Development of a Student Writing Skills Programme for First Year UG Students - Final Report

Write Through The Semester Report for English Subject Centre and Keele Innovations Fund Susan Bruce, Keele University, 29th September, 2003 Write Through The Semester Report for English Subject Centre and Keele Innovations Fund Organisation is another notion which this portfolio has lead [sic] me to discover For example the portfolio instructs that week requires “a plan of your assessed essay” My jaw fell in utter disgust along with the rest of the student nation on receiving such a blow Surely week is intended for far more testing activities in creation such as constructing skyscrapers out of beer cans as opposed to a sterile essay plan, my heart sank However, the truth of it is that as a result of the portfolio my essay began in week and was completed in plenty of time (at least not the night before!) Such planning ahead is now firmly embedded within my student moral principles (along with never refusing a free drink and always using a tea bag at least twice) Another advantage in this early bird approach was plenty of time in which to other work which I didn’t start in week (and in retrospect perhaps should have) (47) I have a complete lack of knowledge about many of the later plays, but it is all right because I know how to evaluate a website … it is a futile way of making me work The Education system has constantly disappointed me, by forcing me into restrictive ways of performing tasks This … has destroyed my creativity and stifled any talent that may have been growing It is only recently that I have gained the confidence to shake off the shackles of an oppressive education and stand up for what I think These methods of working that are forced upon us students in the form of this ‘portfolio’ just serve to aid in the corruption of free-flowing thought … This method … has caused my level of competency of essay writing to regress somewhat … I have probably reduced the number of marks available to me by not supporting the course, but I feel much better for venting my annoyance (26) I had received a first on my [previous semester’s] essay … and believed the portfolio would be a waste of time … These quotations come from some of the end of course short essays on the project written by the students The numbers in brackets after them are the numbers assigned to the essays by the contract researcher who analysed the batch of essays However after the first five weeks my opinion began to change … [My peer group was not working well so] in order to … receive some response to my essay I exchanged work with my friend who is also on the course, but not in my group … [WTTS] has made me appreciate that at this level, we are all able to contribute some level of original thought to the work that we (18) Table of Contents Description of the Project Description of the Evaluation of the Project Conclusions of the Evaluation of the Pilot Year 3.1 Mid-Semester Questionnaire 3.2 Reflective Essay 3.3 Focus Groups 3.4 Tutor Interviews 10 Conclusions of Pilot Year Evaluation and Amendments to the project in its second year 11 4.1 Tutor Involvement 11 4.2 Peer Group Evaluation 13 4.3 Peer Commentary 14 4.4 Scheduling of WTTS 14 4.5 Relation of Assignments to Content of Module 14 4.6 Main Benefit of WTTS 15 5 Final Comments 16 Appendix One: detailed Results of mid-semester evaluation 19 Appendix Two: Reflective Essay Evaluation: Detailed Results and detailed student comments 21 Appendix Three: Proformas for Self/ Peer Assessment 26 Write Through The Semester Report for English Subject Centre and Keele Innovations Fund Description of the Project Write Through the Semester is an Introductory Writing Course which aims to help students improve the literary skills so many of them currently lack on entry to HE, and thereby allow academics to spend more time on content and less on form in their responses to their students' writing Research suggests that student writing improves most markedly when writing tasks are linked directly to the students' discipline(s), and that students engage most effectively with individual tasks when the relation of those tasks to an end product is clear We tried, therefore, to develop a model which would be embedded in a specific discipline, piloted in a module in English, yet adaptable to the requirements of other disciplines inside and outside our own institution There were, however, a number of difficulties which needed to be taken into account in planning the course Self-evidently, improvement in students' writing demands that they write regularly, often, and reflectively But there are only very limited extra resources available to invest in the teaching of such skills, and, currently, none to be invested in any extra marking of student work Similarly, student time is also limited and consideration must be paid to the danger of producing for the students an excessive workload The challenge then was to formulate a writing course which would: • be directly related to the material the student is studying in a given module; • get students writing weekly; • encourage students critically to reflect on the act of writing on an ongoing basis; • encourage students to evaluate their writing and the writing of others on an ongoing basis; • avoid an excessive workload for the students taking the course; • bear an obvious relation to the end product of that module (the assessed essay); • be rewarded at a level commensurate with the effort