Faculty Resources

Online Writing Conferences

Rationale:

One faculty decided to try online conferences since she felt that some of the best land-based teaching about research had taken place in one-one twenty minute conferences. The issue was logistics, and here are her efforts to create online conferences.

She decided to schedule them a week or two before the written project was due. (Smaller projects could be scheduled differently, and the faculty might choose to use this technique for the first assignment if there are more than one.)

She proceeded with these steps:

1. Created a private discussion topic for each student with the student and faculty as the only members
2. Let students know that the conferences were a requirment for the final paper to be graded. Made a generous point al
3. Put up sign-up sheets as discussion topics asking for 4 students per day (so the faculty can read and respond to materials in the conference area on the very day the conference was scheduled.
4. Intended the conferences to be motivational, so was generous w/ points for participating in the conference.
5. Provided a list at what had to be presented at the conference: two page draft of 3-6 page paper with at least a couple citations, and bib entries. Questions. (In this course, the student had posted the choice of topic earlier. Another component might include an annotated bibliography if it is a research topic.)
Respond the same day to the learner--this is a great opportunity to not only ask technical questions about format, but questions about the content itself--as an exchange.
6. Sometimes the learners did have to make additions or corrections and re-submit items to the conference to earn the conference points.