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PEER RESPONSE OF DIGITAL AND NON-DIGITAL TEXTS
IN A COMPOSITION CLASSROOM

presented by

STEPHANIE A. SHEFFIELD

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IV

 

PEER RESPONSE OF DIGITAL AND NON-DIGITAL TEXTS IN A
COMPOSITION CLASSROOM

By

Stephanie A. Sheffield

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rhetoric and Writing

2009

ABSTRACT
PEER RESPONSE OF DIGITAL TEXTS IN A COMPOSITION CLASSROOM
By

Stephanie A. Sheffield

The practice of peer response of student texts has long been a staple of the
composition classroom, but existing peer response approaches do not easily adapt for use
with digital texts (e. g., digital movies or slide presentations). This study uses grounded
theory methodology to examine peer response of digital and non-digital, print-on-paper
texts in a first-year university writing classroom. Through qualitative and quantitative
analyses of response session transcripts, classroom artifacts, and students’ responses to
multiple surveys, this study focuses on the differences in how peer response is
implemented and in the feedback offered when students engage in peer response of
digital and non-digital texts.

The results of this study indicate a significant number of differences between the
ways students in this classroom responded to their peers’ digital and non-digital texts:
students offered far more comments in non—digital sessions, and focused those comments
more heavily on sentence-level concerns (e. g., punctuation, word choice, phrasing), while
in digital per response sessions, students focused their comments on more global, whole-
text concerns (e.g., organization, thesis). Students also seemed to take on different roles
in the different peer response sessions, responding as fellow writers in the non-digital

sessions but taking on a more passive “audience” when discussing the digital texts.

Additionally, students reported the development of fewer and less-detailed plans for the
revision of their texts following the digital peer response sessions.

Though neither the digital nor the non-digital sessions can be characterized as
entirely positive or negative, my results emphasize the need for approaches to peer
response designed specifically for digital texts, and to that end, I conclude with
suggestions, drawn from my results, intended to contribute to the development of such

approaches.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While there’s no way I could possibly acknowledge everyone whose help and
support over the past few years has helped me make it to this point relatively unscathed,
there are a handful of individuals to whom I am particularly indebted, and to whom I
want to offer my sincerest thanks here:

To my committee chair, Danielle DeVoss, who regularly managed to read and
respond to my drafts with superhuman speed, and whose feedback and encouragement
over the past eighteen months kept me moving forward;

To my committee members, Marilyn Wilson, David Sheridan, and Nancy DeJoy,
whose support, guidance, and enthusiasm throughout this entire process have been
invaluable;

To my wonderful friends, most especially Howard Glasser, Mike McLeod, Amy
Pavlov, Jeremy Francis, and Robin Revette Fowler, who were always willing to offer
dissertation feedback or advice when I needed it, equally willing to talk about anything
but the dissertation when I needed a distraction, and incredibly patient on those frequent
occasions when I apparently needed both at the same time;

To my brother Allen, who had the misfortune to share a house with me during the I
Year of the Dissertation, and who managed to keep me sane through judicious use of
Skip-Bo and frosties;

And finally, to my parents, who have always believed that I could do anything,
and who occasionally manage to convince me of that, as well. If there’s anything in my

life that I have a right to be proud of, it’s that they are proud of me.

iv

For Mom and Dad.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ ix
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
My experiences with peer response .............................................................................. 2
My experiences with digital writing ............................................................................. 4
The problem of digital writing and peer response in my own writing classroom ........... 6
Researching digital peer response: A pilot study .......................................................... 7
My guiding research questions ..................................................................................... 9
CHAPTER 2: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...................................................... 11
Peer Response in the Writing Classroom: An Overview ............................................. 12
Digital Writing in the Writing Classroom: An Overview ............................................ l4
Justifications: Peer response and new media in the writing classroom ........................ 18
First Justification: Connecting the writing classroom to the “real world” ................ 18
Second Justification: Awareness of audience ......................................................... 21
Third Justification: Opportunities for learning ........................................................ 26
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 30
Chapter Summary ...................................................................................................... 31
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 32
Context of the research .............................................................................................. 32
The research site: Michigan State University ......................................................... 32

The first-year writing program: Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures ............ 33
WRA 150: “Writing: The Evolution of American Thought” ................................... 35
Classroom environment ......................................................................................... 36

The instructor ........................................................................................................ 38
Peer response in this classroom .............................................................................. 39
Methodology: Grounded Theory ................................................................................ 41
Research Questions ................................................................................................ 41
Conceptual Framework .............................................................................................. 42
Selber’s Theory of Multiliteracies .......................................................................... 43
Connectivism: A theory of networked learning ...................................................... 48
Multiliteracies, connectivism and peer response ..................................................... 49
Data collection and analysis ....................................................................................... 51
Data Collection ...................................................................................................... 51
Data Analysis—Grounded theory .......................................................................... 55
Chapter Summary ...................................................................................................... 64
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS ............................................................................................... 65
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 65
Participant Data ......................................................................................................... 66
Participant Demographics ...................................................................................... 66

vi

Attitude towards peer response at start of data collection ...... 67

Usefulness of peer response given specific tasks .................................................... 69
Characteristics of participants’ most useful peer response experience .................... 71
Characteristics of participants’ least useful peer response session .......................... 74
Session Data .............................................................................................................. 76
Context of PPR and DPR sessions ......................................................................... 76
The PPR sessions ................................................................................................... 78
The DPR Sessions ................................................................................................. 86
Debriefing the sessions: Post-Peer Response surveys ................................................. 92
Development of revision plans ............................................................................... 92
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 96
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ................................................... 98
Addressing my research questions ............................................................................. 98
Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) vs. Lower Order Concerns (LOCS) .................... 100
Repeating back (“What I hear ”) vs. responding as audience (“What I need”) ..... 106
Modeling ............................................................................................................. 107
Discussion of those results not arising from my research questions .......................... 107
Use of the response framework: ........................................................................... 108
Teacher involvement in PPR vs. DPR sessions .................................................... 110
Revision plans: .................................................................................................... 1 11
Implications for the practice of peer response of digital texts ................................... 112
1. Opportunity for multiple viewings of digital texts ............................................ 112
2. Control of playback that lies with the responder ............................................... 113
3. Ability to comment during initial or early text experience ................................ 114
4. Acquisition of “Revision and responding vocabulary” for digital texts ............. 115
Limitations of this research ...................................................................................... 116
Suggestions for future research ................................................................................ 118
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 120
APPENDIX A: PRE- PEER RESPONSE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE .................... 122
APPENDIX B: POST-SESSION SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE ................................. 123
APPENDIX C: PEER RESPONSE WORKSHEET, THE WRITING CENTER AT
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ........................................................................... 124
APPENDIX D: ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION FOR PRINT-TEXT WRITING
ASSIGNMENT ........................................................................................................... 126
APPENDIX F: ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION FOR DIGITAL WRITING
ASSIGNMENT ........................................................................................................... 129
APPENDIX G: CATEGORIES OF RESPONSE FROM SIMMONS (2003) ............... 133
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 134

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Codes derived from open coding ....................................................................... 58
Table 2 Code categories derived from axial coding ........................................................ 61
Table 3 Degree of helpfulness in revising/making large-scale improvements (n=20) ..... 68
Table 4 Degree of helpfulness in correcting surface-level errors (n=19) ......................... 69
Table 5 Usefulness of peer response given specific tasks (n=20) .................................... 71
Table 6 Characteristics of Most Helpful Peer Response Session (n=20) ......................... 73
Table 7 Characteristics of Least Helpful Peer Response Session (n=18) ........................ 75
Table 8 Categories of response observed in PPR sessions .............................................. 85
Table 9 Categories of response observed in DPR Sessions ............................................. 92
Table 10 Revision plans developed as a result of PPR sessions (n=20) .......................... 94
Table I I Revision plans developed as a result of DPR sessions (n=15) .......................... 96
Table 12 Comparing number and type of comments across PPR and DPR sessions ....... 99

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Layout of classroom in which data was generated, indicating placement of
classroom furniture as well as video— and audio-recording devices.) ....................... 38

Figure 2 In order to introduce and explain his literacy frameworks, Selber offers this
breakdown of the categories, their overarching metaphors, their overall objectives,
and the ways in which they position students (Multiliteracies, p. 25) ..................... 44

Figure 3 My revision of Selber’s framework explanation, representing the application of
Selber’s frameworks to digital composing .............................................................. 47

Figure 4 Diagram of relationships between core categories and the other significant
categories and sub-categories derived from coding ................................................ 64

ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

It’s no longer profound to claim that the definition of “composition” as it is
understood in composition classrooms is changing; scholars, theorists, and instructors
have been writing, arguing, revising, and rewriting about this phenomenon for decades
(e.g., Elbow, 1968; Hairston, 1982; Crowley, 1998; F aigley, 2004; Yancey 1997, 2004;
Bolter and Grusin, 1998; Kress, 1997, 2003; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Hooks, 2003;
DeVoss, 2002, 2007; Hawisher and Selfe, 2004; Ball, 2004; Lankshear and Knobel,
2003), and the only disagreements seem to revolve around how the definition is changing
and how theorists and practitioners Should respond to that change. It would be far more
controversial—if not ridiculous—to claim that the definition of composition (or audience,
or authorship, or any one of a number of aspects of the meaning that is made in comp
classrooms) has remained at all constant over the last thirty years, which is why it’s so
surprising that there is at least one significant feature of composition pedagogy that has
remained more or less the same since the 19705: the practice of in-class peer response.
Despite an apparent state of general agreement among composition scholars about the
changing definition of composition—judging by the number of published texts either
celebrating or bemoaning it—the practice of in-class peer response1 continues to be
implemented in classrooms today in much the same ways as it has been implemented for

over three decades.

 

‘ Given the variety of ways in which peer response is enacted in classrooms, a broad definition of the
practice is necessary: for the purposes of this review of the literature, peer response will be understood as
the act of students, within the framework of a classroom activity, offering comments and/or suggestions on
the work of their peers as part of the process of composition. This definition of peer response, though
broad, serves to exclude from examination the practice of peer response within writing centers and the
response that occurs within non-academic writing groups—both of which have undergone their own
related. but distinct, evolutions.

This apparent contradiction serves as the basis for the research project at the center
of this dissertation: an examination of the ways in which the media in which student texts
are composed affects the practice of peer response in that classroom. In order to better
understand this phenomenon, I collected data about two instances of in-class peer
response in a first-year writing classroom at Michigan State University; at two different
points during the semester, I made video- and audio—recordings of six peer response
groups, of two to four students each, as they offered each other feedback regarding two
different writing assignments—one print-text, and one digital. I also collected survey
data from each member of these groups regarding their post—session responses to the
sessions themselves, in order to gauge their perceptions of , and attitudes towards, what
occurred during those sessions.

In this chapter, I discuss the factors that influenced the development of this
project and its guiding research questions, beginning with my own positioning regarding
peer response, digital writing’, and the teaching of composition, and concluding with the

pilot study I conducted at Michigan State during the spring semester of 2007.

My experiences with peer response
I’ve been a believer in the power of peer response since 1996, when, as a
sophomore in college, I first started working as a tutor at my university’s writing center.

I came to that work knowing nothing about the theory behind the practices and protocols

 

2 In defining digital writing for the purposes of this project and my own work. I needed an understanding of
digital writing that encompassed not only the texts themselves, but also the production, consumption, and
distribution of digital texts. Therefore, I use the definition of the term offered by the Writing in Digital
Environments (WIDE) Research Center Collective in 2005, who wrote, in part, that “digital writing is the
art and practice of preparing documents primarily by computer and often for online delivery. Digital
writing often requires attention to the theories and practices of designing, planning, constructing. and
maintaining dynamic and interactive texts . . . . Texts that may, and often do. include multiple media
elements, such as images, video, and audio.”

I was taught at orientation, but I was convinced by the results—when I worked with my
writing center clients, most of whom I met with on a weekly basis, I saw progress in both
their abilities as writers and in their attitudes towards writing. That was enough to sell
me on the “correctness” of the approaches that I and my writing center colleagues were
required to use in our sessions: asking clients to read their work aloud, never writing on a
client’s paper, asking questions rather than making statements, and avoiding value
judgments in favor of more specific criticism. It wasn’t until years later, as a graduate
assistant/writing “consultant”3 at the Writing Center at Michigan State University, that I
was first introduced to the wide body of literature on writing center theory and practice—
in effect, this was my first exposure to the idea that a writing center was a site of
(sometimes heated) intellectual discourse, and that there was no consensus regardin g
what constituted “proper” writing center practice.

Thanks to the MSU Writing Center administration’s4 mandate that writing
consultants be well-versed in the theories that underpinned their work, I was exposed to
the work of many of the foundational writing center theorists; particularly compelling to
me in those early days were North’s “Idea of a Writing Center” (1984) and “Revisiting
the Idea of a Writing Center” (1994), Bruffee’s “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of
Mankind’” (1984), and Lunsford’s “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing
Center” (1991).

These texts opened my eyes to the connections that could—and should—be made

between writing center work and the work of the writing classroom, the university, and

 

3 This term was used at MSU instead of “tutor” or “writing assistant”

‘ At this time, the director and associate director of the Writing Center at MSU were Patricia Lambert Stock
and Janet Swenson, respectively. I owe a great deal to them and their commitment to consultant
professional dev elopment and theoretical grounding.

the world outside academia. This marked the beginning of my intellectual curiosity about
the practice of peer tutoring and peer response, and also the moment that I began to
understand the context-dependent nature of responding to the writing of others, including
and especially the important distinction between classroom peer response and peer
tutoring in the context of a writing center. Though I had facilitated many peer response
groups in writing classrooms as an undergraduate peer tutor, I had always assumed that
the practices that worked for writing center tutoring sessions would apply just as
effectively in peer response groups. I began to understand that though the practices were
indeed related, peer response groups and writing center sessions worked under different
constraints and towards different goals, and therefore required a different repertoire of

approaches and skills to be successful.

My experiences with digital writing

My understanding of digital writing in the composition classroom was profoundly
shaped by my experiences as a graduate assistant during my time at MSU. The graduate
assistantshipsl held from Fall of 1999 through Fall of 2007 had me either teaching
writing or working with writers in the Writing Center each semester, and during that
time, the resources available to instructors and students at the university for composing
with digital media increased exponentially. Computer lab hardware was upgraded,
reasonably-current versions of digital composing software (e.g., Apple iMovie,
Macromedia5 Drearnweaver and Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop) was purchased and
installed, classrooms in many buildings across campus became “tech-enabled” thanks to

the addition of LCD projectors and laptop/computer carts, and wireless access slowly

 

5 This predated Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia.

expanded across campus, growing from one or two temperamental wireless hotspots in
the library and student union to wireless connectivity campus-wide.

With this increased access to digital writing technologies and supportive
infrastructure at MSU came—at least for those of us fortunate enough to teach courses
within the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures program or to be
students within the Rhetoric and Writing program—an emphasis on instructor
professional development and training necessary for those technologies to be used in
pedagogically effective ways. One such course was WRA 415—Digital Rhetoric, which
I took in Fall Semester 2004. Though I had toyed around with making web pages6 since
the late 19903, I consider this course to be my first real exposure to the concept of digital
composition. It’s probably more accurate to say that this course marked the moment that I
first began to appreciate what it might mean to compose a digital text in the same way
that I composed my non-digital work—the course and its work and discussions helped
me begin to recognize the options and assumptions at play when I engaged in digital
composition, and exposed me to the wide range of theoretical approaches to what it can
mean to represent meaning digitally. It was an awakening to how very much I didn’t
know about digital writing, and about how much I had come to take for granted about
non-digital writing, and the questions I found myself asking were questions I thought my

first year writing students could benefit from asking, as well.

 

‘ I intentionally avoid the terms “web design” or “webpage composing” here— that connotes a level of
understanding of audience, purpose, and principle that] most definitely didn’t reach until much later. I was
making web pages—l certainly wasn’t “designing” them.

The problem of digital writing and peer response in my own writing classroom

For me, this problem of peer response of digital writing manifested itself when I
encountered a conflict between my role as an instructor of first year writing and my role
as a writing center tutor/ administrator: as a writing instructor, I wanted to offer my
students the opportunity to compose digital texts7 without abandoning the emphasis on
peer response that I, as someone deeply committed to writing center work, saw as an
integral part of my goals for the course and for my students. My experiences as a writer
and a writing center tutor had convinced me of the value of engaging in conversation
about my writing and the writing of others, but the nature of new media composition—
both of its processes and of its resulting texts—seemed an uncomfortable fit with the
“small-group-read-alou ” model of peer response with which I was most familiar.

It was when I began to search the literature for mention of other more relevant
models of peer response that I realized none existed—I couldn’t find a single book,
article or resource that provided an approach to facilitating peer response of digital textss,
let alone one that would work for a classroom in which students were composing both
digital and print-on-paper texts. While there were publications that discussed the
affordances of digital technology in relation to peer response (e. g., Breuch, 2004; Hewitt,
2000), they focused not on approaches to peer response of texts composed using digital
technologies, but instead on the ways in which such technologies can provide

opportunities for online or asynchronous peer response.

 

7 See Chapter 2 for a more detailed description of the digital composing opportunities afforded by the
Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures undergraduate and Rhetoric and Writing graduate programs at
Michigan State University.

3 Several subsequently published texts do offer resources intended to help teachers or writing center tutors
respond in productive ways to multimodal/digital texts, but none offers a model of classroom peer

response.

It soon became clear that while new modes of communication and composition
are emerging and becoming more commonplace in both academic and non-academic
settings, research into peer response has lagged behind, rarely—if ever—venturing
beyond a definition of “text” as uni-modal print-on-paper.9 In order to take full
advantage of the benefits that peer response can offer to students composing in new,
digital modes (or to determine if, in fact, there are even benefits to be had), new
approaches to peer response were required—approaches that not only took advantage of
the theoretical traditions surrounding peer response of print texts, but that also
incorporated the growing body of research and theory regarding digital and new media
writing and its inclusion within composition classrooms. Since I could find no research

into what these approaches might be, I decided to conduct my own.

Researching digital peer response: A pilot study

In Spring 2007, I began to conduct what I thought would become the primary
research for my dissertation, and what turned out to be a pilot study that greatly informed
the research I discuss here. My research questions for this study sought to examine
whether student attitudes towards peer response were influenced depending on the media
in which the texts under discussion were composed, and to that end, I recorded audio of
peer resmnse groups meeting during each of four in-class peer response sessions in one
first-year college composition classroom, each “session” consisting of two class

meetings. In addition, I collected classroom artifacts (first and final drafts of print and

 

9 The recently published Multimodal Composition (Selfe, 2007) includes a chapter written by Kara Poe
Alexander that focuses on revision and peer review of multimodal texts, and that offers many useful
suggestions for helping students learn to rhetorically analyze multimodal texts response and a model for
“peer review studio” that requires whole—class workshopping of student work but otherwise differs hardly
at all from prev iously-published peer response approaches.

digital student work, peer response sheets, assignments sheets and rubrics) and solicited
student responses to two surveys about in—class peer response-one at the start of the
semester, and one at the end.

When the semester was complete, I had what can only be described as a
formidable mound of data to analyze, so I was surprised, to say the least, when I realized
that I didn’t have what I needed. In my initial passes through the audio data, I found
myself faced with session events that both seemed significant and defied my attempts at
interpretation; there were silences, abrupt changes in tone or attitude, even what seemed
from the audio to be obvious and avoidable misunderstandings that I couldn’t begin to
account for without the ability to see what was happening. Something significant was
happening in these sessions—something that seemed to be tied to whether the sessions
were centered on print-based or digital texts—but in order to examine it, I needed to
rethink my approach.

The role that body language and non-verbal ones can play in peer response
sessions did not come as a surprise—by the time I began the pilot study, I had both
practical knowledge (thanks to more than seven years as a writing center tutor/consultant)
and a theoretical understanding (e. g., from the work of Harris, 1992; Hewitt, 2000;
Wolfe, 2005) of the degree to which peer response can rely on non-verbal means of
communication. My decision to not capture visual data during the pilot study was the
result of many considerations, including a classroom configuration that would have made
videotaping individual peer response sessions extremely intrusive, if not impossible, and
would therefore result in undue burden on the instructor as well as likely rejection from

Michigan State’s Institutional Review Board. I knew that a decision not to capture video

data would be a weakness in the study design thatI would need to justify in the eventual
write-up of my research—I had not expected that such a decision would make the
research itself impossible.

As frustrated as I was to discover that I would need to restart data collection in a
different classroom the following semester, this need to start over afforded me the
opportunity to take advantage of a facet to the problem that I hadn’t originally
considered: that there might be a purely non-verbal difference in students’ approaches to
peer response depending on the media used to compose the texts under discussion, and
that focusing on this difference as a starting point might offer insight into other
potentially significant differences between what I’ve come to refer to as print-text peer

response (PPR) and digital-text peer response (DPR).

My guiding research questions
My revised research project was guided by two research questions:

1. Do participants in a peer response session use different modes of response while
offering feedback in print-based text peer response (PPR) and digital text peer
response (DPR) sessions?

2. How, if at all, do the modes of response employed relate to whether the text under
discussion is digital or print-based?

This dissertation is the result of the research undertaken to exarrrine these
questions further, and in the chapter that follows, I offer a review of the literature that has
informed my understandings of the ways in peer response and digital writing have come

to be used in composition classrooms. In Chapter 3, I discuss my selection and

implementation of grounded theory methodology and the steps taken to generate and
analyze the study data. Chapter 4 provides a discussion of the results of my analysis, and

Chapter 5 offers conclusions from and further implications of this research.

10

CHAPTER 2: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

In the previous chapter, I recall the experiences that led to the development of the
research questions that form the foundation of this research. However, before I can begin
to examine how the practices of peer response and digital composition influence and
interact with each other, it is necessary to better understand the reasons behind the strong
support each has found fiom composition theorists and practitioners—in other words, the
reasons why neither peer response nor digital composing is likely to be abandoned for the
other, despite problems that may be caused by their simultaneous presence in the
classroom.

As I read into the literatures of peer response and digital composition—which
were, for the most part, entirely separate from each other—I began to recognize parallels
between the arguments most frequently made in favor of each; these arguments often
touched on one or more of three points: 1) [Composing with or for digital media/offering
feedback to peers] is a regular and important part of everyday communication activities,
and should therefore have a place in composition classrooms; 2) [Digital writing/peer
response] has the potential to help students develop a strong sense of audience, which in
turn can help them become stronger writers; and 3) [Digital writing/peer response]_
provides opportunities for learning that other classroom approaches and activities do not.
Later in this chapter, I will delve more deeply into these parallel arguments, but first I
will provide two broad overviews, one of peer response in the writing classroom and one
of digital composition in the writing classroom, in order to establish the context in which

these Mlel arguments in support of each practice are made.

