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The following Report describes my experience with adding an e-mail discussion list to Education 025, "Introduction to Tutoring Writing," in the fall of 1997. My goal was to provide a vehicle for student interaction outside of class and to engage students in an additional form of informal writing as part of the writing-intensive component of the course. Although student participation in and evaluation of the list serve was not uniformly positive, I was more than satisfied with the results of the experiment given my own sense of its efficacy in stimulating student interaction and the fact that two-thirds of the class Reported an essentially favorable response to this component of the course.
Goals:
I wanted to add an e-mail discussion component to the two tutoring
courses I teach (Education 025 in the fall and Education 026 in
the spring) for several reasons. The enrollment in these half-credit
courses has doubled in the past several years, and I've found
that since the class meets only once a week, there is not always
enough time for students to bring up all the issues they might
like to discuss regarding either the weekly reading assignments
or the in-the-field tutoring experiences. Course evaluations consistently
mention the importance of being able to share this latter experience
with each other, and it seemed to me a list-serve discussion group
would be an excellent way to provide for such interaction. In
addition, I thought the e-mail discussion would offer an additional
opportunity for the kind of informal writing that supplements
the formal writing in these two writing-intensive courses.
Strategies:
Initially I had a number of questions about how to set up and
manage a list serve, so I was extremely grateful for the help
provided by Kathryn Tomasek both in a formal workshop and through
additional informal consultation. I'm also thankful for the speed
with which Matt Burch established the list serve at the beginning
of the semester.
I decided to present a description of the list serve component
of the course both on the syllabus and orally during the first
day of classes. I described my goals for the discussion list,
explained how to subscribe, noted that the minimum requirement
of ten postings during the semester represented a substitution
for one of the 3 pages of journal writing required each week in
previous versions of the course, and indicated my intention to
"stay out of the way" as much as possible in the discussion.
Then, I kind of sat back to see what would happen.
What happened was initially very satisfying--to me, at least.
In hindsight, I realize it was indeed fortunate that the first
posting was from an extremely able and engaged student who raised
a truly interesting and thought-provoking question. Her query
and comments stimulated a flurry of thoughtful responses and set
the tone for the discussion--at least until mid-semester, when
the momentum seemed to flag a bit.
Although student postings throughout the semester did not maintain
the high level of thoughtfulness and attention to intellectually
stimulating issues that was present at the beginning, what nevertheless
pleased me was the variety of uses to which the class members
put the e-mail component of the course. Not only did they raise
questions about the reading that probably could not have been
shoehorned into our very limited class time, they also used the
list serve to query each other about their sense of what I was
looking for in my assignments, to describe the difficulties they
were having with a particular assignment, to discuss ways of attracting
more tutees, to request coverage for their tutoring hours when
they had to miss their assigned times, and to commiserate about
various aspects of the course they found daunting or discouraging
(including uneven access to live tutees, complaints about the
value of the weekly journal writing, the nervousness they experienced
during their first tutoring session, etc.). I was extremely pleased
that so many of the questions and concerns they raised were so
effectively dealt with by their peers (especially given research
suggesting that students remember much more of what they learn
from each other than what they learn from their instructors...).
I did intervene a couple of times during the semester when I thought
clarification or further exploration of an issue was in order,
but on the whole I was able to follow my initial desire to stay
out of the way. They knew of course that I was "eavesdropping"
on their conversation, but I wanted it to remain, as much as possible,
their conversation.
I told the class at the beginning of the semester that although
their individual postings would not be graded, I would evaluate
each student's overall contribution to the list and assign a grade
that would constitute part of their grade for attendance and participation.
My strategy for implementing this evaluation involved using the
little code box to the left of the e-mail list that allows one
to insert an indication of urgency (you know--the little single
or double arrows that can be put into the middle box on the left
by clicking on that box). After reading each entry, I coded it
with a double red arrow (highest) for a really good entry, a single
red arrow (high) for a good entry, no arrow (normal) for a merely
satisfactory entry, and a downward pointing gray arrow (low) for
an entry too brief to be considered a useful contribution to the
discussion. At the end of the semester, I added up each student's
postings by assigning a number corresponding to the quality of
each entry (highest = 3, high = 2, normal = 1, low = 0). Thus,
for example, a student who had posted 8 times, with 2 highests,
2 highs, and 4 normals received a numerical rating of 14. I then
translated these numerical ratings into a letter grade, working
on a scale from a low of C- to a high of A+. This grade was then
factored into each student's participation grade.
