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Learner-Centered Teaching:
Helping Students to Succeed, Part 2
Qatar University
May 2, 2007
Chris M. Anson
North Carolina State University
Sharing Responses
• Please share your responses to the
case assignment from yesterday at your
tables.
• Be ready to share some ideas with the
larger group when we reconvene.
Supporting Learning in Larger Projects
• Informal summaries
• In-class oral progress reports
and
• Metacommentaries and reflection
• “Microthemes” and short, lowstakes papers
• Planning and invention exercises
• Peer response sessions
• Self-assessments
• Sharing and discussing
evaluation criteria or standards
Teacher gives assignment
Student works alone
A traditional
model of writing
assignments
Student turns in best effort
(usually a first draft)
Teacher reads/views (edits)
the result
Student is supposed to
learn by trial and error
But the next assignment is
different . . . .
Your Instructional Goals
Your Assignment Design
Students' First Attempts
A goal-based model
of writing that
includes response
and revision
Revision Conference or Focus
Students' Revisions
Final Draft
Your Responses/Suggestions
High
Poten tial for
Leaning
Some
Poten tial for
Learning
drafting, rethinking, and revising
Submission for
final evaluation
Start of assignment
Places for Support
first attempt
prelim. exploration
& brainstorming
practicing skills &
strategies
topic selection
first full draft
second & nth drafts
most common
“rewrite”
Your Turn . . . .
• Someone at your table please volunteer to
discuss your assignment
• Focus on the nature of the support that
you provide for learning from the
assignment
• How can you maximize learning through
activities that students engage in before
the first draft and between the first and
final draft?
Evaluation for Support?
Design
Assignments
Develop Goals for
Student Learning
Low-stakes/
informal
Evaluate
Learning
High stakes/
formal
Create Supporting
Activities for Student
Learning
Operative Questions
Learning Goals
What new knowledge, skills, and
processes do you want students
to be able to know or use?
Assignment Design
What aspects of your assignment
help to accomplish those goals?
Supporting Activities
What activities support the
development of the assignment?
Assessment
How do you judge whether the
learning goals are reflected in
students’ products?
Create a Scoring Guide (“Rubric”)
Categorical
• Based on categories that
match the goals or
characteristics of
performances
• Assumes that we can
judge the quality of these
features separately
• Assigns separate scores
to each category
Descriptive
• Based on clusters of
characteristics that
generalize levels of
performance
• Assumes it is hard to
separate features from each
other
• Assigns scores based on
“impressions” of the whole
What’s “Behind” a Rubric?
• Rubrics are “shorthand” methods for
categorizing desired features of responses
• Every category has more specific, underlying
features
• If students don’t understand a category, they
can’t use it productively
• Supporting the use of assessment rubrics for
students means helping them to internalize
the underlying features
[ ] reflects thoughtful response/critical
analysis
What
is
this?
Essential: Define Criteria
•
•
•
•
•
What does it mean to “analyze”?
What’s “good scientific observation?”
What’s “style appropriate to the occasion or
audience?”
What characterizes “strong use of secondary
source material?
What’s “evidence that you studied the material in
the manual”?
How Far to Go?
•
•
Based on the assignment and your comfort level,
decide how specific you want your criteria to be in
your scoring guide
Consider “front-loading” the specific features into
your teaching instead (help students to internalize
criteria by working with them in class)
Use Evaluation for Support
• Evaluation criteria are often hidden from
view
• If they are available, they are often
generalized across various assignments
• How can we help learners to internalize
standards for success? How can we make
evaluation productive?
Explain and Work With Categories
Thoughtful response/critical analysis:
The thoughtful response shows that you have read
the material thoroughly and reflected on it fully. It
demonstrates a careful and thorough application of
the question to the material at hand. It may offer
some interesting and creative insights that are
supported by material in the text. The response will
be generally well written and structured, with an
allowable informality considering the nature of the
task, and there will be few errors that distract or get
in the way of meaning.
Making Criteria Formative
• Create evaluative criteria with direct reference
to your assignment goals.
• Make the criteria available to students in
advance of their beginning the assignment.
• Use the criteria:
•
•
•
•
•
in the evaluation of sample drafts
In any supporting activities that guide students’ work
in the response questions you give students
In the collaborative formulation of criteria
In the annotated models you provide on paper or electronically
Suggestions: Assessment
• Always craft criteria from your goals.
• Avoid collecting and grading first drafts: use revision
and peer review to improve writing before you see it.
• Match your evaluation methods to the formality of
your assignment.
• Give students your criteria in advance, or create them
as a class. Make criteria productive.
Responding to Writing
Criterion-based response
• What could the writer do to improve
the paper’s organization or
structure?
• What could the writer do to make
his/her transitions smoother?
Responding to Writing
Reader-based response
• List three words that best capture the
image the writer conveys of him/herself
in the paper.
• As a reader, were you persuaded by
the argument in the paper? What was
persuasive and why?
