-level officers, you may expect learners with professional experience, and who have different goals for learning and their careers, which is different from a class of undergraduate students who have little to no work experience.
In examining factors of learner characteristics, these are key questions to think about (Adams Becker et al., 2014; Dick et al., 2009; Jonassen et al., 1999; Fink, 2013):
• Who are the learners?
• What personal characteristics do these learners possess?
• What are the dimensions of the learner?
• What contributes to the reason for learning about the topic?
• What is the reason for enrolling in the course?
• What are the student’s learning styles?
• What is it about the topic that motivates the learner?
2. Prior Knowledge
Time is a finite resource for most people, so instructional time should not be wasted covering material that learners already know, but instead building on their prior knowledge. Students’ prior knowledge influences how they interpret and filter new information given in the classroom (Ambrose et al., 2010; Cordova et al., 2014; Dochy et al., 2002; Umanath & Marsh, 2014).
In examining factors of prior knowledge, there are key questions to think about:
• What do learners already know?
• How might this information contribute to the content and order of what you teach?
3. Demographics
Understanding who the learners are and their demographics can directly impact the instructional material. It is important, for example, not to include instructional material that may be culturally insensitive or that has no connection to students. This is particularly important when using media such as film that could be considered historic to one group and offensive to another. Culture is integral to learning and plays a central role in “determining the learning preferences, styles, approaches and experiences of learners” (Young 2014, p. 350). It is worth noting that culture can also relate to organisational cultures. For example, using learning materials or illustrations that promote collaboration amongst employees in an organization that does not have or prioritize such a practice, may run contrary to the typically established culture.
In examining factors of demographics, key questions to think about are:
• Where are the learners coming from in terms of their education level, ethnicity, demographic, hobbies, area of study, grade level?
• Why are these demographics important for the material you will be teaching?
4. Access to Technology
In education, it is important to make sure that all learners have access to the educational material. As technology becomes a necessity to participate in learning opportunities, it is also important to gauge whether or not students have access to technology. Material should be flexible, but you can imagine if you are assigning work through an app that is only available for Apple devices, how this can affect learners who own Android phones. Thus, make sure that throughout the course, educational material is universally accessible.
Sometimes issues of access can be tricky or surprising. For example, if there is only one computer, or limited internet bandwidth, but two parents and two children all need to access it for their job or homework, then there is not sufficient access. Similarly, the computer or internet access may be too old to play the instructional multimedia in a module. Thus, it is important to look beyond the statistics to truly understand the level of access.
In examining factors of access, key questions to think about are:
• How accessible is technology to every learner in my class?
• Are learning materials universally accessible for individuals with disabilities?
• If access is not universal, how can I adapt my course curriculum to include all learners?
Put Your Skills to Use: The Learner Analysis Worksheet
When conducting a learner analysis, a collection of learner information will help develop a positive learning environment. The Learner Analysis Worksheet below is one way to collect and record key factors and general information about the learners, using information available from student enrollment data. This worksheet can be adapted for designing instruction for various learning environments. Student information is often provided when a student enrolls, and academic advisors or student enrollment professionals may also be able to share this information with you. Another way to gather demographic information is to speak with the colleagues in your department. Who are the students who usually register for this course?
For example, a community college will have higher enrollment of non-traditional and first-generation students who are older than 25 and who are full-time workers compared to the conventional student body of 18 to 22-year-olds at a traditional institution who are part-time workers. The more information you can gather for the Learner Analysis Worksheet in Table 1, the more equipped you will be in designing the best learning environment for your learners.
Table 1
Learner Analysis Worksheet
Demographic Characteristics Learner Details
Size of target audience
Are there any subgroups that may participate?
Age ranges
Educational/grade level, or academic program year. How long have they been out of an educational setting?
Gender breakdown
Cultural backgrounds
Primary language
Employment status
Socioeconomic status
Traditional/non-traditional/first generation learners?
Geographic location(s)
Internet connectivity?
Access to technology?
Ethics of Working With Learners
There is now an ever-increasing amount of information on students available on the internet broadly, and specifically through learning management systems and social media that institutions and designers can access. Data on learners includes but is not limited to: personal information, enrollment information, academic information, and other data collected by educational institutions. What was once kept private between the learner and institution on paper can no longer be assumed as safe. Records which are now held in digital format are vulnerable to hackers and are enticing to outside agencies that are seeking to monetize the data. How, then, do institutions assure ethical use of learners' data that may be needed or used for learner analysis? How much data is reasonable to share? If institutions are asking learners to be ethical in their academic assignments, shouldn't institutions do the same when it comes to working with learners? This section covers professional expectations regarding ethical conduct towards learners.
Professional Expectations
In the context of conducting a learner analysis, a professional is expected to be “committed to the needs and best interests of their clients who are basically their learners” (Wainaina et al., 2015, p. 68). There are various code of conducts from which one can draw guidance for ethical practice as most professional organizations have codes of conduct or ethics. An example is the Association of Educational and Communication Technology (AECT), which is available at (https://edtechbooks.org/-RXIX) and aims to aid all members of AECT both individually and collectively in maintaining a high level of professional conduct. However, it is critical to know that just because one adheres to a code of ethics, it does not mean there will never be conflict. What is unfortunately inherent in all human relationships is a level of conflict, even when one has good intentions. So the question then is what happens when conflicts or perceived ethical violation occurs especially when a designer is engaged in collecting data needed for learner analysis? There are various approaches, but here we suggest the following ethical framework developed by Mathur and Corley (2014) which suggests considerations and questions to ask:
• Fact-finding – Most conflicts are related to communication or lack thereof. Hence one of the first steps is to engage in fact-finding exercises. What are the facts? What is known and what is not known?
• Who is involved – who are the people that care about this case or incident? What has been (mis)communicated? Who are the individuals involved?
• What is the conflict? – Is the conflict about the frameworks being used? If so, what are those frameworks and what is conflicting? If the conflicts concern the values, morals, or policies, establish what those are and what needs to be adhered to.
• Potential consequences to actions — What are some of the possible consequences for any actions taken to solve the dilemma? How would the people involved like to be treated? What is the role of the designer in solving the conflict (whether or not the designer is involved in causing this conflict)?
• Reflection – Lastly, reflect on the actions taken. What are the repercussions, if any, to the actions taken from the difficulty?
Educators have a responsibility entrusted upon them when educating learners. The duties include but are not limited to, creating a safe environment and being professional not just in virtual space but also in digital space. When educators neglect their responsibility to be professional and ethical (an expectation that we often have for students), this can be detrimental to learners.
Developing Personas in Learner Analysis
It is often stated that if you want to know a person, you must walk in their shoes. This idiom captures the goal of a learner analysis by helping us figuratively walk in someone’s shoes and come to understand them more deeply. One way to do this is through personas. Personas are fictional characters that embrace the needs and goals of a real user or group of learners (Faily & Flechais, 2011). Personas help generate an understanding of learners and what their key attributes are that learning designers need to know for their designs (Dam & Siang, 2019). Personas may be fictional characters, but they are built based on real learner analysis data and thus embrace the needs and goals of real learners.
Effective personas do five things (from the following website: https://edtechbooks.org/-bXV):
1. Represent the majority of learners
2. Focus on the major needs of the learner
3. Provide clear understanding of the learners’ expectations
4. Provide an aid to uncovering universal features
5. Describe real individuals
To develop your own persona, the following chart in Table 2 can be helpful.
Table 2
Questions to Ask During Persona Development
Objective Questions
Define the purpose/vision of the course
What is the purpose of the course?
What are the goals of the course?
Describe the user
Personal
What is the age of the learner?
What is the gender of the learner?
What is the highest level of education this learner has received?
Professional
How much work experience does your learner have?
What is your learner’s professional background?
Why will the learner take the course?
Technical
What technological devices does the learner use on a regular basis?
What software and/or applications does the learner use on a regular basis?
Through what technological device does your user primarily access the web for information?
User motivation
What is the learner motivated by?
What are the learner’s needs?
Note. From the U.S. Government usability website (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2020) “questions to ask during persona development” chart.
When developing your persona, remember to organize the information in an easy-to-read logical format, and make it as visual as possible to convey the greatest sense of the “humanness” of the learners. Key pieces of information to include are the persona group (i.e. learner), fictional name, personal demographics, goals and tasks for the course, physical/social/technical environment, and a casual picture representing their learning environment.
Following in Figures 1–4 are some examples that provide an illustration of worksheets and examples for creating personas.
Note. Persona worksheet from Open Design Kit https://edtechbooks.org/-oyBd
Note. Persona example from https://edtechbooks.org/-SCmQ
Note. Persona example from https://edtechbooks.org/-GLf
Note. Persona example from https://edtechbooks.org/-GLf
Personas are a helpful way for designers to create a more engaging, more productive, and more effective educational experience for learners. Follow the guidelines provided in Table 2 when creating personas and be flexible and open to new information, as the personas may not be the same from start to finish.
Understanding Learners Through Experience Mapping
The popular adage of "the customer is always right," is often used to emphasize the importance of providing excellent customer service (Samson et al., 2017). While educational institutions are different from traditional service industries, they can still benefit from paying attention to learners’ experiences. An experience map is a strategic tool that captures the journey of customers from point A to point B and generalizes critical insights into learner interactions that occur across such experiences. The journey captured in experience mapping, which is adapted from Schauer (2013), is split into four characteristics that generalize the experience of a learner:
1. uncover the truth
2. chart the course
3. tell the story
4. use the map
The first step, uncover the truth, includes studying the learner's behavior and interactions across channels and touchpoints. Channels are the interactions a person has with a product or service. Touchpoints are the interactions of a person with an agent or artifact of an organization. In the first part of the experience mapping, a designer finds various data and insights relevant to the experiences in the mapping process, including actually talking to the learners. Previous learner surveys and evaluations of the course or program are a good data source to begin. In order for the map to be believable, it needs to tell an authentic story and provide strong insights.
The second step, chart the course, collects the takeaways from learners to create actionable results. After you have collected data, obtained key aspects of the learner’s journey, and obtained quotes from learners, it is time for the third characteristic: tell the story visually in a way that creates empathy and understanding. The goal of this characteristic is for the experience map to stand on its own, inspire new ideas, and foster strategy decisions.
The last step is to show the map to stakeholders that have insights and interactions with learners. Telling the story to stakeholders provides insights into the learner's experiences. The experience must go beyond the physical location and create an experience of usability such as identity, familiarization, memorability, and satisfaction (Ghani et al., 2016). Failure to meet the learner's needs can result in loss of interest, bad reviews, and challenges to getting the learners to accomplish the task.
As with personas, there are a number of examples of what format an experience map might take. Most are considered copyrighted and proprietary to the organizations developing them and so cannot be included here, but you can find examples of experience maps at the following sites (each also provides some practical tips for developing your own experience maps):
Conclusion
As we said at the outset: designing a course that best fits the needs of learners requires both an understanding of who the learners are, as well as actual efforts to evaluate and understand their needs. We reviewed both conceptual issues that concern learner analysis as well as practical approaches you can use to analyze actual learner needs.
At this point, the best the authors can offer is to wish you luck! Your learner analysis activities will lay a strong foundation for the rest of your project, and it is worth the time it will take to set your project off right.
Practice: Learner Analysis Design Project
This learner analysis design exercise provides an opportunity to apply knowledge gained from this chapter. Imagine, you have been hired by a company based in New York City to design a Security Awareness course that teaches newly hired and senior employees to identify and prevent security breaches. The course focuses on teaching the company’s staff the different types of security awareness, email and phishing attacks, malware, ransomware, social media awareness, and password security.
For your project you must do the following:
1. Complete a full learner analysis worksheet.
2. Complete a learner-centered design process based on the description of the course.
3. Develop two learner personas for the course.
Upon completing the project, share and discuss with others how you completed the learner analysis worksheet, how you developed the user-centered design and what resources were used to create the personas.
This exercise is meant to help you consider learner analysis from a practical perspective. However, realize that every company has their own style of course design for their employees, and their own methods for conducting learner analysis. While the principles discussed in this chapter should remain the same, the ways they are applied within any instructional design organization may vary. Despite this variety of approaches, our goals remain the same: all instructional designers agree on the important need to understand and empathize with learners in order to create instruction that best meets their needs. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/01%3A_Understanding/1.05%3A_Conducting_A_Learner_Analysis.txt |
Problem Framing
Vanessa Svihla
Is design a problem solving process? To answer "No" suggests that designers do not produce solutions to design problems. However, in order to produce such solutions, designers must first frame—and typically reframe—the problem. Understanding this can help newcomers recognize the need for a different approach, rather than jumping straight to solutions. What does it mean to frame a problem? In this chapter, detailed below, I define it as follows:
Problem framing: To take ownership of and iteratively define what the problem really is, decide what should be included and excluded, and decide how to proceed in solving it.
To understand what problem framing looks like in practice, this chapter introduces and illustrates key terms that help us speak consistently about design problems and how they differ from other problems. Vignettes highlight how designers direct their problem framing process. The chapter concludes with tools for framing problems and diagnostics for common pitfalls.
The Problem of the Problem: What Makes Design Problems Different from Other Problems?
Most of us have had abundant opportunities to solve problems, beginning in elementary school. But these problems were predominantly well-structured (Jonassen, 2000), meaning there was a single correct answer and the instructor knew what that answer was. Repeated experiences with such problems can lead us to privilege accuracy and efficiency over spending time dwelling with the problem. And surely getting to the right answer quickly is valuable in many situations. But design problems differ—there is not a single right answer or even a best way to come to a solution.
As a result, when tackling these ill-structured problems we must first frame them (Jonassen, 2000). Framing a problem involves defining the problem and bounding it, then deciding what to include and exclude and how to proceed (Dorst & Cross, 2001; Schön, 1983). This, in turn, relies on activities described in other chapters in this text, including the following: (a) gathering information about the task, learners, and context; (b) generating tentative ideas about the problem and solution; (c) making and revising decisions about the problem (often influenced by precedent); and (d) evaluating tentative ideas in light of design requirements and learner needs. Some therefore treat problem framing as a higher-level category that includes all of these activities. Others treat problem framing as an activity threaded through the design process. Regardless, problem framing is the process by which designers take ownership of a problem. This means that two designers, given identical design briefs, would not only produce different solutions, but would have solved different problems (see Figure 1.; cf., Dorst, 2003; Harfield, 2007).
To see how this might play out, try finding multiple problems in the scenarios below (Table 1). Can you frame the problem as an instructional design problem? Can you also frame the problem not as an instructional problem?
Once you have framed possible problems in the scenarios, consider the ill-structuredness, complexity, and domain specificity of each problem (Jonassen, 2000). Each problem you framed may differ in these dimensions (Figure 2):
• Structure refers to the degree to which a problem has a single solution and most-efficient solution path (well-structured) or many possible solutions and solution paths (ill-structured). Problems are sometimes presented to instructional designers as well-structured, but design problems are ill-structured by definition.
• Complexity refers to the number of variables involved and how interrelated they are. Most—but not all—design problems are complex. This characteristic can be tricky to assess simply because we use the term informally as a synonym for “difficult.”
• Domain specificity refers to whether domain general strategies would suffice; Jonassen (2000) described domain specific problems in terms of both “abstract” and “situated,” knowledge, generally placing such knowledge in formal domains. Almost all ID problems are domain specific.
Table 1
Framing Both Instructional Design and Other Problems
Scenario 1 Management at a chemical plant identifies that the most expensive chemical is not typically used efficiently, unless it is used under specific conditions. They contract an instructional designer to create a job aid to ensure the chemical reactor is operated optimally. The reactor includes 15 stages, six chemicals, and gauges for setting pressure, temperature, and rate at each stage. Data suggest workers tend to apply settings from a similar reactor, resulting in waste.
Scenario 2 Beth is hired by a dietician to create instructional materials—printed handouts—for parents/guardians of children with special dietary needs based on a specific disability. The dietician provides published, effective dietary standards based on the specific disability and shares that some of the terms in the standards are hard for families to understand. The production budget is small and timeline tight. The organization provides a set of images they previously created and want used in the handouts.
Scenario 3 A university’s instructional technologies committee selects and implements a learning management system (LMS), heavily guided by their own expertise, along with issues related to copyright law, tight institutional budget concerns, and interfacing with systems for registration and grading. As a consequence, instructional designers are hired primarily based on their capacity to provide technical support for the cumbersome, difficult to use LMS. To ensure they can support the faculty, they create a highly structured course shell.
