Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments: A Complementary Approach 3031191595, 9783031191596

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Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments A Complementary Approach Tamilla Mammadova

Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments

Tamilla Mammadova

Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments A Complementary Approach

Tamilla Mammadova ADA University Baku, Azerbaijan

ISBN 978-3-031-19159-6    ISBN 978-3-031-19160-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Within the last few decades, the educational system in most countries around the globe underwent considerable changes such as the process of reformation and development. These changes mainly depend on two key processes—globalization and technological advancement. In turn, globalization has resulted in change in student population from monocultural to multicultural classes; the appearance of Generation 1.5—that is, students who have had the majority of their education in English but for whom English is not their native language; and, of course, the exploration of Web Generation 2.0—technological advancement that generated the digitalization of education globally. All these processes have considerably affected the teaching of Academic Writing and Information Literacy (AW & IL) which presently has totally new implications. One implication that remains unchanged is the challenge of having the students’ attention on your subject for the whole semester, and this is central to the current volume, either in a real or virtual dimension. Overall, the teaching of academic writing itself needs to deal critically with the norms and expectations of particular discourse communities, to raise issues of social, economic, and political concern, yet provide students with the tools they need. There are hundreds of publications on AW & IL, yet, the rapid development of the discipline says that this is never enough. While the existing literature in academic writing normally focuses on organizational v

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structures, that is, the way to write certain types of papers, focusing on main ideas, grammar, and vocabulary selection; writing drafts; proofreading; editing; and many others, the current book provides some theoretical and practical recommendations on how to teach academic writing to students, native or non-native speakers of English, whose language level is higher than B2 (c.f. CEFR 2001). In turn, while a good level of language proficiency is necessary, it is not, however, sufficient for students to succeed in academic settings. Moreover, the current volume is probably the first attempt to demonstrate the indivisibility of academic writing and information literacy, including digital literacy, under a single shelter. Finally, the book does not impose any ready-made methodology but rather suggests various components used in the teaching of AW & IL to be picked up by the instructors to design their own unique methodology applicable to the particular classroom. Just like in a supermarket, you choose those products that would favorably mix in your pot to make a tasty dinner. Enjoy! Baku, Azerbaijan

Tamilla Mammadova

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 Academic Writing and Information Literacy Today    1 From EFL, CALL, and DL to AW & IL    5 Writing Teachers and Teaching Writing   7 What We Expect, and What We Are Expected To?   10 References  13 2 A  cknowledged Digital Era 17 Technology-Integrated Education  17 What Do We Know About Digital Environments?   19 Digital Citizenship  22 Academic Writing and Technology  23 Multimodality  24 Digital Approach to Teaching   25 Digital Classes and Learning Management Systems   26 Online Bichronous Classes   27 Hybrid Class  27 Blended Class  28 Flipped Class  28 HyFlex Class  29 Digital Tools  30 Mobile Technologies  30 vii

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Apps  31 Websites  32 Search Engines  33 Social Media  33 Cloud Services  34 References  36 3 Writing  Is a Challenge 41 Common Writing Problems  41 Motivation or Its Absence   43 Lack of Interest   46 Distractions  47 Ineffective Concentration  48 Stress and Its Management   49 Writer’s Block  51 Lack of Confidence   54 Lack of Ideas   55 Deadlines  56 Procrastination  58 Time Management  60 References  63 4 Pedagogy  of Writing and Digital Writing 67 Students’ Needs  68 Students’ Attitudes to Writing   69 Students’ Engagement  71 Goal-Setting  73 Students’ Learning Experiences   74 The Way to Start Teaching AW & IL   76 Right Content and its Value   78 Syllabus Design  80 Developing Habits of Mind   83 Critical Reading  84 Critical Writing  86 Critical Thinking  86 Critical Analysis  88

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Writing Across Curriculum—WAC   90 Digitalization of Writing  93 Multimodal Reading and Writing   94 Creative Writing  96 Digital Storytelling  97 References 101 5 Information  Literacy and Digital Literacy107 Information Versus Knowledge  108 Methods to Acquire Knowledge  108 Information Literacy  110 Digital Literacy  112 Digitally Literate Students  113 Digital Natives  114 Digital Immigrants  115 Digital Citizens  115 Digital Literacy Toolkit  116 Web Search Engines  116 Open Educational Resources—OER  117 Library Databases  118 Reference Generators  119 Export Citations  120 Sources: Reliable Versus Unreliable  120 Source Evaluation  122 Information Assimilation Techniques  124 Note Taking  124 Paramedic Method  125 Quotation 126 Paraphrasing 126 Summarizing 126 Academic Misconduct  127 Plagiarism 127 Prototypical Plagiarism  128 Patchwriting 129 Ghost Writers  130

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Ways to Prevent Academic Misconduct  131 Plagiarism Detectors  131 Respondus LockDown  133 Generally Accepted Techniques to Prevent Plagiarism  134 References 139 6 F  acilitating Collaboration143 Collaborative Learning and Student Communication Tools  143 Communication Tools  145 Collaborative Assignments  146 Collaborative Reading  146 Collaborative Writing  147 Group Projects  150 Collaborative Presentations  151 Peer Support and Its Challenges  153 Peer-Feedback 153 Peer-Review 155 Peer-Assessment 158 Misunderstandings Among the Team Members and Their Solutions 160 Student Complaints and Peer Pressure  160 Group Formation Peculiarities  161 Group Types  161 Division into Groups  162 Setting Ground Rules for Effective Group Collaboration  163 Conflict Resolution Documents  164 Assessing Student Collaboration  165 References 168 7 G  rading and Feedback173 Grading and Its Essence  173 Constructive Feedback  176 Technology-Mediated Feedback  180 Graded Versus Ungraded Assignments  181 Rubrics for Graded Assignments  183 Grade Distribution  184

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Grade-Oriented Concerns in AW Classes  186 In-Class Participation  187 Class Attendance  188 Quizzes 191 Exams 192 Presentations 195 Portfolios 198 References 200 8 Student  Academic Support Services203 Extracurricular Meetings  203 Office Hours  203 Public Space  205 Online Meetings  205 Obligatory Consultations  206 Writing Centers  207 Modernist and Postmodernist Writing Centers  211 Multiliteracy Centers  211 Online Consulting Services  213 Library Session  213 IT Literacy Session  216 References 220 I ndex223

About the Author

Tamilla  Mammadova is an assistant professor at ADA University, Azerbaijan. She holds a PhD from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where she is a member of the SPERTUS research group. She completed her post-doctoral research at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

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Abbreviations

ACRL Association of College and Research Libraries APA American Psychological Association AW & IL Academic Writing and Information Literacy BB Blackboard BYOD Buy Your Own Device c.f. compare CALL Computer-Assisted Language Learning CARS Creating a Research Space CD Compact Disc CEFR the Common European Framework of References for Languages CL Collaborative Learning CMS Classroom Management Software COVID-19 Coronavirus Disease CRAAP Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose CSR Collaborative Strategic Reading DL Digital Literacy DOI Digital Object Identifier DP Design Principles DVD Digital Video Disc e.g. for example EFL English Foreign Language et al. et alia, and others xv

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etc. et cetera, the rest FAQ Frequently Asked Questions FL Fall GPA Grade Point Average HyFlex Hybrid and Flexible i.e. id est, that is ICALL Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning ICT Information and Communication Technology ISBN International Standard Book Number ISSN International Standard Serial Number IT Information Technology L1 First Language LMS Learning Management System LSE London School of Economics MLA Modern Languages Association MOOC Massive Open Online Course OER Open Educational Resources PAL Peer-Assisted Learning PDF Portable Document Format PhD Doctor of Philosophy PPT Power Point File Q & A Question and Answer RADAR Rationale, Authority, Date, Accuracy and Relevance SASS Student Academic Support Services SP Spring TA Teacher Assistant TELL Technology-Integrated Language Learning TPACK Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge UNIESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization VCS Video Conferencing Software vs. versus, opposed to WAC Writing Across Curriculum WID Writing in the Discipline Wi-Fi Wireless Fidelity WWW World Wide Web

List of Tables

Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 7.1 Table 7.2

Peer-evaluation and peer-assessment rubrics Rubrics to assess student’s collaboration Rubrics to evaluate student’s participation Items to evaluate student’s oral presentation

157 166 189 197

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1 Introduction

This introduction explores what is meant by teaching AW & IL today. The chapter elucidates the present-day necessity to teach academic writing and information literacy to university students emphasizing the goals and objectives of this discipline. Having juxtaposed traditional teaching of AW & IL to a digitalized one, it offers new insights into the teaching of AW & IL in an era of digitalization, where technology plays a key role. As a result, it is quite obvious that with the rapid changes in general educational domain, the approach to the teaching of academic writing and information literacy will not remain as previous, and both teachers’ and students’ expectations from the class will vary to a great extent. Thus, the introduction will try to define those expectations, as well as examine the most appropriate digital tools that will be used throughout this book.

 cademic Writing and Information A Literacy Today Within the last few decades, we have been witnessing rapid developments in all fields of our lives. As a result, there is an acute need for highly qualified specialists able to manage those fields the way that life goes better, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_1

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not worse. As a key engine for bringing up a new expert generation, the educational system focuses on fostering core and soft skills, the latter competencies being applicable to all professions. One of the competencies that are currently of crucial importance is academic writing (Sparks et al., 2014). This competence is especially important for any future professional who will be required to communicate theoretical and technical concepts in a clear, credible, and effective manner (Ramon-Casas et al., 2019). Drawing on work by applied linguists such as Halliday (1985) and Swales (1990), we understand that communication in a university context cannot be understood merely as grammatical proficiency or generic written and spoken competence in English (Harper & Orr Vered, 2017: 691). This goes far beyond and includes such competencies as critical thinking, problem-solving, time management, teamwork, digital literacy, and many others. Although many students are in the early stages of developing these competencies, it is important to guide them from the very beginning. Today, academic writing represents a key focus of instruction in a variety of disciplines. Papers, lab reports, abstracts, written presentations, emails, and web content rely heavily on writing discourse. Yet the meaning and methods of teaching writing, even within composition studies are hardly settled (Friedrich, 2008: 147). It should be mentioned that teaching writing (composition) traces back to ancient times in the form of rhetoric, yet institutionalization of the first-year composition starts in the late nineteenth century (Friedrich, 2008: 3). Russell (1991, as cited in Harper & Orr Vered, 2017: 691) explains that in the US academic writing first emerged in the late nineteenth century after the formation of discrete academic disciplines and in the midst of a push for mass education spurred by industrialization and urbanization. Writing instruction was first deemed necessary to teach the emerging discourses attached to those new disciplines. As new professionals and academics communicated with one another primarily through writing and began to write for specialized communities rather than general audiences, writing “was no longer a single, generalizable skill learned once and for all at an early age; rather it was a complex and continuously developing response to specialized text-based discourse communities.” The teaching of academic writing in its relatively global sense starts in some of the developed countries after

