A Newsletter from the Center for Teaching and Learning at Western Kentucky University

February 1996               "Ideas not Absolutes"                         Vol. 11, No. 3

In Celebration of Teaching Activities on March 5 & 6 (1996):

Announcement of first annual "In Celebration of Teaching" activities

Dear CTL

Sally Kuhlenschmidt, Director, CTL

New at the Center --

Reviews of two books on writing now available at the Center

A book review by Retta E. Poe, Psychology

A book review by Carlton Jackson, History

Please scroll down to read the articles.

In Celebration of Teaching" Activities --
March 5 & 6 Culminate in two addresses by Keynote Speaker, Dr. Carl Hurley

Dr. Carl Hurley will be the keynote speaker for the March 6 "In Celebration of Teaching" activities. The events have been planned by a faculty committee to show appreciation for WKU faculty teaching efforts. Dr. Meredith, Dr. Haynes, and Dr. Addingt on have been strongly supportive of the celebration. Faculty are invited to enjoy a free lunch and Dr. Hurley's presentation. Drawing from his background in higher education in Kentucky, Dr. Hurley has "been there" and knows the classroom well. He mixes his observations on motivation with humorous gems into an address that leaves his audiences inspired and refreshed.

Born in 1941 in a two-room cabin built by his father on a three-acre hillside farm in the Appalachian Mountains of Laurel County, Kentucky, Carl Hurley comes from a family of storytellers and talkers. Hurley talked and worked his way through the local h igh school where he recalls being on the first Hazel Green football team: "I was a defensive lineman. I had to adjust to the psychological effect of looking across the line at someone called a ‘tiger' and knowing that I was a ‘bullfrog'." The determinat ion of a bullfrog in a world of tigers served Hurley well. He enrolled at Eastern Kentucky University with only fifty dollars. After all, tuition was just $35.50, and, as his father told him, there would be money left over to buy a book. Hurley worke d on the school's dairy farm to meet expenses and stayed at EKU to earn the bachelor and master degrees. He received a doctorate in education from the University of Missouri and returned to EKU as teacher and coordinator of the university's secondary edu cation program.

A few years ago, his propensity for humor and motivation propelled him into the role of educational/motivational speaker. He delivers about 150 speeches a year and has been recently featured on the Nashville Network and Kentucky Educational Television.

Dear CTL by Sally Kuhlenschmidt, 
Director, CTL

A few updates first: I've set up EMail accounts for the students in one class of mine and am enjoying being able to easily get announcements to everyone. I have encouraged them to use EMail to help arrange their group projects. 

Readin', Writin', and ‘Rithmetic in the electronic age: The day after the last Dear CTL concerning software substitutes went to press I learned of a class on campus that is using software in place of texts: Barry Brunson and Claus Ernst use Mathematic a for their basic algebra class instruction. Students meet in the lab and work through instructions and various problem sets. They are able to change the conditions of the problems and get immediate feedback on their performance. Homework is submitted electronically and Brunson and Ernst act as consultants to the students while the students are actively involved in learning the material. If you have advisees who might benefit from a more hands- on approach, consider their sections.

This semester Joe Glaser made lemonade out of lemons for his English 300 class. His text didn't arrive in time so he has had students seek out information on the Internet to summarize, critique and synthesize for his composition class. He reports that after a brief introduction they easily adapted to using the Internet search process. When the books finally arrived, the students did not want to return to the text. He said that checking plagiarism is very easy--he can sit in his office and access the source. The Center has a copy of the Internet instructions he distributed to students if anyone wants to see them. The Center also has the 1 page introduction to EMail that I used.

Finally, I have received a question on how to get students to meet deadlines for research papers. I took it to our brown bag discussion groups and the first two responses were "I don't know" and "hah." But then we had productive discussions which gene rated a number of suggestions. Having consequences for lateness figured noticeably in the discussions as did leaving the responsibility on the student. Reducing the grade by a letter grade (or half a letter grade) for each day late was a favored strateg y. Then the student chooses to lose or be on time. Some favored setting interim deadlines for parts of a total paper. (Drafts must be collected). When grading those segments, it must be made clear that merely making corrections does not guarantee the student an A -- quality of product must be conveyed as being of importance. The level of your students will also be a factor to consider. Finally, despite your best efforts, some students will be unable or unwilling to meet deadlines. It is your teac hing philosophy that will dictate your response. Do you see them as adults who must live with, or even "have a right to," the consequences of their decisions? Is this behavior a developmental stage? Are you training them to be citizens? Do you want to encourage individuality?

Thanks to the Brown Bag participants (Wed 11:45 DUC 226; Thu 1:00 Faculty House) for these ideas: Steve Boilard, Nancy Goldfarb, Dorcey Grice, Chris Hamilton, Barb Kacer, John White.

New at the Center -

A book review by Retta E. Poe, Psychology Dept.

Teaching and Assessing Writing (2nd edition) Edward M. White (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994) Teaching and Assessing Writing, by Edward M. White, is intended for three groups: English department faculty who teach composition courses in high school and college, instructors from other disciplines who incorporate writing instruction in th eir courses, and administrators in charge of assessing both the writing skills of students and the pedagogical skills of those assigned to teach writing. As a member of the second group, I found the book to be useful in a few areas but less relevant in others. I suspect that the book is probably more successful in meeting some of the needs of the members of the other two groups. However, although I did not find very many useful ideas for my teaching, as a parent I was interested to learn what seem to be the theoretical foundations and practical limitations of efforts to teach writing skills. I found myself wondering whether I were suddenly privy to the secrets of KERA!