Assessment:
As suggested above, I was, overall, very satisfied with this first
experience of incorporating e-mail discussion into a course. Even
though some of the student postings were a bit trite and/or trivial,
on the whole I think the members of this class took the opportunity
for electronic discussion seriously and used the technology for
their own--as well as
my--purposes. I sensed that the majority of students did begin
to feel some sort of ownership of the discussion, and I'm quite
convinced that it contributed to the remarkable level of "esprit"
that developed in the class.
One way to think about the success of the list serve in this course
is to simply note the level of participation. On that score, the
results were mixed. As noted above, students were expected to
post 10 times over the course of the semester. Seven students
posted more than 10 times, seven students posted close to 10 times
(7-9 messages), and seven posted 5 or fewer messages. So two-thirds
of the class approached or exceeded my initial expectations while
one-third fell significantly short. I should mention, however,
that even those students who posted the fewest messages seemed
to take their contribution seriously in that their postings were
on the whole quite thoughtful--when they got around to making
them.
By way of formal assessment, at the end of the semester, I invited
students to comment in their final journal entry on their sense
of the value of the list serve as a component of the course. Of
the 21 students in the class, all but three provided some written
commentary. I coded their responses as follows: 1 = enthusiastic;
2 = generally positive; 3 = fairly positive with some reservations
and/or suggestions; 4 = negative; 5 = no comment. Below are some
sample comments from each of the first four categories:
1 enthusiastic (8 students - 38%)
"I love it"
"a great way of getting our class to interact"
"extremely beneficial"
"I learned a lot from the questions that were posed and answered
as well as the experiences that were described"
"extremely helpful for questions or issues that we didn't
cover in class"
"I think every class should think about [having] an e-mail
discussion list"
"very useful as a means of asking others' opinions and getting
answers to my questions"
"I really liked having people in the class respond to my
problems and questions"
2 generally positive (2 students - 10%)
"a very good idea"
"it turned out better than I expected"
"people posted pretty interesting things"
"more interesting than list serves for other classes"
3 fairly positive with some reservations and/or suggestions
(4 students - 19%)
"useful up to a point"
"people often repeated the same points that others made before
them"
"I wished people had used the list serve more economically"
"suddenly receiving 10 e-mails from class can be intimidating"
"although it is a helpful tool, I do not feel it is necessary
to require 10 postings"
"if postings were optional, I think people would enjoy writing
to it more"
"I was a little confused on how to approach it"
"I think the class should have an e-mail list, but students
shouldn't be forced to do it"
4 negative (4 students - 19%)
"I hate e-mailing unless I really have to"
"journal entries serve the same purpose as the list serve"
"I find it tedious and time-consuming"
"I would rather write more in my journals"
"for someone who is not into working with computers, these
messages were hard to be enthusiastic about"
"I hate e-mail discussion!"
"I don't think it serves a purpose unless it's structured"
"the e-mail thing didn't work so well with me because I never
got inspired enough to write on it"
"they [the postings] were really boring to read sometimes"
My reading of these results suggests that about two-thirds of
the class felt at least somewhat positive about the e-mail component
of the course, while about one-fifth really didn't like it. Better
than that I think it would be unreasonable to expect.
From my point of view, the list serve was a genuinely productive
addition to the course. I sense (and several students' comments
confirmed this impression) that the e-mail discussion contributed
to the esprit of the class, producing a kind of we're-all-in-this-together
attitude that I consider essential to this course, but which is
hard to ensure as the enrollment increases. This year's class
was the largest ever, but it seemed to have the best in-class
rapport. In addition, I was grateful that students were indeed
able to answer each other's questions about issues we didn't have
time to discuss in class. Finally, a benefit I had not predicted
but which I very much appreciated was the way the list serve allowed
me to communicate quickly and easily with the whole class between
class meetings, when, for example I needed to clarify an assignment
or remind them to pick up a handout I had neglected to distribute
in class.
I don't know if this semester's experience was just a case of
beginner's luck, but I am certainly looking forward to using a
list serve in the ESL tutoring course I teach in the spring semester.
I'm also planning to continue the original discussion group for
the "graduates" of the fall class who will be serving
as paid tutors in the spring. It will be interesting to see whether
it continues to function as a way of getting tutors in touch with
each other when it is no longer a component of a course. I'll
keep you posted.
Dissemination:
At the moment I can think of no specific plan for disseminating
the experience described above beyond my current tendency to mention
to colleagues how valuable I have found it and my willingness
to serve as a para-mentor (I don't feel at all like an expert)
to anyone interested in adding this electronic component to one
of their courses. I do think that it would be appropriate for
those faculty designing or redesigning writing-intensive courses
to consider e-mail discussion as one example of the kind of informal
writing that can occur in such courses, and I would be happy to
explore this issue with anyone who's interested.
Last updated
on 11/26/00;
Send questions about this page to: Susan
Dearing
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