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the Second World War when the influx of returned soldiers to universities brought new diversification and writing instruction again became a priority (c.f. Russell, 1991: 239). Another reason for the Second World War to be the catalyst for academic writing teaching was the lack of communication, both within and between nations (Friedrich, 2008: 7). Since writing has been seen as a daunting task, researchers and practitioners have long looked for appealing and practical ways to improve students’ writing skills. Consequently, over the decades, approaches to teaching writing have gone through a myriad of changes. The literature on academic writing suggests such approaches as the behaviorist approach, contrastive rhetoric approach, the product-orientated approach, the process-­orientated approach, and so on (c.f. Azim, 2018: 17). In most non-English speaking countries, academic writing appeared as one of the EFL skills with a particular focus on students’ written language production (c.f. Hyland, 1993; Hyland, 2016). However, presently, as most educational institutions offer courses in English, academic writing has acquired a different connotation. The current state of academic writing was established a couple of decades ago. Formal writing instruction has traditionally occurred in a particular kind of course, designed to improve the general writing skills of an increasingly diverse undergraduate population. Teaching writing became a profession in itself, distinct from the teaching of other disciplines (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 5). With this in mind, we may assert that presently academic writing is a stand-­ alone discipline with its own program and teaching methodology. Writing does not appear as an isolated action, that is, one may agree that there is no output without input. As Paltridge et al. (2009: 18) put it, just as with any kind of writing, the writer carries out a variety of internal, cognitive processes to produce the text. Moreover, academic writing does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is influenced by factors that lie outside the writer, some of which serve as direct input to produce a text. The final product of a writer is an output in the form of a text. Allison (2008: 76) emphasizes a tight connection between reading and writing. Research shows that writing and reading are not restricted to the composition classroom but occur in a purposeful relationship across the curriculum. In most college courses, literacy tasks range from note-taking a single day’s lecture to visually reviewing a semester’s collection of lecture

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and text notes to writing responses in final exams and writing papers based on using researchable sources. Gottschalk and Hjortshoj (2004: 123) contend that writing and reading are closely related in higher education, in part because so much academic writing is based on publications in a field of study. Academic books and articles invariably contain references to other books and articles on the subject. The significance of what we have to say as writers emerges in relation to other work we have read, in complex frames of reference. Writing and reading are also linked with presentations and discussions at academic conferences and with informal exchanges of many kinds through which scholars define their positions in relation to other scholars in their disciplines. To this end, present-day academic writing goes hand-in-hand with information literacy (AW & IL), setting up a relatively young discipline in Applied Linguistics. Knowledge is important for writing. While writing, in general, can potentially have various purposes, academic writing seeks to document and communicate knowledge in a written form. Knowledge can be generated through various means such as experiences, intuition, tradition, and science (c.f. Monippally & Pawar, 2010: 4). That is why it is extremely important to expand knowledge and develop a wide variety of soft skills within the AW & IL program. Additionally, an academic literacies approach sees learning to write in academic settings as learning to acquire a repertoire of linguistic practices that are based on complex sets of discourses, identities, and values (Lea & Street, 1998). To this end, instruction is more than just a language-related issue. It teaches the student to effectively produce a piece of writing using the knowledge of the culture, circumstances, purposes, and motives that prevail in particular academic settings (Paltridge, 2009: 6). Finally, the development of new technology, such as computers and word processing, has attempted how students write and new academic writing is taught (Paltridge, 2009: 79). Electronic networking, the Internet, the World Wide Web, computer-based tools like e-mail exchanges, synchronous/asynchronous software platforms, blogging tools, and so on became an important source for student writers. Additionally, electronic feedback that involves automated responses generated in relation to writing has somewhat substituted human feedback. Peer feedback is fulfilled through an electronic medium that permits to

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exchange multiple drafts and make contributions to online discussions (Paltridge, 2009: 136). In other words, the extended reach and rapid expansion of digital networks across conventional cultural, linguistic, and geopolitical borders, for example, has encouraged many teachers to expand their understanding of composition to engage students in exploring multiple modalities of communicating meaning, using not only alphabetic writing as a semiotic channel but also experimenting with moving still images, sound and animation, and combinations of these (Friedrich, 2008). Zheng et al. (2020) suggest four common online strategies to build an AW & IL course: learning contracts, forums, self-­ directed learning, and team learning. This list is far from exhaustive; many of the strategies used in online teaching and learning have been adapted from use in the face-to-face classroom. The authors emphasize that when preparing to teach online, we should consider the instructional strategies we employ in our face-to-face teaching and how they may, or may not, translate into the online environment. In turn, Paltridge et al. (c.f. 2009: 157) recommend a list of academic websites to get online writing support. Hence, these and many other tips for traditional and digitalized AW & IL instruction will be widely discussed all along the current volume.

From EFL, CALL, and DL to AW & IL AW & IL has gone through a long way until it reached its current status as a stand-alone discipline. Yet, a study conducted among numerous universities (2021) around the globe demonstrates that there are still many educational institutions where AW remains a part of an EFL program. This book is a good opportunity for the stakeholders to see that AW & IL is and should be a stand-alone discipline within the social sciences domain. Additionally, with the integration of the most recent technological tools in the teaching of AW & IL, this current discipline turns into an asset for any educational institution able to foster the core and soft skills among the students. Scholars may have long debates about the history of technological integration into education. That is natural because each country due to its

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level of social, political, financial, cultural, and technological development can date different periods. Having referred to global literature, and based on my personal observations within the last two-three decades, I will present a rough timeline with respect to the integration of technology into education. A large body of literature suggests that the first integration of technology in education took place in the USA back in the 1980s or even earlier in 1960s. Yet, we all know that a considerable expansion of technology in education starts in the 1990s–2000s, particularly in the countries of Europe, some Eastern countries, and Asia. I will conventionally focus on the last three decades anchoring my views and visions to such revolutionary steps in education as the engagement of most of the countries in the Bologna Process, the expansion of English as a lingua franca not just among the citizens but the university students as such, and standardization of English language ability levels known as CEFR (2001). Within several decades, academic writing was witnessed as a part of general English language teaching in non-native English-speaking environments, and a part of a mother-tongue course for native speakers of English. Foreign language teachers at every level struggled to fit writing into an already-full curriculum and needed the most effective methods and tools with which to teach. While writing in one’s first language can be complex enough for some, second-language learners are further challenged because of their incomplete command of grammar and vocabulary with which to express their thoughts and ideas (Oxford, 2006). Due to this, the digitalization of academic writing was observed within the EFL when the teachers of English were first introduced to the CALL (computer-assisted language learning). With the incorporation of CALL (Hubbard, 2009; Otto & Pusack, 2009; Hsu, 2013) in EFL, the traditional sense of the computer replaced some paper-based materials and offered a wide variety of software tools. A typical example is presented by Otto and Pusack (2009: 785) when a teacher immediately developed a new communicative writing activity asking students to get on the web to find an image of a French town square, festival, or traditional dish, and import it into the postcard tool, compose a 75-word message about an imagined experience (perhaps using some prescribed vocabulary and syntax), and check and revise the grammar and syntax (based on advice from the software).

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Today, teachers are seen as pivotal players in utilizing the potential of technology to improve materials and activities for the needs of their students and engage their students in more meaningful learning (Aşık et al., 2020: 708). Digitalization, which is extensively discussed in Chap. 2 of the current volume, has urged many instructors to reconsider their approaches to the teaching of language, mainly to the four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). Academic writing in marriage with the Information Literacy and Digital Literacy was gradually shaping its own image as a separate discipline yet going hand-in-hand with other university disciplines for native and non-native speakers of English. Thus, the current volume advocates for the unprecedented role of AW & IL as an individual course at universities around the globe.

Writing Teachers and Teaching Writing They say, wiring is frustrating, complicated, and un-fun (Silvia, 2007: 4). Maybe! But only for those, who do not know how to make it interesting, captivating, and even easy. Writing has long been considered as a main tool for the development of cognition and metacognition (Buoncristiani & Buoncristiani, 2012). And, while some consider it as a skill, not an innate gift or a special talent (Silvia, 2007: 6), others believe that writing is just about experience you shape by time (Rogers, 2002). Like any advanced skill, writing must be developed through systematic instruction and practice (Silvia, 2007: 6). Writers are inevitably shaped by their previous experiences with literacy, education, and schooling, bringing complex and contested histories of participation to any new writing task (Kibler, 2013: 47). Danberg (2015) compares writing with cooking, emphasizing that the ingredients don’t present themselves like the ingredients in a cupboard. Similarly, learning writing is compared to practicing an instrument, but your problem doesn’t always present itself like a score. In other words, whatever writing is, it occupies an important place in academic life, developing the most crucial study skills. While university writing is not a simple or a straightforward one and demands a range of interconnected capacities that learners master (Moore et  al., 2010), academic writing helps to acquire most of the necessary skills and

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capacities that later on help students to fulfil any type of writing. Academic writing is a complicated task that involves a wide range of different kinds of skills, and if you are going to do it properly, it means that you have to know clearly what is required of you and how to deliver it (Moore et al., 2010). In turn, writing essays, reports, literature reviews, and other assignments can be much more interesting and satisfying than one might first expect, yet, many things depend on the instructor. While teaching is challenging, teaching writing is double challenging. The necessity to bring the course content, the AW & IL program, and primarily, the technological advancement together are principal challenges that writing instructors would face. Teaching writing is labor-­ intensive (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004); writing instruction requires attention to individual students, interaction among students and teachers, and extensive practice. If students are continually writing and revising papers, teachers must read, respond to, and evaluate this work, often multiple drafts, and keep track of each student’s progress. Classes devoted to writing instruction are typically small but sometimes larger than their teachers would prefer. An ideal enrollment for a writing class would suggest about 15 students (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 147), yet the reality does not respond to this ideal and reaches up to 20 or 22 students. As teaching writing is one of the major concerns of academics and scholars, many of them have different visions of the writing teachers’ role. The teacher in the classroom is neither the source nor the viaduct for all information. Alternatively, [writing] teacher is the facilitator, creating an environment within which students can engage with knowledge at a complex level, manipulating it, transferring it, and structuring a conceptual framework within which new information can be integrated (Buoncristiani & Buoncristiani, 2012: 5). It is believed that good teachers are able to provide effective classes. There is actually no definition of a good teacher, but in general good teachers are defined as knowledgeable about their subject, interested in it, collaborative members of staff, well organized, adaptable to new school policies and new technology, and have a sound understanding of students’ needs (Herring, 2011: 7). As earlier mentioned, it has been a while since AW & IL has occupied a position of a stand-alone discipline globally. Historically, people who taught freshman composition were formally trained in literary studies,

