Flash Presentation: Using Screen Capture Software to Communicate Ideas in the Drafting Process11/25/2020
By Shakil Rabbi This semester I have used an assignment in my first-year composition (FYC) classes that asks undergraduate students to digitally record a brief presentation of their essay outlines. I call this assignment a “Flash Presentation.” The activity provides students a way to use digital tools to improve their writing and thinking, two competencies listed in our university’s Student Learning Outcomes. It also allows me a way to give feedback to students early in the writing process (when they are formulating their ideas). Taken together, Flash Presentations help my students create deadlines for themselves early in the writing process and write more substantive, organized first drafts. Flash Presentations also help me offer just-in-time feedback on macro-level writing features, even before students begin drafting their essays. The better first drafts I receive also help me save some time typically dedicated to extensive feedback on full-text drafts.  Click here for a brief video I created for my students this term. To explain this activity and how it fits into the writing process approach I take to FYC, in this post, I will first lay out the specifics of the assignment. I will talk about how I pivoted to a digital recorded format for the assignment because of the exigencies of online learning. I will then explain how the Flash Presentation activity helps students create deadlines for themselves early in the writing process. The fact that they have to present on the outline invites them to create better outlines and, in my opinion, better first drafts. I will end by discussing how moving this activity into a digital modality assessed asynchronously helps me provide better writing feedback.
By Jiali Wang and Jacob Steiss In this study, Dr. Barbara Sarnecka and colleagues examine the impact of writing workshops on graduate students' writing quality, writing practices, and overall well-being.
Guest Blogger: Jeremy Hyler, Michigan Middle School English Teacher Yes, it is true, I dislike the term “research paper". Since I was an undergrad, it brings nothing but anxiety to me, personally. For my middle school students, it can be downright terrifying, causing negative thoughts about the process of writing a research paper. However, in my experience, if we reimagine the terminology and use “research project,” it is less likely to raise levels of discomfort in my middle school students. On the other hand, as educators, we can’t just change the wording of something we do in our classrooms and expect a magic fix. In this blog, I describe the multigenre research project, and I provide tips for engaging in these projects through distance learning.
By Jacob Steiss In our last blog, we highlighted research by Antero Garcia and his colleagues that analyzed thousands of letters written by secondary students to the next president of the United States. The corpus of letters showed the capacity of students to use their literacy skills to advocate for social and political changes they see as significant. We believe their research demonstrates a way to engage students in civic writing today, though educators will have to be flexible and responsive to their own students’ interests, cultural backgrounds, and writing skills. In this blog, we share considerations and guidelines for engaging in civic writing in your own classroom.
By Jacob Steiss In this two-part blog, we will highlight the work of Dr. Antero Garcia and his colleagues, with help from The National Writing Project (@WritingProject) and KQED (@KQEDedspace). The project analyzed letters written by over 11,000 students from over 300 schools and 47 states. These letters were written to the future 2016 president, who had not been elected yet. In examining students' compositions, they found that adolescents are engaged and eager to speak out on civic issues that impact their communities, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and police reform. Though written as a classroom activity, the writing also represents and sustains civic identities of youth engaging in activism that addresses government leaders. "Students wrote alongside and in solidarity with ongoing civil rights movements" We see this research as particularly important for writing researchers, teachers, and school leaders as it describes the civic concerns and interests of adolescents and outlines a meaningful and authentic writing task educators may implement in their classrooms.
The project also highlights ways that teachers may focus their instruction to support students' crucial thinking and argumentative writing skills. In part one of this blog (here), we will discuss what researchers learned from studying these letters to the next president. |
WRITE Center: Writing Research to Improve Teaching and EvaluationThe research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305C190007 to University of California, Irvine. In 2025 the National Writing Project took over management of this website and project resources. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
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