Dan E. Seward / The Ohio State University
1. Introduction
Traditional though they were, early writers on electronic discourse were cautiously optimistic about its potential to revitalize intellectual dialogue. I recall as a graduate student in the 1990s reading, in one seminar, Walter Ong’s 1958 lamentation (republished 1998) on the “decay of dialogue” in pre-Enlightenment rhetorical instruction while in another encountering his later speculation (1993/1982) on a “secondary orality” made possible through electronic media (p.135). For Ong, electronic discourse brought about an intriguing marriage between communal orality and self-reflective literacy (pp. 136-7). In a similar vein, Richard Lanham (1993), another scholar of Renaissance rhetoric, also touted the potential of the “electronic word.” For him, the new media encouraged writers and readers to “oscillate” between “purpose and play,” first “looking through” and then “looking at” rhetorical performances (pp. 24, 46-7). He had already proposed (1976) that these modes of textual engagement—modes entailing self-conscious, critical reflections on varied human perspectives—were cultivated in Shakespearean poetic speech and in artfully written humanist dialogues. Although my research interests as a graduate student took me in the direction of historical studies of rhetoric, I too was encouraged by the prospects of the electronic word as a teacher of writing, since then including features like online discussion boards in all my sections as additional spaces for dialogic engagement and exploration by members of the class community.
But using online discussion boards successfully over the years did not mean I had a well-thought-out rationale for what the class would get out of them—at least not beyond the aims of a single assignment, and certainly not with expectations of the lasting critical literacies and rhetorical enrichment associated with the humanist dialogues celebrated by Lanham and Ong. The missing “bigger picture” became apparent when I, in 2010, took over a “Lead Faculty” WPA position at an open-enrollment, predominately-online university. As at similar non-traditional universities concentrating on business and technology programs, the curriculum was standardized and accelerated to accommodate working students with families. My job included designing writing courses to be used without modification by dozens of part-time adjunct faculty. Given this responsibility, I felt obliged to scrutinize my strategies for using discussion boards, among other things, before foisting my assignments on others. For guidance, I turned again towards the literature on electronic discourse in rhetoric and composition studies.
By the second decade of the 21st-century, of course, both the technologies and the scholarly attention to electronic discourse had blossomed, and developers and theorists understandably looked towards the latter generations of Web interaction, such as advanced hypermedia, rhetorical remixing, and multimodal composition. Amidst this rapid development, the humble, low-band-width discussion board seemed taken for granted, treated as a relatively familiar online teaching tool. Though literature about online composition pedagogy offered many practical suggestions for using class discussion boards, as I will discuss in the next section, it was difficult to find any overarching strategy for having them advance academic literacies in early college writers. To be sure, scholars of rhetoric and writing examined online asynchronous communications as “functional” and “rhetorical” multiliteracies modern students should acquire in this digital age (Selber, 2004, pp. 52-4, 138-9), but treatments of asynchronous discussion to foster critical academic discourse tended mostly to examine loosely moderated electronic dialogues, not structured pedagogical, or even post-pedagogical, frameworks.
Outside composition studies, however, the broader treatments of online education included at least one framework supporting a wide range of coursework through asynchronous communication. The Communities of Inquiry (CoI) approach was “designed with asynchronous text-based discussions in mind” (deNoyelles, Mannheimer Zydney, & Chen, 2014, p. 154), and it has been studied by education researchers examining a multitude of college class contexts, ranging from K-12 teacher training to basic science instruction and IT training (e.g., Ling, 2007; Makri, Papanikolaou, Tsakiri, & Karkanis, 2014; Olesova, Slavin, & Lim, 2016). The distinctive features of CoI are its consideration of both the “Social Presence” and the “Cognitive Presence” of students in online environments, each of which is supported by peer-to-peer interaction and various forms of “Teacher Presence” (deNoyelles et al., 2014, p. 154). Ideally, the asynchronous interaction develops into a learning community balancing social, cognitive, and teacher presence to support constructivist pedagogies. In terms of critical inquiry, students progress through four stages: triggering inquiry, communal exploration, integration of ideas and information, and application to particular contexts. These latter stages are supposed to represent the kinds of personal meaning making associated with “higher level” cognition (deNoyelles et al., 2014, p. 157; Olesova et al., 2016, pp. 36-37), no matter the subject studied.
But composition is a different kind of subject. First-year writing, particularly, is supposed to treat academic discourse, yet composition scholars have long questioned the idea that competency in academic (or other) writing conventions is best achieved through direct exploration of the conventions themselves (Gee, 1998, p. 57; Kutz, 1998, pp. 40-1), a recurrent point of the influential articles gathered in the 1998 collection Negotiating Academic Literacies, edited by Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack (1998). For many students, an overbearing emphasis on conventional correctness impedes them from understanding how to become successful college writers since conventional academic language doesn’t immediately reflect their own successful ways of communicating about subjects they already care about (Blanton, 1998, pp. 230-2, Elbow, 1998, p. 146, 158-162; González, 1998; Lu, 1998, pp. 81-82). As I’ll examine more in the next section, though the emphasis on community and inquiry makes CoI attractive for composition teachers, the phasing of cognitive development around external bodies of knowledge doesn’t quite jibe with what we know about the acquisition of academic literacies. Nor does it account for the complicated interlacing of social and cognitive presence embodied in the very choice of topics for inquiry, which students may know deeply and intimately, albeit through acculturated and personal modes of expression not reflecting academic conventions—a factor directly affecting educational access for non-traditional students especially.
The practice of orchestrated asynchronous discussion explained in this article reflects my attempt to address these broader concerns about conventional conformity and topics of inquiry within the highly pragmatic setting of the industrialized, largely-online non-traditional university. In the process of researching the intersection between online discussion and writing pedagogy for non-traditional students, I realized I needed a framework allowing what Paolo Freire (1993/1970), another proponent of dialogic learning, describes as “generative thematics” (pp. 77-78). Freire’s approach to dialogue differs from those of the humanist canon described by Ong and Lanham in its deliberate intention to empower learners traditionally left out of important socio-intellectual conversations. As described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire’s methods elicit from learners themselves the meaningful topics of discussion (pp. 68-78). Meanwhile, educators teach dialogically by facilitating discussion in a sustained, structured manner (pp. 89-101), a manner that entails recurrent, constructive interaction among those representing alternate perspectives, as well as critical reflection on the very discursive practices through which the dialogue is taking place.
> Return to top.
Traditional though they were, early writers on electronic discourse were cautiously optimistic about its potential to revitalize intellectual dialogue. I recall as a graduate student in the 1990s reading, in one seminar, Walter Ong’s 1958 lamentation (republished 1998) on the “decay of dialogue” in pre-Enlightenment rhetorical instruction while in another encountering his later speculation (1993/1982) on a “secondary orality” made possible through electronic media (p.135). For Ong, electronic discourse brought about an intriguing marriage between communal orality and self-reflective literacy (pp. 136-7). In a similar vein, Richard Lanham (1993), another scholar of Renaissance rhetoric, also touted the potential of the “electronic word.” For him, the new media encouraged writers and readers to “oscillate” between “purpose and play,” first “looking through” and then “looking at” rhetorical performances (pp. 24, 46-7). He had already proposed (1976) that these modes of textual engagement—modes entailing self-conscious, critical reflections on varied human perspectives—were cultivated in Shakespearean poetic speech and in artfully written humanist dialogues. Although my research interests as a graduate student took me in the direction of historical studies of rhetoric, I too was encouraged by the prospects of the electronic word as a teacher of writing, since then including features like online discussion boards in all my sections as additional spaces for dialogic engagement and exploration by members of the class community.
But using online discussion boards successfully over the years did not mean I had a well-thought-out rationale for what the class would get out of them—at least not beyond the aims of a single assignment, and certainly not with expectations of the lasting critical literacies and rhetorical enrichment associated with the humanist dialogues celebrated by Lanham and Ong. The missing “bigger picture” became apparent when I, in 2010, took over a “Lead Faculty” WPA position at an open-enrollment, predominately-online university. As at similar non-traditional universities concentrating on business and technology programs, the curriculum was standardized and accelerated to accommodate working students with families. My job included designing writing courses to be used without modification by dozens of part-time adjunct faculty. Given this responsibility, I felt obliged to scrutinize my strategies for using discussion boards, among other things, before foisting my assignments on others. For guidance, I turned again towards the literature on electronic discourse in rhetoric and composition studies.
By the second decade of the 21st-century, of course, both the technologies and the scholarly attention to electronic discourse had blossomed, and developers and theorists understandably looked towards the latter generations of Web interaction, such as advanced hypermedia, rhetorical remixing, and multimodal composition. Amidst this rapid development, the humble, low-band-width discussion board seemed taken for granted, treated as a relatively familiar online teaching tool. Though literature about online composition pedagogy offered many practical suggestions for using class discussion boards, as I will discuss in the next section, it was difficult to find any overarching strategy for having them advance academic literacies in early college writers. To be sure, scholars of rhetoric and writing examined online asynchronous communications as “functional” and “rhetorical” multiliteracies modern students should acquire in this digital age (Selber, 2004, pp. 52-4, 138-9), but treatments of asynchronous discussion to foster critical academic discourse tended mostly to examine loosely moderated electronic dialogues, not structured pedagogical, or even post-pedagogical, frameworks.
Outside composition studies, however, the broader treatments of online education included at least one framework supporting a wide range of coursework through asynchronous communication. The Communities of Inquiry (CoI) approach was “designed with asynchronous text-based discussions in mind” (deNoyelles, Mannheimer Zydney, & Chen, 2014, p. 154), and it has been studied by education researchers examining a multitude of college class contexts, ranging from K-12 teacher training to basic science instruction and IT training (e.g., Ling, 2007; Makri, Papanikolaou, Tsakiri, & Karkanis, 2014; Olesova, Slavin, & Lim, 2016). The distinctive features of CoI are its consideration of both the “Social Presence” and the “Cognitive Presence” of students in online environments, each of which is supported by peer-to-peer interaction and various forms of “Teacher Presence” (deNoyelles et al., 2014, p. 154). Ideally, the asynchronous interaction develops into a learning community balancing social, cognitive, and teacher presence to support constructivist pedagogies. In terms of critical inquiry, students progress through four stages: triggering inquiry, communal exploration, integration of ideas and information, and application to particular contexts. These latter stages are supposed to represent the kinds of personal meaning making associated with “higher level” cognition (deNoyelles et al., 2014, p. 157; Olesova et al., 2016, pp. 36-37), no matter the subject studied.
But composition is a different kind of subject. First-year writing, particularly, is supposed to treat academic discourse, yet composition scholars have long questioned the idea that competency in academic (or other) writing conventions is best achieved through direct exploration of the conventions themselves (Gee, 1998, p. 57; Kutz, 1998, pp. 40-1), a recurrent point of the influential articles gathered in the 1998 collection Negotiating Academic Literacies, edited by Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack (1998). For many students, an overbearing emphasis on conventional correctness impedes them from understanding how to become successful college writers since conventional academic language doesn’t immediately reflect their own successful ways of communicating about subjects they already care about (Blanton, 1998, pp. 230-2, Elbow, 1998, p. 146, 158-162; González, 1998; Lu, 1998, pp. 81-82). As I’ll examine more in the next section, though the emphasis on community and inquiry makes CoI attractive for composition teachers, the phasing of cognitive development around external bodies of knowledge doesn’t quite jibe with what we know about the acquisition of academic literacies. Nor does it account for the complicated interlacing of social and cognitive presence embodied in the very choice of topics for inquiry, which students may know deeply and intimately, albeit through acculturated and personal modes of expression not reflecting academic conventions—a factor directly affecting educational access for non-traditional students especially.