Scenario 4 A district purchases science kits and curricula for teachers in Phoenix, AZ. While the resources seem useful, the teachers realize there are issues. For instance, the curriculum teaches "Fall is when the leaves change colors," but the teachers know their students have never seen leaves change color. They meet during a cross-school professional development session to address these issues, guided by curriculum leads who graduated from an instructional design program.
Scenario 5
An instructional designer is tasked with migrating courses from a decommissioned LMS to a newly adopted one. None of the content or sequencing is to be changed. The two LMSs differ greatly in many ways (e.g., how objects are connected to courses, the order in which settings must be selected, and the number of features available).
Note. Design problems are always ill-structured, and usually complex and domain specific. The letters refer to the problems above related to scenario 1 in Table 1.
How Do Designers Frame Problems?
Problem framing can occur through both overt and covert activities. Some activities and deliverables make the problem visible, but other problem framing work happens through talk or individual thinking. Covert framing activities involve abductive reasoning—filling in gaps in knowledge (e.g., Kolko, 2010). This kind of thinking is heavily influenced by past precedent, and designers contend with the salience and limitations of their own experience.
From their first contact with the problem, designers consider whether the problem seems like one encountered previously and how the current problem seems to differ from past precedent.
How might you convey to a client why framing the problem is important?
Their framing of the problem is visible in the project objectives and learning goals they set. As they seek to understand and explore, researching the task, context, learners, and possibly other precedents, they reframe the problem and consider whether the client will accept their reframing, which is made visible in learning objectives and problem statements. Prototypes may likewise reveal their problem framing. Evaluation of a prototype’s feasibility, desirability, and ability to meet identified learning needs may lead to further reframing.
Clients often undervalue and underestimate the time and effort needed to frame the problem. Clients may request a specific deliverable or solution, yet may not have a deep understanding of the actual needs. Making a value proposition can sometimes help. This means communicating clearly about what problem framing is and why it can benefit the organization by preventing ineffective training.
What Does It Mean to Have Agency to Frame a Design Problem?
Experienced designers—regardless of discipline—know to direct their framing of the problem. They make consequential decisions that lead them to new understandings and reframings of the problem. This “framing agency” is a hallmark of design in which designers rely on information they gather and on their past precedent—as described in other chapters of this volume. What does framing agency look like in practice?
In the case below (Figure 3) a team faces some challenges in part because not all members understand that they need to frame the problem; this is visible in their expectations about their roles and in their talk. In the vignettes, words are highlighted to draw attention to ways the team members are talking that help us notice whether they are framing the problem or not. Designers often share framing agency with other designers, with envisioned stakeholders, and sometimes even with the materials in their designs. In ID, this happens when they reference the learning and transfer contexts, and the modes of learning (e.g., face-to-face, online, etc.) to justify decisions. Another indicator of framing agency is staying tentative, staying with the problem. Using verbs that show possible actions (e.g., could, might, etc.) and hedge words (e.g., maybe, kind of, etc.) invites both the designer and others to revise their thinking about the problem. In contrast, using verbs that show a lack of control (have to, need to, etc.) over the situation tends to shut down problem framing, unless the verb refers to a design requirement (like Yen’s use on “need to” in vignette 2).
Read through the vignettes in figure 3 and answer the following questions:
• Who treats the problem as not needing to be framed?
• How does the instructional designer encourage them to frame the problem?
• Who else shows framing agency?
If you are on a team that is resisting framing the problem, how will you communicate with your team? Using the key in Figure 3, how can you use tentative language to invite them to frame the problem with you? How will you help them understand the importance of framing the problem?
Learning to notice how you talk with your team may help you diagnose whether or not you are framing the problem. When someone sounds tentative, consider it an invitation to engage in framing with them. Try to avoid no-control talk that shuts down problem framing.
What Tools Help Designers Frame Problems?
Mapping unknowns, assumptions, and conjectures can help clarify the work needed to frame problems. In addition to the tools that other chapters in this text have offered, I have found the following tools help make problem frames explicit yet open to revision:
• Problem statements
• Storyboarding
• KWL charting
• Design conjecture maps
• Root cause + sphere of influence analysis
It is important to remain tentative in using these tools. Just as we saw with design talk, staying open to revision is key. For this reason, I typically use pencil and paper or whiteboards for these kinds of activities. Rather than polishing and perfecting them, staying in draft mode can help you stay open.
Problem Statements
Problem statements are concise and provide clarity about the problem frame. Your problem statement should begin with one or two sentences describing a vision of what is possible if the problem is solved. Next, describe—in one to two sentences—what the specific issues are. This should include who, what, when, where and why. Finally, in one to two sentences, describe the primary symptoms of and evidence for the problem. You should not include a solution! Expect to write your problem statement multiple times to capture changes in your understanding of the problem.
Problem Statement Worksheet
Storyboarding
Vividly depict the problem—not the solution—as a sequence of events from a particular point of view. You may hand draw this, use photos, use a graphics program, or try out one of the many free storyboard/comic strip creation websites (see Additional readings and resources). When depicting the problem, consider other points of view, and represent these in another storyboard, with thought bubbles, or as a branching storyline. Avoid depicting the solution!
KWL Charting
KWL charting is adapted from tools commonly used in project-based learning classrooms and supports learners to identify what they do and do not know, as well as what they still need to know (Ogle, 1989). This tool is useful for designers as they manage the ambiguity of the design problem. Using it frequently as a means to track progress can help teams direct their own progress in bringing information into the problem.
Table 2
Example of KWL Charting
Date What do we know about the design problem, learner needs, and other requirements or constraints? What precedent do we want to (or not want to) bring into the problem? What do we want to learn about the problem and how will we learn it?
Design Conjecture Maps
Design conjecture maps are based in tools like logic models and design-based research conjecture maps (Sandoval, 2014). They help designers coherently link the task to learning objectives and to their design ideas. First, place the learning objectives on the same page as the task analysis, then make links between them. Second, after generating tentative ideas, try connecting these to the task analysis and learning objectives using yarn or string. Third, as you begin to develop more solid designs, try connecting these back to the task analysis and learning objectives.
Design Conjecture Mapping
Root Cause Analysis
Root cause analysis techniques, like the five whys (Ohno, 1978; Serrat, 2017), can help designers identify underlying causes rather than treating symptoms. While some use this approach to craft a linear set of causes and effects, creating a network of whys is more effective for framing problems from multiple points of view. In this way, for each problem, you should ask “Why does this happen?” and “Why else does this happen?” This results in a network of possible root causes. Pairing this analysis with sphere of influence analysis—meaning, deliberately analyzing whether each cause is within your capacity to influence the problem through instructional design—provides an opportunity to consider the feasibility and impact for any particular cause. To do this, for each cause you should consider whether it is a problem you can influence and whether it is an instructional design problem (Figure 4). Which of these causes suggest an instructional design problem?
Do-It-Yourself
Now that we have learned about several tools, here are some specific ways you can apply these. First, you can try out the tools in the previous section using the scenarios above in Table 1. Second, if you are in a class that includes developing an instructional design, you can use these tools for your class. When teaching instructional design, I always require students to work for clients on real design projects because I have observed issues that come up without clients. Students spend as much or more time inventing fake clients as they would learning how to assess needs. Without a real client and context, it can be hard to learn to frame problems authentically, to really understand that even though you are designing something for others, by framing the problem, you are taking ownership of it. That is challenging to do if it is a problem of your own invention. Likewise, without a client, the reasons for reframing are likelier to stem from challenges you encounter than new understanding of the problem space. Of course, working with real clients can be challenging in other ways. Make sure your client understands that you have course deadlines and are just learning to design. Agree on the scope of work beforehand using a formal design brief.
Conclusion
While problem framing is typically treated as something that happens at the beginning of a design project, it is important to remember that it is a process that continues until the design is finalized. You may revisit and revise along the way, especially for short deliverables like problem statements and KWL charting. Prototypes, especially low fidelity prototypes, and evaluation often reveal the need for reframing. And, as contexts and needs change by location or over time, a solution may no longer function, and the problem can pop back open. In considering the iterative nature of problem framing, how will you use these tools to guide and document reframings of the problem?
Finally, my advice to you as new designers is this: Dwell with the problem. Wallow in some uncertainty. Stay tentative!
Additional Readings and Resources
Problem Framing Resources
• Gause, D. C., & Weinberg, G. M. (1990). Are your lights on? Dorset House.
• ISIXSIGMA
• Atlassian
Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC 1751369. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
References
Dorst, K. (2003). The problem of design problems. Design Thinking Research Symposium, Sydney, 17(19.11).
Dorst, K., & Cross, N. (2001). Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem-solution. Design Studies, 22(5), 425-437. doi:10.1016/S0142-694X(01)00009-6
Harfield, S. (2007). On design `problematization': Theorising differences in designed outcomes. Design Studies, 28(2), 159-173. doi:10.1016/j.destud.2006.11.005
Jonassen, D. H. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(4), 63-85. doi:10.1007/BF02300500
Kolko, J. (2010). Abductive thinking and sensemaking: The drivers of design synthesis. Design Issues, 26(1), 15-28. doi:10.1162/desi.2010.26.1.15
Ogle, D. M. (1989). The know, want to know, learn strategy. Children’s comprehension of text: Research into practice, 205-223.
Ohno, T. (1978). Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production. Vol. 1: Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press.
Sandoval, W. (2014). Conjecture mapping: An approach to systematic educational design research. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 23(1), 18-36. doi:10.1080/10508406.2013.778204
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.
Serrat, O. (2017). The five whys technique. Knowledge solutions (pp. 307-310): Springer. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/02%3A_Exploring/2.01%3A_Problem_Framing.txt |
Task and Content Analysis
Levi Posadas
Editor's Note
This is a condensed version of a larger chapter on Task Analysis that can be found at the Philosophies of Instructional Design website. It is printed here by permission of the author.
Task and/or content analysis is a set of activities that help instructional designers understand the domain (knowledge, skills, etc.) to be taught. It is a critical part of the instructional design process, solving at least three problems for the designer:
1. It defines the knowledge and skills required to solve the performance problem or alleviate a performance need. This step is crucial because most designers are working with an unfamiliar domain.
2. Because the process forces subject-matter experts to work through each individual step of what is required to solve a problem, subtle details of the knowledge and skills to be taught can be more easily identified.
3. During the process, the designer has the opportunity to view material from the learner’s perspective. Using this perspective, the designer can often gain insight into appropriate instructional strategies for the materials they will ultimately create.
Task/content analysis does not begin in a vacuum. It begins with the needs or goals derived from the definition of the instructional problem. Designers should also consider what they uncovered during their learner analysis. An understanding of the learner’s knowledge and background related to the instructional domain helps designers determine the beginning point for the analysis as well as the depth and breadth of analysis. The output of a task/content analysis is documentation of the content that could possibly be included in the instructional materials. This output then serves as input for developing detailed instructional objectives.
Preparing to Conduct a Task or Content Analysis
A task/content analysis can take many different forms. Designers most often work with one or more subject-matter experts (SMEs), individuals who are experts in the content area. The SME is our link to the instructional domain; we rely on this individual (or individuals) to provide accurate, detailed information for use in developing the instructional unit. Our task as designers is to help the SME elaborate on the content and tasks in a meaningful, logical manner.
In this chapter, we describe the different kinds of content structures designers might encounter in their work, and how each can require different types of strategies to analyze (and later teach) effectively. We then describe three specific techniques for analyzing these knowledge and skill structures: (a) a topic analysis well suited for defining cognitive knowledge; (b) a procedural analysis for use with psychomotor tasks, job tasks, or cognitive sequences involving a series of steps; and (c) a critical incident method, which is useful for analyzing interpersonal skills.
Content Structures
Six structures are often associated with a task/content analysis: facts, concepts, principles and rules, procedures, and interpersonal skills.
Facts
A fact is an arbitrary association between two things. For example, ‘‘The chemical symbol for potassium is K’’ is a fact that describes a relationship between potassium and K. Most topics include many facts because they are the building blocks or tools of any subject—the ‘‘vocabulary’’ the learner must master for understanding. But unless facts are arranged in structured patterns, they will be of limited use to a learner and are often quickly forgotten.
Concepts
Concepts are categories used for grouping similar or related ideas, events, or objects. For example, we might use the concept of soft drinks to categorize the aisle in the grocery store that contains colas, orange drink, root beer, and so forth. The concept of fruit would include apples, oranges, bananas, and dates, but not potatoes. We use concepts to simplify information by grouping similar ideas or objects together and assigning the grouping a name (e.g., fruit, islands, or democracies). Some concepts, such as fruit, are considered concrete concepts because we can easily show an example. Concepts such as safety, liberty, peace, and justice are abstract concepts because they are difficult to represent or illustrate.
Principles and Rules
Principles and rules describe a relationship between two concepts. In microeconomics, we can derive several principles from a supply-and-demand curve. For example, ‘‘as price increases, the supply increases’’ is a principle that describes a direct relationship between two concepts (i.e., price and supply) that increase and decrease together. ‘‘As price decreases, demand increases’’ describes a different relationship between price and demand that causes one to increase as the other decreases.
Procedures
A procedure is an ordered sequence of steps a learner must execute to complete a task. A recipe for making a cake or casserole is a procedure. Similarly, a procedure could be a series of steps needed to plant a rosebush, or it could be a complex series of cognitive processes required to debug a computer program or diagnose the flu.
Interpersonal Skills
This broad category includes behaviors and objectives related to interpersonal communication, for example the development of interviewing skills, solving group conflict, leading a group, or how to sit (e.g., appropriate body language) when being interviewed on television.
Topic Analysis
A topic analysis is used to define connections and relationships between the facts, concepts, principles, and rules that make up a knowledge domain. Such an analysis is typically done in layers, much like what an archaeologist finds when excavating a site. First, the top layer of soil is scraped away. Then layers of earth are removed, and each artifact’s identity and location are recorded. Similarly, a designer working with the SME carefully reveals the first layer of information while looking for indicators of knowledge structures (i.e., facts, concept, and principles). Once the structure is revealed, additional detail is gathered for each structure, and new information appears as the designer digs deeper into the content.
A topic analysis thus provides two types of information. First, it identifies the content that will be the focus of the intended instruction. Second, it identifies the structure of the components. We should note that during a topic analysis, the designer might also identify one or more procedures that require analysis. While the topic analysis is not suited for analyzing procedures, our next methodology, procedural analysis, would be appropriate. As you conduct a topic analysis, then, you should remain focused on identifying the facts, concepts, and principles that make up the domain.
Analyzing a Topic
Let’s examine a topic analysis example. Imagine we are designing a beginning carpentry course. The course includes an introductory module on different types of wood fasteners. To begin, we can ask an SME to describe the different fasteners. Our question prompts the following outline:
1. Nails
2. Screws
3. Bolts
The SME considered these three major categories adequate to describe the various types of fasteners. So we might next ask the SME to further define each category. He expanded our outline as we asked additional questions. To get started, we might ask from what material fasteners are made, how they are sized, and how they are used.
1. Nails
1. Generally made from wire
2. Range in size from 2-penny to 60-penny
1. Length of nails 10-penny or less is determined by dividing size by 4 and adding 0.5 inch
1. Example: 7-penny nail is 2.25 inches long
3. Typically driven into one or more pieces of wood with a hammer or nail gun
2. Screws
1. Made from steel
2. Size determined by the gauge (thickness) and length
1. Length varies from 0.25 to 6 inches
3. Usually twisted into a hole with screwdriver
4. Provide a more secure joint than nails
3. Bolts
1. Made from steel
2. Measured by length and diameter
1. Available in fine or coarse threads
3. Placed through a hole and then a nut is tightened from opposite side
Let’s examine the content structure identified in the outline. Some of the facts identified in the outline are as follows:
1. Nails are generally made from wire
2. Bolts are made of steel
3. Bolts are measured by length and diameter
4. Screw length varies from .25 to 6 inches
The concepts identified in the topic analysis are:
1. Nail
2. Screw
3. Bolt
One procedure was identified in the task analysis:
Length of nails 10-penny or less is determined by dividing size by 4 and adding 0.5 inch.
Our SME helped us identify one principle in the content:
Screws provide a more secure joint than nails.
Next, we can ask the SME to provide detailed information on each fastener category, starting with nails. Once he finishes, we can organize the content using the following steps:
1. Identify the different content structures (facts, concepts, and principles; we might have also identified procedures, and interpersonal skills that we will also need to analyze using other procedures).
2. Group related facts, concepts, principles, and interpersonal skills. For example, in our full outline of wood fasteners, we would group all the information about nails, then the information about screws, and so forth.
