Writing Machines is the course website for English 170L at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
A late realization
Submitted by Oz on 14 December 2006 - 1:37pm.
I just had a huge “duh†moment about this blog.
Has it felt really strange to anyone else to come this far in the semester without receiving any grades or, other than on the progress updates of our final projects, major professorial feedback? I know it’s felt weird to me; I’m accustomed to classes that operate on the midterm/final structure, with a few mini-grades in between, where by the end of the semester you’re more or less clear on your standing grade-wise. That got me thinking about the feedback we have gotten in this class -- there's been a ton, and it’s all come in the form of our own comments on one another’s blog posts.
So really there’s been extensive updating and feedback over the course of the semester, but I hadn’t thought about it as such because it wasn’t coming from the traditional, i.e. the professorial, source. Maybe other people have long since caught on to this? I don’t know, but I’ve found reading and responding to all your posts, and the comments on mine, to be really valuable, and I think I really like and appreciate the overall idea behind this sort of class structure. That is, it’s a pretty huge indicator of our professor’s respect for her students that she’d trust us to self-monitor in this way.
How do the rest of you feel about the blog-commenting-as-substitute-for-professor-feedback structure? Has it worked for you? Do you feel like you’ve gotten as much from it as you would have from say, the types of comments you’d normally get from professors at the end of papers or reading responses?
yes and no
I do see what you mean about the feedback we have been receiving. It has certainly been interesting and helpful to have feedback throughout the semester in terms of our ongoing dialogue on the blog. On the other hand, it's certainly a very different kind of feedback. I like it when people comment on my blog and I like to read and comment on other blogs but I don't feel that this gives me a sense of my standing gradewise.
At any rate, I have appreciated the blog as a source of feedback on the different thoughts I and others have had throughout the course.
Yeah, I realized earlier
Yeah, I realized earlier this semester that this wasn't going to be a traditional English class, so I accepted that the contents/structure of the class would be different too.
It hasn't been too weird for me, actually. I've enjoyed this process more than the process of other classes. It feels more democratic to me, and I actually wish more of my classes the last three years could've been more democratic like this. Whenever I write a paper for another class, I often think it's silly that I'm spending SO much time on the paper and there's only going to be ONE person reading it. I'm glad that with this class, we're writing with the class being our audience rather than just one teacher.
So, in conclusion, yay for democratic processes! Yay for democratic blogs!
I'm just glad that there's
I'm just glad that there's more than one person reading my hypertext. I worked way too hard on it for it to be only read by one professor.
I agree with tophat, this
I agree with tophat, this structure doesn't really substitute for professor feedback (though I think that's fine). Plus for the people who occasionally post really strong blog entries that demonstrate they know what's going on in class or write good comments, aren't their grades even more uncertain with this set-up? It seems that most people are pretty good with the material, but not everyone has chosen to fulfill the blog or wiki requirements. And of course, none of us are actually grading each other. So I don't think of it so much as a substitute but something else entirely. But I am a big fan of this student feedback...