11

Peer Response in the Writing Classroom: An Overview

Though writers in both academic and non-academic settings have been sharing
their writing and offering each other feedback for centuries (Gere 1987), the popularity
and longevity of the practice of peer response in composition classrooms owes much to
the increased focus by theorists in the late 19605 and early 1970’s on student writing
processes; this time of “intense fermentation, reflection, and innovation” in the study and
teaching of writing (DiPardo 119) was greatly influenced—even prompted—by research
in the field of cognitive psychology, many of the founders of the process movement
having built upon or drawn their inspiration from the works of cognitive theorists like
Piaget (1971), Vygotsky (1978; 1986), and Bruner (1978), each of whom, though the
individual approaches differed, emphasized the importance of social interaction and
experimentation in cognitive development and the learning process. Whereas the
methods of teaching writing at the time emphasized correctness of product and fonrr
above all else, these new theories of learning served as the basis for the calls for new
pedagogical approaches made by now-canonical educational theorists like Elbow,
Moffett, and Macrorie—calls for a move towards more “student-center ” approaches to
the teaching of the language arts, in which classroom experiences would be crafted to
facilitate these kinds of generative social interactions (Clark 10-1 1).

These theorists and others believed that writing, formerly treated academically as
a “silent and solitary activity” with “no community or collaboration,” should instead be
perceived to be “enhanced by working in, and with, a group of other writers, perhaps
especially a teacher, who gives vital response including advice” (Emig, 1971, pp 140-

141). Peer response was often seen as an important component of this collaborative,

12

student-centered writing classroom, and teachers, practitioners, and theorists began
advocating for the use of peer response groups in English language arts classrooms as
part of their calls for a more collaborative, less product-oriented approach to the teaching
of writing. Murray (1971) called for instructors to see that "the text of the writing course
is the student’s own writing. Students [should] examine their own evolving writing and
that of their classmates, so that they study writing while it is still a matter of choice, word
by word" (91). Elbow (1968, 1971) advocated for the use of an expressivist approach to
writing pedagogy, one in which the students’ experiences and perceptions are seen as
valid—even valuable—topics for academic writing; Macrorie (1976) argued that
experience with peer response is vital to student success in the composition classroom—a
way for beginning writers to gain experience via the classroom community of writers;
and Moffett (1968) proposed a language arts curriculum in which the practice of offering
and receiving peer feedback is used to facilitate students’ progression from reflective
communication (“interpersonal communication within the self”) to the opposite end of
the continuum, publication (“impersonal communication between unconnected
individuals, unknown to one another”) (p.33).

By the late 19705 and early 19803, most of the literature of composition pedagogy
espoused theories of collaborative learning, and with them the idea of the writing process
paradigm (Hairston 1984), which soon adopted peer response as a fundamental feature;
academic writing was now seen as a recursive and communal activity, through which
students could “gain a stronger sense of the degree to which knowledge, like writing
itself, is a social phenomenon, and the degree to which the social context in which we

learn permeates what we know and how we know it” (Bruffee 116). Students met

13

regularly with peers to discuss writing, and were thought to find more value in "small
group meetings with each other than from the exhausting one to-one conferences that the
teachers hold" (Hairston 17). Peer response was about more than just correcting
papers‘O—it was about forming the "critical capacities which will serve [students] well as
writers" (Gere and Abbott 378).

The “writing as process” movement soon moved from rallying cry to whipping
boy, with critics “point[ing] not so much to the classroom shortcomings of process
pedagogy as to the failure of the process movement to fulfill the goal of “empowering”
students as part of a larger project of creating equality through education” (Faigley 68).
However, the belief that learning and writing required learners to interact with each other
(Gillespie and Lerner 13) has remained, and with it, the practice of peer response. This
belief in and reliance on collaborative classroom approaches continues throughout the
majority of the literature being published on the teaching of composition1 1, and peer
response groups have become the most popular incarnation of collaborative learning in

post-secondary writing classrooms (Highberg et al. 3).

Digital Writing in the Writing Classroom: An Overview
Digital composition” as a regular part of the work of the writing classroom is a
fairly recent and still-spreading phenomenon, but digital technologies in writing

classrooms—and the concurrent discussions, arguments, and concerns about how such

 

‘° Though it was sometimes about that, too.

" There are certainly those who criticize the collaborative, social constructivist paradigm (e. g., Stewart
1987; Faigley 1992; Murphy 1994), but their voices are drowned out by the overwhelming number of
publications that either explicitly support the paradigm or take its precepts for granted.

'2 As described in the previous chapter, my definition of digital writing encompasses the production,
consumption, and distribution of texts primarily composed with and for computers and usually composed
of multiple media (e. g., image, text, sound, movement, interactivity).

l4

technologies can and should be used—have been around for decades. Digital
technologies have frequently been the catalysts for arguments surrounding what should
constitute the “legitimate” work of the composition classroom, and those instructors and
composition theorists who desire to engage in new ways with technology in their
teaching or theorizing have regularly met with resistance from “those more senior and/ or
in more powerful institutional positions [who] often have limited respect for the depth
and breadth, and rigor of [their] work” (Inman 107).

The archives of Computers and Composition (which started in 1983 as a
newsletter and now exists as both an online and a print journal) offer a window into the
history of digital technologies in the writing classroom. Those first issues of Computers
and Composition featured articles describing the use by writing teachers of word
processing programs, the design (frequently by writing teachers themselves) of custom
software programs for use in writing classrooms, and the difficulty of obtaining
acceptance for computers as valid pedagogical tools in writing courses. In the
intervening years, the articles in Computers and Composition have traced the invention,
adaptation, and incorporation into teaching practice of increasingly complex digital
technologies, and document the challenges experienced by the practitioners using them.
In that time,

a steady stream of technological developments has thrust computers into an ever

more prominent role in the teaching, learning, and uses of literacy. . . . The new

technology—from ever more efficient word processing to computerized
classrooms, e-mail, chatrooms, MOOs, listservs, bulletin boards, distance learning
systems, digitalized archives, on-line databases, and the myriad Web

applications—has created major transformations in the environments in which
people read, writing, and learn. (Research on Composition, 96).

15

The discipline, at least as it is perceived by those willing to acknowledge the presence
and importance of digital technologies, has existed in a state of constant tech-enabled
revision.

However, the present moment, in its unprecedented access (for some) to digital
writing technologies and its willingness (again, for some) to accept the products of digital
composition as texts worthy of research and study, is unique; as McKee and DeVoss
point out in 2007, “Never before, for instance, have writers (of certain economic classes
and at particular institutions) had at their fingertips the means to integrate text and
graphics (and, for the tech-savvy, animation, audio, video, and other elements) and to
publish and widely distribute digital products to virtual spaces” (6).

The argument for the continued inclusion of digital media as an object of study in
writing courses relies on the assumption that the purpose of the composition classroom is
not media-dependent—that its purpose is to produce active, critical producers and
consumers of information by enabling students to assess the usefulness of information as
it is presented to them, to analyze and assimilate the information they deem relevant to
their purposes, and to repackage and redistribute that information in the most efiective
means available. These goals are not restricted to alphabetic print literacy, but would
instead are “rooted in the facilitation of the decoding of texts” (Takayoshi, Hawisher, and
Selfe, 2007), regardless of the media with which those texts are composed or
disseminated This broader understanding of the purpose of the writing classroom
requires a broader understanding of “literacy”—one in which “literacy” isn’t limited to a
“set of stand-alone skills” required to produce and consume print-based alphabetic texts,

but instead is understood as “meaning making practices that must be understood in

16

context” (Williams 2007, xi).

The calls for widespread change in how literacy is understood and defined in
writing classrooms13 are pervasive; theorists and practitioners alike have called for
recognition of “the transformation of singular print-based literacy into hyphenated, plural,
or multiple literacies that acknowledge the diversity of information sources and media
that people access, negotiate, and redeploy in everyday contexts” (Luke 398). Evidence
of this shift includes not only the oft-cited New London Group’s “Pedagogy of
Multiliteracies” and the numerous practical and theoretical texts that use part or all of its
proposed pedagogical framework as a jumping-off point, but also the relevant position
statements published by organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE) and the Conference on College Composition and Communication
(CCCC), one of which proclaims that “the curriculum of composition is widening to
include not one but two literacies: a literacy of print and a literacy of the screen” (CCCC
Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital
Environments); as well as the handbooks, CD ROMS, and other resources intended to
assist writing instructors in teaching, researching, and discussing digital writing (e.g.,
Wysocki, et. al., 2004; Selfe, 2007; McKee and DeVoss, 2007). In conjunction with this
increased attention, “[w]riting is no longer confined (if it ever was) to standard letter-
sizcd paper, set with default margins, default font sizes, default font faces, and default
paragraph spacing. Digital videos, soundscapes, and visual essays are increasingly
common in writing curricula, both in first-year writing courses and in advanced

seminars” (McKee and DeVoss 9), and “interactive digital media” are increasingly

 

'3 Or, alternately, calls for recognition that this change in understanding and definition has, in f act. already
occurred.

17

represented—at the post-secondary level at least—in the texts composed and the texts

analyzed in writing classrooms (Hooks 631).

Justifications: Peer response and new media in the writing classroom
In the introduction to this chapter, I briefly mentioned the parallel arguments that
I identified within the bodies of literature surrounding peer response and digital writing.
In the pages that follow, I examine each of these three pairs of arguments in greater
detail, and conclude with a discussion of the significance of these similar threads of

justification running through the two bodies of literature.

First Justification: Connecting the writing classroom to the “real war ”
1a. “Real world” writing tasks involve sharing, discussing, and responding to the work
of colleagues, and the practice of teaching writing should reflect this reality.

A quick survey of the acknowledgements included by authors in their books and
articles would reveal the extent to which many writers consider sharing their works-in-
progress with others a part of their writing process. Whether it’s a government
researcher thanking the interns who assisted on a project, a mystery writer thanking the
medical experts who helped her understand the workings of a rare poison, or a journalist
acknowledging the work of editors and fact—checkers, first-time and many-times-
published authors alike list the names of mentors and colleagues whose comments and
suggestions have influenced their texts in some generative way, and readers take these
acknowledgments in stride, if they are read at all. Acknowledgement that a writer has

had assistance in crafting a text is not shocking, and one is not likely to think less of a

18

text because its author turned to colleagues for feedback. Yet in many classrooms,
instructors “assess individuals as the personal bearers of knowledge, and [. . .] approach
pedagogy in terms of trying to get knowledge into individual heads” (Lankshear and
Knobel 176, emphasis in original). Student academic discourse frequently requires
individuals to work alone—with the exception of collaborative activities like peer
response, which enable students to develop the skills and abilities they’ll need to be
successful members of these non-academic “socially interactive communities of learners”
(Luke 398).

The advent and constant improvement of digital tools—especially those that
facilitate networking and communication—have only increased the ease with which
drafts and ideas can be exchanged, thereby increasing the likelihood that texts are
composed collaboratively. As a composition researcher whose own work reveals the
impact of digital technologies in her examinations of the affordances and constraints of ,
first, print and eventually digital portfolios, Kathleen Yancey describes these new(ly)
collaborative spaces:

Like l9m-century readers creating their own social contexts for reading in reading

circles, writers in the 21“ century self-organize into what seem to be overlapping

technologically driven writing circles, what we might call a series of newly
imagined communities, communities that cross borders of all kinds-nation state,
class, gender, ethnicity. Composers gather in Internet chat rooms; they participate
in listservs dedicated to both the ridiculous and the sublime; they mobilize for
health concerns, for political causes, for research, and for travel advice. (Yancey

2004, p 301)

Yancey emphasizes that these activities she describes are, for the most part, engaged in
voluntarily by members of these writing communities, and furthermore that these writers

have learned to negotiate these diverse communities and complex writing tasks largely

outside of schools—since, and this is Yancey’s point, such activities have rarely been

19

seen as appropriate subjects for academic engagement. However, Yancey argues, such
activities can and should become part of the work of any composition classroom that
seeks to prepare students for “real-world” communication and interaction; our writing
classrooms should prepare students to negotiate the collaboration that so frequently

characterizes the writing tasks that they will encounter after they graduate.

I b. “Real world“ ” communication tasks involve composing and interpreting digital
media texts, and the practice of teaching writing should reflect this reality.

Digital media are increasingly being used to communicate messages that used to
be the exclusive domain of print or face-to-face communication (for example, classified
ads vs. craigslist org, personal letters vs. email messages, scribbled notes vs. text
messages or Twitter “tweets”), and many students today come to their first-year college
writing classrooms as experienced (though perhaps not critical) producers and consumers
of digital texts (Selfe and Hawisher, 2004). Many of these students are—though they
may not be aware of it—already well versed in decoding meaning presented in multiple
and digital media, and classes that take advantage of this literacy have the opportunity to
help students develop the kind of “intertextual dexterity that may be as important if not
more so than the memorization of facts” (Kist 42).

For many of the students currently enrolled in or getting ready to start
undergraduate degree programs, texts composed solely of printed alphabetic characters
fail to represent the range of their meaning-making practices; for these students,
“questions of communication and composition will absolutely include the visual, not as

attendant to the verbal but as complex communication intricately related to the world

 

1"I use this in the colloquial sense, to refer to life outside of academia and/or after graduation.

20

around them” (George 32). And not just the visual: these students could also be used to
meaning that is communicated aurally (Halbritter, 2006), through movement (Schaffner)
or interactivity (Zoetewey and Staggers, 2003; Murray, 1998), as well as through
carefully crafted combinations and juxtapositions of these different textual aspects
(Sorapure, 2005; Di girhet.org, 2006). Approaches to teaching composition that don’t take
into account the “technology rich and image saturated” spaces in which many students
live (George 32) fail not only to address the needs of those students (The WIDE Research
Center Collective, 2005) but also fail to acknowledge that the “rapid evolution of digital
technology has pushed the possibilities of composition well beyond print to visual, audio,
and video texts” (Williams 2007, x). Given that information is increasingly presented to
the public through digital media, students who aren’t prepared to perform the
complicated rhetorical tasks necessary for understanding both digital and print-on-paper
texts will be, at best, uninforrned--and at worst, subject to manipulation and

misinformation from those better able to negotiate and manipulate those media.

Second Justification: Awareness of audience
2a. Peer response can facilitate an increased awareness of audience in student writers.
First-year writing students can fall into the trap of failing to consider any audience
beyond the teachers from whom they will receive their final grades, even when the
assignment explicitly requires students to assume they are writing to a hypothetical
audience other than their instructor (W ootten 1981), and instructors often turn to peer
response as a way of instilling this sense of audience in student writers. In Concepts in

Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing, Irene Clark refers to peer

21

response as “one of the most useful strategies [she] know[s] of for helping students gain
awareness of audience” (157). Through peer response, students are exposed to multiple
responses to their work, which can result in the development of what Howard refers to as
a “heightened sense of audience” (60), and frequently, this increased awareness of and
attention to the needs and expectations of an audience is cited as the primary benefit that
peer response groups can provide to student writers.

Theorists and practitioners have offered many different strategies for encouraging
students’ awareness of audience through peer response; for example, Smagorinsky (1991)
offers a framework for structuring what he refers to as “role-playing peer response
groups,” in which peer responders assume the role(s) of their academic text’s intended
audience(s) in order to offer, theoretically, more accurate and useful feedback to the
author. In the illustrative example Smagorinsky provides, students compose drafts of
their college application essays, and then are placed in mock “admissions boards” to
evaluate and offer feedback on the essays written by their peers. By actively taking on
the role of the application essays’ intended audience, students are given an opportunity to
identify not only what the needs of a specific audience might be, but also which of the
many different approaches to meeting those needs might be most effective.

Lyons (1981) advocates for a more structured approach; he outlines what he calls
the “Praise, Question, Polish” (PQP) approach to peer response, in which students follow
a predetermined fi'amework of offering praise for what was done well, asking questions
for clarification, and finally making suggestions for improvement. Lyons even
recommends that the guiding questions that direct students through this framework be

introduced to students as early in the composing process as possible, and should also be

22

displayed prominently in the room during peer response sessions. By carefully crafting
and controlling the ways in which the peer “audiences” respond, Lyons hopes to instill in
student writers an approach to determining the needs of a given audience that will stay
with themieven after his PQP framework is no longer there to guide their responses.

Danis (1988) recommends the approach introduced by Ponsot and Deen in Beat
Not the Poor Desk— What to Teach, How to Teach It, and Why, in which students are
restricted to responding only with observations, and not with evaluations or inferences.
Danis argues that through repeated experience with this kind of peer response, students
will strengthen their abilities to focus on details and to clearly articulate what they’ve
noticed, which will lead to those students eventually becoming “more effective writers,
more astute critics, and more purposeful learners” (358). This is similar to what Elbow
(1971) refers to as the development of an “internal editor,” who can perform the function
of a response group even when one isn’t present, and what Zamel (1982) calls “the
crucial ability of reviewing their writing with the eyes of another” (206), a heightened
sense of awareness of how their texts will be read that will help them produce better texts
than they would have otherwise. ‘5

And there is indeed evidence—anecdotal and otherwise—to support the claim that
students who receive feedback on their writing from their peers produce better papers

than those who don’t (e. g., Britton, et al., 1975; Bruffee, 1993; Gere, 1987, 1990;

 

‘5 This justification for the use of peer response has its detractors, and understandably so; when offered as a
sole reason for peer response, it reduces the purpose to mere improvement of ‘product’—a throwback to
the kind of pedagogy that spawned the process writing movement in the 19603 and 703. However, despite
calls for different approaches to assessing the work of the composition classroom (e. g., Yancey, 2004;
Huot, 2002; Broad, 2003), assessment of student writing—digital or otherwise—is still frequently the
yardstick with which the success or failure of the student is measured, and instructors must take this into
account—if peer response didn’t help students improve the written work through which they will be
assessed, instructors could hardly justify its use.

Moffett, 1983; Spear, 1988). Much of the literature on peer response, especially that
written by instructors, offers “improved student final products” as side benefit to the
implementation to peer response—namely, that students can help each other fix many of
the mechanical, syntactical, and other errors in their writing, leaving only the more
complex issues for the teacher to address while responding to drafts of student work.
Indeed, many instructors see peer response as a way of offering an entire class of students
the more personalized attention that they themselves don’t have time to give (Belcher).
By allowing students to respond to each other’s writing—usually in ways that are
sanctioned, if not outlined in advance, by the instructor—the instructor uses the time
freed up by peer response to respond to students’ questions, concerns, or perceived needs

on an individual level.16

2b. Digital writing can facilitate an increased awareness of audience in student writers.
Though much has been made of digital technologies’ ability to open up the walls
of the writing classroom by facilitating communication with myriad audiences in myriad
ways, those who support the teaching of digital writing rarely rely only on the somewhat
unassailable position17 that digital communication technologies increase the opportunities
for communication. Instead, advocates for the teaching of digital writing tend to focus on

the ways in which communication with a wider and more varied audience can complicate

 

“ The argument that peer response leads to the production of better student work may further explain how
peer response has found such a secure place in composition classrooms: such a claim, if true, could
drastically reduce teacher workload. Though there is little if any literature on peer response that advocates
for its use 301er as a time-saver for teachers, advoeates of peer response (e.g., Murray, 1972; Hairston,
1982; Bruffee, 1984) regularly refer to the practice’s potential for reducing the amount of time instructors
spend responding to student work or conferencing individually with students. And, though she doesn’t use
the term “peer response,” Eileen Wagner (1975) suggests“ that teachers can greatly reduce their grading
load by letting their students “offer praise and suggestions to other student writers” (78).

‘7 Obviously, this holds true only for those students fortunate enough to have access to the training and
technologies necessary for digital composing and networked communication.

24

the act of composition. By their very nature, digital texts enable much swifter digital
publication and dissemination of both final products and in-progress drafts, and this
allows instructors to bring consideration of audiences into their writing assignments in
more significant ways by developing digital assignments that require students to compose
texts for actual audiences—audiences to whom questions can be asked, with whom drafts
can be exchanged, and from whom feedback can (or must) be sought, allowing
“audiences and writers can be related to each other more interactively in time and space”
(McKee and DeVoss 9). This communication between author and audience makes it
possible for an investigation of an audience’s needs and expectations to become a more
substantial part of the writing process—instead of relying solely on their ability to put
themselves in the shoes of their intended audiences, writers can discuss those
expectations with the audience directly.

Though non-digital texts can still be disseminated to outside audiences through
non-digital means, students’ digital texts can be much more quickly, more widely, and
more cheaply disseminated to audiences outside of the classroom or the university
(McKee and DeVoss), using tools that many college students have access to by virtue of
their university enrollment. For example, at Michigan State University, all students
enrolled in Fall 2008 automatically had access to the internet (while on campus—the
University scaled back its free dial-up internet access for students and faculty in 2007,
when the university decided to stop replacing the modems that made the service possible
as they wore out), a university email account, and 100MB of server space that could be
used for file storage or web hosting; and many students also had access to online

resources and course-compMon sites through ANGEL, MSU’s course management

25

system. Students and faculty could also request that ANGEL accounts be established for
student organizations or other MSU-related groups. Such accounts provide a location for
sharing of files and other resources, as well as facilities for synchronous and
asynchronous communication. Though there are, of course, constraints placed by the
University on how these spaces can and should be used, each of these allows for
widespread dissemination of a variety of digital texts to audiences both within and
outside of the university community.

This more seamless transition between composition and dissemination in various
digital modes “is dissolving the traditional gap between writing and publishing” (DeVoss
and Porter, 2005); as a result, distribution of student texts, either in draft or finished form,
to their intended audiences can become a regular part of classroom assignments, and,
therefore, consideration of the needs and expectations of those audiences can become a

regular part of the composing process for those students.

Third Justification: Opportunities for learning
3a. Peer response provides students with opportunities for learning and growth that are
denied them by other, less collaborative activities.

This argument for the affordances of peer response as a classroom activity is
based primarily on the tenets of collaborative learning theory, which maintains that
thinking and learning only occur as the result of the participation of and interaction with
others; from this perspective, schooling’s main purpose is to enable and facilitate the
growth of the collaborative learning communities in which this interaction can take

place—or, to put it another way, “Education initiates us into conversation, and by virtue

of the conversation initiates us into thought” (Bruffee 133). Collaborative learning
theory is in turn founded on the social constructionist view that “that knowledge is
essentially a socially justified belief” (Carson and Nelson 17-18) and that new ideas are
“generated by communities of like-minded peers” (Bruffee, 1986, p. 774).

In Writing Groups: History, Theory and Implications, Gere argues that the act of
talking with others about writing—about language—is one of the fundamental ways
through which a literate community develops, and collaborative learning has long been
thought to benefit students in writing classrooms (e. g, Britton, et al.; Bruffee, 1984,
1993; Gere, 1987, 1990; Moffett, 1983; Spear, 1988). Unsurprisingly, peer response,
because of its reliance on interaction, conversation, and group negotiation of tasks, is
frequently the way in which collaborative learning theory is made manifest in the writing
classroom.

