Getting students to format their online discussion posts for readability

[downer]

I find that when a student posts a long paragraph of text in an online discusison, I can't read it. Certainly, I can't read the 20th long para in a day. I've got lots of students and they are all online. My eyes cloud over very quickly at big blocks of text.

So I've been pushing them not only to use fairly short paragraphs, but also to do a lot of formatting -- highlighting, underlining, using bold and italics, so they are showing their understanding of what terms and ideas are most important.

How are you coping with all the online text you are reading?

[mamselle]

I don't read stuff like that, and send it back for re-working, with the following advice (my grading rubric, if you like):

Three sentences make a paragraph.
   You can indent by tabbing, or (preferable for the last 30 years) by inserting a line space,
   But break the paragraphs up: they should be coherent, and topically focused.

Ten words make a sentence.
    Don't let long rhythmic patterns suggest extra words to your ear. Find sparse rhythms and use them.
    Omit most adverbs and nearly all adjectives. Subsume them into nuanced action verbs.
    One adjective per noun is enough; two is the most you need: no lacy embroideries.
    Turn the most essential adverbs defining your adjectives into serial adjectives or omit.
     Avoid serial adverbs.
     Avoid starting with "There is/are;" "Because," "Since," or other causal terms:
         show causality chronologically.
     Omit falsely dichotomizing words like "While...," "but,": replace with a semicolon or start a new sentence.
     Break up whatever is left, after applying all the above, into 10-word sentences
     Remember phrases and clauses are not usually sentences: S+V = Sentence.
     Think Wordsworth or Hemingway, not Dickens. No-one understands grammar well enough to do Dickens.

Spontaneous production is the beginning of creativity. The spontaneous product, like slag from a mine, must be refined to produce valuable thoughts in readable form.

The truly creative product is communicative. If you are unwilling, unable, too lazy, too proud, too entitled, or too falsely self-effacing to do the work of the refiner as well as the miner, your gems of thought will remain embedded in the slag of your spontaneous production.

It's rude to expect others to do that work for you; your own carelessness implies that it's not worth it.

No one will bother panning out your gold for you: we're all too busy.

M.

[polly_mer]

I agree with refusing to grade or recording a zero if the instructions are clear.

I disagree with most of the exact words that mamselle just wrote, but do give clear examples and expectations.

[Caracal]

I find that when a student posts a long paragraph of text in an online discusison, I can't read it. Certainly, I can't read the 20th long para in a day. I've got lots of students and they are all online. My eyes cloud over very quickly at big blocks of text.

So I've been pushing them not only to use fairly short paragraphs, but also to do a lot of formatting -- highlighting, underlining, using bold and italics, so they are showing their understanding of what terms and ideas are most important.

How are you coping with all the online text you are reading?

I think this is one of those things where you are in charge and you should feel free to use your authority to make the class work for you, as well as the students. I can't say that would really bother me in the context of informal discussion posts, but I'm not the one who has to read these things. Just have clear instructions and enforce them. I'd suggest just not reading it and ask students to reformat and resubmit without penalty the first time a student doesn't follow the instructions and make clear that if it happens again you won't give credit.

[downer]

That's all good advice. I agree that it is for me to set out the rules, and rules change with the increased workload for me.

Of course, the readings they have to do for the course provide bad models of the writing I'm expecting. Long paras and sometimes not even section headings. But the writing I do for them mostly models what I want. Well, I often go over the 10 words per sentence rule -- that seems very restrictive!

Anybody else have specific online discussion rules or recommendations they have for students, aimed at increasing comprehensibility?

[mamselle]

I agree with refusing to grade or recording a zero if the instructions are clear.

I disagree with most of the exact words that mamselle just wrote, but do give clear examples and expectations.

That's fine, but they're not random, they're leaned from three years' experience on a nationally recognized weekly newspaper in a major city.

I'm basically paraphrasing what my editor said to all of us, all the time, and they've worked for my own editing and teaching ever since.

If you want a more conventional set of suggestions, Strunk and White (or whatever iteration it's in now) is likewise useful and has pithy suggestions that people can remember. 

But you do need to give people guidelines.

M.

[spork]

[. . . ]

Of course, the readings they have to do for the course provide bad models of the writing I'm expecting.

[. . . ]

If the authors of texts that students have to read can't be bothered to write well, then why should the students be held to a higher standard?

I refuse to assign anything that I regard as badly-written unless the purpose of the assignment is to identify why/how the text is written badly. 

[downer]

[. . . ]

Of course, the readings they have to do for the course provide bad models of the writing I'm expecting.

