It’s not about learning all the tools, but about being mindful of how to use which tool for the right purpose at the right time,

Some students have been conditioned by experience in other online courses to expect to be able to read and study quietly by themselves for a few weeks, post a minimum number of discussion board posts in a single day, and complete an exam or writing assignment at the end of a unit or module. The chunky model, with its frequent required interaction, may disappoint students who want to be able to proceed more independently. For that reason, we encourage students to refl ect and comment on the process as we go along. We make design visible by asking students to engage and respond to the course content and design in real time. Inevitably, some students will express resistance, arguing that they enrolled in an online course specifi cally to be able to “work on my own schedule.” So it is important to take those concerns seriously and encourage students to express them. In a writing course, we argue that students can measurably benefi t from breaking major writing projects into a series of steps that can be completed in short units of time.

In practice, applying the concept of chunked content in course design can work in many ways. For several years, we have been using backward design and creating course schedules in which writing activities were usually due on the same day each week. We discovered, perhaps predictably, that most students were logging on to post writing the day assignments were due. This created a rhythm where activity in the course community spiked one day each week, followed by a period of quiet in between. In our recent courses, we have moved to design schedules where short, work-in-progress tasks are due two or three times per week. While the total net amount of writing students do has not changed, breaking the writing into two or three mini-activities has helped to create a more constant fl ow of activity and discourse in and around the course environment.

a relatively new peer-feedback tool developed by writing faculty at Michigan State University called Eli Review offers a promising model for merging design and pedagogy. Eli Review extends the capabilities of collaboration software like Google Docs by allowing instructors to design and assign targeted peer feedback activities that work toward specifi c learning outcomes. For example, an instructor working toward a learning outcome related to the use of claims and evidence in an argument could direct students to respond to peer drafts by looking specifi cally for claims and supporting evidence.

Start with the problem.

Learning analytics platforms produced little gain in student learning. Adding in supplemental digital resources was a mixed bag. Peer learning supports offered modest gains. So did course redesign efforts. Only when institutions undertook “a fundamental transformation of the course” – essentially introducing all of the above – were there consistently significant positive results.

“we do see patterns in the literature about what types of technologies and approaches are most likely to have positive effects,” she said. In general, they are tools that: increase the flexibility of what happens in the classroom, rather than overly scripting it; give students lots of opportunity to explore; and engage students in active problem solving.

“If you just use a new digital learning technology without changing anything else, chances are you’re not going to have a significant impact” on learning

But their other key takeaway was that the use of technology itself appears not to be primarily responsible for the improved outcomes. Rather, the accumulated studies they shared found that the biggest effects came when the instructors changed what material they taught and how they taught it.

“[a] crucial missing element in most writing pedagogy is any experience or instruction in ascertaining the value of one’s own work”

. In Chapter 3, he argues convincingly that writing teachers need to teach students how to assess writing themselves in order to help students become better writers

Assessment as an act is at its core an act of reading.