While there have been studies that have raised concerns with the implementation
of peer response (DiPardo and Freedman, 1988), these studies have primarily focused
their criticisms on a lack of clear direction for instructors’ regarding how peer response
groups should be structured, and on the perception by instructors that without strict
oversight, peer response groups too often become distracted from the task at hand and
digress into non-academic conversation. ‘8 Despite these concerns, however, research
has demonstrated that students often benefit from working in peer response groups
because such groups offer students the opportunity for lower-risk experimentation and
critical thinking about meaning and audience (Gere, 1987); because peer response groups

“shift the emphasis in the classroom from product to process and from teacherly

 

'8 Gere (1987) expresses doubt as to whether this is, in fact, a problem, arguing that students are still
learning valuable communication and critical thinking skills even if there are technically ‘of f-task.’

27

evaluation to writers’ goals and readers’ response” (Flower 704); and because through
peer response, students develop an understanding of how the choices made by the author
influence the resulting text, allowing them to read and think more like writers (Spear,
1988). This “significant redefinition of the self,” the moment that students begin to think
and acts as writers, occurs only when students are given the opportunity to address

composition and revision tasks through interaction with peers (Spear 14).

3b. Digital writing tasks provide students with opportunities to learn that are denied them
by print-based writing assignments.

This argument in support of the teaching of digital composition relies on what are
seen as the educational affordances of teaching digital writing—the ways in which this
type of writing “pushes on systems and established ways of working with a pressure that
other ways of writing don’t exert” (DeVoss, Cushman and Grabill, 17). Johnson-Eilola
(1993) has argued that digital composing should be interpreted as more than a new way
to produce or publish print-based texts—that such composing and its presence in writing
classes opens up possibilities for new ways of thinking, teaching and learning.

For example, digital composing allows students to examine the possibilities
available to them in terms of expression, thereby enabling composition instructors to
examine with their students the ways in which different media are more or less effective
at communicating certain messages or achieving certain aims in different contexts; such
assignments can help keep students from becoming limited by what Sean D. Williams
describes as a “pro-vet ” perspective that “value[s] only verbal representations when

the most effective rhetorical strategy might be to use a visual” (27).

Digital writing assignments also provide opportunities for students to engage in other
intellectual exercises not required of them by what Yancey calls the “present [non-digital,
primarily print-based] model.” These exercises, according to Yancey, could include the
opportunity to:

0 “consider the issue of intertextual circulation: how what they are composing

relates or compares to ‘real world’ genres;

. consider what the best medium and the best delivery for such a communication

might be and then create and share those different communication pieces in those
different media, to different audiences;

0 think explicitly about what they might "transfer" from one medium to the next:
what moves forward, what gets left out, what gets added- and what they have

learned about composing in this transfer process;
- consider how to transfer what they have learned in one site and how that could or
could not transfer to another, be that site on campus or ofi‘;
- think about how these practices help prepare them to become members of a writing
public” (2004, p311)
Though some of the exercises Yancey lists could arguably be accomplished with non-
digital writing assignments, the relative unfamiliarity of digital composition as an
academic subject is itself a benefit, making possible—or perhaps even requiring—
consideration of many of the aspects of writing that are so often invisible (e.g., the
familiar essay requirement of 8.5 x 11-inch white paper, with one-inch margins and a
particular font size and typeface), and that are usually presented to students “as though
these material decisions are not and have never been decisions but are natural” (Wysocki,
2004, p22). This invisibility—or, rather, this overwhelming familiarity with the ways in
which written texts are traditionally shaped—has led to the perception by some that form
and content are separate entities that must be forced together instead of two aspects of the
same set of rhetorical composing decisions, regardless of the media with/in which one is

composing (Wysocki 2001). Because digital composition frequently forces writers to

consider form and design in ways they never have, teaching digital composition

29

alongside alphabetic print composition can facilitate conversations about the material and
contextual nature of all writing, and can draw attention to the ways in which that nature
can be and frequently is hidden.

Digital writing assignments can also “make visible the strategies we already use,
or ones that we could or should use when reading any text” (Parrish 2002, cited in Ball,
2004; emphasis added). Students are forced to consider the impact of the materials (the
sounds, images, text, color, shape, organization, etc) of digital texts in ways that they
rarely feel the need to engage in with print-on-paper texts, and this consideration
facilitates classroom conversations about the rhetoric of design and presentation that are

relevant to all texts, not only digital ones.

Conclusion

As is evident from the literature, proponents of peer response and of digital
composition are committed to the continued presence of each in the writing classroom
because digital writing and peer response help instructors accomplish similar goals:
through peer response, as through composing in digital media, students are able to
develop a more robust understanding of audience; are provided with experiences that
better prepare them for writing tasks they will encounter outside of school; and are
provided with opportunities for learning and growth that would otherwise be denied
them. Laudable goals, all, and goals that resonate with the overall goals of the writing
classroom as summarized by the Conference on College Composition and
Communication in 1989: to contribute to a functioning democratic society by developing

“citizens who can read critically and write clearly and cogently.” Though definitions of

30

what it means to “read and write” may have changed thanks to technological innovation
since the late 1980’s, the goal of a writing classroom that helps students process and
communicate messages effectively has remained, and instructors are not likely to give up

any tools that could help them achieve that goal.

Chapter Summary

The parallel themes of justification discussed in this chapter represent the context
of two popular features of the writing classroom: peer response and digital composition,
and the goals they cite—increased attention to the needs and real-world experiences of
students, fewer demands on overworked writing instructors, better preparation of students
for future writing tasks and for active participation as citizens, better preparation of
students as academic writers—are difficult to argue against. The point at which these
two entities—peer response and digital writing—intersect is the point at which my
dissertation research began, and in the chapter that follows, I explain in greater detail the
context in which this research was conducted, including a thick description of the
research site; I also describe and define the key concepts that provide a framework for

this research and the methods through which the data was generated and analyzed.

31

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, I provide a description of the context of the research into peer
response of digital texts that] conducted during Spring Semester 2008 in a first-year
writing classroom at Michigan State University, including a thick description of the
university, program, course, and classroom in which my data was collected; additionally,
I describe the ways in which the theories of multiliteracies proposed by Stuart Selber and
theories of connectivism proposed by George Siemens (2005) and Stephen Downes
(2007) contribute to the conceptual framework that greatly influenced my approach to
this research and the data it generated. I conclude with a discussion of the planning and
implementation of data collection and the grounded theory methods I employed during

my analysis of the data.

Context of the research
The research site: Michigan State University

Founded in 1855, Michigan State University—originally the Agricultural College
of the State of Michigan—was the pioneer land-grant institution in the country, and the
model for the land-grant colleges that arose from the 1968 Morrill Act, which provided
federal land to states “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial
classes on the several pursuits and professions in life” (USDA, 7 U.S.C. 304) This
mandate led to the development of university extension and outreach programs, and these

programs continue to be a part of Michigan State University’s core mission statement,

32

which reinforces a commitment to broad access and diversity in education in its goal of

“advanc[ing] knowledge and transform[ing] lives (http:/Lmesident.msu.eduImissionphp).

The first-year writing program: Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures
The first-year—or “Tier I”—writing requirement at Michigan State University consists of
one four-credit 100-level course in Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures (WRAC).
WRAC courses are intended “to prepare students for the kinds of writing they will be
called upon to produce academically, professionally, personally and publicly,“ and the

Tier I Writing Mission Statement lists the specific goals of the course as follows:

Writing:
Use writing for purposes of reflection, action, and participation in academic
inquiry
' Work within a repertoire of genres and modes to meet appropriate rhetorical
purposes

0 Exercise a flexible repertoire of invention, arrangement, and revision strategies

' Demonstrate an understanding of writing as an epistemic and recursive process
and effectively apply a variety of knowledge-making strategies in writing

0 Understand diction, usage, voice, and style, including standard edited English, as
conventional and rhetorical features of writing

Reading:

° Engage in reading for the purposes of reflection, critical analysis, decision-
making, and inquiry

' Understand that various academic disciplines and fields employ varied genre,
voice, syntactical choices, use of evidence, and citation styles.

' Read in ways that improve writing, especially by demonstrating an ability to
analyze invention, arrangement, and revision strategies at work in a variety of
texts

° Demonstrate an understanding of reading as epistemic and recursive meaning
making processes

° Understand that academic disciplines and fields employ varied genre, styles,
syntactical patterns, uses of evidence, and documentation practices that call for a
variety of reading strategies

Researching:
' Apply methods of inquiry and conventions to generate new understanding

 

’9 Taken from the WRAC "Tier I Writing” information page
. . . ‘ ".h1

 

33

° Demonstrate the ability to locate, critically evaluate, and employ a variety of
sources for a range of purposes
0 Demonstrate the ability to generate and apply research strategies that are
purposeful, ethical, and balanced
° Demonstrate an understanding of research as epistemic and recursive processes
that arise from and respond back to various communities
' Understand the logics and uses of citation systems and documentation styles and
display competence with one citation system/documentation style
Between 100 and 125 sections of the Tier] WRAC courses are offered each
semester in the Fall and Spring, taught by a mixture of teaching assistants and fixed-term
and tenure-stream faculty, with a total enrollment of approximately 6000 students each
year. Tier] Writing courses are offered under different thematic headings (e.g., Science
and Technology; The American Ethnic and Racial Experience; American Radical
Thought). Regardless of the theme, WRAC courses are—as mentioned above—reading,
writing-, and research-intensive and serve as the prerequisite for other required courses,
including the required Integrated Arts and Humanities (IAH) courses, two of which (one
“A” course and one “B” course) students must successfully complete in order to meet
their Arts and Humanities general education requirements. Because of this system of
prerequisites, the majority of students in a given WRAC course are freshmen, usually in
their first or second semester at the university. However, not all students take Tier]
WRAC courses their freshman year; some students are able to bypass the Tier I WRAC
course requirement altogether due to high AP test scores, and some students must first
take WRA 1004/0102: Preparation for College Writing because of low scores on the Test
of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores and/or insufficient preparation for
college writing.

Tier I WRAC classes meet in spaces across campus that can vary greatly in terms

of their size, configuration, and access to technology. Some WRAC courses meet each

34

day in computer labs with fixed, lab-style tables arranged in rows or in pods, some meet
in tech-enabled classrooms that feature a computer cart with tables or rows of chair/desk
combos, some meet in cramped basement classrooms in which the sole classroom
technology is an overhead projector. If space is available, instructors who find
themselves assigned to teach in a less-than-ideal classroom space can sometimes arrange
for their class to be moved to another location, but given that students sometimes
schedule their courses based at least in part on the listed course locations, instructors are
frequently encouraged to make do with the rooms to which they are originally assigned.
However, instructors can request that at least one of their weekly course meetings be
scheduled for one of the designated WRAC computer labs, and these requests are
accommodated whenever possible. The average maximum class size for Tier] WRAC
courses varies somewhat from semester to semester, ranging from 24 to 27 students.
During Spring Semester 2008, all Tier 1 WRAC courses were capped at either 24 or 25
students—though exceptions were made for a few sections that increased class sizes to 26

or 27.

WRA 150: “Writing: The Evolution of American Thought”

The course in which I generated my data was one of 35 sections of WRA 150
offered during Spring semester of 2008, and one of a total of 120 sections of the Tier]
writing course offered that semester. As described in the Registrar’s online “Course
Description” database, students in WRA 150 focus on “drafting, revising, and editing
compositions derived from American historical, social, and cultural texts to develop skills

in narration, persuasion, analysis, and documentation.” This particular section of WRA

35

150 was designated a “Technology-Intensive” section, which was indicated by a note on
the Course Schedule page: “Technology intensive section. Students are required to have
and bring a working laptOp to class with them each day. Laptops must be equipped with
Microsoft Office version 2000 or higher (which includes Word and PowerPoing [sic]); a
wireless card; and a power cord.” This section was fully enrolled, at 24 students; the
majority of the other offered sections of first-year writing had reached their enrollment

limits as well.

Classroom environment

The classroom in which I collected my data was one of the four WRAC
“wireless” classrooms, designed to facilitate students’ use of laptops; tables were of a size
to accommodate the books, laptops, and other class materials of four students, while still
light enough to allow easy reconfiguration of the classroom; chairs were on casters,
serving again to facilitate on-the-fly reconfigurations and student movement. (As
previously mentioned, this was one of the ten WRAC courses offered that semester in
which students were required to bring a wireless-enabled laptop to class every day;
students were encouraged to use their laptops for note taking in addition to other
classroom activities.) These four laptop classrooms are, however, the smallest in the
building, with an official capacity of only 24 students, according to the MSU Office of
the Registrar’s Classroom Events Calendar. (In comparison, the average student capacity
for classrooms in that building was 58 students, with only five of the building’s 22

classrooms having capacities at lower than 40 students.)

36

Because of the classroom’s small size and the course’s full enrollment, space was
definitely at a premium when all the enrolled students showed up for class; every chair
was taken, and there was little room for students or teacher to maneuver between the
tables, making in-class reconfiguration of the space difficult. Students who wanted
privacy during peer response sessions usually went out into the hallway outside the
classroom, sitting either on the floor or on (not at) one of two large metal desks that are
kept in that hallway outside the classroom.

Though the tables and chairs were, as previously mentioned, designed to be easily
reconfigured, the classroom remained similarly configured during each of my visits to the
classroom, with the exception of my first visit at the start of the second week of classes,
during which time I explained my study and underwent the consent process. At that time,
the tables in the room were configured in long rows of three or four tables each that
stretched from wall to wall, facing the chalkboard and the solitary table on which sat a
wooden lectem for the instructor. I next visited the class the following week, in order to
administer the pre-peer response survey, and at that point the tables were in the
configuration that remained consistent for all of my subsequent visits. (See Figure 1

below.)

37

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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- m ._-- __ _ ._,._. _,. _, _ _ __ .1. ‘k .. __,___,._,...__ J
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Figure 1 Layout of classroom in which data was generated, indicating placement of
classroom furniture as well as video- and audio-recording devices.)
The instructor

The instructor for this section, Liz”, was a graduate student within the Rhetoric
and Writing program, and a former writing consultant at the MSU Writing Center. I had
known Liz for many years, having both worked with her at the Writing Center and been
enrolled in the same graduate program for two years. The Spring 2008 semester was
Liz’s sixth semester teaching first year writing, though her first semester teaching WRA
150; in past semesters she had taught WRA 140: Women in America and WRA 0102:
Preparation for College Writing, a pre—Tier I course designed for students whose

placement tests indicated that they weren’t likely to be successful were they to enroll in

 

2° All names are pseudonyms unless otherwise stated.

38

the required Tier] course. Given her previous semesters of experience in teaching for the
WRAC program, Liz had a measure of autonomy in designing her own course
requirements and assignments, within certain limits (i.e., three or four major writing
assignments, depending on length; a reasonable amount of reading from a program-
approved text or texts; and—since hers was a technology-intensive section, course
assignments and activities that took advantage of the laptop requirement and used the

technology in pedagogically appropriate ways, given the goals of the course).

Peer response in this classroom

Perhaps because Liz had been a writing center consultant herself for several years,
peer response groups in her classroom were structured along the same lines as the model
of peer response demonstrated in the Writing Center’s peer response presentation. Like
many other Tier I WRAC instructors, Liz had scheduled a Writing Center Peer Response
Workshop for her class at the start of the semester; in this workshop, three writing
consultants visited the classroom to discuss and demonstrate the Writing Center’s
proposed peer response model. Though Writing Center consultants have some freedom
to tailor how they present the peer response model to their audience, the model itself is
laid out in handouts and workshop preparation materials, and so rarely varies from
workshop to workshop. This particular workshop, which I observed as part of my data
collection, was no exception. The model of peer response as it was presented to Liz’s

class consists of four steps, as follows:

39

. The author of the text under discussion selects two or three “areas of concern” for

the group to focus on—for example, “organization,” “transitions,” or “is my thesis
statement clear enough?”

. The author reads the text aloud to the group, and the group listens and makes
notes for the upcoming discussion of the text, paying particular attention to the
areas of concern identified by the author.

. The group members discuss their comments and concerns about the text, while
the author remains silent and listens, taking notes.

. The author joins in the discussion, asking any questions that might remain about

the group’s responses, and responding to the comments and concerns of the

group.

A handout containing this peer response framework, as well as other tips and

suggestions for peer response, was distributed during the Writing Center presentation,

and though I didn’t hear Liz mention this handout again, I did see several students using

their copies of the handout during the rounds of peer response that I observed. (See

Appendix C.)

During one of the rounds of peer response that I observed, students were also

given a rubric worksheet with which to evaluate their peers’ work (see Appendix D);

students were to complete this worksheet during or after the peer response discussion and ,

then return the completed rubric to the author“. During the second observed round of

peer response, no such rubric worksheet was used, though the class—prompted by Liz——

 

2‘ Students were required to submit these worksheets with the drafts of their papers, for credit.

40

jointly brainstormed several characteristics of an effective response to the assignment that

they could then use as a point of comparison in their responses.

Methodology: Grounded Theory
Because no theory of peer response or new media pedagogy had been developed
that would apply to the problem I sought to examine with my research questions (below),
I decided to employ a grounded theory approach in order to derive a theory from the
situation itself.

Research Questions

1. Do participants in a peer response session use different modes of response while
offering feedback in print-based text peer response (PPR) and digital text peer
response (DPR) sessions?

2. How, if at all, do the modes of response employed relate to whether the text under

discussion is digital or print-text?

Grounded theory is an interpretive approach, one in which "the search is not for
abstract universals arrived as by statistical generalizations from a sample to a population,
but for concrete universals, arrived at by studying a specific case in great detail and then
comparing it with other cases studied in equally great detail" (Erickson, 1986, p. 130).
The methods used in grounded theory analysis “provide interpretive researchers with a
disciplined process, not simply for generating concepts, but more importantly for coming

to see possible and plausible relationships among them. It is the researcher’s portrayal of

41

these conceptual relationships that constitute a grounded theory” (Piantanida, Tananis,
and Grubs, 2002).

Though, as Erickson (1986) points out, ”the primary concern of interpretive
research is particularizability, rather than generalizability," it remains true that "some
aspects of what occurs in any human teaching situation will generalize to all other
situations of teaching" (130), and therefore this interpretive approach seemed particularly
suited to my research which I hoped, though it would be situated in one classroom, would
have relevance to many others.

In this approach, it is important to avoid pre-existing conclusions and expectations
about the theory that might emerge to explain the phenomena observed—instead of
seeking to prove a pre-existing series of hypotheses, the grounded theory researcher
attempts to avoid making assumptions about what her research will uncover in order to

remain open to findings she did not—or could not—anticipate.

Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework that informs my observations and analyses is based on
the intersection of two theories, both of which have greatly influenced the way] approach
and understand the teaching of composition: 1) the framework of multiple and
complementary literacies proposed by Stuart Selber in Multiliteracies for a Digital Age,
and 2) connectivist learning theory, which posits that learning takes place within
communicative networks comprised by individual learners and often facilitated by

technology.

42

Selber’s Theory of Multiliteracies

Selber’s theory of literacies helped to redefine what I believe it means to be
literate in this historical moment, and his work has greatly informed my approaches to
assigning and assessing digital texts in my own writing classes, as well as my
observations and analyses of the ways in which students in Liz’s classroom responded to
and interacted with the digital texts they composed. Though Selber’s goal in
Multiliteracies for a Digital Age is the presentation of strategies to establish English
departments as the site where students develop computer literacy, I’ve found his theory of
literacies to be incredibly useful to me when applied to an understanding of the
development of writers capable of composing effective texts in both print and new media.

In Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, Selber is concerned with the failure of
English departments to involve themselves with computer literacy, and argues that by
doing 30, English departments cede their position as sites of literacy development. While
he does focus on computer skills rather that digital or multimedia composing, his
argument centers around a ceding of rightful territory on the part of English departments,
a failure to address the ways in which that territory is expanded by new technologies, and
his concerns apply just as well to the failure of writing programs to embrace new media
writing as part of its core subject.

The three-part literacy framework that Selber proposes has resonated with
theorists and practitioners in a number of fields; a brief survey of online syllabi returns
over one hundred undergraduate and graduate-level courses in composition, technical
and professional writing, TESOL, English, and communication that have used or are

using Selber’s Multiliteracies as a required text, and Google Scholar lists a similar

43

number of journal articles, dissertations, and other texts that cite Multiliteracies for a
Digital Age as a primary source—among them, Grabill and Hicks (2005), who suggest
that Selber’s framework could be a useful heuristic for pre-service English teachers in
their methods courses, one that would help to shape their own approaches to and uses of
technology as well as provide strategies that could be used with their students, and
Pennell (2008), who takes a different approach, using Selber’s multiliteracies framework
to justify and advocate for large-scale collaborative digital writing assignments using
wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies.

Selber identifies a three-part literacy framework that addresses the characteristics
of “ideal” computer literacy: functional, critical, and rhetorical (see Figure 2). By
viewing digital composition—and even composition in general—through the lens
provided by these three frameworks, I was able to refine my understanding of the goals of

digital composing in the writing classroom.22

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category Metaphor Subject Position Objective
11:? nctronal Computers as tools Students as users of technology Effective
teracy employment
Critical Computers as cultural Students a3 questioners of Informed
Literacy artifacts technolng critique
Rhetorical Computers as Students as producers of Reflective
Literacy hypertextual media technolfly praxis

 

Figure 2 In order to introduce and explain his literacy frameworks, Selber offers this
breakdown of the categories, their overarching metaphors, their overall objectives, and
the ways in which they position students (Multiliteracies, p. 25)

 

2’ If my admittedly-informal start-of-the-semester surveys are any indication, none of my first year writing
students ever started their semester with me without experience in digital composing— they just didn’t
think of what they did with their Blogger and Facebook accounts, their forum postings and online gaming,
even their webpages or PowerPoint presentations as “digital composing.” ] see “digital composing in the
writing classroom” as a whole other animal entirely.

44

Functional Literacy
The first of Selber’s literacy frameworks, functional literacy, is intended to help
students deveIOp the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to use the technologies
currently available to them, as well as any that might be introduced in the future. Selber
identifies five aspects through which functional literacy can be measured: 1) use of
technology to achieve educational goals, 2) an understanding of the social conventions
that drive use of the technology, 3) facility with using the specialized discourses
associated with the technology, 4) effective management of online environments, and 5)
the Possession of strategies for addressing difficulties and challenges that might arise
during the use of technologies (45). According to Selber, a student is functionally literate
when he or she “is alert to the limitations of technology and the circumstances in which
human awareness is required” (47).

This framework can be neatly and easily adapted to digital composing: the
funCtionally literate digital writer understands how and when to operate different digital
composing tools, comprehends the metaphors that govern the language used to describe
these tools, and is aware of both the problems that can arise while composing digitally as

we“ as the strategies that can be employed to address them.

Critical Literacy
The second component to Selber’s theory is critical literacy, in which he
encourages students and teachers alike to question the ways in which the technology is

Sed to move, influence, use, or define rndrvrduals and groups, to interrogate how the

45

ways in which individuals use and are used by technology determines how they think and
act, and how much power they wield. To be critically literate is “to seek oppositional
discourses that defarniliarize commonsensical impressions of technology” (88).