3. Arrange the various components into a logical, sequential order.
4. Prepare the final outline to represent your task analysis.
A completed topic analysis on nails, then, could look like this:
1. Nails
1. Generally made from wire
2. Range in size from 2-penny to 60-penny
1. Length of nails 10-penny or less is determined by dividing size by 4 and adding 0.5 inch
2. Example: 7-penny nail is 2.25 inches long
3. Size is written as 2d for ‘‘2-penny’’
4. Typically driven into one or more pieces of wood with a hammer
5. Types of nails
1. Common nails
1. Most commonly used nail
2. Available in sizes from 2d to 60d
1. 8d size is most common
3. Identified by flat head
4. Used for general purposes
2. Box nails
1. Smaller in diameter than common nails
2. Available in sizes ranging from 2d to 40d
3. Also identified by its flat head
4. Used in lumber that may split easily
5. Often used for nailing siding
3. Finishing nails
1. Have a very small head that will not show
1. Head can be sunk into wood and hole filled
2. Available in sizes 2d to 20d
3. Used primarily for finishing work and cabinetry
4. Common brads
1. Similar to finishing nails but much smaller
2. Available in various lengths
1. Length expressed in inches or parts of an inch
3. Used for finishing work
5. Roofing nails
1. Similar to common nails but with a larger head
2. Available in lengths from 0.75 inch to 2 inches
1. Available in various diameters
3. Used for roofing
How detailed should a topic analysis be? There is no strict guideline, but as a rule of thumb you can use your learner analysis as a guide, since this should describe the learners’ prior knowledge of the content area. A course on home repair for apprentice carpenters, for example, will require a different amount of detail than a course for homeowners.
Topic Analysis Template
Procedural Analysis
A procedural analysis is used to analyze tasks by identifying the steps required to complete them. This technique can be used for both observable and unobservable procedures. You conduct a procedural analysis by asking an SME to walk through the steps of a process, preferably with the same equipment and in the same environment in which the task is performed. For example, if you are conducting a procedural analysis for repairing an electric meter, the SME should have an electric meter and the necessary tools to refer to during your interview.
Each step of a procedure analysis includes three questions:
1. What does the learner do?
1. Identify the action in each step that the learner must perform.
2. These actions are either physical (e.g., loosening a bolt) or mental (e.g., adding two numbers).
2. What does the learner need to know to do this step?
1. What knowledge (e.g., temperature, pressure, orientation) is necessary?
2. What does the learner need to know about the location or orientation of the components that are a part of this step (e.g., how to position a wrench to remove a hidden nut)?
3. What cues (tactile, smell, visual, etc.) inform the learner that there is a problem, the step is done correctly, or a different step is needed (e.g., a blinking light indicates you can release the starter switch)?
In the following procedural analysis, a designer visited a cabinetmaker and asked him how to prepare a piece of woodwork for the final finish. During the analysis, the designer asked him variations of the three questions described in the previous paragraphs to identify the steps, knowledge, and cues. As part of the analysis, the cabinetmaker informed him that someone who finishes furniture would already know the basics of sanding and using a paint sprayer. The designer’s analysis produced the following steps:
1. Inspect all surfaces for defects.
1. Tactile cue: Feel for dents, scratches, and other surface defects.
2. Visual cue: Splits or cracks are normally visible.
2. Repair defects in surface.
1. Use sand and glue to fill minor defects.
2. Reject pieces that you cannot repair for rework.
3. Spray two coats of lacquer sanding sealer on all surfaces.
1. Visual cue: Dry, misty appearance indicates too-light application.
2. Visual cue: Runs or sags indicate too-heavy application.
4. Prepare for final finish.
1. Allow a 20-minute minimum drying time for sealer coat.
2. After drying, rub out all parts with #400 grit silicon carbide abrasive paper.
3. Remove dust from all surfaces with air gun, then wipe with clean, lint-free cloth.
5. Complete the final finish.
1. Spray two coats of finishing lacquer on all parts.
2. Visual cue: Dry, misty finish indicates too-light application.
3. Visual cue: Runs or sags indicate too-heavy application.
4. Allow a minimum of four hours for second coat to dry.
6. Inspect final finish.
1. Tactile cue: Feel for grit or runs that may not be visible.
2. Rub out all surfaces with #000 steel wool.
3. Remove dust from all finished surfaces with air gun and lint-free cloth.
4. Apply a thin coat of wax to all finished surfaces.
5. Buff all surfaces to high gloss.
6. Visual cue: Wax becomes dull prior to buffing.
Procedure Analysis Template
The Critical Incident Method
The two methods we have described—topic and procedural analyses—work well with concrete content and highly structured tasks. Analyzing other processes, however, such as how to conduct an interview, resolve an interpersonal conflict, or close a sales opportunity, are more difficult because they vary from instance to instance. Although the instances share certain elements, typically a breadth of skills and techniques actually accounts for one’s success. A procedural analysis works quite well for analyzing how to apply the final finish to a wooden table, for instance, because the basic process is repeated time after time, with variations due to size and type of wood. But closing a sale, however, depends on several conditions (e.g., personality of the buyer, financial status of the buyer) that change with each sale. There are also complex tasks that an SME might consider an ‘‘art,’’ for example, determining where to drill an oil well, predicting successful stocks or mutual funds to purchase, or determining which type of psychotherapy to use with a patient.
To define content for these types of instruction we need an analysis method that provides different points of view on the skills/processes involved. For example, we might interview a salesperson who uses a very calm approach and another who uses high-pressure tactics. This is what we call a critical incident analysis, or an interview technique where the designer interviews several individuals to provide a rich source of data about possibilities.
There are two, key questions to ask as part of a critical incident analysis: First, ask an SME to identify three instances when he or she was successful in achieving a goal. Second, ask the SME to identify three instances when he or she was not successful in achieving the same goal.
Next, ask additional questions to gather three types of information:
1. What were the conditions before, during, and after the incident?
1. Where did the incident occur?
2. When did it occur?
3. Who was involved?
4. What equipment was used, and what was its condition?
2. What did you do?
1. What did you do physically?
2. What did you say and to whom?
3. What were you thinking?
3. How did this incident help you reach or prevent you from reaching your goal?
(Ideally, this process should then be repeated with other SMEs.)
An analysis of critical incident interviews will identify knowledge and techniques the SMEs use to accomplish their goals. But note that although the critical incident analysis provides a list of topics and procedures that experts used, it does not include a list of the steps or details for topics. But using the information from this analysis you can perform a topic and/or procedural analysis to further define the content for the instruction.
Critical Incident Analysis Template
Conclusion
Task/content analysis is a critical step of the instructional design process. It can be easy to neglect, or to carry out superficially, especially given the time it takes to capture the detail required to do it right. But skipping this analysis will likely cause problems in future phases of the design process, particularly when it is time to design instructional activities. If designers only have superficial understanding of the content, or only rely on their subject matter experts’ tacit understanding of the content, they are unlikely to design instructional materials that support learners in actually mastering the desired learning outcomes. Instructional designers should ensure they reserve enough time in their design process to carry out their task/content analysis in an adequate manner.
Application Exercises
Like any other skill, becoming proficient at task/content analysis requires practice. If you don’t have a current instructional design project you can practice on your own by:
1. Identifying a topic area you personally wish you knew more about and interviewing an expert to create a diagram of the knowledge structure.
1. You may consider interviewing more than one expert to see what kind of unique structures emerge from their different point of views.
2. Identifying a simple skill and interviewing/observing an expert to create a diagram of how the skill is completed.
1. If you interview another expert about the same skill, is there more or less variability in the results than you found with your topic analysis?
3. Identifying a complex interpersonal skill and conducting a critical incident analysis with an expert.
1. If you interview another expert about the same skill, is there more or less variability in the results than you found with your topic or procedure analysis? | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/02%3A_Exploring/2.02%3A_Task_And_Content_Analysis.txt |
Documenting Instructional Design Decisions
Jill Stefaniak
Instructional designers are tasked with making countless decisions in every project they complete. Questions ranging from “Who is my learning audience?” to “How will this project be evaluated for effectiveness upon implementation?” all require the instructional designer to make a variety of decisions to ensure that their instructional design efforts are contributing to efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of learning (Morrison, Ross, Kalman, & Kemp, 2013). As the utility of instructional design continues to be recognized across industries, the complexities of design will continue to grow. With more options available in terms of how instructional solutions are to be designed and disseminated to a range of different learning audiences, the complexities of design decisions facing instructional designers are insurmountable.
There is a large body of literature in other design disciplines that outline strategies for engaging in decision-making and documenting design decisions. Many of these strategies lend themselves to the ID field, particularly with working on complex, ill-structured design problems. Marston and Mistree (1997) argue the importance of decision-making in design practices stating that decisions serve as markers to identify the progress that is made on designing a solution.
The purpose of this chapter is to help instructional designers differentiate between the different types of decisions they may be responsible for during a project. Various approaches for engaging in decision-making will be discussed and tools will be provided to assist the instructional designer with documenting their design decisions.
Types of Decisions
Instructional design problems can be classified as well-structured (Jonassen, 2000). Well-structured problems typically have one possible solution, whereas ill-structured problems may have multiple solutions. Instructional designers will often find themselves tasked with designing instructional solutions for problems of an ill-structured nature. While some problems may require a quick decision by the designer, other problems may be more complex; thus, requiring several interrelated decisions (Jonassen, 2011).
Decisions can be categorized according to types such as choices, acceptances/rejections, evaluation, and constructions (Yates & Tschirhart, 2006). Choices consist of selecting an option from a large set of options. Acceptance/rejection decisions consist of a binary decision where the option (or solution) is accepted or not. Evaluative decisions involve an individual assigning worth to a possible option and determining their level of commitment if they were to proceed with that option (Fitzpatrick, Sanders, & Worthen, 2011; Guerra-Lopez, 2008). Decisions of a more constructive nature involve trying to “identify ideal solutions given available resources (Jonassen, 2012, p. 343).
Table 1 provides an overview of their typology along with the types of decisions an instructional designer may encounter during a project.
Table 1
Decision Typologies as They Relate to Instructional Design
Type Example of Instructional Design Decisions
Choices An instructional designer has been asked to help a local museum with developing learning materials for their patrons. During their brainstorming meeting with the museum staff, they discuss the possibility of using audio headsets, mobile learning, QR codes, online learning modules, and face-to-face training programs as training options.
Acceptances/Rejections An instructional designer submits a proposal to present their project at a national instructional design conference. Reviewers responsible for reading the proposal must decide to accept or reject the conference proposal.
Evaluation An instructional design firm in a metropolitan city meets with a not-for-profit organization to discuss their training needs. During a few of the initial conversations, the firm realizes that their client would not be able to pay the typical fees they charge for their instructional design services. The CEO of the instructional design firm sees the impact that the not-for-profit has made in the local community and decides that they can offer a few of their services pro bono.
Constructions An instructional design program discusses the options for offering two special topics courses to their students in the upcoming year. Program faculty discuss possible topics and discuss which ones might be of the most interest to their students. During their discussions, they identify potential instructors for the courses and look to see how this might impact regular course offerings and instructor assignments.
Jonassen (2012) suggests that decisions fall under two models of decision-making: normative and naturalistic. Normative models involve an individual evaluating the situation and considering several options before deciding on a solution that yields the optimal solution given any constraints or resources related to the situation. He further categorizes normative models of decision-making as falling into three categories (rational choice, cost-benefit, and risk assessment).
Rational choice models involve the instructional designer evaluating alternative options for addressing a problem and weighing the option to determine what is the most viable of the solutions. Oftentimes, the instructional designer will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each solution using decision-making tools such as SWOT or force field analyses. A cost-benefit analysis seeks to select solutions based on the potential for their return-on-investment. There may be instances where it is worth foregoing training if an organization cannot justify incurring the costs associated with training. A risk assessment model is when an instructional designer will evaluate the risks associated with not proceeding with a particular solution.
Naturalistic models are suggested to assist in the decision-making process when decisions are more contextually-embedded. These models “stress the role of identity and unconscious emotions in decision-making” (Jonassen, 2012, p. 348). Narrative-based models place value on the explanations that accompany the various decision options. More emphasis is placed on the explanation rather than the cost-benefit analysis associated with a particular solution. Identify-based decisions are centered around how any individual relates to solutions on a personal level. Table 2 provides examples of instructional design decisions that may fall under normative or naturalistic decision-making models.
Table 2
Examples of Normative and Naturalistic Instructional Design Decisions
Type of Decision-Making Model Examples in Relation to Instructional Design
Normative Decision-Making Rational choice A manufacturing company is looking to conduct Kaizen events as a means to create a lean manufacturing environment. To date, there have been many issues reported and logged by employees related to inefficiencies related to production. The manufacturing supervisors and the director of continuous improvement meet to rank the performance issues. They will begin by developing training and Kaizen events around the top three issues that have been prioritized by the team.
Cost-benefit analysis A call center is interested in investing in the development of new training modules to assist their call attendants on strategies to troubleshoot common calls they have been receiving about new products. Investing in training has the potential to reduce each customer call by five minutes.
Risk assessment A local hospital has sought input from its training department to explore whether training is needed regarding patient safety for their volunteers. The organization is looking at what the cost would be to host training sessions every month with incoming volunteers versus the risks of not training them on patient safety practices.
Naturalistic Decision-Making Narrative-based A sociology department at a research-intensive university is meeting to discuss if there is a need to modify and update their curriculum for their graduate programs. A faculty member has mentioned to the group that they do not believe the existing curriculum places enough emphasis on vulnerable populations. As they talk during the meeting, they keep referring to some existing students and asking the program faculty to consider what they would do if they were these students.
Identity-based The curriculum committee at a medical school is discussing options for offering graduate certificates in Patient Safety and Quality or Global Health in addition to their medical degree programs. Three of the members on the curriculum committee participated in global health trips during their medical training and recall it being a very engaging experience. They are more inclined to support the certificate in global health because they identify with that program on a personal level.
Normative Decision-Making Example: An Accident Occurs on the Plant Floor
Mike is an instructional designer who works in the Department of Employee Development for an automotive aftermarket manufacturer. Over the weekend, an employee had a fatal accident operating a piece of machinery during the night shift. Mike and his supervisor have been included in meetings to explore whether modifications are needed to the company’s existing health and safety modules.
It is most likely that Mike and his supervisor will employ a normative approach to decision-making by conducting a risk assessment to determine the need for updating existing modules or developing new courses. The following are examples of some questions that Mike may ask during his meeting with the organizational leadership:
• How many accidents have occurred on the plant floor in the past year?
• How many of these accidents were related to the particular machine?
• What training had the injured employee received before operating the machinery?
• Are safety practices related to the machine covered in the existing health and safety training modules?
Application Exercises
Make a list of all of the potential options you might consider if you were to assist Mike with the project.
Naturalistic Decision-Making Example: Transitioning Human Resource Mandatory Training
Angela has recently been hired as an instructional designer and trainer in support of employee development initiatives for a local hospital. In a recent meeting that was held with managers in human resources, there was a discussion about whether mandatory training courses should be offered in an online format. At her previous organization, Angela remembers that there were a lot of issues with transferring courses to an online format and she wonders if the employee development team has the necessary manpower and resources to support these modules.
Application Exercises
How might Angela’s previous employment experience influence her position during this discussion about offering online training modules?
Fostering the Development of Instructional Design Decision-Making
Several studies have been conducted exploring the development of instructional designers' design judgment (Demiral-Uzan, 2015; Gray et al., 2015; Honebein, 2017; Korkmaz & Boling, 2014). These studies have explored how instructional designers engage in making decisions based on resources available in real-world settings. The results of these studies have supported the idea that instructional design is not limited to a linear approach for designing and developing instructional solutions; it is complex, and heavily influenced by contextual factors that are uniquely situated in relation to the project goals.
Other studies have sought to explore the role of experience and instructional designers’ abilities to make decisions. There are several differences inherent in terms of how novice instructional designers engage in decision-making compared to experts (Ertmer et al., 2008, 2009; Hoard, Stefaniak, Baaki, & Draper, 2019; Perez & Emery, 1995; Stefaniak, Baaki, Hoard, & Stapleton, 2018). Novice instructional designers are more apt to rely on instructional design models to guide their design process in a linear fashion whereas expert designers design in a more recursive manner. Several of the abovementioned studies also reported that novices tend to revert back to instructional design solutions they have used in previous projects; experts are more prone to customize solutions to meet the unique needs of their learning audience.
