Free Writing-A Great Tool for Students

What fifteen-minute ungraded activity can promote better test scores? There are many answers, but today’s focus is a quick five-minute free writing activity followed by a short discussion. According to a study by Drabick, Weisberg, Paul, and Bubier (2007), students who participated in free writing about the course content did better on multiple choice exams than those who were not part of the study. In addition, students attended class more often.

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Richard Day, in his article “Two Writing Activities for Extensive Reading,” says that having students extend the free writing to a slightly more advanced timed repeated thinking and writing provides three benefits. Students can have a starting place for their writing, they improve their writing fluency, and the instructor has a better insight to the students’ reading. Imagine having your students write for a few minutes each day about what they read or what they heard during the last class period. It would be easy to find out if they are keeping up with the class. As Day says, “If they have not read a book, they will have little, if anything, to write about.” This is equally true for those who haven’t attended class, or have not paid attention.

Focused free writing is probably more beneficial for most courses, but if you’d like to try free writing that isn’t focused on your course topic, go to Creative Writing Prompts, where 346 topics are ready for your use. If you are in a computer room and want to control the free writing time, you might want to have students use this site to write their ideas.

While most instructors don’t have the time to free write in every class, adding this to your class activities would be useful to students. Focused topics could help students think about what is discussed in class, and could help them on their exams. As you’re planning next semester’s classes, think about adding this beneficial activity.

Note:  Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no blog entry next week. See you in December!

Yes! Text in Class!

  If you have teenagers at home, you know that their cell phones are used as watches and as texting devices. Occasionally, they're used as  phones, if they have to talk to you, the parent!  In that respect, our college students are not much different than younger teens.  There are few students who do not have cell phones in class, and they use them to text.  If you want to read more about cell phone use at every age, you might want to read an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal, called  Y U Luv Text, H8 Calls, by Katherine Rosman.  Obviously, texting is here to stay, at least for now, so, let's join the party!

  One way to put the cell phones to good use in the classroom is to use Poll Everywhere. As the name implies, Poll Everywhere is a polling system that can be used for quick interactions.   Poll Everywhere is free for a group up to 30 people, and can involve your students and let them use their cell phones at the same time.  Poll Everywhere can be at as a quick substitute for Clickers, which have become more popular in our classes. 

  Once students have texted their answers, either from their cell phones or computers, you can show the results live via the Internet or a PowerPoint slide.  An Internet connection is necessary for this, of course.  The following video gives you an overview of how easy it is to use Poll Everywhere.



There are a couple of limitations to Poll Everywhere.  It seems that you can create just one question at a time, but you can quickly move from one question to another.  Also, students must have access to a cell phone or computer connected to the Internet to participate. 

Poll Everywhere is something I think would be a good ice-breaker at the beginning of class or a quick wake-them-up activity after 20 minutes or so of lecturing.  Students could also create test questions for the their classmates to answer.

Once you've tried Poll Everywhere, comment on the blog so we can learn from your experiences.

Have a great week.

Inspiring the Love of Learning in Today's Student

Blog note:  Today's guest blogger is Margie Nelson.  Margie is an Assistant Professor of English at the Valle Verde Campus.  If you'd like to discuss teaching and learning as a guest blogger, feel free to contact me at jrudnick@epcc.edu. 

by Margie Nelson

At this year's Southwest Seminar, I was lucky enough to attend the “Inspiring the Love of Learning in Today's Student” session. Instructors from various disciplines and different colleges shared their techniques and ideas for inspiring the love of learning in our students.



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 After an in-depth discussion, our group organized our numerous ideas into two major categories. The first category, Connecting with Students Early and Often, included ideas that stressed the importance of appropriately showing students your “human” side, making students feel invested in the course, and demonstrating the course’s relevance to students’ lives and “the real world.” Some specific examples include a math instructor bringing in a utility bill to demonstrate equations, an accounting instructor sharing his academic and work history with students, an information technology instructor comparing computer programming to everyday “programming,” and a writing instructor using email assignments to show audience.

The second category, Strategies to Motivate Learning in Class and Beyond, was comprised of strategies that instructors had successfully employed to motivate students’ learning in class and life-long-learning (LLL). Some specific examples include reminding students about their motivation for being in class (even if the course is a degree requirement), requiring or encouraging students to publish their work on the web (such as EPCC’s Borderland’s Project), involving students in professional associations and conferences, and appealing to students’ personal interests while developing their technology skills with biographical assignments on the web (such as using Microsoft’s Photostory software program).

Discussing and sharing techniques with such passionate instructors inspired me. I want to thank all of the instructors who participated and shared their excellent ideas and to El Paso Community College, Central New Mexico Community College, and EPCC’s Faculty Development Office for an enriching seminar. Motivating students to love learning is a legacy we can pass on to our students. Yes, it can be a challenge, but this invaluable legacy is worth all the hard work.