Real Work

or How Students and I Learned to Like Composition

 

Introduction
 

Imagine being told that you have a new responsibility.  You will attend regular meetings, perform research, and spend weeks producing a report that will go into a file cabinet for safe keeping.  In return, you will receive “credit.”  You don’t have to imagine this scenario, of course.  You have served on a university committee.  Did the knowledge that you “learned something” from the process console you?
 
As much as teachers resent having to produce work that no one will ever use, we ask our composition students to do such work every semester.  Is it any wonder that many of these students--and a few of their teachers--think composition courses are a waste of time?  In fact, composition, in addition to being a crucial learning experience, can be one of the most satisfying courses students take in college.  The secret is turning composition assignments into “real work”--that is, work that goes somewhere and means something, work with a real audience who reads it for a real reason.

The best experiences I have had teaching composition have come since I began asking students to do real work.  In my literature courses, I already had been having students create World Wide Web pages on American writers.  I then edited the clearest, most substantive pages and published them on All American: Literature, History, and Culture, a Web site I manage and maintain on the University of North Carolina at Pembroke server.  In summer 1999, I brought this idea to one of my courses in argumentative writing.  I stopped asking--or forcing--students to write papers and instead began helping them to construct Web pages on historical topics that interested them-- minstrel shows, for example, and sports in antebellum America.  Again, I edited worthy pages and published them on All American.

The difference between my previous composition courses and this one was dramatic.  The students were actively engaged in their research and produced some of the best student writing I had seen since I began teaching.  One student--who had failed my course in the spring--was even inspired to ask insightful questions about professional scholarship and credibility.  The benefits of real work were clear.  When students know they are producing something useful, that a real audience is reading this material, and that their names will appear in bylines accompanying the material, they put more into a class and, I suspect, get more out of it.  At the same time, I have a greater investment in their success.  While I always enjoy seeing students succeed, I now have the extra incentive of making my own Web site better by adding good material to it.

In this demonstration, I will describe the details of my Web page assignments and the class activities leading up to them, share student comments on these assignments, and use a computer and a projector to show examples of student work.  First, however, I should describe the publication in which the students' work appears.  All American, as I explain on the site itself, is "an Internet clearinghouse for information about American literature, history, and culture."  I like to think of it as an electronic subject encylopedia, where Internet users can find detailed information without wading through the mass of irrelevant, disorganized, and suspect material they are liable to encounter if they run a search on the World Wide Web.  The site features the following components:

My students produce virtually all of this material by conducting research, writing and editing essays, and designing Web pages.  I review their submissions, decide which ones are worthy of publication, and--with the help of some advanced students--edit the materials before posting them on the Web.
 

Assignments
 
Instead of writing traditional papers, the students in my composition and other courses create Web pages.  They still must conduct research, write, and edit, but they do all of these things with a real purpose and a real audience in mind because they submit their products for possible publication on All American.  In our class meetings, we sometimes discuss writing for this audience.  For example, we might talk about how much this audience already knows and how much we must explain.

Since integrating electronic publications into my composition courses, I have used two themes:

Portrait of a Period

Most semesters, I design my composition courses around a period in American history: the colonial era, the antebellum and Civil War period, the postbellum period, or the modern era.  Students then create Web pages that illuminate various aspects of this period, first collaborating on group projects about general subjects ("Higher Education") and eventually creating independent articles on very specific topics ("Community Colleges: Failing to Prepare").

Election 2000

This fall I designed my composition courses around the presidential election.  One of the first assignments required the students to write a glossary entry for a political term ("Delegate").  Later, each wrote an issue analysis ("Agricultural Wastes Cause Water Pollution") and a candidate endorsement ("Vote Al Gore for President!").  Their final assignment is to write an election analysis.
 

Benefits
 

I believe that giving students real work to do in a composition course benefits them--and me--in a number of ways.
 

Hands-on Learning

For starters, real work naturally involves doing something.  Instead of having abstract knowledge to absorb or a skill to master, students have a task to complete.  Learning is just something that comes with the job.  One of my students summed of the experiential nature of my composition course in this way:
 
"I really liked the way the class was run.  I learned quite a bit [about] the internet and how to post a web site.  I enjoyed this class far more than any other class I have taken to this point because you made it enjoyable.  You didn't bore us with constant lectures on stuff that didn't pertain to our subject.  You said what you wanted and showed us the most efficient way to accomplish it and let us get to work.  . . . I believe that you are a very good [professor] and made a usually boring class very interesting for me.  If I can find a way to take your class again, I will because I enjoyed myself immensely."

