A writer as facilitator
After a recent planning and structuring workshop, an undergraduate student commented that the most useful element was ‘Hearing other people’s ideas which I may not have thought of originally.’ I’m no egotist, and I don’t mind that sharing suggestions with peers proved more important to this student than my pearls of wisdom. In fact, this is a very positive result. Research and development by Dr Wendy Maples at the University of Sussex, who has investigated the value of peer assessment, shows that students frequently learn a lot from interacting with their peers. ‘I’ve always felt that students can learn as much if not more from each other than they can from some teachers,’ noted one participant in her study.
In my planning and structuring workshop, the students start by discussing how well they plan at the moment. Many say they create only a skeleton plan and don’t really know how to go about creating a detailed structure. My task is to facilitate a discussion about how to do this.
As the students talk in small groups, a range of techniques for planning and structuring emerge. They then share them with the whole group. We collate the ideas and I add mine. I talk about how I’ve developed a process through years of writing children’s non-fiction books and we talk about how different writers work in different ways. It’s a matter of finding an approach that suits you, whether it’s mind mapping, storyboarding with pictures, concept maps[1], using sticky notes or a more linear approach, listing bullet points. The students sometimes know of new software programs or apps that I haven’t heard of, so I learn something too.
This process indicates to the students that they are not the only ones struggling with organising their essays and reports. It also demonstrates that they know more than they think they do. Some report that having dreaded the writing process before, they now look forward to writing their assignments; for one undergraduate, the planning and structuring session ‘helped to just give me more confidence about what I need to do and how to be a writer’. When I read feedback like that, I feel I have done my job.
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Some very interesting points! Peer-assessment is an area I am really interested in and of course this links to peer sharing of experiences/ideas which can be so useful. I agree that workshops impart valuable information from experts but as you say, they can also provide a space for students to share their own experiences.
Thanks Ruth – I also think peer assessment is an interesting area – evidence has shown that peer feedback can be just as valuable as tutor feedback when it’s well organised.