VOLUME XIII, NUMBER 13

#8 INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD), COLLEGE OF EDUCATION,

 

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN « WITH SUPPORT FROM THE W. K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION AND THE SID W. RICHARDSON ee

Yes, We Can Expect Perfect Papers

Having been involved in graduate education courses
and in administration for almost 10 years, I had lost
touch with the real world of the community college
student. Was I surprised when I stepped back into the
classroom two years ago!

Some of my colleagues tried to warn me, but I
wouldn't listen. They said that the community college
student of today has changed and cannot be expected to
write—period. Did I believe them? No. Did I get some
proof that they were right? Yes.

In the first class I taught, I assigned what I thought
was a relatively simple writing project; it was to be a
brief research paper based upon a minimum of 10
magazine articles and was to contain no less than three
and no more than five pages of body, plus a cover page
and a bibliography—a weekend project at best. Wrong!
And, when I suggested that it be typed, the students
almost came unglued.

The best paper that semester had 66 mistakes on the
first page (I didn’t bother to read the second). The
worst paper had 88 mistakes on the first page (this one
from a computer science major whom I knew had
access to a spell-checker, thesaurus, grammar-checker,
etc.). Surprise!

When I asked the students what happened, the
standard answer was, “We’ve never had to write a
research paper before. We’ve always written essays,
and the instructors never checked for mistakes. They
only checked for content.”

“Impossible,” I thought. So, I checked it out with
students in other classes—same response.

Maybe I hadn’t made myself clear. Next semester I
beefed up my instructions; checked out the writing lab,
the library, and the tutoring department to determine
what help was available; and took another shot at
research papers. The results were a little better—some
papers actually were typed, and some only had 30-40
mistakes. Something worked, but what? Careful
analysis of my instructions indicated several loop-
holes—the writing lab didn’t understand exactly what I
was trying to do, ditto for the tutoring lab. No fault
with the library.

The next semester I made some serious changes in
the instructions to students. Also, I asked the students

to buy a copy of the stylebook used by the English
department, the writing lab, and the tutoring lab. (At
least we would all be singing out of the same
songbook.) I scheduled tours of the library. I spent two
hours during my management courses to personally
take the students to the tutoring labs to introduce them
to word processing on the lab computers. And I set to
learning more about how to teach research writing.

Then, Iannounced: “You will be allowed no more
than five mistakes on the entire paper.” My rationale
was that this number would be generous enough. After
all, if these students were going to be the future manag-
ers in the business world, five mistakes could be
enough to make a small business go belly-up; and I
wasn’t teaching them how to fail! Great idea, right?
Wrong, again.

Students went to the program director, the chairper-
son, and the dean. The end result was that I had to back
off a little, but it was still my belief that a perfect paper
was not entirely out of the question.

The spring semester brought about more changes in
the instructions and more study on my part—and these
extra efforts are now beginning to pay off. I actually
had two papers with no obvious mistakes and several
more in the range of 4-5 mistakes. On average, the
quality of the papers has improved dramatically.

SUC TS

The current process goes something like this:

1. After the initial shock of the first day of class, |
distribute the term paper instructions and go over
them very carefully—word by word and page by
page. The final paper is to be a research report from
at least 15 magazine articles and contain 5-10 pages
of body, plus cover page, contents page, and bibliog-
raphy. It is to be typed. The instructions include a
copy of the grading sheet which will be used to grade
each part of the final paper. To support this project, |
include a library tour, writing lab tour, and “private”
sessions from the tutoring lab instructors to learn the
basics of word processing.

2. The term paper is now a phased-project over a 16-
week semester.

 

 

Oy

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
Community College Leadership Program, Department of Educational Administration
College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712