Use the Learning Management System (LMS) to extend opportunities for self-assessment and feedback.
Webbed learning environments
Student writing takes places in and out of the classroom; the fact is the majority of our students write every day on their social media accounts -- webbed spaces outside of (and sometimes while “off task” during) our composition classes. Our communities (schools, workplaces, social groups) are now connected with lots of opportunity for communication through these webbed technologies.
These are resources grounded in “ecocomposition” theory – the study of how language and environment shape one another – and they point us toward webbed environments that provide both writing teachers and writing students collaborative opportunities. Why not use the webbed environments we already have to extend opportunities for self-assessment and feedback?
Using the LMS (and other technologies) to extend SA and the feedback loop
The fact is self-assessment and reflection takes time. But it doesn't have to happen in the classroom. We can use the Learning Management System -- in my case, Canvas -- as a natural extension of the classroom, which helps with this time constraint. I often post the daily reflection exercise on Canvas so that students have more time to respond after class. Additionally, this provides a space for me to respond to my students' reflections, asking questions and probing further reflection, whether the assignment is graded, or not. I also sometimes create a discussion thread, so that students can view one another's reflections and respond. It keeps the conversation going, and it doesn't require carrying a stack of papers around!
Other practical resources can help writing teachers engage students to connect them to writing in the world outside of the classroom. Some teachers use Twitter, Remind101, and other social media accounts to connect students to writing topics while outside of the classroom.
While you're at it, reflect on digital literacy
“Ecocomposition, like Freire, asks students to write in their environments, to be critical of those environments, and to consider what effect their own writing and literacies have on that very environment” (Dobrin and Weisser, 2002, p. 582).
And finally, if we're using these technologies to teach, we should also be engaging in reflective discourse about these webbed environments, and their opportunities and limitations. In "Breaking Ground in Ecocomposition: Exploring Relationships between Discourse and Environment," (2002) Sidney Dobrin and Christian Weisser see discourse and the environment as co-creators. They borrow from ecology to suggest that writers must first make sense of the “organic” and “inorganic” world around them before responding by shaping that environment through rhetorical description. Dobrin and Weisser offer the opportunities afforded via digital media as writing which “allows for associations, connections, and junctures among words, ideas, texts, and authors” (p. 585). Students can connect with audiences and at the same time learn about the social nature of discourse and knowledge.
As we ask students to write in webbed environments, and reflect on how writing works in that environment, we will have many opportunities for reflection activities about how modality shapes genre, leading back to key topics of genre analysis and the need for our students to develop an "adaptive composition theory". The National Association for Media Literacy Education provides a guide for developing media literacy with students in a technology driven context. NAMLE is a response to the world of rapidly changing media as well as acknowledgment that the priority of critical thinking remains constant. It is truly a guide for composition educators as it provides the rhetorical principles and resources to support its “implications for practice”.
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