Cary Moskovitz
Director, Writing in the Disciplines, Thompson Writing Program

An essential part of Cary Moskovitz’s Writing 20 courses is collaborative writing, encouraging students to work together to improve their skills. Cary discusses in this video how he uses Blackboard’s Wiki feature for collaborative writing assignments. The tool allows students to work anywhere, produce documents in parts with multiple pages, and view a history of their work.

Vicki Russell
Senior Lecturing Fellow and Director, Writing Studio

Vicki Russell expects students in her Writing 20 course to actively participate in discussions of readings and peer review of writing assignments. In this video, Vicki explains how she uses Discussion Boards and Wimba Voice Tools to help students give feedback in written and audio form to writing assignments.

Christine Beaule
Mellon Lecturing Fellow, Professor in University Writing Program

Christine Beaule’s Writing 20 course syllabus and her Blackboard course site have evolved together over time. In this video, Christine talks about how she uses Blackboard’s content sections to organize material for her course into units, each containing assignments, handouts and reading materials that make the course outline clear to the students.

Julie Reynolds, Mellon Lecturer in Writing & Biology
Vicki Russell,  Senior Lecturing Fellow and Director, Writing Studio

Julie and Vicki have published a research report on using audio feedback for peer review on student writing.  They used iPods distributed as part of the Duke Digital Initiative, to test if audio feedback is an effective way for students to offer high-quality comments to each other on their writing.   Their report “Can you hear us now?: A comparison of peer review quality when students give audio versus written feedback” (pdf) is published in the annual 2008 edition of The WAC Journal, a national peer-reviewed journal on writing across the curriculum.

Julie and Vicki noticed that when they gave students feedback on their writing, audio feedback was more time-efficient and seemed to be of higher quality than written comments.  They designed a study to find out if students would experience the same efficiency and effectiveness using audio feedback for peer review.  Students in their classes gave and received peer reviews using both audio and written comments.  Students were surveyed about their preferences and perceptions at the end of the semester.  In addition, Julie and Vicki assessed the quality of the peer reviews using defined criteria and two raters for each review.

They found that audio peer reviews contained more specific and higher order comments than written peer reviews.  They conclude that audio feedback significantly improves the quality of peer reviews.  The paper finishes with concrete suggestions based on their results and experiences with students for effectively using audio feedback in the classroom.

This paper is a great example of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Vicki and Julie have carefully researched “what works” in teaching using audio peer reviews, and offered suggestions for others based on their results.

Vicki Russell, Senior Lecturing Fellow and Director, Duke University Writing Studio

Project Description:

Vicki Russell, Director of the Duke University Writing Studio, is investigating innovative ways that tutors can work with students on writing assignments, and students can collaborate on writing projects. Russell, using 3d virtual worlds software, has created a virtual Writing Studio – an online, 3d “space” where students, faculty and writing tutors can collaborate in real time.

The goals of the project are to use the extensive resources for writers available on the Writing Studio Web site as a foundation for creating an interactive virtual learning environment, demonstrating for writers that writing is a dynamic rather than static process. Allowing access to these resources during a tutoring session with students in a real-time virtual environment will provide interactive ways to facilitate writing as recursive rather than linear process. In addition, by creating a virtual environment space for collaborative writing that is expandable and reproducible for other units at Duke, the project will focus on helping writers improve individual written texts and become more self-reflective better writers and provide faculty with tools to help their students become more effective writers and critical thinkers.

Promoting a larger “culture of writing” on the Duke campus, the resource will include spaces for exploring writing resources in non-linear ways to help students during the writing process. The online presence will be a meeting place where writing tutors can assist students with writing assignments and spaces where student organizations can collaborate on writing projects for publication.

Russell was awarded a CIT Strategic Initiative Grant to facilitate the early stages of her project. Russell used funding from the CIT grant to learn more about virtual worlds applications, to investigate different virtual worlds tools determine technical suitability for the project and to survey students about current and potential virtual worlds interest and use.  The grant was also used to develop a plan and paper-prototype as a blueprint for implementing the future development of the virtual Writing Studio.