At least two students appreciated the opportunity to use her nonverbal communication skills in preparing their Web sites.  One wrote:
 

"Being able to create our own webpages in ENG 106 made the class quite enjoyable because I not only got to demonstrate my writing ablities, but also use my imagination and creativity to design an attractive setting for my writings. Colors and graphics may seem to have little importance when it comes to writing a research paper or essay, but I believe incorporating those types of items in a written work increase students' writing efforts. Students seem to be more interested in working hard on enhancing their assignments with different graphics and styles, which will then lead to more efforts when writing the actual paper. So requiring our composition assignments to be in a world wide webpage format aroused my interest in the class and made learning very enjoyable. I felt that I gained a great deal of knowledge about writing in my ENG106 class and could see the improvements I made in my writing over the semester. And I must say that I was very proud to be able to see my assignments on the world wide web and be able to show them to my family and friends." (Jessica Guy, student in ENG 106: Composition 2, University of North Carolina at Pembroke)

A second student expressed a similar opinion:
 

"In addition, I personally thought the project was much more fun than writing a regular research paper.  On the webpage, I could put up statistics and pictures to accompany my argument making the topic visually intertesting.  I could set links on my page so that the reader can easily access the source.  And because the project was more appealing to me than regular papers, I was able to put more effort into my writing.  I believe my online research project is one of my best works so far." (Koji Sado, student in ENG 106: Composition 2, University of North Carolina at Pembroke)

For these students--and, I suspect, others--real work called for thinking outside the box.  Instead of merely determining what the professor wanted and providing it, they looked for ways to engage their audience with graphic elements, as well as words.
 

Purpose

By its very nature, real work also has a purpose.  One student put it this way:
 
"I enjoyed your class very much. I extremely liked the fact that our works were put on the web. It gives the assignments a purpose.  I always liked computers, and having your class in the computer lab makes it a lot more enjoyable."
As they will do when they leave the university, students create products and services that other people can use.  And people do use All American.  Our counter has recorded nearly 4,000 hits, and several users have e-mailed us with compliments and questions.  In the past few months, I learned that All American has been named one of the top sites on American literature and that a Web site called HomeworkSpot.com features a link to our site.  Of course, I waste no opportunity to share this news with my students, reminding them of the purpose and audience for their work.

Thus, although real work is no easier than traditional papers they have written, it has meaning.  It also has a byline.  Students leave the course with not only new knowledge and skills that they still may not fully appreciate, but also publications that they can show off to parents and friends--perhaps even list on resumes.
 

Confidence

Real work can build confidence in a way that traditional assignments cannot.  College students are adults, and I think many of them appreciate being entrusted to do adult work--in this case, to produce scholarship for a real audience, to earn a byline, and to contribute to a project that a professor values.  One of my best students seized this opportunity.  This is what she had to say later:
 
 
"From the first day I started ENG106 class, I knew that I would like it. On the syllabus you mentioned that we would be using a web page format when we wrote our papers. When I learned that some of our work might appear on the World Wide Web, I was excited.  From then on, I actually looked forward to going to class. I was not that familiar with the Internet, but that class helped me discover a lot more.  I learned a tremendous amount of information that I can now use for the rest of my life. Since technology has pretty much demanded college students to use the Internet, it is good to know that I can now use it as a tool in and out of class. After taking your class, I have the knowledge and understanding to utilize the credible sites that are on the World Wide Web.  By the end of this class, I felt more confident about the way I wrote. Knowing that I was competent enough to post something on the World Wide Web helped me to be more familiar with the Internet and gain the confidence to know that I can now create my own web page. Thank you for teaching me information that I will be able to use now and in many years to come." (Linda Stefko, student in ENG 106: Composition 2, University of North Carolina at Pembroke)
 
 

Contact

Finally, real work helps students make contact with the world outside college.  Thanks to the extraordinary connections that the Internet has forged, students can become participants in intelligent, meaningful discussions with people they may have never thought they would meet.  Some time after one of my literature courses ended, I received this note from a student:
 
"I just wanted to let you know that my research poet, Gary Snyder just e-mailed me and asked if I'd send him a copy of my explication. I am so excited!"
Other students have conducted their research by writing directly to experts and requesting their help on projects.  Thus, students who conduct real work may begin to realize that writing is not a one-way street, but a form of exchange.
 
 
 Updated November 6, 2000 | University of North Carolina at Pembroke
© Mark Canada, 2000 | mark.canada@uncp.edu