Debriefing and Your End-of-Quarter Feedback

Writing 2rs,

The end is near!  Woot woot!  I wanted to shoot you a quick heads up, re: portfolios/grades/timelines.  This week, I'll be perusing through your awesome e-portfolios.  Next week, you can expect an email with a personalized debriefing and your grade.

I also wanted to share your end-of-quarter feedback.  It was so, so valuable, and I want to make sure you know that I really, truly appreciate it.  For any aspiring teachers and/or super-nerds, the hard data is below as well as my "best of" curation of your comments.  Before that, though... take a look at this awesome class pic.

What's that?  Too soft?

Writing 2 Spring ’15 – Student Feedback and My Thoughts

Likes:

·       readings were relatively helpful but there were too many of them

·       WP1/Pancakes (77% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)

·       WP2/Vietnam (50% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)

·       WP3/Fairytales (73% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)

·       visual aspect of videos helped

·       videos shown in the middle of class helped (good noticing!)

·       Country tunes  (77% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful) for learning genre/conventions

·       Horror movies (63% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful) for learning genre/conventions

·       The Rock, MJackson, MJordan, AIversion for “Moves” (72% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)

·       4 Disney Artists Paint 1 Tree (66% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)

·       The Blogger’s Animated Writing Process (77% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)

·       in-class group activities

·       My Comments/feedback (91% agreed or strongly agreed à it was helpful)  Woo hoo!

·       Text Features/Qualities Matrices (ie, “Expecations”)

·       Enjoyed posting your work on a blog (64%)

·        blogs were convenient (ie, no printing required)

·        cool to see classmates’ work/ideas on the blog

·       class conversations/communication/culture

Sweet Comments:

·       Teaching us about the use of dashes changed my writing completely. I find that when I use them, my writing is a lot more clear and it is a lot more easy for me to get out what I'm trying to say

·        Another comment that I thought was very important was when you told me that the paper sounded a little dry and lacked any kind of voice. This allowed me to realize that even throughout these papers, which were directed towards an academic audience, I can add voice that would differentiate my writing as well as make the content a little more interesting.

·        instead of just flat out telling me what I did incorrectly, you also would ask me questions to make me think of other potential ways to improve that excerpt

·       (Re: Text Features/Qualities Matrix) 

o   I felt that they were more beneficial than harmful. The article or survey gave me a glimpse or a screenshot of a teacher's mind as they grade a paper. I saw what most teachers prefer and that in itself was beneficial.

o    After studying them more, I was able to start observing genres in the world around me and in my own everyday life.

o    This whole course made me think about writing in a different way. I think about genres more in depth now.

o    Almost like the quote "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." For certain kinds of paper, pieces, and letters, there are always certain conventions everyone must follow. People can break away from these conventions to be unique, but there are certain standards that must be met and kept up, otherwise the conventions would not follow that genre.

·       (Re: moves)

o   Again, I don't think this really helped me or benefited me anyway (however, in the future once I see the effect I may really like it).

o   Moves was a very interesting and important concept that we discussed in this class. At first it seemed very vague and unspecific, however I later realized that that’s how it should be. Moves could be anything that an author does differently for basically any particular reason

o    I like the moves because it helped me specify why I was doing something or why another author was doing something

·       (Re blogs)

o   Blogging allowed me to speak my mind while still adhering to academic themes. The fact that I was allowed to write about assignments in an informal matter made it so much easier for me and I was actually able to enjoy writing (something I used to not do)

o   [Blogging] was fun and gave my work more meaning. It also made me work harder because I knew my work could be seen by other people.

·       The only way you can get better at writing is by practicing; I think that this really gave me a chance to practice a lot and get better.

·       I actually liked this class. Although it is kind of tedious, I think it helped me become a better writer.

·       I don't think so, you were very easy and fair but also challenging as a teacher and held people to a high standard!

·       My favorite part of the course was being able to decide on our own what we want our topic to be rather than being assigned a topic.

·       I think the classroom environment was always cool, I love when people feel comfortable to share their ideas and talk, as well as discuss things together as a group.

·        I liked to see that I was applying the things I learned in this class to essays in other classes. Like, when I was writing a paper and thought "I'm going to make a move in the way I do this...". That showed me that all the work I do in this class isn't for nothing

·       YES I'm not sure that there would be a 15 minute presentation on semicolons... but the idea of a group activity/ presentation sounds great.