White has divided the book into two parts. The first part, "Assessment - A Critical Tool in the Teaching of Writing," is directed toward instructors and includes suggestions for designing writing assignments and essay exams, responding to student wri ting, and using portfolios. Although most of White's specific recommendations for creating good writing assignments are primarily applicable to the kinds of writing students do in English courses (and perhaps other humanities courses), he makes a coupl e of points that are relevant to instructors in any discipline. First, it's important to remember that the teaching of writing and the assessment of writing cannot be separated from each other; as we develop writing assignments, we need to have an idea about the purposes the assignments are intended to serve and how we plan to measure the success of the assignments. In addition, we must give very clear, very specific, written assignment instructions; if we take a casual, informal approach to making a n assignment, our students are likely to take a similar approach in completing the assignments. White also recommends conducting extensive in-class discussions of writing assignments, and he offers suggestions for facilitating a class discussion to dev elop scoring criteria for writing assignments.

White's chapter on creating and using essay tests provides several useful tips for developing good essay questions and for helping students to do well on essay exams. One illustration is his discussion of the words frequently used in essay directions ; though the instructor may think everyone knows what compare, compare and contrast, explain, discuss, describe, etc., mean, there actually is no common understanding of their meanings. Therefore, White suggests that we should either explain what we me an by the words we use or else figure out how to reword the question so that the instructions are clear. He offers some ideas on how to do this, and I plan to use some of his suggestions.

Since grading papers and exams is my least favorite part of my job, I was very hopeful that I would find some magic tricks in the chapter on responding to student writing. However, White's focus is on how to help students discover their own "voices" and develop their skills in descriptive and expository writing. Since my discipline requires more technical and analytical writing, I did not find much in this chapter that I could use. Similarly, the chapter on using portfolios to teach and assess writ ing had limited applicability to my teaching, but I can imagine that some of White's suggestions would be helpful to instructors in different courses.
Part Two of Teaching and Assessing Writing, "Writing Beyond the Classroom," concerns group assessment of writing skills and assessment of writing programs. As White notes in the preface, "here assessment is not so much formative as it is summative, p roviding information on student performance for various institutional purposes" (p. xviii). Some of the topics addressed include selecting appropriate measures of writing, organizing a system for reading portfolios or holistic essays, and developing re liable and valid evaluation criteria for writing. Since these tasks fall way outside my little sphere of responsibility, I only skimmed Part Two of the book. However, those of us who will eventually be involved in developing a rising junior assessment a s part of the "Moving to a New Level" initiative may want to keep this book in mind as a potential reference. Also, some of the issues White raises mirror my own concerns about the portfolio assessments currently in use as part of the Kentucky Instruc tional Results Information System (KIRIS), so some of the information may have value to some of us as parents and all of us as taxpayers.

In sum, I believe that while few faculty would find all of this book useful, most faculty would find some chapters particularly informative. Therefore, I certainly think that faculty who teach "w" courses or are otherwise concerned with improving thei r writing instruction will want to take a look.

New at the Center

A book review by Carlton Jackson, History Department

The Art of Writing for Publication. Kenneth T. Henson. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995). This book by EKU Education Dean Kenneth T. Henson is a practical, common-sense guide to writing intended for publication. His first and most important point is that too many would-be writers fuss about "finding" the time. None of us "finds" time to write, for we all have the same twenty-four hours a day. There is a big difference between "finding" and "scheduling." Good, careful authors do the latter and avoid the former.

The second most important point is: why do people write? Most academics in this book said writing made them better teachers, dismissing the old canard that either one is a good teacher or researcher, but not both. Certainly, good teaching and resear ch are complementary in a university setting.

One must overcome the myth that professional writers are "born," not "made," and that much writing success comes from "good luck." (Many times, a writer's "good luck" comes at 4 a.m., when he/she is struggling over a manuscript). Successful authors are self-disciplined and motivated.

After finding a topic to write on (from theses, dissertations, newspapers, magazines, etc.), the writer must determine the method that best suits him/her. Some work two hours a day early in the morning or at night, others count their words at the en d of a session, and some end their day's work in the middle of a sentence so that completing it will make it easier to start the next segment of a project. No matter the subject, one psychological factor is of utmost importance, and that is confidence: if you don't believe in your work, how will you ever get others to see its significance?

Word usage is essential. Don't write down to your audiences. Get rid of as many prepositional phrases as you can, and put everything into the active voice. Just remember: brevity is the essence of scholarship. That is why rewriting is so necessary. Avoid jargon, even in academic journals. When you use "big words" to convince everyone of your erudition, you're only proving that you don't have any. Avoid buzz words like "prioritize" and "finalize." And, unlike Dean Henson in this volume, do try t o eliminate split infinitives from your writings.

Dean Henson is known for his numerous books, articles, and workshops on writing. Even if you've been writing for several years, or are just beginning, this book will be valuable to you because of its down-to-earth approach to the art of creative res earch and writing. It even tells you how to make proper paragraphs, the two words with which never to begin a sentence, the importance of catchy titles and subheadings, and how to submit your materials to editors. All these qualities, and more, are hi ghlighted in this worthwhile, easy to read, volume.

Jim Wayne Miller
WKU faculty in MLIS,
poet, winner
of the Thomas Wolfe
Award in Poetry

 

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