During the Spring 2018 semester, one of the courses I am taking is Internship in the Teaching of Writing. In this course, I am observing an English class at a local community college (Sacramento Community College). Beyond observing, I am also leading select class sections and participating in one on one conferences. It is this last point that I want to address.
While sitting in on a couple of conferences a few weeks ago, I watched as the professor for the course spoke with students one on one using Canvas. Briefly, the structure of the conferences were all the same; ask the student how life is going, show them statistics and information on Canvas (where this post will focus), discuss the upcoming paper including concerns and ideas, then end by encouraging a course of action relevant to the student (start early if they procrastinate, spend extra time researching if previous papers were weak in this area, etc.).
The most interesting part of these conferences was the way the professor integrated Canvas into the one on one conference. This integration occurred in two ways. First, he showed the student statistics regarding their interaction with Canvas. This includes the number of times they posted/commented, the amount of traffic the student was responsible for on different pages, the days that the student was active, interaction with assignments, etc. Second, he was able to go over previous submissions and posts with the students. Particularly in the case of scaffolding, this allowed the professor to consider previous submissions that led into the current research paper they were tasked with, showing proven strengths/weaknesses to the students.
Canvas allowing the professor to tangibly show students their interactions with course material, or more importantly that he is aware of their interaction with the material, is something that would have been next to impossible a generation ago. With much of the course available on Canvas, from assignment prompts to resources to sample writing, a large portion of what the course has to offer in terms of learning is found on Canvas. The result is that if students are not interacting frequently with Canvas, they are likely missing out on a lot of opportunities to learn. Now, the professor KNOWS when this is the case. If you pair that knowledge with the actual performance of the student, you start to get a good idea of the level of engagement that each student is showing.
Taking this information into a conference is a powerful tool, a tool that becomes even more powerful when you let the student know about it. To be clear, the power is not in shaming the student into feeling bad about how they are doing, or reprimanding them (necessarily) for not engaging fully in the course. However, it does let them know that you are watching and that you might be seeing things that they are not. In fact, the most powerful demonstration of this tool was with an ESL student who was not engaging with the prompts, and in turn her writing was not addressing the prompt properly. This put the professor in the prime position to see ahead of time that the student needed to be coached on taking the time to carefully review prompts before trying to address them. It is in these moments where the professor is able to take that knowledge and turn it into feedback, showing the student exactly what he is seeing and why he is offering this or that advice, that the tool becomes incredible. It gives students a peek behind the curtain, a birds eye view of their own learning process, a metacognitive understanding of why they are doing good or bad.
Beyond statistical information, the teacher is able to review actual submissions with the student. While this could be done without technology by sitting down with a printed submission, it becomes a lot easier to move between various posts, comments, and submissions when they are all on one website (this could technically be done with a portfolio of sorts, but the internet makes it more organic and includes other students' comments and posts too). If the class has been scaffolded well, many of the posts and comments will likely lead into the bigger assignments. Perhaps there have been discussions about immigration leading up to a research paper on DACA. Perhaps there have been assignments about formatting sources that lead up to writing a full works cited page. Being able to go over whichever assignment is needed for the conference at will means the professor has the full support of his pre-built scaffolding at his fingertips in an instant. This could be particularly useful if the student is asking questions in the conference that the professor has not specifically set out to address.
Even more than just posts, comments, and submissions, the professor can also point the student toward a particular resource available in Canvas. Perhaps the student is formatting his papers incorrectly and can use a resource about proper MLA format. Perhaps the student is unsure how to go about finding scholarly sources and can use a guide on how to navigate academic libraries online. This only adds to the ways the teacher can turn a conference into an experience that truly pushes the student in the direction they need to go.
