I love the beginning of the semester - new professors, new classes, new assignments. However, often it does not take very long for the fresh excitement to fade and the stress to build. Do you feel the same way?

What can we do now to help protect ourselves from feeling bogged-down with all of our course work during the coming weeks?

Writing Intensive classes are designed so that assignments are divided into sections (in WI terms, they are scaffolded) and multiple drafts of a formal piece of work must be reviewed before the final version is graded. My advice is to review the syllabi for all of your classes and transfer "due dates" - both for informal and formal writing, drafts and final papers - to a single calendar that will be marked appropriately for all of your courses.

If you have some professors who don't scaffold assignments or who don't incorporate multiple drafts into the writing process, it's OK! I encourage you to take the learning tools that you have acquired from your WI classes and apply them to classes that aren't designated WI. If the due dates of final papers are provided for you, mark those on your calendar and then work backwards. Is there preliminary research you can do? If so, mark on your calendar when you want that to be done. When do you think you should have the first draft of a paper completed? Mark that too! And remember to also record your professors' office hours - and the office hours of your writing fellow - so that you make time to review your work with someone else.

With all of your due dates together on one calendar you will be better able to visualize the semester and plan for the assignments to come. It will allow you to see when deadlines overlap and think about how you can spread out preparatory work over weeks that appear less busy. This will help organize your time.

Just a word of caution - make sure that when you transfer the due dates from the syllabi to your calendar that you double-check to make sure you haven't made any errors!

Happy Spring 2009!

Hello BMCC writers - I hope this entry find you rested from the break and excited for the semester to come!

I just wanted to remind you to read and comment on this blog throughout your writing intensive experience. This is a place where you can go to get help with your writing and tips for being an efficient learner. It is also a place where you can ask questions.

I wish you all the best of luck with your writing and look forward to communicating with you through this blog during this semester!

P.S. Perhaps you want to scroll down and review the previous entries to refresh your memory and prepare for the months ahead.

A Thanksgiving Family Review

Monday morning always seems to come quickly, doesn’t it? And this one, for me, is particularly stressful because with the holiday coming up, I’m trying to figure out how all of my work is going to get done over the next week. How am I going to balance spending time with my family and focusing on work that needs to be completed by December 1? I always seem to be in this pickle around a holiday because no matter how well I prepare, I always have work to do.

Knowing that my family will ask me how my work is coming along and probably to explain, again, what exactly it is that I’m doing, I’ve been thinking…why not have them read and review something that I have written?

So, here’s my plan – after I finish this entry, I am going to create a peer review sheet (or “family” review sheet!), which will help guide my loved ones as they read what I am currently working on – the method section of my dissertation. I’ll write a few sentences about what a method section is supposed to include (so they are clear) and then I will create a rubric for them to use as a guide as they read through my work, making sure that each subsection is sufficiently complete. I’ll also include a few sentences about the area I am having the most trouble with and ask them to share any suggestions.

I encourage you to do something similar, creating a review sheet that will be the most helpful for you. Perhaps on your review sheet you want to include the instructions that your professor gave you for the specific assignment you are having your family (or friends) read. You can also include a rubric, if the professor gave you one (or you can make your own – see the last blog entry).

If we do this, not only will we get the help that we need, but I think that by reading our work, our families and friends will get a better idea of what we are all working on. For me, the method section will work particularly well for this because it really shows what steps I have taken to collect my data and my reasoning behind the procedures that I am using. Also, it has already gone through multiple stages and revisions, and to be honest, it would be helpful to have other eyes looking at it.

As always, good luck with your work and…

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

BYOR - Bring Your Own Rubric

Welcome to Monday, writers. I hope that you are feeling refreshed from that extra hour of sleep you were able to get this weekend!

Today I’d like to talk about rubrics.

