Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Complexity of the Exploratory Writing Workshop

The Complexity of the Exploratory Writing Workshop

There are many words in the writing vernacular that a student might not be familiar with. Karen pointed out and rightly so, that many of the words I use the student might not be familiar with. For example what is the shade of meaning difference between Flash Fiction, a Vignette, a Short Story, A Novella and a Novel? The big difference has to do with theme and word count. Karen suggested that the first time a second tier word is used we ought to define it on the spot and then put it in a Dictionary for the class with a link to the Assignments. This will work and it is something we will be working on.

In past blogs I have lamented that the need for supporting materials exceeds that which a student would find in a classroom. In a classroom there is a real live teacher and he/she can intervene with the student when there are questions. In an E–Class there is not that instant feedback, so the course design needs to take that into account. In the Workshop there are six class pages, eight weekly assignments, forty Objectives, not to mention numerous examples, a contest, and a Dictionary of Terms. This level of complexity and detail is necessary to head off questions the student has and provide answers, without having to wait a day or two after asking with an E-Mail or posting in a Forum.

On a typical assignment in the EWW the student gets the requirement from the assignment page. The page shows the objectives (typically 5) the student is expected to read. Then there is the contest prompts which provides the minimal essential elements that the Vignette will include. Next is the checklist that shows how the vignette will be evaluated and finally discussion topics and Practical Exercises the student must complete. After digesting this student writes the Vignette and posts it in either the Classroom Forum (if they are shy) or in the Contest Forum. Then they submit to the Classroom forum the Discussion topics and Practical Exercises. Now all these levels and components must be coordinated, and linked. It’s like writing a computer program.

In the last two weeks the student collects and organizes what they have learned in the workshop into an outline and then expands that outline into the format of the larger work thy plan to write after the workshop. Anyway the Workshop is finally roughed out and it would fly if we had to run it tomorrow. However, there is still some fine tuning in parts and in others a need to explain things more clearly.