More Saturday Reading

This week, I'm reading writing by my students. It's cutting into my time to do anything else though I have been able to finish Part 1 of DQ and I've just read the dedication to Part 2. I feel good that I'm inching forward. I want to think more about my reading the book within the book which is so inherent to the structure of DQ. I guess I've already talked about reading D&G this week. It was hard for me to forego reading it this morning but I am behind in my grading and my reading of student work so...

My students are writing reflective self-assessments in response to our class but also in response to an article by Edmund Hansen called "Creating Teachable Moments and Making Them Last". (I think this is the title but I don't have the article right here so I'm not sure). It's actually a great article that mostly focuses on students' lack of motivation throughout university. Hansen recommends "cognitive dissonance" as a way of stimulating and motivating students to help them achieve worthwhile learning outcomes. He also advocates for reflective writing as a way of enabling students to process the "unsettling" feelings that cognitive dissonance generates. As our course is both structurally unsettling and presents content that is often surprising to students, I use self-assessment and peer assessment through journal writing in small on-line groups as a way for them to explore their learning throughout the course.

What they write is interesting because it's often a revelation to them even as they are writing. This is partly because of the medium and because of how busy they are with other assignments and exams. It's a real-time, writing to the moment kind of experience for some of them and this is what I like to read the most -- the between-the-lines sense of discovery. Sometimes the writing becomes hyper or even garbled but the feeling is very powerful. The poorer ones tend to be written to a formula or a "try to please the teacher" template. If only they realized that what pleases me is their own honesty, excitement and even inability to fully in the moment comprehend what has happened to them over the last 3-4 months...Now that's exciting reading...