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not in writing instruction per se. This is why early composition courses were essentially literate classes, or writing classes within the field of English (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 5). Presently, writing instructors fall into two main categories: a) second-language teachers who have not had any particular training in this area; b) teachers trained to teach writing to students who speak English as a native speaker and are uncertain of the needs of second-language students in their classes (Paltridge, 2009). Practice shows that since writing directly deals with the language, competent AW & IL instructors are those who come from a Linguistic background with a firm framework of own writing experience. Going back to competent writing instruction, Killen (2007: 13) identifies several steps that effective teachers take to focus their teaching on student learning, and states that the first step is to describe what it is you want your students to understand. Moreover, many teachers prioritize students’ success, both current and future. Certainly, the most important contribution a professor can make toward promoting student success is to create the type of active, rich learning environment (Buller & Cipriano, 2015: 24). It should also be mentioned that today, along with the changes in how information is produced and how people access it and put it to use, teaching practice, and mainly, teaching writing has changed to a great extent. The main target of the writing instructors today is to show the students what they need to do, rather than what they need to do well (Danberg, 2015). For this, teachers should create an image of expertise and help students to answer the following questions: What kind of situations do they find themselves in? How do they behave when they encounter some particular situations? What kind of problems will they have to solve? When they need to learn something new, what do they do? (Danberg, 2015). Writing processes are not linear. Successful writers use different processes that vary over time and depend on the particular task. For example, a writer may research a topic before drafting, then after receiving feedback conduct additional research as part of revising. Writers learn to move back and forth through different stages of writing, adapting those stages to the situation. This ability to employ flexible writing processes is important as students encounter different types of writing tasks that require them to work through the various stages independently to

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produce final, polished texts. Hence, according to the council of writing program administrators (2011: 8), teachers can help writers develop flexible processes by having students: –– practice all aspects of writing processes including invention, research, drafting, sharing with others, revising in response to reviews, and editing; –– generate ideas and texts using a variety of processes and situate those ideas within different academic disciplines and contexts; –– incorporate evidence and ideas from written, visual, graphic, verbal, and other kinds of texts; –– use feedback to revise texts to make them appropriate for the academic discipline or context for which the writing is intended; –– work with others in various stages of writing; and –– reflect on how different writing tasks and elements of the writing process contribute to their development as a writer. Unfortunately, not all teachers are capable of foreseeing these changes and fostering the above-mentioned skills, which seriously impedes successful course teaching. On the other hand, most teachers teach the way they were taught to teach. Moreover, some believe that creating active learning experiences is extremely time-intensive, and cannot be implemented due to the number of days consumed by the need to keep up with research, serve on endless committees, and so on (Buller & Cipriano, 2015: 2). In the light of this, I believe that the current book accompanied by a series of workshops will be a good tool to level up the teaching of AW & IL among the instructors globally.

 hat We Expect, and What We Are W Expected To? Enjoying our teaching will not only benefit our students but may actually combat the negative effects (see Chap. 3) of the current academic climate (Berg & Seeber, 2016: 40). But, as I always mention, the academic

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climate is mostly created by us—stakeholders. While university authorities create a positive climate for its staff, teachers/instructors are those who create a positive climate in their classes. And this positive climate should be established from the first day. “A good beginning makes a good ending”—they say.

The first class is the most important in establishing a positive atmosphere for the students. If we turn to our syllabi, many of us will find: “Intro class & syllabus discussion” in the first lines of the semester agenda. Students should know what to expect and what they are expected to do from the very first class. Your introduction lesson is a basement for a bridge to be constructed between you and your students. Students always want to know who you are, your background, and whether you are “eligible” enough to be their teacher. They may not ask you these questions, but they do want to know it, and the way you relate your educational background to what you teach them will constitute their degree of trust in you. Don’t stay indifferent: let them talk from the first class. After you ask their names and reveal their major, question them on what they expect from your class and what they need to acquire at the end of the term. This will make it possible to understand your learners’ interests and needs, as well as make them believe that their opinions matter to you. Some 8–10 minutes of syllabus discussion is important. Do not expect your students to read it carefully before they come to class. Even if they do, your clarification would remain crucial. Make sure that the students understand the grading criteria and their class-related responsibilities, because this is what later may cause misunderstanding and even some arguments between you and your student (see Chap. 4). Students should clearly understand the role of technology (see Chap. 2) for the AW & IL class since some of the students may need help from the student academic support services (see Chap. 8). Additionally, they should be aware of the necessity to distinguish information literacy from digital literacy (see Chap. 5), though today, both are integral parts of academic writing. The acknowledgment of group work is equally important. The supporters of the individualistic approach should understand that teamwork is a key soft skill a new generation should possess (see Chap. 6).

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Despite some common issues reflected in the syllabus, each of us constructs it differently due to the university requirements or some other factors. Yet, we will all probably share such important rubrics as course descriptions, learning objectives, grading policy, and assignments. Describe the course and explain the learning objectives. Students should understand what they are here for, and what sort of knowledge and skills they are going to possess at the end of the course. Rose (2007: 4) believes that understanding the course flow as well as its objectives will help students feel in control of the situation and concentrate on the important areas of the course. It is also appropriate to consider carefully each writing assignment and how it fits into the instructional plan for the course (White, 2007: 10). Make sure the assignments you select for this particular class correspond to students’ needs. AW & IL is a wide discipline and we can approach it from many different angles offering a huge variety of (written) assignments. The assignments you include in the syllabus should be either specific or general, both being dependent on the specificity of your class and students’ general needs. It is true that all of us want students who are enthusiastic about the material and appreciative of our efforts to make it clear. At the same time, all students want teachers who are enthusiastic about the material and appreciate their efforts to comprehend it (Berg & Seeber, 2016: 33). To achieve this, first, we need to carefully consider the materials and include all tiny items that may become a source of debate in the future. Berg and Seeber (2016), for instance, find it important to include “classroom etiquette” into the syllabus while I believe that grading policy should be carefully described in the syllabus and uttered in the class (see Chap. 7). In one word, tell your students what you expect from them and try to understand what they expect from you. Above all, today as we all deal with a number of international students of various backgrounds coming from different environments, a positive atmosphere of adaptation should be created for them. It is quite natural that every country as well as every university has its rules and regulation to be followed. In this respect, campus and local communities need to provide a welcoming environment to support student integration and a positive quality of life (Arthur & Popadiuk, 2015: 47). And in line with the university responsible for orientation sessions and other events to accommodate the students, instructors should also create a positive classroom atmosphere from the very first day.

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Chapter Highlights • Writing competence is a gateway to academic success. • AW & IL is of crucial importance in fostering soft skills among university students. • Academic writing represents a key focus of instruction in a variety of disciplines. • Presently, AW & IL is a stand-alone discipline with its own program and teaching methodology. • There is no output without input. Hence, reading is key to having a written production. • The AW & IL in its current state stays on three pillars: the course content, technological outfit, and the AW & IL content itself. • Incorporation of technology in the teaching of AW & IL comes from such processes as CALL and DL. • A competent AW & IL instructor comes from a Linguistic background with a firm framework of their own writing experiences. • The first AW & IL class is important to establish an atmosphere conducive to productive teacher–student cooperation.

References Allison, H. (2008). High school academic literacy instruction and the transition to college writing. In M. Roberge, M. Siegal, & L. Harklau (Eds.), Generation 1.5 in college composition (pp. 75–91). Routledge. Arthur, N., & Popadiuk, N. (2015). International students’ wellbeing, relationship, and quality of life. In M. A. Henning, C. U. Krägeloh, & G. Wong-Toi (Eds.), Students motivation and quality of life in higher education (pp. 47–56). Routledge. Aşık, A., Köse, S., Yangın Ekşi, G., Seferoğlu, G., Pereira, R., & Ekiert, M. (2020). ICT integration in English language teacher education: Insights from Turkey, Portugal and Poland. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 33(7), 708–731. Azim, J. (2018). A brief overview of key issues in second language writing teaching and research. International Journal of Education and Literacy studies, 6(2), 15–25. Berg, M., & Seeber, B. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press. Buller, J., & Cipriano, R. (2015). A toolkit for college professors. Rowman and Littlefield.

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Buoncristiani, M., & Buoncristiani, P. (2012). Developing mindful students, skilful thinkers, thoughtful schools. Corwin. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project. (2011). Framework for success in postsecondary writing. Available at: https://ncte.org/statement/collwriting framework/ Danberg, R. (2015). Teaching writing while standing on one foot. Sense. Friedrich, P. (2008). Teaching academic writing. Continuum. Gottschalk, K., & Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The elements of teaching writing. US. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. Edwin Arnold. Harper, R., & Orr Vered, K. (2017). Developing communication as a graduate outcome: using ‘Writing Across the Curriculum’ as a whole-of-institution approach to curriculum and pedagogy. Higher Education Research & Development, 36(4), 688–701. Herring, J. (2011). Improving students web use & information literacy. Facet Publishing. Hsu, L. (2013). English as a foreign language learners’ perception of mobile assisted language learning: A cross-national study. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 26(3), 197–213. Hubbard, P. (2009). Educating the CALL specialist. International Journal of Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 3(1), 3–15. Hyland, K. (1993). ESL computer writers: What can we do to help? System, 21(1), 21–30. Hyland, K. (2016). In P. Shaw (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes (1st ed.). Routledge. Kibler, A. (2013). Doing like almost everything wrong. In L. C. de Oliveira & T. Silva (Eds.), L2 writing in secondary classrooms (pp. 44–65). Routledge. Killen, R. (2007). Effective teaching strategies: Lessons from research and information services. Libraries Unlimited. Lea, M., & Street, B. V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23, 157–172. Monippally, M., & Pawar, B. S. (2010). Academic writing. A guide for management students and researchers. Response. Moore, S., Neville, C., Murphy, M., & Connolly, C. (2010). The ultimate study skills handbook. Open University Press.

