New Insight into Student Cognition

This week in my eportfolio adaptation for my American Literature classes I’ve had a dozen or so students come by my office to get feedback on their overview essays, which essentially are their reflections on their preparations for their final analysis papers. The model that most of them have been following successfully, so far as I have seen, is to discuss how their group arrived at their larger topic, then how they individually chose a possible thesis or theses to explore and what texts they most likely will analyze, and then either what their preliminary analysis tells them so far or what they plan to do next (or both). I knew when I began this class redesign that I wanted them to focus more thoughtfully on their own processes, the metacognition, but as was the case when I brought eportfolio and reflective assignments into core composition, I have found unexpected benefits. In fact, I’d say this is even more so in literature because I had a fair idea of how the processes worked from a student perspective in composition, but, as it turns out, I had much less insight into their processes working on an literary analysis paper.

For example, based on what I’ve read so far, in their initial group sessions they decided their topic for their group eportfolio in about fifteen minutes. Many of the sessions I’ve read about centered on whether they thought a topic from their assigned list of choices would be too narrow to either accommodate their interests or be present in enough texts from the syllabus. A few students after finding their preference was not favored by the group have quickly discovered ways to pursue their stated interest anyway and still stay within the group’s topic. In the second phase, where the project becomes more individualized, I am reading about them sifting through texts and considering the possibilities of which ones lend themselves best to the theses they wish to investigate. Interestingly, I believe some of their judgments as groups and sometimes as individuals have been hasty, but these processes were practically invisible before, and now that I’m gaining better insight into how they make their choices I should be able in the future to address these issues either in the assignment itself or in our discussion of the assignments.

Is it better to follow a traditional approach and have them write two analysis papers in a semester, very many of which would be written in the final week, if not the final few days before the due date? Or is it better to have them write their initial papers as reflections on their preparation for analysis, recording their initial decisions and the thought processes they go through in selecting texts and analytical points, and recording the questions they seek to answer, and then write a final analysis paper? I hope to determine this to my satisfaction, but I believe the older model produces proportionally fewer essays of quality and creates the kind of pressure that might tempt a few students to plagiarize. The newer model, as it seems so far, involves proportionally more forethought, and, since it requires a record of the process, would seem to create an environment much less conducive to plagiarism.