expended on the assignments by the students; • operate insofar as is possible with minimal weekly intervention from tutors; • result in a comparable marking load to that generated by more conventional modes of assessment; • avoid, insofar as is possible, inflation or deflation of average grades for the module as a whole (this is also important for the assessment of any change in the quality of student writing) Our solution to these problems was to devise a series of short assignments, which have intrinsic and collateral value in themselves, but which also build up progressively to the submission of a first draft of an assessed essay at the beginning of the second half of the module, and then, by a series of peer- and self-evaluations, to a revision of the assessed essay The final assignment in the initial year of the project was a short reflective essay, which evaluated the usefulness of the project from the student's point of view Throughout the semester, students were required to exchange their writing, every week, with two (or in some cases three) of their peers, and to deposit copies of their writing in a portfolio which they eventually submitted to their tutor The mark scheme for the module was devised to ensure that students could not pass the module without submitting the complete portfolio but were also rewarded for the work they did in completing it The mark scheme devised ensured that tutors awarded marks only for qualities they already felt comfortable in judging (in this case, for example, hard work; and the argumentative essay); and that any change to the average grade of students taking the course would reflect change in the quality of their writing Description of the Evaluation of the Project The project was extensively evaluated in the first year We tried to maximise the objectivity of the evaluation by embedding in the project’s plan a clear distinction between the person responsible for devising and instituting WTTS (Susan Bruce) and the person responsible for evaluating its success (Monica McLean) In addition, we hired contract researchers to undertake substantial statistical analysis of the students’ responses to WTTS, as well as to conduct focus groups and interviews with those who were teaching on the course in 2002 The evaluations undertaken were as follows: A mid-semester questionnaire, distributed to all students in class around week 6, which aimed to ascertain: the use the students had made of the Handbook; their level of confidence about their writing prior to taking WTTS, and after it; what they liked and did not like about WTTS; whether any problems were occurring with its delivery (and if so, what they were) An obligatory reflective essay as the final course assignment, entitled, ‘”Writing this Portfolio was a Complete Waste of Time”: Discuss’ All these essays were read by Susan Bruce She produced a chart detailing what she thought were the most common remarks, with the help of which a contract researcher analysed all the essays and drew the information together into statistical conclusions Focus Groups were conducted (by our contract researchers) with all of the tutorial groups involved with WTTS in its pilot year Interviews with all tutors teaching on Elizabeth Tragedy (2 f/t staff members; postgraduate teaching assistants) were conducted by one of the contract researchers, using questions devised by Monica McLean Conclusions of Evaluation of Pilot Year 3.1 Mid-semester Questionnaire Detailed results of the answers the students gave to the questionnaire are available in Appendix one The most notable results were in the area of the students’ perception of their confidence in their writing skills; in the students’ engagement with the course handbook; and in their reaction to the optional workshops Confidence The students’ confidence in their writing skills appeared to be significantly improved by having taken the course Thus whilst 54% of the respondents said that they felt ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ about their writing skills on entering HE, and 57% said that they felt ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ after completing the English Department’s Introductory course, 85% of the students said that they thought that they would feel ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ after completing WTTS Just as marked were the relative percentages of students who felt that their anxieties about writing had been substantially alleviated by WTTS 23% of students felt ‘anxious’ or ‘very anxious’ about their writing on entering HE This rose to 28% of the cohort after they had taken the Introductory course But only 2% of the students felt that they would feel ‘anxious’ after completing WTTS, and none replied to this question with ‘very anxious’ It would seem then, that the most substantial benefit in terms of confidence in their ability to write was afforded to those students who were anxious about their writing skills (the numbers of those who said they ‘didn’t really think about it’ remained pretty constant between semester one and semester two) The Handbook A markedly high percentage of the students (93%) stated that they had read through the entire handbook (and thus would at least have read material on punctuation; on how to present an essay correctly; on assessment of the quality of their own and others’ essays and so forth) Of the 7% who said that they had not read through the handbook, most had read the relevant sections to each assignment, and