The purpose of this Discussion Forum is to give you an opportunity to synthesize and reflect on the content you have encountered on this site, to identify new questions these materials raised, and to revisit existing questions that may not have been fully answered for you.
Please write a response to the following question, and enter it in the Comment field below. Please indicate the name of the course in which you are teaching as part of your response. Also consider writing a reply to at least one colleague’s post (you might add another perspective, add another question, or contribute additional thoughts).
Teaching writing involves many variables. What questions, concerns, and/or thoughts do you have about balancing these variables in your classroom this fall?
I am a first-time GSI for Humanizing Science, which is a first-year writing and discussion oriented course. To that end, I am most concerned about managing potential classroom conflict and balancing the creation of an inclusive, respectful classroom with facilitating open discussions. In particular, I imagine that many first-year students may be uncomfortable or nervous to discuss their thoughts in a college setting. Additionally, first-year students will come from a wide variety of classrooms and communities with their own norms, language, and dynamics. Ultimately, I want students to feel comfortable sharing diverse or working thoughts while maintaining a safe and supportive environment for all of my students. One first-week activity that I am contemplating is the creation of a “classroom contract” to get students thinking about the ways they want to interact with their peers and set expectations and guidelines for our discussions. The Teaching Inclusively module provided several strategies for dealing with conflict (e.g., the five-minute rule), but I would love to brainstorm and hear from more experienced instructors on potential exercises to set up a respectful and open classroom in the first place and suggestions for real time conflict management.
I am a returning GSI who will be teaching Great Books. I am concerned about facilitiating peer-review and feedback. The module on feedback had some helpful exercises, but I am nonetheless worried about my capacity to guide students through the process of providing useful and additive feedback.
I am a first-time GSI for a first-year writing course. I am excited (and nervous) about helping students see themselves as writers. The metacognition resource was helpful, providing reflective activities throughout the writing process (e.g., leaving self-reflective comments on drafts). In addition to these, I am brainstorming a first-week activity that will unpack the writing process. Does anyone have any favorites?
I am a returning GSI, teaching Great Books. I taught a first-year writing course in Fall 2021, but it was not an honors course. Last year, I taught intro language courses, so I’m a little concerned about getting back into the habit of giving feedback on, and grading, essays (rather than primarily correcting grammar/syntax). I remember in the other first-year writing course I taught that peer review was tricky to manage and sometimes difficult for students to benefit from because of conflicting messages in their peers’ feedback, so I’m hoping to work on that this semester to make it more beneficial for students.
I’m a returning GSI. This fall I’ll help teach Honors Wellness, and I’m very excited about the topic and approaches! Last semester, some of my Women’s and Gender Studies students struggled to differentiate analysis from summary, and I wanted to help them make more novel arguments without being too hard on the work they had originally submitted. In general, I’d like to strike the right balance between pushing my students and supporting them.
With the advent of ChatGPT and related AI, it’s an interesting time to begin teaching first-year writing! I think it would be useful to contemplate how to help students understand academic integrity and plagiarism while perhaps still engaging constructively with emerging technology. How can we create space within a writing course that will help students to approach new technologies critically? To what extent can we allow students use these technologies to facilitate their brainstorming? To conduct initial research that they must then evaluate? To generate draft compositions that they must edit and develop? Where this technology is intentionally engaged, how might it impact peer feedback and instructor evaluation of student writing?
I am a returning GSI who have taught an FYWC once before (Intro. to Greek Civ.). I will be teaching Great Books this term.
I have not taught since ChatGPT was released last year. Now, it seems inevitable that freshmen, who are just beginning to form their writing habits, will have begun experimenting with it. It seems to me that we are at the front line of shaping how students will integrating it into their writing process.
Peer review has in my experience always produced poor results relative to the time and trouble. I wonder whether AI can be integrated into this part of the process. For example, perhaps AI could analyze and critique a student essay, then two students could critique the AI critique. This might give them some an idea of AI’s limitations while critiquing their own work in the process.
This is my first time teaching a writing course. I’m a little worried about my capacity to give helpful and concrete feedback to students about improving their essays. For example, how can a student bring a B+ grade essay to an A- or A? I think sample student work would be helpful in this regard, but it would differ from course to course. I also expect students to be very grade-motivated given that Great Books is an honors class, so this is something I will have to pay attention to.