Again, with very little adaptation, this framework is applicable to digital
composing: the critically literate digital writer is able to question the digital texts with
which they come into contact; such a writer is aware of the ways in which such texts and

the choices they represent are made invisible, and can interrogate these texts and their

assumptions effectively.

Rhetorical Literacy
In this third part of his multiliteracies argument, Selber advocates for praxis-f or

the “the thoughtful integration of [the] functional and critical” literacies as students
critique technologies and perhaps go on to develop their own interfaces (145). He
identifies four parameters that constitute rhetorical literacy: persuasion, deliberation,

refl ection, and social action, and provides suggestions for students and teachers regarding
how to engage in the rhetorical acts he describes. Perhaps because he is explicitly
addressing textual production using technology, this is the aspect of Selber’s framework
that requires the least amount of adaptation to apply to digital composing. The rhetorical
literacy represents, for Selber, the effective shift between functional and critical literacies,
in order to produce, interrogate, and revise texts using the technologies he describes, and

as snob, is applicable to any digitally-composed text, not only the web pages and other

byPel'textual documents Selber focuses on.

By adapting Selber’s multiliteracies framework to better fit digital writing in the

composition classroom, I provided myself with a series of lenses through which] would

be able to observe—and ideally, better understand and describe—the composing

circumstances of the digital writers who would be my research participants. Figure 3

below represents my adaptation of Selber’s multiliteracies framework.

 

 

 

 

 

[Category Metaphor 323$; Objective Application
Students understand
the operation of
different digital

D1 3 composing totgls,
' gital tudents as comprehend e
Functional composing users of digital Effective metaphors that
Literacy media as composing employment govern the language
tools media used to describe these
tools, and possess
strategies to address
any problems that
might arise.
Students can
as... 1...... 3:225:32?“
di . ta] questioners of critique (of the assum tions
it“ cogrir sin digital texts and digital texts effectigel to
L y medifas 8 digital they encounter uncover hir’w such
cultural °°mP°Sing and imam“ texts affect and
artifacts media With darly) influence students in
-\ their daily lives.
Reflective
- praxis (in their
Rh Digital Students as composmon 3123;33:st
L «0M lifetfaistive producers of 3?“. alsetecfts produce, interrogate,
media technology anal di 'tal and revise digital
compogsling texts effectively.
\ tOOl S)

 

 

 

 

 

 

:81 “0'8 3 My revision of Selber’s framework explanation, representing the application of
hers frameworks to digital composing

47

Connectivism: A theory of networked learning

In 2005, George Siemens proposed what he called a “connective theory of
learning,” in response to what he saw as a fundamental flaw in the existing learning
theories of behaviorism, cognitivism, and social constructivism, namely that the central
tenet of these learning theories held that learning occurs within individuals. Siemens
argued that such an understanding of the site and mechanics of learning ignored the

reality that learning, thanks in no small part to communication and dissemination
technologies, resides not inside individuals but within networks, and that learning can
even exist outside of people, in sites where individuals collectively store and share
information they’ve gathered (e.g., social bookmarkings sites, wikis). In this
understanding of learning, individuals are members of learning communities, which
themselves constitute nodes in a larger network of learning; information is discovered,
Shared, debated, and revised via these network connections, and, therefore, in order to
understand how learning occurs, Siemens (2008) states, one needs to “understand[..] how
and why connections form.” He identifies the following principles of connectivism—

thollgh he emphasizes that they should not be interpreted as prescriptive:

‘ Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.

‘ Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.

' Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

‘ Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known

‘ Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
‘ Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill

‘ Currency (accurate, up—to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist

learning activities.

Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the
meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality.
While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in

the information climate affecting the decision.

This understanding of learning as the product of networks frees up students (and
teachers) from any perceived responsibility to serve as knowledge repositories; instead, it
privileges the abilities to find, evaluate, process, and communicate information in a
never-ending recursive process. Conceiving of learning in this way has been particularly
helpful for me, as it reinforced my own long-held belief, drawn from my own experience

as a student, that knowing the answers wasn’t nearing as important as knowing how or
where to find them”. Connectivist learning theory also mapped well onto the ways in
Which I saw students working in my own classrooms and in writing center sessions, and
encouraged me to develop assignments and activities that would help writers develop
Valuable network connections and strategies for evaluating the usefulness of their existing
and future connections. Connectivist learning theory also informed my practice and use
Of Peer response in my composition classes, leading me to emphasize the development of

learning communities within and among peer response groups as a fundamental part of
the Peer response process.

Multiliteracies, connectivism and peer response

Making connections
Connectivist learning is dependent on both context and communication, and as

such, it maps well onto Selber’s theory of multiliteracies; students in the process of

 

23[\
0!! aspect that this particular perception can be traced back to the moment I realized that performing well
‘8 had more to do with an understanding of “tests" as a genre than it did with content knowledge.

49

acquiring functional, critical, and rhetorical literacies are increasingly likely to do so
through engagement with a growing online network of fellow-learners, via, for example,
Wikipedia, YouTube, Deliciouscom, or Facebook. I began to understand multiliteracy

as a goal of the composition classroom, and connectivist learning as the means through
which that goal could be achieved. Multiliteracies as I had adapted them from Selber and
connectivist learning provided lenses that greatly informed my understanding of the
teaching and learning of composition, including the use of peer response, and so also

greatly influenced the development of the tools I would use to gather my data.

Developing tools

I approached the development of my data gathering instruments with a desire to
address the questions that arose when I began to consider peer response through the
lenses of connectivism and multiliteracies. Through these lenses, peer response groups
Operate as learning communities within the larger community of the classroom,
communities whose individual members have the potential to influence and facilitate
each other’s literacy acquisition in profound ways. Group members can share content
knowledge, model behavior, and provide the benefit of other connections and resources
they ’ Ve obtained, thereby strengthening the ability of the community to move towards

functi onal, critical, and/or rhetorical literacy, depending on the tasks with which the

groups are engaged.

I would need to develop data collection methods that allowed for the observation
of functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy development as they manifested in peer

respoIlse; that would gather information about the kinds of problems students

encountered, and the kinds of literacies that students drew on in their comments and
questions; that would examine the ways in which students took advantage of their peer
response members as fellow learner-researchers and their peer response group as a
network; would note how students made connections between in- group discussion and
other potential nodes within their network, and how these connections influenced their
behavior within the groups, if at all; and, finally, would allow me to observe and account

for any differences in the above when the texts under discussion were print-based or

digital.

Data collection and analysis
Data Collection
The data for this research project were collected through the following methods:
pre— peer response survey questionnaires; video- and audio-recordings of peer response

sessions; post-session survey questionnaires; drafts and final copies of student work; and

assignment handouts and other classroom artifacts.

Pre -peer response survey questionnaires

Before the first in-class peer response session, and before the informational peer
r espouse presentation by consultants from the Writing Center, a survey instrument (see
Appendix A) was distributed to all participants. This instrument was intended to gauge 1)
Students,24 previous experience with peer response in their writing classrooms; 2)
Students attitudes towards peer response in general; and 3) students’ perceptions of the
useful ness of peer response to help them to make substantive, effective revisions to their
\

24
T -
CO I“ S and all references to students in the discussion of this study include only those students who
3“‘ed to participate in this research.

51

texts. This and all other surveys were designed to take fewer than ten minutes of class
time to complete, in order to minimize disruption to the planned classroom activities and
to avoid survey fatigue (Porter et al.), which might negatively influence response to

surveys distributed later in the data collection process.

Video- and audio-recordings of peer response sessions
Five digital video cameras were used to make recordings of five different peer

response groups” during the two rounds of observed peer response sessions, and digital
audio recorders were placed at each of the five tables to capture any audio missed by the
cameras. One additional recorder was placed at the front of the room to capture any
instructor comments or instructions that were missed by other recording equipment. In
order to minimize student shyness or discomfort, I left the room once the equipment was
running, and returned only once class had ended, waiting outside the classroom until all
groups were finished with their discussion.

In order to protect participants from feeling obligated to allow their sessions to be
1"worded, the students had been informed during the consent process that they would have
the Option, if they so chose, to turn off any of the recording equipment at any time during
the data collection, and before each observed peer response session, group members were
remi nded of that option and were given a brief instruction as to how to go about

switching off the audio and video recorders. During the data collection, only once did the

25\

[Dane Student in the class did not consent to participate in this research, and so her group’ s video data from

mufounds of peer response could not be included in the analyses; the consent procedures approved by

so 'h S IRB required me to leave the consent forms in a sealed envelope until after the end of the semester,

inter at knowledge of which students, if any, bad or had not consented would not influence the way I
a"fled with them. I therefore arranged cameras and recording equipment as though all students had

Sented.

 

52

recording equipment stop recording before the end of the peer response session,
approximately 25 minutes before class was to end; this corresponds with the point in the
peer response session at which the final group member would have begun sharing his or
her work, leading me to believe that one group member decided on that day that he/ she
didn’t want his/her portion of the session recorded.

Each camera was placed on a tripod, between two and three feet away from the
nearest member of the group being recorded. Four cameras were affixed to tabletop
tripods, two of which were then placed on window-sills, one on top of the overhead-
projector cart, and one on a non-rolling chair borrowed from the hallway. The fifth I
camera was affixed to a standard-sized tripod and was placed against one wall, where
there were no other stables surfaces on which to balance a camera. Tabletop tripods were
uS€=d whenever possible, in order to minimize classroom disruption; as previously
mentioned, this was a relatively small classroom at maximum capacity, and the tabletop
triPods, while they limited the placement and angling of the video cameras, took up much
less classroom space than did the standard tripod Though the cameras had directional
microphones for audio-pickup, digital audio recorders were also placed in the center of

each table in order to better capture the group conversations.

POSt~session survey questionnaires

After each of the two recorded rounds of peer response, participants were asked to
r eSPOnd to a brief “post-peer-response” survey instrument; the intent behind this
questionnaire was to gauge the students’ perceptions of and responses to the events that

Declined in the sessions themselves. Participants were asked to describe the project they

53

had shared with the group along with any concerns they had with their project before the
peer response session; additionally, they were asked to describe the feedback they had
received from their groups and any revisions that they intended to make as a result. (See

Appendix B for the full text of the questionnaire.)

Drafis and final copies of student work

While my goal was not to analyze specifically the revisions that my participants
made to their texts, I anticipated perhaps wanting to trace the effectiveness of a particular
comment or series of comments observed in a session, and so I collected electronic
versions of the draft and final copies of student work as they existed at the point at which
they were collected by the instructor. (Students were required to submit copies of their
Works-in-progress on the same day that the peer response groups met to discuss their
drafts, so the draft copies of the student work I collected were identical to those shared in

the peer response groups.)

A33 ignment handouts and other classroom artifacts

In addition to student work, I collected copies of classroom handouts pertaining to
the Peer response process, and to the writing assignments being discussed in the sessions
I 01)Served. These documents consisted of assignment descriptions, Writing Center
presentation handouts, co-constructed or instructor- generated assignment rubrics, and

1"’Search citation handouts. Many of these texts are included in the Appendices.

Data Analysis— Grounded theory
In order to analyze my collected data, I turned to the methods of data coding and
analysis prescribed by Strauss and Corbin (1990), who dictate that the grounded theory
researcher must engage in constant comparison, first comparing the data with itself in
order to uncover similarities and differences that mark the boundaries (1‘ distinct
categories, and then, in later rounds of coding, comparing categories to each other to
determine their relationships, if any. These categories serve as the “cornerstones” of the
theory as’it is developed (Corbin and Strauss, 1990, p. 7), and the researcher continues to
build on the categories as they developed throughout each round of coding and analysis.
Though steps to the coding and analytic processes of grounded theory are
provided in the work of Strauss and Corbin (1990) and Glaser and Strauss (1967), the
generation and development of concepts, categories and propositions is an unbounded
and iterative process. Grounded theory is not generated a priori and then tested. Instead, it
is
inductively derived from the study of the phenomenon it represents. That is,
discovered, developed, and provisionally verified through systematic data
collection and analysis of data pertaining to that phenomenon. Therefore, data
collection, analysis, and theory should stand in reciprocal relationship with each

other. One does not begin with a theory, then prove it. Rather, one begins with an
area of study and what rs relevant to that area is allowed to emerge. (Strauss and

Corbin, 1990, p. 23)

Coding of data in grounded theory methodology involves continually revisiting
data again and again in order to form, reform, and revise categories and identify the key
concepts and concept-relationships from which the theory will eventually be constructed.

The theory arises, not from the data itself, but from the relationships and categories that

a . . .
re uIlcoverrng dunng the coding process:

55

Theories can’t be built with actual incidents or activities as observed or reported;
that is, from “raw data.” The incidents, events, happenings are taken as, or
analysed as, potential indicators of phenomena, which are thereby given
conceptual labels. . . . Only by comparing incidents and naming like phenomena
with the same term can the theorist accumulate the basic units for theory. (Corbin

and Strauss, 1990, p. 7)

Corbin and Strauss provide a three-part framework for the coding of data in a
grounded theory study: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. Though the
grounded theory coding process is intentionally recursive, these three stages of coding are
progressed through more or less linearly starting with open coding. The researcher
continues in the open coding stage until no new codes emerge, then moves on to axial
coding; when axial coding no longer elicits new categories, the researcher moves to the

final stage, selective coding. In the pages that follow, I discuss in greater detail these

coding stages and how I applied them to the data I had generated.

Open coding

For my first pass at coding the video/audio and questionnaire data, I engaged in
Open coding as described by Corbin and Strauss (2007). In order to facilitate coding of all
the collected data, I made transcripts of the video and audio recordings, which were then
entered into a Word document along with my descriptions of phenomenal observed in
the Video and any other notes I had made during the transcription process. Data from the
three rounds of questionnaires (pre-peer response, and two post-peer response
queStionnaires) was entered into an Excel spreadsheet. Managing data in MS Word and
MS Excel allowed me to move notes, codes, and snippets of data back and forth between

files and programs, and I found it useful, as codes began to emerge, to use Excel

spreadsheets to keep track of the different categories and descriptions and the
corresponding data.

In open coding, researchers attempt to identify and categorize the actions and
phenomena”S they observe in the data, while doing their best to refrain from making any
assumptions or pre-judgments about what those categories might signify or where the

process might lead. In my case, however, this caused what initially seemed to be a
problem. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, I had formed a suspicion during my pilot study
that a significant point of comparison between DPR and PPR might be the modes of
response employed by students during the different sessions; I had even identified, as a
starting point, four categories of modes I felt were likely to occur during peer response:
Written (on scrap paper, on instructor-provided response form, via email, on margins of
tCXt, in-text, etc); Oral (asking questions, making suggestions, offering corrections, etc.);
I(incesthetic (pointing, cutting and pasting, flipping through pages, etc.); and Additional
noll-verbal (shrugging, facial expressions, nodding, etc.). It would be impossible for me
to approach coding as though I had not previously considered these to be relevant codes,
and I knew that I could very likely tend towards an awareness of behaviors that would
SerVe to confirm that impression. Therefore, I determined that I would apply and adapt
these codes when and if they seemed appropriate during open coding, while also
remaining open to other categories that might arise that could also fit the observed events,
as Well as to events that didn’t relate to these modes of response.
As I worked my way through the data, I developed a number of representative

codes which could describe the events and actions I observed; the events and actions I
\

26
Wlfitrauss and Corbin (1990) define a phenomenon as “the central idea, event, happening, incident about
ch 3 set of actions are directed at managing, handling, or to which the set of actions is related.”

57

observed in the surveys, student work, classroom artifacts, and video/audio data were

assigned one or more of these codes, and I made notes of actions or events that did not

seem to fit in any code. Many codes arose through the open coding process that were

eventually discarded or combined with other codes, but those codes that I deemed useful

enough to carry through to the next stage of coding are listed below in Table 1.

Table 1 Codes derived from open coding

 

Codes arising from or

applied to session transcripts

Codes arising from or applied
to surveys

Codes arising from or
applied to classroom
artifacts

 

addressing author’s
concems/ audience’s
Expectations

author: only wants grammar
correction/author wants more
than only grammatical fixes

due dates and
deadlines

 

body
Me/pmture/ attitude

Change in focus of attention

-—__

concems/challenges relating

to the classroom

concerns addressed/concerns
not addressed
conclusion

development/incomplete
paper

number of drafts

requirements of the
assignment

research sources and
citations

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moment
CPoperative talk/active explicit direction from teacher scoring rubrics
.hggemng
deferring to group has detailed revision steps of peer response
member/instructor plan/might have vague idea of framework
\ revision plan /no revision plan
dcViate from/adhere to peer no previous experience with
muse framework peer response
direct response peer response helps you with:
alternative perspectives/
citations/ appropriate content!
edi tin g/f ormatting/ grammar/
organi zation/thesis
development /confirmation of
opinion/f1 gure out where to
add/word choice; reaching
‘d\"\ your audience
11‘ ective/non—directive peer response is:
Statelnents useful/useless/interesting/unin
teresting/confusing/too
\ long/too short

58

Table 1 (cont’d)
eye contact/facing towards
or away from/looking at or
away

positive/negative experience
with peer response

 

formatting texts and
citations

responders are: biased against
topic/uninformed/

unprepared/not willing to
help/not invested in
task/mostly wrong /impossible
to keep on-task/hard to get
along with/indifferent

revision already completed in
session

HOCs/LOCS

identifying concerns

 

incorporating and balancing

multiple elements

of f -task and unrelated to

task/ off-task but related to
_t§sk/on-task

of f -topic/tangential
merits

 

Opposing viewpoints/devil’s
Mate

 

Organization of text

 

 

positive comments, “I
liked. . .,” vague comments,

6‘

W”
POSitive/negative value

fiflggpents

unStions vs. statements
\.

r eadmg silently/reading out

loud .

 

refusing to yield/ignoring
mintemptmi
re<lllirements of assignment

 

resPonse group size

 

scoring rubric
\

 

uncfel‘tainty about
assl gnment requirements

 

uSing images and sound
\

59

Axial coding
After I had identified a number of code categories that seemed to fit the
phenomenal observed, I engaged in axial coding, so called because “the analyzing

revolves around the ‘axis’ of one category at a time” (Strauss and Corbin 32). Axial
coding requires the researcher to focus on each coded category individually, in order to
determine its relationship, if any, to the other categories that have. arisen during open
coding. Through this axial coding, the previously identified codes are grouped and
shaped into a system of categories and sub-categories, with the patterns of interaction
between them identified.

I began reexamining the different codes I had developed during open coding in
order to determine what relationships might exist between or among them. I began with
those codes that had arisen from the transcripts, and grouped those codes that seemed to
be related, sorting them into categories and sub-categories that best represented those
rel ationships. Whereas in open coding, the codes developed had been unique to the
80111131: of the data (i.e., one set of codes each for the transcripts, surveys, and classroom
afl-ifacts), during axial coding I developed categories that spanned across different data
soul‘ces, allowing me to develop a better understanding of the entire picture painting by
the data I had generated.

Table 2 below lists the categories of codes developed during axial coding, and
incllldes a brief description of each category, along with examples of the sub-categories

and codes that each category includes.

Table 2 Code categories derived from axial coding

ASSIGN: Relating to the assignment (e.g., requirements; scoring rubrics; due dates
and deadlines; drafis; research sources and citations; uncertainty about assignment
requirements; rubric questions; required number of sources; formatting texts and
citations; movie length; using images and sound; addressing the audience’s

expectations)

ATTENTION (A'IT): Relating to an observed change in focus of attention of
participants during peer response sessions (e.g., looking at or away from other group
members or texts under discussion)

BODY LANGUAGE (BL): Descriptions of the body language observed in group
members before, during, and after sessions (e.g., posture, eye contact, facing

towards/away from, attitude)

FEEDBACK CHARACTERISTICS (FBC): Descriptive characteristics of the
responses offered by peer groups (e.g., Questions; statements; specific; vague;
unrelated; off-topic; tangential; direct response; positive/negative value judgments;
directive “you should” statements; deferring to instructor; deferring to group member;
off-topic; useful; useless; too short; not correct; biased)

LITERACIES (LIT): Demonstrating or otherwise related to functional, critical, and/or
rhetorical literacies (e. g., determining how best to reach the audience; adding music
and images to Movie projects; offering feedback to peers; suggesting resources to
help with composition or revision; file formats)

 

OPINION (OP): ParticipantS’ expressed opinions of peer response, contains three
sllbcategories: l) Responder: positive or negative experiences or impressions related
to other group members, (e. g., bias, alternative perspectives; doesn’t trust responder’s
S1.1ggestions; interpersonal problems; lack of effort; offered poor or incorrect feedback;
didn’t come prepared; didn’t stay on task); 2) Response: positive or negative
experiences or impressions related to feedback received, e.g., author wants more than
only grammatical fixes; author only wants grammar correction); 3) Session: positive
01‘ negative experiences or impressions related to how per response sessions are

sU‘uctured (e.g., not enough direction from teacher)
\

F RAMEWORK (F RA): Relating to adherence or non-adherence to the approved peer
l'eSponse framework (e.g., reading silently; reading out loud; only two group
l“embers; silent discussion; identifying concerns; addressing concerns; steps of per

response framework)
\

SP‘ACE: concems/challenges relating to the classroom environment

TASK: On-task, off-task but related to task, ofl'-task and unrelated to task
\

61

Table 2 (cont’d)
TOPICS: Topics discussed during sessions (e.g., formatting; grammar, content,
editing, citations appropriate content; continuation of opinion; incomplete paper; need
more research; thesis development; word choice; organization; mechanics;

requirements of assignment; opposing viewpoints; incorporating and balancing
multiple elements; using iMovie; proofreading strategies; interviewing strategies;

weekend activities; lunch plans; Facebook profiles)

TURN-TAKING (TT): Turn-taking and other conversational cues (e.g., refusing to
yield; ignoring cues; interrupting; cooperative talk; active listening)

WRITING PROCESS (WP): Demonstrating influence on or
acknowledgment/evidence of the writing process (e.g., has detailed revision plan;
conclusion development; no revision plan; might have vague idea of revision plan;

revision already completed in session)

Selective coding
The final coding step in grounded theory as described by Corbin and Strauss is

sel ective coding, in which the core category is selected, the relationships between it and
other categories are more firmly established, further descriptive information is gather to
fill in any gaps that might exist in the data, and relationships between categories are
validated by reexamining the different categories at all stages of coding against the
rel ationships as they are understood at that point. Corbin and Strauss place a great deal
of emphasis on this final step, validation, as it is vital to determine whether the final
categories and relationships that have emerged at the end of coding can be used to
aCcoum for the categories that arose and the phenomena that were observed throughout
Codi!) g. Only after this validity has been determined can a theory be posited to explain
the Patterns that have emerged through selective coding. '
Through the selective coding process, two core concepts emerged: topic (i.e.,

hat was said 1n a sessron; the content) and feedback characteristics (i.e., rn what way(s)

62

comments and other feedback were presented in a session; the delivery). Each of these
concepts was represented by a category of the same name that had emerged during the
axial coding process. To confirm my suspicions that the distinct but related concepts of
topic and feedback characteristics were the core concepts represented by my data, I
reexamined the remaining categories and codes in relation to these two concepts, and
determined that these two concepts were either made up of, or significantly influential to,
all of the other categories and codes that had emerged during open and axial coding.
Through reexamining these codes in light of my discovery of these core concepts, I was
able to determine and validate the relationships of topic and feedback characteristics to
the remaining code categories (see Figure 4 below). Topic and Feedback Characteristics
operate as the two core categories, comprising the code categories of Task and Assign,
and Attention, Body Language, Tum-Taking, and Framework, respectively. The core
categor'ies also significantly influence and are influenced by the categories of Opinion
and Writing Process and their sub—categories. The code category of Space, dealing as it
does With the influence of the affordances and limitations of the classroom space on the
peer response experience, influences the context in which the rest of the categories exist,
and 80 was placed outside the central diagram, but with permeable boundaries to indicate
its ability to potentially impact any category. The significance of these core categories,
their relationships with their other categories, and their influence on my interpretation of

my l‘Etsearch results will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

BODY
LANGUAGE

    

 

 

 

 

 

@_ ( OPINION 3
TOPIC FEEDBACK
@— (warms PROCESEQ

' SPACE

 

LITERACIES

 

 

Figure 4 Diagram of relationships between core categories and the other significant
categories and sub-categories derived from coding

Chapter Summary

The nature of my research—and my own epistemological perspective—preclude the

making of global generalizations about peer response from my experiences studying peer

resPonse in this one classroom; instead, my goal was to identify patterns and develop

l-eS‘llts that could be particularized to other similar situations (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005;

I”’Iilxwell, 1992; Erickson, 1986). I focused on examining the specific conditions

Sun‘Ounding peer response of print and new media texts at my research site in order to

acellrately represent the phenomena that resulted in the generated theory (Strauss &

COl‘bin 1990). The chapter that follows describes the results of this research in detail.