some had skimmed the handbook The Workshops Together with Claire Slater-Mamlouk of the University’s Skills Centre we had scheduled two optional workshops for the students Take-up for these was very disappointing, so poor that we were in the end only able to run one workshop (on thesis sentences; only students turned up to this) According to the results of the mid-semester questionnaire, however, only 15% of the students had actively decided not to go Most of the rest either intended to go, or were prohibited from doing so through timetable clashes, part-time jobs, or poor time management (Those who did attend the workshop, incidentally, all said on their evaluation forms that it had been useful to them) 10 3.2 Final Reflective Essay The most extensive statistical analysis came from the analysis of the reflective essays The students were in this assignment free to mention or not mention anything they wanted to within the terms of the essay and thus the percentages mentioning a particular aspect of the course should be understood differently than they would be had a student specifically been asked to comment on a particular aspect of WTTS (as in a questionnaire, for instance) Many students, for example, chose to structure their essays around the series of assignments which they had been given Thus 93% mentioned the website reviews (which accounted for the first batch of assignments), whilst only 40% specifically mentioned having to revisit their Yr1 first semester essay (which was only a part of one assignment) 83% of students did not mention the reflective essay itself So, for instance, the fact that 29% of the students requested more tutor involvement in the course does not imply that 71% of the students did not want more tutor involvement, but rather that 29% of the students actively requested more involvement without any prompting Once again, we have given more detailed extracts from the reflective essays in an appendix (Appendix 2), and confined ourselves here to the main conclusions • A clear majority of the students thought that overall, writing the portfolio had been beneficial to some degree 72% of the essays disagreed to varying degrees with the proposition that writing the portfolio had been a complete waste of time About 14% of the students thought that it had been a complete waste of time, and about the same percentage were unsure But of those who said it had been a complete waste of time, a considerable number were contradictory (for example: ‘it was when studying my essay more critically that I realised I had devoted too much space to ‘”Hamlet” in both the main body of the essay and the conclusion, and I then corrected this In conclusion, although doing the portfolio this semester did have it’s [sic] advantages such as improving my critical abilities, it didn’t really improve my writing skills’ (15)) • There was huge approval of the idea of working in peer groups 68% said that they liked this idea, as against 15% who said that they did not But a clear majority thought that peer group work entailed significant problems: 56% thought that the peer group work had not worked, as against 27% who thought that it had • There was very significant approval of having to start – being forced to start – their assessed essay very early in the semester 64% of the students independently noted this aspect of the course was something of which they approved; while 10% said they did not like this aspect of the course 20 space to work more intensively on a particular assignment, and/ or to catch up on assignments that they have not managed to complete 4.6 Main Benefit of WTTS There was overwhelming student approval of being forced to start work on their assessed essay in week (despite their sometimes conscious recognition of the damper this put on the alternative project of constructing skyscrapers out of beer cans) Time and time again, although not always so wittily, the students returned to this aspect of the project in the different ways they were asked to assess it: in the mid-term evaluations, in the reflective essays, in the focus groups Comment after comment noted, in varying ways, that they will endeavour to work like this in the future What the students are saying here is that WTTS taught them the virtues of timemanagement Given that time-management is the ‘skill’ that almost all students of English Literature feel has not been taught them in their degree programmes8 the overwhelming student appreciation of this aspect of WTTS is very significant Almost all students participating in WTTS felt that their time-management had been significantly improved; almost all seemed to feel that this was not a skill that they would otherwise have been taught; almost all remarked that they wanted to be encouraged too start thinking about their assessed essay sooner than they generally otherwise would have done and were grateful (this is the right word, I think) for that compulsion See Brennan, Williams and Blasko (2003) 21 Final Comments There is, I think, overwhelming evidence to suggest that this project has been extremely successful It has been well-received by students, by and large The vast majority of the students who have participated in the project think that their writing has improved, and seem to conceive of what they are doing in different ways to the manner in which they did before taking the course.9 Ascertaining whether this is really the case is not at all easy Nor is it easy to ascertain the importance of the