The practice of orchestrated asynchronous discussion explained in this article reflects my attempt to address these broader concerns about conventional conformity and topics of inquiry within the highly pragmatic setting of the industrialized, largely-online non-traditional university. In the process of researching the intersection between online discussion and writing pedagogy for non-traditional students, I realized I needed a framework allowing what Paolo Freire (1993/1970), another proponent of dialogic learning, describes as “generative thematics” (pp. 77-78). Freire’s approach to dialogue differs from those of the humanist canon described by Ong and Lanham in its deliberate intention to empower learners traditionally left out of important socio-intellectual conversations. As described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire’s methods elicit from learners themselves the meaningful topics of discussion (pp. 68-78). Meanwhile, educators teach dialogically by facilitating discussion in a sustained, structured manner (pp. 89-101), a manner that entails recurrent, constructive interaction among those representing alternate perspectives, as well as critical reflection on the very discursive practices through which the dialogue is taking place.
> Return to top.
2. More than Leveling Tools: From Managing Effective Discussions to Designing Performative Interactions
One long-recognized affordance of asynchronous online discussions for developing the online pedagogies described in the introduction is their ability to decenter or level traditional classroom hierarchies. On screen, students can and do take the lead, interacting directly without the constraints of the teacher-centered, onsite classroom, thereby taking more control over their learning processes, an outcome that has been seen as a significant paradigmatic change associated with e-learning (Amy, 2006, p. 113; Selber, 2004, pp. 84-5; etc.). And alongside the leveling theorem sits the more general notion that such online spaces provide alternate venues for higher education. This notion is indeed foundational for considering online instruction as a means for providing more students greater access to learning (Kear, 2011, pp. 55-57; Warnock, 2009, pp. xi-xii). Such observations about educational access and socialization have, moreover, been applied to online discussion platforms particularly (including LMS-hosted forums, newsgroups, e-mail lists, etc.), seeing them as alternate sites and ancillary tools for facilitating academic socialization and learning (Beckett, Amaro-Jiménez, & Beckett, 2010; Hawisher & Pemberton; Yagelski, 1998; Yancey, 2000; etc.).
However, complications with this leveling and online socialization has meant that much practical guidance for asynchronous discussions in composition and language learning courses focuses on participation and discussion management, rather than implementing particular approaches for teaching composition. Not only have studies suggested that social and institutional disparities often replicate themselves onscreen (Selber, 2004, p. 85), but in cases they don’t, the outcomes do not necessarily produce the inclusive dialogic space hoped for by proponents of the technologies (Amy, 2006, pp. 113-20). In some cases, the participation is inconsistent (Hawisher & Pemberton, 1998), while in others, participants digress from the aims of the assignment or dismiss the value of peer responses (Rendahl & Breuch, 2013, pp. 309, 312). Thus, the guidance turns cautionary, focusing on ways to avoid unsuccessful discussions, especially by ensuring that instructions are clear (Beckett et al., 2010, pp. 323-4;), that the purposes of the discussion are understood (Yagelski, 1998, pp. 346-7), that there are expectations for consistent participation (Beckett et al., 2010, pp. 323-4; Hawisher & Pemberton, 1998, p. 36), and that all accept the need for civil conduct and the goal of developing a supportive learning community (Amy, 2006, pp. 124-5).
Given these cautionary concerns, the constructive role of asynchronous discussions among the larger pedagogical aims of the writing course is often lost, not considered beyond the leveling theorem. Such an absence may explain Gillam and Wooden’s observation as late as 2013 that “the best parts of composition pedagogy are precisely what’s missing in most online learning situations” (p. 26). To rectify this omission, Gillam and Wooden draw on ecological models for online first-year composition. They explain how discussion boards, working alongside other online technologies, can foster a “roots to fruits” approach (p. 32). Their “multi-step” assignments lead students through various forms of interaction, starting with “purposeful” topic development facilitated by “discussion scripts” (p. 31) and proceeding through the development of a full paper. While not all their interactive steps use discussion boards, they easily could, as will be shown with the section describing the framework of orchestrated discussion, which like Gillam and Wooden’s ecological model, seeks to use the affordances of the electronic medium to grow students’ interactions into a “purposeful community of inquiry” (p. 28).
On that note, we might revisit the core elements of the formal CoI model, especially by considering how the different categories of presence and cognitive phases, in particular, map onto the concerns of composition pedagogy for early college students. As suggested in the introduction, we would need to consider the possibility that expressions of cognitive presence exhibit a social presence as well, and one that is intimately tied to the ways students communicate knowledge. Although social presence is presumed to be cohesive and community building on the CoI model (Makri, 2014, p. 185), studies in composition suggest that this is not always the case—indeed, these are the conclusions of the more cautionary studies cited earlier in this section. Moreover, the very model of cognitive phasing in CoI suggests that observations voiced at the beginning of a dialogue do not demonstrate high-level thinking, though such an assumption may well go against the encouragement we give students to explore topics with which they have personal engagement, maybe even a substantial amount of knowledge, even if not academically expressed.
Put another way, the phases of cognitive development in the standard CoI model do not easily account for the challenge of negotiating with one’s past language practice as a socio-intellectual identity, one potentially exhibiting quite sophisticated thinking. Indeed, for a course like first-year writing, initial responses to triggering prompts and early exploration of a topic in a communal fashion may well entail sophisticated integrations and applications of course concepts, though not always in a manner adhering to standards of academic discourse—a common outcome for work presented by non-traditional students, who often have years of work experience and families. The focus, then, is how to use asynchronous discussion to explain and encourage academic ways of expressing thinking without alienating students socially, that is, without suggesting their past expressions of understanding and topics of discussion were fundamentally incorrect or insufficient, perhaps even by calling attention to the idiosyncrasies of academic discursive moves and socialization.
So, while we can encourage communal inquiry, as in the CoI model (albeit without conceding that later phases represent categorically “higher level” thinking), more attention needs to be directed towards the collateral discursive attunement taking place in the dialogic interactions themselves. Here we should discuss teacher presence. In the managed discussion models noted above, instructors attune students to discursive conventions more or less explicitly, that is, by establishing and enforcing class policies for interaction and moderating asynchronous dialogue directly. Such an authoritative presence may well be warranted, even hard to avoid in some situations. However, when the discussion design foregrounds the instructor’s moderating role and doesn’t promote other kinds of teacher presence, we may just confirm misconceptions of academic discourse, namely, that it’s about following rules set by an authority figure, not about intersubjective inquiry into important subjects and critical thinking about the different ways through which both understanding and authority are expressed in dialogic exchanges.
I propose, instead, a framework in which the instructor’s central roles in the active discussion, and in helping students attune themselves to the conventions of academic discourse, are those of performance modeler and reflective practitioner. To achieve this shift, however, more attention needs to be placed on how the predesigned prompts direct interactivity on the discussion board. Particularly, we are interested in how the prompts may encourage students to experiment with discursive identities conducive to the development of new literacies. Such experimentation may be easier to cultivate if the teacher’s presence as moderator is downplayed, something relatively easy to achieve when discussion prompts take on a depersonalized directive form and when instructors subject themselves—that is, perform—the directions on the prompts as well. While it is not entirely possible to erase the teacher’s authoritative presence from the discussion space (nor perhaps desired), it is possible to create an interactive environment that emphasizes the generative use of guidelines (i.e., the directive prompts) in dialogic performance—the more so when instructors show they can follow directions too.
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, designing such depersonalized directive interactions may indeed be a socially-aware, student-centered endeavor, a point I’ll support by invoking literacy scholar James Gee. Gee’s influential work on sociolinguistics emphasizes that literacy development depends on socialization within discourse communities, not objective understandings of grammatical conventions (2012/1990). For our purposes, though, it is significant that he complements these social theories of language acquisition with an examination of learning in video games, that is, learning in electronic environments embodying socially significant language practices within predesigned interactive spaces lacking immediate human presence (2003). Players of video games learn as they perform progressively more sophisticated actions and interactions relevant to both short-term and long-term goals of the game. Good video games, as Gee (2012) notes, allow players to perform these tasks in the process of shaping their identities within the game. Most significantly, though, Gee emphasizes that the roles players develop within games have genuine connections to those they adopt in real-life social situations (pp. 59-66).
The interactivity writing teachers design through discussion board prompts might include a similar kind of deliberate, identity-enabling performative sequencing, yet replace the game goals with those of a discourse community being taught as part of the course. In first-year writing, this should generally reflect the aims of an inclusive academic community seeking to build knowledge of socially relevant themes in a critical manner. To encourage interactivity that fosters reflective dialogic engagement about meaningful themes, then, class discussion boards might not be conceived simply as stand-alone assignments, nor as ongoing free-form discussions, two typical approaches that certainly have their uses. Rather, they might be designed to cultivate an ongoing, communal examination of how specific discursive moves, both those brought into the class by students and those taught as part of the course of instruction, do or do not enable deeper understandings of the varied forms of expression and relevant themes of class discussion.
> Return to top.
One long-recognized affordance of asynchronous online discussions for developing the online pedagogies described in the introduction is their ability to decenter or level traditional classroom hierarchies. On screen, students can and do take the lead, interacting directly without the constraints of the teacher-centered, onsite classroom, thereby taking more control over their learning processes, an outcome that has been seen as a significant paradigmatic change associated with e-learning (Amy, 2006, p. 113; Selber, 2004, pp. 84-5; etc.). And alongside the leveling theorem sits the more general notion that such online spaces provide alternate venues for higher education. This notion is indeed foundational for considering online instruction as a means for providing more students greater access to learning (Kear, 2011, pp. 55-57; Warnock, 2009, pp. xi-xii). Such observations about educational access and socialization have, moreover, been applied to online discussion platforms particularly (including LMS-hosted forums, newsgroups, e-mail lists, etc.), seeing them as alternate sites and ancillary tools for facilitating academic socialization and learning (Beckett, Amaro-Jiménez, & Beckett, 2010; Hawisher & Pemberton; Yagelski, 1998; Yancey, 2000; etc.).
However, complications with this leveling and online socialization has meant that much practical guidance for asynchronous discussions in composition and language learning courses focuses on participation and discussion management, rather than implementing particular approaches for teaching composition. Not only have studies suggested that social and institutional disparities often replicate themselves onscreen (Selber, 2004, p. 85), but in cases they don’t, the outcomes do not necessarily produce the inclusive dialogic space hoped for by proponents of the technologies (Amy, 2006, pp. 113-20). In some cases, the participation is inconsistent (Hawisher & Pemberton, 1998), while in others, participants digress from the aims of the assignment or dismiss the value of peer responses (Rendahl & Breuch, 2013, pp. 309, 312). Thus, the guidance turns cautionary, focusing on ways to avoid unsuccessful discussions, especially by ensuring that instructions are clear (Beckett et al., 2010, pp. 323-4;), that the purposes of the discussion are understood (Yagelski, 1998, pp. 346-7), that there are expectations for consistent participation (Beckett et al., 2010, pp. 323-4; Hawisher & Pemberton, 1998, p. 36), and that all accept the need for civil conduct and the goal of developing a supportive learning community (Amy, 2006, pp. 124-5).
