Writing Bursts

How does one keep a class of 300 students actively involved and participating?

This was the question I faced last term, teaching a large-size first-year English Writing Requirement course for the first time. I had taught large classes before, but since coming to Dalhousie ten years ago my largest had been about 90 students. I could lecture at them for an hour, I guessed, but I am more comfortable with a discussion style of pedagogy. I firmly believe that a good teacher can get the same number of students participating in a class discussion, if not the same percentage, whatever the size of the class; but how, then, does one ensure the ones not participating vocally are still engaged and active?

I tried Top Hat, the campus’s student response system (i.e., clickers), but I found it more useful for quick quizzes than for getting discussion started; indeed, it ended up disrupting the flow of the class more often than not, as students fumbled for their phones and as I paused for them to answer. I then remembered a method my undergraduate mentor at Wilfrid Laurier, Jim Weldon, had used to some success. At the end of every class, he would have the students write for one minute summarizing the main points of the class.

I received an Academic Innovation Grant in 2018 from the AVPA’s office to scale these “writing bursts” for a large class. Writing bursts were helpful pedagogically on a number of levels. First of all, they gave me a good sense of what the class took from a given lecture; I could correct widespread misunderstandings the following class, or email individual students with fuller explanations. Second, I gained a better appreciation for which parts of the lecture the students found most interesting and memorable.

The writing bursts also encouraged students to engage actively with class material, enabling students to participate who were too intimidated to talk out loud in such a large class. The process also develops an important skill: distilling a large (hour-long) body of information into a short summary or thesis (minute-long).

Students were expected to write regularly, and some of them noted that their writing skills improved as the term went on. Pedagogically, summarizing and writing down information cements it in one’s brain, and makes studying before an exam much easier.

The writing bursts had other, unforeseen, advantages. The TA could easily tell if a student had zoned out halfway through a lecture [by reading the writing bursts], and only give half-marks for participation. If a TA or I suspected plagiarism on an essay, we could compare the student’s writing level on the essay with the level of the writing bursts. We had to take into consideration the fact that essays can be edited, of course; however, in some cases the gap in ability was large enough to raise concerns.

Students also recognized advantages to writing bursts. They often asked questions on the bursts, about parts of the lecture they had not understood or about upcoming texts. I would either answer those questions at the beginning of the next class, if I thought other people might have had the same questions, or in a personal email to that student, if the question was more individual. Some students commented by the end of term that it would be more effective if I gave a specific question each time, rather than just “summarize the main points of the class,” because they noticed some students didn’t take the time at the end of class to write the burst but had it written already by the end; however, I felt for the most part that writing the burst earlier did not necessarily detract from the benefits of the exercise. (Still, if I use this practice again, I may use different questions in response to this student suggestion.)

Our Writing Requirement courses are a paradox: ideally writing would happen in small classes with lots of one-on-one instruction. But the nature of our institution means we teach them in huge classes with battalions of TAs to run tutorials. Often that means a disconnect between the lectures and the tutorials.

Writing bursts are one way of getting students actually writing in lecture, without sacrificing lecture content. The fact that they have other pedagogical value—feedback for the professor, study and note-taking skills for the students, and evidence for the integrity officer—is a bonus.