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Otto, S.  E. K., & Pusack, J.  P. (2009). Computer-assisted language learning authoring issues. The Modern Language Journal, 93, 784–801. Oxford, R. (2006). Effects of technology-enhanced language learning on second language composition. Hispania, 89(2), 358–361. Paltridge, B. (2009). Teaching academic writing: An introduction for teachers of second language writers. University of Michigan Press. Ramon-Casas, M., Nuño, N., Pons, F., & Cunillera, T. (2019). The different impact of a structured peer-assessment task in relation to university undergraduates’ initial writing skills. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(5), 653–663. Rogers, R. (2002). Between context: A critical analysis of family literacy, discursive practices, and literate subjectivities. Reading Research Quarterly, 37, 248–277. Rose, J. (2007). The mature student’s guide to writing. Palgrave Macmillan. Russell, D. R. (1991). Writing in the academic disciplines: A curricular history. Southern Illinois University Press. Silvia, P. (2007). How to write a lot? American Psychological Association. Sparks, R. L., Patton, J., & Murdoch, A. (2014). Early reading success and its relationship to reading achievement and reading volume: Replication of ‘10 years later’. Reading & Writing, 27, 189–211. Swales, J.  M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press. White, E. (2007). Assigning, responding, evaluating: A writing teacher’s guide. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Zheng, L., Bhagat, K. K., Zhen, Y., & Zhang, X. (2020). The effectiveness of the flipped classroom on students’ learning achievement and learning motivation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 23(1), 1–15.

2 Acknowledged Digital Era

Having evolved from extensive use of technology in present-day teaching, an acknowledged digital era in education stands for a new form of teaching and learning various disciplines. Defining a digital environment, this chapter walks the reader through different types of digital classes, that is, classrooms that are immersed in technology, including blended and hybrid classrooms, as well as online platforms used as a means of realization of those classes. The chapter gives count to multimodal and digital approaches in modern education and focuses on the involvement of such digital tools as apps, websites, cloud services, social media, mobile technologies, and others in the teaching and learning process. In turn, the digitalization of AW & IL will constitute the backbone of the book applied to the pedagogy of AW & IL.

Technology-Integrated Education Integration of technology in education has been widely discussed by scholars within the last three or four decades. A large body of literature suggests that the first use of technology in education traces back to 1960–1970, a post-war time, and implements such tools as film strips, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_2

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slide projectors, language laboratories, audiotapes, and television (Gregory & Lodge, 2015). The utilization of technology in teaching and learning has been differently termed by scholars at each stage of the timeline. In many cases, we come across computer-assisted language learning (CALL) that takes its roots from the 1960s and studies the application of the computer into the teaching of language (Higgins, 1983). Later in the early 1980s, few articles were discussing intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL), which referred primarily to the fields like natural language processing, educational technology, and CALL without the “I”—that is, computer-assisted language learning that does not attempt to use so-called artificial intelligence techniques (Bailin, 1995). Already in the 1990s, technology-integrated language learning (TELL) emerged as an alternative to CALL. As mentioned in the first chapter, academic writing and information literacy as a stand-alone discipline appeared from the EFL; hence, it is not by accident that I refer to the integration of technology into the teaching of language at earlier times. Today, as a result of societal, political, economic, and technological development that has a global effect, technology has completely restructured and reformed education (Anderson, 1995). Hence, the problem of integrating technology into the teaching and learning process has become a perennial one. Common excuses for the limited use of technology to support instruction include a shortage of computers, lack of computer skills, and computer intimidation. While these could affect the success of technology integration, it should be acknowledged that the degree of success teachers have in using technology for instruction could depend in part on their ability to explore the relationship between pedagogy and technology (Okojie et  al., 2006). In this respect, it is highly recommended that to be effective in education, information and communication technology (ICT) must be fully integrated into the pedagogy. According to Avidov-Ungar and Amir (2018), technology should not be regarded as its own discipline, but rather integrated into the pedagogy and content of teaching. Good technology-integrated teaching includes three components: content, pedagogy, and technology, and the effectiveness of the integration depends on the inter-relationships between them. In this vein, the current book does not see these three as separate

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components of academic writing and information literacy teaching, but as complementary ones aimed to commonly bring effective outcomes. The exploitation of technology in the teaching of academic writing and information literacy plays a paramount role. However, instructors should be certain of their technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge—TPACK (Avidov-Ungar & Amir, 2018). As Oxford (2006) puts it, “communication through writing … is a desirable tool”; yet, teaching writing is a complex, time-consuming endeavor in any language, that is why technology may provide a viable scaffold to support writing instruction for teachers and students. Moreover, universities do not stay indifferent to the process of globalization and change, creating a transdisciplinary environment where instructors of technology and other fields may interact (Aneas, 2015). While some scholars (Higgins, 1983; Bailin, 1995; Anderson, 1995) predicted that the opportunity of technology in study design would reach up to 50 percent by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the process of digitalization in the first two decades of the current century has been steadily embracing many educational institutions. Thus, the following sections will be addressing the key components of digitalization.

 hat Do We Know About Digital W Environments? Digital Environment has turned into a key habitat for many people in civilized societies. Among major components of a digital environment are mobile apps, websites, search engines, social media, audio and video resources, web-based resources, and cloud services. Key digital environments are digital business environments, digital communication environments, digital social environments, digital learning environments, and others. According to Reid Chassiakos and Stager (2020), today, adolescents, who constitute the future generation of a progressive world, are immersed in a digital environment. Traditional media, such as radio, television, films, and magazines have been eclipsed by digital media, such as apps, games, and virtual reality, viewed through mobile tablets,

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smartphones, and headsets. Teens no longer need to be passive media consumers; these new technologies have expanded the opportunities for teens to communicate, engage, learn, and create. In educational contexts today, we can see many advantages with digital tools, and how technology can support teaching, learning, and assessment (Wikström & Eklöf, 2019). While the growing use of educational technologies is evident in all levels of formal education, it is perhaps in higher education that some of the most profound changes are taking place (Lodge et al., 2020). There is a broad consensus that digitalization can promote educational quality: it can enhance professionalism, student activity, improve the quality of students’ digital skills, and, in a broader sense, the quality of their schooling and therefore their lives in general (Engeness, 2021). Students are increasingly engaging in their studies in “blended”, “flipped”, or online modes with significant proportions of the learning activities they undertake occurring in digital environments (Lodge et al., 2020). As technology continues to impact the ways in which students learn, it also will continue to impact the ways in which teachers and students interact with each other and with content (Lodge et al., 2020). In this respect, both teachers and students are expected to be profound users of educational digital technologies, teachers being also engaged in the design of digital learning environments to adapt to the needs of the students. Such digital environments are online courses (e.g. Massive Open Online Courses—MOOCs), learning management systems (LMS), and various applications (Engeness, 2021). Having addressed Galperin’s pedagogical theory, Engeness (2021) distinguishes the following design principles (DP) of digital environments aimed to enhance students’ learning capacities: DP 1: When designing a digital environment, it seems important to identify the target concept about which students need to develop their understanding based on their prior knowledge and skills. DP 2: If a learning activity is to adequately assist the development of students’ learning and their understanding of the learning process, students should be engaged in the construction of a digital environment;

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DP 3: The overview of the entire activity, termed by Galperin as the “operational scheme of thinking”, might be integrated into digital environments to enhance students’ understanding of the learning process they engage in. DP 4: Some resources to assist the development of learners’ conceptual understanding should be presented in the materialized form (digital resources, animations, etc.). Students’ experience from interactions with the materialized resources is transferred through collaborative interactions to the internal plane of the learner (materialized action— communicative thinking—dialogical thinking—acting mentally). DP 5: The phase of communicative thinking urges to create premises for social interactions in digital environments (e.g. discussion forums and collaborative video meetings). DP 6: The role of feedback as well as facilitation of the learning process by teachers need to be accounted for in the design: feedback provided to students in digital environments might assist them to develop their conceptual understanding and enhance their understanding of how to go about learning. According to the University of Wisconsin System, a digital learning environment fosters the following improvements for the three stakeholder groups: 1. Instructors—increased collaboration and sharing of expertise and resources among instructors, thereby reducing redundancy and spurring innovation; 2. Students—a “one-stop” resource environment alleviates the disparate nature of accessing teaching and learning tools and services, thereby increasing retention rates and improving student learning outcomes; 3. Administration—reduces and standardizes infrastructure, improves support, and provides cross-institution opportunities for common practices, thereby freeing up resources for innovations in teaching and learning. In the next sections, we will try to touch upon major components of digitalization used in present-day classes.

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Digital Citizenship Education is central to the process of creating citizens (Pedersen et al., 2018). However, due to a digital paradigm of the existing reality, citizenship has acquired a new connotation. Digital citizenship is the notion of teaching students about media literacy and safe and responsible Internet use (Gleason & von Gillern, 2018). Moreover, digital citizenship is not just teaching learners about the appropriate use of social media but helping them learn and model good behavior by integrating social media into the learning process where appropriate. Digital citizenship manifests itself in many ways (Gleason & von Gillern, 2018). While many young people are savvy at communicating their values and influencing the attitudes and behaviors of their peers with social media, secondary educators also have a role and opportunity to help their students develop skills that enhance students’ ability to identify problems, create persuasive media, and strategically distribute this media to their peers and communities (Gleason & von Gillern, 2018). The acknowledgment of digital citizenship in academic writing and information literacy class seems particularly important as it deals with the two key issues involved with responsible Internet use: plagiarism and cyberbullying, both being essential in the sense of multimodality, digital literacy, and academic integrity. There needs to be an awareness of these matters in the classroom and clear policies when dealing with offenses. The scale of the digital citizenship profile is leveled by information literacy as it provides access and means to build the required knowledge. This includes conceptacles to evaluate information sources. Instructional practices could support the dissemination of credible information through integrating relevant practices across the curriculum and authentic tasks (Atif & Chou, 2018: 152) further discussed in this book. Finally, education for digital citizenship is not simply a matter of information, knowledge, and know-how. It is also a matter of interpersonal and inherently ethical relations, of how we think about and behave towards others, particularly those who differ from us in their race, religion, class, and the like (Kymlicka, 2002).

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Academic Writing and Technology As mentioned earlier, the development and diffusion of information and communication technologies have dramatically transformed the way people write. On the one hand, written interaction, for example via email or text messages, has both supplemented and supplanted forms of communication previously conducted orally. On the other hand, blogs, wikis, and social media have given much more to people in the sense of experiencing authorship and publication that previous generations could only imagine (De Oliveira & Silva, 2013: 104). While technology access via laptops and other devices can have positive effects on the amount of time that students practice writing, specific modes of computer-mediated communication—either synchronous forms, such as instant messaging, or asynchronous forms such as email or discussion forums—can also help increase student participation in writing (Ito et al., 2009: 105, as cited in De Oliveira & Silva, 2013). Numerous investigations have found multimedia use to be potentially motivating for young writers. Using software to compose and illustrate their stories, students may write more and experience “less fatigue than with pen and paper” (Warschauer, 2008: 60, as cited in De Oliveira & Silva, 2013). Academic writing requires practice. Access to technology may improve student engagement, thereby increasing time spent on the task (De Oliveira & Silva, 2013: 105). It is also clear that keeping students engaged in the course material can often be a challenge. Since increasing numbers of students are using laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones for note-taking and as replacements for traditional textbooks, it is important for faculty members to explore ways of making these devices an integral part of the learning process, rather than a mere distraction (Buller & Cipriano, 2015: 37). Dunne and Owen (2013) illustrate the creation of a Facebook group used by students to answer any queries from classmates, such as assignment due dates, how to go about re-sitting, if necessary, and other administrative issues. Facebook was selected since it was a daily-used platform. An example of a student who had missed many of the classes and wanted to know how to go about resuming the module, without potentially being reprimanded by the tutor. Today, there are

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many more platforms, both daily-used and educational, able to provide a space for the stakeholders to collaborate and communicate.

