Shifting to a Digital, In-Progress Presentation and Unexpected Effects

Lauren Garskie

This activity and the accompanying statement share the shift from an in-person, final project presentation to a digital, in-progress presentation. This shift was motivated by the desire to provide context for peers reviewing working drafts of the projects as well as to prompt reflection on part of the writer.

This past spring, I taught the second of a two semester first-year writing course focused on argument and research writing. Throughout the semester, students maintain one topic, which begins with a proposal followed by an annotated bibliography and a research paper. The final project of the course is then a digital remix. This project alters the original print-based research paper to a new, digital genre by adding, removing, and overall changing the form the content is taking. Based on their rhetorical situation, students choose the digital genre that best fits their audience. This project culminates in a presentation.

Sequence of Work Pre-Remote Instruction

With a focus on process, students bring a working draft of their project to class and the class conducts a studio review. I often book a larger, flexible space that allows for plenty of room to both set up devices to display the projects (while providing often necessary outlets) and allows the class to move about with ease. During this class period, students and myself move throughout the room discussing the different projects and providing feedback. Approximately a week later, students submit their final draft of the project and the class spends a week presenting their work.

This schedule for the project worked well enough when the class was meeting face-to-face. As the project takes place at the end of the semester, there is more workshop time. The class is consistently discussing ideas for individual projects, and students have become familiar with their peers’ topics and the new genres.

Shift to Remote Instruction

However, when my university switched to remote learning, classes were first canceled for a week to allow instructors time to prepare for remote delivery. As students were in the midst of their research paper, this affected the timeline for both that project as well as the digital remix. It not only affected the timeline, but the digital remix would be completed entirely remotely. There would be no sharing of space and workshopping projects together. I became concerned about the effect this would have on the studio review. Students would be at many different stages of developing their drafts. I was worried that during studio review students would not know what they were looking at and this would affect their ability to provide feedback. I chose to move the presentation and have it be submitted with the working draft. My hope was that doing so would provide not only necessary context for peers but would allow the writers a moment of reflection on their developing project. They would be required to pause and explain what they had been doing and why with their project. This “reflective assessment” asks the student to distance themselves, allowing the student to critique their work, “both as a way of improving it and as a way of explaining its rhetorical effectiveness to others” (Lauer 173). I was also motivated by the new setting of our course. The Rationale for OWI Principle 3 explains that the online writing instruction setting is “an environment that is by nature text-centric and reading-heavy and that requires intensive written communication.” By maintaining the oral and possibly visual aspect of the presentation, I was hoping not to add additional reading for both the peers providing feedback and for myself.

Unexpected Effects

The presentations were previously a celebration of the work students had completed, but they were also a final assessment. Moving the presentation to earlier shifted the focus from being about assessing the completed work to assessing work that was still in progress. Lauer, following the recommendations of Hilgers, Hussey, and Stitt-Bergh, discusses implementing assessment at critical moments in the design process, “when the student would be well positioned to make important revisions to improve the overall quality of the design” (177). Shifting the presentation to while the work was in progress was such a moment. While I was concerned about the technical aspect of students recording these presentations (Would they be able to find a means to create such a recording?), I found myself not focusing on the quality of the presentation once they were submitted. With in-person presentations, I find students to be understandably nervous, which affects the overall presentation style. With students pre-recording (and possibly then rerecording) their presentations, I found myself giving very little focus to their presentation style. Most students met the required length, answered the provided prompts, and there were no technical issues in playing their presentations. Instead, I found joy in hearing, and in some cases seeing, my students. In fact, the first presentation I listened to the student had recorded both their screen and their voice/body and it prompted such an emotional response that I had to pause and collect myself before continuing on. My course was asynchronous, but I did not expect to have quite the emotional response to once again hearing and seeing my students. I had a mix of students who only recorded their voice, those who recorded their screen where they talked over and about the project as it was displayed, and those who recorded themselves and their screen simultaneously. I listened and paused and listened and paused as I engaged and responded to their projects.

Did this improve the feedback students received from their peers? I cannot answer that question conclusively. However, it certainly helped me as I provided feedback. As I will be teaching the course again in the fall, I am working on how to incorporate the activity once again with the working draft, but with what is now planned to be a face-to-face semester. It also has me interested in responding to working drafts in a manner similar to their presentations, recording my screen, voice, and body.

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Works Cited

The Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction. “Rationale for OWI Principle 3.”  A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI), 2013. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/owiprinciples/principle3rationale

Lauer, Claire. “Examining the Effect of Reflective Assessment on the Quality of Visual Design Assignments in the Technical Writing Classroom.” Technical Communication Quarterly, vol. 22, 2013, pp. 172-190.