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS

Introduction

This research project sought to investigate the differences that might exist
between peer response of print-based and digital texts by gathering data about and from
two separate rounds of per response, one digital (DPR) and one print-based (PPR), in a
first-year composition classroom at Michigan State University. This chapter presents the
data resulting from that investigation, which was guided by the following research
questions:

3. Do participants in a peer response session use different modes of response while
offering feedback in print-based text peer response (PPR) and digital text peer
response (DPR) sessions?

4. How, if at all, do the modes of response employed relate to whether the text under
discussion is digital or print-based?

The methods through which these results were generated were discussed in the
previous chapter. This chapter is organized into two primary sections: Participant Data,
which includes that data gathered from and about the research participants and Session
Data, which includes the data generated both fiom (e.g., video- and audio recordings) and
about (e. g., participant surveys, classroom artifacts) the two rounds of per response that

were the primary focus of this research.

65

Participant Data
Participant Demographics
There were 24 students enrolled in this section of WRA 150, and of these, 23
consented to participate in this research study.27 All but one of these students were
freshmen in their second semester at Michigan State University; the remaining student
was a junior who had recently transferred to MSU from another university and was
required to take the introductory writing course to meet MSU’s Tier I requirement,
despite having completed a first-year writing course at her previous institution. (This
requirement and other characteristics of the course, program, and university that
contributed to the institutional and pedagogical context of the class were addressed in

greater detail in Chapter 3.)

Previous experience with peer response

A brief survey was distributed to participants during the third week of the
semester in order to determine students’ existing experience with, and attitudes towards,
in-class peer response; the purpose of this survey was to allow me to better understand
how students’ previous experiences with peer response might be influencing their
behavior within and impressions of the peer response sessions I would be observing, as
well as to enable me to compare students’ pre-existing ideas regarding how per response
was or was not useful to them in their writing to their actual experiences in this WRA

COlll'SC.

 

’7 Unless otherwise stated, all references to “students” or “participants” will refer to the 23 students who
consented to participate in this research.

I suspected that many, if not all, of the students would have had some experience
with per response in their high school English classes, and the results of the initial
survey justified that suspicion: of the 21 participants who responded to this initial
inforrnation-gathering survey, 20 reported having previous experience with peer
response, and all reported that this experience had been in their high school English

classes. (See Appendix A for the complete survey.)

Attitude towards peer response at start of data collection

Degree of helpfulness in revising/making large-scale improvements

Students who had previous experience with per response were presented with
two survey items that asked them to rate aspects of peer response’s helpfulness or lack
thereof on a five-point Likert scale; the first of the two survey items asked students to
characterize the helpfulness of their previous peer response experience in addressing
what McAndrew and Reigstad refer to as “Higher Order Concerns,” those issues or
problems that would likely result in major revision to their text (e.g., developing or
changing the thesis argument, organization, or structure of a text). Students were asked
to rate peer response as one of the following: “Extremely helpful,” “Mostly helpful,”
“Neither helpful nor unhelpful,” “Mostly unhelpful,” or “Extremely unhelpfirl.” Of those
20 students who had previous experience with per response, 75% (15 students)
responded that their previous per response experiences had been “mostly helpf ” in
assisting them to address higher order concerns, and 25% (5 students) responded that

those previous experiences had been “mostly unhelpful” in that area. See Table 3 below.

67

Table 3 Degree of helpfulness in revising/making large-scale improvements (n=20)

 

Rating of Helpfulness of Peer Response in Making Large- Percentage of Participants

 

 

 

 

 

Scale Improvements to Text Selecting Rating
Extremely helpful 0%

Mostly helpful 75% (15 participants)
Neither helpful nor unhelpful 0%

Mostly unhelpfill 25% (5 participants)
Extremely unhelpful 0%

 

Degree of helpfulness in correcting surface-level errors

Participants were also asked to rate the usefulness of their previous peer response
experiences in helping them to identify and/or correct issues with “Lower Order
Concerns,” such as errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar”. Fourteen students
(70%) replied positively to this survey item, with 13 students responding that per
response had been “mostly helpful” to them in this area, and one student responding that
it had been “extremely helpful.” The remaining 5 students (25%) responded that per
response had been “mostly unhelpful” in assisting them with identifying and/or
correcting these errors. (One student who had indicated previous experience with per

response neglected to respond to this survey item.) See Table 4 below.

 

2’ “Grammar” is used here in the colloquial sense, as I anticipated that “mechanics, usage. and syntax” were
likely to be misunderstood, or, at least, weren’t likely to be understood in the way I intended.

68

Table 4 Degree of helpfulness in correcting surface-level errors (n=19)

 

Rating of Helpfulness of Peer Response in Surface-Level Percentage of Participants

 

 

 

 

 

Errors in Text Selecting Rating
Extremely helpful 5% (1 participant)
Mostly helpful 70% (14 participants)
Neither helpful nor unhelpful 0%

Mostly unhelpful 25% (5 participants)
Extremely unhelpful 0%

 

Degree of helpfitlness: In summary

Though for the most part, students gave the same response to each of these two
related survey items, there were four students who indicated differences in the perceived
helpfulness of peer response to assist with making large-scale improvements and with
correcting surface-level errors: Debra29 responded that per response was “mostly
unhelpful” with revising or making improvements, but “mostly helpful” when she needed
surface-level error correction; Susan and John thought the opposite, responding that peer
response was “mostly helpful” to them. in revising or making improvements, but “mostly
unhelpf ” with error correction; and Braedon responded that peer response was “mostly
helpful” to him in making large-scale improvements to his writing, but “extremely

helpful” in identifying and correcting errors.

Usefulness of peer response given specific tasks
Participants were also asked to identify which specific tasks, if any, peer response

was most useful to them in addressing; the survey item offered six suggestions of tasks,

 

2’ All names are pseudonyms.

69

in addition to which students had the opportunity to write in any other responses that they
deemed appropriate. Participants could also select as many responses as they wished. (A
response of “None of the above” was also an option, though no participants opted for it.)
The six suggested tasks were “Correcting spelling and punctuation errors,” “Improving
organization,” “Developing good transitions between paragraphs,” “Coming up with
topics for my writing,” “Developing a thesis statement,” and “Understanding the
assignment better.” Of these, “Correcting spelling and punctuation errors,” “Improving
organization,” and “Understanding the assignment better” were the most popular, with
70% of the participants (14 students) selecting “Correcting spelling and punctuation
errors,” and 60% (12 students) selecting “Improving organization” and “Understanding
the assignment better.” Of the remaining categories, 35% of participants (7 students)
responded that per response was most useful in helping them come up with interesting
ideas, 25% (5 students) found peer response most helpful in developing thesis statements
and 15% (3 students) thought that peer response was most useful in helping them develop

transitions between paragraphs. (See Table 5 below.)

70

Table 5 Usefulness of peer response given specific tasks (n=20)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Task Percentage of Participants
Selectlng Task
Correcting spelling and punctuation errors 70% (14 participants)
Improving organization 60% (12 participants)
Understanding the assignment better 60% (12 participants)
Coming up with topics for my writing 35% (7 participants)
Developing a thesis statement 25% (5 participants)
Developing good transitions between paragraphs 15% (3 participants)
Other 0%
None of the above 0%

 

Characteristics of participants’ most useful peer response experience

Students were also invited to think back to the peer response experience that had
been most useful to them in their writing and were asked to describe in their own words
the characteristic(s) of that session that most contributed to its usefulness. Participants
were free to focus on whatever aspects of the session they wished, and therefore the
responses varied greatly: one student replied that peer response was “not really helpf ,”
since “no one [in the peer response group] has any other ideas,” whereas three students
offered responses that focused on the structure of the sessions themselves, answering that
the best sessions were those in which the peer responders had their own copies of the
paper on which to write comments; in which papers were submitted to group members
via an online drOpbox, commented on using a rubric, and returned by email; or which

lasted long enough “to really talk about [the] paper.”

71

The remaining 16 respondents chose to emphasize some aspect of the session’s
content as most significant: seven students mentioned that peer response helped them
develop new ideas to approach the assignment, with three of those students adding that
peer response also helped them better understand the assignment; two students responded
that they received the most help on developing their thesis arguments; two students
mentioned that peer response helped to improve their confidence about their papers and
their ability as writers; one student shared that she had learned several useful
proofreading strategies from a peer response session; and four students responded that
peer response was most useful to them in identifying problems in spelling or grammar,
with one of these students adding the caveat that “the only thing i [sic] have ever got out
of peer response is help on my grammar and spelling.” See Table 6 for the positive

characteristics identified in the responses to this survey item, organized by category.

72

Table 6 Characteristics of Most Helpful Peer Response Session (n=20)

 

 

Aspects of session structure Aspects of session content

The reviewer spent time reading My partner told me good method for checking my
my paper and had a copy for them paper. All I have to do is read my paper aloud to
to write on my self to see w[h]ether it interests me or sounds

reall[y] really bad. I have used it on every paper
since then.

 

[The session] was long enough to

The only thing i have ever got out of peer response

 

really talk about my paper. is help on my grammar and spelling

Had to anonymously turn in a A helpful response was when I the person helped me
paper online in a dropbox, got it with my thesis and to understand what we needed to
reviewed following a RUBRIC write about

and then got it sent back. I was
able to see how it followed the
guidelines of what the professor
wanted and what another student
thought about it and fixed so that
it followed to rubric.

 

correct spelling and grammar

 

Having another person’s point of view, being given
suggestions and aspects of a subject that you would
not normally come up with yourself.

 

Getting another persons Opinion about my writing
and having a new way of looking at the paper.

 

The person reading my paper actually cared about
helping. They also offered good ideas and ways to
really improve my paper.

 

Well my Peer review helped with ideas.

 

Talking to my classmates about the assignment

 

i worked with someone that i was comfortable with
and it helped me because i could talk to them and
express myself.

 

it helped me come up with new ideas to put into my
paper

 

It helped me a lot because I am not that good of a
writer. I like getting other people’s ideas and
opinions.

 

The group was able to give me better ideas for my
paper and clarify what we are supposed to be writing
on.

 

It helps me get a better understanding of what I want
my thesis to be.

 

I find peer review most helpful for grammar,
Spelling, things like that. Most students are shy
about their writing and don’t want to say anything
critical about others papers. At least I don’t.

 

grammatical errors, rearrangement of sentences

73

Characteristics of participants’ least useful peer response session

There were greater similarities in the responses to the survey item asking students
to identify characteristics of their least useful peer response experience: one student
responded that he couldn’t think of a bad experience he’d had with peer response, another
student complained that his least useful session had suffered from a lack of guidance or
direction from his teacher, and the remaining respondents identified either problems with
either the other members of their response groups or with the feedback those members
had offered. (Two students who had previously indicated experience with peer response
neglected to respond to this survey item.)

Of those who identified some negative characteristic of their least helpful peer
response experience, 12 students (71%) complained about problems with other group
members: other members’ bias against the topic chosen made it impossible for them to
respond fairly and constructively to the text; other members’ ignorance of the writer’s
chosen topic, of the assignment, or of the writing process in general made what
comments they offered useless; their lack of investment or interest in the process led
other group members to become distracted by off-topic conversation or otherwise fail to
take the task of responding seriously. Four students (24%) chose to focus on issues with
the feedback they received as the reason for their session’s lack of usefulness: either they
wanted grammar correction and didn’t receive it, or they wanted more than grammar
correction and didn’t receive it. As previously mentioned, one student (6%) identified a
lack of direction from his teacher as the biggest problem in his least useful session. See
Table 7 below for the negative characteristics identified in responses to this survey item,

organized by category.

74

Table 7 Characteristics of Least Helpful Peer Response Session (n=18)

 

_ Problems with
Problems wrth responders feedback

Problems with session
structure

 

This experience was unhelpful because All peer review that I

the people reading my paper were only have been associated

looking at grammar, and thinks like it with has been

Also, they did not really care, and filled unhelpful in

out the "peer review shee " like it was developing a better

an assignment, rather than to improve a paper, thesis

paper. statement, or
transitional sentences.

Was not very
organized in the sense
that there were not set
goals to accomplish.
more just a read
through and highlight

what was wrong.

 

On a science paper people had to read A unhelpful response
them and respond. If someone didn’t usually consists of
like the subject then they didn’t fixing grammatical
respond. That was worthless. errors

 

i don’t think that the students really not enough feedback
know what the assignment is about and given, done just to
i never really use the advice they give get it over with and to

 

 

me get credit

When your peer does not try very hard Grammar was not

to give suggestions, just states that corrected as it should
everything looks fine. have been

when someone in the group was not Got nothing else to
prepared of wasted time add to paper

 

the person didn’t have any clue what
was going on and did not correct my
paper at all and most of the corrections
he did give were wrong

 

My partner was not very helpful and
wasn’t helpful.

 

working with someone that i couldn’t
really talk to that well. it didn’t help me
at all

 

The reviewer was not on task.

 

The group didn’t want to work and
nothing on my paper was corrected To
say the least there was no help at all.

 

The only thing that is really unhelpfirl is
when people don’t respond and give
feedback about what you wrote.

75

Session Data
Context of PPR and DPR sessions

In order to give students a chance to become familiar with the per response
framework they would be using—and therefore reduce the impact of unfamiliarity with
the per response framework on the data collected—I omitted the first round of in-class
peer response from my data collection, recording only the second (PPR) and third (DPR)
of the three rounds of peer response in this course. The PPR round took place over one
class period during the eleventh week of the semester, and the DPR round took place over
two consecutive class periods during the fifteenth week of the semester. (The first round
of in-class peer response was also for a print-based text assignment, and took place in the
sixth week of the semester.)

Each of the two observed rounds of per response took place on either one or two
class days, during which approximately one hour of class time was given over to peer
response group discussion; the remaining 50 minutes of class time for each day was spent
either on peer-response-related tasks (e. g., reviewing the per response process,
addressing concerns that arose during per response sessions, or finding appropriate
places in the hallway or neighboring classrooms for groups to meet) or in tasks related to
the current assignment (e. g., independent student work time, reminders about due dates,
collecting drafts, answering student questions about requirements for course assignments,
or scheduling instructor conferences). The expectation for the PPR session, announced at
the start of class on that day, was that all of each groups’ members were expected to share
and receive feedback on their drafts of their research papers (see Appendix D for the

assignment description) during the allotted one-hour period; therefore, given the time

76

constraints, many students chose to work in pairs30 or in groups of three for the PPR
session.

Circumstances were different for the DPR sessions, which took place over two
class days. The assignment for which the digital texts were composed required students
to use Apple Movie to create digital videos that ranged in length from 3 to 5 minutes,
and offered students the option of working in groups of two or three to develop their
videos. (See Appendix F for the handout containing the assignment description and
requirements.) All but one of the students took advantage of the opportunity to
collaborate with at least one other student on their video projects, and therefore for peer
response, a simple exchange of texts between individual students wouldn’t have been
sufficient or, given the layout of the classroom, even possible. Instead, the groups and
one individual author shared their texts with the entire class via the classroom LCD
projector, and peer response groups of three or four students discussed their response to
the text before presenting their comments to the video’ s authors and the rest of the class.
For the DPR sessions, I video- and audio-recorded both the individual group discussions
of the texts and their presentation of their feedback to the entire class, including the texts’
authors, who were, according to the peer response framework, then supposed to respond

and ask any questions they might have after they had heard the feedback from all of the

groups.

 

3° Though the peer response framework (see Appendix D) used in this classroom assumes groups of 3 or
more, students who chose to work in pairs were asked to adhere as closely to the framework as possible
during the “Group discusses, author remains silent” step by giving the responding peer a chance to offer
comments for a time without interruption by the author. (Not one of the four observed groups actually
followed this instruction.)

The PPR sessions

Narrative Descriptions of PPR Sessions

Of the four peer response groups from whom usable video and audio data was
gathered31 during the PPR round of peer response, not one group adhered entirely to the
four-step per response framework as they had been told to do (See Appendix C), despite
having been reminded to do so by their instructor at the start of the class, and despite the
framework being clearly displayed on the projection screen at the front of the classroom
throughout the allotted peer response time. However, each of the four groups deviated
from the framework in different ways and to different degrees. In this section, I present
narrative descriptions of each of the four sessions, focusing primarily the structure of

each session and how time within the sessions was spent.

PPR Session 1: Erica and Anisa

Before beginning to talk specifically about one or the other of their drafts, Erica
and Anisa spent seven minutes discussing concerns they had about citation sources and
about document forrnattin g in MS Word. During this conversation, both students decided
that they needed the assistance of their instructor in understanding how to cite online
sources. Liz, who spent much of her time during these sessions walking around the
room, observing the groups, taking attendance, and answering questions when asked,

spoke briefly with both students about their concerns, and eventually suggested that they

 

3‘ As mentioned in Chapter 3, the video and audio data from one of the five groups recording during each
round of peer response had to be excluded, because one group member did not consent to participate. All
future references to video and audio data will refer only to the four groups whose members consented to

participate.

78

ask their question again once the peer response sessions were over so that the whole class
could benefit from the discussion.

Eventually, Erica suggested that they get on with responding to each other’s
papers; after both students admitted that neither wanted to read her paper, Erica finally
agreed to go first. However, she only read a few sentences before stopping to ask her
partner a question about her thesis, which they discussed briefly before Erica resumed
reading, stopping again almost immediately for another question. This pattern of “read a
few sentences, stop to discuss” remained consistent for‘ Erica’s half of the peer response
session, though occasionally Anisa was the one stopping the reading with a comment or
question. The conversation about Erica’s paper was punctuated by expressive gestures
by both students, who used pointing to the text and moving imaginary objects (apparently
representing paragraphs) around in the air to demonstrate potential organization strategies
for Erica’s argument. The discussion moved slowly through the paper, occasionally
going back to discuss a previous section, with only a few concluding remarks from both
students after Erica finished reading. The total amount of time spent reading and
discussing Erica’s draft was 33 minutes and 31 seconds, after which Anisa spent some
time quietly filling out the grading rubric before putting it aside.

Less time was spent discussing Anisa’s draft—only 13 minutes and 30 seconds—
and she (was) stopped while reading only a few times: once on her own initiative, in
order to ask Erica for suggestions about rephrasing an awkward sentence, and twice by
Erica, who interrupted to point out misspelled words. After Anisa finished reading, she
and Erica discussed concerns that each had about the text, though Anisa seemed

disinterested in receiving feedback, frequently checking her cell phone or laptop (which

79

remained open during the session) and cracking her knuckles which Erica was talking.
Erica finally turned to filling out the grading rubric, discussing several of her responses to

the sheet’s prompts with Anisa before writing them down.

PPR Session 2: Kyle and Craig

At the start of the peer response session, Craig volunteered to read his draft first,
stating that his paper was unfinished (it was only three of the required six to eight pages),
and telling Kyle, his peer response partner, that his chosen topic was stem cell research.
Craig read through the paper quickly and once he was finished, got no feedback
whatsoever from Kyle, who despite offering no comments during the allotted “author
remains silent” portion of the peer response session, had appeared to be paying attention
at Craig read his draft. Instead of soliciting feedback from Kyle—and, indeed, without
even waiting for any—Craig made five comments/suggestions about his own paper (cg,
“I’m definitely going to go way a lot more into it and add to my argument, so I need way
a lot more research,” and “I didn’t really pick a side yet I need to take a side. . .I mean,
sure, they’re embryos, but awesome things are coming out of [stem cell research].” To
each of these comments, Kyle’s only reply was either to nod somewhat enthusiastically
or to say “Yeah”—on one occasion, he did both The total amount of time spent on
Craig’s paper was 7 minutes and 21 seconds; almost immediately after Craig’s final
comment about his paper, attention shifted to Kyle’s draft of his paper on the conflict in
Darfur.

Kyle also read his draft (like Craig’s, the draft was unfinished, barely four pages)

all the way through without interruption or stopping. After the draft was read, Craig

made a comment to which Kyle responded, and the rest of the session consisted of a
back-and-forth exchange between the two, discussing various aspects of Kyle’s draft and
his topic. At one point, the discussion of the paper morphed into a conversation about
politics and American military action overseas; this digression lasted just over three
minutes, until Craig made a connection back to Kyle’s paper and the discussion
continued for a minute or two more. The total amount of time spent on Kyle’s draft was
16 minutes and 8 seconds, after which both students turned their attention to filling out
the grading rubrics, which they did quickly and without conversation, apart from a
comment on Kyle’s part about how quickly they’d finished talking about their papers and

how much time (over an hour) there was left of class.