Multimodality The word multimodality has been extensively used in education within the last decades. However, many educators might not be aware of the factual meaning of multimodality, as there is no exact definition of the term. In fact, multimodality refers to the various sources—among them, images, sounds, document design, and graphics—that authors tap to create meaning in all kinds of text (Multimodality, 2014). According to Smith et  al. (2011), there are three major affordances in multimodal discourse: 1. access to the audio, visual, somatic, and other data in a variety of formats; 2. the capacity to annotate the data within the same environment in which one accesses the data, via an annotation interface, and store these analyses in a database; 3. the capacity to retrieve, interrogate, present and share one’s analyses in a variety of relations to one another in the template interface. Turning to AW & IL, as more texts become available in digital form, users access information in different ways that have potentially profound ramifications for reading and writing (Luke, 2003). Although the fundamental principles of reading and writing have not changed, the process has shifted from the serial cognitive processing of linear print text to the parallel processing of multimodal text-image information sources. Luke (2003) enumerates some examples of multimodality: pencil and paper writing has been replaced by keyboarding and, increasingly, iconic button click writing. Text and meaning are no longer embedded exclusively in a linear sequence of alphabetic characters. Hypertext embeds text-­ image and links. In other words, print-based reading and writing are and always have been multimodal. They require the interpretation and design of visual marks, space, color, font or style, and, increasingly image, and

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other modes of representation and communication (Carey, 2005). Students in writing class can expect to compose texts requiring multimodality, ranging from print texts with “minimal” multimodality—words, layout, and font size and style—to blogs with a fuller multimodal representation—including images, photos, banners, words, and podcasts (Multimodality, 2014). Moreover, multimodality and multimodal literacy have been researched as a goal of literacy education aimed to promote learning (Weninger, 2021). Finally, digital technologies make multimodality both more visible and easier to employ (Multimodality, 2014).

Digital Approach to Teaching Educators today are gradually developing online tools, making the classes more and more digitalized. This is definitely the right way to get prepared for a digitally native generation we will be hosting within the next decade. Digital natives have been exposed to the Internet since childhood. Thus, the Internet can be a valuable tool to gain their attention and spark their interest in the discipline (Moustafa, 2017). According to Moustafa (2017), digitalization takes place in the light of the following: –– blended learning approach, which is a hybrid of online and face-to-­ face classes; –– another approach is to take advantage of the different digital tools on your university website or free tools online; –– instructors can also direct students to online materials in the library collection to use for their own research; –– instructors can also use the Internet to emphasize the value of primary sources; –– professors can also use the Internet to encourage student engagement in class. Finally, “we are in a time where almost every element of our lives is online. Students are online through their computers, phones, and TVs. They go online to talk to families and friends via Skype. They follow friends via Facebook,

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Twitter, and Instagram. Therefore, instructors [ ] should use digital technology and online sources more to communicate with this generation of students. Our teaching tools need to adapt to the technology that is used by our students to support their needs and attract them to our discipline.” (Moustafa, 2017)

 igital Classes and Learning Management D Systems Top Hat Glossary (tophat.com/glossary) defines a digital classroom as typically one that incorporates electronic devices and software into the learning environment. A digital classroom is where a physical classroom extends into a digital space. A digital classroom refers to a classroom that is fully immersed in technology. These classrooms rely on educational apps and websites to enhance student learning, mainly known as LMS (Learning Management System). LMSs are defined as online learning technologies for the creation, management, and delivery of course materials. It acts as a repository of information and as a communication mechanism between students and lecturers (Brady & O’Reilly, 2020; Turnbull et al., 2021). LMSs have changed the roles of teachers from knowledge transmitters to facilitators, having implications for individual lecturers in terms of teaching style, classroom management approaches and abilities, and digital skills (Brady & O’Reilly, 2020). Moreover, the authors claim that the materials are stored on an organizational-level repository and consequently, the academic creator no longer has full control over these materials. Multiple copies of the materials exist: on the lecturer’s own desktop and laptop, on the LMS server, in university LMS archives, and on multiple student laptops and other devices. Among the most popular LMS are Blackboard, Edmodo, eFront, Moodle, and so on. Digitalization of classes is also fulfilled through the Video Conferencing Software (VCS) and online platforms. The most outstanding VCS are Blackboard Collaborate, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, WebEx Meetings, Zoom, and so on. The most popular online educational platforms (MOOCs) are Coursera, Duolingo, Future Learn, LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare, Udemy, and so on. In this respect, it is no longer possible to teach AW & IL without the implementation of these digital facilities into the teaching and learning process.

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Online Bichronous Classes Digital classes can be both synchronous and asynchronous in nature. Synchronous class foresees a teacher as a facilitator of the course that takes place at a specific time on a specific web link, LMS, or a web conference program. The key advantage of synchronous classes is the immediacy of interaction among the course participants as well as timely feedback provided. Asynchronous courses take place on a certain LMS and have no scheduled meeting time. Since the communication of the stakeholders does not take place in real-time, all course participants, as well as facilitators, interact at different times based on their personal schedules. The convenience of access is one of the advantages of the asynchronous class. The participants are flexible to log in whenever they want with respect to the time zones, their study preferences, and their pace of work. Additionally, asynchronous classes are good for fostering the culture of personalized learning that has acquired vast popularity within the last decade. Depending on the type of your course, its objectives, and estimated outcomes, you can always decide whether your students will benefit from the synchronous or asynchronous class. However, recently many educators have chosen a Bichronous form of teaching, merging their course into a synchronous and asynchronous mode.

Hybrid Class The possibility of being always connected to the Internet and/or the mobile network is increasingly blurring the borderline between physical and digital spaces, introducing a new concept of space, known as “hybrid” (Trentin, 2016). Hybrid education is such crossbreeding of different dimensions like online and on-site, digital and analog, formal and informal. Hybridity within education is the acknowledgment of otherness and difference as something productive (Pedersen et al., 2018). Hybrid spaces are dynamic spaces created by the constant movement of users carrying portable devices which are continuously connected to the Internet and other users (Trentin, 2016). In other words, hybrid learning is based on traditional learning that allows the use of technology both in-class and

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outside it. The technology used may range from the students’ personal devices up to classroom equipment that leads to digitalization of teaching and learning.

Blended Class Blended course design, which is “a systematic combination of co-present (face-to-face) interactions and technologically-mediated interactions between students, teachers, and learning resources” (Bliuc et al., 2007: 234), has been increasingly adopted in the higher education sector worldwide (Han & Ellis, 2021). Garrison (1988) defines such learning as a balanced approach between teacher-centered relationships found in face-­ to-­face education and the tendency to stress learner-centered relationships in the emerging electronic environment. Although, in the beginning, the blend had essentially involved a twinning of Moodle and classroom teaching, by the later stages a new generation of tools added diversity to the enactment of blended learning approaches (Breen, 2018). Today, the term “blended learning” is taken as synonymous with the integration of classroom instruction and web-based technologies (Breen, 2018). Teachers see the blended and fully online space as a tremendous opportunity for flexible learning. From this perspective, students are free to use journal articles, eBooks, websites, and documents easily accessible via laptops, computers, and even their mobile phones.

Flipped Class Flipped learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter (Flipped Learning Network, 2014). A flipped classroom is also called an “inverted classroom” or “reversed instruction”. The major component of a flipped classroom involves reversing what happens in the classroom with what happens out of the classroom as compared with a typical lecture-style class. In a traditional classroom, the instructor delivers content during

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class to the students via direct instruction. Outside of class, students are to work on homework assignments, often independently. In the flipped (inverted) classroom this is reversed. The learners watch the content videos at home and solve problems in the class (Zheng et al., 2020). Students come to class having already gained basic content knowledge from sources such as videos and books. Instructors can then turn face-to-face contact with students from a time to lecture to an opportunity to actively engage students in the learning process (Love et al., 2015). In a flipped classroom teacher of a course serves in many roles that may include subject matter expert, instructional designer, and media developer. The role of learners in the flipped classroom is to use self-directed learning methods to review and critically consider materials outside of class, and then actively apply what was learned in a collaborative class environment. The advantages of a flipped design are that the teacher becomes more of a mentor or guide for learning, rather than a disseminator of information. In addition, learners can process the content at different speeds, helping them become more responsible for their learning. Technology serves as the major tool to implement a flipped approach to teaching.

HyFlex Class The HyFlex (hybrid + flexible) model combines face-to-face and online modes to provide flexibility for students to participate in the best mode for them (face-to-face, online synchronously, or asynchronously) (Miller et al., 2021; Vilhauer, 2021). HyFlex sees teachers teaching students at the same time in a physical classroom and synchronously online through videoconferencing software (Kohnke & Moorhouse, 2021). According to Beatty (2019), HyFlex is based on four values: –– Learner Choice: The learner chooses their mode of participation (face-­ to-­face, online, synchronously, or asynchronously) and can change that mode as often as necessary throughout the course. –– Equivalency: All learning opportunities, no matter the mode offered, lead students to meet the learning outcomes for the course. –– Reusability: Students in different modes can access the outcomes of the learning opportunities for students in another mode, for example, discussion board posts, Padlet, Google Docs, or course recordings.

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–– Accessibility: Students are provided the tools and skills and participate in all the participation modes offered. In other words, HyFlex classes have emerged in response to some physical limitations and constitute a new normal teaching and learning environment.

Digital Tools Digital Tools are programs, websites, online resources, mobile technologies, apps, social media, search engines, and some others. Below, we will try to understand what each of them is used for, and how we can benefit from these tools.