Several researchers in the instructional design field have suggested that an apprentice model can be beneficial to novice instructional design students as they are acquiring and developing design skills. The use of a cognitive apprenticeship provides a framework for instructors and expert instructional designers to model behavior and design practices in addition to providing the necessary instructional scaffolding to support instructional designers as they engage in design decision-making (Bannan-Ritland, 2001; Ertmer & Cennamo, 1995, Moallem, 1998; Shambaugh & Magliaro, 2001; Stefaniak, 2017)
Tools to Facilitate and Log Decision-Making During the Design Phase of Instruction
Instructional design is an iterative and recursive process that requires the instructional designer to continuously monitor and revisit their designs to ensure alignment between instructional components from conception to implementation. Table 3 provides an overview of various tools that an instructional designer can utilize throughout their design process to log and reflect upon their instructional design decisions. Also, examples of studies and resources that discuss the use of these tools in detail are included in the table.
Table 3
Overview of Tools to Assist Instructional Designers with Logging Decisions
Tool Description Examples of Studies and Uses
Design documents
A document that serves as a blueprint for the entire instructional project. This document typically includes information related to course goals, learning objectives, instructional strategies, assessments, project timelines, and budgets.
Boot, Nelson, van Merrienboer, and Gibbons (2007)
Martin (2011)
Piskurich (2015)
External representations
The knowledge and structure in the environment, as physical symbols, objects, or dimensions (e.g., written symbols, beads of abacuses, dimensions of a graph, etc.), and as external rules, constraints, or relations embedded in physical configurations (e.g., spatial relations of written digits, visual and spatial layouts of diagrams, physical constraints in abacuses, etc.)” (Zhang, 1997, p. 180).
Baaki and Luo (2019)
Boling and Gray (2015)
Fischer and Mandl (2005)
Huybrechts, Schoffelen, Schepers, and Braspenning (2012)
Luo and Baaki (2019)
Verschaffel, de Corte, de Jong, and Elen (2010)
Yanchar, South, Williams, Allen, and Wilson (2010)
Group repositories
Space where an instructional design team can track the progress of a project and share notes. This space is typically housed by an online platform.
Gustafson (2002)
Spector (2002)
Stefaniak, Maddrell, Earnshaw, and Hale (2018)
Van Rooij (2010)
Rapid Prototyping
An instructional design approach that is used to create a sample of an instructional design product that is scalable according to the needs of the project. Rapid prototyping allows instructional designs to combine multiple phases of the instructional design process to facilitate discussions and decisions about results.
Roytek (2010)
Tripp & Bichelmeyer (1990)
York and Ertmer (2011)
Reflection journals
A journal where an instructional designer can log any ideas they might help, reactions to different phases of the instructional design process, or notes that might be beneficial for a future project. The use of a journal helps an instructional designer keep track of their thoughts and ideas that might not be suitable to be documented in a design document while still promoting a reflection-in-action mindset (Schon, 1983).
Baaki, Tracey, and Hutchinson (2017)
Bannan-Ritland (2001)
Gray et al. (2015)
Luppicini (2003)
Moallem (1998)
Tracey and Hutchinson (2013)
Young (2008)
Conclusion
While decision-making is recognized as a common form of problem-solving in instructional design practices, Jonassen (2012) contends that there is a need for empirical research to assess decision-making in our field. To date, there is a growing body of literature exploring the decision-making practices of instructional designers; however, we, as a field, have just begun to skim the surface. More studies are needed to explore the types and quality of decisions made by instructional designers of all levels in a variety of contexts. We know that contextual factors contribute to or hinder the effectiveness of instructional designers’ final designs (Morrison et al., 2013; Smith & Ragan, 2005). Researchers have criticized that the role of context continues to be an aspect of design that still warrants further explanation and understanding (Tessmer, 1990; Tessmer & Wedman, 1995). This continues to be an issue facing our field. Additional studies on factors influencing instructional designers’ abilities to engage in decision-making will better equip our field to prepare the future of instructional design (Ertmer et al., 2009; Jonassen, 2008; Stefaniak et al., 2018; Tracey & Boling, 2014).
In the meantime, instructional designers can continue to focus on cultivating their designer identity (Tracey & Hutchinson, 2016, 2018) by documenting their thoughts and making use of the tools mentioned in this chapter to track their design decisions during projects. Over time, the aspiring instructional designer will begin to identify patterns in terms of how they approach various types of design problems, identify and utilize design resources and space, and articulate their rationale to fellow designers and clients. This continual practice of design documentation will serve the field well by informing both theory and practice. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/02%3A_Exploring/2.03%3A_Documenting_Instructional_Design_Decisions.txt |
Generating Ideas
Vanessa Svihla
Brainstorming, ideation, generating ideas. These terms and the kinds of practices they refer to are familiar to many, even outside of design fields. As instructional designers, we use such techniques to come up with more ideas—and more creative ideas. But how do these techniques help designers develop ideas? And when and why should we use them?
In this chapter, I first discuss the typical purposes and desired outcomes for ideation. I review some common as well as new techniques and briefly discuss evidence of their effectiveness, in part to draw attention to the kinds of challenges designers face when using such techniques. Finally, I re-center the purpose of generating ideas as reframing the problem.
What Is Ideation? When and Why Do We Typically Generate Ideas?
Designers commonly generate ideas about possible solutions after the problem is initially framed. Or at least, typical texts on design suggest this is when designers should generate ideas. We will reconsider that later in this chapter.
Many ideation techniques focus on generating many ideas, going on the assumption that if you generate many ideas, some of them will surely be creative. This probabilistic reasoning is not always accurate, however. This is because even if we generate many ideas, they may still be similar to each other. Researchers who study ideation techniques argue that novelty comes from having dissimilar ideas. This means that variety is more important than quantity. But coming up with dissimilar ideas can be challenging because of fixation—the experience of getting stuck on previous ideas. Compared to designers who are not shown an existing solution, designers who are given an example tend to reproduce features from the example (Jansson & Smith, 1991), even when the example is known to be flawed (Purcell & Gero, 1996). Often, designers are unaware they have incorporated such features, and this is why overcoming fixation can be so challenging—it is often a covert process.
Research suggests that designers who have less diverse precedent to consider may be more prone to fixation (Purcell & Gero, 1996). Who has a less diverse precedent? Some may think this would be novice designers because they have not been exposed to the concepts and materials with which they are designing. But in some fields, like mechanical engineering and instructional design, we commonly encounter designs, but many of us do not encounter much diversity in those designs (e.g., a lot of sedans look like one another, and many school lessons look like one another). Repeated exposure to a limited set of ideas covertly shapes our vision of what could be. And, without deliberate engagement with diverse precedent, we might not be very influenced by that precedent.
New designers also tend to commit to design ideas prematurely (Rowland, 1992; Shum, 1991), and once committed, can feel invested and unwilling to change, a phenomenon referred to as sunk cost (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). In my own teaching of design, I require messy, hand-drafted first versions of ideation and prototypes and impose a -10% penalty to any such assignment that looks to have been tidied up. This appears to help, but it is still very easy to fall in love with a first idea. Consider the following vignettes in Tables 1 and 2, in which a supervisor (Sunil) requests fire extinguisher training to comply with regulations and the design team (newcomer Noel, experienced Eli, and subject matter expert Marley) considers their options.
Vignette 1. Meeting With Supervisor
Sunil
Of course, we want to make sure our employees are exposed to proper fire extinguisher use. We have to comply with these new regulations ASAP.
Marley
Some units, like mine, have already been certifying employees because we really have to know how to use an extinguisher. But we rely on an external provider.
Eli
It seems like that won’t scale to the entire organization, given the cost you shared with us earlier.
Noel
We can just put together a short online training using the PASS model, with a quiz to certify them. I think the pass score should be rather high, though, right? Like 100%. I know we sometimes go with 80%.
Sunil
What is the difference between a pass model and pass score?
Noel
Oh! Sorry. The PASS model—I googled it before the meeting—is a mnemonic to use the fire extinguisher. It means pull the pin, um, aim, and sweep. I forget what the other S stands for, give me a sec—
Sunil
How long would it take you to put that together?
Eli
Before we get to that, I think we need to consider options.
In the vignette, who shows fixation? Premature commitment? What precedent might shape how the design team and supervisor evaluate design ideas? How might they overcome fixation and premature commitment? To answer that, let’s look first at the origins of idea generation.
What Are Some Tools for Ideation?
In 1939, Osborn began developing techniques for more creative advertising. He devised classic brainstorming and published techniques based on years of practice (Osborn, 1957). He advocated for the following techniques as part of brainstorming:
• suspending critique
• considering wild ideas
• coming up with as many ideas as possible
• combining ideas, and
• working in a large group of designers.
Several of these ideas were later empirically challenged, especially group size (Mongeau & Morr, 1999). Generally, support has been found for more structured ideation methods (Crilly & Cardoso, 2017; Runco et al., 2011; Santanen, Briggs, & Vreede, 2004; Sosa & Gero, 2013; Yilmaz, Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2010). For instance, an early, somewhat more-structured approach was lateral thinking, meaning thinking in generative ways (as opposed to analytical “vertical thinking”) (De Bono & Zimbalist, 1970). De Bono described general methods for lateral thinking, such as:
• generating alternatives with a pre-set quota (number of ideas),
• challenging assumptions by repeatedly asking why,
• suspending or delaying judgement, and
• restructuring or reorganizing elements.
In the vignette below, what techniques (from the bulleted lists above) do they use? Where do they stray from the guidelines for brainstorming and lateral thinking?
Vignette 2. Design Team Meeting: Classic Brainstorming in a Group
Eli
I am a little worried that if we just deliver a compliance training, Sunil will consider that sufficient, even for units like Marley’s, because the cost savings will be so appealing. So, I think we should generate some ideas before we commit. So, let’s come up with at least 20 ideas. Let’s not evaluate them yet, just list any ideas that pop in.
Noel
Well, I think we should do the PASS model, followed by a quiz.
Marley
That makes me think about job aids. Like we could have a sign, maybe next to or on fire extinguishers?
Noel
Nice. And we should make the job aid similar to the training, so the instructional and transfer contexts are similar.
Marley
That’s a good idea. We can use the same font and pictures even.
Eli
Sometimes asking “why” helps. Like, why do all employees need this training? Why don’t they know how to use a fire extinguisher already?
Marley
In the certification course we take in my unit, people think they should aim at the top of the flames, but it’s the base. So, we could focus on that aspect.
Noel
And that is also part of the PASS model. And they need it because of compliance though, right?
Eli
Let’s really try to get some other ideas on the table.
Noel
We could make our own model. SAPS? APSS?
Marley
Or it could be just like a handout they get.
In this vignette, you may have noticed that although Eli encouraged them not to evaluate ideas, Noel and Marley reacted in evaluative ways to each other’s ideas. Although they did not critique ideas, even providing positive evaluation can shape how others respond because it signals that poor ideas are unwelcome. This in turn can impinge on creative thinking.
Noel’s suggestion to make their own model by rearranging the steps is something those of us who teach design see often. Coming up with flawed versions of existing ideas accomplishes two things well—it gets you toward whatever preset quota you need, and it guarantees your favorite idea won’t be ruled out—but it does not lead to more creative ideas. Yet, this approach is common when ideation feels forced or artificial, as can happen when one designer prompts ideation that others do not see a need for (or when ideation is assigned, such as in an ID class!). Knowing when to deploy ideation techniques is critical, but this is learned through experience. For practicing designers, ideation is not always a formal step; they often generate ideas ad hoc. Experienced designers do not always find benefit from typical ideation techniques (Laakso & Liikkanen, 2012; Linsey et al., 2010; Sio, Kotovsky, & Cagan, 2015; Tauber, 1972; Vasconcelos & Crilly, 2016), but research suggests these may hold benefit for newcomers.
Below, I have summarized some common structured ideation techniques. I have included a couple that are not common in instructional design because methods developed in other design fields, like engineering and creativity, are transferrable outside of product design fields (Moreno, Yang, Hernández, & Wood, 2014). This is important in part because our most prominent design approach—ADDIE—has relatively little to say about ideation, and even newer models like SAM do not provide clarity about where new ideas might come from (Allen, 2012).
Take the fire extinguisher training problem described in the vignettes, and try out two of the techniques in Table 1 below.
Table 1
Common Structured Ideation Techniques
Technique
Outcomes
Use in ID
SCAMPER
An elaboration of traditional brainstorming, this technique structures ideation by providing questions tied to actions that form the SCAMPER acronym: substitute, combine, adapt, modify/magnify/minimize, put to other uses, eliminate, and reverse/rearrange (Eberle, 1972). For instance, ask “What can I substitute?”
Studies suggest that SCAMPER may result in more high-quality novel ideas compared to unguided methods (Moreno, Yang, et al., 2014).
SCAMPER has been commonly used with elementary students. It is a particularly promising technique for making incremental changes to typical instructional settings, where major changes may be viewed as threatening or problematic.
Design Heuristics
Based on expert performance in product and engineering design (Yilmaz, Daly, Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2015, 2016) this is a well-studied set of 77 strategy cards—such as add levels, adjust functions for specific users, repeat, compartmentalize, contextualize, build user community, change flexibility, scale up or down, and incorporate environment—for designers to use as inspiration as they generate ideas.
Design heuristics can support newcomer designers to develop more elaborated and practical ideas (Daly, Seifert, Yilmaz, & Gonzalez, 2016).
While many of the strategies are specific to engineering or product design, many are salient to instructional design, especially if we change “user” to “learner.” For instance, several focus on user agency, which we could frame as learner agency—allow the learner to customize, reconfigure, reorient. What other heuristics might we identify from expert ID practice? The list of ID heuristics could be a place to start (York & Ertmer, 2011).
Design-by-Analogy
These methods include various forms—Synectics (Gordon, 1961), biomimicry—and include techniques like mapping related words in a network like a concept map or exposure to near or far examples. The latter mirrors intuitive as well as professional design practice in which designers rely on precedent. However it involves deliberately considering ideas that may be similar or wildly different as sources of inspiration.
Common to engineering design, the TRIZ (Altshuller, 1996) approach involves first identifying “contradictions” then looking at ways others have resolved the same kind of contradiction.
Design-by-analogy methods can help designers produce more novel ideas (Moreno, Hernandez, et al., 2014) especially if the designers use far analogies (Chan et al., 2011) which can help them think more broadly about a problem (S. M. Smith & Linsey, 2011).
TRIZ has led to more varied ideas (Belski, Hourani, Valentine, & Belski, 2014).
Although not commonly used in ID, this is a promising technique to overcome exposure to traditional precedent.
Developing clarity about tensions is also promising. Common contradictions salient in instructional design are breadth versus depth, efficiency versus understanding, and convenience versus learning.
Nominal group
In a group, individuals silently generate ideas. Each member shares ideas. After all have been shared, members clarify and evaluate ideas collectively then vote individually.
Compared to an unstructured group, nominal groups generate more ideas (Ven & Delbecq, 1974).
Nominal group techniques are beneficial when generating ideas with stakeholders or in groups with power imbalances because it opens space for all members to participate.
Bodystorming
Rather than attempting to generate ideas removed from context, bodystorming involves acting out the problem and possible solutions in situ (Oulasvirta, Kurvinen, & Kankainen, 2003).
Bodystorming has been helpful when designing with new or unfamiliar learning technologies (B. K. Smith, 2014).
Although not commonly used (in ID or other fields), bodystorming can be particularly generative when considering the configuration of learning spaces, ways to arrange collaborating learners, and mobile learning.
Contrast the two techniques you tried out:
• Which did you prefer and why?
• Which led you to produce more ideas?
• Which do you think led you to generate more novel ideas?
• Which do you think led you to generate higher quality ideas?
If you found answering the last two questions more difficult, you are not alone. Researchers have long debated the best ways to measure novelty and quality of ideas. While counting the number of ideas generated is straightforward, as mentioned earlier, this does not necessarily result in better ideas. Novelty is often characterized by the variety or breadth of ideas of a single designer as well as the frequency of their ideas compared to other designers (Hernandez, Okudan, & Schmidt, 2012). Quality is sometimes measured as feasibility, usability (Kudrowitz & Wallace, 2013) or the degree to which needs are met without violating constraints.
Others have also considered characteristics such as ethics and empathy. This means evaluating the just distribution of risks and benefits for multiple and especially marginalized groups (Beever & Brightman, 2016). Although not commonly used, techniques that sensitize the instructional designer to the experiences of marginalized groups and connect this to their own experiences prior to generating ideas has potential for addressing persistent inequities and structural oppression (Kouprie & Visser, 2009; Visser & Kouprie, 2008). Such approaches also tend to more clearly change the problem space.
How Can Ideation Reshape the Problem Space?