fact that so many of the students felt that they would be more confident of their writing, and of their knowledge of what was expected of a university essay Does confidence translate into a more assured voice? I don’t know I suspect it does, but I cannot say for certain, although there is some evidence to suggest that this is the case.10 In some instances, the students remarked on benefits which I had not anticipated in constructing the assignments A notable number of students in both pilot years, for example, remarked that the brevity of the assignments (often two or three hundred words) had made them conscious of both the difficulty and the importance of writing succinctly That hadn't been the intention of the word limit (the reason for brevity was the consideration of the students' workload) It is worth noting that although this objective apparently backfired, all of the students who commented on the difficulty they had had confining themselves to the word limit did so approvingly I think that the evidence –impressionistic as it perforce is—from the kind of things that students are saying about the project (see further comments in Appendix 2) suggests that students are reflecting on what they in a way they would not have done in the absence of WTTS; and that such reflection is a good in and of itself, and is likely to lead to further good That said, improvement in writing as such is a long-term project, not something that can be achieved, immediately, in one semester If the project manages to embed better work practices (such as time-management); or if it encourages the students to think about writing as process rather than as a task to be completed the night before the deadline; or to challenge their notion that discussing their work with their peers is likely to lead to plagiarism, then it will have served a purpose but it would probably be more effective if those lessons were more systematically reinforced in the later years or their programme of study There have, however, been some problems in instituting the project on a departmental level From outside, the project garnered considerable interest and financial support : it was internally and externally funded; and many colleagues in other departments adopted aspects of the handbook to distribute to their own students But instituting a project such as this in the current climate is difficult I think that the most obvious and See Smith, Campbell and Brooker (1998) on the relation between students' conceptions of the essay-writing task and the quality of their final products 10 See Charney and Newman, 1995 for example 22 immediate reason for these difficulties in my own department stem from chronic understaffing; but that wider changes in English Higher Education over the past couple of decades act to exacerbate the problems generated in the first instance by scant staff resources So I end this report by attempting very briefly to situate the practical challenge of trying to institute a project such as WTTS within the larger contradictions of the present state of English Higher Education insofar as it governs institutions such as Keele English HE has until very recently has been governed by two or three watchwords One is ‘innovation’ So on the one hand, I was granted money – a considerable amount of money in Humanities terms—to institute something on the grounds that it was ‘innovative’ But under-staffed and hard-pressed departments are justifiably suspicious of innovations of whatever kind, because innovations, they are right to fear, may bring with them an increased work load which they cannot afford either individually or as a team Moreover, 'innovation' sits very uneasily with the other two principles which have increasingly come to govern the management and delivery of English HE over the past decade or two: ‘standardisation’ and ‘accountability’ Both of these terms perhaps, indeed, all three emanate from the increasingly mechanistic and market driven model of HE That model works on a conception of education as commodity, in which each module must be seen to ‘deliver’ the same educational ‘product’; to ‘require’ from its students the same ‘input’ of ‘labour’; to ‘standardise’ in its ‘learning outcomes’ identical educational acquisitions.11 ‘Standardisation ‘ and ‘accountability’ are odd terms here, and in the ways they have become most commonly invoked in an educational context Both share with each other the characteristic of owning two meanings; and in both cases, the relations between those two meanings reflect the relationship between the meanings of the other term Moreover, in both cases, the two meanings appear to have become confused with each other in the thinking of those who manage our educational institutions and drive our educational policies Thus a ‘standard’ is a measure of quality to which one arguably ought to aspire (depending on who is responsible for setting the standards, and on whether the standards are correctly set); but it may also denote the rendering of everything the same, as it does, for instance, in the sense of ‘standardisation’ So too with the word ‘accountability‘ Originally applied to public sector institutions in response to the sense that professionals within those institutions (the academics, doctors, teachers, social workers and so forth) were too autonomous, too free to set their own standards, too unfettered by management and government, demands for ‘accountability’ were intended to force professionals to defend their