PPR Session 3: Mary and Amy

At the start of the peer response time, Mary asked if she could share her draft first,
since she was very worried about it—though she did not, as the peer response framework
suggested, identify specific concerns before reading her paper”. She read her paper,
which was about global warming, with no stops and no interruptions from her peer
response partner, and the students then spent approximately 15 minutes discussing
concerns that each had with the paper, primarily the lack of research and reflection— both
of which were important components of the assignment. At one point during this

discussion, as they were attempting to determine the role that reflection should play in

 

3’ Not one of the sessions I observed involved an author identifying concerns at the start of the session, and
Mary was the only participant to express worry about her draft before reading, though several other

students did make face—saving comments (e. g., “It’s not very good” or “It’s not really finished yet") during
and after their sessions, which could be interpreted as expressing concern similar to that exhibited by Mary.

81

Mary’s conclusion, Mary decided to solicit the help of their instructor, who joined the
conversation for approximately two minutes before moving on.

After that fifteen-minute conversation, there was a seven-minute lull in the
discussion as Mary paused to rework a paragraph they had been talking about, and Amy
took that opportunity to begin filling out the grading rubric. When Mary finished
revising her paragraph, Amy began asking her questions from the rubric, asking her to
point out the aspects of her paper that the response sheet required responders to verify
(e. g., thesis, use of 5 or more recent sources, use of “appropriate” citation). The session
focusing on Mary’s draft ended when Amy completed the grading rubric; the total
amount of time spent on Mary’s draft was 29 minutes and 32 seconds.

The discussion of Amy’s paper began much the same as Mary’s: Amy read
through the entire paper with no interruptions, and only one brief pause when she
stumbled on a sentence and went back to reread it. However, the rest of the session was
spent almost entirely on a discussion of one issue: the different perspectives she
presented in her paper on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). After an
argument about the number of points of view that Amy presented that sent both students
back to the text looking for support for their interpretations, the students spent the
remainder of the session talking about how to balance the different perspectives, and how
Amy might effectively research points of view on the issue other than her own. At the
very end of the session, as Amy was gathering her papers together, Mary pointed out a

missing period at the end of a sentence on the first page of her draft. The total amount of

time spent on Amy’s draft was 20 minutes and 4 seconds.33

PPR Session 4: Debra and Michelle

This session began with Debra reading the draft of her paper on euthanasia; she
read quickly, and was interrupted three times by comments from Michelle, who asked her
to repeat sentences she hadn’t understood. When Debra finished reading, Michelle went
through the grading rubric item by item, asking each question out loud and either
answering it herself or soliciting a response from Debra Occasionally, Michelle would
offer comments or suggestions related to an item on the grading rubric (e.g., after reading
aloud the rubric item addressing “Reflection,” Michelle suggested that Debra add
“another sentence or two at the en ” that addressed what Debra had learned from the
experience of writing her paper, since, as Michelle put it, Debra “said it real fast at the
start and then it was gone”). The session, which lasted for 14 minutes and 23 seconds,
was over when Michelle read and recorded her answer to the final rubric item, at which
point attention shifted to Michelle’s draft.

As Michelle read the draft of her paper about the impact that violence in the
media has on children, she stopped or was interrupted several times to reword sentences
or to address brief comments or questions from her partner. When Michelle finished
reading, Debra turned immediately to the grading rubric, and began working through it
question by question in much the same way Michelle had done in response to Debra’s
draft. The total amount of time focused on Michelle’s draft was 23 minutes and 18

seconds.

 

’3 This was the only peer response session in which the grading rubric-which could be seen as part of the
session, and frequently prompted additional comments and discussion— wasn’t completed during class
time. It is possible that Mary completed the rubric after class.

83

PPR session feedback

After transcribing each of the PPR sessions, I sorted the feedback offered by the
responders into nine categories": Offering general or vague praise (e. g., “I liked it!” or “I
think this is really good”); Discussing Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) (e. g, referencing a
need for specific major revisions, including changes to the text’s organization, structure,
or thesis); Discussing Lower Order Concerns (LOCS) (e.g., referencing a need for
specific minor refinements, including word choice or word order, as well as correction of
typos or formatting issues); Repeating back/text playback (e. g., offering an understanding
or interpretation of the whole text or some aspect of it); Responding as audience (e. g.,
offering a reaction based on how the text influenced or affected the responder, including
whether and/or how the text did or did not meet the responder’s needs or expectations);
Discussing writer’s strategies (e.g., providing general suggestions of approaches that
could be taken to address concerns, including suggestions regarding conducting
additional interviews or research, or expanding on certain areas of a paper or argument);
Modeling (e.g., providing examples from the responder’s own text or experience);
Asking questions (e. g., requesting clarification or information); and Gesturing to
emphasize or explain (e. g., using hand gestures to indicate reorganization of a text, or

pointing to particular aspects to emphasize a point).

 

3" Though these nine categories arose from the data through the course of the coding
process, I realized as I began to organize and refine the comment categories that many of
them were similar to those developed in Simmons’ (2003) study of peer response in high
school writing classes While I did not set out to impose Simmons’ categories on my data,
I strongly suspect that my reading of Simmons’ research greatly informed the comment
categories I constructed (see Appendix G for Simmons’ response categories).

Occasionally, a single comment would fall into two or more categories, as in this
example, from Amy in her PPR session with Mary, which fell into both the “Discussing
writer’s strategies” and “Repeating back” categories: “I think you could expand a lot
because you talk a lot about how it might not be humans, and I think there should be one
paragraph on the gray area.” In these cases, the comment was counted as belonging to all
of the categories to which it applied. Table 8 below shows the type and number of

instances of feedback observed in each PPR session.

Table 8 Categories of response observed in PPR sessions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PPR PPR PPR PPR

Feedback Category Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 Total

Offering general or vague 1 1 1 4 7
misc

Drscussmg Higher Order 1 0 2 2 5

Concerns

Drscussmg Lower Order 18 0 1 2 21

Concerns

Repeating back/text 2 7 12 29

playback

Responding as audience 0 0 7 2 9

Discussing writer’s

strategies 14 4 9 4 31

Modeling 3 9 1 2 20

Asking questions 5 1 4 22 32

Gesturing to emphasize or 14 3 7 3 27

explain

Total 69 20 39 53 181

The DPR Sessions

Narrative Descriptions of DPR Sessions

The structure of the DPR sessions differed greatly from that of the PPR sessions,
in part due to the nature of the texts under discussion. The instructor, Liz, decided to
have the entire class view and respond to each iMovie project, in order to give each
author or group of authors the opportunity to show their iMovie projects using the
classroom’s LCD projector and stereo speakers (the latter being especially important, as
response groups might otherwise have had to attempt to hear soundtracks through shared
headphones). The entire class would view each project, then would break into their
individual response groups for five minutes to discuss their feedback, and finally would
share their feedback with the authors and the rest of the class. This change to the peer
response structure made adhering strictly to the four-part-peer response framework
impossible, but the instructor asked that her students keep the framework in mind and
attempt to follow its steps whenever possible. Each of the sessions described below
involved a certain amount of time coping with technology issues (e. g., sound problems,
file exporting, connecting/disconnecting different computers and/or storage devices to the
LCD projector); the time taken by instructor and students to address these issues has not

been included in the given session lengths.

DPR Session 1: Craig, Kyle, and Connor
The first group, consisting of Craig, Kyle, and Connor, played their draft iMovie
about steroids in baseball. There was an error on the title screen (“Stroids” instead of

“Steroids”) that elicited laughter and some apparently good-natured teasing from

students, but apart from this there were no audible comments or reactions and no
significant visible movement from the audience while the iMovie was onscreen.

When the movie finished, the instructor reminded the class that they would be
meeting in their small groups for five minutes to discuss their responses to the video;
these small group discussions were fairly animated, with all but one of the groups
continuing to discuss their responses to the iMovie for the full time they were allotted by
the instructor. (The remaining group talked about the iMovie they’d just seen for only 2
minutes before starting to work on their own iMovie projects.)

After 5 minutes and 43 seconds, Liz called an end to the small- group discussion
time and invited groups to share their comments with the authors. A few students
volunteered comments after prompting from the instructor—primarily Susan, Michelle,
and Mary, who seemed to be speaking for their respective small groups and who took
turns offering feedback, frequently engaging in back-and—forth discussion with the
authors and each other about the issues they’d identified as problems in the text. Liz
joined in the discussion, too, sometimes repeating or rephrasing a comment offered by
students, and twice offering her own response to certain portions of the iMovie. The
authors responded to the few questions they were asked, but for the most part remained
silent during the discussion of their text. The total time spent in whole-class discussion

of Craig, Kyle, and Connor’s iMovie was 9 minutes.

DPR Session 2: Yildiz, Denise, Jocelyn, and Ji Sun
The second group to share their digital text consisted of Yildiz, Denise, Jocelyn,

and Ji Sun, who were collaborating on an iMovie about globalization. Before playing

their iMovie draft, Yildiz told the class that they weren’t finished, and that they knew
they still had to add in “the positives” (i.e., the beneficial aspects of globalization—their
draft as they shared it during peer response only addressed the negative). During the 3
minutes 10 seconds of their iMovie, there were no audible comments from the audience,
and no one was observed to be taking notes or making any other discernible movement,
apart from a few students who drank from water bottles or briefly checked the screens of
their cell phones.

The small group discussion was less animated that it had been for the previous
session, and no group went beyond expressing that they were impressed with the 2-
minute animation that opened the iMovie but confused by the animation’s meaning
and/or the meaning of the entire text. All the groups stopped discussion the text after
three and a half minutes, and, perhaps noticing this, Liz called an end to the small-group
discussion at 4 minutes and 32 seconds.

The comments offered to the authors during the whole-class discussion focused
entirely on the two points that had dominated the small- group discussion: the animated
portion of the iMovie, and the overall point of the iMovie as a whole. Several peers, as
well as the instructor, expressed confusion at whether the iMovie’s animation, music, and
text were intended to frighten or amuse the audience, or just make them curious. After
these comments and questions were discussed briefly, no other students volunteered
additional feedback, and the whole-class portion of the session ended after 4 minutes and

1 second.

DPR Session 3: Anisa and Erica

The third iMovie draft shared for peer response was composed by Anisa and
Erica, and addressed the topic of eating disorders. Their draft was 3 minutes and 48
seconds long, and as was the case with the previous two DPR sessions, there were no
comments and very little movement from the audience as the movie played.

The small group discussion began immediately after the iMovie ended, without
prompting from the instructor. Many small group members expressed concerns about
several technical aspects of the iMovie (e. g., the volume of an important voiceover track,
the speed with which several images transitioned into each other), and discussed these at
length, occasionally commiserating with Anisa and Erica (though not directly) at how
difficult fine-tuning these aspects in iMovie can be. For the most part, each response
group stayed on task for the entire small-group discussion part of the session, which
lasted 5 minutes and 11 seconds; the one exception was the group to which John, the sole
author of the final iMovie to receive feedback (see below) belonged. This group of four
students didn’t discuss Anisa and Erica’s text at all, and instead turned to their computers
immediately after the movie concluded.35

When the discussion was Opened up to the entire class, the first three minutes of
feedback focused on the technical issues that had dominated the small- group discussions,
and several solutions were proposed that many students—not just the authors of the text
being discussed—appeared to make note of. For the remaining whole-group discussion,

students commented on their own emotional responses to the images that Anisa and Erica

 

3‘ Because of the placement of the eamera, I was only able to observe the screens of two of the group
members’ laptops: John, the author of the next iMovie to be presented, appeared to be working on his
iMovie project. The other student, Tricia, was using Facebook

89

had used, and suggested ways in which additional and different images might evoke an
even stronger response. The total time spent on whole-class discussion of this text was 6

minutes and 1 second.

DPR Session 4: John

Perhaps because he had no collaborators on his project, John seemed the most
nervous and reluctant to share of all the authors in the DPR sessions I observed. He made
several deprecatory comments (e. g., “I’m going to FAIL, fail, fail,” “[the iMovie]’s only
about one minute [long]”) before finally allowing Liz to start the movie, which addressed
violence in the media—specifically in rap music. As the iMovie played, John made
comments regarding what was missing, what he intended to add in the final version, and,
several times, how bad he thought various parts of his movie were. He was eventually
shushed by the instructor. Despite John’s having announced that the movie was only
about a minute in length, it actually clocked in at 3 minutes and 28 seconds.

For reasons that she didn’t address, the instructor neglected to have students
discuss John’s movie in small groups, jumping straight to the whole-class discussion, and
joining in with her own comments eight times—far more than she had in the other DPR
sessions, where her role during the whole-group discussion had seemed more managerial
than participatory. Unlike other sessions, in which students had discussed the text in
question both with the author and with other classmates, all of the comments during this
session were directed only at John, who responded at length to most of them, sometimes
defensively. The comments ranged from questions about the meaning of text John had

included on an opening screen (a Creative Commons emblem about which John

responded, when asked, that he thought was the symbol for Closed Captioning) to
suggestions that he consider including text of some of the lyrics of songs he was using, to
further draw attention to the words. The time spent by the class responding to John’s

iMovie was 11 minutes and 56 seconds.

DPR session feedback

The feedback offered each of the DPR sessions was sorted into the same nine
categories as had been used to sort the PPR comments: Offering general or vague praise;
Discussing Higher Order Concerns (HOCs); Discussing Lower Order Concerns;
Repeating back/text playback; Responding as audience; Discussing writer’s strategies;
Modeling; Asking questions; and Gesturing to emphasize or explain. Because students
discussed each digital text first in small groups and then with the entire class, many
comments were mentioned in the former and then repeated, sometimes with development
or clarification, in the latter. In these cases, the comments were considered part of the
same instances of feedback and were only counted once. Table 9 below shows the type

and number of feedback observed in each DPR session.

91

 

Table 9 Categories of response observed in DPR Sessions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1] DPR DPR DPR DPR
F ack Category Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 Total
Offering general or 4 1 4 0 9
vague praise
Discussing Higher
Order Concerns 2 2 4 5 13
Drscussmg Lower Order 2 O 4 1 7
Concerns
Repeating back/ text 2 0 1 O 3
JIayback
Responding as audience 5 5 6 10 26
Discussing wnter s 3 l 2 10 l 6
strategies
Modeling 0 O O O 0
Asking questions 1 5 1 2 9
Gesturing to emphasrze O O 1 3
or explain
Total 19 14 23 30 86

Debriefing the sessions: Post-Peer Response surveys

Development of revision plans

Revision plans developed following PPR sessions

The final item in the brief post-peer-response survey distributed after each round

of peer response asked students to describe any plans for the revision of their texts that

had been developed during the course of this peer response session. (See Appendix B for

the complete post-session survey.) Of the 20 students who responded to this survey item

for the PPR sessions, all but two reported having developed some plan for revision as a

result of the session; of those two students who didn’t report having a plan, one

responded as though the revision had already taken place (“i changed my thesis around a

bit and made some grammatical changes”), and the other student responded “nothing

yet,” leaving open the possibility for later development of a revision plan The plans for
revision as reported by students varied greatly in content, scope, and degree of
specificity, ranging from vague general statements that offered no specifics (e. g.,
“everything that my peer response person suggested, i'll look at”) to detailed (e. g., “To
include more research. Tie together position. Include both sides. Work on telling a story
of my process of learning about the topic”).

In order to determine the degree to which students left their peer response
sessions able to articulate the next steps in their revision process, responses to this survey
item were grouped into three categories: “No plan,” when the participant indicated no
current plan for revision; “Evidence of plan, with little or no detail,” when the participant
either indicated an awareness of the need for revision in a general way, without offering
any detail as to what that revision would entail, or singled out an aspect or aspects of the
text that needed attention, but offered no real insight into the ways in which those
aspect(s) would be addressed; and “Evidence of plan, with concrete detail,” when the
participant indicated specific action that will be taken to address at least one area of
concern in the text Ten percent (two responses) were labeled “No plan,” 35% (7
responses) were categorized as “Evidence of plan, with little or no detail,” and 55% (1 1
responses) fell into the category of “Evidence of plan, with concrete detail.” See Table

10 below for the responses to this survey item, grouped by category.

Table 10 Revision plans developed as a result of PPR sessions (n=20)

 

 

 

Evidence of plan,
No plan with little or no Evidence of plan, with concrete detail
detail
thesis I’m going reduce the use of quotes and
nothing yet format/ structure go in greater detail about my quotes
that i am using.
i changed my thesis .
around a bit and xrhesplfntsleagengon Adding more detail, go over
made some su est ed, I’ll look information to see if it’s relevant to
grammatical at gg topic, add more research
changes

 

citations, more
reflections

I’m going to re read through this and
map out where things would fit better.

 

Better organization

Rewrite some form of an outline and
organize my paper into that structure.

 

more research, mla
citations

To include more research Tie together
position. Include both sides. Work on
telling a story of my process of learning
about the topic.

 

 

figfisgllfd i need to elaborate more on certain
citations and areas to help the reader understand

.’ what 1 am talking about
connections
a lot on my quotes I need to make my paper clearer with
and presenting my my research so that my audience will
ethos be able to understand better.

 

restructure and focus my arguments,
use more quotes and info fiom sources
and reflect more

 

I need a thesis, more research, and
reflection in my paper.

 

Do more research and be more
organized

 

I decided that they were right and I do
need to reorganize and add more
argument to a couple of my body

paragraphs.

Revision plans developed following DPR sessions

The final item in the post-DPR survey also asked students to articulate any plans
for revision that they had developed as a result of their peer response session. (See
Appendix B for the complete post-session survey.) Of the 15 students who responded to
this survey item, only one did not report having developed a plan for revision as a result
of the session, offering instead a response that indicated that the required revision had
already taken place. The remaining 14 responses indicated some degree of revision plan
development; these responses were sorted into categories based on the level of specificity
and detail in the reported plan, using the same category definitions used to sort the
responses to this item in the PPR post-session survey. Table 11 below presents the
responses to this survey item, grouped by the degree to which the response indicated

development of a revision plan.

95

Table 11 Revision plans developed as a result of DPR sessions (n=15)

 

 

No plan figigicfioog 5:111” With Evidence of plan, with concrete detail
I changed It up fnhggfintggrtsegtnszgltes Reorder facts and change text
' scrolling.

 

more detail and
solutions

We plan on making
quite a few revisions to
the project because of

we need to revise visual effects and
make it clear between our two
opposing aspects

We are going to change some of the
transitions, organization, and overall
include different aspects to get the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

peer review point across more effectively.
more recorded video Put in cm song, take out the words,
and put in different pictures.

global warming we are going to add more strips in
solutions. between to explain this better
more discussion
less text
fix the errors
shorter intro, more
background info

Conclusion

This chapter has presented the results from the data generated by my research into
peer response of print-based and digital texts in one first-year writing classroom. The
data discussed in this chapter were drawn from multiple sources: initial participant survey
questionnaires that solicited information regarding previous experiences with, and
attitudes towards, peer response; detailed transcripts of the video and audio recordings
made of eight peer response sessions—four PPR and four DPR; post-peer response
survey questionnaires that gauged students’ goals for and perceptions of each recorded
peer response session; and classroom artifacts, including peer response framework

worksheets, assignment handouts, and grading rubrics. These results provide a window

into the ways in which peer response in the same classroom of texts composed in
different media can result in very different experiences for the writers involved

In the chapter that follows, I will discuss the significance and implications of my
results. I will posit reasons for the differences and similarities between the PPR and DPR
sessions as they are represented by my data, I will examine the answers I have begun to
develop to my guiding research questions, and, perhaps most importantly, I will suggest
steps that can be taken towards the development of a revised approach to peer response
that can be used in both PPR and DPR sessions, and, to that end, will offer suggestions

for further research into the use of peer response with digital texts.

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

In this chapter, I revisit my guiding research questions in light of the results of my
research, and I discuss the ways in which those results now lead me to answer those
questions. Additionally, I discuss the implications of these answers in the context of
peer response of digital writing, and for composition teachers who engage in in-class peer
response. I also discuss other results that do not arise from my initial research questions,
but still serve to shed light on the use of peer response in this classroom. In this chapter I
also address some limitations of this work, and I conclude by suggesting future research
that could be undertaken by those interested in the intersection between peer response

and digital writing.

Addressing my research questions
Because my research questions served as such a valuable point of departure for my
data analysis, as well as a useful initial frame for interpreting my results, it seems

appropriate to begin the discussion of my results with those questions, which were:

1. Do participants in a peer response session use different modes of response while
offering feedback in print-based text peer response (PPR) and digital text peer
response (DPR) sessions?

2. How, if at all, do the modes of response employed relate to whether the text under

discussion is digital or print-based?

Of the two, the first is far easier to address—when the comments offered in the PPR and

DPR sessions are examined side by side (see Table 12 below, which combines for easier
comparison the PPR and DPR comment categories and totals presented in Tables 8 and 9
in Chapter 4), it quickly becomes apparent that the PPR and DPR sessions differed

greatly in both the number and type of comments offered.

Table 12 Comparing number and type of comments across PPR and DPR sessions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feedback Category PPR Total DPR Total
Offering general or vague praise 7 9
Discussing Higher Order Concerns 5 13
Discussirg Lower Order Concerns 21 7
Repeating back/text playback 29 3
Responding as audience 9 26
Discussing writer’s strategies 31 16
Modeling 20 0
Asking questions 32 9
Gesturing to emphasize or explain 27 3
Total 181 86

However, addressing the second of my two research questions is more
complicated: while student approaches to response differed greatly in the PPR and DPR
sessions I observed, the reasons why are not as apparent. In order to better represent these
differences and their origins as I have come to understand them, I will address each
significant point of comparison in turn, beginning with what was, for me, the most
surprising: the difference between the number of comments offered in the sessions that

addressed Higher Order and Lower Order Concerns.

Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) vs. Lower Order Concerns (LOCs)

A significant difference can be found in the focus within the PPR and DPR
sessions on either Higher Order” or Lower OrderJ7 concerns. In the PPR sessions,
comments addressing LOCs (21 comments) were offered three times as often as
comments addressing HOCs (7 comments), and the opposite was true for the DPR
sessions, in which HOCs (13 comments) were addressed almost three times as often as
LOCs (5 comments). Because HOCs are frequently addressed earlier in the writing
process than are LOCs, this result would be expected if the PPR drafts had been
presented at a later stage of development than the DPR drafts, but this wasn’t the case
with these sessions: peer response took place at the same point in the composing process
for each text— approximately one week before final drafts were due, at a point at which
major global revision of the text is unlikely and impractical, and therefore discussion of
Lower Order Concerns would be more appropriate in most cases.

Additionally, though I intentionally excluded from this research any attempt to
evaluate the quality or appropriateness of the feedback offered by responders”, I did
observe many instances of what I would consider Lower Order Concerns, including
misspellings, misplaced capitals, missing or incorrect punctuation, poorly timed
transitions, inconsistent formatting of text, and inappropriate audio levels, in each of the
digital video drafts shared during the DPR sessions, and therefore cannot conclude that
the reason surface-level problems were not addressed is that such problems were not

present. Why, then, would students be led to comment more on surf ace-level issues

 

3‘ These are more global issues, such as those relating to thesis argument or organization, that would likely
involve major revision if addressed.