So far, we have mostly focused on the solution space, but due to the ill-structured nature of design problems, ideation also changes the problem space (Cardoso, Badke-Schaub, & Eris, 2016) as designers reframe the problem during ideation (Daly, Yilmaz, Christian, Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2012). Designers sometimes relax constraints and this can reshape the problem space (Chan, Dang, Kremer, Guo, & Dow, 2014; Silk, Daly, Jablokow, Yilmaz, & Rosenberg, 2014). By temporarily ignoring a key constraint, sometimes we can notice something new about the problem space.
Similarly, my own approach—the Wrong Theory Protocol (WTP, https://edtechbooks.org/-IAVb)—likewise tends to reshape the problem space. In this approach, we ask designers to first come up with ideas that would cause harm and humiliation prior to generating beneficial ideas. I was inspired by a magazine article on artists and designers deliberately creating displeasing and wrong works (Dadich, 2014). When we first incorporated it into an ideation session, we noticed that the most humiliating ideas led to more empathetic insights and changed problem frames. Consider the vignette below to understand why this might be.
Vignette 3. Design Team Meeting: Wrong Theory Protocol
After individually generating harmful and humiliating ideas, the team discusses their insights:
Eli
I think my worst idea was locking the learner in a room with a small fire burning and a sort of Rube Goldberg fire extinguisher with terribly complex instructions. They first can’t get it started, and once set in motion, the extinguisher has too many steps to get through and the fire grows and grows.
Noel
Wow. That’s terrible. Mine was giving them a depleted extinguisher with no instructions and putting them on one of those weird game shows, where if they can’t make the extinguisher go, they have to eat spiders.
Marley
Ew! You both had much worse ideas than me. I think mine was just lazy. I said just give them no instructions and wait for a fire, then put up a list in the hall of those who messed up. Eli, your wrong design makes me think of how—in some of our units, it could go really wrong if someone who got basic training used the wrong kind of extinguisher. Some of our labs have two or three kinds for different situations.
Noel
You know, at first, I thought, we just need to make sure everyone knows how to use a basic model, but now I wonder if that could actually lead to accidents. If we tackle this just as a compliance problem, we could make it worse.
In this vignette, how did the problem change as a result of insight gained from generating wrong ideas? Why do you think it changed?
In our work on WTP, designers’ beneficial ideas, though not numerous, tend to be both creative and empathetic. We have several reasons for why WTP might work. Perhaps designers feel beholden to stakeholders after coming up with harmful and humiliating ideas? Or perhaps they simply gain empathy? Maybe they notice something new about the problem situation? Or, perhaps in absence of the pressure to be right, they are able to be more creative? Afterall, research on suspending judgment suggests that it is difficult to accomplish.
Conclusion
Instead of treating ideation as the tipping point between being problem- and solution-focused, try generating ideas across the depth and duration of your design process to help you frame the problem with empathy and design learning experiences that meet needs without unintentionally widening gaps. By depth, I mean that it can help to drill down and ideate on a particular aspect.
While this chapter introduced a few techniques, there are many more available.
Finally, ideation can be an effective tool when employed at any sticking point. Low fidelity prototypes, use-cases and early storyboards often reveal issues that can be dealt with through ideation. Even in pilot implementation, having ideation techniques ready-to-hand can avert disaster when issues come up. This kind of generative thinking—How can it work? How else could it work?—serves designers well throughout their design work.
Additional Readings and Resources
There are many texts that illustrate additional ideation/creativity techniques. I always recommend keeping an eye out for one that appeals to you.
Kelley, T., & Littman, J. (2006). The ten faces of innovation: IDEO's strategies for defeating the devil's advocate and driving creativity throughout your organization: Crown Business.
Michalko, M. (2011). Cracking creativity: The secrets of creative genius: Ten Speed Press.
Michalko, M. (2010). Thinkertoys: A handbook of creative-thinking techniques: Ten Speed Press.
Sawyer, K. (2013). Zig Zag: the surprising path to greater creativity: John Wiley & Sons.
Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC 1751369. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/03%3A_Creating/3.01%3A_Generating_Ideas.txt |
Instructional Strategies
Joshua Hill & Linda Jordan
Editor's Note
This is a condensed version of a chapter on Instructional Strategies from the book Experiential Learning in Instructional Design and Technology, by Joshua Hill and Linda Jordan. It is printed here under a similar license as the original.
Introduction
A well designed course, whether it be face-to-face, blended, or online, must be well structured with careful attention to instructional strategies in the selection of instructional material, the planning of learning activities, and the selection of media. An instructional strategy describes the instructional materials and procedures that enable students to achieve the learning outcomes. Learning outcomes are what the student should know, or be able to accomplish at the end of the course or learning unit. Your instructional strategy should describe the instructional materials’ components and procedures used with the materials that are needed for students to achieve the learning outcomes. The strategy should be based on the learning outcomes and information from the other previous instructional design steps. You can even base your strategy on how you or others have solved similar problems. You can save time and money by not re-inventing the wheel. However, be careful; a lot of existing instructional material is designed poorly. Use the instructional strategy as a framework for further developing the instructional materials or evaluating whether existing materials are suitable or need revision. As a general rule, use the strategy to set up a framework for maximizing effective and efficient learning. This often requires using strategies that go beyond basic teaching methods. For example, discovery-learning techniques can be more powerful than simply presenting the facts.
This chapter reviews some basic information to help you choose appropriate instructional strategies for the learning outcomes you hope your learners will be able to accomplish. Rather than reviewing specific details about any of the hundreds of instructional strategies that have been developed, this chapter describes considerations that should go into the selection of any instructional strategy.
Goal Analysis
Goal analysis includes classifying the instructional goal into the domain, or kind of learning that will occur. The domains can be verbal information where learners state, list, describe, name, etc., intellectual skills such as learning how to discriminate, identify, classify, demonstrate, generate, originate, create, etc., psychomotor skills where learners make, draw, adjust, assemble, etc., and attitudes such as making choices or decisions. If you used a guide like Bloom's Taxonomy when generating your learning outcomes, you likely have a good handle on the type of learning you hope will occur. Establishing the domain is important in determining what instructional strategies to use in subsequent steps.
Learning Domain Strategies
Each learning domain classification (i.e., verbal information, intellectual skills and cognitive strategies, psychomotor skills, and attitudes) is best taught with different instructional strategies.
Verbal Information
Verbal information is material, such as names of objects, that students simply have to memorize and recall.
When teaching verbal information:
• Organize the material into small, easily retrievable chunks.
• Link new information to knowledge the learner already possesses. For example, use statements such as
“Remember how”, or “This is like …”. Linking information helps the learner to store and recall the material.
• Use mnemonics and other memory devices for new information. You may recall that the musical notes of the treble clef staff lines can be remembered with the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
• Use meaningful contexts and relevant cues. For example, relating a problem to a sports car can be relevant to some members of your target audience.
• Have the learners generate examples in their minds, such as create a song or game with the information or apply the knowledge to the real world. If the student only memorizes facts then the learning will only have minimal value.
• Avoid rote repetition as a memorization aid. Rote learning has minimal effectiveness over time.
• Provide visuals to increase learning and recall.
Intellectual Skills
Intellectual skills are those that require learners to think (rather than simply memorizing and recalling information).
When teaching intellectual skills:
• Base the instructional strategy and sequencing on an analysis such as a topic or a procedural analysis. Always teach subordinate skills before higher-level skills.
• Link new knowledge to previously learned knowledge. You can do this explicitly (e.g., the bones in your feet are comparable to the bones you learned about in your hands) or implicitly (e.g., compare the bones in your feet to other bone structures you have learned about).
• Use memory devices like acronyms, rhymes, or imagery for information such as rules or principles. You can use the first letters of words to help memorize information. For example, “KISS” means “Keep It Simple Stupid”. General rules can often be remembered through rhymes such as “i before e except after c”. Remember that rules often have exceptions. Tell your learners about the exceptions. Memory devices are best for limited amounts of information.
• Use examples and non-examples that are familiar to the student. For instance, when classifying metals, iron and copper are examples while glass and plastic are non-examples.
• Use discovery-learning techniques. For example, let students manipulate variables and see the consequences.
• Use analogies that the learners know. However, be careful that learners do not over-generalize or create misconceptions.
• Provide for practice and immediate feedback.
Psychomotor Skills
Psychomotor skills are those that require learners to carry out muscular actions.
When teaching psychomotor skills:
• Base the instructional strategy on an analysis such as a procedural analysis or a critical incident analysis.
• Provide directions for completing all of the steps.
• Provide repeated practice and feedback for individual steps, then groups of steps, and then the entire sequence.
• Remember that, in general, practice should become less dependent on written or verbal directions.
• Consider visuals to enhance learning.
• Consider job aids, such as a list of steps, to reduce memory requirements. This is especially important if there are many procedures or if the procedures are infrequently used.
• After a certain point, allow learners to interact with real objects or do the real thing. How much can you learn about swimming without getting wet?
Note that some skills involve other learning-domain classifications. For example, when learning how to operate a camcorder, many of the skills are psychomotor. However, deciding how to light an image is an intellectual skill. Also, note that the required proficiency level can affect the instructional strategy. There is a big difference between being able to imitate a skill and being able to automatically do a skill.
Attitudes
Attitudes involve how a student feels about the instruction, whether they will value or care about the material presented to them.
When teaching attitudes:
• Base the instructional strategy on the instructional design steps done earlier.
• If you can, show a human model to which the students can easily relate. One consideration is that it may be better if the model is of the same socioeconomic group.
• Show realistic consequences to appropriate and inappropriate choices.
• Consider using video.
• Remember that attitudes taught through computer technology are not guaranteed to transfer to the real world. If appropriate and possible, consider arranging for practice opportunities to make the choice in real life. Alternatively, use role-playing to reinforce the attitudes taught.
Note that it can be difficult to test whether the attitudes taught have transferred to real situations. Will learners behave naturally if they know that they are being observed? If learners have not voluntarily permitted observations, then you must consider whether it is ethical to make the observations.
Strategies to Sequence Learning Outcomes
Another aspect of your instructional strategy will be to determine the sequence of how the learning outcomes will be taught. In general, to best facilitate learning you should sequence the learning outcomes from:
• easy to hard
• You could teach adding fractions with common denominators and then with different denominators. Your lesson could first deal with writing complete sentences and then writing paragraphs.
• simple to complex
• As an example, teach recognizing weather patterns and then predicting the weather.
• Cover replacing a washer and then replacing a faucet.
• specific to general
• You could teach driving a specific car and then transfer the skills to driving any car. Similarly, you could cover adjusting the brakes on a specific mountain bike and then generalize the procedure to other mountain bikes
• Note that some students like to learn through an inductive approach (that is, from the general to the specific). For example, students could be presented with a number of simple examples, and based on those, be asked to generalize a rule. That general rule can then be applied to solving specific examples. Since some students will not enjoy an inductive approach, do not use it all of the time. Rather consider an inductive approach as a way to provide some variation and occasionally address other learning preferences.
• concrete to abstract
• As an example, teach measuring distances with a tape measure and then estimating distances without a tape measure. Cover writing learning outcomes and then evaluating learning outcomes.
• the known to the unknown
• You could do this by starting with concepts learners already know and extending those concepts to new ideas. In other words, build on what has been previously taught.
Each of these methods of sequencing learning outcomes enables students to acquire the needed knowledge base for learning higher-level skills. Note that these guidelines are not black and white rules.
Strategies to Motivate Students - The ARCS Model
As described by Keller, motivation can be enhanced through addressing the four attributes of Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS). Try to include all of the attributes since each alone may not maintain student motivation. Your learner analysis may have provided useful information for motivating students. You should build motivational strategies into the materials throughout the instructional design process. This is challenging since each learner is an individual with unique interests, experiences, and goals.
Attention
Gain attention and then sustain it. You can gain attention by using human-interest examples, arousing emotions such as by showing a peer being wheeled into an ambulance, presenting personal information, challenging the learner, providing an interesting problem to solve, arousing the learner’s curiosity, showing exciting video or animation sequences, stating conflicting information, using humor, asking questions, and presenting a stimulus change that can be as simple as an audio beep. One way to sustain attention is by making the learning highly interactive.
Relevance
Relevance helps the student to want to learn the material by helping them understand how the material relates to their needs or how it can relate to improving their future. For example, when teaching adult students how to solve percent problems, having them calculate the gratuity on a restaurant bill may be more relevant than a problem that compares two person’s ages. You can provide relevance through testimonials, illustrative stories, simulations, practical applications, personal experience, and relating the material to present or future values or needs. Relevance is also useful in helping to sustain attention. For material to be perceived as being relevant, you must strive to match the learner’s expectations to the material you provide.
Confidence
If students are confident that they can master the material, they will be much more willing to attempt the instruction. You will need to convince students with low confidence that they can be successful. You can do this through presenting the material in small incremental steps, or even by stating how other similar students have succeeded. Tasks should seem achievable rather than insurmountable. You should also convince students who are overconfident that there is material that they need to learn. You can do this by giving a challenging pre-test or presenting difficult questions.
Satisfaction
Satisfaction provides value for learning the material. Satisfaction can be intrinsic from the pleasure or value of the activity itself, extrinsic from the value or importance of the activity’s result, for social reasons such as pleasing people who’s opinions are important to them, for achievement goals such as the motive to be successful or avoid failure, or a combination of these. Examples of intrinsic satisfaction include the joy or challenge of learning, increased confidence, positive outcomes, and increased feelings of self-worth. Examples of extrinsic satisfaction include monetary rewards, praise, a certificate, avoidance of discomfort or punishment for not doing it, and unexpected rewards. Some evidence suggests that extrinsic motivation, such as a certificate for completing a course, does not last over time. Nonetheless, it is better to assume that some students need extrinsic motivation. To be safe, try to provide your learners with both intrinsic, which should have more of the focus, and extrinsic rewards. If the intrinsic motivation is high for all learners, you will not need to plan as much for extrinsic motivation. Note that satisfaction can be provided by enabling learners to apply the skills they have gained in a meaningful way. Remember to let the students know that the material to be learned is important. Consider increasing extrinsic motivation through quizzes and tests.
Strategies for Sequencing Instructional Events
As Robert Gagné described, that instructional events (gaining attention, informing the learner of the learning outcome, stimulating recall of prerequisites, presenting the material, providing learning guidance, eliciting the performance, providing feedback, assessing performance, and enhancing retention and transfer) represent what should be done to ensure that learning occurs. If you address each instructional event, you will have a solid foundation for creating effective instructional materials. You will need to determine what will be done for each instructional event for each learning outcome.
You can learn more about sequencing instructional events from another chapter in this textbook, Robert Gagné and the Systematic Design of Instruction.
Conclusion
The emphasis in this review of instructional strategies was on getting the fundamentals right. Regardless of what revolutionary tools or teaching approaches are being used, what we know of how people learn does not change a great deal over time, and we do know that learning is a process, and you ignore the factors that influence that process at your peril.
For learning leading to successful outcomes, it is important to remember that most students need:
• well-defined learning goals;
• instructional strategies linked with the appropriate learning domains;
• a proper sequencing of instructional events; providing a clear timetable of work, based on a well-structured organization of the curriculum;
• appropriate and engaging learning activities; with regular feedback
• manageable study workloads appropriate for their conditions of learning;
• a skilled instructor; regular instructor communication and presence;
• a social environment that draws on, and contributes to, the knowledge and experience of other students;
• other motivated learners to provide mutual support and encouragement.
There are many different ways these criteria can be met, with many different tools.
Remember these key takeaways when designing your instructional strategies:
• Learning domain classification (i.e., verbal information, intellectual skills and cognitive strategies, psychomotor skills, and attitudes) are best taught with different instructional strategies.
• Teach learning outcomes in the order that best facilitates learning.
• The four attributes of the Keller’s ARCS Motivational Model are; Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Including all of the attributes may increase student motivation.
• The unique interests, experiences, and goals of each learner influence motivation.
• Instructional events include; gaining attention, informing the learner of the learning outcome, stimulating recall of prerequisites, presenting the material, providing learning guidance, eliciting the performance, providing feedback, assessing performance, and enhancing retention and transfer. (as reviewed in the chapter Robert Gagné and the Systematic Design of Instruction).
Application Exercise
You have been tasked with designing a university orientation course for freshmen community college students. Everyone at the institution is aware that students feel an orientation course is not necessary and that it is a waste of their time. Explain what portion of the ARCS Motivational Model might be applied into the design of the course to help students understand why this course is important for their success. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/03%3A_Creating/3.02%3A_Instructional_Strategies.txt |
Instructional Design Prototyping Strategies
Jacquelyn Claire Johnson & Richard E. West
One of the differences between design as practiced in our field and traditional art is that our designs must not only be interesting, engaging, and even beautiful, but they must also be useful for someone—the end users or learners. Over 2,000 years ago, Marcus Vitruvius—a Roman architect—articulated that good architecture should rise to three ideals: firmitas (strength), utilitas (functionality), and venustas (beauty). In other words, a building should be strong and not fall down, it should accomplish its purpose (e.g. as a home or an office), and it should be beautiful to enjoy.