Dislikes:

·       no set bathroom breaks

·       vague comments on papers

·       a bit too much focus (ie, only) on genres

·       “moves” seemed vague

·        commenting on classmates’ blog posts seemed forced/too much (45%.... but 40% did like it….)

·        2 hours is a long class

Clarification:

·       (Re: unhelpful comments).  The one about steak. Im still a little confused about how I should make my paragraphs into bite­sized pieces

·       Comments saying that I should change my thesis statement were not helpful because I didn't know what to change it to.

·       In one comment you asked " so? how does this relate back to your argument?" This was helpful in that I took a second look and tried to figure this out, yet I'm still confused. I know you're not suppose to correct our paper for us but maybe a leading question would have helped.

·       I mean I understand how there are different "techniques" or "moves" that are used by writers, but I kind of felt that this occurs more unintentionally. When you have been writing for so long, we kind of incorporate these techniques without second­guessing ourselves. This does not mean I have not learned anything from the lesson, but a lot of the "moves" we talked about, I felt like I have already used or have done without considering them as "moves."

·       I wish that the class taught how to write a research paper or another genre depending on our major because I found that the writing style in this class doesn't really translate to other classes.

·       I think the lesson plan/what we had to write for WP2 could be edited. I hated writing this paper because I don't think I really understood what we had to do

Huh?!/  In My Defense

·       (Re: My Comments)

o   "I'm not understanding this". A select few comments were vague like this and it really just doesn't help me when I look at it because I myself understand it. It would help to clarify on what about that specific part is unclear.

o   One comment that I found the least helpful might have been to make sure that my document’s margins were 1 inch. This might be due to the fact that the change is extremely minor and I felt as if it did not make much of a difference, however I do realize that the academic standard is to be 1 inch margins and it is important to follow that rule.

·       (Re: Text Features/Qualities “Expectations” Matrix)

o   I would rather have it pointed out to me on my paper where I went wrong (where I could use more analysis, things that could be developed/changed, etc). I didn't find the "didnt meet expectations" helpful because it didnt specifically tell me where I was making the mistakes

o   I don't believe I was there for that class.

·       (Re: Genre Awareness as the UCSB WProgram Model)

o   I think genre is a good topic of writing. However, genre is not the only topic of writing. It would be better to add some other elements and combine genres and other topics.

o   I don't understand how helping understand genres is going to help me become a better writer. I feel like I already noticed "moves" about writing different papers and such. I do understand that we have to choose something to write about and genres seem like a pretty logical topic.

o   I think you should lessen the amount of responses we have to do on the blog. Its a lot. Also, I spend wayyyyy more time on this class than any of my other classes. I think the workload should be less. I understand that we should work hard in this class and that this is college, but for the amount of time needed to be put in in order to be successful in this class, I really believe it should be worth more than 4 units.

·       (Ummmmmmm….?!?!!)   Maybe a little less getting upset when people ask questions. You did this quite often, and then wondered why people didn't end up asking them later on. Maybe just be a bit calmer in that aspect.

·       You often sent emails very last minute: For example: you let us know you opened up the spot to turn in WP3 rough drafts the DAY it was due

Tough Ones

·       I just thought it wasn't taken very seriously with the comments so I couldn't really use that feedback

·        I didn't really enjoy responding to classmates' blogs because I never knew what to say and had a hard time being critical.

·        Sometimes the peer reader workshops were helpful, but then other times some people would just fix grammatical mistakes and not comment on the paper as a whole.

·        We can read more sample WPs because they are very helpful for me to understand and think how to work on the WP.

·       "How to organize WP" is a good lesson because when we worked on WP2, most of us felt trouble organizing the paper.

Changes I Will Probably Make:

·       The Blogger's Animated Writing Process was most helpful. This helped with not only writing process tips but also with life tips. I feel this video could be more helpful earlier in the quarter!

·        Readings were helpful, so maybe take some time in class to kinda discuss about it a little bit. I know we kind of did that in the beginning of the course, but I felt like we strayed from the reader.

·        Maybe talk more about thesis statements, I still feel a little lost on them.

·        Comments on classmates’ blogs… extra credit?

Great stuff right there.  OK, so as promised, here's a link to the survey data.