Mobile Technologies Advanced mobile devices such as “smart” cellular telephones are very popular among people primarily because they are wireless and portable. These functionalities enable users to communicate while on the move. The popularity of these devices is therefore a consequence of their ability to function at multiple levels (El-Hussein & Cronje, 2010). Handheld smartphones are commonly used for socializing, communication, and academic purposes. Many students believe that smartphones facilitate their learning process through quick access to online dictionaries, university library pages, universal search engines, and personal e-mails. Similarly, smartphone functions like note-taking, on-screen reading, taking photos of the whiteboard and/or smartboard (see the Photo 2.1), and recording oral presentations can contribute to increased learning productivity, boosting student motivation (Mammadova, 2018). Mobile learning stands for learning via mobile devices such as basic mobile phones, e-readers, smartphones, and tablet computers. These devices are digital, easily portable, lightweight, pocket-sized, and mobile, usually owned and controlled by an individual rather than an institution, able to access the

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Photo 2.1

Internet and other networks. Wi-Fi connectivity and the availability of the WhatsApp application, in particular, strengthen students’ peer support, communication skills, and capacity for teamwork (Mammadova, 2018). One of the major trends with respect to mobile devices is Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) that allows the learners to make a free choice regarding the device they want to use to enable interaction with content.

Apps In the most common context, mobile applications are defined as a type of application designed to run on a mobile device, which can be a smartphone or tablet computer. Educational mobile apps provide an added value from the perspective of the responsible teachers and administration and promise to overcome obstacles such as technological problems, additional technical skills, and further challenges with respect to privacy and security

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issues (Khaddage et al., 2016). A mobile app can be used across a variety of subjects in and outside of classrooms. They are capable of running on the learner’s mobile device to deliver learning that can offer skills in a hybrid/ blended-learning environment, where the main focus is on the required skills regardless of how they are obtained, formally or informally. Today, there is a huge number of educational applications that help students and instructors develop certain skills and habits. Among the most common applications are Due, Evernote, CamScanner, Duolingo, Khan Academy, Quizlet, Google Drive, Google Classroom, Kahoot, Nearpod, Mentimeter, and many others. For academic writing purposes, we can always apply to Popplet, Writing Challenge, Clean Writer, Pages, Sentence Builder, and many others.

Websites The World Wide Web (WWW) has become an indispensable part of daily life for many professionals. With an Internet connection, one can complete a variety of tasks online in mere minutes that would require significantly more time and effort otherwise (Kurt, 2019). The Internet, an emerging medium, offers unprecedented opportunities and exciting avenues for science education. The accessibility to a huge interlinked and complex network of information as well as the availability of novel communication means offer new ways to use scientific information, communicate, and learn (Nachmias & Tuvi, 2001). The possibility to contribute to or access online libraries, databases, journals, museums, and other public information repositories on the Internet may therefore qualitatively affect science education (Nachmias & Tuvi, 2001). The WWW is also increasingly becoming a creation environment. A considerable number of userfriendly tools for the creation of web-deliverable materials are currently available. These tools may support students’ creativity and initiative, allowing them to generate and publish their own websites without mediators and with minimal technical assistance (Nachmias & Tuvi, 2001). Likewise, websites are extensively used in AW & IL classes, providing an access to the recent materials and user-friendly platforms aimed to facilitate teaching and learning. Ensuring Web accessibility requires the removal of barriers and obstacles so that all individuals are equally able to participate in the online space. Equality of access means, then, that everyone who desires to

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take advantage of all that the Internet has to offer can do so, regardless of their particular circumstances, needs, and preferences (level of ability/disability, age, education level, equipment being utilized, and preferred platform, whether that be desktop, mobile phone, or tablet). Equality of access is particularly critical with respect to education because having the ability to use the Web is quickly becoming a non-negotiable requirement, and a fundamental part of the educational experience (Kurt, 2019).

Search Engines Using the Internet to find information is almost always time-consuming for both teachers and students, and finding a good search engine that suits your purpose will undoubtedly lighten the workload (Broad, 2003). However, considering that the World Wide Web is rich in information, both reliable and not, it makes the search process harder than it may seem at first sight. In their paper, Broad (2003) distinguishes some features of the search engines, such as topic categorization and strategy development. According to the author, search engines work by organizing materials into categories. This is done in four ways: reviewed, non-reviewed, crawlers, and metacrawlers. In this vein, Chen et al. (2021) suggest using collocations to achieve better search results. In other words, search engines being essential for information literacy classes, AW & IL instructors should address the contemporary studies/research on the use of search engines to establish a certain culture of their usage.

Social Media The emerging literature on academics’ use of social media tells us how differently forms of social media are employed (Guerin et  al., 2020). Researchers (Lupton et  al. 2018; Guerin et  al., 2020, etc.) categorize social media into: 1 . social networking (LinkedIn, Facebook, ResearchGate, Academia.edu); 2. social bookmarking and reference management (Mendeley, Zotero); 3. social data sharing (figshare, SlideShare); 4. video (YouTube);

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5. wikis (Wikispaces); 6. blogging (WordPress, Wix); 7. microblogging (Twitter). Alternatively, having referred to various authors, Greenhow and Lewin (2016) contend that technological advancements and pedagogies that emphasize learners as co-producers of knowledge have contributed to people’s adoption of the term “social media” to indicate websites and online applications that enable users to create and participate in various communities through functions such as communicating, sharing, collaborating, publishing, managing, and interacting. The authors summarize the following features of social media: typical social media features promote individual users through profile pages (e.g., displaying likes, comments, recommendations); social media features include interconnections with other users through links and news feeds, and sharing of user-generated content (e.g., photos, ratings, tags); pages can be dynamically updated and content embedded (e.g., embedding a video). Examples of social media include social network sites (e.g., Facebook); wikis (e.g., Wikispaces); media-sharing services (e.g., YouTube); blogging tools (e.g., Blogger); micro-blogging services (e.g., Twitter); social bookmarking (e.g., Delicious); bibliographic management tools (e.g., Zotero); and presentation-sharing tools (e.g., Slideshare).

Cloud Services Recently, many educators have suggested the practicality and utility of online writing platforms and applications and realize the benefits of integrating technology into writing instruction (Yim et  al., 2014). This is what we actually discuss in this book. According to Yim et al. (2014), cloud-based technology has become increasingly popular due to its accessibility, convenient interface, and sharing features that may support efficient collaboration. The authors define cloud computing as a networked computer system that harnesses the resources of several servers, thus allowing multiple users to access resources from different computers and collaborate in an online environment. Cloud-based platforms are extensively used to facilitate individual writing, process writing, and collaborative writing in particular.

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Chapter Highlights • Due to a global effect of societal, political, economic, and technological development, technology has completely restructured and reformed education. • A digital citizen is a digitally literate person responsible for the appropriate use of media and the Internet. • Accurate use and implementation of technology in AW & IL classes may increase students’ engagement to a great extent. • Multimodality refers to the various sources that include images, sounds, document design, and graphics. • Since we are to be dealing with the generation of digital natives who have been exposed to the Internet since childhood, we should think of ways to effectively exploit it in AW & IL classes. • A digital classroom is a class that is fully immersed in technology. • LMSs are online learning technologies for the creation, management, and delivery of course materials. • Synchronous classes are good in providing an immediate interaction among the course participants. • Asynchronous classes offer the participants the flexibility to log in with respect to the time zones, study preferences, and workplace. • Bichronous classes offer an effective combination of synchronous and asynchronous courses. • Hybrid learning is based on traditional learning that allows the use of technology both in class and out of it. • Blended learning is a combination of face-to-face interactions and technology-­mediated interactions (online) within a single course. • Flipped learning is an inverted class when the content of the course is delivered out of the classroom via technology while face-to-face meetings are used for content discussions, task implementation, case studies, and so on. • HyFlex class is a new opportunity for students to join the course either online or offline. • Digital Tools are programs, websites, online resources, mobile technologies, apps, social media, search engines, and others. • Mobile learning is learning via digital mobile devices such as mobile phones, e-readers, smartphones, portable tablets which are light, pocket-sized, and easily portable, usually owned and controlled by an individual. • Educational mobile apps are capable of running on learners’ mobile devices to deliver learning that can offer skills in hybrid or blended learning environments.

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References Anderson, L. D. (1995). Implementing the technology preparation (tech-prep) curriculum. The Journal of Technology Studies, 21(1), 48–58. Aneas, A. (2015). Transdisciplinary technology education: A characterization and some ideas for implementation in the university. Studies in Higher Education, 40(9), 1715–1728. Atif, Y., & Chou, C. (2018). Digital citizenship: Innovations in education, practice, and pedagogy. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 152–154. Avidov-Ungar, O., & Amir, A. (2018). Development of a teacher questionnaire on the use of ICT tools to teach first language writing. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31(7), 675–693. Bailin, A. (1995). Intelligent computer-assisted language learning: A bibliography. Computers and the Humanities, 29(5), 375–387. Beatty, B. J. (2019). Values and principles of hybrid-flexible course design. In B.  J. Beatty (Ed.), Hybrid-flexible course design. EdTech Books. https:// edtechbooks.org/hyflex/hyflex_values Bliuc, A. M., Goodyear, P., & Ellis, R. A. (2007). Research focus and methodological choices in studies into students’ experiences of blended learning in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 10(4), 231–244. Bradley, A., Smith, S. T., Podlasov, A., & O’Halloran, K. L. (2011). Analysing multimodality in an interactive digital environment: Software as a meta-­ semiotic tool. Social Semiotics, 21(3), 359–380. Brady, M., & O’Reilly, N. (2020). Learning management systems and their impact on academic work. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 29(3), 251–268. Breen, P. (2018). Blended learning’s consistent presence. In Developing educators for the digital age: A framework for capturing knowledge in action (pp. 127–142). : University of Westminster Press. Broad, J. (2003). Using search engines. Teaching Geography, 28(3), 118–121. Buller, J. L., & Cipriano, R. E. (2015). A toolkit for college professors. Rowman and Littlefield. Carey, J. (2005). Multimodality, ‘Reading’, and ‘Writing’ for the 21st century, discourse. Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(3), 315–331. Chen, H.  H., Lai, S., Lee, K., & Ting-Yu Yang, C. (2021). Developing and evaluating an academic collocations and phrases search engine for academic writers. Computer Assisted Language Learning. https://doi.org/10.108 0/09588221.2021.1937229

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Khaddage, F., Müller, W., & Flintoff, K. (2016). Advancing mobile learning in formal and informal settings via mobile app technology: Where to from here, and how? Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(3), 16–26. Kohnke, L., & Moorhouse, B. L. (2021). Adopting HyFlex in higher education in response to COVID-19: Students’ perspectives, open learning. The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 36(3), 231–244. Kurt, S. (2019). Moving toward a universally accessible web: Web accessibility and education. Assistive Technology, 31(4), 199–208. Kymlicka, W. (2002). Civil society and government: A Liberal-egalitarian perspective. In N. L. Rosenblum & R. C. Post (Eds.), Civil society and government (pp. 79–110). Princeton University Press. Lodge, J.  M., Kennedy, G., & Lockyer, L. (2020). Digital learning environments, the science of learning and the relationship between the teacher and the learner. In A.  Carroll, R.  Cunnington, & A.  Nugent (Eds.), Learning under the lens: Applying findings from the science of learning to the classroom (pp. 154–169). CRC Press. Love, B., Hodge, A., Corritore, C., Ernst, C., & D. C. (2015). Inquiry-based learning and the flipped classroom model. Primus, 25(8), 745–762. Luke, C. (2003). Pedagogy, connectivity, multimodality, and Interdisciplinarity. Reading Research Quarterly, 38(3), 397–403. Lupton, D., Mewburn, I., & Thomson, P. (2018). The Digital Academic: Critical Perspectives on Digital Technologies in Higher Education. London: Routledge. Mammadova, T. (2018). Smartphones and their role in the modern classroom. International Journal of Technologies in Higher Education, 15(2), 5–14. Miller, A. N., Sellnow, D. D., & Strawser, M. G. (2021). Pandemic pedagogy challenges and opportunities: Instruction communication in remote, HyFlex, and BlendFlex courses. Communication Education, 70(2), 202–204. Moustafa, L.  H. (2017). Teaching the digital natives. Review of Middle East Studies, 51(1), 45–49. Multimodality. (2014). College. Composition and Communication, 65(3), 506–506. Nachmias, R., & Tuvi, I. (2001). Taxonomy of scientifically oriented educational websites. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 10(1), 93–104. Okojie, M. C., Olinzock, A. A., & Okojie-Boulder, T. C. (2006). The pedagogy of technology integration. The Journal of Technology Studies, 32(1/2), 66–71. Oxford, R. (2006). Effects of technology-enhanced language learning on second language composition. Hispania, 89(2), 358–361.