Instructional designers seek the same three ideals in our products. For us, we desire the learning environments we create to work well, teach well, and, well, be beautiful and enjoyable to experience!
Prototyping is an essential skill and process for instructional designers to achieve these three goals. Despite careful and rigorous front-end analysis, user research, and attention to detail during development, it is nearly impossible to produce instruction that works perfectly the first time. However, through iterations of prototypes, we can evaluate how well our instructional designs are working, teaching, and being enjoyed by a group of potential users. This will increase the likelihood that final designs will be successful. In addition, digital technologies have reduced the cost of creating prototypes, which has led to a new focus on agile, lean, and rapid prototyping design models where prototypes are not a single step in the process, but instead, each stage of design development can be tested as a new prototype—and this continual refinement of the design through continuous evaluation may never cease (see Wiley & Bodily’s chapter in this book).
How can we effectively prototype and test our designs? We can learn much about prototyping from other design fields. For example, it is standard practice to use visual representations of ideas—such as pictures—during the creative process in many design fields such as architecture (Bilda et al., 2006), film and cinematography (Teng et al., 2014), and engineering (Perry & Sanderson, 1998). This skill is so meaningful, graphic design instructors insist that it is vital to “equip students with the ability to make well-informed decisions about tool choice and tool use during design ideation” (Stones & Cassidy, 2010, p. 439).
Though graphic design is an inherently visual field, the use of prototypes has application in other design fields as well. For instance, extensive research demonstrates the usefulness of visuals in product development as a means of exploring problems and generating possible solutions. Prototypes help designers understand specific design challenges and make inferences about the situation (Suwa & Tversky, 1997). They also contribute to many aspects of problem solving (Dorst & Cross, 2001; Do et al., 2000). Research in cognitive psychology has established that the cognitive load of processing ideas is reduced for designers through the use of visuals.
Furthermore, studies show it is easier for designers to process complex ideas with visual prototypes rather than relying on working memory (Cash, Stanković, & Štorga, 2014). Vicarious experiences can be provided through visuals, which allow designers to glean and evaluate the pertinent information without investing as much time or effort into creating the experience (Menezes & Lawson, 2006). Prototypes also can guide important design conversations “if they lead the team visually into a fruitful sequence of conversation steps” (Eppler & Kernbach, 2016, p. 96).
Key Prototyping Principles
Dam and Siang (2018) argued that during prototyping you should pay attention to the following:
• People—including those whom you are testing and the observers. Because we design for humans, we are particularly interested in how humans interact with and perceive the usefulness of our designs.
• Objects—including the prototype and other objects people interact with, because what people choose to do and the objects they choose to interact with can provide clues into why they like or do not like our design.
• Location—such as places and environments, because we can learn from where people choose to use designs, and why they use them in those locations, and what affordances those locations provide for using the design.
• Interactions—including digital or physical interactions between people, the objects, and the environment. This is particularly essential because the interactions we observe provide clues into how the design could be used, and any unintended outcomes.
Similarly in our field, Andrew Gibbons (2013) has argued that every instructional design is comprised of various layers, such as the following:
• Content, or the actual material to be learned
• Strategy, or the unifying framework about how the teaching/learning is theorized to happen, or how the tasks involved in learning should take place
• Control, or how students interact with and provide input back into the learning material
• Message, or the intended meaning the instruction is meant to communicate to the learner
• Representation, or how the layers of the design are presented to learners (visual, audio, touch, etc.)
• Media-logic, or the background structures that activate each component of the instruction at the proper time and in the proper way
• Management, or how data about people’s use of the instruction is collected and managed to improve learning and communicate about outcomes to stakeholders.
A design prototype, then, should serve to test one or all of these components from Dam and Siang and/or Gibbons. In other words, a high fidelity prototype, created close before implementation, would likely try to test all of these components. An earlier prototype may focus on one or two, perhaps testing primarily the validity of the content or messaging layers, the ability of the learner to control the interface, or the reliability of the media.
Prototyping Stages and Goals for Each Stage
In our opinion, there are three key stages for prototyping, and there are different primary goals for each stage, as described in Table 1.
Table 1
Prototyping Stages and Goals
Prototyping Stage
Prototyping Goals
Static/paper—These prototypes can be created on paper or digitally, but typically are static and do not involve interactivity, graphic design, or other expensive features. These are often “Wizard of Oz” or paper prototypes, described below.
The primary goal is to test the logic of the design with users, experts, and clients. Do they think this is likely to succeed? Which aspects or attributes of the design do they think warrant full development? Does this design seem like a good answer to the instructional problem? Are we using the best content? What insights do they have now about how to present the final product (e.g. what media format, location, or scale should we aim for?)? This is also a good time to estimate the potential costs in time and money to develop the design, and to ensure all parties feel the scope is accurate.
Low fidelity product/process—These prototypes have minimal interactivity and visual storyboards instead of full graphics.
Low fidelity prototypes are produced to give users and clients a better idea about how a design may look and interact, and how instructional content and strategies will be presented. Things do not work perfectly, but the focus is on testing the ideas, interaction, and potential of the design.
High fidelity product/process—These prototypes should be nearly completed designs, and ready for rigorous internal testing.
First impressions often matter a great deal, so before launching a product with actual users, ready-to-launch prototypes should be rigorously tested internally or with a sample of users. This process is usually repeated multiple times with larger groups of people until there is confidence that most of the design bugs have been identified, the product works reasonably well, and users will be able to use the product as intended.
Beta or soft launch of the design—Many designers now choose to launch a design in beta form, allowing users full range of access to the design, but without a promise that everything will work perfectly.
The goal of this stage is to fully test all aspects of the design, including user satisfaction and implementation costs. However, by keeping the design in beta, there is still flexibility to redesign an aspect not working very well, and usually users will be more forgiving.
Full launch/implementation
Even when we feel a design is “done” or ready for launch, we continue to collect confirmative or “continuous” (Wiley and Bodily, 2020) evaluation data on how well it is working and make adjustments as needed.
Prototyping Strategies
There are many strategies to prototyping ideas. Essentially, whatever you as a designer can do to test out any aspect of your design is a prototype. For example, this can be something visual, tactile, auditory, or performance-related. Following are some of the most common prototyping strategies.
Sketching
Sketches are “rough drawings representing the chief features of an object or scene and often made as a preliminary study” (Sketches, n.d.). For an example of a sketch, see Figure 1. Because sketches are simple and easily created, they are used by designers in the automotive industry to develop new design concepts. Researchers studied six designers at the Ford design studio to understand the physical and mental processes these designers go through as they sketch. They compared the process of these professional designers to student designers to ascertain the differences between the two groups. Findings indicated that, when compared to novice designers, professionals have a greater understanding of physical dimension and used an iterative design approach in which they used sketches to facilitate problem solving and creative thought (Tovey et al., 2003).
Note. Many of the examples provided in this chapter come from museum exhibit design, which was the background of the lead author.
As illustrated by the automotive designers, sketches elucidate aspects of the parallel development of the designer and the product. Sketches allow designers to set out ideas spontaneously (Bilda et al., 2006; Segers et al., 2005) without investing much in terms of time (Rodgers et al., 2000; Stones & Cassidy, 2010) and money (McGown et al., 1998). Expert designers are more adept at using visuals, suggesting that visuals are often a part of their professional development (Bilda et al., 2006). These visuals also contribute significantly to the design process (Dörner, 1999; Jonson, 2005; Kavakli & Gero, 2001; Suwa & Tversky, 1997; Teng et al., 2014) and are said to be essential for conceptual designing (Bilda et al., 2006). Designers use sketches to focus their non-verbal thinking (Rodgers et al., 2000), consider the idea as both its component parts and as a whole (Bilda et al., 2006), and tap into the deeper meaning and implications of their ideas (Eppler & Kernbach, 2016). Sketching enlivens previously only imagined designs (Bilda et al., 2006; Tovey et al., 2003). Through sketching, designers can embody and explore ideas that are not fully developed (Rodgers et al., 2000), communicate the physical nature of an idea (McGown et al., 1998), and subsequently clarify its characteristics to determine what will and will not work (Dörner, 1999). All of these activities are critical in the product development process.
Storyboarding
Sketch methods lead to the creation of storyboards because key ideas and images can be created and then organized in a storyboard sequence (Teng et al., 2014). Storyboards are “a panel or series of panels on which a set of sketches is arranged depicting consecutively the important changes of scene and action in a series of shots” (Storyboards, n.d.). Storyboards are an exploration, analysis, and conceptualization tool generally used later in the design process once ideas from sketches have been evaluated and selected for development.
The development of storyboards often starts with a collection of individual drawings that represent single scenes, which are part of the whole design being drawn. Each separate depiction in the storyboard represents a specific scene or perspective. Taken together, they represent the sequence in which things will flow.
Storyboards are utilized in cinematography, live television, animation, and special effects to plan the details of how a story will be portrayed (Teng et al., 2014). In architecture, they are used to visualize presentations of projects by creating analog versions of proposed buildings that will later be digitally designed (Cristiano, 2007). In other design contexts such as industrial design, storyboarding is a way of visually recording social, environmental, and technical factors that affect the context of how end users will interact with the product (Martin & Hanington, 2012).
Storyboards were used by students at Georgia Institute of Technology in their industrial design classes. When working on a product development project to redesign travel luggage, students performed research about the needs of consumers as well as market standards as a basis for beginning their design project. After completing the research, students storyboarded their designs to show how luggage is handled through the whole travel experience from storage, packing, passing security, walking through the airport, boarding the airplane, loading it into the overhead bins, and ultimately back into storage. These storyboards facilitated discussions about various design features and how to prioritize them to meet user needs (Reeder, 2005b).
As this example demonstrates, storyboards can contribute to product development because they are drawn with the target audience in mind (Martin & Hanington, 2012) and visually describe how users will interact with the product. When designers examine design challenges in depth using storyboards, they can understand the complexity of the situation and consider individual portions of the situation while not losing sight of the whole (Reeder, 2005a). They can visually document how users will interact with the product and use this documentation to develop innovative product solutions that address the needs and expectations of users (Reeder, 2005a). In general, storyboards act as a visual budget, which helps the production process run more smoothly by planning and allocating resources effectively (Cristiano, 2007). Because nothing is fixed or unchangeable, storyboarding is a flexible way of trying out ideas and incorporating changes; ideas can easily evolve as they are drawn in storyboards (Glebas, 2013), as was the case with the exhibit pictured in Figure 2.
Note. CC-BY from Rosenfeld Media, available at https://edtechbooks.org/-kzST.
Product Builds
Product builds are any three-dimensional representation of an idea that an audience and designer can manipulate and experience. They can be as complex as working versions of a tool, 3-D prints, or even Lego/fabric-based lower fidelity builds. They can also be of varying levels of fidelity, as initial product builds may include a few layers of the design (such as the physical shape and visual coloring/representation). However, later prototypes can have increasing more fidelity, including prototyping various versions of audio, music, content, and dynamic interactivity to test how effective each new design element is.
Product builds are seen as an essential design activity because it allows designers to learn by doing as they explore ideas (Camere & Bordegoni, 2015). This is a practice common to many fields, including experience design (Buchenau & Suri, 2000), education (Barab & Plucker, 2002), engineering (Alley et al., 2011), social innovation (Brown & Wyatt, 2015), and instructional design (Merrill & Wilson, 2007).
As an example, engineers at a precision pump manufacturing organization were tasked with creating a new line of pumps for a food processing chain. The pumps needed to be more efficient and have fewer parts than the originals. The core design team was co-located and created prototypes to test their new designs. The use of prototypes contributed to the direct aural and visual communication team members had with each other. The prototypes were critiqued and approved, and in this way they structured the design process for the engineers (Perry & Sanderson, 1998).
As this engineering example illustrates, product builds are a valuable communication tool. They can provide a shared, tangible view of an idea and facilitate answering questions concretely (Yang, 2005). They can also be used to persuade others to adopt a new mindset because they tangibly demonstrate the merit of an idea. Prototypes can be a source of positive peer pressure to move forward with the development of ideas (Norris & Tisdale, 2013).
Product builds also reveal information about the designs through the process of fabrication. Creating prototypes reduces design risk because designers can learn about the product-to-be without investing the time and cost required for full production (Yang, 2005). This technique helps designers determine how to fulfill the tasks and requirements that must be accomplished for a given project (Smith, 2014). Designers learn from the mistakes they make on prototypes and the feedback they receive about their prototypes, which then leads to improved designs, as was the case with the prototype pictured in Figure 4. This is an iterative process that continues until they reach a product that will accomplish the desired results.
Bodystorming, or Role-Playing
Bodystorming is a method in which brainstorming is made physical. During bodystorming, role-playing and simulation with simple prototypes is done to create informative performances that illustrate what it might be like to use a product that is under development (Martin & Hanington, 2012). Bodystorming is a way of developing greater user empathy: designers immerse themselves in situations end users might experience and then focus on the decisions, emotional reactions, and interactive experiences users might have. This approach is based on the premise that the best way to understand an interaction is to experience it personally (Smith, 2014).
Participating in the interactions users might have can reduce the time designers spend studying documents of user observation. It allows them to tap into aspects that are unobservable because they have experienced these elements firsthand (Oulasvirta et al., 2003). This technique has the potential to help designers communicate better with their peers, clients, and end users because of the performance aspect of this type of visual (Burns et al., 1994).
Designers at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology enlisted 10 researchers and industry representatives to use bodystorming to innovate ubiquitous computing technologies. They spent a full day bodystorming the interactions an elderly user group would have at an old age service house, subway station, the subway, the mall, and a grocery store. They identified problems related to activities performed at each of these locations and framed them as design questions. Those involved were split into two groups to perform the bodystorming. One researcher acted as a moderator, while another served as a group leader. These researchers recorded ideas that emerged and facilitated the experience. They found that bodystorming inspired researchers to become familiar with new contexts and improve their design abilities (Oulasvirta et al., 2003).
This example of bodystorming presents how this visual tool can support the product development process through facilitating communication across peers, clients, and users. Like the other forms of visual representation, it offers a shared perspective to all involved, which provides opportunities for further discussions (Burns et al., 1994). However, it contributes differently than other visuals. It allows designers to experience, discuss, and evaluate their ideas in context, and helps designers to understand how the settings in which a design is used can affect their intended use (Smith, 2014).
This approach is believed to be less error-prone than brainstorming because it allows designers to experience realistic constraints that can affect the user experience (Smith, 2014). In bodystorming, designers rapidly prototype ideas, which allows for immediate feedback on how the product works (Oulsavirta et al., 2003). Discussing the feedback brings up new issues for designers to explore (Flink & Odde, 2012).
Wizard of Oz Prototypes
In the movie/book, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her companions seek the wisdom and power of the Great Oz to grant their wishes. However, what they thought was an all-powerful wizard was really a man behind the curtain, pulling levers and pushing buttons to give the effect of something magical happening. Similarly, in Wizard of Oz prototyping, the designer creates a low fidelity or paper prototype, but without the interactivity or dynamic responses from the system. Instead, when a user or prototype tester wants to do something, they indicate where they would go, or what they would click, and the designer provides the next low fidelity prototype example. In this way, they simulate the interaction that they will eventually build into the system. In essence, as Dam and Siang (2018) explained these are “prototypes with faked functions.”
Sometimes this “faking” can be more complex, with a human on one side of a screen typing responses to the user that appear to come from the computer. As another example, a popular experience at Disneyland theme parks is Turtle Talk with Crush (shown in Figure 5), where children talk to Crush, the popular turtle from Finding Nemo, through a computer screen. On the other side of the screen, the performers make Crush respond to the children in authentic ways that make Crush seem real. This perhaps also exemplifies an ethical issue with Wizard of Oz prototyping as many young children really do think Crush is real. Even with adults, some Wizard of Oz prototyping can appear realistic, and participants should be informed that they are not, in reality, interacting with a real product.
Note. Photo CC-BY/SA from Josh Hallet and available at https://edtechbooks.org/-SmA.
User-Driven Prototypes
Dam and Siang (2018) described one final prototyping strategy, where instead of designers creating prototypes for users, the users create prototypes for the designers. They explained that this can be a way of understanding the users and developing empathy. “When you ask the user to design a solution, rather than provide feedback on a prototype, you can learn about the assumptions and desires that the user possesses. The purpose of a user-driven prototype is not to use the solutions that the users have generated; instead, it is to use their designs to understand their thinking.”