37 These are surface-level issues, such as those related to punctuation or spelling, that could require
signifieant proofreading, but would likely not require a substantive revision to the text

3' I address the need for such a study later in this chapter.

100

 

 

du

during the PPR sessions, but address more global concerns when responding to their
peers’ digital texts? My observations and analyses lead me to identify two contributing
factors: 1) the difference in the ways in which the digital and print-based texts were
presented to responders during the two rounds of peer response; and 2) the responders’

lack of vocabulary with which to address LOCs in digital texts.

Print-based paper text or digital text: Interaction vs. presentation

The ways in which the print-based paper and digital texts were presented to
responders differed greatly during the two rounds of peer response observed for this
research. As was described in the previous chapter, students shared their print-based
paper texts with one or two other responders seated at the same table, reading the text
aloud while their peer response partner(s) followed along, and frequently sharing the
same printed copy of the text. During peer response of the digital texts, however, the
students’ digital movies were displayed one at a time on a large screen, using the
instructor’s laptop connected to a ceiling-mounted LCD projector, and to an audience that
included the entire class”. The instructor’s laptop remained on a lectern at the front of
the room during the DPR sessions, and the instructor herself controlled when the text
playback began and ended in these sessions; however, in the PPR sessions, both the
author and the responder(s) had the ability to impact when reading of the text started and
stopped. In fact, this starting and stopping—occasionally author-initiated, but frequently
due to interruptions from the responders—was a prominent feature in several of the PPR

sessions, and coincided with most (all but 4 of the 21 total) of the instances of LOC

 

3’ It is worthy of note that the circumstances of the DPR sessions positioned students more passively, as
viewers or receivers of texts rather than as respondents or fellow authors. While I do not address this
complexity here, it is one I hope to explore in future research.

10]

comments in those sessions. In these sessions, both the authors and responders
frequently seemed driven to address LOC issues as soon as they noticed them, i.e., during
the initial read-aloud, instead of after the author finished reading the paper, as they had
been told to do by both their instructor and by the mandated peer response protocol. The
responders’ inability to stop the playback of the digital texts in order to comment or
question—as they did frequently during the reading of the texts during PPR sessions—
may very well have resulted these issues being neglected in favor of comments or
questions about other, more global issues or concerns.

This difference in how responders were (or weren’t) able to interact with the texts
seems related to two other significant differences revealed by the comparison in Table
12: first, the significantly greater number of gestures made to emphasize or explain
feedback in the PPR sessions (27 instances) as compared to the DPR sessions (3
instances), and second, the difference in the number of total comments made in the PPR
and DPR sessions (181 total comments and 86 total comments, respectively).

Though gestures were, in the PPR sessions, used several times to emphasize
comments relating to HOCs (as in Anisa and Erica’s session, in which many of the
expressive gestures were used to demonstrate reorganization of the paper), the majority
of these gestures involved responders commenting on Lower Order Concerns, asking
questions, or discussing writers strategies, and to that end the responders physically
manipulated the texts, flipping back and forth through the pages, pointing to different
sections, demonstrating suggested revisions, or indicating confusing sentences by circling

them with a finger. These gestures, while they rarely occurred without verbal

102

 

accompaniment”, served to emphasize the points being made, and while I had no way of
determining conclusively whether the authors of the texts in question paid more attention
to those comments which were accompanied by gestures, my perception of the
engagement of author and responder(s) during the sessions, and the greater amount of
time spent discussing the issues to which the gestures were related, lead me to believe
that this was likely the case.

This inability to stop the playback for comments or questions during the viewing
of the digital texts also likely, and perhaps unsurprisingly, contributed to the greater
number of total comments offered in the PPR sessions—during the PPR sessions, that
initial sharing of the text became part of the time during which comments could be made,
and, as previously discussed, responders and writers alike frequently availed themselves
of this additional opportunity for conversation about the texts. The actual time devoted to
response in the PPR and DPR sessions varied greatly, with time spent presenting and
discussing each text in the PPR sessions averaging 19 minutes and 43 seconds in length
and presentation and discussion of texts in the DPR sessions averaging 13 minutes and 39
seconds. I do not, however, believe that the entire difference between the total number of
comments in the PPR sessions (181 comments) and the DPR sessions (86 comments) can
be attributed solely to the shorter average length of the DPR sessions, since the DPR
sessions were brought to a close by the instructor only when no additional comments or
questions were forthcoming from responders, and would apparently have continued if

students had had more to say. More likely, it seems, is the explanation that the

 

‘° In only one instance did a responder use only a gesture, without some spoken accompaniment, to indicate
an identified problem: during Debra and Michelle’s PPR session, Debra simply placed a finger next to an
error she perceived in the text as Michelle was reading, and Michelle corrected it quickly before moving
on.

103

 

opportunity to comment during the initial experience with the text—-—an opportunity
available only in the PPR sessions—led to comments being made that were unfortunately

not made, and were therefore lost, during the DPR sessions."I

Lack of vocabulary for discussing LOCs in digital texts

Another factor that may well have contributed to the lower number of LOCs
addressed in the DPR sessions could be respondents’ inability to discuss what would be
considered Lower Order Concerns in digital texts. Since they had no trouble at all
identifying and discussing LOCs during the PPR sessions, students’ failure to identify
problems with and offer feedback on Lower Order Concerns in their peers’ digital texts
could very well be due to their lack of the vocabulary and understanding necessary to do
so. This might be due in part to a general unfamiliarity with composing digital texts,
specifically digital movies, and in part to how the assignments were presented by the
instructor.

The assignment sheet and grading rubric for the print-based paper assignment
(See Appendices D and E) include requirements that emphasize the importance of LOCs,
including reminders to proofread and edit carefully and document sources correctly
according to the chosen citation style. However, the iMovie assignment sheet (See
Appendix F) focuses entirely on Higher Order Concerns, with the possible exception of a

mention of the importance of ethos, which, while not at all entirely an Lower Order

 

‘“ In fact, a number of popular training guides for writing center tutors include chapters on in-session note-
taking, and emphasize the need to develop and practice these note-taking strategies, due to how diffith it
an be to remember the comments that come to mind while a text is being read, and how little time there is
while reading and/or listening to a text to make notes. The need for a quick and efficient way to make note
of responses and reactions is even more pressing when responding to digital texts, given how much could
be missed if a responder looks away from the screen to make note of something.

104

Concern, had been used as an example in a previous class as a justification for thorough
proofreading—the idea being that poor attention to things like mechanics and punctuation
might cause an audience to have difficulty in trusting or respecting the writer.

In the PPR texts, the Lower Order Concerns seemed to stand out to the
responders, so much so that they would frequently interrupt the author’s reading in order
to point out an incorrectly formatted citation, missed punctuation mark, or misspelled
word—and, in fact, a similar response occurred from several members of the audience at
the start of the first DPR session, when a pause before the first video began gave
responders time to notice and comment on the misspelling of “Steroids” on the title slide.
However, this was the only instance in any of the DPR sessions in which comments were
offered while the text in question was displayed on the screen. As I mentioned
previously in this chapter, I observed a number of what I would consider Lower Order
Concerns in the digital texts shared during the DPR sessions,"2 only about half of which
were the kinds of problems that could also be encountered in print-on-paper texts (i.e.,
misspelled text, inappropriate citation formatting, misused or missing punctuation). The
rest of these LOCs were unique to the digital media in which the texts were composed,
and included issues of image size and resolution, transition speed and timing, text size
and readability, and audio quality.

My conclusion that responders may have lacked the understandings and/or
vocabulary necessary to discuss these issues in detail is supported by the fact that when
one of these digital-media Lower Order Concerns was addressed by responders, it was

invariably discussed not in terms of the specific LOC involved (e.g., the levels on the

 

‘2 Interestingly, I notiwd the majority of these Lower Order Concerns on my second and third viewings of
the DPR session videos.

105

voiceover track are set too low in relation to the background music track) but instead in
the context of the responder’s experience as an audience member (e.g., “I couldn’t hear

what she was saying”).

Repeating back (“What I heard”) vs. responding as audience ( “What I need”)

Responders in PPR sessions were also far more likely than those in DPR sessions
to repeat back to the author what they had heard or interpreted from the text (PPR: 29
comments; DPR: 3 comments), but were far less likely than those in DPR sessions to
respond from the audience’s perspective in an attempt to communicate what they
themselves or a hypothetical audience would need or expect from the text (PPR: 9
comments; DPR: 26 comments). These two comment categories are related, as they both
provide an author with a window in to how their text is being or might be received, but in
different ways: when responders make Repeating Back comments, they make statements
related to their interpretation of the text as it is, without necessarily implying or intending
to indicate the need for a specific revision. In these types of comments, responders are,
for the moment at least, treating the text as a complete and cohesive whole, whereas the
Responding as Audience comments do the opposite, acknowledging the text as a work in
progress and making suggestions for how it might better meet the needs of its audience.

Both kinds of feedback—i.e., how what one has said is being interpreted, and
what else one’s audience would like to hear—could potentially be valuable to a writer
during his or her revision process, and the fact that neither the PPR nor DPR sessions

elicited an equal number of each kind of feedback is troubling.

106

Modeling

Another significant difference in the feedback offered in the PPR and DPR
sessions relates to the response category of “Modeling.” In the PPR sessions, there were
20 instances of Modeling comments (i.e., comments in which responders drew examples
from their own current or previous writing projects to offer feedback or suggestions to
their peers); however, there were no instances at all of this kind of comment in the DPR
sessions, even though all of the students in the class were working on similar digital
movie projects and therefore had at least one relevant composing experience on which
they might have drawn.

Modeling in the PPR sessions not only helped communicate useful feedback, but
it provided responders with the opportunity to display a degree of expertise, and to
articulate something they’d learned or discovered about writing in order to assist a peer.
It may be possible that none of the students participating in the DPR sessions felt
confident enough about their abilities as digital writers to use their own experiences—
even their own trial and error—as a model to benefit their classmates. Whatever the
cause, this is unfortunate, given the usefulness of modeling in the PPR sessions not only
to communicate useful tips, but also to develop a sense of collaboration and mutual
endeavor: many of the instances of modeling also had an overtone of commiseration and

shared experience that seemed to strengthen the rapport between group members.
Discussion of those results not arising from my research questions

Not all of the results of my research worth discussing arose from my original

research questions. As I coded and analyzed my data, I discovered three additional areas

107

 

of interest not directly related to the types of response offered in the PPR and DPR
sessions: 1) use of the response framework; 2) teacher involvement in the sessions; and 3)

development of revision plans.

Use of the response framework

Though I didn’t set out to examine the impact of the peer response framework43
itself on the sessions I observed, I frequently found myself, as I reviewed the video and
audio-recordings of the sessions, noting the ways in which response groups deviated from
the frarnework’s prescribed steps. Not one session I observed adhered to the four-part
framework, though—as is evident from the narrative descriptions of the sessions in
Chapter 4--each session departed from the framework in different ways and to varying
degrees. Because I had no non—framework control group to compare to the sessions I
observed, I can’t say to what extent the imposed peer response framework had an impact
on the ways in which the response sessions played out, but I can say that the framework
definitely didn’t determine the shape of the sessions in the way it was intended. It is
significant that though the students in these response groups supposedly didn’t have the
agency to determine the structure of their response sessions, they sought to—and did—
influence the session structure regardless.

Once of the more interesting ways in which they resisted this framework has been
addressed already in this chapter: students in the PPR sessions frequently offered
comments and feedback during the reading of the text in the PPR sessions, instead of

taking notes to inform the discussion after the author had finished reading. Additionally,

 

‘3 The four steps of the response framework are as follows: 1. Author identifies concerns; 2. Author reads
text aloud, responders listen and take notes; 3. Author remains silent while responders discuss their
response to the text; and 4. Author joins in discussion.

.108

the writers in both the PPR and DPR sessions ignored the framework’s prescription that
the author refrain from joining in the conversation about their text immediately (with the
exception of John, whose attempt at a response to feedback during discussion of his
digital movie was denied by the instructor).

The students’ -—and, in the case of the majority of the DPR sessions, the
instructor’s— failure to adhere to the response framework, when viewed alongside the
obvious value many writers found in the feedback they received in their response
sessions, leads me to question whether this ignoring of the response framework is
actually a problem at all. While my data cannot show whether students would have
developed even more effective revision plans had they adhered strictly to the four-part
framework, my results do indicate that deviation from the framework was frequently
productive, especially in the PPR sessions, in which response groups had a great deal
more freedom to revise the session structure as they saw fit. In fact, the sessions that
most closely adhered to the framework, the PPR sessions involving Kyle and Craig (see
narrative description on page 85), were the least productive of any of the sessions in
terms of session length, amount of discussion, and number of comments offered.
Though more research would be necessary to verify this, these results lead me to suspect
that perhaps a loosely enforced framework, or none at all, would be a more effective
approach to structuring peer response sessions than strict enforcement of a rigid response

framework.

109

Teacher involvement in PPR vs. DPR sessions

The different ways in which the instructor, Liz, interacted with students during the
PPR and DPR sessions also had a significant impact on the ways in which those sessions
progressed. In the PPR sessions, Liz circulated around the room as the response groups
read and discussed their texts; she occasionally paused to observe groups and listen to the
discussion, but rarely stopped for more than thirty seconds before moving on to another
group. On two occasions, discussions within response groups reached a point at which
one or both group members decided they needed clarification or feedback from their
instructor, and there were brief discussions about whether or not to call Liz over to join
the discussion. Once the instructor was invited in to the session, students seemed to defer
to her judgment and opinion, both while she was present and after she left to continue
circulating throughout the classroom—on one occasion, towards the end of a session, a
group member referred to Liz’s having praised the conclusion of her response partner’s
essay as reason enough for her partner to discount her own opinion that the conclusion
needed work.

Liz’s role in the DPR sessions was very different. Because the feedback in the
DPR sessions was offered in whole class discussions that were supplemented by small-
group conversations, Liz was present for the entire discussion, and served either as
moderator and participant throughout, and on at least one occasion, simultaneously:
during John’s DPR session, Liz offered a somewhat detailed response to his movie from
her perspective as a viewer (as opposed to as his instructor). When she finished her
thought, John seemed anxious to respond, but—perhaps remembering the step in the peer

response framework that mandated the author remains silent while the response group

110

discusses the text—he asked Liz (in her role as instructor) whether he was allowed to
respond to her comments. She replied that no, he wasn’t allowed to respond yet, at which
point she invited other students to comment further on his text. This was only the most
obvious of the many instances of Liz’s switching between roles throughout the DPR
sessions—she was an active participant in each session, making several comments about
each video during the whole class discussion, and also occasionally repeating comments
made by others, seemingly to reinforce them.

Given the tendency of students to defer to her opinion during the PPR sessions, I
had expected to observe something similar in the DPR sessions, but this wasn’t the
case—in fact, several students even disagreed, though not directly, with some of Liz’s
comments by offering positive responses about aspects that Liz seemed to find
problematic. Though Liz never relinquished the role of instructor during the DPR
sessions, and though students did not interrupt or talk over her, as they occasionally did
each other, her comments seemed to carry no more weight with the rest of the
responders“ than did their own, which is particularly interesting, given that she would be

the one assigning the grades once the projects were completed.

Revision plans
Finally, students came out of DPR sessions reporting far fewer ideas for revision
than they did after the PPR sessions, and those students who were able to articulate
revision plans following their DPR sessions offered fewer specifics about those plans.

After the PPR sessions, eleven students reported having developed revision plans about

 

“ There is no way to tell from my data, however, whether Liz’ 5 opinion carried more weight with the
authors.

11]

which they were able to offer concrete detail, seven students seemed to have gained some
direction regarding their revision but provided little or no detail, and two students
described no revision plan at all-though one of these students indicated having already
completed her revision in the session. However, after the DPR sessions, only five
students articulated detailed revision plans, while nine students seemed to have some
direction but offered no specifics, and one student (not the same as in the PPR sessions)
indicated having already completed his revision within the response session.

This result is, to me, both the most interesting and the most troubling, since I’ve
always maintained that the primary goal of peer response is the facilitation of a plan for
revision that students can use to improve their texts. The fact that fewer students in the
DPR sessions were able to articulate concrete approaches to revision as a result of their
peers’ feedback is clear indication that the DPR sessions were failing to meet the needs of
these writers in a fundamental way, and a good indication that a different approach to the

peer response of digital texts is required.

Implications for the practice of peer response of digital texts
Though additional research will certainly be necessary to determine and refine the
shape of any new approach to peer response of digital texts, my research suggests that

such an approach would benefit from the inclusion of the following features:

1 . Opportunity for multiple viewings of digital texts

In the PPR sessions I observed, authors and responders read and reread different

sections of the text, sometimes repeating a sentence in order to test its flow or tease out

112

its meaning, and other times repeating a troublesome word or phrase several times as part
of an attempt to replace or revise it. Response group members used this repetition both
on their own and collaboratively, sometimes rereading sections silently to themselves
before making notes or suggestions, and sometimes going over sentences together,
repeating phrases again and again with small alterations until coming up with a revision
they both liked

However, in the DPR sessions, digital texts were shared only once, from
beginning to end without stopping, and so this kind of repetitive play as part of the
interpretation or revision wasn’t possible. Given how much of the work of the PPR
sessions occurred in these moments of textual repetition, I believe authors of and
responders to digital texts could benefit from the opportunity to review an entire digital
text—or revisit certain parts of it—repeatedly, both before and while responding to the

text.

2 . Control of playback that lies with the responder

I do not doubt that there is value in giving responders the opportunity to view (or
read) a text in its entirety before they offer feedback—such a practice ideally allows
responders to form an understanding of the text as a complete argument, and to offer the
writer feedback about the overall impact or message of the text. This is, in fact, one of
the reasons that the MSU Writing Center’s peer response framework asks writers to read
through their text from start to finish without stopping for comment However,
responders in the PPR sessions frequently interrupted the reading of the text to offer

feedback, and the comments they offered during those interruptions were, for the most

113

part, received positively by the authors. Despite possibly interrupting the responder’s
ability to see the text as a whole, the practice of offering comments as soon as they
occurred to the responder seemed to result in productive discussion about the text in
question, and this cannot—and should not——be discounted.

Therefore, I suggest that for at least one of the possibly multiple viewings of
digital texts within DPR sessions, the response session should be structured so as to
enable responders to navigate throughout the text in whatever direction they choose, and
to stop playback, if they choose, in order to make comments, indicate concerns, or ask
questions. This would most easily be accomplished by having students share their digital
texts on individual laptops instead of classroom projection screens, and giving responders
control of the mouse and/or keyboard for one playback of the text. Such an opportunity
would not only allow responders to replay troublesome or confusing sections and/or
address aspects of the text in any order, but would also facilitate the recommendation I
address in the next section: enabling effective commenting while the text is being played,

in addition to afterwards.

3. Ability to comment during initial or early text experience
The idea that there can be value in soliciting feedback while a user experiences a
text instead of afier is the foundation of the “thinking aloud method,” developed for
cognitive interviewing and frequently used in usability testing. In this method,
participants provide a running commentary of their thought processes by thinking aloud
as they engage in whatever activities required of them by the usability test. By creating

an environment in which users are able—and encouraged—to vocalize their reactions,

114

questions, and intentions as they interact with the text or interface being tested, usability
researchers can come to a better understanding not only of the needs and expectations of
potential users, but also of how the text in question does or does not meet those needs
(Rubin 1994; Rubin and Chisnell 2008).

Introducing aspects of think-aloud usability testing into peer response would free
up responders to address concerns or questions during their initial experience of a digital
text without stopping or slowing the playback of the text itself, and these comments could
then be revisited and discussed in greater detail after the playback has completed.

One possible solution to the additional time that would be taken up by multiple
viewings could be for students to exchange texts with peers and conduct the “think
aloud” sessions simultaneously, recording each responder’s (or response group’s) out-
loud reaction to a text as an audio track that the author could then listen to—multiple
times, if necessary—— while reviewing and revising their own digital text. Such a
response technique would likely take some practice, as well as guidance from an
instructor, since usability testers engaging in think-aloud testing frequently have to

remind users to vocalize their responses (Rubin 1994).

4. Acquisition of “Revision and responding vocabulary ” for digital texts
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, one possible contributing factor for students’
failure to address the surface-level issues in their peers’ digital texts is a lack of the
vocabulary and/or understandings required to do so. Though the language and concepts
used to describe the more global Higher Order Concerns can be applied to both print-

based paper and digital texts (i.e., organization, audience awareness, thesis argument), the

115

Lower Order Concerns of digital texts (e.g., timing, audio levels, speed, focus, transition
from image to image) don’t lend themselves so easily to being understood in non-digital
terms. This might have contributed to the failure in the sessions I observed of responders
to address these more surface-level issues.

While I have found the concepts of Higher Order and Lower Order Concerns
useful in my own teaching and writing center work, I don’t insist that use of these terms
would be necessary for successful peer response; however, some understanding of how to
discuss and understand different aspects of digital texts and their composition is
necessary for the peer response of those texts to be worthwhile. One approach to
developing this understanding before response groups first meet could involve co-
constructing a response sheet or rubric as part of the initial digital assignment
explanation: guided by their instructor, students could collaboratively develop a catalog
of textual features they deem important to an effective digital text, and could use that
catalog as a guide both while composing and revising their own texts and while

responding to their peers’.

Limitations of this research
This research has three possible limitations that are important to acknowledge:
because this research was conducted in one classroom, the number of peer response
groups available to be observed was relatively small, resulting in usable video- and
audio-recordings of only four of the seven or eight groups on any given response day.
Because of this limited sample size, I cannot—and do not—claim that my observations

are representative of all first-year writing classrooms, or even of all sections of WRA 150

116

offered at Michigan State University in the semester during which I collected my data.
However, it is my hope and my intention that those who teach or research in classrooms
within similar contexts or with shared characteristics might be able to better understand
their own situation through this in—depth examination of eight peer response groups
within this classroom.

The second possible limitation is the degree to which the imposition of a specific
peer response framework—and, more specifically, the disregarding of that framework at
different points by both students and instructor—may have influenced my data and
results. Much of the students’ behavior was likely colored, if not entirely guided, by the
peer response framework they were supposed to implement during their sessions, even
when they deviated from that framework, as they frequently did. Those classrooms in
which instructors manage to enforce a strict adherence to a specific peer response
framework will likely encounter different outcomes. However, it should be noted that
my results indicate that such framework enforcement is more difficult than it might seem,
and, given the number of participants in my research who reported development of
detailed revision plans after peer response sessions, perhaps even counter-productive.
(The use of whole-class response for the DPR sessions, while a significant difference
between the two types of sessions, seems less likely to pose a significant limitation to the
research, as students discussed their feedback in small-group settings first, and with few
exceptions repeated their small- group responses in the whole-class discussion with little
or no variation.)