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Pedersen, A. Y., Nørgaard, R. T., & Köppe, C. (2018). Patterns of inclusion: Fostering digital citizenship through hybrid education. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 225–236. Reid Chassiakos, Y., & Stager, M. (2020). Current trends in digital media: How and why teens use technology. In M.  A. Moreno & A.  J. Hoopes (Eds.), Technology and adolescent health: In schools and beyond (pp.  25–56). Academic Press. Smith, B. A., Tan, S., Podlasov, A., & O’Halloran, L. K. (2011). Analysing multimodality in an interactive digital environment: Software as a meta-semiotic tool. Social Semiotics, 21(3), 359–380. Top Hat Glossary. Available from: https://tophat.com/glossary/d/digital-­classroom Trentin, G. (2016). Always-on education and hybrid learning spaces. Educational Technology, 56(2), 31–37. Turnbull, D., Chugh, R., & Luck, J. (2021). Learning management systems: A review of the research methodology literature in Australia and China. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 44(2), 164–178. University of Wisconsin System. Available from: https://www.wisconsin.edu/ dle/strategy/ Vilhauer, H. (2021). Moving forward with HyFlex, SCHOLE. A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education, 1. https://doi.org/10.108 0/1937156X.2021.1984860 Warschauer, M. (2008). Laptops and literacy: A multi-site case study. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 3, 52–67. Weninger, C. (2021). Multimodality in critical language textbook analysis. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 34(2), 133–146. Wikström, C., & Eklöf, H. (2019). Educational assessment in digital environments: Insights from different assessment contexts. Education Inquiry, 10(1), 1–3. Yim, S., Warschauer, M., Zheng, B., & Lawrence, J.  F. (2014). Cloud-based collaborative writing and the common core standards. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(3), 243–254. Zheng, L., Bhagat, K. K., Zhen, Y., & Zhang, X. (2020). The effectiveness of the flipped classroom on students’ learning achievement and learning motivation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 23(1), 1–15.

3 Writing Is a Challenge

Despite a rapid shift in teaching AW & IL to a new digitalized reality, most of the challenges related to the current discipline remain the same. With this in mind, this chapter identifies the key problems students normally face in AW & IL classes and beyond. The chapter touches upon such nuances as procrastination, lack of motivation, lack of concentration, stress, distractions, deadlines, writer’s block, and many others that turn the writing process into a real torment. Building on international resources and personal teaching experience, the author explains how to tackle and overcome these difficulties, and how the digital environment may assist in mitigating these challenges.

Common Writing Problems Writing is often characterized as a hierarchically organized, goal-directed, problem-solving process that is said to consist of four main recursive processes—planning, writing, editing, and reviewing (Hartley, 2008: 10). However, ask your students which of these four processes they would like to implement. Maybe planning? Or, some may say the writing itself. It © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_3

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might be anything, but definitely not editing or reviewing. Students are mainly afraid of writing as soon as they understand that writing, particularly academic writing, is another set of certain steps that should follow certain rules; so, such a perception of the process of writing will inevitably end up with “poor writing”. “Writing can be hard” (Berg & Seeber, 2016), but the things which make it really hard, in fact, are all those inescapable challenges and steps that constitute the writing itself. Poor writing is something that the majority of students face when they start a course. Hansen and Hansen (1997) name a number of flaws that result in poor writing. These are poor organization, failure to support your thesis, misspelling, inadequate citation of sources, confusing sentence structure, typos, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, incorrect word usage, little evidence of research, and little evidence of understanding the topic. One would agree that writing requires the use of a variety of motor, cognitive, and affective skills, as one needs to decide what to say and how to say; apply keyboarding or handwriting to create a visible representation of intentions; make multiple judgments about how to frame the intentions into sentences; select just the right words to convey the intended meaning; ensure that words are correctly spelled and sentences are grammatically correct; continually evaluate and possibly revise the emerging message so it is forceful and clear, and rework the message until it views as persuasive and suitable (Graham & Harris, 2016). Fundamental literacy skills, including oral language fluency, transcription fluency, self-­ monitoring capacity, and reading fluency; content knowledge; regulation of attention; motivation and effort: all these are challenges a writer, particularly a student-writer, may face. Another nightmare for the writers is the understanding that they must satisfy gatekeepers. This process begins with instructors, mentors, or supervisors but soon involves external reviewers, editors, and funding agencies (Deane, 2018: 282). To add up to the writing challenges, Berg and Seeber (2016) distinguish writer’s block, procrastination, doubt, fatigue, and guilt as the main universal challenges that beset writers, whether mature ones or novice students. As a part of the EFL program, Gottschalk and Hjortshoj (2004) believe that a weak grasp of written English, inadequate instruction or the use of

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English as a foreign language, unfamiliarity with the assigned task, inappropriate methods, or lack of time for completing the task successfully may also result in poor writing. Additionally, today, the changes in the university climate have increased the expectations of research “output” while at the same time increasing overall workloads, making it more difficult than ever to set aside time in the face of the more immediate and tangible teaching and administrative demands (Berg & Seeber, 2016: 86). With the rapid expansion of technology in education, the requirements for writing are no longer the same. Good command of (digital) information literacy as well as the ability to use technical skills in writing turned into a puzzle for many students. No doubts that all these reasons may negatively impact students’ attitudes towards writing, making them find easy and devious ways to deal with the assignments. In the next sections, we will individually discuss the most common challenges, and try to find ways to overcome those challenges.

Motivation or Its Absence You won’t do it if you are not motivated to!

Writing is also about motivation. If there is nothing to motivate students for writing, they will not do it. Motivation may come in different forms (Zhou, 2015: 5), or simply may never come. Sobral (2004, as cited in Pinnock & Hazell, 2015: 183) defines motivation as the complex interaction between competing internal and external factors. It is the result of an individual’s basic psychological needs as directed towards an action or goal with an anticipated result. We all know that there is a small number of students who can set goals and motivate themselves. On the other hand, some students with self-determination indeed decide to engage with their studies, based on their personal values, aspirations, beliefs, and interests (Popenici, 2013: 32); however, this number is normally quite small. In the case of writing, students generally write for their teachers, or to be more precise for teacher-examiners (Melzer, 2014); and, I would

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dare say, “they write to get a grade”. Unfortunately, in most cases, grade stands as the primary motivator in the educational process. But times have changed! Students should understand that if some decades ago the only thing that mattered was a transcript, today, knowledge and skills matter. The more a graduate can offer to the employer, the better chances of getting a good job they have. Writing turned out to be the key skill that a qualified specialist should have. In this respect, presently, writing instructors have more responsibilities than just teaching a primitive structure of a descriptive or an argumentative essay. Turning to the question of motivation, there are ways that we, instructors, can do to increase students’ motivation towards writing. Bandura (1997), as cited in Silvia (2007), for instance, suggests that goal-setting may enhance motivation, that is, when people set concrete, short-term goals, they can see ways of achieving the goals and monitor how quickly they are moving toward their goals. Similarly, Zhou (2015: 6) states that motivation may also stem from a sense of achievement as a result of goal-setting. The goals may range from hourly goals for tasks that needed to be completed to long-term planning. Henning and Manalo (2015) distinguish motivational theories pertinent in higher education. The theory involves expectance-­value theory, achievement theory, and others that include such important personal skills as self-efficacy, goal-setting, self-­ determination, self-actualization, motivational engagement, and others. I will not go into detail about each theory; instead, I will be discussing some techniques to increase students’ motivation. One would agree that writing as a stand-alone discipline should never be a routine. A carefully selected course content is a key to an interesting course. Setting examples or telling your students a story of yourself as a learner and having interaction with different types of assignments (Danberg, 2015: 103) would always work well to motivate your students. In their paper, Alkiş and Temizel (2018: 35) discuss the role of motivation in online learning. The authors argue that high attrition rates are negative indicators of motivation. In addition, since the interaction between students and instructors is different in both online and blended learning environments, students may have different motivators, which affect their academic performance. Also, motivational factors and scales

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to measure students’ motivation for a specific course are different. The authors measure six motivational factors under three constructs: value construct; expectancy construct; and, affect construct. The value construct includes intrinsic goal orientation which refers to students’ perceptions of engaging in a learning task for a challenge, curiosity, or mastery. A high score of intrinsic goal orientation for an academic task indicates that the students participate in the task for themselves. Extrinsic goal orientation represents the extrinsic reasons for participating in a task such as achieving good grades, rewards, or gaining a competitive advantage over peers. Finally, task value refers to students’ perception of the extent to which the task is important and useful. As to the expectancy construct, the authors distinguish between the control of learning beliefs that refer to the extent to which the students believe that they can manage their efforts to learn, and this process will result in positive outcomes; and, self-efficacy for learning and performance that refer to the expectancies of the ability to accomplish a task. The affect construct is related to students’ negative thoughts that prevent their performance. With this in mind, we may consider some practical tips to motivate our students. No doubts that as writing instructors we have got some achievements to talk about. Why wouldn’t you show some of your published work? A Master’s thesis or a PhD dissertation, a novel, a scholarly article, a book review, or even a blog post would be good authentic material to inspire your students. Speak about the process and, mainly, of satisfaction that you get when you have your paper published. Don’t forget to tell about the advantages of having some publications in your professional life. Explain to your students that today, writing does not only remain an academic discipline; it goes far beyond and includes scholarly journal publications, book publications, work reports, newspaper publications, and many others that would definitely distinguish them “out of the crowd”. Make your classes task-based and use different types of assignments. Ask your students to volunteer in projects which can later reflect in their writing. Provide enough feedback. Respond timely to students’ e-mails and queries. Create structured and transparent grading criteria, using relevant rubrics and policies. These and many other techniques discussed in this book will help a lot to motivate your students.

