Social Reading and Identifying the Argument (Part II of II)

[sonya_tiratsuya]

This article was originally posted and written by Katherine Jewell on www.teachingushistory.co on March 28, 2018.

In my last post, I explored how to employ social reading in the online classroom using Perusall, Padlet, and other digital tools.

In that application, my main goal is to ensure students are reading critically. By that I mean not just scrolling through a textbook, but actually engaging with it. I want them to consider the implications of what they are reading, and to think about how different points connect across the chapter. I want them to see how I pose questions to give some shape to their summary of events and to see how various interpretations might emerge. By putting the textbook into their own words, I’m hoping that they retain the material and apply it in other assignments.

In that application, the tool has been useful for giving me a glimpse into how the students are processing information. I can see where concepts begin to breakdown in their understanding, or how they apply contemporary metaphors and analogies to what they have been reading.

In my elective, however, I have different goals. While I’m still looking for students to do critical reading, I have two other goals. The first overlaps with my survey and online environment: I want a tool to ensure students are actually doing the reading. As is often the case, I have visions at the beginning of a semester of the engaging activities students will pursue, but they fall behind in the reading and that engagement breaks down. Students skim the reading or don’t do it at all, and I’m left having a conversation with only the students who have read, or having those students carry the load in group discussion. Like it or not, this is a reality that I must grapple with as an instructor.

The second is to go further in the kind of engagement students have with readings at the elective level. I want them to come to class having identified the argument(s) of an article. By having them engage with other students IN the actual reading, prior to class, my goal is to begin class discussion from a position at which we can begin to engage with the argument. Often times class time is spent coming to a decision about what a scholarly article or chapter (or book excerpt) actually said, rather than engaging with the ideas presented and critiquing them in light of other course material. My goal is to have students — sometimes helped along by those who have a better sense of where the argument is in a piece — come to class with that groundwork laid.

I am hoping see students highlighting sections of the reading that they think demonstrate the argument, or follow up sections that develop that argument further. Right now, I need a better way to explain this second goal to students, and to set them up with the tools to identify scholarly arguments. I am hoping that the work we have done so far in the semester will help with that goal. Evidence so far suggests I may not be successful. In the first social reading at the elective level, the first goal was much more front and center. I showed the students Perusall’s analytics feature after only 5-10% of the class opened the reading. I now need to figure out the “carrot” to accompany this “stick” of accountability. Follow-through in assignments and discussion is where my teaching abilities will be tested — and hopefully, I’ve assigned readings that will be relevant and useful long after students leave the classroom.

Be sure to check out Part I of Katherine's post, Social Reading and the Online Classroom (Part I of II).