practices and take responsibility for them : to make us ‘accountable’ to some higher power, be that our management, our government, our students, or, increasingly, to all of them (on the very dubious assumptions that the interests of students are identical to the interests of management, or government; and that the latter bodies have the interests of See for example the growing sub-genre of publications devoted to analyses of the ideologies governing Western HE at the present time, such as Readings, 1997; Gaita, 2000; Brantlinger, 2001; and Walker, 2002 For an intelligent and thought-provoking analysis of the way in which exactly analogous principle have increasingly come to dominate the field of mental health, see Craib, 1994 11 23 the former at heart more than we do) That insulting sense of the term persists still in the ways that the term is currently invoked in our workplaces, but it is confused and conflated with another meaning of ‘accountability’, which is that which denotes the capacity to ‘account’ for things: in the sense of counting them up, specifying them and measuring them And of course one can only count up and measure things that are the same – which of course, in turn, dovetails neatly with the other confusion operative between ‘standards’ and ‘standardising’ This is at any rate one way to explain the continuing confusion in our public sector institutions between issues of quality and issues of sameness; one way to try to account for the perception apparently ubiquitous in public sector institutions these days that if something is to be good, it must be identical with everything else that is good within a given institution or set of institutions, and must also be immediately and demonstrably measurable in the same terms in which everything else is immediately and demonstrably measurable But whether or not I am right in this analysis or these two terms, and the deep confusion they appear to generate in allegedly intelligent people who should know better, it would seem indubitably to be the case that ‘standardisation’ is intrinsically at odds with that other (equally dubious) aspiration and touchstone which has characterised managerial discourse in education in recent years: ‘innovation’ In fact, it is no more logical to believe (or to imply) that something will be good because it is new than it is to believe or imply that something will be good because it is the same as everything else But leaving this illogicality aside, it is certainly true that innovation and standardisation are hardly easy bedfellows, and the intrinsic contradictions between them inevitably lead to problems, perhaps even insuperable problems, in the long-term institution of a project like this I want to give my students the skills to write and express themselves; the skills that might enable them in a small way to change the world as well as to understand it I don’t want to attempt to that in the mechanistic , market-driven way that the current skills agenda wants me to; I don’t want to it to fulfil the designs of the skills agenda; because those designs are deeply at odds with the furthering of real intellectual endeavour and the cultivation of independent thinking , enquiry and, conceivably, protest when protest is necessary and desirable There is, perhaps, an uncomfortable irony here, in that one of the students who took WTTS in its first year (student number 26, whose impassioned diatribe against the project I quoted on the first page of this report) sees WTTS as part and parcel of the way in which ‘the Education system has constantly disappointed [him] by forcing [him] into restrictive ways of performing tasks [which have] destroyed [his] creativity and stifled any talent that may have been growing’ His was one of two responses from the 60 essays we analysed that unambiguously hated the project I agree with him that in an ideal world, the skills of selfexpression should be learnt and mastered before students enter HE (as they could be, with more funding for, and a better conception of, compulsory education) I’m sorry he felt that he had ‘probably reduced the number of marks available to him by not supporting the course’ but glad that he ‘felt much better for venting his annoyance’ But I wonder if it occurred to him, then or later, that the inbuilt invitation to critique the project was not quite 24 commensurate with the ‘shackles of an oppressive education’ against which he was reacting My reasons for trying to teach the students the skills of decent argumentation were and remain absolutely at odds with the reasons why the White Paper (for instance), itself only a small manifestation of a deeper postmodernist agenda, wants us to teach them Our students need those skills Most of them don’t have them when they arrive at our door They should, but they don’t, and it is not their fault that they don’t We need to teach them, as efficiently as we can WTTS is a small way to attempt to increase my students’ power to express themselves and argue a case; it evolved in a couple of years to better approximate to the kind of dialogic, democratic educational model I want to teach within It could be better But it was one way to try to offer our students the skills they need within the context of the mechanistic and market-driven educational environment within which we all currently work, and in which we will be condemned to labour for the foreseeable future unless we find ways in which we, and our students, can begin to challenge its presumptions