What is a rubric? Well, thanks to Wikipedia I can share with you a clear explanation:

A rubric is a scoring tool for subjective assessments. It is a set of criteria and standards linked to learning objectives that is used to assess a student's performance on papers, projects, essays, and other assignments. Rubrics allow for standardized evaluation according to specified criteria, making grading simpler and more transparent.

The rubric is an attempt to delineate consistent assessment criteria. It allows teachers and students alike to assess criteria which are complex and subjective and also provide ground for self-evaluation, reflection and peer review. It is aimed at accurate and fair assessment, fostering understanding and indicating the way to proceed with subsequent learning/teaching.

You may have had professors that actually gave you the rubrics that they planned to use when grading your papers. They may have even suggested that as you review your work you analyze your writing with the help of the rubric, making sure that you have included all of the requirements.

But what if your professor doesn’t distribute a rubric? I say, when it comes time to edit your work:

BRING YOUR OWN!

That’s right – make a simple rubric using the criteria that your professor gave in the instructions for the paper. This way you can still have a useful tool to assist you when reviewing your work, even though you were not provided with one.

When making your own rubric, you’ll need to “translate” the instructions into criteria for you to look for as you review your work. For example, if the instructions state that you need to present a clear thesis, then “thesis clearly stated” should be one of your criteria. If there is a requirement that you use two sources to support your thesis, make sure that is also included. If the instructions ask that you compare the present topic to a personal experience, have a space for that. Also, if there are logistical requirements, make sure you also include those (i.e., length of paper, page numbers).

*= complete
0= needs strengthening
- = absent from the writing

Thesis clearly stated _____
First support _____
Second support _____
Personal experience_____
3 pages_____
Page numbers on all pages____

As you review your work, score each criterion appropriately with a *, 0, or -.

If you are writing a paper in a discipline that has clear organizational or style requirements, you may want to add those criteria to your rubric. For example, if you were writing in the sciences, your rubric may look more like this:


*= complete
0= needs strengthening
- = absent from the writing

Introduction_____
Methods_____
Data analysis_____
Findings_____
Discussion_____

Again you would score each criterion with a *, 0, or -.

One last bit of advice…if you create a rubric for a specific assignment, show your professor! Make sure that you have correctly recognized all of the requirements and confirm that you haven’t missed any. Not only can you use a homemade rubric to “communicate” with your writing, but you can use it as a tool to clearly communicate with your professor.

Any questions? Any suggestions? I look forward to your comments!

P.S. If there are any professors reading this, I highly recommend distributing rubrics to your students. This way, you encourage your students to more completely review their work - and ultimately your review of their papers will be made easier because they will have successfully edited with the guidance of the rubrics. If you don’t like rubrics, then maybe just distributing a list of grading criteria would be a nice compromise.

Like Ice on a Cactus – Finding the Unexpected

Has this ever happened to you:

The final edition of a paper is at long last completed. You’ve worked on it for weeks. Drafts have come and gone. Your writing has been through peer review. Your professor has even looked through parts. Sentences have been tweaked to perfection. You’ve printed it out and it looks beautiful! BUT, just as you go to hand it in you notice a typo! Ouch! After all of that work…

Why does this happen and what can we do about it?

We live and breathe our final papers for an intense period of time, during which the reading and reviewing of our writing can get a little sloppy. Both our eyes and our minds become fatigued. When we read silently to ourselves we tend to read fast and we tend to read what we think we see, or what we thought we wrote, not what is actually in front of us.

For example, this sentence looked perfect to me for months: This project will focus on three gardens located on the hostipal grounds. But, when I went to turn in my paper I noticed that I needed to make clear that I was going to do my research in a hospital, not a hostipal!

So, my advice this week: as you go through the finally editing stage of your work, read your writing out loud and slowly. If you do this, you will say what is actually on the page and you will catch more little errors. Your tongue will trip on words that you would not have gotten stuck on had you been reading silently. Even if you have previously reviewed your work (possibly many times before) you may find the unexpected.