Given these cautionary concerns, the constructive role of asynchronous discussions among the larger pedagogical aims of the writing course is often lost, not considered beyond the leveling theorem. Such an absence may explain Gillam and Wooden’s observation as late as 2013 that “the best parts of composition pedagogy are precisely what’s missing in most online learning situations” (p. 26). To rectify this omission, Gillam and Wooden draw on ecological models for online first-year composition. They explain how discussion boards, working alongside other online technologies, can foster a “roots to fruits” approach (p. 32). Their “multi-step” assignments lead students through various forms of interaction, starting with “purposeful” topic development facilitated by “discussion scripts” (p. 31) and proceeding through the development of a full paper. While not all their interactive steps use discussion boards, they easily could, as will be shown with the section describing the framework of orchestrated discussion, which like Gillam and Wooden’s ecological model, seeks to use the affordances of the electronic medium to grow students’ interactions into a “purposeful community of inquiry” (p. 28).
On that note, we might revisit the core elements of the formal CoI model, especially by considering how the different categories of presence and cognitive phases, in particular, map onto the concerns of composition pedagogy for early college students. As suggested in the introduction, we would need to consider the possibility that expressions of cognitive presence exhibit a social presence as well, and one that is intimately tied to the ways students communicate knowledge. Although social presence is presumed to be cohesive and community building on the CoI model (Makri, 2014, p. 185), studies in composition suggest that this is not always the case—indeed, these are the conclusions of the more cautionary studies cited earlier in this section. Moreover, the very model of cognitive phasing in CoI suggests that observations voiced at the beginning of a dialogue do not demonstrate high-level thinking, though such an assumption may well go against the encouragement we give students to explore topics with which they have personal engagement, maybe even a substantial amount of knowledge, even if not academically expressed.
Put another way, the phases of cognitive development in the standard CoI model do not easily account for the challenge of negotiating with one’s past language practice as a socio-intellectual identity, one potentially exhibiting quite sophisticated thinking. Indeed, for a course like first-year writing, initial responses to triggering prompts and early exploration of a topic in a communal fashion may well entail sophisticated integrations and applications of course concepts, though not always in a manner adhering to standards of academic discourse—a common outcome for work presented by non-traditional students, who often have years of work experience and families. The focus, then, is how to use asynchronous discussion to explain and encourage academic ways of expressing thinking without alienating students socially, that is, without suggesting their past expressions of understanding and topics of discussion were fundamentally incorrect or insufficient, perhaps even by calling attention to the idiosyncrasies of academic discursive moves and socialization.
So, while we can encourage communal inquiry, as in the CoI model (albeit without conceding that later phases represent categorically “higher level” thinking), more attention needs to be directed towards the collateral discursive attunement taking place in the dialogic interactions themselves. Here we should discuss teacher presence. In the managed discussion models noted above, instructors attune students to discursive conventions more or less explicitly, that is, by establishing and enforcing class policies for interaction and moderating asynchronous dialogue directly. Such an authoritative presence may well be warranted, even hard to avoid in some situations. However, when the discussion design foregrounds the instructor’s moderating role and doesn’t promote other kinds of teacher presence, we may just confirm misconceptions of academic discourse, namely, that it’s about following rules set by an authority figure, not about intersubjective inquiry into important subjects and critical thinking about the different ways through which both understanding and authority are expressed in dialogic exchanges.
I propose, instead, a framework in which the instructor’s central roles in the active discussion, and in helping students attune themselves to the conventions of academic discourse, are those of performance modeler and reflective practitioner. To achieve this shift, however, more attention needs to be placed on how the predesigned prompts direct interactivity on the discussion board. Particularly, we are interested in how the prompts may encourage students to experiment with discursive identities conducive to the development of new literacies. Such experimentation may be easier to cultivate if the teacher’s presence as moderator is downplayed, something relatively easy to achieve when discussion prompts take on a depersonalized directive form and when instructors subject themselves—that is, perform—the directions on the prompts as well. While it is not entirely possible to erase the teacher’s authoritative presence from the discussion space (nor perhaps desired), it is possible to create an interactive environment that emphasizes the generative use of guidelines (i.e., the directive prompts) in dialogic performance—the more so when instructors show they can follow directions too.
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, designing such depersonalized directive interactions may indeed be a socially-aware, student-centered endeavor, a point I’ll support by invoking literacy scholar James Gee. Gee’s influential work on sociolinguistics emphasizes that literacy development depends on socialization within discourse communities, not objective understandings of grammatical conventions (2012/1990). For our purposes, though, it is significant that he complements these social theories of language acquisition with an examination of learning in video games, that is, learning in electronic environments embodying socially significant language practices within predesigned interactive spaces lacking immediate human presence (2003). Players of video games learn as they perform progressively more sophisticated actions and interactions relevant to both short-term and long-term goals of the game. Good video games, as Gee (2012) notes, allow players to perform these tasks in the process of shaping their identities within the game. Most significantly, though, Gee emphasizes that the roles players develop within games have genuine connections to those they adopt in real-life social situations (pp. 59-66).
The interactivity writing teachers design through discussion board prompts might include a similar kind of deliberate, identity-enabling performative sequencing, yet replace the game goals with those of a discourse community being taught as part of the course. In first-year writing, this should generally reflect the aims of an inclusive academic community seeking to build knowledge of socially relevant themes in a critical manner. To encourage interactivity that fosters reflective dialogic engagement about meaningful themes, then, class discussion boards might not be conceived simply as stand-alone assignments, nor as ongoing free-form discussions, two typical approaches that certainly have their uses. Rather, they might be designed to cultivate an ongoing, communal examination of how specific discursive moves, both those brought into the class by students and those taught as part of the course of instruction, do or do not enable deeper understandings of the varied forms of expression and relevant themes of class discussion.
> Return to top.
3. Orchestrated Conversation: A Framework for Pedagogical Praxis in Online Discussion Boards
In this section, I explain a framework for designing interaction in asynchronous online discussions by using the metaphor of musical orchestration, an apt figure for conceptualizing the deliberate performative sequencing described above, especially given the interpersonal coordination involved in both conversational performance and musical arrangement. Although the framework accounts for a variety of instructional roles and teacher presence, I subsume them under two broad categories of pedagogical practice: discussion design, or composing the “score,” and real-time orchestration, “conducting” the discussion. My treatment of each category, moreover, takes into account the recognized cautions noted about asynchronous dialogues in the previous section, including the need for clear instructions and recurrent peer-to-peer engagement, while nonetheless attempting to establish a constructive approach to literacy development.
Before proceeding to each category, however, I should explain that, when I refer to “orchestrated discussion,” I am thinking specifically of a coordinated series of posting assignments arranged into multiple interactive “movements,” each asking students to reflect on, respond to, and selectively develop classmates’ previous postings. This approach differs both from stand-alone prompt-response-reply sequences and from forums setup to host extended topic-focused conversations. As demonstrated in my companion OLOR piece and in the detailed walkthrough of an example of orchestrated discussion in the next section, the multiple movements do indeed take place over a series of weeks, like the latter open-forum paradigm. However, each movement also entails varying degrees of performative scripting to ensure students build upon the class’s previous intellectual work, both in how they respond to each other and in how they choose to develop topics that write to their own interests.
3.1 Discussion Design: Sequencing Experimental Interactivity to Support Reflective Practice
As noted above, the discussion is driven by a sequence of assignments directing students to post messages to a series of corresponding boards. Each assignment includes two or more posting prompts, one for an initial post and at least one for replies. Below, I explain four principles for designing and sequencing prompts, each of which I tie to the literature on discussion boards and e-learning. These principles are followed by a list of four genres of postings that accommodate these principles and that are demonstrated in the example implementation that follows.
Prompt Principle 1: Treat each discussion post as a more or less experimental responsive performance. It is important to think of these prompts as eliciting specific types of discursive performances, rather than simply posing questions or requesting information or opinions. One key affordance of online asynchronous platforms is that they make it easy to have students experiment with discursive roles and voices (Oleseva et al., 2016; Spiliotopoulous & Carey, 2005, pp. 96-7; Hendrix, 2006, pp. 72-4). A well-designed online discussion, as Webb Boyd (2008) observes, can even help students adopt voices they may feel less comfortable articulating in face-to-face settings imposing other social pressures (p. 236; cf. Beckett et al., 2010, p. 323). While students will certainly perform familiar, even comfortable, roles, including those that entail expressions of opinion or relaying personal information, the goals of the performative sequencing are to have them experiment with new rhetorical identities, ones particularly relevant to the discourse community to which they are being introduced.
Prompt Principle 2: Vary performance expectations to balance energy, experimentation, and peer-to-peer engagement. The coordination of interaction is crucial for successfully sequencing familiar and novel performances. Gee (2003) explains that inviting learning environments, like some of the most engaging video games, offer multiple forms of readily-rewarded “low-input” interactivity, all while gradually encouraging learners to invest more time and intellectual effort in performing incrementally more sophisticated and unfamiliar tasks, especially by reflectively adapting previous performances to new scenarios (pp. 61-71). An online discussion might, then, begin by asking students to complete a variety of familiar or novel-but-low-input performances at the edge of their “regime of competence” (again from Gee). These performances could then be validated by the instructor in various ways, for instance, with participation points and through brief in-discussion affirmations (see more below). Ideally, though, in the spirit of dialogic discovery, the main sense of reward should come from validation through peer replies, which should not be considered lesser performances than the initial postings. The replies too represent steps toward more sophisticated discursive practices.
Prompt Principle 3: Use directive reply prompts to encourage both improvised and deliberately analytical engagement with peers. Given the substantial role of reply in dialogic discovery, responses to others’ postings might, then, also have more or less direction, given that they too are learned discursive practices. Although impromptu, improvised replies should always be welcome as natural manifestations of social presence, directive reply prompts can ensure students engage with, reflect upon, and reprocess class members’ previous postings in purposeful ways. Directive reply prompts provide students further opportunities to take on an even wider variety of discursive roles, and therefore to exhibit more varied forms of cognitive and social presence. The reply prompts can also direct students towards rhetorical moves that facilitate the recognition of affinities with other students, a key step towards building community (Gee, 2003, pp. 192-3; Gillam & Wooden, 2013, p. 33). Spontaneous interactions based on common interests are indeed fortuitous in writing classes, but we can teach students more deliberate ways of discovering affinities too, including those that reflect academic modes of conversation, as I’ll discuss in my sample implementation in the next section.
Prompt Principle 4: Script prompts for late-stage discussion movements to encourage reflective reprocessing of earlier dialogic exchanges. The overarching aim of such scripting, finally, is to develop students’ critical literacies through reflective participation in dialogue. Although discussion boards are fairly rudimentary social-media technologies, one important affordance of the medium is that it nonetheless records in a remarkably clear manner the dialogic interactions entailed in sophisticated knowledge work (Murphy, 2004). By giving discursive activities “embodiment” online (Gillam & Wooden, 2013, pp. 31-33), the score of the discussion enables reflection on the kinds of rhetorical gestures and topics that do or do not resonate with members of the discourse community. Thus, the persistence of the forums together with the purposeful scripting of particular kinds of performances for experimentation can facilitate the development of students into reflective practitioners (Webb Boyd, 2008, pp. 237-241), an outcome of the discussion that, we hope, transforms student identities through the self-aware and socially conscious acquisition of academic literacies.