rather than however reluctantly-accept, and so endorse them 25 Appendix One Mid-Semester Evaluation: detailed results Q1 Confidence about writing skills on entering HE: Very confident Confident Didn’t think about it Anxious Very Anxious 5% 49% 23% 23% 0% Q2 Confidence about writing skills after end Semester 12 Very confident Confident Didn’t think about it Anxious Very Anxious 8% 49% 11% 26% 2% Q3 Confidence they think they’ll feel having completed WTTS Very confident Confident Didn’t think about it Anxious Very Anxious 10% 75% 13% 2% 0% some students replied to this question with ‘not applicable’: they may perhaps have been students who shifted subject, into English, at the end of semester one 12 26 Q4 When you arrived at Keele, did you feel you knew what an English Essay should look like? YES 46% NO 5% UNCERTAIN 49% Q5 Did Introductory course improve your knowledge of what is expected from an English essay? YES 84% NO 16% Q6 Has WTTS improved your knowledge of what is expected from an English essay? YES 84% NO 16% Q7 Have you read through the WTTS handbook? YES 93% NO 7% Q11 Have the WTTS assignments made any difference to the way in which you think about writing skills? YES 82% NO 18% 27 Appendix Two Reflective Essay Evaluation: Detailed Results and Student Comments • 93% of the students mentioned the online tutorial they had been asked to follow, Internet Detective Of those 32% said that they had found the tutorial useful; 41% said they did not (but see below, under general conclusions) Similarly 93% of the students mentioned the website reviews (of writing-related websites); of these the students were evenly divide as to whether or not they found the assignment useful (36% yes; 37% no) • 32% of students liked having to revisit the essay they had written in their first semester at Keele 8% did not • A substantial majority liked having to grade past student essays 47% wrote approvingly of this aspect of the course, 10% disapproved • 37% of students thought that they had gained confidence about their writing skills through their engagement in the project; 15% thought that they had not Comments from individual students: • 'The feedback … of the peer group … is a good idea: by sharing • • • • • ideas and opinions work can only be improved.' (2) '[peer group members] are in a much better position to offer tips and advice than … other friends who are not studying English Literature.' (3) 'I found it very hard to criticise my peer’s work, since all our ideas were very different and neither right nor wrong.' (5) 'Many students, especially in the first year, have problems with selfmotivation.' (8) '[The grading of anonymous essays] enable the students who many not be comfortable commenting on their peers essay to … begin … essay assessment on someone’s paper that they not know.' (8) 'I have finished the portfolio slightly more confused, rushed and 28 • • • • • • • • • • generally unsure as to what I was supposed to learn from it all '(9) 'The course was very computer orientated I felt as though I had to actually go and buy a computer and a printer in order to carry out the tasks and print them off in time.' (10) 'I am sitting in a lecture theatre … listening to the new WTTS course being explained My initial fears are, ‘how am I going to write an assignment of 200-300 words per week on top of all my other work, foolishly realising [sic] that in fact this amount of words takes no time at all to write.' (11) 'I believe that assignment one should be made compulsory to all students when they start a university degree, and that similarly assignment two should be undertaken by all English degree students at the beginning of the course in September.'(11) 'I did find it useful to assess [my peer’s] first draft so I could highlight where I believed improvement was needed and then I could go back to my essay and see if I had also made these mistakes in order to correct them.' (11) '[The portfolio] concentrates very much on peer work which is vital as it allows a person to get to know the people who are studying alongside them and, importantly, it allows the group to learn from each other and become more vocal in expressing their ideas and opinions '(13) 'I was unclear as to whether I should just correct grammar and point out any particular passages I felt did not make sense or whether to suggest areas which could be mentioned or commented on further Having my work assessed by my peers, however, was an enlightening experience, as although the work was not marked by an experienced tutor, it was still helpful to read the views of others on my plan and essay and ideas on how I might improve parts of it.' (14) 'It was … useful to read another style of writing [i.e other student’s essays] It increased my vocabulary and allowed me to incorporate difference devices into my writing.' (16) 'My writing has improved from concentrating on a small piece of writing each week I believe that the possibilities [of plagiarism] occurring with [peer group work] is quite high.' (21) 'I took the Renaissance tragedy course not only because I thought I would enjoy the material it covers, but also because I wanted to learn how to write effectively My writing has, I feel improved since taking the course, and this is largely due to the work completed for the portfolio.' (23) 'Instead of leaving [my essay] until the last minute I found that I was planning ahead and managed to go and see my tutor about my plan and ideas.' (23) 'The pivotal problem [is] the reliance