7 things students expect from an online writing skills course

Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by Jeffrey Doonan, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

A new online semester started two weeks ago. This is the sixth time around that I’m running my compulsory writing skills course for (predominantly) communication sciences majors in Moodle. I have my assistant mods helping me out again, for which I’m truly grateful, and this time we have seven exchange students out of a total of 22, so even people with dismal math skills such as my own can immediately see that a third of the group aren’t Croatian. This is pretty unusual (for those teaching in Croatia) and quite exciting (for me).

One of the first things I get each new group to do as soon as we start online is set up their e-portfolio page in Mahara. A brief digression – you can read more about what we do in the couple of F2F sessions before we move online here. Mahara is not the most intuitive of environments, but it’s the e-portfolio of choice for the University of Zagreb Computing Center. We primarily use it to share learning journals, which works reasonably well once everyone has figured out how to share their page with the group, made sure their journal is showing up on the page and comments are enabled – experience has shown managing all three steps without instructor intervention can be tricky, even with detailed instructions. Did I say Mahara is not the most intuitive of environments? Oh well.

Anyway, before we start on the course proper, I ask the students to write an entry on their expectations from the course. These are inevitably tinged with the experience of the F2F sessions, so there’s a fair amount of reference to the content I said we’d be covering; still, it helps me get a better picture of what the group as a whole expects to happen over the course of the semester. I always share my own expectations entry as well; apart from believing it’s only fair, this post is meant to help break the ice and to demonstrate roughly the length and tone I expect of student posts.

I try to respond to these first posts myself, although the assistant mods have been a great help here too. When I go through the posts I watch out for any expectations unlikely to be met, as those are probably best addressed straight away. I confess that I sometimes wish they were a little more creative exciting; for instance, that someone would say, “I would like to be able to write for the New York Times someday, and hope that this course will help me get there”, but that does not appear to figure on their list of priorities.

I thought I would go through the expectations from this semester, similar to those from previous years, in the hope of categorizing them in some way. I don’t expect anything revolutionary to happen as I do this, but it might give me a different slant on what the students consider important (or think the instructor wants to hear – there’s always that).

1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most students say they expect to improve their writing skills. See, that’s what I mean when I say I wish they were a tad more exciting – is this merely playing it safe or is imagination completely absent here? Or am I underestimating the lack of confidence in their writing skills?

What I say in response – Normally nothing, partly because the statement is vague enough to depend on a whole range of factors: level of English, level of writing as a productive language skill, effort each student will put in, etc. Of course, the advantage of this vague phrasing (for the instructor) is that no one can complain they didn’t get what they thought they would; in four months it’s quite likely there will be some improvement somewhere, even if simply by chance.

To be fair, there are some who narrow their goals down a little; for example, they want to be able to structure a piece of writing or produce a formal piece of writing. You could argue these are still pretty vague, but I try to acknowledge them as specific and usually include a comment about how the more specific goals are, the more likely it is they’ll be met (and the student will be able to tell if they’ve been met).

2. The second most oft-repeated target is vocabulary expansion, usually without regard to any particular area. This could be at least partly due to one of the introductory activities I ask them to do.

What I say in response – This is another vague target likely to be met to some degree just by going through any L2 course content. We do, however, have three vocabulary-based units, built around general topics but with a focus on the vocab that might be used to report on these in the media, so I sometimes mention these. These units include links to a number of articles and videos (authentic materials), which I now realize I almost never mention (perhaps assuming students will take it for granted something like that will be part of the course?) and I probably should.

3. Some say they expect their grammar to get better.

What I say in response – Here I usually try to stress that if that does happen, it won’t be because it’s part of the course syllabus. It is assumed that the students are B2 and any explicit grammar instruction is limited to the passive voice (function, not form) and a brief mention of relative clauses. I keep an eye out for recurring mistakes, especially those that tend to cause Croatian speakers trouble – present perfect vs past simple, for instance – and will point this out if there seems to be consistent confusion, but apart from that, grammar is not on the menu.

4. Quite a few say they expect the instructor to correct (all) their mistakes.

What I say in response – I try to nip that one in the bud. However, as for Croatian learners the idea of the all-knowing, red-pen-wielding instructor is quite common, I try to strike a balance. There are a couple of pieces of writing where I’ll go all out and do what they expect me to do (for which I use Kaizena, which I cannot recommend highly enough), but I stress that the idea is to get them to become aware of what to look out for in their writing, catching errors on their own. I should probably note here that when I started teaching I was an ardent believer in jumping on a mistake the moment I spotted one, whereas by now I’ve mellowed considerably.

5. Some expect to improve their digital skills. This is often accompanied by a comment on their lack of experience with online learning, and some even profess to being anxious about how they’ll cope.

What I say in response – The majority won’t have taken a semester-long course almost entirely online before, and finding their way around, particularly around Mahara, can seem intimidating. I explain that digital skills are transferable to outside our LMS (so applicable outside the course), and try to alleviate any anxiety by stressing that the environment will become more familiar as they progress through the course.

6. There are some who focus on the learning environment and its attendant benefits. These include not having to go to campus, learning what it’s like to work from home, possibly even help with organizational skills (in the sense that there are deadlines, but between these the course is self-paced, so discipline will be required).

What I say in response – Not much, normally; sometimes I sympathize with having to go to campus because it _is_ quite remote, and this can be hard on those from out of town. I usually suggest that those who wonder if their (absence of) organizational skills might affect successful course completion schedule their time as if the course were actually held in the classroom, and log on twice a week at a fixed time. It isn’t ideal as you obviously would like as much engagement as possible, but beats logging on half an hour before the deadline each week.

7. A smattering say they expect the work to be fun, not difficult, and that they look forward to the course.

What I say in response – Well, that sounds good, doesn’t it? Yes, except for the ‘not difficult’ part – obviously I don’t want students spending hours logged on, but ‘fun’ and ‘not difficult’ are usually not the first words that spring to mind when you describe your university courses. Or are they? It’s not that I think a course should be ‘not fun’ (yawn-inducing? scary?) or difficult to be a proper course, but… I think, actually, I’m concerned they might not see it as one of the ‘real’ courses. By this I don’t mean offline, but – it’s just English, you know? Not something I’ll need in real life when I look for a real job. But I don’t normally say anything about this at the beginning, because a) I might be reading too much into it, and b) it seems like it could be a little off-putting at the beginning. Anything approaching enthusiasm should not be discouraged.

Reading back over the list, I realize it’s been helpful putting it together. I wasn’t aware that I generally respond in more detail to expectations that probably won’t be met (fully). On the other hand, I seem to subconsciously file those that are likely to be met (to some degree) as uncontroversial, and don’t see a need to comment on them as much, which is a pity because the students who voiced those expectations can’t know what I’m thinking. Moreover, it now appears obvious that students who think in terms of vague goals might eventually formulate more concrete ones if I responded with specific questions. There are two students who haven’t shared their expectations posts yet, which means I’ll probably have a chance to try this out before next semester.