I've been trying to figure out how I want to structure my class in terms of revision. Bean suggests that we "allow rewrites after [we] return the 'finished' papers." The problem I could see with that is that many students may just accept a lower grade, rather than doing more work. I believe that my freshman comp teacher did something similar to this, but I believe we had a first draft (which was supposed to be a complete paper) due a couple of weeks before the 'finished' version. That way we got his comments and had a chance to revise before 'finishing' the paper. After turning in the finished version, we could still revise it one more time if we were not satisfied with our grade.
I like this system, but I also want to incorporate peer review. It seems to me to be rather pointless to have peer review of the first version of the paper if I will be commenting on that version as well, since my comments will be more useful than my students' comments (at least in terms of getting a good grade, since I'll be grading!). I've thought of having my students workshop a first draft of their paper about a week before the first version is submitted, and then having them revise this to turn in their 'finished' paper. Then they may still revise if they are not satisfied. But this seems like an awful lot of time on one paper. What do you all think? Is this excessive?
I'm also afraid that the first draft that they workshop will not be very complete, since they'll know they will be 'revising' it before turning it in. I plan to combat this by giving it a grade, although, of course, this grade will be based more on whether or not they actually appear to have put work into their draft than on the quality of that draft. I'm also afraid that I'll be burying myself under a huge pile of grading with this system. Any thoughts?
3 comments:
Leta,
revisions of papers seem to be very time-consuming but I think we should not refuse of this type of assignments. Only it does not have to be frequent. For example, we could offer students to revise their papers once or twice in a semester, and it may be better not to give for revision more than one big formal assignment. I think we cold also ask students to write brief comments on what they changed in their drafts, a kind of self-criticism. Even if they have to do it once it will bring the idea of analytical approach to academic writing.
In general, I suppose that the best way is to offer variety of assingnentms in order to figure out which ones are better for ourselves as teachers and which ones are better for a group of students.
Actually, I've noticed that many Eng. 1000 instructors do a 3 submission process for each paper. The first being a peer review submission, the second being the first submission to the teacher, which is often discussed one-on-one in an individual conference, and the third being the final submission. Only the second and third are actually graded. The peer review draft is more of a pass/fail grade. I think that sort of system works great-- one of the most important things for students to learn is that papers are not, or at least should not be, written the night before they are due. That there is a process of drafting and revision.
Leta,
I, too, have contemplated this issue recently. I'm rather torn, actually. My original thought was to do either a peer review or a revision of a copy I've marked, but not both.
Now my thought is to mark the first submission of the first paper so that they all get a feel for how I grade. I think that this will help them to be better peer reviewers, also, since they will all have gotten a paper back. Thereafter, I might conference with them, but not fully mark their papers.
However, I'm thinking of offering an optional revision on either of the first two papers (since there won't be time for the third) to replace the final submission grade.
I think that, all in all, this system will encourage students to grow as writers, rather than merely learning how to tailor papers to my specific criteria. But then, I'm making it up, so, who knows if it will work?
--Bri
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