History Research Paper Series--First Draft

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and are ready to start thinking again about scaffolding your research papers.

There are several different approaches that you might take with the next step which is composing the rough draft. You might suggest to students that they have peers, friends, and family read and review their rough draft. You might also suggest that they read the document out loud to themselves or a friend to start catching awkward phrases or mistakes.

I like to use an optional discussion where students post their rough draft for classmates to review and provide feedback. The advantage of this is that students get multiple perspectives from other students who understand the parameters of the assignment. I usually give bonus points (5 points) to the student for just taking the time to put their rough draft in the discussion and additional bonus points (up to 5 points) for taking the time to thoughtfully review a classmates’ paper. It is helpful to reviewing students to provide a rubric or other tools when evaluating the papers so they can provide the most useful feedback to their classmates without sounding overly critical or harsh. I announce to students that I will not read the papers in the discussion, so they feel less risk about showing work that might not be polished. However, I also state I will monitor the discussion for questions and positive, thoughtful correspondence.

Most students seem to understand that the rough draft is a first, second, or even third version of their final paper. They also understand that the rough draft should have citation, quotation, and basic grammar and spelling. However, be sure your students know that the rough draft is to have strong organization and is more than a free writing activity to get thoughts on paper.

For the purposes of this blog, the lesson below is for the student to submit the paper to the instructor to continue the feedback loop presented in other assignments. I do not think that this assignment should be graded except possibly some points for turning it in on time. This is the moment to help students struggling with the writing process and a graded assignment might be too penalizing at this step to encourage improvement.

Objective: Learner will compose a rough draft of their final research paper using the steps prior to this assignment. The rough draft should include a strong thesis statement, demonstrate research on the topic including a Works Cited or Bibliography section, and must be well organized with a concluding statement.

Assignment type: Formative

Assignment Details:
Student will compose a rough draft of their final paper. The rough draft must include the following:
1. Thesis Statement
2. Researched details as examples in the body
3. Works Cited or Bibliography and in-text citation
4. Strong organization of thoughts and ideas

Student will submit the assignment to the instructor for feedback and review. (In my courses the assignments can immediately be run through a plagiarism detector and can be marked up using that tool. Students can see the plagiarism report and this can save many students from accidentally plagiarizing on the graded final version. Additionally, this is a good opportunity to require students to submit some questions about their paper or to have a live session with the instructor to discuss areas for improvement.)

There is no rubric included for this assignment because the focus should be on encouraging your student to improve the assignment for the final version.

Self-Evaluation

The fall semester is drawing to a close and students are taking final exams that evaluate their learning. However, what methods do you have to evaluate your success as an instructor?

Your institution may deliver student surveys. This anonymous and direct communication from students is valuable and launches some of my best ideas, but sometimes these results are very skewed by a couple unhappy students. I also consider performance on assignments and the number of questions I may have had regarding some of them. If students really struggled with something, then I need to go back to the drawing board on that concept. I also include a couple checking-in type discussions for feedback. I ask in the middle of the semester “How’s it going,” so that I can hear from students about what is working or not for them and share some ideas of how they could get the most out of the course materials. Another discussion at the end of the semester asks “What did you think”. Here students are encouraged to provide their thoughts about assignments, discussions, workload, and digital content. I thank each of them, positive or negative, and again get some of my best ideas directly from them.

Getting student feedback is important, but you should also consider using some rubrics for course design to evaluate your courses. CCCOnline gives faculty a self-evaluation list to consider. It asks a series of yes/no questions to help faculty carry on their inner-dialogue any time of the year. Other rubrics are more formal such as the Blackboard Greenhouse Project and Quality Matters. For more, you might also check out the De Anza College page for Excellence in Online Teaching and Learning and Best Practices in Online Teaching at Connexions.

We usually get a little extra time between fall and spring semesters, so no matter what, take a break over the holidays and then take time evaluate your course and online teaching.