3.2 A Repertoire of Posting Prompts for Orchestrated Discussion.
In the next section and in my OLOR piece, I describe an arrangement of orchestrated movements I have used for my first-year writing courses. Although I use phrases like “exploration” and “inquiry” to describe the arrangement, like CoI designs, orchestrated discussions depend more on deliberately varied interaction with other students’ postings than on straight-line cognitive phasing, as explained in the principles above. I draw on four different types of postings within the orchestral metaphor, each eliciting a particular type of dialogic performance. Below, they appear in an order reflecting how they are commonly introduced in a discussion, but, as my example implementation shows, students perform these broad categories of prompts recursively with slight variations to encourage incremental experimentation that enables meaningful reflective practice.
3.3 Instructor Orchestration: Modeling and Reflecting on Performance
The “conductor” position of the orchestrated conversation actually entails multiple roles, each positioning the instructor as mentor in the academic discourse community. Below, I have identified three particularly useful roles for conceptualizing online discussions as orchestrated conversations.
Instructor Role 1: Lead Instrumentalist. While the conventional roles of moderator or even equal participant are open to instructors, in orchestrated discussion, they also model discursive performances, especially rhetorical moves new to students. Modeling has generally been recognized as a way to improve students’ contributions to the dialogue (Warnock, 2009, p.76). Instructor performances can demonstrate expectations of civility, depth, or conventional readability, or they can give students an idea of how to pose dissenting positions in a civil manner (Yagelski, 2000, p. 356). Other kinds of performative postings can also be used, however, as Scott Warnock (2010) has shown in his use of devil’s advocate persona (p. 104). Simply put, when instructors view themselves as performers to imitate or challenge, they make it easier for students to envision themselves taking on particular rhetorical identities relevant to the discourse community.
Instructor Role 2: Reflective Practitioner. But instructors also model behaviors outside the discussion itself, especially by adopting the role of reflective practitioner, which we already noted as a role we also hope students adopt. The instructor can, first of all, help students recognize how they and their peers already (knowingly or unknowingly) exercise and impose a range of discursive conventions based on experiences within both academic and non-academic discourse communities. Gee (2012) observes that a common challenge of teaching a diverse student body to learn conventional, and so socially empowered, forms of literacy is that the teacher potentially devalues students’ home cultures (pp. 179-184). Thus, in agreement with others cited in the introduction, Gee suggests that one responsible approach is to teach students new discourses in a comparative fashion (cf. Delpit, 1998, pp. 216-7), one that allows the conventions and social practices associated with various discourses to be critiqued as they are learned (pp. 170-171). Off-discussion exchanges about the progression of each movement, as or after students experiment with a variety of rhetorical moves, offer opportunities for fruitful comparisons, especially when particular performances are examined alongside those reflecting alternate approaches to treating common topics of interest.
Instructor Role 3: Performance Reviewer. Just as instructors are assigned the responsibility in teaching conventional modes of writing as part of the literacy sponsorship afforded to them by their institutions, so too do those same institutions expect grades and other forms of summative assessment. For better or worse, moreover, students tend to be motivated by the grades for discussion participation (deNoyelles et al., 2014, 156). While simple class participation credit might be offered for student postings, the discussions can serve as low-stakes opportunities to introduce and apply common criteria for evaluating academic discourse, either with grades or written feedback. In fact, given that students will be able to see a range of performances from classmates, the use of grades in this broader dialogic framework can allow the grades themselves to be more clearly part of the ongoing reflective practice, and yet without the high-stakes stress commonly associated with extended compositions or at the end of the term.
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In this section, I explain a framework for designing interaction in asynchronous online discussions by using the metaphor of musical orchestration, an apt figure for conceptualizing the deliberate performative sequencing described above, especially given the interpersonal coordination involved in both conversational performance and musical arrangement. Although the framework accounts for a variety of instructional roles and teacher presence, I subsume them under two broad categories of pedagogical practice: discussion design, or composing the “score,” and real-time orchestration, “conducting” the discussion. My treatment of each category, moreover, takes into account the recognized cautions noted about asynchronous dialogues in the previous section, including the need for clear instructions and recurrent peer-to-peer engagement, while nonetheless attempting to establish a constructive approach to literacy development.
Before proceeding to each category, however, I should explain that, when I refer to “orchestrated discussion,” I am thinking specifically of a coordinated series of posting assignments arranged into multiple interactive “movements,” each asking students to reflect on, respond to, and selectively develop classmates’ previous postings. This approach differs both from stand-alone prompt-response-reply sequences and from forums setup to host extended topic-focused conversations. As demonstrated in my companion OLOR piece and in the detailed walkthrough of an example of orchestrated discussion in the next section, the multiple movements do indeed take place over a series of weeks, like the latter open-forum paradigm. However, each movement also entails varying degrees of performative scripting to ensure students build upon the class’s previous intellectual work, both in how they respond to each other and in how they choose to develop topics that write to their own interests.
3.1 Discussion Design: Sequencing Experimental Interactivity to Support Reflective Practice
As noted above, the discussion is driven by a sequence of assignments directing students to post messages to a series of corresponding boards. Each assignment includes two or more posting prompts, one for an initial post and at least one for replies. Below, I explain four principles for designing and sequencing prompts, each of which I tie to the literature on discussion boards and e-learning. These principles are followed by a list of four genres of postings that accommodate these principles and that are demonstrated in the example implementation that follows.
Prompt Principle 1: Treat each discussion post as a more or less experimental responsive performance. It is important to think of these prompts as eliciting specific types of discursive performances, rather than simply posing questions or requesting information or opinions. One key affordance of online asynchronous platforms is that they make it easy to have students experiment with discursive roles and voices (Oleseva et al., 2016; Spiliotopoulous & Carey, 2005, pp. 96-7; Hendrix, 2006, pp. 72-4). A well-designed online discussion, as Webb Boyd (2008) observes, can even help students adopt voices they may feel less comfortable articulating in face-to-face settings imposing other social pressures (p. 236; cf. Beckett et al., 2010, p. 323). While students will certainly perform familiar, even comfortable, roles, including those that entail expressions of opinion or relaying personal information, the goals of the performative sequencing are to have them experiment with new rhetorical identities, ones particularly relevant to the discourse community to which they are being introduced.
Prompt Principle 2: Vary performance expectations to balance energy, experimentation, and peer-to-peer engagement. The coordination of interaction is crucial for successfully sequencing familiar and novel performances. Gee (2003) explains that inviting learning environments, like some of the most engaging video games, offer multiple forms of readily-rewarded “low-input” interactivity, all while gradually encouraging learners to invest more time and intellectual effort in performing incrementally more sophisticated and unfamiliar tasks, especially by reflectively adapting previous performances to new scenarios (pp. 61-71). An online discussion might, then, begin by asking students to complete a variety of familiar or novel-but-low-input performances at the edge of their “regime of competence” (again from Gee). These performances could then be validated by the instructor in various ways, for instance, with participation points and through brief in-discussion affirmations (see more below). Ideally, though, in the spirit of dialogic discovery, the main sense of reward should come from validation through peer replies, which should not be considered lesser performances than the initial postings. The replies too represent steps toward more sophisticated discursive practices.
Prompt Principle 3: Use directive reply prompts to encourage both improvised and deliberately analytical engagement with peers. Given the substantial role of reply in dialogic discovery, responses to others’ postings might, then, also have more or less direction, given that they too are learned discursive practices. Although impromptu, improvised replies should always be welcome as natural manifestations of social presence, directive reply prompts can ensure students engage with, reflect upon, and reprocess class members’ previous postings in purposeful ways. Directive reply prompts provide students further opportunities to take on an even wider variety of discursive roles, and therefore to exhibit more varied forms of cognitive and social presence. The reply prompts can also direct students towards rhetorical moves that facilitate the recognition of affinities with other students, a key step towards building community (Gee, 2003, pp. 192-3; Gillam & Wooden, 2013, p. 33). Spontaneous interactions based on common interests are indeed fortuitous in writing classes, but we can teach students more deliberate ways of discovering affinities too, including those that reflect academic modes of conversation, as I’ll discuss in my sample implementation in the next section.
Prompt Principle 4: Script prompts for late-stage discussion movements to encourage reflective reprocessing of earlier dialogic exchanges. The overarching aim of such scripting, finally, is to develop students’ critical literacies through reflective participation in dialogue. Although discussion boards are fairly rudimentary social-media technologies, one important affordance of the medium is that it nonetheless records in a remarkably clear manner the dialogic interactions entailed in sophisticated knowledge work (Murphy, 2004). By giving discursive activities “embodiment” online (Gillam & Wooden, 2013, pp. 31-33), the score of the discussion enables reflection on the kinds of rhetorical gestures and topics that do or do not resonate with members of the discourse community. Thus, the persistence of the forums together with the purposeful scripting of particular kinds of performances for experimentation can facilitate the development of students into reflective practitioners (Webb Boyd, 2008, pp. 237-241), an outcome of the discussion that, we hope, transforms student identities through the self-aware and socially conscious acquisition of academic literacies.
3.2 A Repertoire of Posting Prompts for Orchestrated Discussion.
In the next section and in my OLOR piece, I describe an arrangement of orchestrated movements I have used for my first-year writing courses. Although I use phrases like “exploration” and “inquiry” to describe the arrangement, like CoI designs, orchestrated discussions depend more on deliberately varied interaction with other students’ postings than on straight-line cognitive phasing, as explained in the principles above. I draw on four different types of postings within the orchestral metaphor, each eliciting a particular type of dialogic performance. Below, they appear in an order reflecting how they are commonly introduced in a discussion, but, as my example implementation shows, students perform these broad categories of prompts recursively with slight variations to encourage incremental experimentation that enables meaningful reflective practice.
- Instrumental overtures: The prompts for these opening postings call for an initial performance from students, but not simply by way of responding to a simple “icebreaker” prompt. Rather, the prompts ask students to write in a familiar genre (the “instrument”) on a more or less broad theme (i.e., one relevant to the class or unit). Students thereby introduce themselves through their personalized interpretations of genre and theme. At the same time, though, it should be emphasized that these performances also serve as the primary triggers for inquiry into meaningful themes of discussion, that is, themes chosen and developed by the students themselves.
- Counterpoint contributions: In counterpoint postings, students are asked to perform directed interactions with each other’s earlier postings to develop further the themes they find engaging, and to do so by practicing particular discursive gestures. Following upon the “overtures,” counterpoint prompts ask students to take the initial thematic keynotes in new directions. The prompts for these posting assignments can take a variety of forms, but they generally require students to amplify, redirect, or provide contrast to classmates’ earlier treatments of class themes.
- Improvisational interludes: While both the initial and the follow-up posts described above necessitate students’ personalization of directive prompts, there is value in providing space for more open interaction, in particular, by encouraging, even requiring (at least initially) casual replies to classmates. These posts offer students another way to amplify topics they find engaging, thereby to discover and reinforce common affinities with classmates.
- Purposeful recapitulations: In the later movements of the orchestrated conversation, students recapitulate meaningful themes in novel forms, forms reflecting the more sophisticated or novel literacy practices associated with the discourse community.
3.3 Instructor Orchestration: Modeling and Reflecting on Performance
The “conductor” position of the orchestrated conversation actually entails multiple roles, each positioning the instructor as mentor in the academic discourse community. Below, I have identified three particularly useful roles for conceptualizing online discussions as orchestrated conversations.
