Friday, September 5, 2014

Day 5: What I see (and don't see)

Day 5 of the Reflective Teaching Blogging Challenge asks us to post a photo of our class and discuss what we see and don't see.

I don't teach f2f on Fridays, so here are two images from my hybrid course. The students are doing peer review of their first essay. They post their essay, and their classmates (and I) write about 250 words in response to the essay and several questions intended to focus their review.



A student reply

What I see are students on the right track. Almost the entire class--28 out of 30--posted their draft on time. Almost all the peer replies seemed to have read their partners' essays and tried to answer the questions prompted. I also see that the original author, Miguel, replied to Adam, after reading his comment, which is cool. In a f2f setting, students would do the same--have a conversation about their paper, not just listen silently while they received feedback.

What I don't see is that the responder, Adam's, replies could be just a bit more thorough and connected to the author. He technically answered the questions and expresses himself well enough, but the reply runs a little short and lacks a meaningful connection with the author. As my husband likes to cynically report: "School is a video game. Get your points. Get your A." A lot of the work I get online seems composed in such a way that it fits the "let's just do this and get the points" category. 

Oh, the humanity!

1 comment:

bayanprofessor said...

I see that you are a generous reader. You notice what students are "getting," what skills their work demonstrates. And you see what they are "on the verge" of getting.

That's such a geat way to meet them where they are at. Super clever to take a picture of BB!

What kind of guidelines do you give students for making comments? I could use help in that area, providing stems and sentence starters to keep conversation relevant, meaningful . . . and civil.