I am really interested in developmental courses at the college level, especially reading and writing programs. These programs are separated into 2 separated classes, but I fail to see how students can write without reading or read without writing. What I am interested in doing is looking at reading only, writing only, and reading and writing programs. I am especially interested in seeing if reading and writing combo classes exist at the college level.
After doing research on what programs exist, I would like to do a pilot program at the Alamogordo campus where I have students for 2 courses--reading and writing. (I know that I would have to work with lots of logistical problems involving scheduling and enrollment, but it's doable.) The first time through would be a pilot study to see how students in my courses compare to students who are taking reading and writing as separate courses. (I need to work on how I will assess this.) The goal would be to figure out how to best scaffold learning so that students can get out of developmental as quickly as possible and into the main stream courses that they will be getting actual credit for.
Once the program has been piloted, I would like to do the courses again, but look at case studies of individuals who are in the program. This second time through would give me a better idea of how the two courses are working or not working for students.
I have participated in Learning Communities where I have been the reading instructor and have worked with the composition instructor to form cohesive links between the two classes. The feedback that we got from the students, however, is that there was a lot of overlap in what was being taught. In other words, I was unable to teach just the reading portion of the work, and the other instructor was unable to teach just the composition part of the work. I think the two need to go together in order to be as effective as possible. If I am teaching both courses, then I will know exactly what I am teaching about reading and exactly what I am teaching about writing in order to make the two courses completely complimentary. It would have the same benefit as a Learning Community also in that students will build a social network that they can rely on to help them be successful in college.
This is a rough sketch of my plan. Any suggestions (especially for assessment) would be much appreciated!
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*sigh* dangit. i just lost my comment.
ReplyDeleteTanya this sounds to me like a great idea to pursue, and it makes a lot of sense.
Up front, it seems to me there are a couple of tricky areas. One is that if your approach requires simultaneous registration in two classes, some folks might not be able to afford the time or money to do so. Have you considered breaking breaking up courses so that instead of having two separate reading and writing courses, you still have two courses but they are more like "Reading and writing I" and "reading and writing II?"
The second tricky part, which I'm sure is what you are struggling with, is how to measure the effectiveness, right?
I was thinking of some approaches:
1. Be willing to follow the students throughout successive semesters, to see how they perform. This would involve following studetns from both the traditional approach and yours. Still this begs the question about how to measure performance, but it might give you more defensible data (something like grades throughout their career, drop-out rates, etc).
2. Analyze papers written by students from the two approaches. Figure out how to code for strengths and weaknesses in the papers, and then compare/contrast the papers from each approach.
3. Survey the students from both approaches, and try to guage their subjective perception of how the courses worked for them. A problem here is that students from each approach can't comment on the relative merits of the other approach, since they haven't had it. But if you can come up with an effective set of survey questions, it might work. Perhaps if the survey mentioned the *other* approach (the one they didn't experience), it would give the students something to work with.
Just some ideas off the cuff. I like the idea and it makes sense.
Tanya-
ReplyDeleteI think Aaron gave you some great feedback for your project. I might add that you could do some content analysis of existing syllabi for the various courses and see what sort of overlap exists - if any - in those documents.
It seems you are interested in doing research to lead to institutional/curricular change. This is common for lots of us in rhet/comp/tech writing. What leads you to believe this change is needed? This is where your lit review will start (folks that agree with you - as I do - that reading and writing can't be separated). Then I'd think you'd need some sort of case study/interview data. Are you getting at student attitude here (they are mad because taking both classes seem a waste of time, for ex) or success rates (grades, retention, etc) or both? It might help in your design to do a focus group with students who have taken (or are taking) both classes to begin to formulate question. Also, could you talk to folks who teach both?
Seems like a good start.
Jen