Instructor Role 1: Lead Instrumentalist. While the conventional roles of moderator or even equal participant are open to instructors, in orchestrated discussion, they also model discursive performances, especially rhetorical moves new to students. Modeling has generally been recognized as a way to improve students’ contributions to the dialogue (Warnock, 2009, p.76). Instructor performances can demonstrate expectations of civility, depth, or conventional readability, or they can give students an idea of how to pose dissenting positions in a civil manner (Yagelski, 2000, p. 356). Other kinds of performative postings can also be used, however, as Scott Warnock (2010) has shown in his use of devil’s advocate persona (p. 104). Simply put, when instructors view themselves as performers to imitate or challenge, they make it easier for students to envision themselves taking on particular rhetorical identities relevant to the discourse community.
Instructor Role 2: Reflective Practitioner. But instructors also model behaviors outside the discussion itself, especially by adopting the role of reflective practitioner, which we already noted as a role we also hope students adopt. The instructor can, first of all, help students recognize how they and their peers already (knowingly or unknowingly) exercise and impose a range of discursive conventions based on experiences within both academic and non-academic discourse communities. Gee (2012) observes that a common challenge of teaching a diverse student body to learn conventional, and so socially empowered, forms of literacy is that the teacher potentially devalues students’ home cultures (pp. 179-184). Thus, in agreement with others cited in the introduction, Gee suggests that one responsible approach is to teach students new discourses in a comparative fashion (cf. Delpit, 1998, pp. 216-7), one that allows the conventions and social practices associated with various discourses to be critiqued as they are learned (pp. 170-171). Off-discussion exchanges about the progression of each movement, as or after students experiment with a variety of rhetorical moves, offer opportunities for fruitful comparisons, especially when particular performances are examined alongside those reflecting alternate approaches to treating common topics of interest.
Instructor Role 3: Performance Reviewer. Just as instructors are assigned the responsibility in teaching conventional modes of writing as part of the literacy sponsorship afforded to them by their institutions, so too do those same institutions expect grades and other forms of summative assessment. For better or worse, moreover, students tend to be motivated by the grades for discussion participation (deNoyelles et al., 2014, 156). While simple class participation credit might be offered for student postings, the discussions can serve as low-stakes opportunities to introduce and apply common criteria for evaluating academic discourse, either with grades or written feedback. In fact, given that students will be able to see a range of performances from classmates, the use of grades in this broader dialogic framework can allow the grades themselves to be more clearly part of the ongoing reflective practice, and yet without the high-stakes stress commonly associated with extended compositions or at the end of the term.
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4. Example Implementation: Conversation Starters
The discussion design explained below has been used in the two entry-level writing classes, one a four-credit first-year composition class on argumentation and another a two-credit bridge class focusing on research writing. The orchestrated discussion complements each course’s formal paper assignments. As we reach the midpoint of the class, the discussion assignments begin to merge with the formal-paper writing process. The focus of the final movement in the orchestrated discussion is the submission of a formal topic proposal for the final paper. The overarching strategy of the discussion design is to transform the class’s initial semi-formal conversation about students’ social, civic, and vocational lives—the broad, inclusive themes driving these first-year writing courses—into an academic conversation on related subjects, ones that students develop by experimenting with various analytical and critical expressions and by interacting with the writing fellow students and published authors.
The accompanying OLOR piece provides a fuller explanation of how the orchestrated discussion is set up within the class, but Figure 1 below shows how the discussion assignments progress through the term. The various movements within the orchestrated conversation, each having a corresponding assignment sheet and discussion board (listed as “forum” below), intertwine as students are directed in the first posting of each new movement to reprocess the dialogue that occurred in the previous movement. My walkthrough of each movement below treats the prompt design and orchestration in more detail.
The discussion design explained below has been used in the two entry-level writing classes, one a four-credit first-year composition class on argumentation and another a two-credit bridge class focusing on research writing. The orchestrated discussion complements each course’s formal paper assignments. As we reach the midpoint of the class, the discussion assignments begin to merge with the formal-paper writing process. The focus of the final movement in the orchestrated discussion is the submission of a formal topic proposal for the final paper. The overarching strategy of the discussion design is to transform the class’s initial semi-formal conversation about students’ social, civic, and vocational lives—the broad, inclusive themes driving these first-year writing courses—into an academic conversation on related subjects, ones that students develop by experimenting with various analytical and critical expressions and by interacting with the writing fellow students and published authors.
The accompanying OLOR piece provides a fuller explanation of how the orchestrated discussion is set up within the class, but Figure 1 below shows how the discussion assignments progress through the term. The various movements within the orchestrated conversation, each having a corresponding assignment sheet and discussion board (listed as “forum” below), intertwine as students are directed in the first posting of each new movement to reprocess the dialogue that occurred in the previous movement. My walkthrough of each movement below treats the prompt design and orchestration in more detail.
Figure 1. Sequence of Assignments for Orchestrated Discussion with Four Movements
4.1 The First Movement: “Conversations Starters” Overture and Interlude
The opening movement is designed to engage students with broad themes of the class, even as students introduce details about themselves in their postings. The themes— civic, social, and vocational life—are common in entry-level textbooks precisely because they provide overarching categories that could include almost any conceivable topic. Like many first-year writing courses, we address these topics in a few brief readings too. However, at this point of the course, I’m most interested in having students produce their own texts on these themes so fellow classmates can begin responding to them. For our “icebreaker” discussion, then, students write about the themes without reference to readings, but rather by composing three generically-delimited paragraphs submitted to three separate discussion board threads.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: On a discussion board titled, “Conversation Starters,” three threads are created with the following titles and prompts:
The opening movement is designed to engage students with broad themes of the class, even as students introduce details about themselves in their postings. The themes— civic, social, and vocational life—are common in entry-level textbooks precisely because they provide overarching categories that could include almost any conceivable topic. Like many first-year writing courses, we address these topics in a few brief readings too. However, at this point of the course, I’m most interested in having students produce their own texts on these themes so fellow classmates can begin responding to them. For our “icebreaker” discussion, then, students write about the themes without reference to readings, but rather by composing three generically-delimited paragraphs submitted to three separate discussion board threads.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: On a discussion board titled, “Conversation Starters,” three threads are created with the following titles and prompts:
Prompts Appearing on Assignment Page and in Thread Openers
“Social Life” Thread: Write a paragraph narrating either a typical or an ideal night out or weekend activity. Try to describe the event with as many concrete details as possible. Who would be there? What would you be doing? What makes the activities enjoyable?
“Work Life” Thread: Write a paragraph-length job description of either your current job (what you really do, not the official description) or your ideal job. Make sure to discuss the types of details you might typically find in a job description, the hours of work, benefits, required skills and experience, and so on.
“Civic Life” Thread: Write a paragraph-length evaluation of some aspect of civic life, for instance, public safety, transportation, parks and recreation, or and so on. Use specific details or personal anecdotes to support your evaluation.
These prompts draw on familiar rhetorical modes—narration, description, and complaint—modes students will have encountered in both basic writing classes and through their experiences with public discourse. Students, therefore, write about what they know best: their own experiences. However, by calling for a particular genre and invoking themes related to students’ multifaceted lives, the instructor can evoke personal writing that nonetheless exhibits generic textual markers exhibiting commonly recognized interpretive cues. These cues become the focal points of the instructor’s subsequent reflective processing within the first week of class (see more below).
On the assignment sheet for the initial postings, students are also asked to reply to at least one posting on each of the threads by the end of the first week. I start with open-ended replies to provide a chance for students to single out postings that speak to their own interests. This step allows students to discover common affinities that can be developed into a recurrent point of class discussion later, should students choose. Older non-traditional students tend to take full advantages of these less formal exchanges as ways to share more fully common life experiences, which includes going back to school.
B) Instructor Leads: I post model messages for each of the threads. These examples provide demonstration of the generic markers we look for in the students’ postings, but they also demonstrate the performance of personally meaningful writing in a pseudo-public academic space. Figure 2 below shows a model I have posted before presented within the context of an actual discussion. For another model, see the corresponding OLOR submission.
On the assignment sheet for the initial postings, students are also asked to reply to at least one posting on each of the threads by the end of the first week. I start with open-ended replies to provide a chance for students to single out postings that speak to their own interests. This step allows students to discover common affinities that can be developed into a recurrent point of class discussion later, should students choose. Older non-traditional students tend to take full advantages of these less formal exchanges as ways to share more fully common life experiences, which includes going back to school.
B) Instructor Leads: I post model messages for each of the threads. These examples provide demonstration of the generic markers we look for in the students’ postings, but they also demonstrate the performance of personally meaningful writing in a pseudo-public academic space. Figure 2 below shows a model I have posted before presented within the context of an actual discussion. For another model, see the corresponding OLOR submission.
Figure 2. Screen Capture of “Conversation Starters” Discussion
Since using models to set benchmarks for length and tone (I tried this step first without models), I’ve seen that students are much more willing to go into greater detail about various aspects of their lives, that is, to treat these postings as ways to express something about themselves. Models thus become a non-directive way for shaping interaction. After all, even the instructor is willing to admit his outdated musical tastes or other personal idiosyncrasies, as inevitably come out in my “social life” posting. What we all find out, especially in a setting with a large number of non-traditional students, is that those things we thought were idiosyncrasies may really be hidden affinities that will serve as a basis for meaningful conversation.
C) Reflective Practice: In the first synchronous class meeting, we discuss the “Conversation Starters” postings. For hybrid classes, this occurs onsite, in a classroom, while for online-only sections, the live session is optional for attendance, but all class members must at least view a recording of the session. Though the discussion varies from class to class, I’ll give an overview of how the discussion takes place in my online-only sections using web-conferencing:
C) Reflective Practice: In the first synchronous class meeting, we discuss the “Conversation Starters” postings. For hybrid classes, this occurs onsite, in a classroom, while for online-only sections, the live session is optional for attendance, but all class members must at least view a recording of the session. Though the discussion varies from class to class, I’ll give an overview of how the discussion takes place in my online-only sections using web-conferencing:
- Using the chat feature of the conferencing tool, I poll students about which posting seemed most challenging to write. It varies from student to student, but they tend to single out the civic-life evaluative writing most often. These observations offer an opportunity to note that such writing may seem difficult because we feel compelled to justify ourselves in ways unnecessary for narration or description. There are many ways to go with this line of questioning though.
- If there are particular postings that receive a relatively large number of replies, I call attention to them and ask the repliers what drew them to their classmate’s particular posting. This provides another way to amplify affinities among students, but also a way to validate participation with more immediately social modes of feedback.
- I call attention to particularly strong performances on each thread by showing how they reflect the cues associated with the genre. I tend to do this especially with the job description paragraph because this genre is so common and full of readily recognizable conventional markers (e.g., “Requires heavy lifting.”). This discussion provides a chance to validate a sensitivity to the textual features of writing and what they mean within specific social contexts, something very easy to do when the strong generic performances happen to be the messages that also garner a large number of replies.
