Low Stakes Writing in a Large Lecture GUR
Kathleen Saunders
Department of Anthropology
Context
Each fall I teach Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, a popular GUR that usually enrolls 180 students per section (our department offers six sections per year). Especially in the fall, the majority of students are entering freshpersons. The large lecture format is new to them; classroom anonymity is new to them, and grading based solely on 2 – 4 objective exams is new to them.
One 50-minute period per week is devoted to small (25 max) discussion sessions led by senior anthropology majors. The topic for discussion each week is three or four articles from a reader that supplements their core text.
Rationale
Because I know that writing can engage students actively in their own learning, I regularly use a low stakes writing assignment – one that asks them to write, but doesn’t count heavily in the overall grade.
The Assignment
For each assigned reading, the students must write two sentences: the first sentence is the author’s thesis restated in their own words, and the second sentence is a research question that follows from the reading.
Grading is simple: a completed assignment is worth full points and an incomplete or missing assignment is worth no points. Points are not qualitatively assigned. My discussion leaders keep attendance and assignment sheets that I only enter into the grade book at the end of the quarter.
Then I power read through the papers, selecting examples of well-crafted theses and research questions. I also look for those that widely miss the mark and for common misconceptions in the reading. From this reading, I post a weekly summary on Blackboard of my observations on their collective work and often offer a little personal meditation on the subject at hand. For example, if some students are writing unreflectively about “primitives” in their papers, this is a good juncture for me to interject about what depth of knowledge and inventiveness it requires to live a “primitive” life.
Teaching Objectives
1. learning how to read scholarly articles for content and meaning
2. learning to paraphrase other’s work in one’s own words
3. learning to generate academic questions from scholarly literature
4.learning how to prepare for discussion by encouraging students to come to discussion groups prepared
This is the lowest stakes writing assignment the class undertakes and I worried that “ungraded” would mean that it would generate minimal effort. But instead they do seem to want to improve. I think the key piece is getting a weekly summarized response from me because they seem gratified when something they have written is used as an exemplary model and discomforted when their work is used as an object lesson to be avoided. (The summaries, of course, do not name names and are often generalized.)
This routine low-stakes assignment is not the only written work in this GUR. I will briefly outline other, higher stakes, assignments.

Weekly Analysis of Ethnographic Video
Mindful that writers develop with both practice and critique, I ask students to write six short analyses (500 words) of ethnographic video. One video is shown each week and students choose which six to write about. This assignment commits my teaching assistant and me to grading roughly 60 essays per week each. They are qualitatively evaluated for both content and writing. The mean and median scores for the first few weeks are generally in the C- range but steadily improve during the quarter. This expectation is often eye-opening for freshpersons who believe that “meeting requirements” equals an A. In this assignment “meeting requirements” is a baseline C.
The Big Ethics Project
In this GUR, students have one writing project that carries an equal number of points as an exam. I require them to participate in a national writing competition on a contemporary ethical dilemma in anthropology.
After reading approximately 100 pages of background material that delineates both the facts and the conflicting ethical reasoning around the issue for the year, students must write a persuasive letter to one of the decision makers in the controversy making their best case for a particular resolution. Submission of the letters is done electronically and then each student must peer evaluate four blind letters from their competitors. The evaluations generate a percentage evaluation based on strength of argument, ethical disciplinary reasoning, and effectiveness of writing. I take these evaluations as the students’ grades with the caveat that students may bring me their letters for my evaluation if they think they were under appreciated. I have yet to have a student do so. Interestingly, the Writing Center director reports that may students bring drafts of their letters for critique. The competitive component of this exercise seems to bring out the desire to excel.
The following is an analysis of the grades that would have been earned by students in my Fall 08 GUR had they been evaluated by objective exams alone, along with the actual distribution including the writing components. Results suggest that writing, when used in combination with other assessment measures such as objective tests, enables students to demonstrate more fully what they have learned.
Grade
A
Exams Only
4.29%
Exams + Writing
8.59%
A-
B+
B
4.29%
4.91%
9.20%
6.75%
5.52%
23.31%
B-
C+
C
C-
10.43%
5.52%
12.27%
14.72%
14.72%
6.13%
18.40%
7.98%
D+
D
D-
7.98%
14.11%
5.52%
2.45%
4.29%
0.00%
F 6.75% 1.84%
Low, Low Stakes Writing
In addition to the graded low and high stakes writing, I often use ungraded quick writes. I introduce a prompt which connects the course content to lived experience (such as "describe your perfect death" and
"tell me the last sexist or racist joke you heard"). Students jot down their thoughts in class and turn them in to me. I power read them and take out talking points (without naming names). The quick writes thus serve to kick start discussion in class.