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teaching with writing
why respond to student writing online?
Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, Linda Clemens, Kirsten Jamsen, Mitch Ogden
Writing Studies and the Center for Writing
benefits and opportunities
- students practicing writing multimodally and continuously in online environments
- student and instructor comfort with thinking and composing on a keyboard
- student comfort in online environments (a more welcoming space for some students who don’t feel comfortable in a traditional face-to-face classroom)
- ability to highlight text and make pinpointed comments with room to elaborate and explain
- ability to manipulate text (example: pull out a paragraph and model revision)
- students can actually read and save our comments
- opportunity to create a virtual writing community where writers write to real readers, readers share responses, and everyone can contribute to this dialogue
- online activities and interaction “primes the pump” for class discussion and peer review (and continues those discussions beyond class time)
- lots of choices about how and when to respond and with what tools (examples: making students responsible for responding to each other while you observe, participating and modeling how to give to feedback, giving global response to the entire class)
pitfalls and challenges
- possible instructor and student discomfort in online environments
- forgetting what we know about effective response when faced with a student paper on screen (read the entire text first, move from global to local issues, prioritize suggestions, motivate with praise, etc.)
- desire to address every issue and concern in a paper
- danger of spending endless time
- expectation of immediate feedback
- overwhelm when faced with lots of choices about how and when to respond and with what tools
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