4.2 The Second Movement: “Common Topics” as Thematic Counterpoints
During this phase of the orchestrated conversation, students develop the themes introduced in the first postings in different ways, especially by practicing analytical moves that reflect foundations of academic conversation. The analytical moves described below for the first “Common Topics” posting reflect what one of the textbooks I’ve used refers to as topic “indexing” (Rosen’s Academic Writer’s Handbook, 2012). The follow-up prompt for this movement, by contrast, asks students to identify gaps in our class’s collective treatment of the themes of social, civic, and vocational lives. Together, these two contrapuntal discursive moves amplify or accentuate the conversational keynotes already resonant in our orchestrated conversation by offering parallel and contrastive development, and they do so by asking students to complete readily achievable (i.e., low-input) writing tasks that are nonetheless reflective of sophisticated academic discourse.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: For this stage of the conversation, students take more control of the topics to be treated within the larger themes, especially by amplifying or complementing what classmates have said. Even in a technological sense, they take more control by initiating for themselves the threads on the second movement’s discussion board, rather than working within those I create. To make this transition work well, however, the prompts are more directive. In other words, while students are encouraged to amplify topics that speak to their interests, they are asked to present them in somewhat more structured form, one that ensures they practice the particular discursive moves associated with conveying perspectival awareness—nothing complicated, just acknowledgments of how their classmates’ earlier posts fed into their own post for this stage of the discussion.
As noted above, the first posting focuses on trend analysis, while the second focuses on gap analysis. Here are the core instructions on the assignment sheet directing students to complete the initial and follow-up posts within the second week of class:
During this phase of the orchestrated conversation, students develop the themes introduced in the first postings in different ways, especially by practicing analytical moves that reflect foundations of academic conversation. The analytical moves described below for the first “Common Topics” posting reflect what one of the textbooks I’ve used refers to as topic “indexing” (Rosen’s Academic Writer’s Handbook, 2012). The follow-up prompt for this movement, by contrast, asks students to identify gaps in our class’s collective treatment of the themes of social, civic, and vocational lives. Together, these two contrapuntal discursive moves amplify or accentuate the conversational keynotes already resonant in our orchestrated conversation by offering parallel and contrastive development, and they do so by asking students to complete readily achievable (i.e., low-input) writing tasks that are nonetheless reflective of sophisticated academic discourse.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: For this stage of the conversation, students take more control of the topics to be treated within the larger themes, especially by amplifying or complementing what classmates have said. Even in a technological sense, they take more control by initiating for themselves the threads on the second movement’s discussion board, rather than working within those I create. To make this transition work well, however, the prompts are more directive. In other words, while students are encouraged to amplify topics that speak to their interests, they are asked to present them in somewhat more structured form, one that ensures they practice the particular discursive moves associated with conveying perspectival awareness—nothing complicated, just acknowledgments of how their classmates’ earlier posts fed into their own post for this stage of the discussion.
As noted above, the first posting focuses on trend analysis, while the second focuses on gap analysis. Here are the core instructions on the assignment sheet directing students to complete the initial and follow-up posts within the second week of class:
Guidelines for Initial and Reply Posts (From the “Common Topics” Assignment page)
- First postings on “Common Topics” discussion: Begin by reviewing your classmates’ postings on the “Conversation Starters” forum. Try to identify topics that represent common interests mentioned in classmates’ contributions. For instance, under “Social Life,” multiple postings might mention songs; “music” would then be a key topic. Under “Civic Life,” multiple postings might mention buses; “public transportation” would then be a shared topic. Identify at least two common topics mentioned by two or more classmates. After you have identified two common topics, go to the “Common Topics” discussion forum and create a new thread for each one. In the body of each thread opener, reference your classmates’ postings and explain their interest in the topic alongside your own interests.
- Follow-up postings: Two days after you have made your initial postings, return to the “Common Topics” forum and review the postings. Think of a topic within the class themes that interests you, but that does not seem to be discussed yet. It may be narrower than those posted, or it may be a topic that treats a very different subject than those mentioned so far. Add another new thread posting identifying this topic in the thread title. Explain what interests you about this topic.
For each posting, students are given one additional requirement: Do not repeat a topic already posted by a classmate. This added expectation calls attention to a key social dynamic of both casual and academic conversations, that is, the need to be aware of others’ contributions to an ongoing conversation in order to add something to it. Not a small part of the effectiveness of these prompts is the motivation it provides for students to engage early so other students don’t “use up” the more readily identifiable topics. And yet, I am always impressed by students’ abilities to tease out threads of common interest from classmates’ posts to avoid overlapping with related topics already posted.
B) Instructor Leads: While the prompt above explains fairly clearly what we’re looking for, the instructor can still provide students some reassurances by posting a model to show how simple these basic analytical moves can be. So, I typically demonstrate how to analyze the previous postings and format the posting in the live session preceding the assignment. It is useful also to identify topical connections that students may not recognize on their own, especially to show the range of connections critical readers can make between seemingly loosely connected comments. Figure 3 below shows a model posted within the context of an active forum, where you can see the threads that students started themselves.
B) Instructor Leads: While the prompt above explains fairly clearly what we’re looking for, the instructor can still provide students some reassurances by posting a model to show how simple these basic analytical moves can be. So, I typically demonstrate how to analyze the previous postings and format the posting in the live session preceding the assignment. It is useful also to identify topical connections that students may not recognize on their own, especially to show the range of connections critical readers can make between seemingly loosely connected comments. Figure 3 below shows a model posted within the context of an active forum, where you can see the threads that students started themselves.
Figure 3. Screen Capture of “Common Topics” Discussion
The models for the followup gap-analysis posts provide other opportunities. Being experienced in teaching the course, I know a variety of subjects that both fall under the broad themes of civic, social, and vocational life and work well for research paper topics. These subjects may not have arisen organically within the students’ initial postings, though they probably would have if we were given more time to develop the discussion, so I can actively “fill in the gap” once I see what students have posted, essentially opening up the area for further discussion in later movements, albeit without forcing it.
C) Reflective Practices: In processing the conversation with the class, I call attention to two things: 1) what these postings reveal about our class’s interests and 2) how this exercise reflects the types of analyses they will need to do as they research and read for academic purposes. Regarding the latter, I first call attention to the acts of seeking similarities and identifying gaps as common conversational moves, ways in which anyone can begin to join or further advance an ongoing conversation. On one hand, the recognition of a common point of interest can be the basis upon which further discussion can happen (and it will in the next movement). On the other hand, simply repeating the same points about a previously stated topic does not advance conversation. The conversation can nonetheless be advanced by identifying possible ways to redirect discussion, albeit without totally jumping off topic.
I then make the connection between colloquial conversational moves and similar ones practiced in academic conversation, in particular, the kind of academic conversation associated with critical reading and research. As noted above, the textbook we use for the class highlights the practice of topical “indexing” as a step in the research-paper writing process, as a way to narrow in on the facets of a common theme that participants in ongoing scholarly conversation find of interest, even if they aren’t responding directly to each other. Here, the discussion of academic conversational moves dovetails with our discussion of what the class finds important. Here also, students are encouraged to see the topics raised by themselves and classmates as possible paper topics for later in the term. By the end of this movement, in fact, the class has a discussion board listing dozens of possible topics, each with at least a little explanation of how classmates have already found them valuable for further examination.
D) Performance review: For these postings, I give completion points with special consideration for following the directions regarding no repeats and direct reference to classmates’ postings (which is, of course, intended to anticipate the source-based writing central to the class’s formal papers). These postings aren’t worth a great amount of points, but it is useful to validate students for performing the analytical moves and attributive gestures themselves. In writing courses, these discrete discursive moves are often not provided focused feedback, primarily because the results of such analyses and attributions become integrated directly into a fuller “paper” submission.
C) Reflective Practices: In processing the conversation with the class, I call attention to two things: 1) what these postings reveal about our class’s interests and 2) how this exercise reflects the types of analyses they will need to do as they research and read for academic purposes. Regarding the latter, I first call attention to the acts of seeking similarities and identifying gaps as common conversational moves, ways in which anyone can begin to join or further advance an ongoing conversation. On one hand, the recognition of a common point of interest can be the basis upon which further discussion can happen (and it will in the next movement). On the other hand, simply repeating the same points about a previously stated topic does not advance conversation. The conversation can nonetheless be advanced by identifying possible ways to redirect discussion, albeit without totally jumping off topic.
I then make the connection between colloquial conversational moves and similar ones practiced in academic conversation, in particular, the kind of academic conversation associated with critical reading and research. As noted above, the textbook we use for the class highlights the practice of topical “indexing” as a step in the research-paper writing process, as a way to narrow in on the facets of a common theme that participants in ongoing scholarly conversation find of interest, even if they aren’t responding directly to each other. Here, the discussion of academic conversational moves dovetails with our discussion of what the class finds important. Here also, students are encouraged to see the topics raised by themselves and classmates as possible paper topics for later in the term. By the end of this movement, in fact, the class has a discussion board listing dozens of possible topics, each with at least a little explanation of how classmates have already found them valuable for further examination.
D) Performance review: For these postings, I give completion points with special consideration for following the directions regarding no repeats and direct reference to classmates’ postings (which is, of course, intended to anticipate the source-based writing central to the class’s formal papers). These postings aren’t worth a great amount of points, but it is useful to validate students for performing the analytical moves and attributive gestures themselves. In writing courses, these discrete discursive moves are often not provided focused feedback, primarily because the results of such analyses and attributions become integrated directly into a fuller “paper” submission.
4.3 The Third Movement: “Exploratory Research” as Academic Counterpoint
In presenting the third movement of the discussion, I emphasize that our class’s dialogue about the themes of social, civic, and vocational lives will now bring other voices into the conversation. At this stage, students locate outside sources treating topics identified in the “Common Topics” forum and write annotated bibliographic entries for them. These entries are then posted to the third movement’s discussion board, which is titled simply, “Exploratory Research.” This phase of the orchestrated discussion reflects both the qualities of a counterpoint movement, one developing previously introduced themes, and a limited form of purposeful recapitulation.
Note that, in the past, I have had students post the annotated references directly to the Common Topics threads to reinforce the expansion of the ongoing conversation to include other voices, but that proved too cluttered. To make the exploratory research easier to evaluate and use (by students developing papers), I created a separate discussion for which the students first post a “statement of interest” about a particular topic, as explained below. The outcome of this logistical adjustment contributed substantially to the reflective practice students ended up performing at this stage of discussion.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: The assignment sheet and prompts ask students to review the “Common Topics” discussion for subjects they would like to research in anticipation of choosing a paper topic. They then post a “Statement of interest” to the “Exploratory Research” forum, identifying a topic they will explore, justifying their interest, and asking some basic research questions.
In presenting the third movement of the discussion, I emphasize that our class’s dialogue about the themes of social, civic, and vocational lives will now bring other voices into the conversation. At this stage, students locate outside sources treating topics identified in the “Common Topics” forum and write annotated bibliographic entries for them. These entries are then posted to the third movement’s discussion board, which is titled simply, “Exploratory Research.” This phase of the orchestrated discussion reflects both the qualities of a counterpoint movement, one developing previously introduced themes, and a limited form of purposeful recapitulation.
Note that, in the past, I have had students post the annotated references directly to the Common Topics threads to reinforce the expansion of the ongoing conversation to include other voices, but that proved too cluttered. To make the exploratory research easier to evaluate and use (by students developing papers), I created a separate discussion for which the students first post a “statement of interest” about a particular topic, as explained below. The outcome of this logistical adjustment contributed substantially to the reflective practice students ended up performing at this stage of discussion.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: The assignment sheet and prompts ask students to review the “Common Topics” discussion for subjects they would like to research in anticipation of choosing a paper topic. They then post a “Statement of interest” to the “Exploratory Research” forum, identifying a topic they will explore, justifying their interest, and asking some basic research questions.
Guidelines for “Statement of Interest” (from first “Exploratory Research” assignment)
Write a three-paragraph “Statement of Interest” identifying a topic you would like to explore further and perhaps write about for your final paper.