Responding to Writing
Descriptive prompts
• Summarize, in your own words, the main
point or idea in the writer’s paper.
• Describe what you think are the most
convincing information the writer used to
support or illustrate that point.
Note the difference
“Move the third paragraph to the front.”
“There’s a dangling modifier in line 12.”
“Get rid of the clinical style.”
“Your style is too bureaucratic for a
story.”
“I was sort of confused by this section.”
“Did you mean to sound so passionate?”
“I felt distanced by the language.”
“I couldn’t see you anywhere in here.”
Focus
on text
Focus on
reader’s
experience
Other Strategies
Do/Say Focus
The teacher (or peer responder) works through
a paper paragraph by paragraph. For each, the
reader writes what the paragraph says and
what the paragraph does: “This paragraph says
that people are silly to believe in ancient
superstitions. It repeats the point made in
paragraph #3.
Other Strategies
“Heard/Noticed/Wondered” Focus
• I heard . . . Summarize the writing. What’s the
main idea? What is communicated?
• I noticed. . . Describe what stood out. What
attracted your attention? What will you
remember?
• I wondered… Describe gaps, puzzles, other
information you wanted, confusions, things that
disturbed you.
Example
Dear Karina,
When reading your essay, I heard that, although you never met your
grandfather, you are interested in who he was and what his life was
like. He moved to the Dominican Republic from China, got married
and had ten children. He opened a successful restaurant, but when the
tourists no longer passed by his town, the restaurant went bankrupt.
I noticed you showing the relationship between your grandfather's
life in China and his life in the Dominican Republic. I also noticed how
well you described the sacrifices he made by moving. For example, you
went into detail about what his father had been, and about the family he
left behind. I noticed that you began the story by telling us why it was
important to you, and by making us curious about your grandfather.
Example
Finally, I wondered about the Chinese family he left behind. Did
he ever contact them again? Did he miss them? I wondered if you
could have told us more about that. Also, why did your
grandfather just stay at home after his restaurant went bankrupt. I
wondered how he was able to support himself, and why he didn't
try to open another restaurant. What was your father's relationship
to your grandfather? Does your father have the same curiosity
about his Chinese heritage that you do?
Thanks for letting me read your story.
Your friend,
Bob (Peer Reviewer)
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/example1.html
Response and Students’ Models
TEACHER IN CONTROL
STUDENT IN CONTROL
• Instructional purposes
dominate
• Defers to teacher's authority
• Purpose is to do it correctly
• Sees writing as "right or
wrong"--purpose is follow
formulas and directives
• Is apprehensive of
uncertainty; wants answers,
not questions
• Imagined or real rhetorical
purposes dominate
• Finds authority in own ability
to make decisions & in
resources
• Sees writing as decisionmaking; purpose is to do it
effectively by reflecting on
decisions & making use of
resources
• Embraces uncertainty as
part of writing; asks
questions of self, others
Response and Students’ Models
TEACHER IN CONTROL
STUDENT IN CONTROL
• Finds little inherent purpose
in writing
• Discussion of text focuses
on text itself, in "past tense,"
as artifact
• Revises little
• Finds much intrinsic worth
writing--more conscious of
being “in” the writing, even if
it is practice-oriented rather
than learning
• Discussion of text moves
among textual, ideational, &
interpersonal concerns; is
both retrospective and
projective; text is fluid
• Revises much
Modes and Methods
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Traditional marginal and/or end commentary
“Insert comments” on electronic texts
“Track changes” on electronic texts
Video (PIP) responses (e.g., iSight)
Digitally taped responses; podcasting; YackPack
Emailed responses
Personal Web site responses
Split screen responses
But What About Error?
The Place of Error in Assessment
• If you work from goals to assessment, concern
about error can’t be disconnected from other
learning goals or outcomes. It needs to be in
your goals, in your assignment design, and in
your supporting work.
• You can choose to emphasize error a lot, a little,
or not at all, depending on your learning goals.
Some Suggestions
• Error has its place and limits; it’s not up front in
the writing process.
• There are different kinds of errors with different
causes: simple slips, oral interference, dialect
sources, ESL sources, conceptual sources.
Diagnose and respond accordingly.
• Start with meaning/effect: it makes more sense
than teaching isolated rules.
• Recommend a handbook; use support services.
Some Suggestions
• Put responsibility back on students whenever
possible, but offer guidance.
• Make simple errors simple.
• Go sparingly. It’s easy to reach overload.
• Balance response to the whole group with
response tailored to individual students.
• Encourage students to create a personal log of
errors, written in their own terms with examples
from their writing.
Some Suggestions
• First drafts will have more errors than revised
drafts. Support revision and editing.
• Limit students’ focus to a few manageable
problems in each paper.
• Balance your concerns about error with your
major learning goals--don’t let error dominate
your criteria (e.g., “three grammatical errors and
you fail”), but in larger projects, do make error
count in your assessment.
Questions and Discussion