Student-friendly, prof-friendly paper feedback?

[youllneverwalkalone]

In twenty years of teaching, I have never seen a bad writer show meaningful improvement.  Neither have my colleagues.  We talk about it all the time.  I suppose it's possible that we're all just bad teachers, but my own theory is that our students have never read a book in their lives, came of age well after grammar had been de-emphasized in elementary schools for political reasons, and know perfectly well that we can't fail them all.

There is some truth in what you say but maybe the impressions you get from talking about it among colleagues just aren't an accurate metric for tracking improvement in writing quality of the students.

[Hegemony]

But if student writing improves — but not in a way that the professors ever notice — does that really count as improvement?

[polly_mer]

But if student writing improves — but not in a way that the professors ever notice — does that really count as improvement?

I suppose that depends on what the goal is.  I was very annoyed with a colleague who stepped up one semester to do a writing-intensive course, saw minimal improvement in individual students after the one term, and flat out stated that doing all the scaffolding was a waste of his time because of the small improvement over the term. 

The bigger picture we had from assessment in following students over their four years indicated that students did get better over the four years when the students took several writing-intensive courses with substantial feedback and scaffolding, especially when the courses were in their major as well as general education and were truly spread to have one or two every term for the whole four years.  Each individual professor tended to see minimal improvement, but the net effect were people who were better writers when they left than when they started, but only when we moved away from the idea that the freshman comp sequence were the only explicit writing courses.

[writingprof]

. . . but only when we moved away from the idea that the freshman comp sequence were the only explicit writing courses.

The problem my university would run into is that the faculty in departments other than English are often themselves poor writers. 

[marshwiggle]

The bigger picture we had from assessment in following students over their four years indicated that students did get better over the four years when the students took several writing-intensive courses with substantial feedback and scaffolding, especially when the courses were in their major as well as general education and were truly spread to have one or two every term for the whole four years.  Each individual professor tended to see minimal improvement, but the net effect were people who were better writers when they left than when they started, but only when we moved away from the idea that the freshman comp sequence were the only explicit writing courses.

Has there been any research comparing the writing ability of graduates in different English-speaking countries (UK, Canada, Aus, NZ, etc.)? Since the US places so much emphasis on things like explicit composition courses, do the graduates write any better in consequence? I admit to being somewhat skeptical; otherwise you'd expect to hear things like employers saying "Graduates from the US are much better writers", but I have never heard anything like that.

[polly_mer]

The bigger picture we had from assessment in following students over their four years indicated that students did get better over the four years when the students took several writing-intensive courses with substantial feedback and scaffolding, especially when the courses were in their major as well as general education and were truly spread to have one or two every term for the whole four years.  Each individual professor tended to see minimal improvement, but the net effect were people who were better writers when they left than when they started, but only when we moved away from the idea that the freshman comp sequence were the only explicit writing courses.

Has there been any research comparing the writing ability of graduates in different English-speaking countries (UK, Canada, Aus, NZ, etc.)? Since the US places so much emphasis on things like explicit composition courses, do the graduates write any better in consequence? I admit to being somewhat skeptical; otherwise you'd expect to hear things like employers saying "Graduates from the US are much better writers", but I have never heard anything like that.

One complicating factor is how the US higher ed system includes everything from elite institutions that are truly world-class to Joe Bob's School of Learning and Such.  The elite institutions often are more like other world universities in skimming off the top of people who are already excellent and who thus were already pretty good writers.  Once we drop down to less prepared students, the situation is more that parts of US higher education try to bring average students up to an acceptable proficiency rather than pushing top students to be even better.

Therefore, employers who are keeping track will hire from specific institutions that never had noticeable levels of low literacy students and therefore graduate only literate people.  The strength of the US system is our many open-enrollment institutions to allow people to start where they are at whatever age they are.  The weakness of that system is we're often trying to educate people who would never be admitted to any other university environment because they just aren't ready to perform at that level.

At Super Dinky, students who bought in and really tried did progress about 4 years in measurable areas.  The sad reality is that, on college graduation, those super-successful students were about at the same level where the average student at the state flagship was at high school graduation.  Thus, the international employers aren't generally looking for any US graduate; they are looking at the handful of institutions where they know even the graduates who are below average are likely good enough.

[wellfleet]

I've spent most of my career teaching writing to undergraduates, and now I teach writing to graduate students in an institution with no English department of any kind (we do have a writing center, and I work there, too). My grad students really, really want to improve so that their theses will 1) pass their committees and 2) be read and acted upon by people outside the institution, so aligning everything I do with their subject- and profession-specific writing goals is highly effective.

Their department faculty don't want to teach writing and don't want to scaffold assignments themselves but are very happy when I build in complimentary scaffolding on those same assignments for them, as the assignments in my course. They like the improved end-products, too.

When I assigned stand-alone essays and papers in my undergraduate writing courses, I weighted the drafts very heavily and gave extensive feedback at those stages (usually with required conferences). Of course, I had to read and grade the final papers, too. In my current system, I pretty much only see/mark up drafts, which means I can spend even more time on formative feedback.

[pedanticromantic]

Would it not make more sense then to give feedback and allow them to correct the mistakes, for improving the final grade on the project? Yes, it's more work, but they would actually pay attention to what they need to change.
I'm going to experiment with some grading this fall, after reading the "ungrading" article in Inside Higher (or was it CHE?)... Anything to make my life easier while helping students improve would be grateful.