Post your statement as a new thread on the “Exploratory Research” discussion forum.
- In the first paragraph, explain your personal interest in the subject. What experience do you have with the topic? What emotions does it invoke? (See 1b in Rosen.)
- In the second paragraph, discuss the class’s treatment of the topic (or related topics) in the earlier “Conversation Starters” and “Common Topics” postings. What attracts members to the topic? What details related to the topic are discussed? Which ones seem missing? If the topic doesn’t appear at all, suggest why class members may not have mentioned the topic and explain how knowing more about the topic might benefit them.
- In the third paragraph, identify three or four groups of people who show interest in the topic, or who you think should have an interest. Be sure to identify both local groups, such as communities, clubs, businesses, or neighborhood organizations, and also groups residing outside your local community, such as special-interest organizations, communities on social sites, or websites dedicated to the topic. Explain each groups’ existing relationship to the topic or, if they don’t have one, why you think they should know more about the topic.
Students are then asked to reply to the “Statement of Interest” postings with annotated references (i.e., annotated bibliographic entries—at an APA institution) for relevant sources. Here is an example of such a reply prompt on the “Exploratory Research” assignment sheet:
Guidelines for Annotated References (from “Exploratory Research” assignment)
Locate three current-events sources in our library’s periodical databases: one from a newspaper, one from a popular magazine, and one from a special-interest or trade magazine. Read the articles and write annotated reference listings for each, posting them to the Exploratory Research discussion forum as responses to either your own “Statement of Interest” or that of a classmate.
During this movement, then, multiple short reply prompts have students post annotated-references for different types of sources (e.g., current events sources, scholarly articles., organizational website, etc.), activities performed following recorded or synchronous (and recorded) lessons on how to locate and cite these same types of sources. The directions for how to frame the annotations also develop as the class goes over research summaries and critique writing. I typically require only a summary paragraph for the first annotated reference postings, and then I ask them to add a paragraph exhibiting a critical perspective, either evaluating the source’s credibility or explaining its relevance to the student’s particular interests.
Significantly, students are allowed to reply to other students’ Statements of Interest. This option provides another opportunity for affinity recognition, but one that now reflects well more traditional affinity recognition within academic discourse communities. After all, the students are effectively building a shared annotated bibliography that can used as a foundation for each of the students to contribute their own voices to an even larger conversation—by way of a formal academic paper.
B) Instructor Leads: For this movement, I simply post an annotated reference in the form required—in other words, typical modeling for a traditional academic genre. Given that the themes tend to lead to many of the same common topics of exploration from term to term, I have a few annotated references that I have created for previous sessions. Even so, I routinely demonstrate through a live session or video recording the whole process of finding the sources, drafting the annotated reference, and posting it within a single synchronous lesson.
C) Reflective Practice: There are a variety of surface-level and deeper topics to discuss here. Much of the discussion will depend upon the specificity of direction in the prompts explaining the expectations, but here are some common points of discussion I raise as we go through the series of postings:
D) Performance review: This assignment provides a low-stakes opportunity to give students focused evaluative feedback on the surface-level elements of academic writing (e.g., citation format) that, on one hand, we don’t want to overemphasize in the larger process of developing a well-rounded, thoughtful paper, but that, on the other hand, we know are commonly recognized markers of quality in academic writing. At the same time, however, even a quick evaluation of the substance of the annotations provides an opportunity to give feedback about the more challenging skills of dialoguing with sources, including making understandable recapitulations of sources’ key points and tying sources’ observations to the writer’s own points of interest. These are the types of observations that will provide the foundation for writing a fuller paper.
To address each of these registers of writing (surface features and concepts), as well as to address the challenge of locating particular kinds of sources, I typically spend as much time on evaluating these postings as I would a traditional annotated bibliography. I also use a three-part rubric, allocating a few points each for a) locating the right kinds of sources, b) writing meaningful summaries (and critiques for later postings), and c) providing proper citation, grammar, and mechanics. Within our LMS’s online gradebook (where I also post the participation assessments noted above), I apply the rubric to each student’s entire collection of annotated bibliographic postings, effectively treating them as if they were a conventional annotated bibliography assignment—something that is easy to do if the discussion board has a feature allowing filtering of posts according to contributor.
Significantly, students are allowed to reply to other students’ Statements of Interest. This option provides another opportunity for affinity recognition, but one that now reflects well more traditional affinity recognition within academic discourse communities. After all, the students are effectively building a shared annotated bibliography that can used as a foundation for each of the students to contribute their own voices to an even larger conversation—by way of a formal academic paper.
B) Instructor Leads: For this movement, I simply post an annotated reference in the form required—in other words, typical modeling for a traditional academic genre. Given that the themes tend to lead to many of the same common topics of exploration from term to term, I have a few annotated references that I have created for previous sessions. Even so, I routinely demonstrate through a live session or video recording the whole process of finding the sources, drafting the annotated reference, and posting it within a single synchronous lesson.
C) Reflective Practice: There are a variety of surface-level and deeper topics to discuss here. Much of the discussion will depend upon the specificity of direction in the prompts explaining the expectations, but here are some common points of discussion I raise as we go through the series of postings:
- We discuss common mistakes or points of confusion in reference-list citation, treating them as a work in progress for the entire class, emphasizing the fact that even highly formalized discursive practices may simply reflect the conventions of idiosyncratic discourse communities—these may not be worth memorizing, but we should know how to look them up.
- We discuss difficulties in locating particular kinds of sources when researching particular topics. After seeing what students post, it is fairly easy to do a formative assessment and address any significant omissions or misdirection.
- I point out strengths in the writing of summary and critique paragraphs. These comments are especially useful to post directly to the forum itself, since then the validation appears in a class space where all can see. The more this is done early in the discussion, the more the results of later postings reflect the real-time guidance.
- We discuss what to do when there appears to be a gap in sources on the topic of interest—this should be an opportunity, not a problem.
D) Performance review: This assignment provides a low-stakes opportunity to give students focused evaluative feedback on the surface-level elements of academic writing (e.g., citation format) that, on one hand, we don’t want to overemphasize in the larger process of developing a well-rounded, thoughtful paper, but that, on the other hand, we know are commonly recognized markers of quality in academic writing. At the same time, however, even a quick evaluation of the substance of the annotations provides an opportunity to give feedback about the more challenging skills of dialoguing with sources, including making understandable recapitulations of sources’ key points and tying sources’ observations to the writer’s own points of interest. These are the types of observations that will provide the foundation for writing a fuller paper.
To address each of these registers of writing (surface features and concepts), as well as to address the challenge of locating particular kinds of sources, I typically spend as much time on evaluating these postings as I would a traditional annotated bibliography. I also use a three-part rubric, allocating a few points each for a) locating the right kinds of sources, b) writing meaningful summaries (and critiques for later postings), and c) providing proper citation, grammar, and mechanics. Within our LMS’s online gradebook (where I also post the participation assessments noted above), I apply the rubric to each student’s entire collection of annotated bibliographic postings, effectively treating them as if they were a conventional annotated bibliography assignment—something that is easy to do if the discussion board has a feature allowing filtering of posts according to contributor.
4.4 The Fourth Movement: Formal Topic Proposals as Academic Recapitulation
Having explored the class themes through a variety of discursive exchanges and having also connected students’ interests in those themes to a larger public conversation (i.e., through exploratory research), the ongoing orchestrated discussion finally directs students to examine their interests in a traditional academic form. The two classes I described above treat different types of writing, but each requires students to develop their research into a formal paper. One class ends with a proposal argument addressing specific civic, social, or vocational issues, while the other class ends with an explanatory research paper on a topic falling under one of those broad themes. However, there is a final phase of the orchestrated conversation that more immediately represents the transformation of our initial topics of discussion into academic conversation. In both classes, students cap the weeks-long asynchronous conversation by posting their formal topic proposals for their final research papers.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: Given that this posting reflects a genre commonly assigned in most early writing classes, especially classes with research paper assignments, I won’t need to provide too many implementation details. Moreover, the two classes ask for topic proposals in different formats, holding in common, mainly, that the topic be justified and connected to both the forgoing class discussions and to exploratory research. Here is an example of one class’s prompt:
Having explored the class themes through a variety of discursive exchanges and having also connected students’ interests in those themes to a larger public conversation (i.e., through exploratory research), the ongoing orchestrated discussion finally directs students to examine their interests in a traditional academic form. The two classes I described above treat different types of writing, but each requires students to develop their research into a formal paper. One class ends with a proposal argument addressing specific civic, social, or vocational issues, while the other class ends with an explanatory research paper on a topic falling under one of those broad themes. However, there is a final phase of the orchestrated conversation that more immediately represents the transformation of our initial topics of discussion into academic conversation. In both classes, students cap the weeks-long asynchronous conversation by posting their formal topic proposals for their final research papers.
A) Prompt Design and Coordination: Given that this posting reflects a genre commonly assigned in most early writing classes, especially classes with research paper assignments, I won’t need to provide too many implementation details. Moreover, the two classes ask for topic proposals in different formats, holding in common, mainly, that the topic be justified and connected to both the forgoing class discussions and to exploratory research. Here is an example of one class’s prompt:
Prompt for a Topic Proposal Posting Appearing on Assignment Page
Write a four-part topic proposal for your final explanatory research paper and post it to the “Topic Proposals” discussion forum as a new thread. To avoid deductions in points, your posting should include all of the following parts: a) Topic justification; b) Key research questions; c) Working thesis and outline; d) References list. Post your topic proposal as a new thread opener on the “Topic Proposal” discussion forum.
On the full assignment page, I provide other guidelines as well, explaining specific expectations for each of the elements listed above. While covering those expectations, I also talk about the social function of a topic proposal in a collaborative research environment, including those representing civic or work environments. Finally, I also contrast this more formal treatment of writing topics with our earlier paragraphs for the “Conversation Starter” posts, emphasizing differences in reception, not in importance.
I have assigned a variety of reply prompts for the topic proposals, but I typically ask students to take on a more or less evaluative role. Students might be asked to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the topic as presented in the topic proposal, stating where they think the challenges might be for successfully completing the paper. Alternatively, for proposal arguments especially, I have asked students to take on the role of reader highly invested in the topic, but taking the opposing side, stating their counter-arguments so that the writer can address them even in the early drafts of the paper.
For these replies, I change the reply dynamics somewhat to reinforce the transition to academic conversation, wherein constructive feedback is obligatory, even for writing that treats topics not immediately speaking to the respondent’s own personal interests. On one hand, we hope the earlier movements of the orchestrated conversation have helped students choose interesting topics based on their recurrent mention in the ongoing discussion. On the other hand, academic dialogue works well when people having differing perspectives and interests provide feedback to each other. To make the latter more likely to happen, students are asked to respond to the two topic proposals posted immediately before their own on the forum, rather than to pick the postings to which they will reply.
B) Instructor Leads: As with the annotated references, I post a model I have prepared earlier, a practice that needs no further discussion. However, the instructor can also take the lead as respondent. In fact, this is the only movement in the entire orchestrated discussion wherein I make sure to respond directly on the discussion board to every student. For these replies, I focus on elements of the topic proposal that the student might address in order to develop a stronger paper, using a tone that approaches the topic proposal as a work in progress and as an overture for input, rather than as a short version of the final paper. If other students have posted by the time I respond, I try to bring their observations into my response. If other students haven’t yet posted, I welcome input and suggest perspectives that might be useful to consider—classmates often follow up by filling in the gap. Overall, I present this step as a collaborative part of the paper development process wherein we as a class are seeking collectively to ensure that each member’s proposal receives the “go ahead” signal, which is an achievement I acknowledge in clear terms once I’m comfortable with the student’s stated topic and approach. Tweaks to the topic proposal are thus expected on the forum as well.