During the grant term, Russell, working with Writing Studio tutors and graduate students Richard Musselwhite and Jen Walsh, compared different virtual worlds tools (Second Life, Protosphere, Cobalt, and Qwak) and their possible suitability for the project.  Based on factors such as the ability to custom program objects in the application, ease of use, suitability for an academic environment and the facilities for text collaboration, the team choose Qwak, a commercial product built on the Croquet/Cobalt engine, for initial development, with a plan to port the Virtual Writing Studio to Cobalt after testing in courses.

Finally, Russell and the team surveyed students about their prior use of virtual worlds software and the types of features they might find useful in a Virtual Writing Studio.  While only a small number of students had tried some type of virtual worlds software in the past, they expressed interest in chat with tutors, access to help materials and collaborative spaces.

The team built some sample spaces in Qwak based on a paper prototype developed during the grant term.  The CIT provided additional funding to license Qwak for creation of spaces for the Virtual Writing Center so that it could be tested in Spring 2009.

During the semester, Holly Ryan and Jennifer Welsh used the virtual world in their course.  Students in Welsh’s class used Qwaq to create learning rooms that students can visit to discover a wide variety of topics.  In Ryan’s course, students revised writing studio handouts into materials that would be effective for visual kinesthetic and aural learners.  The materials included videos, virtual rooms, PowerPoint slides and additional handouts that are housed in the Virtual Studio for use by future students.  In March 2009, Russell presented at the College Conference on Composition and Communication about the project.

The Virtual Writing Studio was used for sessions between students and writing tutors during the semester to a limited extent.  “The handful of experiences we had were well received and successful, with both students and tutors feeling the medium offered a different and ultimately richer way of interacting with the text under consideration,” Russell said.  Welsh noted in that one student “was able to take as much time as needed to go over the paper, and really work through it”; She also noted that “It’s also clear that working in a virtual space contributed to how they were able to work through the paper– reading through it on a panel, scrolling up or down, highlighting, etc.”

While the Virtual Writing Studio is still a “work in progress”, Russell reports that it has been well received by students.  They plan to continue to explore the most effective ways that students can be aware of the resource and ways to encourage them to try it out.  The Virtual Writing Studio will be continued in Qwaq in the fall and spring.  Faculty interested in trying the Virtual Writing Studio are encouraged to contact Vicki Russell via email for more information.

Student survey questions (PDF)
Student survey results summary (PDF)
Comparison of virtual worlds software (PDF)

Project start date: 5/13/2008
Funding awarded: $4,000

Julie Reynolds, Mellon Instructor in Writing & Biology
David Shiffman, Instructor, Biology

Project Description

Julie Reynolds and research associate David Shiffman have compared ArcGIS and Google Earth for undergraduate research projects. ArcGIS is a powerful program, but is very expensive and difficult to learn. Google Earth has fewer analytical tools, but is free and very user friendly. Using data generated by student research projects, David compared the capabilities of both programs.

ArcGIS is undeniably a more powerful tool, but it has several drawbacks. The expense and difficulty of learning ArcGIS makes it impractical for short-term, small-scale projects. Google Earth, in contrast, is powerful enough for small-scale projects such as undergraduate research projects and large mapping project that do not require quantitative analysis.

These results are being prepared for publication, and will be used to guide future undergraduate research projects.

Below, left image was created in ArcGIS, image on the right is the same data in Google Earth.

Project start date: 4/1/2008
Funding awarded: $1800

Cary A. Moskovitz, Senior Lecturing Fellow and director, Writing in the Disciplines
University Writing Program

Project Description

Cary Moskovitz has been using the concept of “think aloud” responses in his writing courses, getting professionals in various fields at Duke to record comments and feedback on student papers. Students gain valuable insight from a reader familiar with the subject area of the paper and gain a better sense of ownership of their writing in a “real world” situation.

To build on the success of this approach in his own courses, Moskovitz is cooperated with the Duke Alumni Association to introduce this method into Writing in the Disciplines courses, by locating Duke alumni residing around the United States to serve as readers in three classes in Economics, History and Chemistry in Spring 2008.

During Fall 2007, Moskovitz used CIT funding to explore the technologies which will be used to implement the full project in Spring 2008. From fifty alumni applicants, twenty were paired with Duke students.  Readers used a webcam-assisted teleconference to virtually “meet” with their student partners, and web-based audio recording software to record a “think aloud” response on a student paper in the course. Students used the readers’ feedback to edit and improve their writing based on this professional input. The CIT consulted on technology approaches, documentation for the volunteer readers and students, and evaluation of the project.

