DAJ Feedback Loop

Since the research project I’m doing focuses on the value/benefit of the Discourse Analysis Journal (DAJ) assignment, I want to spend some time thinking through some of the responses to yesterday’s in-class writing on the DAJ. I presented the students with the survey data and asked the groups to discuss what the numbers indicated to them. I then asked each student to write a paragraph response to each of three prompts:

1. How did you interpret the “neutral” choice on the survey?
2. How would you summarize your group’s discussion?
3. What are your reactions to the DAJ so far?

I’m ok thinking that the “neutral” was a methodological screw-up on the survey, and I agree with several of the students who claim it allowed for “cop-out” answers. I was really just trying to provide a continuum of responses and saw the jump from “somewhat agree” to “somewhat disagree” as too big.

The larger findings from the freewrites suggest several things:

1. Students are not seeing a significant connection between the journals and the rest of the course.
2. They want to see samples of good entries.
3. They want more direct feedback from me.

Some evidence for these findings:

“…the assignment is being completed but the big picture isn’t being brought into class.”
“I feel like it is the same thing over and over and still not a huge change for the better.”
“Yes, the students are trying to do the assignments with the fair understanding of what is expected and are reflecting on each piece as a separate piece of discourse but I believe we are not consciously/actively thinking about how this relates to the larger objectives of the course. We acknowledge its importance . . . but we haven’t figured out / done much to incorporate these very ‘private’ (‘journals’) assignments into the classroom discussion.”
“The DAJ at first was not so difficult but once I began learning other concepts, it seemed like I couldn’t keep up with all the new information. . . . I only interpret the bigger picture of the text and neglect to pinpoint the concepts discussed in class.”
“I feel that the DAJs should be assessed more on completion than anything else. This is an opportunity for the student to get his thoughts organized and coherent while trying to grasp terms. It would be more beneficial if instead of the professor taking time to give a point value to take time and write what is good/bad or ‘Did you think about x’?”
“I think in order for it to be a useful forum for testing/practicing concepts, it would be nice to get feedback more often.”

I think one of the first things I need to do is explain my lack of comments on the journals. It’s kind of two-fold: One, I got about 20 journals, each with up to 9 pages of entries. I read through them for trends and problems, but not with an eye toward commenting because I would have had them for way too long. And the kind of quick comments I could have written probably would have confused people more than not. The fact is that I liked most of what I saw in the journals. The lower grades came mostly for incompleteness. Two, part of me wanted to encourage students to come see me with questions and requests for comments. This is sort of my way of coaxing people into my office hours. If I gave comments toward improvement, some students might have taken them as the last word and then choose not to come talk with me. This may be a strategy that works well for some students while angering others. In class on Wednesday, I tried to make very clear that I am always available to talk about any aspect of the class. (It always surprises me the extent to which some students will sit in class frustrated and then choose not to talk to the teacher.) I very much respect the desire for feedback, especially when the work is time-consuming. So, I’ll figure out ways of getting more feedback to the students. I might rotate through the groups, so that only one group is without its journals for a give period. I might also ask them to trade journals for a night and respond to each other.

I don’t think everything done for class needs some overt connection to everything else, but clearly students will not engage an assignment fully if they don’t see its relevance (which is exactly the problem with many of the writing assignments floating around campuses). The thing is, discourse analysis is as much about habits of mind as is it about specific techniques and strategies—perhaps more so. One goal behind the DAJ is to encourage a continual analytical perspective on the world—it’s to push students to see every text or group of texts as rife with meanings and functions to analyze. I know it’s tiring some times, but it can also be thrilling. And I’m not trying to be corny.

So the challenge for the DAJ remains to make it more vital to the students’ experiences with the course and its assignments. Tomorrow I will suggest the feedback stuff above and will also suggest that students use their next few entries to draft the annotations for their poster projects.

Intellectualism

I need to get to the analysis of the DAJs, but that’s going to have to wait one more post. I was feeling really sick on Monday and just couldn’t get focused on the academic tasks at hand, which included leading (and participating in) a discussion of Sandra Silberstein’s wonderful War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. I call it wonderful even when some of the students (who took the time to read it) were more like, “ehh.” And what added to the ehh-factor? The students’ responses could have easily been interpreted as an anti-intellectual dismissal of academic discourse. When confronted with the kinds of books I read for living, many students claim that they don’t speak to them, that they bore them, or that they make points so subtle and minute as to not be important. Teachers often dismiss these reactions as laziness or lack of intellectual curiosity. And they’re not always wrong—though they sometimes leap to that conclusion too quickly. Some academic prose is boring, petty, and narrow. BUT, I didn’t sense that the students who were “ehh” about the book were so for these reasons. Several of them said that Silberstein didn’t say much about what they didn’t already know. Two points about this reaction: one, these students have been thinking all along about how language shapes our political/social institutions, so Silberstein’s analysis, while deft and specific, easily confirms much of what they’ve been considering; two, I didn’t do a good enough job of introducing the book as an example of discourse analysis written for a larger public audience than usual. What I think some students missed was how accessible Silberstein made her analysis—almost to the point of making it appear “simple.” But discourse analysis does not have to be difficult or obtuse; in fact, it’s most effective when its accessible and timely. On Wednesday, I’ll discuss more the approaches and techniques Silberstein uses.

Here’s the frustration: half the class didn’t crack the book—and half of that half appeared to not even know they were supposed to (despite the syllabus and my announcement the week prior). What’s up? In my frustration I threatened quizzes, a move which firmly placed me back at the center of the class. And what good would they do?

What bothers me is not so much my lack of power to get the students to read. Instead, I’m simply disappointed that (some) students are ok with missing the intellectual exchange that comes with reading and discussion. I’ve tried to establish this class as one that emphasizes intellectualism over good-student-ism. The class should be a gathering of intellectuals looking to reflect on their own ideas and reactions, not a group of students following the rubric toward a particular grade. Why don’t some students want to claim the more interesting identity?

Am I failing here? Probably too early to tell. I’ve spent a great deal of energy explaining and providing rationales for the structure of the course. I have not spent the same amount of energy defending the book choices and assignments. And I think the expenses have been appropriately distributed. But is it because there was not an assignment or a test directly linked to Silberstein’s book that students chose to ignore it? Does education really require such direct links between ideas and assessment? Are the only things worth learning the things we get graded on? Depressing.