digital digs - Latest Comments in product orientation in the age of networked composition

Re: product orientation in the age of networked composition

Charles — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:01:22 -0000

The primary factor in learning is time on task. So, in giving feedback, I have to prioritize what I want my students to learn. If I give too much feedback, they wouldn't be able to spend sufficient time on all of it to learn those various points well. The analogy of sports should work here. Coaches don't give a detailed list of every point an athlete needs to work on, only those seen as most pertinent in improving his/her playing. Once particular points have been learned, then a coach provides new items to learn. So, in some sense, instructors cannot get out of the "correcting" business even if they do not focus on surface level errors at all.

Returning to copyediting, it won't interfere with the coaching an instructor gives, but students won't learn those points. But if those surface level skills are not the most important items to learn in FYC, then contracting them out makes sense.

Eventually, however, those students will have to deal with those surface features, whether in another class or in their careers. So, again, we return to the point of which feedback should be prioritized at a particular time in a student's education.

From my perspective, there is no difference between feedback that leads to learning and feedback that leads to a more polished product. If the latter is not considered, it is not feedback, although it does affect the polishing of the final product.

Again, there are limits to how much feedback an instructor can give due to time, and I don't think long hours of correcting is productive in terms of learning. So I'm not opposed to outside editing. At the same time, there is a limit to how much feedback a student can take in that leads to learning, and yet I would like to see that outside editing leads to some learning without overwhelming a student. That might be accomplished by keeping a journal that tracks errors that repeat frequently, thus raising awareness of those errors and consequently, with time, reducing their frequency of repeating.

Re: product orientation in the age of networked composition

digitaldigs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:10:58 -0000

I can agree with this Charles. I guess my question here is: what relationship pertains between feedback from which students might learn and feedback which leads to a more polished final product? Do the two have any necessary relationship? Would having students pay for surface-level copyediting interfere with their learning? We put so much energy in FYC into error correction. At least this is what we always here, right? Laments about long hours of grading or correcting.

What would happen if we just took the "correcting" business out of the instructors' hands? Would we get a better pedagogy in return?

Re: product orientation in the age of networked composition

Charles — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:51:17 -0000

For determining the boundary line of feedback, I would put it at learning. That is, comments and feedback should not do the work for the student but should point the student to areas that need re-thinking. Generally speaking, a copy editing service does re-writing that the student need not reconsider while, I hope, an instructor and classmates offer suggestions that a student at least needs to consider as they revise and edit their work. So, if a student is learning from feedback, then that feedback can be offered by anyone.

Re: product orientation in the age of networked composition

Alex Reid — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:05:25 -0000

OK, so this comment is mostly advertisement, but I'm going to leave it up because I'm amused by what it implies for the quality of the product provided. Caveat emptor.

Re: product orientation in the age of networked composition

Essay writer — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:48:10 -0000

Certainly, thats right but we can't really control the students who wants to ask for help even though they will pay for it. What they think is that "If they pay, they'll pass their subjects", so asking and paying someone to write them an essay isn't a big deal for them as long as they pass.