The main challenges encountered during the project were recruitment of alumni readers with expertise that matched the student papers and with technology problems encountered by some users.  Using Wimba for recording of responses was successful, but some users had difficulty configuring and setting up the webcams or Skype account for the project.  Reactions to use of video for the project were mixed, with some users finding it more efficient to talk with students by phone and others reporting that it added a meaningful dimension to their interactions with the students.

• Moskovitz’s full report on the project (PDF)
• Duke Today feature article about the project

Project Started: 8/15/2007
Funding: $5,000 total (Fall 2007, Spring 2008)

First-year students Rita Baumgartner and April Edwards huddled around a speaker phone with their iPod digital devices set to record. They called the principal of Columbine High School, Frank DeAngelis, and began their interview. What was DeAngelis’ view of the infamous 1999 shooting spree at his school? Baumgartner and Edwards wanted to know. What was left out of subsequent news reports about it? And what was erroneously added?

The riveting half-hour interview with DeAngelis, captured on the women’s iPods, was part of a class project to examine how major events are remembered by various social groups and how cultural texts such as newspaper articles might influence or reflect such group memories. (Baumgartner grew up in Boulder, Co., a town near Columbine, and, based on advice from a family friend, arranged for the interview.)

The project for Professor Michele Strano’s Writing 20 course “Social Minds: Memory as Collective Practice” asked students, in groups of three or four, to conduct a dozen-or-so interviews about an event and then compare the responses to news articles about it. In addition to the Columbine shooting, students examined memories of the Apollo 11 mission, Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Y2K, first Gulf War, O.J. Simpson trial, Apollo 13 mission and Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.

After writing essays about the interviews and the articles, the groups gave class presentations on how the news reports and the accounts given in the interviews may be related. The students were required to play clips from their interviews to support their points. The clips were incorporated into the students’ PowerPoint presentations as digital audio files that were played through a classroom sound system. Baumgartner and April Edwards, along with teammates Dean Chiang and Matt Edwards, concluded in their presentation that both the people they interviewed and the news stories they read interpreted the Columbine shootings through the lens of themes, or what they termed “myths.” The four students cited three prevalent myths: “end of innocence,” “perpetrators as victims,” and “personal responsibility.”

“If we could pinpoint one thing — if I could tell you the reason that [the student killers] Harris and Klebold committed this crime was because of A, B and C, then people can say, ‘Well, we’ll make sure that other students do not do A, B and C.’” DeAngelis said in a clip the students played. “But we can’t. We don’t know what the cause was. They took that to their grave with them.” Listen to DeAngelis’ remark about blame. Including audio excerpts in the presentations reinforces a key principle of writing, Strano says. “One thing we emphasize about academic writing is that researchers are expected to move beyond speculation and support their claims with some form of evidence,” she says. “You make a claim, and then you give data to support that claim. Incorporating the sound files made that expectation clear.”

Freshman Rita Baumgartner conducts a phone interview with Columbine High School Principal Frank DeAngelis, while April Edwards, also a freshman, takes notes. The two recorded the interview with their iPods.

“They started thinking of the voice files and the news articles on the same level,” she says. “Through their analyses of the interviews — which they recognized as raw, subjective data from the beginning — they began to realize that the news coverage was also data about how an event is framed.”

Strano has taught other writing courses with interview assignments, but she says, with the iPods, she was better able to guide students through the process of interpreting interviews because the students could easily send her the audio files of the interviews. “I kept all 84 interviews [done by the students] on my iPod,” she says. “It gave me access to the raw data in a way that allowed me to better evaluate how they interpreted it.”

Students said that recording the interviews with iPods and including clips in the presentation made the project more engaging.

“It helps us make our points better,” Matt Edwards says. “But it was a hassle getting all the [audio excerpts] to length.”

“[The assignment] seems more practical because it’s a real world application,” says April Edwards, who called the interview with DeAngelis “eye opening.”

Listen to the beginning of the interview.



Listen to reflections from Columbine High School Principal Frank DeAngelis