This unit illustrates the pedagogical foundations and practical approaches to informal, exploratory writing activities that can be implemented in a WI class via the support of digital platforms.
Informal writing activities are an essential part of the notion of scaffolding: starting with short, low-stakes exercises and building up to a lengthier more formal (research) essay or final project. John Bean describes low-stakes writing as “the kind of exploratory, thinking-on-paper writing we do to discover, develop, and clarify our own ideas.” (Bean 97)
Some low-stakes writing assignments, however, may not conform to the traditional structure of a class in your discipline. The aim of this unit is to assist you with the development of assignments that are both beneficial to your students and easy to implement and manage. To this end, this unit pairs the discussion of low-stakes writing assignments with some methodological guidance on digital platforms, which have the benefit of allowing you to manage the students’ work easily while also providing the students with a genuine pragmatic context to their activities.
Readings
All of the readings for this unit can be accessed at this link (requires Blackboard login). The readings consist of:
- one book chapter from John Bean’s Engaging Ideas (“Informal, Exploratory Writing Activities”);
- one short paper from University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing (plus supplements);
- two blog posts serving as case studies.
Activities
Activity 1: Social annotation via Hypothes.is
Online annotation is a practice which enables sentence-level critique or note-taking within news, blogs, scientific articles, books, ballot initiatives, legislation and more. The elevator pitch is easy: visit a web page, then select some text and annotate with comments or tags. You will see those annotations when you return to the page, and so will other users belonging to the same work group. According to Gao (2013), students engaged in social annotation “participated actively in the collaborative learning activity and were engaged in a variety of behaviors including self-reflection, elaboration, internalization, and showing support.”
In this activity, you will be sharing and comparing online notes on exploratory writing assignments with a work group consisting of York instructors. To do this, we will be using a free online service, Hypothes.is. This requires a 5-minutes setup:
- Visit the Hypothes.is website (https://web.hypothes.is) and create an account by clicking on Get Started, then on Create a Free Account.
- Add the Hypothes.is extension or bookmarklet to your web browser. Google Chrome is needed for the extension, but all major browsers are compatible with the bookmarklet. Instructions for each method can be found on the very same page.
- Make sure that the Hypothes.is extension (top right corner of the screen) is active and that you are signed in. If you are using the bookmarklet, you can simply click on it.
- (Last step!) Click on this link to join the York WAC Faculty Seminar Hypothes.is group. This allows you to read annotations made by other faculty members.
- You can now annotate any web page and share those annotations with other users!
Once you have the Hypothes.is extension or bookmarklet ready, open the following link: Twenty-Five Ideas for Incorporating Exploratory Writing into a Course. Since this is an online activity, you do not need to download this file to your PC: just activate Hypothes.is from your web browser. Some comments are already present on the text to provide examples.
The file we are annotating is an excerpt from the assigned readings. Your annotation is freeform, though it is recommended that your in-line notes address some or all of the following prompts:
- Which one(s) of the listed activities you think would benefit your students more? Why?
- Which one(s) of the listed activities would be the easiest to adopt and manage in your class? Why?
- How would you modify or expand a listed activity to best suit your class’s needs?
- What digital platform do you think is best suited for the activity? Is the text outdated or current in this regard?
- How can the use of a digital platform facilitate your tracking/grading of student work?
This activity is a social one: by annotating the page, you are sharing your ideas with other York instructors and you may even reply to their notes. This means you can use annotations to ask questions and offer your thoughts.
Q: Is the use of Hypothes.is necessary?
A: The aim of this activity is twofold: on the one hand, this allows you to interact with fellow instructors on the same text, while on the other hand this familiarizes you with a social annotation platform should you decide to use this type of tool in your class. Should you have issues with this interface, remember that there are many alternatives to Hypothes.is.
Activity 2: Design a Writing Assignment Incorporating Digital Tools
Now that you have familiarized yourself with many types of low-stakes assignments and have shared your thoughts with other instructors, it is time to design an assignment (or series of assignments) for your class. To do so, the use of Hypothes.is is once again encouraged: you can simply annotate this very page. Alternatively, you can post your assignment on this Blackboard discussion [link TBD].
Reflection Questions
The following questions are only intended to provide food for thought.
- What are the common purposes of writing in your discipline?
- What types of audiences do you typically address in your discipline?
- What are conventions of format and structure that students need to learn?