According to Dam and Siang (2018), a designer sets up user-driven prototyping by asking users to design specifically to answer questions designers have. They provide the example of airport designers asking users to sketch or build what they think an ideal experience would look like.
Conclusion
Prototyping is an essential strategy for testing out emerging designs and refining ideas before expensive implementation launches. In addition, prototyping is an essential part of the design process itself because prototypes help to structure the collaborations on a design team and represent the distributed cognition of design teams and how ideas are negotiated by team members (Henderson, 1998). Thus, design cultures or styles are intrinsically tied to the way in which each constructs representations of their ideas. Such prototypes—e.g. sketches, drawings, bodystorming, etc.—are the heart of design work and constitute the space in which ideas are defined, refined, and negotiated. (Henderson, 1998, p. 141). A team’s ability to create, interpret, and communicate with prototypes can facilitate or restrict how they interact as a group, making these prototypes “primary players in the social construction of the design culture or design style of the designing group” (Henderson, 1998, p. 140). Thus, it is essential that designers think deliberately about how they use prototypes as part of an effective team design culture. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/03%3A_Creating/3.03%3A_Instructional_Design_Prototyping_Strategies.txt |
Design Critique
Brad Hokanson
Central to design and design education is the critique (Dannels, 2005; Gray, 2013). The methodology and practice of critique is how designs are improved and how design skills are developed in workplaces and within studio education around the world. It is where work is presented by a designer, criticized by others, its virtues and limitations debated, and the work improved.
By itself, designing is a challenge to any individual's abilities. Information must be gathered and analyzed and a guiding principle or idea must be developed and communicated to others. Designers must expose their work to the criticism of others and answer critiques with the quality of their arguments and improvement in the design. Critique looks at an idea—created through analysis and an inventive process, which is shared by the learner/designer—and advances its quality.
The design critique can provide instructional design with a means for intensifying the learning process as well as improving the design project itself. As a process, critique benefits the learner, other members of a class, and the critic.
Defining Critique
Used throughout the design and creative fields, "critique" is a formative, conversational method of interaction and assessment. It is the systematic and objective examination of an idea, phenomenon, or artifact. Critique is a semi-structured method of sharing work for evaluation and commentary by others; it is a discussion with a project focus. While there are a number of different forms and terms for the process, critique is used here to refer to formal and informal discussions involving design disclosure and criticism.
This writing focuses on the formative aspects of critique, and does not address final critiques or formal reviews, processes meant to conclude and evaluate a design project (see Figure 4). For less formal and individual scaled interactions, the terms "crit" and "desk crit" are commonly used. Here the focus is on critiques which happen during the design process.
Design critique can be compared with user testing. Both allow the evaluation of design projects and provide important feedback to the designer. Here the focus is on critiques which happen during the design process. In contrast, in user testing, most of the understanding of the quality of design work comes from observation of appropriate test users. Comments from the test users can be helpful, but often are limited by their experience with design or the project at hand. On the other hand, critique generally deals with peers or mentors with experience in designs of this project type.
In the first major studies of these interactions in the design studio, Donald Schön (1983, 1985, 1987) directly observed architectural education. His writing described the individual consultations between studio instructors and individual students. The intensity and focus of this type of learning event is the essence of an effective studio education, it is not didactic. At its most positive, a critique is meant to “coach” or “guide” the learner to a more effective answer, develop judgment, and model tacit design/problem setting and solving skills. Per Schön, “The student cannot be taught what he needs to know, but he can be coached” (1987, p. 17).
Forms of Critique
There are a number of different structures for critique. Blythman et al. (2007) describe a variety of critique forms which range from final reviews to industry presentations to individual critiques. In this writing three of these forms are described as central to design and education: desk critiques, peer crits, and group critiques. Each of these types is formative, designed to encourage and direct design progress, and are qualitatively the most effective.
Within a studio learning experience, the development of design skills is commonly sought through a form of informal critique or desk crit (see Figure 1). A desk crit is “… an extended and loosely structured interaction between designer and critic (expert or peer) involving discussion and collaborative work on a design in progress” (Shaffer, 2003, p. 5). In general, most of the activity during scheduled class time in a design studio will be individual students receiving criticism of their work from instructors or visitors.
“During a crit, a student describes his or her work to the professor…As students present possible solutions, the professor explores the implications of various design choices, suggesting alternative possibilities, or offering ways for the student to proceed in his or her exploration of the problem” (Shaffer, 2000, pp. 251–252).
The desk crit is a personal conversation between a designer and a critic (who may be a visiting professional, expert, or professor). The length varies with the discussion. “This model of social interaction between student and instructor involves a critical conversation about the student’s design, and usually involves both people working towards solving a problem” (Conanan et al., 1997, p. 2). It is inherently formative, guiding the work toward a more successful conclusion. It is also subjective, and when successful, provides not only objective answers but directions focused on developing the designer's ideas and thought process.
An important concept in effective critiques is the focus of the criticism on the work itself and not on the designer. A positive, formative atmosphere is essential to an effective critique; grading and evaluation occur elsewhere. Shaffer described this nature:
“The tone of desk crits was almost always supportive and nonjudgmental. On the other hand, pinups and reviews, although constructive, were quite blunt and sometimes extremely critical—particularly in the case of formal reviews. Judgment was, in effect, off-loaded from the more private desk crits to the more public presentations” (Shaffer, 2003, p. 2).
Non-participants also can benefit from the individual desk critique both through direct observation and through incidental listening to the process. While not as formalized as a lecture, within a studio space, frequently there are informal observers who gain from hearing another's desk critique.
Talking to two student designers at a time may be more effective as it allows designs to be compared and more designers to be critiqued in a given time period. It does, however, lack the focus and attention found through the individual critique.
While access to instructors is limited, other members of a class or team are available at any time to provide opinions, clarifications, and evaluations through a peer critique, inside or outside of formal meeting hours. This is the simplest form of critique in design, the "peer crit", where design work and ideas are discussed between colleagues (see Figure 2).
Any critique develops both the critic and designer. While they can provide an external review of one’s design decisions, peer crits also provide the critic with the opportunity to extend their own skills. Peer critics review the validity and logic of a particular design idea or set of design choices. While peer crits may be the least formal format, they are the basis for an extended professional understanding of the use of critique. This practice occurs in a range of fields from graphic design to architecture to user-experience design.
An individual working session with a single student can change learners' minds and their thinking process, providing, as Shaffer describes it involves social scaffolding of learning the design process. At its core, critique as part of an educational experience is constructivist. While the focus is on an external project, the overall goal of the critique is to develop the designs skills of the learner.
"He [sic] has to see on his own behalf … Nobody else can see for him, and he can’t see just by being “told,” although the right kind of telling may guide his seeing and thus help him see what he needs to see." (Dewey 1974, p. 151)
The importance of the informal critique in the development of learners in the studio classroom is clear. Frequent engagement and discussion of ideas scaffold the experience, while the designer tacitly recognizes the value of engagement and collaboration with other professionals by seeking criticism from others.
Designers who participate in critique may do so as a critic or as one being critiqued. Both roles have cognitive benefits to the individual designer and to their broader understanding of design. Designs are developed conversationally, building from the initial ideas of the designer, but tested and improved through the argumentation like process of a critique. Criticism of the work can help improve the quality of the end-product. Over time, exposure to critique can also help develop thinking skills of the designer building their capability to analyze, anticipate, and respond. For a beginning designer, a first critique may be challenging and helpful comments may be rejected. Often the criticism of the work is conflated with criticism of the designer themselves, when they should be separated. Discussions must focus on the work, and not on the designer.
Small groups can also observe and participate in formative group critique as well, with selected projects serving to trigger discussion and interaction with all present. In studio format learning, intermediate group critiques can have much of the same coaching or generative functions as individual critiques. Whether as a group crit or pin-up, these can highlight specific milestones in a project development. While similar in form to final reviews or "juries", the distinguishing quality is one of development and advancing the work of the individual designer and benefiting the group from generalizable comments. It is inherently formative and positive.
A general, but often tacit goal of design education is to instill a habit of critique, and an ongoing practice of generative evaluation of creative work. Critique supports reflection and engagement among designers of all types.
Use of Critique in Studio
Studio-based education is learning by designing, a rich and complex process. Designers in all fields examine problems, advance possible exploratory resolutions, and iteratively evaluate their own work as a regular part of the design process. This process occurs through personal reflection and evaluation, but it can also be improved through the interaction with others through as Shaffer calls "…a variety of structured conversations…" (2003, p. 5). An important aspect of learning design is developing the professional practice of seeking and giving critique; the formal and informal evaluation of the work. It is one of the consistent aspects across design programs and schools worldwide, and importantly, in design culture. As a generative format, the critique process focuses on the improvement and development of the design project.
The use of the studio model in instructional design has become increasingly common over the past ten years (Clinton and Rieber, 2010). Studios are based on the ideas of project-based learning and modeled directly from pedagogical methods in the creative fields such as studio art, architecture, and product design. “The originators of the studio curriculum [at the University of Georgia] … envisioned the learning of educational multimedia design to that of an art or architectural studio in which a group of people learn skills and develop expertise while working on authentic projects in a public space comprised of tools and work areas” (Clinton and Rieber, 2010).
Application in Instructional Design
Instructional design education can benefit from the models presented in studio-format classes. Instructional designers also can utilize the general concept of critique in various ways in design products of their own. However, not everyone is experienced with critique or even studio-based learning in an educational environment. Design schools have the advantage of a well-developed and expected critique model; the scaffolding is explicit and the instructors are well versed in the process.
It is valuable to start using and employing critique as a method as a learner, as an instructor, and as an instructional designer. The suggestions below intersperse these roles, describing critique from these three different orientations.
Designers, even those without experience in studio-based learning, can start by opening themselves to critique as an educational method. Beginning can be as simple as developing a habit of asking peers or friends for informal feedback on a project. The author's own second year architecture critic began the year by saying "You have to expose yourself.", encouraging our own sharing and interaction regarding design ideas. (Stageberg, 1973).
Peer critiques can be done at any time, whether during scheduled class time or at off-hours, exposing project ideas to others' opinions and assessments. Critique can also be done between designers, developing their skills of synthesis and evaluation, and expands the learning process…and importantly as a way to improve the design work itself. [An application exercise is included at the conclusion of this writing.]
Designers seeking input on their work can begin by specifically focusing the critique on areas for improvement. A peer critique should start with briefly describing the problem or design and outlining the objectives of the project. Present is an understanding of the immediate goal of the critique being improvement of the design solution (Gibbons, 2016). As with writing, the goal is to seek a larger understanding of the logic and tone as opposed to a copy edit.
While a critique is in progress, designers can help steer the direction of discussion to more important issues by focusing on discourse within the design work, and by seeking evidence and the reasoning behind any criticisms.
Critiquing a colleague, peer, or student helps in developing one's own reflective ability to analyze and criticize design work. Critiquing the work of others can help make one a better designer in the long term, and improve design projects in the present.
While giving a critique involves evaluating the work for errors and problems, it can also delve into the more philosophical and theoretical aspects of the project. For example, an instructional design could begin from a behavioral basis or a constructivist basis, which is a place for philosophical advocacy.
For instructors, individual critiques can be described as a regular system of tutoring individual learners, driven by attention and engagement. Critique is contemporary and formative feedback, engaging, and scaffolds the design process. The skills of critique should be consciously developed in learners both as recipients and for their role as critic. The critique model is extendable, as individuals can be paired or grouped as need be, building collaborative learning events. A formative critique is comparable to reviewing a written article draft for a colleague, building on their ideas and their thinking.
Critics or instructors themselves will need to begin by modeling a positive and formative approach to a constructive conversation. Faculty will need to have a consistent pattern of using critique for helping learners develop their ideas as well as their thinking process. Explicit standards for both the interaction and the quality of the work are helpful. Individual "desk" crits can be either private or public, and faculty can encourage other students to informally listen in. As individual critiques can be face-to-face or online, they can continue to allow others to participate or view. Establishing individual critiques as an educational practice in a course can build to conducting small group critiques as well.
Instructional designers have the opportunity to build into their designs open frameworks for critique. A framework can, for example, support student peer critiques, user testing of interactive designs, verbal critique of visual layouts, or a shared review of a colleague's writing. In most cases it would be important to develop critique skills in learners to help improve responses. The goal of any particular critique is progress toward improvement of the finished design, with the overarching goal of improving learner thinking. It is valuable for a learner or critic to review over all ideas and evaluate their validity and consistency, and to be present, positive, and engaged. Critique is a structure that can be built into instructional designs.
While critique is valuable for both face-to-face and online learning, there are challenges that exist with the increasing use of technology-enhanced learning. The fluidity of conversation, whether online or in-person adds much to a critique, even if done through sharing screens and talking synchronously, which is now possible with some course management systems. Critiques should be done in a manner providing the highest fidelity of communication possible; while face-to-face is valuable, most synchronous critique can be done through video conference software. A current example would be online music lessons connecting, say, a violin player in Japan with an instructor in Finland (Furui et.al., 2015; Nishimura, 2017).
Asynchronous critique may be less effective, but can still provide direction and formative assessment through mark-up and annotation. Unfortunately, there isn't the same interaction with a "Track Changes" review or with software such as VoiceThread as with a face-to-face conversation, but with investigation, structuring of the conversation could be improved. Online written texts can be combined with synchronous audio for editing sessions as well.
Conclusion
As with any educational practice, there are limits to the use of critique in education. More commonly, the limits on the use of critique are due to time and the one-on-one nature of an instructor critique. Modern economics necessarily constrains the amount of time spent reviewing, analyzing, and being involved with individual critiques. Lecture classes and objective evaluations are simpler and much more financially viable in 'presenting' a large class than is a single design instructor working with individuals in a smaller studio class. This is a continuing source of pressure on design departments. Pragmatically, class size and time limit the availability of critique as an educational method.
Critiques do vary in quality as well as scale. Some critiques are helpful and advance the work, others challenge the designer's thoughts, leading to new insight for future work. Other critiques, of course, are less successful, perhaps focusing on the traits of the designer and not on the design itself. Critiques which focus primarily on minor details, facts or factual error are often distracted from larger, more important issues. Critiques which are simplistic and present criticism without evidence are not helpful, nor are those which are overwhelmingly negative or positive. The goal of a good critique is to make the design and designer better, and not to express a power relationship.
The skills of the reviewer, whether educator or peer, are also important—recognizing the social and formative nature of the interaction. However, it is within the systemic role of instructional designers to extend a valued and effective model to the technology-enhanced learning of today.
Critique can be integrated into instructional design models and education. It can be the way instructional designers learn, and an important aspect of how they practice.
Application Exercises
As a concluding exercise for this writing, try the following process. At some point in a design project, whether with early sketches or more developed ideas, contact a peer who is working at a comparable scale. It might be the same type of project or one that has similar requirements and standards. Ask if they would be willing to critique your work, and offer the same input on theirs. Review the following process and set a reasonable time scale for the critique, with enough for discussion of both efforts.
For the critique itself, first give your colleague a brief outline of the current progress of your work and focus the critique on areas of concern you may have. Solicit a comparable set of information from your partner. Spend a reasonable amount of time examining the project, depending on the scope of the project and on your agreed upon time commitment. Take notes, and try to synthesize your understanding and experience with their work. With a goal of seeking to improve the work, discuss your findings with them, and in turn, learn of their findings. Restate what you heard in your own words to them for confirmation and clarification. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/04%3A_Evaluating/4.01%3A_Design_Critique.txt |
The Role of Design Judgment and Reflection in Instructional Design
Ahmed Lachheb & Elizabeth Boling
As a student of instructional design (ID), or as a future ID practitioner, you will have to make many decisions that allow you to move forward in your design work. Such decisions will be informed in part by the particular situation you are dealing with, influenced by precedent design experience (see more about design precedent here), and inflected with your values and ideals. Making decisions is a fundamental human capacity. When designing, designers make decisions specific to design. The capacity to make solid design decisions is what distinguishes excellent designers from mediocre designers. So how can designers make solid decisions? The answer is through evoking good design judgments and constantly reflecting on their design work.
What is Design Judgment?
When designers face complex situations—a constraint, a problem with a client or another design stakeholder, a block in the design process—they need to make design judgments to reduce the complexity of the situation or solve the issue that has been encountered. Depending on the situation, a specific design judgment is invoked to make design decisions. In the area of general design theory, Nelson and Stolterman (2012) have identified design judgment as “essential to design. It does not replicate decision making but it is necessary” (p. 139). In this definition, the authors distinguish judgment from decision-making. Design judgments for them are the means to achieve “wise action” (p. 139), or—in other words—good design decisions. In this way, designers can think about design decisions as the “what and how,” of design, whereas design judgments have to do with the “why” a design decision has been made (see Figure 1).
