ELECTRONIC RESPONSE TO STUDENT WRITING IS SEMINAR TOPIC

"Responding to Student Writing Electronically," a seminar for instructors of distance learning and other classes, will be from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, Feb. 13, in room 415 of Old Dominion University's Gornto TELETECHNET Center.

Whether teaching distance education courses, employing course delivery programs such as Blackboard, facilitating collaborative student projects, corresponding with students over email or just trying to save paper, instructors are increasingly working with students' writing online.

This workshop provides pedagogical and technical instruction on reading, assessing, and responding to student writing on the computer. Joel A. English, coordinator of professional writing at Old Dominion, will provide a theoretical look at the interactivity between students, teachers and student writing that computer-facilitated assessment allows.

He will provide step-by-step instruction on downloading papers from email, Blackboard, and other online resources, using MS Word advantageously to expedite assessment and sending responses back to students. He will include a segment on using macros to create a library of "canned" comments for student papers, and he will offer guidance on executing that library ethically and strategically.

Please contact English at jaenglis@odu.edu for registration information or to express your interest in a future workshop.