Those Delightful In-class Essays

So far this semester, I have been quite satisfied with the work of my undergraduate students, and my GTAs as well, relative to the engineering and orchestration I have put into my large format active learning literature class. But the in-class written responses have been thus far the most pleasant surprise. They were designed principally to keep those students not presenting on any given day usefully occupied while the other groups were working, but for each class session thus far, not only have all those present and asked to write responded, but the greater majority of them have had substantial and thoughtful responses, especially considering that there is a defined window of response time. There is, of course, variation in the quality of the responses, but not nearly so much as I would have expected.

While similar in tone and intent to the prompted responses of the groups assigned to present to their peers, at first, in-class written responses were included in the overall design to keep the sixty-five students not involved in presenting to their peers occupied in a useful, pedagogically sound way. The assigned presenters access their daily prompts through Canvas pages exclusive to their groups, but all the others access their prompt through the general class discussion board in Canvas. For these latter students, I set up the discussion board for the day in question in such a way that they cannot access the prompt till class begins at 9 a.m. and then the window of access to post a response closes at 11 a.m., or an hour after the end of the class in case the ten to fifteen minutes that they have to respond online in class is insufficient for them.

Since I did not want people simply copying or paraphrasing their peers on the in-class written responses, (even if there is some limited value in doing so), I also set up the general discussion board so that the individual student has to post first before he or she can view the posts of the other students. (In fact, the one day I neglected this point, the repetition of phrases and ideas was blatant.) To reinforce this particular participation and to acknowledge the work of the students consulting and presenting in their groups, I added a participation grade with an attached participation rubric. Twenty of the hundred points assigned to the participation grade directly stem from in-class online posting under the category heading “Satisfactory Completion of Daily In-class writing.” Specifically, my rubric on this point says, “When asked to respond in class to online prompts through Canvas, do so in a thoughtful manner that indicates both that you have read the material and that you have given thought to the prompt and to your response.”

Here is an example of an in-class prompt that asked for a close reading of a poem: “Read Robert Frost's "Desert Places" on page 234 of volume II (1914-1945) and discuss its most possible interpretations. Show that you've paid attention to Frost's diction (word choice) and the poem's mood.” And here is a student response to that prompt entered in that interval while the presenting groups were conferring:

Frost keeps referring to "desert places"; I interpret that as a variation of blank spaces, hidden fears, or scary places in our mind that we are scared to even refer into. He is making the point that blankness on his walk of all snow cannot scare or him, nor can the blank gaps in the dark skies between the stars because he is used to holding his own loneliness in his heart, so any outside influences will not shake him. He mentions being "absent spirited" and "unaware,” meaning that he is not concerned with the surroundings in nature, just on himself and current thoughts.

Not every response is as thorough as this one; however, most of them are near or of this caliber, and considering how few of these students are English majors and how many are not majoring in any of the humanities, I find the responses encouraging. Here’s another example of a prompt regarding a Flannery O’Connor short story: “Using specific examples, how does O’Connor’s use of humor in such a violent story affect the way that you read and understand it?” The larger part of the responses were similar to this one:

The humor used in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" makes the story more disturbing and effective than it already is. In the beginning of the story the grandmother jokes about her past with the watermelons and makes a joke about Gone With the Wind, which seem to lighten the story and set the tone, but later on, we see the story is not a light and happy one and the humor makes it darker. Another example of humor later in the story is when the little girl says the Misfit's friend looks like a pig, and that's why he can't hold her hand. Overall, the humor in the story makes it more horrifying and unsettling.

So these responses thus far have been abundantly satisfactory, but, of course, I will have to wait on mid-terms and final papers to see how this work might be affecting their measured performance.

I also set up the general discussion board so that individual in-class written posts can be marked as “liked,” which gives me a reasonable way to offer feedback to the sixty or more responses I receive for each daily in-class prompt. Then, as I scan through the responses and “like” the satisfactory ones, I also copy and paste the best responses anonymously into a two-page pdf that I upload into Canvas on our Study Aids page as not only an aid, but also as an encouragement to participate and an example of the sort of responses that I am expecting.