Design judgments rely on different types of logic than rule-based systems. For example, imagine you have been tasked to design an instructional module to be delivered online. You are now faced with the choice of making this instructional module in the form of video, or text, or text with visuals and a video. Eventually, you will make a decision about which form the instructional module will take. That is the design decision. What allows you to make such a decision are your design judgments (e.g. preference for videos over text, based on constraints you perceive in the design project or your past history as a designer). Design judgments are based on your own knowledge. This knowledge cannot be separated from you, the designer, but it is not arbitrary either. Your appreciation of media and understanding of time and tools are disciplined, based on intuitive but very rational logic, generated from “the particularity or the uniqueness of a situation” (Nelson and Stolterman, 2012, p. 141).
Designers’ Design Judgments
Nelson and Stolterman (2012) have proposed a construct comprising eleven design judgments that designers invoke. A summary of these design judgments is available in Table 1. We, as authors, recommend that you read more in-depth about these design judgments in Nelson and Stolterman’s (2012) book, The Design Way.
Table 1
General Summary of Design Judgments and Examples
Design Judgment
Definition
Example of Design Judgment in Action
Core
Designer’s own value or thinking that can lead to invoke all other above design judgments
Designer advocates and insists on a designing discussions activity because they firmly believe that learning is interaction
Instrumental
Selecting and using design tools/means to reach established design goals
Drawing icons using a digital tool or using a paper and pencil, or selecting to use a MAC vs. a PC for design work
Framing
Defining the boundaries of the design project by emphasizing its focus and outcomes
Deciding whether to design an academic course, a workshop, a performance-support handout, etc.
Default
Generating “automatic” response to a situation without hesitation, and without too much thinking
Asking an SME to meet for a design project kick-off meeting because that is the first thing you do in all of your design projects, no matter what
Deliberated Offhand (DOH)
Recall of previous successful default judgments, consciously
Emailing an SME about a first meeting and providing them with options of when to meet and whether the meeting is face-to-face or online
Appreciative
Emphasizing certain aspects of a design, and backgrounding others
Appreciating the work a media developer has done but not emphasizing the challenging relationship they had with other project’s stakeholders
Quality
Finding out the match/mismatch between aesthetic norms/standards and the particular proposed design artifacts
Discussing the quality of a slide deck presentation with a critical eye and through referencing branding guidelines of the organization and/or aesthetic design norms in regards to colors, visuals, and typeface, such as CARP principles
Appearance
Assessing the overall quality of the design
Examining the overall path of a learning experience in a course design, and stating whether it feels cumbersome, boring, clunky or smooth/friendly
Navigational
Considering a path/direction to follow in completing a design task
Consider inviting an external SME to provide expertise about a specific subject area that the current/available SMEs lack so you can fill a content gap that other SMEs and designers identified
Connective
Making connections of objects together for the specific design situation
Considering how a design of a lecture in an academic course is related to another learning activity/assessment, and whether there is a connection and or alignment between these two design objects or not
Compositional
Bringing all elements of design together to form a whole
Considering how to place learning objects within structures of modules to form a whole, complete, and smooth 16-weeks long academic course, in a way that lectures and discussions precede exams and major assignments
As a student of instructional design, there are the three of these design judgments that play a critical role in instructional design practice, and that will be examined more completely.
The first is core judgment—"buried deep within each individual, but unlike off-hand judgments, they are not easy to access” (p. 154). Designers invoke core judgments often in an unconscious manner because it stems from designers’ own values or thinking that can be revealed through “why” questions (e.g., a designer advocates and insists on designing discussion activities because they firmly believe that learning is interaction—that is their core judgment). Core judgment is behind every other design judgment. It is, in a sense, our human capacity to have tacit knowledge, beliefs, and own philosophies. Designers invoke core design judgment to make design decisions, including those based on prior experience.
The second is instrumental judgment—“interaction with their [designers’] materials and the tools” (p. 152). Instrumental is used here to mean ‘instrument’ and not to mean ‘important.’ Designers invoke instrumental judgments to decide on which design tools to use or not, and how to use them for their design projects (e.g., drawing icons using a digital tool or using a paper and pencil). This judgment is one of the most invoked judgments as it is concerned with design tools—all kinds of means that designers use to design, regardless of their form—and because design tools encompass almost every design activity. Design tools could be abstract/theoretical or tangible, analog, or digital. If you are curious, you can read more about design tools in instructional design practice in Lachheb and Boling (2018).
The third is framing judgment—“defining and embracing the space of potential design outcomes … [it] forms the limits that delineate the conceptual container” (Nelson & Stolterman, 2012, p. 148). In evoking this design judgment, designers discuss the goal of their design project (e.g., designing an academic course, a workshop, a performance-support handout, etc.) in order to frame what the design project is about. Framing judgment is also invoked throughout the progress of a project that involves deciding what is important to focus on next.
Guidance to Develop and Invoke Design Judgments
You might be asking now, “What design judgments should I make? Which ones are the best design judgments? How will I know? How does a designer learn to make good design judgments?” These are very legitimate and important questions. Frankly, these questions are what actually spark many research studies on design practice; answering them is not as straightforward as one sometimes wishes.
First, it is important to think about these design judgments as not isolated units, but rather like pearls that are connected to each other with strings. If you take one pearl and you hold it up, then the other ones just hang as a cluster underneath because they are connected to each other (E. Stolterman, personal communication, November 18, 2013). Designers often invoke a number of design judgments together—always interconnected and often overlapping (see Figure 2). That being said, as you are practicing design, you will be making these design judgments at all times, most of the time unconsciously. Now that you read about them, you can think about them in a conscious manner and watch for when a design judgment you invoke does not lead to the desired result.
Second, all of these design judgments are important to help you navigate the complexities of your design projects. However, as mentioned earlier, the most important design judgments are core, instrumental, and framing. Core design judgment is connected to every design decision—there is always a personal belief behind every design decision you make. Instrumental design judgments are concerned with design tools—every aspect of your design projects involve using design tools of all kinds. Framing design judgment allows you to set up the whole design project for success or failure, from the very beginning—if you frame your design project incorrectly, there will be money and resources wasted, not to mention upset clients and supervisors. Third, knowing which design judgments are you evoking, what design judgment you should or you should not evoke, and how you learn to make good design judgments are always matters of deliberate reflection on your design practice—a topic addressed in the second part of this chapter.
Finally, as a designer, you will face many situations when you feel uncertain; you can make several design judgments but you are not sure what is the right choice to make. Uncertainty is a hallmark of the design profession and our advice is to embrace it, not to be afraid of it. We, the authors, also advise you to trust your instinct and remember your rigorous design training. Additionally, taking time to think and studying your design context should equip you with powerful insights to help you make the right choice (e.g., using the instructional theory framework to inform your design judgments). You can also seek mentorship and consulting from senior designers to help you deal with uncertainty, and ultimately make good design judgments.
Examples of Design Judgments Invoked by Instructional Design Students
Some researchers in the field have studied design judgments and how students of instructional designers invoke them (Demiral‐Uzan, 2015; 2017, Korkmaz & Boling, 2014). From the studies of Demiral‐Uzan (2015; 2017), the authors provide the following examples of design judgments invoked by ID students as they are designing instruction during graduate-level instructional design courses.
Example 1: An instructional design student was asked to design an instruction for their final project. This student decided to design a course for advanced Chinese ESL learners about business emails. This student invoked a framing and navigational design judgment because when asked by the researcher how they decided to design this instruction, they said: “How I came up with that specific topic and why is that, very simple. I mean, what’s the most practical, more effective easy to me, something that I am at least familiar with, something I already know” (adapted from Demiral-Uzan, 2017).
Example 2: A group of instructional design students came together to discuss their group project in their instructional design course. Their discussion was focused on the content of the instruction and the flow of information they wish to present in the instruction. A researcher observed and recorded their interaction. Each statement that a student says points to design judgments being invoked and overlapped:
Student A: Should this go first or after the overview? (Appearance, Quality and
Connective design judgment)
Student B: This comes after the content on my part. (Default, Appearance, Quality and Connective design judgment)
Student A: Your approach is different than mine, which is okay. For learners to understand what networking is, the definition of networking will come here first, then tell and show them what is networking is not. (Appreciative, Core, Quality and Compositional design judgment)
(adapted from Demiral-Uzan, 2015).
What is Design Reflection?
Reflection is the personal and the internal building of knowledge through considering and interpreting one’s experiences or beliefs (Tracey et al., 2014). It is usually a method to solve problems, as well as to define and refine one’s beliefs, values, and perspectives. Reflecting on your design work, its qualities, process, and outcomes, allows you to become aware of your tacit knowledge and learn from your design experience. Donald Schön—a prominent design scholar and a design educator—has identified two types of design reflections (Schön, 1983): (1) Reflection-in-Action; and (2) Reflection-on-Action.
Reflection-in-action is that internal dialogue that designers have as they are engaged in solving a particular design problem, or while using a specific design tool. For example, you could be working on designing a training program. You face a complex situation where the capacity of the software you are using to develop the training materials is not allowing you to create a specific interaction you wish to create. You could ask yourself something like “How do I get around this? Should I use another software or try to think of another way to create the interaction the client and I want to see?” This self-questioning is essentially the internal dialogue you could have, which constitutes “reflection-in-action.” You could have this internal dialogue without being aware of it, as most of us think and reflect unconsciously and in silence. Eventually, reflection-in-action allows you to establish a ground to make decisions and work toward a resolution of the problem (Schön, 1983).
Reflection-on-action has to do with looking back at past design experiences, to make sense of what happened, what worked well, what did not work well, why taking one design approach seemed to be better than the other, etc. Many designers recognize reflection-on-action as what happens in design “post-mortem” meetings—a dialogue between designers who reflect upon their experiences, practices, and beliefs. Reflection-on-action dwells upon subjective interpretations of events, situations, and ideas. It is personal and can be hard to express. Nevertheless, this type of reflection is proven to be an effective practice to learn from past designer experience, so future design experiences are optimized. Additionally, when designers experience failure, only reflection-on-action could allow them to process that failure, learn from it, and essentially become aware of future modes of failure that might come their way.
An Example of a Design Reflection by an Instructional Design Student
Kaminski et al. (2018) has illustrated several design reflections written by ID students. One example is shared in this chapter, and you are encouraged to read more—as shared by Kaminski et al. (2018).
"One of the hardest lessons I learned from the instructional design course (and still struggle with), is articulating my decisions and actions onto paper. The best advice I received from Dr. Kaminski is to approach instructional design with the mindset that you are making something that another instructor (without any prior experience) can recreate. I think my difficulty comes from the many steps that I personally revisit and parts that I revise with research and experience. It is hard to describe all those directions that my mind takes to come to a final product. The picture I drew allows me to provide an abstract visual of all those steps. The student is the 'key,' the center of my purpose. As the 'doorknob, it is my responsibility to make sure all the working parts are in place so that the individual can open the door to knowledge. Begin by identifying the goals of the training event, analyze the learner, and the method for instruction, and verify the performance objectives. Start on outer edges and spiral toward the middle, and then through evaluation back out and spiral back in again until you get through the door. Goals are set – look at the learner and environment to make it work. Facilitators need to address all the pieces and parts of the classroom component, so the facilitator ensures the student has what they need to open the door."
As you can see in this example, the student expressed how hard it was for them to make design decisions. The student reflected on what they believe to be the appropriate design moves, how to begin, and what the design should be focused on. Toward the end of the reflection, the student expressed a set of values and ideals—core design judgments.
Design Judgments and Reflection: Recommendations for Instructional Design Students
The Reflection Journal
Some designers keep a journal. Some designers turn parts of their journal into a blog or a website where they reflect on their design work publicly. Commit to a journal in the format you prefer–a simple notebook, a Google document, a blog, a video, a podcast. Start your first entry about the last design project you completed in class and address the following prompt (adapted from Tracey et al, 2014):
Describe a time when you felt totally uncertain while working on this design project. Try to remember how you felt and what was the greatest challenge(s) you faced because of the uncertainty you felt. What actions did you take to overcome such uncertainty? How did it go? Why did you take certain actions and not other actions? What did you believe to be happening vs. what actually happened? Knowing that you will feel uncertain in future design projects, how do you feel about becoming a designer?
Start writing the reflection post using descriptive language. You should not worry about grammar and typos at this stage. Let the words and thoughts flow and make their way from your head to the journal. Pay attention to how you felt and what thoughts you had at the moment. Think about if someone reads this reflection, will they understand what was going on in the design project? Will they get to feel how you felt? Don’t limit yourself to formal writing. Write as you think and speak. Once you complete this first entry, share it with your ID faculty or another designer if you feel comfortable.
The following are some ways to document design reflections:
• Pick what you want to focus on for each reflection—a challenge with a designer, a moment of design failure, a harsh critique from a client, or an SME; you pick.
• Describe your design actions by addressing the Five Ws (What, When, Where, Why, Who).
• Elaborate on the “Why” part so you can reveal the design judgments you made that led to these design actions.
• Speculate on the “Why” when speaking about other’s actions, unless you are certain.
• Conclude with what you have learned from this design project—what you will not forget to do next time? To what extent this design project will be similar to future projects you anticipate?
Exploring Your Core Design Judgments
People are surrounded by designs they use every day, and some they cannot live without. Commit to a week of noticing and collecting—through photographs—designs that you appreciate and designs that you do not like at all. These could be the items you use every day, such as your phone, the showerhead in your bathroom, a specific app, or a favorite frying pan in your kitchen, or anything else. Challenge yourself to notice as many designs as possible. Such design could include instruction or performance support materials around you (e.g., a flyer that teaches people how to wash their hands or the instructional book that comes with IKEA furniture). Take about an hour or more to write down notes about each design—why you appreciate it and why you do not. Keep asking yourself “why do I like/dislike this?” and record your answers. Repeat this activity until you cannot think of any more answers to. For example, the authors appreciate public libraries. We like them because we find the books we like to borrow and not buy, they are accessible to us, they are free, they are diverse, and they provide quiet places for us to concentrate. We can say more why we like public libraries, but essentially we like public libraries because we believe in the noble cause of public goods, and public libraries represent such a cause.
Now examine your answers to the “why” questions and try to think about how such answers represent values you hold. These could be transparency, ease of use, elegance, democratic, accessible, inclusive/exclusive, soft, strong, and so on. These values constitute your core judgments and influence all kinds of design judgments you make. You may not be able to access all of them completely, but you are aiming to heighten your awareness of what your design values really are. Once you have spent some time on this exercise, consider revisiting it in the future to see any change you might notice in terms of the values you have—write a reflection post on such change. You can focus the noticing experience on specific types of designs (e.g., phone apps), or you can mix designs together that you see belong to each other (e.g., instructional posters and cooking books). Essentially, noticing designs and why you appreciate them will become a somewhat automatic habit for you. By these means you can question and refine your judgement across a whole career.
Additional Information
Ways to document design judgments and decisions:
• Document your design through documents and project management tools—you will have an audit trail at the end of the project that helps you or anyone else to trace back what design decisions you have made.
• Use the margins of such documents to add comments/thoughts and explanations on design decisions you have made.
• Archive written conversations (emails, chats, etc.…) between you and other design stakeholders that include design decisions (and most likely your “defense” or such decisions).
• Leverage your design reflections, notes, and design documents to write a design a case which you can publish in the International Journal of Designs for Learning (IJDL).
Conclusion
You may have heard the common wisdom that to become a better professional, you should engage in at least 10,000 hours of practice in your profession. While there is truth in the advice that many, many hours of practice are required to develop expertise, the authors are also confident in an additional claim that there is more to expertise than just putting in a certain number of hours. Without deliberately reflecting on your design actions and the design judgments that lead to those actions, not even 10,000 hours of instructional design practice will be enough to make you an expert designer. Explicitly reflecting on your design judgments, in addition to reflecting on your practice, is what will help you become a more engaged and expert designer. Make reflection on your design judgments an intentional aspect of your efforts to develop your growing competence as a member of the instructional design profession. | textbooks/socialsci/Education_and_Professional_Development/Design_for_Learning_-_Principles_Processes_and_Praxis_(McDonald_and_West)/01%3A_Instructional_Design_Practice/04%3A_Evaluating/4.02%3A_The_Role_Of_Design_Judgment_And_Reflection_.txt |
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