upon others [peer group].' (23) • • 'I feel that my writing has improved immensely as a direct result of the weekly exercises … I feel that I am [now] more fully equipped to 29 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • address problems that I may find in my writing in the future, as I am now aware of where to access help and advice.' (24) 'In future I will definitely plan ahead for my work as I felt a greater sense of satisfaction with my essay than I have ever done before I know that I had done my best work … [I] believe that the exercise has encouraged me to approach essays in the same way in the future … I feel that this course is invaluable for first year students, for I believe that it gives us a greater opportunity to well in future when our essays count towards our final degree.' (24) 'Planning the essay in the fifth assignment was brilliant, as I wouldn’t have started planning it that early otherwise.' (25) 'I rewrote my introduction after completing [the essay selfassessment].' (25) 'I think that it was unfair [that only of the Yr modules running that semester had to complete a portfolio].' (25) 'Overall the idea behind the portfolio is excellent, as it is basically a short course in learning how to produce good quality essays however the workload needs to be taken into consideration.' (25) '[of internet reviews] In Geography practicals and subsid computing we were at the time also doing the same kind of internet site evaluation, so it became a bit repetitive.' (25) 'One of the hardest parts … was to keep all my writing below 300 words I did not realise how easy it is to write 300 + words and so I had to always edit out a lot of my work to fit inside the word limit.' (25) 'The section [of the handbook] about how to set out an English essay [was useful] because English essays are very different to Geography and Applied Environmental Science essays.' (25) 'The entire portfolio has been an almost separate entity to the rest of the course, thus feeling like a waste of our time.' (28) 'It is implied (although I am sure it was not the intention) that there is a “right and wrong” way to write an essay.' (31) 'The idea of writing the portfolio was different to anything I had ever done before and was therefore a slightly daunting prospect.' (34) 'It is only looking back reflectively that the benefits of [the internet] assignments are apparent and the benefits are worth it.' (34) 'Even if people did not actually write the whole essay early on, at least they will have been thinking about it for quite a long time before writing it and they will have been planning it in their heads at least, if not on paper.' (37) 'The only part of the portfolio which was a waste of time was this very essay.' (39) 'I really feel the course is a success, as it will have helped many the same as me … they may not like it then but I’m sure they’d thank you in the end.' (40) 30 • 'As a mature student who has been away from full time education for • • • • • • • • • • • • many years, my reaction to the writing of the portfolio may be different to younger students [Seeing other students’ work] was invaluable to me as I realised that my writing skills were of a comparable standard to my peers and this realisation gave me some comfort.' (42) 'I will definitely refer to the guidelines [on assessing essays] before submitting future essays! '(42) 'My confidence has definitely been boosted from doing the regular assignments.' (42) '[Peers] are not as experienced and honest as tutors, and so would should [sic] all have still been given the chance to speak to a tutor, like we did when writing the essay for the last module.' (43) 'I think the portfolio [handbook] was a great help and will keep it throughout my academic career as a reference tool '(43) 'I have used this site [Internet detective ] again [since completing the assignment] with English and my other principal subject, History.' (45) 'If I had a chance to a module in English with a portfolio option again I would not hesitate to choose it.' (45) 'My initial thoughts when we were given the portfolios were those of panic, it meant that I would have to work properly and practice writing every week which was not so very appealing as I often got myself into a sate when writing essays Looking back, I am so grateful that we were given the portfolio as it enabled me to overcome weaknesses in my essays that I could not previously remedy.' (48) 'Working as a team has been both great fun and also an important learning experience, The tutor groups [sic – peergroups? Tutorial groups?] were also valuable as everyone gave their own ideas and structured practice essays together which helped me not only with structuring English essays but also papers for my other subjects I feel much more confident with my writing now and have actually enjoyed it.' (48) 'Previously [information on how to assess an essay] has not been conveyed to pupils or students and I feel that if it was given to school children as well as students the grades would be vastly improved.' (49) 'As [the internet reviews] require you to write for a specific group of people, one becomes aware of audience In an exam or essay one usually forgets that they [sic] are writing for a reader The portfolio should be used by every group in future first years and not just Elizabethan tragedy.' (49) 'The first year at University is about improvement, and this is the aim of the portfolio.' (53) 'I can definitely tell the difference between the