[. . . ]

If the authors of texts that students have to read can't be bothered to write well, then why should the students be held to a higher standard?

I refuse to assign anything that I regard as badly-written unless the purpose of the assignment is to identify why/how the text is written badly.

The students need to be held to a standard that makes my job possible to do. That's simple enough.

Most academic writing is pretty bad. Certainly, the "great" writers in philosophy, history, and social sciences are often horrendous.  Some seem to be wilfully obscure. Even the textbooks are often not great. But I can't just assign them "Crash Course" videos to watch.

[Vkw10]

My instructions are simple:

Write short paragraphs. They're easier to read, which makes everyone happier. Three sentences is okay. Five sentences is great. Seven sentences is getting long. If I have to scroll to count lines in paragraph, I'm eventually going to get tired and cranky. Write short paragraphs.

I don't push them to format, as I find that giving too many instructions is counterproductive.

[spork]

[. . . ]

Of course, the readings they have to do for the course provide bad models of the writing I'm expecting.

[. . . ]

If the authors of texts that students have to read can't be bothered to write well, then why should the students be held to a higher standard?

I refuse to assign anything that I regard as badly-written unless the purpose of the assignment is to identify why/how the text is written badly.

The students need to be held to a standard that makes my job possible to do. That's simple enough.

That's my starting point as well, though I would replace "possible" with "as easy for me as possible."

I get a lot of undergraduates whose sloppy writing comes from sloppy thinking. If they can't clearly express themselves in the first sentence or two, they get marked down for it. And I move on to the next item that needs to be graded.

Most academic writing is pretty bad. Certainly, the "great" writers in philosophy, history, and social sciences are often horrendous.  Some seem to be wilfully obscure. Even the textbooks are often not great. But I can't just assign them "Crash Course" videos to watch.

The horrendous writers are, more often than not, the most pretentious. They are reciting definitions (often self-created ones that they've dressed up in verbose jargon), not explaining ideas or demonstrating how to apply them.

In my job, I'm not teaching finite element analysis or computational biology. It's mostly "here are some ideas that you ought to understand because you'll probably be in situations where understanding them will be helpful, and in the process of understanding these ideas you might learn about how to learn." So while I can assign articles from the American Economic Review, I can also assign Naked Economics and the students get a lot more out of it because of how it's written. And if they try to mimic that book's writing style instead of the style of a journal article on econometrics then my job is a lot easier.

In my opinion 95% of the writing in my discipline is truly terrible, whether it's in book or journal article form, and this is one reason its perceived relevance has disintegrated over the decades.

[Cheerful]

How are you coping with all the online text you are reading?

I read much less than I did when I began teaching online years ago.

Our learning management system is awful.  Text we type in Word and transfer online must be edited 1-3 times to get it right in the LMS.

Despite precise directions, I almost always have some students posting in 8-point font, exceeding word count limits, no paragraph breaks, text that runs outside the discussion box, etc.

When I was new and naive about teaching online, I would correct students' tiny fonts in the LMS.  This led students to email in a panic, "the time stamp on my post has been changed!"  I would email individual students and ask them to re-format/revise problematic posts.  I would reply to many individual posts (and discovered that many never read my replies).  I don't do any of that anymore.  The students are still learning, my student evals are great, and my life is much better.

[Vkw10]

How are you coping with all the online text you are reading?

Our learning management system is awful.  Text we type in Word and transfer online must be edited 1-3 times to get it right in the LMS.

Word documents have lots of hidden formatting codes, which can cause issues for pasting Word text into an LMS. I use Notepad when writing text for the LMS, because it's a plain text editor that transfers easily.

[downer]

How are you coping with all the online text you are reading?

Our learning management system is awful.  Text we type in Word and transfer online must be edited 1-3 times to get it right in the LMS.

Word documents have lots of hidden formatting codes, which can cause issues for pasting Word text into an LMS. I use Notepad when writing text for the LMS, because it's a plain text editor that transfers easily.

Or you can paste as plain text. (Shift-ctrl-V in Chrome). Of course, that loses any formatting you had.

[Vkw10]

Word documents have lots of hidden formatting codes, which can cause issues for pasting Word text into an LMS. I use Notepad when writing text for the LMS, because it's a plain text editor that transfers easily.

Or you can paste as plain text. (Shift-ctrl-V in Chrome). Of course, that loses any formatting you had.

That's why I use Notepad. It doesn't let me put in any formatting so I don't get frustrated by losing it.

[Juvenal]

Don't we all write well?  Following all precepts and standards?  What we let be seen by other eyes?  Of course we do.  Editors are superfluous.  Right?