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 Student weblogging
for fluency, skills, and integration
The following was written in preparation for TESOL 2007 in
Seattle: Student weblogging for fluency, skills, and integration.
Demonstration, Writing IS, CC 3B, Sat. Mar. 24, 10:30-11:15. It follows
my comments only roughly. -Thomas Leverett, CESL, Southern Illinois
Univ., Carbondale IL USA 62901-4518.
This presentation:
[ Weblogs for fluency
(home) ][ Ways to use
weblogs ][ Kinds of
fluency ][ Skills ][ Integration ][
New blogger,
old mac ][ Portfolios ][ Resources ][ Weblogs in
esl/bibliography ]
Weblogs happen: stuff happens on weblogs
A brief tour of CESL weblogs will show that I don't always practice what
I preach, nor do I successfully teach other teachers to practice what I
preach. I do the best I can; I visualize goals, and I try to reach
them. I consider all weblogs works in progress, including this
document; although, chances are, I will leave it virtually untouched,
after the TESOL presentation, I will also, if I spot a problem with it
later, either fix or delete the problem. The changeable, temporal nature
of weblogs is what gives them a large advantage over the print media,
and what makes some get better over time, while others sink into the
archives of history. And in fact, a shrewd observer will notice that in
the weblog community, a post that is a big hit will be linked to a lot,
and this will cause the author to be more hesitant about changing
or fixing it, since he/she is conscious of the fact that it is being
referenced and linked to. For our program and our students, there are
several unspoken but still well-known maxims. One is that, though
students are expected to learn basic formatting conventions, often they
don't, and work that they put on class weblogs may be formatted later.
It may also be edited or changed slightly, without affecting the
meaning; this may be considered unethical by some, but has never to my
knowledge been objected to by a student (see skill through
correction, #2); lately we've become less self-conscious about
blatant ungrammaticality on class weblogs, and have let these things
slip. It is, after all, a picture of a class's work, and it is a
picture in time, an incomplete picture, a picture in which the teacher's
red ink pen is missing. Over time, this becomes data to the acquisition
researcher, but only if it is clear that no correction is made; in the
same way, it is an embarrassment to both the student and the teacher, to
the student because it is blatantly imperfect, and published forever; to
the teacher, because it represents work not finished, not completed, yet
published anyway.
A harder question is how to deal with profanity, inappropriate content,
plagiarism, or image trafficking on the class weblogs. Here again,
you'll see that our weblogs are works in progress. We can and do delete
comments and work that is offensive, inappropriate, or plagiarized. But
we don't catch it all right away; sometimes it remains indefinitely as a
student's experiment, conscious or unconscious, with crossing the line
of appropriacy and seeing how long it takes before someone notices.
There are a number of good stories to be told to illuminate this point,
but these are best left off of this permanent document. It is best put
this way: True freedom of speech is a precious thing, and is frequently
a shock to the person who is experiencing it for the first time; it's
powerful, and one may not know immediately how to handle it. The
price of freedom is eternal vigilance (I have lost the reference to
this quote, but the author is carved into Mt. Rushmore, I
believe).
How do I plagiarize thee? Let me count the ways
A far more serious problem is plagiarism, since at this low level they
have very little confidence in their own ability to make sentences that
make sense (a well-justified self-doubt, in some cases), but are quite
able and willing to copy and paste parts of what they've read, and in
fact come from cultures and communities where this is quite common
(Leverett 2006d). It is at this level that I can most eagerly and
forcefully stamp out plagiarism, for it is generally easily
recognizable, and the informal nature of the assignment does not change
our general cultural taboo against copying, or the consequences, further
up in the academic food-chain, of ignoring them. At the higher levels
one can announce to the class that plagiarism will not be tolerated, and
they'll understand it pretty quickly, but the lower level classes have a
much harder time understanding it, and have to receive a few zeroes on
their assignments sometimes, before it truly sinks in.
I have come to believe that the greatest sources of this common form of
plagiarism are the following. First, they lack confidence (above);
their estimation of the difficulty of the assignment exceeds their
estimation of their own ability to produce what is expected to get a
good grade on their own, and they believe that someone else has said it
better than they possibly could. Second, learning at a low level
involves a lot of copying, in general; they are in the habit; they have
been taught to cooperate and collaborate (Wagstaff 2007). When they
look at a limited piece of English text, it does not occur to them that
the same information could appear in a different form, could be reported
in their own words, without copying; they just feel that it's important,
and that, in talking about the subject, they must convey that
information somehow. So, they copy and paste it!
Other factors include the fact that other cultures view copying
differently than we do, and, students tend to put off assignments until
the last possible moment. These reasons are common to all esl/efl
writing assignments (see Internet
Plagiarism). There is nothing particular about this assignment that
attracts it, except that the student must be at the computer while
completing it. The student is generally familiar with copy/paste as a
way of constructing some assignments. And, the student has little
concept of how seriously it is taken, or of how easily it is spotted by
the veteran teacher.