Good luck this week! And, please share with us any tips that you may have!

P.S. I also find it helpful to print a copy of the assignment I am working on rather than just editing on my computer screen. For those who don’t do this out of concern for our trees – use scrap paper! It’s better to do this than to have to print a second final paper.

Many Leaves of Basil and Many Pages of Writing

One of my favorite things to do is to collect the fresh green leaves off of the basil plant that finds its home on our little balcony. With the fall officially here I did a big “harvest” the other day, making sure to take advantage of the growth before it was too late. Seeing all of the leaves together in my bowl, instead of spaciously displayed on the stock, showed me that we had so much more than I thought. It was a great surprise!

What if we thought of the pages of our writing like I did these beautiful basil leaves? If we looked at them all together, would we be surprised by all of the work we had done so far this semester?

I tried it and - YES! - I was delighted to find that I had done more than I remembered! I thumbed through my old notebook and my new notebook; I put together in a binder all of the transcriptions I had typed from the interviews I am conducting for my research, and the summaries I had composed about them; I gathered all of the scraps of paper I had written on and the drafts I have been revising. I couldn’t believe it – there was so much! And, in addition to realizing how much work I had done, it was fun to read through things and see how my thoughts have evolved over the past few months. What a great self-esteem boost!

So, here’s what I want you to do:
1. Pull your work out of the corners where it is hiding – in filing cabinets, on bookshelves, in bags, etc.
2. Gather all of your exploratory writing – journals, notebooks, loose-leaf paper, etc.
3. Place all of your work on the floor (neatly).
4. Place a pillow near all of your work, sit down and make yourself comfortable.
5. Take a deep breath and look through everything you’ve done. Find yourself engulfed – both physically and metaphorically – in your work.
6. Take another deep breath and BE PROUD OF YOURSELF.
7. Put everything back where it belongs!

In writing intensive classes we do a lot of informal writing that we may forget about, or we may not see how it connects to the bigger picture. When we do an exercise like this, however, we see just how much writing we have done, how our ideas have grown, shifted, or become clearer, and how this has helped point us in the direction of our more formal pieces.

Just like I turned the basil leaves into pesto, let’s turn all of our great work into amazing finished pieces.

If you have any questions or suggestions or if you just want to say “hi” please leave a comment. I look forward to hearing from you!

Happy writing…

Tip of the Week: Carry a Notebook!

Does a great idea ever pop into your head as you are walking home from work, taking a walk in the park, shopping for groceries, or really anytime when you are not sitting in front of your computer prepared to write? It certainly happens to me – so what do I do about it? I carry a notebook. I learned this from my husband who is never without his Moleskine, always ready to write down an idea when he thinks of it, relieved of having to worry about remembering it perfectly for later.
Why does this happen – these “aha!” moments in the midst of busy days? Well, because even if your computer is turned off, your brain isn’t! The paper or problem that you are working on continues to be muddled-over and analyzed in your subconscious during what John Bean (the author of the book Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, which all Writing Across the Curriculum faculty and fellows read) calls the incubation period – the time when the writer steps away from his or her work and “lets ideas cook” (p. 30).
It has been during some of these incubation periods when I have had my best ideas, when things seem to come together. Before I began my notebook-carrying, when I would get a good idea at an inconvenient time, I would be fearful of forgetting the idea’s clarity. Now, with a notebook, I don’t need to worry about that anymore! I’m ready to jot things down in an instant and I have taken away the pressure I put on myself to have a perfect memory.
Now…I know that it’s not always possible to carry a notebook, so if you are out some place fancy and have a pocket, take a little sheet of scrap paper or an index card with you. Also, if you forget to bring something, paper napkins, ticket stubs, and theater programs work well too!
Your mind is always active, which means that you should be ready to write no matter where you are! A lot can happen when you are away from your desk, so be sure to be prepared and take full advantage of it!
Do you have any writing tips or suggestions? Please share! Add a comment!