This practice of open feedback represents yet another piece of the transition to academic (and professional) discourse, which often entails direct presentation and consideration of doubts, questions, and contrary positions for the purposes of constructive intellectual engagement. Although by this time in the class, students will have done peer reviews on other papers and or participated in synchronous sessions, it is still worthwhile reviewing the role of and techniques for critical, constructive feedback within academic discourse communities, given the pseudo-public and persistent nature of the remarks.
C) Reflective Practice: Although I often identify some general trends in the topic proposals, either for the purposes of validating particular points of practice or to redirect the class if it has generally gone in the wrong direction, most of the reflective work comes in the response postings discussed above. However, in introducing this posting assignment, I encourage students to review earlier postings in the earlier movements, especially to identify what classmates may have found interesting about the subject. This way, I emphasize the rhetorical obligations of justifying a topic while also encouraging students to see their peers’ comments as useful resources for helping them conceptualize their own papers.
D) Performance review: The topic proposals, like the annotated references, are generally graded with a rubric allocating points to each part of the topic proposal, as outlined above. The response postings, however, are typically evaluated as part of the class participation for the week, in a manner similar to that suggested for the first movement above.
I have assigned a variety of reply prompts for the topic proposals, but I typically ask students to take on a more or less evaluative role. Students might be asked to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the topic as presented in the topic proposal, stating where they think the challenges might be for successfully completing the paper. Alternatively, for proposal arguments especially, I have asked students to take on the role of reader highly invested in the topic, but taking the opposing side, stating their counter-arguments so that the writer can address them even in the early drafts of the paper.
For these replies, I change the reply dynamics somewhat to reinforce the transition to academic conversation, wherein constructive feedback is obligatory, even for writing that treats topics not immediately speaking to the respondent’s own personal interests. On one hand, we hope the earlier movements of the orchestrated conversation have helped students choose interesting topics based on their recurrent mention in the ongoing discussion. On the other hand, academic dialogue works well when people having differing perspectives and interests provide feedback to each other. To make the latter more likely to happen, students are asked to respond to the two topic proposals posted immediately before their own on the forum, rather than to pick the postings to which they will reply.
B) Instructor Leads: As with the annotated references, I post a model I have prepared earlier, a practice that needs no further discussion. However, the instructor can also take the lead as respondent. In fact, this is the only movement in the entire orchestrated discussion wherein I make sure to respond directly on the discussion board to every student. For these replies, I focus on elements of the topic proposal that the student might address in order to develop a stronger paper, using a tone that approaches the topic proposal as a work in progress and as an overture for input, rather than as a short version of the final paper. If other students have posted by the time I respond, I try to bring their observations into my response. If other students haven’t yet posted, I welcome input and suggest perspectives that might be useful to consider—classmates often follow up by filling in the gap. Overall, I present this step as a collaborative part of the paper development process wherein we as a class are seeking collectively to ensure that each member’s proposal receives the “go ahead” signal, which is an achievement I acknowledge in clear terms once I’m comfortable with the student’s stated topic and approach. Tweaks to the topic proposal are thus expected on the forum as well.
This practice of open feedback represents yet another piece of the transition to academic (and professional) discourse, which often entails direct presentation and consideration of doubts, questions, and contrary positions for the purposes of constructive intellectual engagement. Although by this time in the class, students will have done peer reviews on other papers and or participated in synchronous sessions, it is still worthwhile reviewing the role of and techniques for critical, constructive feedback within academic discourse communities, given the pseudo-public and persistent nature of the remarks.
C) Reflective Practice: Although I often identify some general trends in the topic proposals, either for the purposes of validating particular points of practice or to redirect the class if it has generally gone in the wrong direction, most of the reflective work comes in the response postings discussed above. However, in introducing this posting assignment, I encourage students to review earlier postings in the earlier movements, especially to identify what classmates may have found interesting about the subject. This way, I emphasize the rhetorical obligations of justifying a topic while also encouraging students to see their peers’ comments as useful resources for helping them conceptualize their own papers.
D) Performance review: The topic proposals, like the annotated references, are generally graded with a rubric allocating points to each part of the topic proposal, as outlined above. The response postings, however, are typically evaluated as part of the class participation for the week, in a manner similar to that suggested for the first movement above.
5. Conclusion: Discussion Design, Topics of Inquiry, and Access to College Education
The orchestrated discussion described above is, I would guess, quite different from the digital dialogue envisioned by Ong and Lanham. It certainly lacks the casual conversational feel of the humanist dialogues they praised (though, as Thomas Sloane, 1996, has emphasized humanist dialogues too progressed by way of more or less clearly articulated “protocols” for engagement). The directed discussions above may also be quite different than other visions of Freirean pedagogies online (e.g., Antonette, 2006, pp. 139-44; Sands, 2006, pp. 206-7; Yagelski, 2000), which often attend more to the instructor's managing of improvised student engagement. Yet, it’s important to recognize that the requisite experimentation with discrete discursive moves entailed in orchestrated discussion is offset by students’ freedom and encouragement to pursue themes of discussion relevant to their own lives, as well as by the critical reflective processing that happens with each movement in the orchestrated conversation.
One assumption of the Freirean approach, at least when applied to college-level writing, is that truly broad access to university education requires a framework for first-year writing that encourages students of all backgrounds to explore topics they find relevant to their lives visions of community. Indeed, one modern critique of the those celebrated humanist dialogues is that they represent generally inaccessible discourse communities, not just in their leisurely pacing and antiquated phrasing, but also in their exclusionary choice of themes, which reflected the concerns of the privileged (Grafton & Jardine, 1986). But more immediately relevant and on the other extreme, online discussions in classes at many non-traditional institutions sometimes race towards purely instrumental topics. As Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Ellenmarie Cronin Wahlrab observe in their contribution to What is “College-Level” Writing? (2006), students at non-traditional campuses are sometimes pushed more towards workplace (or career or “study skills”) topics than other students (p. 167), a tendency that often makes it easier to reduce the aims of first-year writing to conventional conformity (pp. 173-4), aside from preventing an examination of social or civic life. Highly standardized versions of such coursework can easily make first-year writing appear narrowly pre-professional, like technical training, inhibiting students from advancing critical self-awareness, social consciousness, and intellectual curiosity.
While there are many ways to approach such topics critically (and I hope I do so in my business and professional writing classes), a common course design for “basic skills” classes at business and tech schools is to prescribe standardized topics as “cases,” under the presumption that students’ acquisition of those basic skills will be more successful by not having to spend cognitive resources on choosing topics or if they see the immediate relevance to a specific job task. Sometimes, indeed, this approach is structured as a community of inquiry. But when first-year students are assigned a research paper asking them, for instance, to propose which European country might be best to host a new factory, they miss an opportunity to develop the rhetorical moves involved in presenting topics relevant to other aspects of their lives and negotiating their meaning and value in broader contexts. Put another way, the socially-situated inventive processes of dialogic inquiry are obviated when the focal point of inquiry is too narrowly predetermined.
In those cases, we may well question whether the intellectual outcomes of first-year writing were truly achieved, regardless of how well the final papers exhibit conventional surface features of academic writing and argumentative moves about a prescribed topic. As other contributions to What is “College-Level” Writing? suggest, an overly standardized approach to discursive conventions and course content can lead to “good enough” writing, but it doesn’t tend to produce “good” writing (a consideration of Bloom, 2006), that is, writing that reflects range and variability in expression and earnest engagement with the perspectives of others about topics students really care about (c.f., ; Lunsford, 2006; McCormick, 2006). The generative thematics of orchestrated discussion serve to open up inquiry even in the standardized settings of industrial-model online university, especially so non-traditional students, who have a wealth of experience to share with each other, can access the rewards of higher education that go beyond mere training for employment.
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The orchestrated discussion described above is, I would guess, quite different from the digital dialogue envisioned by Ong and Lanham. It certainly lacks the casual conversational feel of the humanist dialogues they praised (though, as Thomas Sloane, 1996, has emphasized humanist dialogues too progressed by way of more or less clearly articulated “protocols” for engagement). The directed discussions above may also be quite different than other visions of Freirean pedagogies online (e.g., Antonette, 2006, pp. 139-44; Sands, 2006, pp. 206-7; Yagelski, 2000), which often attend more to the instructor's managing of improvised student engagement. Yet, it’s important to recognize that the requisite experimentation with discrete discursive moves entailed in orchestrated discussion is offset by students’ freedom and encouragement to pursue themes of discussion relevant to their own lives, as well as by the critical reflective processing that happens with each movement in the orchestrated conversation.
One assumption of the Freirean approach, at least when applied to college-level writing, is that truly broad access to university education requires a framework for first-year writing that encourages students of all backgrounds to explore topics they find relevant to their lives visions of community. Indeed, one modern critique of the those celebrated humanist dialogues is that they represent generally inaccessible discourse communities, not just in their leisurely pacing and antiquated phrasing, but also in their exclusionary choice of themes, which reflected the concerns of the privileged (Grafton & Jardine, 1986). But more immediately relevant and on the other extreme, online discussions in classes at many non-traditional institutions sometimes race towards purely instrumental topics. As Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Ellenmarie Cronin Wahlrab observe in their contribution to What is “College-Level” Writing? (2006), students at non-traditional campuses are sometimes pushed more towards workplace (or career or “study skills”) topics than other students (p. 167), a tendency that often makes it easier to reduce the aims of first-year writing to conventional conformity (pp. 173-4), aside from preventing an examination of social or civic life. Highly standardized versions of such coursework can easily make first-year writing appear narrowly pre-professional, like technical training, inhibiting students from advancing critical self-awareness, social consciousness, and intellectual curiosity.
While there are many ways to approach such topics critically (and I hope I do so in my business and professional writing classes), a common course design for “basic skills” classes at business and tech schools is to prescribe standardized topics as “cases,” under the presumption that students’ acquisition of those basic skills will be more successful by not having to spend cognitive resources on choosing topics or if they see the immediate relevance to a specific job task. Sometimes, indeed, this approach is structured as a community of inquiry. But when first-year students are assigned a research paper asking them, for instance, to propose which European country might be best to host a new factory, they miss an opportunity to develop the rhetorical moves involved in presenting topics relevant to other aspects of their lives and negotiating their meaning and value in broader contexts. Put another way, the socially-situated inventive processes of dialogic inquiry are obviated when the focal point of inquiry is too narrowly predetermined.
In those cases, we may well question whether the intellectual outcomes of first-year writing were truly achieved, regardless of how well the final papers exhibit conventional surface features of academic writing and argumentative moves about a prescribed topic. As other contributions to What is “College-Level” Writing? suggest, an overly standardized approach to discursive conventions and course content can lead to “good enough” writing, but it doesn’t tend to produce “good” writing (a consideration of Bloom, 2006), that is, writing that reflects range and variability in expression and earnest engagement with the perspectives of others about topics students really care about (c.f., ; Lunsford, 2006; McCormick, 2006). The generative thematics of orchestrated discussion serve to open up inquiry even in the standardized settings of industrial-model online university, especially so non-traditional students, who have a wealth of experience to share with each other, can access the rewards of higher education that go beyond mere training for employment.
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