One factor on my side is simply the fact that the assignment asks them
to tell about the site itself, rather than the content; that is,
whatever they have said about the topic (which they can get from various
sources), if they have said nothing about the site itself,
they've said nothing. Or at least, they haven't completed the
assignment successfully.
Swiper no swiping: Image trafficking
Lately I've had a number of these low-level students produce pictures on
our class weblogs, on their assignments, much as the cat might bring in
a mouse from outside, and produce it on the living room floor, a gift
for the family. I use this analogy because, as host of the class
weblog, it is a gift that makes me uncomfortable, but it is meant in
only the best intentions by the givers, who, painfully aware of their
own linguistic weakness, are still eager to show that they're not bad at
using Google images and the
copy/paste skills mentioned above. What to do? They do spice up the
weblog, make it more interesting, complement the writing, and in general
add positively to the feel of the weblog. On the negative side, this
kind of activity is definitely stealing, unintentional or not, and is
likely to be seen as such by the artist/photographer, if they should
find out.
I mention this for several reasons. First, their ability and
willingness to do this is often an indication that in general their
technological fluency surpasses their English fluency; the former may in
fact be being used to compensate for the latter. Second, the teacher
must have an active pre-planned strategy for dealing with this; looking
back on my term, I can clearly say that this problem snuck up on me, as
I didn't have such a strategy, and a critical mass of students had the
skills to doctor up the weblog very quickly. The hard part of the
situation is that the pictures they choose (often gotten innocently from
Google image search, which does
state that the pictures may be protected, but does not actively prevent
anyone from using them) are often well-chosen, visually appealing, and
attractive to their classmates when they go into the weblog to read each
other's work. Thus, it is often difficult for the teacher, or
responsible party, to take them down.*
Nevertheless, I can say this: there are free pictures out there;
students can be pointed to them and invited to use them. Also, they can
be taught to ask permission and give credit. And finally, we as a class
are not exploiting the pictures, are not making money from the use of
them; therefore, the price of letting it go, as a teacher, should be
seen more in terms of teaching them poor internet habits, than as
leaving the class and school as liable for being sued by irate artists
and their agents.
Vacuous opinions
One cannot blame the student for having virtually nothing to say; for
being like a deer in headlights, when faced with the task of giving a
clear opinion in a new language. It is a daunting task for all of us,
even in our native language. I like to give the option of being neutral
in an argument, pointing out that something is "interesting," or just
saying (when faced with a huge issue of the day, such as gay marriage)
that it sure is different from what happens in my country. Students are
not required to have a strong, forceful or polarized opinion.
It is disappointing, however, and also somewhat common, to have students
say basically nothing, repeatedly, for as long as they can get away with
it. I detested the length requirement (5-7 sentences), but found that,
if I did not charge points for not doing the entire assignment, I would
be faced with 1-2 sentences, not once, but repeatedly, and worse, they
often said nothing beyond that it was interesting. I did not really
want to grade "interesting;" I was hoping for fluency; I was getting a
reverse process, turtles going back into their shells.
The length requirement solved the problem to some degree. It is much
harder to say nothing and back it up than to just find
something you have an opinion on, and many of my students are now
choosing the latter, though they remain fairly conservative and
cautious. I cannot blame them for this; I know that many people
actually read what they write!
*In our case, the class page is like a
wiki; everyone has the password, and for us to remove the pictures after
they've been uploaded is probably far more difficult it would be if we
had simply put adequate controls on the posting in the first place. We
don't suffer from much conscious abuse of the class pages by our own
students, but the image problem is vexing, if only because students
generally don't understand what is happening or why we would want to
remove them, after the fact.
bibliography
Leverett, T. (2006a, Aug.). This is your class
on weblogs. Teaching English with Technology 6, 3. IATEFL
Poland Computer SIG Publication.
http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_tech25.htm#cla
Leverett, T. (2006b, Aug.). Three ways to
integrate weblogging into your writing classes. Teaching English
with Technology 6, 3. IATEFL Poland Computer SIG Publication.
http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_tech25.htm#way.
Leverett, T. (2006c). Daring to enter
the blogosphere. Prog. Admin. IS, Paper, TESOL Convention, Tampa,
FL, Mar.
Leverett, T. (2006d). Internet
plagiarism, CALL-IS discussion, TESOL 2006, Tampa FL.
http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/ip.html. Accessed 3-07.
Leverett, T. and Montgomerie, J. (2005). Teaching teachers to
use weblogs, Internet Fair, CALL-IS, TESOL 2005, San Antonio,
March.
Wagstaff, J. (2007, Mar. 8).
Plagiarising students, or wiki-style collaboration? Loosewire
blog.
http://www.loosewireblog.com/2007/03/plagiarising_st.html.
Accessed 3-07.
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Thomas
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Photo above (Leap of Faith) by Kurt Larsen.
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