Since I am steadily making progress on my ARG with 1001 students in mind, I wanted to find other ways to incorporate digital interactive experiences into the composition classroom, especially those which would help students to visualize the writing process and feel more engaged with their work. For the assessed assignment in 1001, students are asked to analyze an issue and its various subtopics and stakeholders. We do our best to prepare students for such a large undertaking, but many of my students at the end of the semester still struggle with organization and determining how much summary and/or background information is relevant to their argument. For this reason, the Issue Analysis first drafts often read more like a history report on an issue than a mature analysis. Last semester, my technique for solving these issues included having my class create a reverse outline of their drafts (a technique I’m sure many of you are familiar with). This strategy was successful enough, but I wondered if there was a way to engage the students with the creation of an outline through digital tools, perhaps creating a visual map of their essay so that they could see their own writing through new eyes.
After conducting Google searches on “digital humanities and composition outlines”, I found this lesson plan from the University of Texas at Austin’s Digital Writing & Research Lab called “Using Prezi for Outlining Papers”: http://lessonplans.dwrl.utexas.edu/content/using-prezi-outlining-papers
In this lesson, students break down their writing notes into categories and sub-categories, and then create a visual map/draft of their essay through the presentation website Prezi. (If you aren’t familiar with Prezi, here is an example presentation.)
When students finish, they end up with wide mind-map. Ask them to spend some time resizing. Which categories are most important? Which seem to be floating out there with only one note or so? This is a way for them to visualize the strongest points of their argument, to cut pieces that might seem interesting but aren’t pulling their weight, or to recognize where further research could be done at home.
The lesson is, at its roots, a digitized version of a bubble/thinking map, a technique that many of our students will have experienced in grade school. Thus, the task runs the risk of inciting resentment in students, who might feel these techniques are below them. However, because this lesson includes a digital interface (and an extremely elegant one, at that) I believe students will be more likely to positively respond to and appreciate mapping their ideas, perhaps without realizing that they are employing familiar techniques.
This example lesson plan is based on an assignment in which students construct a rhetorical analysis of a controversial topic, making it very easily adaptable to any of the UWP’s recommended assignments in 1001. In my own adaptation of this activity, I would prefer to have the student’s create a mind-map of an early draft, ideally before their first peer-review session.
I highly recommend checking out the DWRL’s other shared lesson plans. The DWRL Lesson Plan website and Blogging Pedagogy site is now retired. However, the department has started publishing lesson plans and other content on their current website, which can be accessed here.
The particular assignment and the lesson-plan site seem very useful. The lesson emphasizes Prezi not in some technodeterminist way, or as an end unto itself, but instead that using enables students to author a digital outline that is easy to manipulate, update, re-form. I wonder what it would be like to use the open-ness of Prezis to embrace what Davidson & Goldberg call networked learning — for example, other students could update/resize/re-visualize an outline.