writing styles on my 31 first essay to the one I completed this semester.' (53) • '[WTTS] gave me a starting point where from I can base my writing techniques, which will hopefully improve even more over time.' (53) • 'The only reason why I took this course was to learn about Renaissance tragedy, not to waste time doing mindless busy work and to be taken by some step-by-step process on how to write an essay Don’t you think learning how to write an essay would have been more useful during the first semester anyway??? Overall, I am sorry that my time and money was wasted on putting together this portfolio because a) learning how to write an essay would only been [sic] helpful during the first semester, b) my essay-writing skills weren’t improved in any way, and c) I wasted my time, where [sic] I could otherwise have spent studying the literature that I intended to in the first place!!! ' (55) • 'I didn’t want my work to be seen by my peers.' (58) • 'I am a mature student and therefore I not have as much information technology knowledge as the average student It can be quite frightening to be unwittingly thrust into the 21st century, where the computer can swiftly become public enemy number one The Internet Detective enabled me to decide whether a site is worth bothering with or not …' 'I appear to have a problem with comma splicing The second website was extremely helpful to me I still the odd splice, but not as much now as I used to.' 'I assessed the draft of Kathrine’s essay and found it to be very good I could see from her essay that mine was not as good as Kathrine’s and concluded that I should make an appointment with my tutor.' (59) • 'The commentary of your peer’s essay plan was pointless, as it did nothing to help you along with your own essay, unless you were doing the same essay but on different plays, or that both yours and the other person’s ideas were exactly the same and so you could borrow ideas from their essay to put into yours.' (60) 32 Appendix Three Pro-Forma that the students were required to complete For any assessment of their own or another’s work What is the writer trying to argue? Has the writer got an identifiable thesis sentence? What is it? Write it down here, or say that you cannot identify it How satisfactory is this thesis sentence? Can you suggest ways to improve it? If not, say why you think it is satisfactory Can you follow the writers argument easily? (Circle one: Yes/ No.) If not, please confirm that you have marked on his or her essay the places where you are getting confused, and why (Circle one: Yes/ No) Are there any paragraphs of less than 10 lines, or more than a page? (Circle one: Yes/ No) Please confirm that you have drawn the writers attention to these on his or her draft (circle on: yes/ no) Please note things which you think are promising or good in this essay: Please note things which you think need attention and improvement in this essay: For the sample essays, and for your own, please note the grade you would assign this essay if you were marking it: Any other comments? 33 34 Bibliography Brantlinger, Patrick (2001) Who Killed Shakespeare? What's Happened to English Since the Radical Sixties London: Routledge Brennan, John and Ruth Williams, with Zsuzsa Blasko (2003) The English Degree and Graduate Careers, English Subject Centre Report Charney, Davida, and John Newman (1995) 'I'm Just no Good at Writing; Epistemological Style and Attitudes Toward Writing' Written Communication 12 (3) pp 298-330 Craib, Ian (1994) The Importance of Disappointment London, Routledge Gaita, Raymond (2000) 'Truth and the University', in T.Coady (ed.), Why Universities Matter, pp.26-48 Sidney: Allen and Unwin Lea, Mary (1998) 'Academic Literacies and Learning in Higher Education: Constructing Knowledge through Texts and Experience' Studies in the Education of Adults, 30 (2) pp 156-172 Lea, Mary and Brian Street (1999) "Writing as academic literacies: understanding textual practices in higher education', in C Candlin and K Hyland (eds) Writing: texts, Processes and Practices London: Longman Macphail, Ann (2001) ‘ Nominal Group Technique: a Useful Method for Working with Young People’ British Educational Research Journal, 27 (2), pp.161-170 Readings, Bill (1997) The University in Ruins Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press Smith, David, Jennifer Campbell and Ross Brooker (1998) 'Developing Students' essay-writing skills: implications of case studies in essay writing of undergraduate students in an Education Faculty' in Rust, C (ed.) Improving Student learning Oxford: Oxford Brooks Sumsion, Thelma (2000) ‘Nominal Group Technique: a format for Focus Groups,’ paper presented at the Qualitative Evidence-Based Practice Conference, Coventry University, May 15-17 Walker, Melanie,(2002) 'Pedagogy and the Politics of Higher Education,' Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, (1), pp 43-58 ... the writing of some of the students: comparisons between the draft essay grades of many of my tutees with their final grade for the finished assessed essay showed that a number of students had... Conclusions of Pilot Year Evaluation and Amendments to the Project in its second year A number of comments and suggestions for improvement emanated from all the various forms of evaluation of the... writing than they would have had they not had to take WTTS That students were organising their workloads better as a result of the course That peer groups are a good idea and are a desirable way of