The third limitation is grounded in my own experience as a writing teacher and

writing center tutor. I, as have many current first-year-writing students, have come to

117

understand and define digital writing in the context of its differences from and
similarities to non-digital writing, and this has without question influenced how I
approached this research. While I attempted to be aware of and account for this bias in
designing and implementing my study, I am aware that a researcher whose career started
with digital composition rather than its non-digital counterpart would not have seen peer
response of non-digital texts as a norm to which DPR should be compared, and might
perhaps have approached the entire project differently. Given that my focus was peer
response in the first-year writing classroom, and that, in that space, non—digital texts are
still far more common than digital, I don’t believe that my inclination to see peer
response of non-digital texts as the norm can be considered an unreasonable bias. I
would, however, be very interested to read the results of a similar study done from a
perspective that wasn’t influenced by my years of experience with peer response of print-

based paper texts.

Suggestions for future research

If we are to understand more completely the ways in which peer response can and
should be used with digital texts, additional research into peer response of digital
writing—and, perhaps, peer response in general—is needed.

The practice of peer response would particularly benefit from research that seeks
to analyze the feedback offered and texts discussed in PPR and DPR sessions in order to
determine whether differences in types of feedback translate to differences in usefulness
of feedback, i.e., whether the kinds of feedback offered in PPR or DPR sessions are more

likely to result in more effective revision to the texts in question. Such a study would

118

involve analysis not only'of session transcripts, but also of rough and final drafts of
student work, and would perhaps require making a distinction between effective revision
as defined by the student as author and as defined by the instructor as evaluator.

Those who seek to better understand peer response might also consider research
that examines how and why writers become comfortable enough to use their own
experience as a model within peer response sessions, and whether such modeling actually
serves a useful purpose, either by providing information about composing or revision
strategies, or by establishing or strengthening the rapport between response group
members.

Additionally, research should be done that engages in more in-depth analysis of
the discourse within PPR and DPR sessions and examines length of utterance,
conversational turns, and pauses, in order to determine whether the amount of time spent
discussing a particular textual aspect or question has any correlation to the plan for
revision, if any, that eventually arises from the discussion, and to examine whether there
is a difference in the amount of time response groups spend on discussion of different
textual features in DPR and PPR sessions.

Finally, research should be undertaken to examine the impact of imposed
response frameworks on response sessions, and whether better results (e.g., more positive
experiences reported from writers and responders, or more effective revision as a result)
are obtained from the use of a framework. This research would be difficult to undertake,
since there is no one accepted peer response framework and since, as I’ve mentioned
previously, enforcing a response framework is extremely difficult. However, studies

could be done comparing sessions in which existing response frameworks are rigidly

119

enforced with sessions in which frameworks are used only as suggestions, or are not
introduced at all. Such a study might help to determine at what point a peer response
framework might become so restrictive as to hamper the discussion it is meant to

facilitate.

Conclusion

In Chapter 2, I discussed the parallel themes of justification that weave their way
through the literatures of peer response and digital composition in writing classrooms; I
called attention to the laudable goals often cited in support of each, and I stated my still-
held belief that neither practice is likely to be abandoned for the other, despite any
challenges that might arise through their simultaneous adoption. Through this
dissertation research, I have sought to uncover what happens when those parallel
conversations merge, to learn whether the peer response of students’ digital texts could be
comparable to that of non-digital texts, and through that to examine whether peer
response of digital texts could be a helpful approach for student writers, or one whose
inherent conflicts render it useless.

The answer, at least that indicated by my results, seems to lie somewhere in
between. While peer response appears to have the potential to benefit digital writers in
the revision of their texts, the simple application of existing peer response frameworks,
developed for use with non—digital texts, isn’t likely to provide student writers with
feedback as useful as that received during peer response sessions revised or redesigned
with digital texts in mind. Though this research may—and, I hope, will—serve as a

starting point for the development of these new approaches to peer response, more

120

 

research will be necessary in order to better understand the ways in which the opportunity

for in-class peer response could benefit students composing texts in and for digital media.

121

APPENDIX A: PRE- PEER RESPONSE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Not counting this semester, have you ever participated in an in-class peer
response“ group before? (*Peer response can be known by many diflerent names
(peer review, writing group, response group, etc. ), but generally refers to the
practice of receiving feedback on your writing fiom your classmates and oflering
feedback to your classmates on their own writing projects.)

2. (Please complete this sentence.) In the past, peer response groups in my classes
have been mostly:

a.
b.
c.

d.

6.

Extremely helpful in making major revisions and/or large-scale If
improvements to my writing.

Mostly helpful in making major revisions and/or large-scale improvements
to my writing.

Mostly unhelpful in making major revisions and/or large-scale
improvements to my writing.

Extremely unhelpful in making major revisions and/or large-scale
improvements to my writing. t.-
I’m not sure if peer response groups have been helpful or unhelpful to my

writing.

 

3. (Complete this sentence.) In the past, peer review groups in my classes have been

mostly:
a.

b.
c.
d.

6.

Extremely helpful in assisting me to identify and/or correct surface-level
errors, such as errors in spelling, punctuation, or grammar.

Mostly helpful in assisting me to identify and/or correct surface-level
errors, such as errors in spelling, punctuation, or grammar.

Mostly unhelpful in assisting me to identify and/or correct surface-level
errors, such as errors in spelling, punctuation, or grammar.

Extremely unhelpful in assisting me to identify and/or correct surface-
level errors, such as errors in spelling, punctuation, or grammar.

I’m not sure if peer response groups have been helpful or unhelpful to my
writing.

4. I have found peer review most useful in helping me to (select all that apply):

scrape-99‘s»

h

Develop a thesis statement

Develop good transitions between paragraphs
Improve organization

Understand the assignment better

Come up with topics for my writing

Correct spelling and punctuation errors

Other (please specify)

None of the above

5. Think back to the peer response experience that was most helpful to you. What
made this experience so helpful? (Please be as specific as possible.)

6. Think back to the peer response experience that was least helpful to you. What
made this experience so unhelpful? (Please be as specific as possible.)

122

PP!"

APPENDIX B: POST-SESSION SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

Who else was in your peer response group today?

In one sentence, describe the project you shared with the group:

What was/were your main concern(s) about the writing you shared with your
response group?

What was/were the main comment(s) that your response group members made
about your writing project?

What revisions, if any, have you decided to make to your project because of this
response group meeting? 5

 

123

APPENDIX C: PEER RESPONSE WORKSHEET, THE WRITING CENTER AT
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

 

 

 

 

Peer Response Worksheet
11
Who an the members of
maroon? , 2)
3)
4)
MAPS Mode: WHAT kind of writing is this and what expectations does the
i do pupae“ , mode at this piece of writing create?
from you it order to
provide you with
“mm" mm“ Audonco: wrro will read the writing and what wil this audience
expect In terms of language. content. eta? (Affects tone)
Purpose: WHAT EFFECflS) do you want the writing to have and how
do you envision that the writing wil accomplsh this purpose?
Situation: HOW will you do the writing? W
Otihovrling: Whatcrothooxtemalcomtraints onihispieoooiwrlthg?
Olihovrlior: Whaiaoyouproiorencosro: the piecedwriihgmd the
writhg process?
Three Priorities
What are the top 3 thing I,
you world Ice for the
group to address 2)
regadha this piece of
writing? 3)
idod Edict
What kind a! feedback
do you need from your
peers about the
concerns you have
identified? .
”“9 m Author reads paperoioud. poor: make notes as they Isiah

 

 

 

 

 

124

 

 

Peer Response Worksheet

 

Peer Response

Howcanyouensuethat

yourpeerrespor‘rse
sessionsaeettective?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peers discuss paper. author remains silent

STRENGTHS oi the paper include . . .

SUGGESTIONS (Consensus among group members is not necessary)

> thesis Statement Can youparaptvase what the paperis about?

> ideas: Cmyouidentfythemainideasotthispaper? Ooalthemainideash
the paperseem diecttyreiated to the thesis statement? (Summarize the topic
sentenceoteachparagrophasakeyword. Coutdthekeywordsserveasa
quickouthe otyoupqaefi lnot. youmightneedto reorganize youpaper.)

> Content: Doesthepaperaccomplshttsstatedpuposetorttsintended
audience? Doesthe paperadeqwtetyaddressthereqwementsotthe
assignment? -

> Organization:
hthem-Doesthesequenceotthepaagrophsmakeseme?

headrpaoaaph- lyouweretoptvasethetopicsentenceoteach
paographasaqmstbndotheremahingsentenceshthepaogrophseemto

 

 

 

r "answer'thatquesttonanda'etheyorgantzedhobglcatordert
P
m > Flow 3. trmsiltons:
Pat-gash i:
“ Detweerr -DoesthetastsentenceotParagrophlseemcomected
- ' tothettstsedenceotPaoqaphZ? DoesthetmtsentenceotPa'oaophz
' seemconnectedtothetistsentenceotPaagraphat’ Etc.
{3 Fronrthougtltolroufirt—Doesthemiteruetranfltonaiptvoseslsuchas
Paw 2 additionaly. afterward. as a resdt. by contrast. consequent». conversely. hence.
' A howevenhaddtbnto.hstead.theretore.thw)tohebthereaderseehow
various thoughts ae connected or related to one another?
> Sentence fluency: Does the wrttervary the length. language. andstructuat
patterns at the sentences s/he uses? (Hht: Upload a section at the paper to
“mew tor a tree. comprehensive analysts!) Would chhg
longer sentences into 2 shorter ones. or combining shorter sentences Into longer
Paragraphs: 0"“ hob?
‘ ‘ SPECIFIC SIRATEGIES for addressing weaknesses . . .
Conclusion
0 Author joins the conversation 8. asks questions
What else does the
author and ,0 mm", 0 Author ultimately ”owns” the paper
the woririt

 

125

 

APPENDIX D: ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION FOR PRINT-TEXT WRITING

ASSIGNMENT
Project #3: ExploratoryIArgumentetive Research Project
Rough Drafts Due: 3IZOID8
Final Drafts Due: 3I25/08

How long should the paper he and how should it look when ltum it in?
Your paper needs to be 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words)‘ In length, typed, consistent with MLA
formatting and documentation guidelines (both internal citations and a Works Cited page), and
printed in 12 point-Times New Roman font.
- You need to consult at least 5 scholarly sources. One can include primary research (research
you’ve conducted) and one can be from an interview with someone.

What do I have to do for this project? What’s the point of it?

Your job for this assignment is to conduct research and write a paper about the various perspectives
and issues surrounding a contemporary issue concerning American culture. Your topic should be
arguable in nature—that is, “it should address a problem or which no easily acceptable solution exists
or ask a question to which no absolute answer exists” (The Everyday Writer). The purpose of this paper
is to help you learn new things and see unfamiliar perspectives. The point of the paper is to present
your research and tell the story of what you've learned through your research. You aren’t just
presenting both sides of an argument—you’re showing what’s complicated about the issue and
why it can’t be represented in just “two sides.”

For this assignment, I want to see your journey as a student and researcher in this process. You will not
simply chose one side of an argument and defend it. Instead, you will begin by telling me/your audience
why you chose the topic you did, what your initial opinion of the topic was, and how that changed
throughout your research. Your final paper should reflect a process or progression of sorts; it should
reflect on how you starting at one place/stance on an issue and ending up somewhere else. Is it
possible that your opinion won’t change after you finish your research? Sure, but I want to know what
challenged your stance along the way, what you thought about it, and why it is important.

My objective in having you approach the research paper in this way is give you experience doing
research to explore a topic, to identify ways of looking at an issue, and to give you practice organizing
information from sources.

Ideas and suggestions for getting started
Probably the best way to choose a topic for this project is to think about what issue interests or affects
you the most—something you have particular experience with, prior knowledge of, or strong feelings
about. Expect to BEGIN with an “opinion,' and end with a more informed perspective on the issue.
1. Read this assignment description VERY CAREFULLY. Read it again. Then read it again.
Take notes on what you don’t understand. Ask questions.
2 Once you’re sure you understand what this project is asking you to do, choose a topic. Here are
some ways to choose a topic that connects to your own experiences and interests:

0 Look again at what you wrote about in Project # 1 or Project # 2, and use an issue in that

paper as a starting point for this project.
0 You could use class readings and conversations to take you in a new direction.

126

3. After you decide on a topic, you’ll need to identify a research question to focus and guide your
research. Some examples of research questions might be:

. How are gender roles prescribed in this culture harmful to women? To men?

- How does American culture idealize love? Romance?

- How does race intersect with cultural prescriptions of beauty and success?

. How does sexual orientation intersect with dominant culture?

What you learn about answers to your question will later become the thesis of your paper.

4. Once you have a research question, you’re ready to begin looking for sources that can help you
find answers to your question. You’ll look for relevant sources in your reader, online, in library
magazines and journals, and among people you know.

5. Once you’ve gathered your sources, you’ll take notes on them. If you’re using print or online
sources, you’ll summarize their arguments and take notes on any passages you want to quote in your
paper. If you're using a human source, you’ll interview him or her and take notes on what you Ieam,
again paying special attention to any quotable material.

6. AFTER you have collected your sources and taken good notes, you're ready to begin writing. Think
about how your sources help you answer your research question, and craft a thesis about what you
Ieamed from them. Make sure you’ve summarized and quoted sources accurately and that you've
documented them correctly. Think of a title that reflects or predicts your thesis.

7. Revise, proofread, edit.

What does a “”good paper look like?

A ‘good’ paper will do the following:
Will introduce the research by giving background or motives for your research—why this“ Issue;
what did you think or know before you started?

0 Will be exploratory in stance and tone - begin by telling me/your audience why you chose the
topic you did, what your initial opinion of the topic was, and how that changed throughout your
research.

Will represent all perspectives and positions accurately and fairly

Will summarize source material fully enough so that your reader understands it

Will include well-chosen quotations from sources

Will include enough of your own voice and language to show that you understand the issue
and positions you’re describing

Will NOT be just a stack of summaries with no “voice” framing and integrating source material
Vlfill document all sources both internally and in a Works Cited page

WIll be effectively organized, so that each paragraph has an identifiable purpose and point
Will have a conclusion that indicates why what you Ieamed matters or could matter—to you, or
to others

MUST have a title—one that indicates both the subject of your analysis and your position on it
0 Will be carefully proofread and edited.

- MUST be at least 1500 words long.

127

Appendix E: Grading Rubric for Print-Text Assignment

 

Project #3 Grading Rubric

Yes

Kinda

No

 

Basic
Requirements

15%

MLA (in-text, Works Cited)

 

6—8 pages, Times New Roman, 12 pt
font,

 

5 sources, 2000 or newer?

 

Title

 

Arguable topic?

 

Grammar, mechanics, “correctness”

 

Research

30%

Research: Do you include evidence
and facts relevant to paper? Are they
on topic?

 

Do you include an appropriate amount
of citation (no specific number, but 2
citations/page as guideline). Also, do
you include information about the
credibility of author and cited
information?

 

Explain quoted information:
sometimes quotes are complex, so
you need to “unpack” them

 

Content/ Structure

35%

Do you present all perspectives on
your argument?

 

Reflection: Answer the question,
“Why did you choose your topic?
How has opinion changed?” In other
words, reflect on what you Ieamed.
Use words like “I” and “me.”

 

Is there a thesis? Is it appropriately
placed?

 

Conclusion: restate thesis, wrap up
paper, no new information

 

Structure: Is your set up suitable for
this paper?

 

Voice

20%

 

Ethos: Do you show that you know
something about your topic and let the
reader know something about you?
(this could connect to culture)

 

 

Define specialized
terminology/vocabulary (something
that not many people know about, this
could be jargon)

 

 

 

 

128

 

APPENDIX F: ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION FOR DIGITAL WRITING
ASSIGNMENT

Project #4: Digital Story/Movie

 

 

i INTRODUCTION '

 

 

Purpose:

For Project #4 you will design and create a digital story/movie using iMovie (Macintosh).
The purpose of this project is to continue our conversation about argument by putting into
practice the rhetorical skills you’ve developed while writing your research paper.
Basically, you will be repurposing Project #3 using MAPS as a guide to determine the
best mode, audience, purpose, and situation for Project #4. You will also put into practice
what you have learned from Project #3 about pathos, logos, and ethos, while constructing
your project.

Objectives:

To expand our definition of writing to include digital technologies

To learn how to use digital tools effectively in the composition process

To work collaboratively in a digital environment

To strengthen our rhetorical skills both digitally and visually

To recognize how the rhetorical situation (MAPS) changes as writers repurpose
their print texts f or a digital environment.

To accomplish these objectives, you will be making movies using a digital video camera
(to be checked out at the WRAC office, 235 Bessey Hall) and iMovie. You will have the
opportunity to work collaboratively on this project (although it is not required, it is
strongly encouraged) to form an argument using the genre that is most appropriate for
your audience. Your group will need to carefully consider how your print essay will help
you create a movie.

 

 

' ammo STARTED

 

 

Although we will all be using iMovie for this project, 1911 will choose the genre most
appropriate for your topic. Additionally, you will need to address concerns or limitations
that may interfere with your project.

Possible Genres:

129

Public Service Announcement
Documentary

Television Advertisement
Music Video

Movie Trailer

Political Ad Campaign

Critical aspects to consider:

Detail the megs of the project: locations for video, travel, interviews, etc.
I Discuss the 1mm of the project: how will the length of this project dictate
what you can do?

 

[ * mm 8

 

 

 

A .7 ~'-a“m. thixm~ yr.

Part 1: Proposal and Storyboard
Due Date: Tuesday, April 8"‘lI‘hursday, April 10"I (due during conferences)
Point Value: 20 points

Length: will vary

To complete Part 1, you will need to include two important steps: 1) write a proposal, and
2) sketch a storyboard. Together, these two steps will help you organize and sequence
your project. Basically, you are telling me “Here’s what I want to do, and this is how I
will do it.”

 

Proposal: This is a 1-2 page written document describing how you will repurpose your
research paper (Project #3) using MAPS. Each of these aspects (mode, audience, purpose,
and situation) are closely related and must often be considered simultaneously.
Additionally, you may need to revise your MAPS many times in order to effectively
address each aspect.

Carefully, THINK THIS THROUGH:

I MW: Fihn (or movie) is a very large genre; it contains many subgenres
within it (e. g. public service announcements (PSA), documentaries, music videos,
advertisements, and movie trailers, etc.). You will have to determine what kind of
film you want to produce and what characteristics define that genre. Additionally,
which type of movie will be the most effective for your purpose? What
expectations does it create for your audience? Who will view the project and what
will they expect in terms of delivery, language, content, etc.

' Audiencg: The research that you’ve done for Project #3 concerns a specific
language and/or literacy issue and pertains to a specific community. Who would

130

benefit from the information and knowledge you’ve gained? Who can you reach
out to with your movie? Is your audience the same as Project #3 or is it much
larger?

I Bunnie: What do you hope to accomplish in your movie? Will you carry over the
same argument that you made in Project #3, or will your movie do something
different? Do you hope to convince your audience of something or would it be
more useful to inform them of your issue?

I Situatign: How has your situation as a writer changed? How is the situation of this
project different from the others we’ve done for this class? For example, how will
you use your skills as a writer to complete this project? How will collaboration be
similar to or different from Project #3?

Storyboard: This is a visual document in which you will sketch out how you plan to
implement your ideas from above. Your storyboard should establish a sense of what your
movie might look like scene by scene. To complete your storyboard, you will use the
“storyboarding template” available in Angel.

Carefully, THINK THIS THROUGH:

I Consider W - phrases, words, quotes passages that you may want to
embed in your project

I Consider W - images, including digital video and/or stills, clipart,
etc.

I Consider W - music, voice recordings, sounds

I Consider W - transitions, animations across pieces of the movie.

Part 2: Peer Review

 

Due Date: Tuesday, April lStthhursday, April 17‘”
Point Value: 30 points
Length: 2 minutes

Peer review will be held on two different days and you will need to bring atlas; two
minutes of movie to show during class.

Part 3: Completed Video
Due Date: Tuesday, April 22“"
Point Value: 100 points
Length: 3-5 minutes

 

Completed videos must be bumed to a disk and uploaded to Angel to receive credit.
Additionally, your finished movie will include the following:

I W - phrases, words, quotes passages that you may want to embed in

your project
I W - images, including digital video and/or stills, clipart, etc.

131

I W - music, voice recordings, sounds. (we will discuss issues
pertaining to using music protected by copyright and how to find and/or create
music that you can use without first obtaining permission).

I W— transitions, animations across pieces of the movie.

QLQQLQ- appropriate citation of your sources

Part 4: Reflection

 

Due Date: Tuesday, April 22""
Point Value: 30 points
Length: 2-3 pages

You will write a reflection based on what you learned from working on this project.
What did you learn about creating iMovies? What obstacles did you run into? What did
you learn about collaboration in a large group? How has your definition of literacy
changed?

You will receive a detailed assignment sheet prior to the due date and we will talk more
about this reflection in class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project #3 Point Value
Part 1: Proposal & Storyboard 20 points
Part 2: Peer Review 30 points
Part 3: Completed Video 100 points
Part 4: Reflection 30 points

 

 

Total Points Possible: 180

 

OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

 

Digital Video Cameras: You can check out cameras from the WRAC (Writing,
Rhetoric, and American Cultures) Department in 235 Bessey Hall.

Other Online Resources:
I video techniquezhttpzllwww.adobe.com/education/digkids/tips/index.html
I example music video: http://www.worldonfire.ca/
I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPCkhYMQgY
I public service announcement: http://www.easehistory.org/index2.html

132

APPENDIX G: CATEGORIES OF RESPONSE FROM SIMMONS (2003)

 

 

Typeal'reepoan
beel [nine

Personal resporm

Text fiayback

Want edits

Mfr needs

Writer's strategies

Table l

 

Definition
lntendedtomkethewrtter
feelpodabornhtsorlnrwork.
Farmesmthepsychologlcal
lwalvermntofthewrtterasa
persmmotasawrlmr.

Focuseorrtheldeasor
organtradanofthetext.

Focusesanasearrnore
serrterrcesargnmmer.
Formaonthemeofwords
«spelling.

Facmesonttuneedsorthe
reactnrsdthereeder.

Focmeeonfecllltethgthe
wrtm'sworkbydtscusstmthe

tedmlqmsthatweremedor
couldbeI-edbyttnwrur.

Types of peer response observed

Emph

“Great paper" (no
reasons given).
'You sound like a
depressed kid.’

'I think you have an excelhnt
conchalon-lt shows how
you've char-pd and grown
from your uperhtes.’
'Run—m sentence.’

'Youseemtorepeet‘famly
trltttutlan'Maybeyou
shouldtryanaltemattve
phrase'
'l'htsconfusesdlereedere
lttflethAtfirstdanml
thirdtthatyoumbleckex-
Mtgmllmlnlhfl
'17-”
'Indwfowthmphyou
gettntottr‘meat’d’ttrex-
perhaoeXounrtd-rtbedrle
tatncreanthelrupctofmls
sectionbynotustngchrono—
bglcalorder.(Maybestart
wtthhlrnpttlmfirethen
tellthedrcurmhnoesleedhg
uptolt.)'

 

133

 

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