This project was part of an elective course focused on "designed thinking". This notion was articulated around concepts from Stanford University's Design School (d.school).
In this project, students were asked to identify a problem of practice that could be addressed using design thinking skills. All were guided to choose a problem that was large in scale and one that didn't have a concrete solution. For me, this was easy. Years had gone by in my teaching where I had worked with numerous classes on core writing skills. Yet, each time I went to grade student writing , I found myself grappling for more time and wishing I had a better solution for giving feedback without all the tedious work. Furthermore, I felt that my students learned no more from my strenuous feedback on papers and I only gained extra frustration when they threw every minute of my feedback in the trash can. I found myself pondering time and time again...there has to be a better way ! Herein lied my problem to work on: how can teachers grade writing skills in an efficient way that also engages the student? To begin, I identified a few key areas to explore: 1. What is it like to receive feedback from a teacher and what would/should a student want to get out of the feedback? 2. What is it like to give feedback a s a teacher? What are the goals of giving writing feedback to students? 3. What modern technology can I use to help solve this problem? 4. What already exists? In other words, what have other teachers done to improve this problem? In all, I gained a deep understanding of what students might want out of their writing assignments and I was able to identify these specific trends: 1. Students will always use the time given to them (up until the last minute), no matter if it is an 8 p.m. or 7 a.m. deadline. 2.More time spent doesn't always mean a better product, but often it does correlate. 3. Students aren't drafting much. 4.Students spend a very brief time working though a "finished" piece, especially after grading. 5. Students are more responsive to a grade than they are to a "process" for their writing. 6. Thought provoking assignments ( related to current events, or their own opinions, etc.) tend to have more turn ins, more drafts, and generally more progress. |
Click on the specific segments below to see each progression of work/thinking for this project:
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