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Lack of Interest Motivation and interest normally go hand-in-hand. If you have no interest, you will probably have no motivation. Berg and Seeber (2016) believe that allowing students to follow their own interests results in far more interesting and frequently fascinating papers and far fewer instances of plagiarism. However, if the instructor does not take into consideration students’ interests and needs, students are unlikely to produce interesting pieces of paper. Once again, the question of how to interest students comes into being. This question is particularly important when dealing with students of different backgrounds, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and even gender, as the simplest example. So, our main target is to find a common ground that could engage each student in our class. A carefully tailored methodology is another key factor in students’ engagement. Boring topic presentations followed by a routine writing assignment will definitely discourage the students. As mentioned earlier, students should understand that they are not writing just to get a grade but to meet a particular goal that may range from a simple blog publication to participation in a writing contest, or being published in an undergraduate journal. I remember my students were inspired by the idea that the university would be posting the best research paper on a university website (www.adawriteshistory.com). Hours spent on the research question selection, and then, intensive meetings during office hours resulted in outstanding papers, some of them being posted online. Instructors should stop saying “no” to something that they used to consider unacceptable. There is nothing wrong with using mobile phones or portable devices in class (Mammadova, 2018). Indeed, most countries have detailed strategies that encourage and support the use of digital devices to improve and modernize their educational systems (Aagaard, 2021). As writing becomes more and more digitalized, students should be accustomed to using technology for writing purposes. This will include using apps, dictionaries, websites, search engines, software, and even social media discussed in this book. In turn, the instructors should implement better proctoring and control to avoid any type of abuse.

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Distractions A small bird flying by the window is a source of my distraction.

Distractions are probably one of the key reasons for inattentive and poor writing. Distractions and interruptions have insidiously crept into our days, eroding our attention span and fostering a culture of discontinuity (Dewan, 2014: 94). We are so used to interruptions that we have become habituated to a fragmented work style (Dewan, 2014: 96), as well as fragmented writing. Issues like poor cohesion and coherence, typos, redundancy, choppy sentences, and many others are sourced in distractions. Dewan (2014) distinguishes some common distractions among which are irrelevant sounds, open-office design areas, technology mainly including computers with pop-up reminders, e-mail alerts, tweets, and chat messages; tablets and smartphones with their incoming text, phone calls, voice mails, low battery warning, and many others. Today’s traditional-aged college students are avid recreational users of mobile technology (Flanigan & Babchuk, 2020). However, leisure use of mobile technology does not end once students enter the classroom—a phenomenon commonly referred to as digital distraction (McCoy, 2016), or a trap. Research shows that students often use digital devices for off-­task purposes like instant messaging, meme-browsing, news-reading, and videowatching (Gaudreau et al., 2014). Scholars (Turel & Qahri-Saremi, 2016; Chen et al., 2020; Aagaard, 2021, etc.) contend that when students engage in distraction, this is to a large extent the result of automatic, unplanned, and impulsive processes. In this respect, comprehensive students use stumbling blocks to obstruct the automatic performance of digital distraction. In their study, Flanigan and Babchuk (2020) reveal that most instructors view the use of digital devices in the classroom for non-class purposes as an obstacle to classroom learning and implement technology policies into their syllabi to minimize student digital distraction. Instructors use a variety of strategies to enforce their policies including public and private verbal reprimands, removal from class, grade reduction, and many others. However, we should never forget that the forbidden fruit is sweet. Flanigan and Babchuk (2020) suggest that there are many ways instructors can incorporate mobile technology into their courses. Additionally, one may notice that the more technology use is involved in the class, the

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less desire students have to consult it for their private purposes. Though, we should bear in mind that this should be a reasonable use, not just use for the sake of use.

Ineffective Concentration I am not a big fan of hot drinks, but you can’t imagine how many cups of coffee and tea I made for myself while writing this chapter.

Concentration refers to the orientation or focus of a person’s psychological activities on a certain object. Concentration is one of the most critical factors in implementing effective learning activities and plays an important role in improving learning achievement (Yang et  al., 2021). The degree of concentration would lessen day by day once the students have to cope with poor ideas, lack of confidence, some deadlines, and poor time management. Burke and Ray (2008) suggest that in the educational domain, concentration levels may refer to the degree to which students attend to instructional material. Turning to writing classes, we may talk about in-class and out-of-class concentration. Egeth, back in 1971, conducted experiments with college students from which he concluded that students’ attentional capacity is limited. In particular, he found that students’ language processing capability is restricted, while their perceptual capacity appears less constrained. Timpson and Bendel-Simso (1996, as cited in Burke & Ray, 2008) also recognize that student concentration levels have limits, and instructors can intervene to solicit a higher level of concentration with varying active measures such as exercises, questions, special assignments, or group activities that help break the routine of passive lectures. To this end, Mayers and Jones (1993, as cited in Burke & Ray, 2008: 573) call for active learning which involves students in course material through carefully constructed activities. In the next chapters, I will bring some practical examples on making our writing classes more interactive, with and/or without the use of modern technologies. It is suggested that students’ out-of-class concentration would mostly depend on some personal factors. To obtain good learning achievement, students must have the correct learning attitude, self-efficacy (Pimta

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et al., 2009), and a clear learning objective. Students should seek a favorable learning environment (Sleegers et  al., 2013) and maximize other means to improve their learning concentration. Additionally, many researchers (e.g., Ali, 2013; Yang et al., 2021) in psychology and pedagogy have focused on the influence of noisy environments on the learning performance, emotion, memory, and concentration of learners. In their study on learning with mobile devices, Yang et al. (2021) explore the influence of environment and posture on students’ concentration. The authors reveal that environment and learning posture have interaction effects on M-learning, and quiet environments and sitting posture can enable learners to acquire considerably high concentration. Overall, learners have different levels of concentration when adopting different postures, that is, learners have higher levels of concentration when sitting than when standing or moving. AW & IL classes being quite overwhelming, we may often observe students look tired and distracted after some 30–35 minutes of the class time. It may sound weird, but asking your students to stand up with their hands up either during the online or traditional class would help a lot to return your students’ concentration.

Stress and Its Management Stress is a situation where demands on a person exceed that person’s resources or ability to cope (Health and Safety Executive, 2004). Similarly, in 2011, Donaldson-Feilder defined stress as an adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand. Very often, stress restricts individuals from being who they are—it disconnects people from living in the fullness of relational connectedness (Gibbs 2015: 195). As a result, a person loses a sense of harmony which is central to health, wellbeing, learning, and teaching. So far, in my writing classes, I have met dozens of students who felt stressed just because of poor time management and a huge workload. In the working environment, workload refers to the amount and complexity of the work that employees have to do, that is, workload has been conceptualized in a variety of ways such as number of projects completed, number

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of hours worked, or speed of production (Rossi et al., 2009: 51). The workload for students is measured by the amount of tasks and activities they have to complete within a certain time frame. A roughly designed syllabus with a huge number of graded tasks may cause serious stress in students. Gibbs (2015: 193) warns that stress, and its effects on students’ health, portray higher education in a rather dim light. The effects of stress entrap students into ways of being and operating that inevitably hinder their motivation to pursue learning. Furthermore, stress restrains students from achieving wholeness—that is, to live and be in a place of light, liberty, and learning. Stress becomes, as it were, a barrier to enabling students to flourish in their full humanity. Yet, I believe we are not interested in that, but in having our students complete the course with a good load of knowledge and skills as well as positive memories about our class (see the Photo 3.1).

Photo 3.1

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One of my best students felt dizzy every time she delivered a presentation in front of the class. Despite this, I kept on giving her the highest grade for the performance since evaluating students’ emotional state contradicts my teaching philosophy. Long out-of-class discussions to fight the stress made her a really good presenter. Moore et  al. (2010: 173) believe that in such situations instructors should not drive their students into a corner where they could feel desperate and easily get into a cycle of escalation. This can make students feel more stressed so that the levels would rise and it would gradually be harder to keep things in perspective and under control. Back in 1983, Burka and Yuen suggested that stress often leads to procrastination, which occurs because it is often a means of distancing oneself from stressful activities. The most difficult tasks are often put to one side mentally until the last possible moment. It is argued that recognizing, understanding, and dealing with why some tasks can seem more stressful than others assist in reducing procrastination (Burka & Yuen, 1983: 145). In other words, everyone finds learning stressful at times (Clarke, 2008: 161), particularly, when students are facing an examination, have left it too late to finish an assignment, or simply find the subject difficult to understand. A key factor in coping with stress is to try to identify the cause and remove it (Clarke, 2008: 160). I am totally convinced that like line managers who play a vital role in all attempts to manage work-related stress (Donaldson-Feilder et al., 2011: 31), instructors can also assist in students’ stress prevention being endorsed and engaged into the issue. A sincere talk with a student, a carefully designed syllabus, interactive and distressful classes, as well as constructive feedback and fair grading, are capable of minimizing the stress in students.

Writer’s Block Writing is a challenge! This is what many people would say. Writing is challenging both for students and mature writers who spend years writing their masterpieces in various genres. There are many reasons making writing challenging, which include writer’s block, procrastination, lack of ideas, doubt, fatigue (Berg & Seeber, 2016), and even hatred to writing

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as a process. Writer’s block is one of the most inconvenient conditions which means different things to different people and is often portrayed by writers in works of literature (Thomas, 2016). Similarly, it is believed that academic writers cannot get writer’s block since writer’s block happens to those (students) who deal with creative writing at the department of fine arts (Silvia, 2007: 45). I would probably argue these since many of my academic writing students, for this or that reason, frequently experience writer’s block. A large body of literature (e.g., Boice, 1990; Silvia, 2007) refers to several factors that lead to writer’s block: these are procrastination, fear of failure, self-censoring criticism, perfectionism, time pressure, personality factors, and mood disorders. The list was extended in 2016, when Thomas added up the following reasons: outside distraction, lack of time, tiredness, general anxiety, efforts to live up to very high standards established by others, lack of confidence in the end product, thinking which is muddled or blinkered, a feeling of heading up a blind alley or running out of options, and a premonition of heading for ultimate failure. Lack of ideas or lack of knowledge, negative feedback from readers as well as language difficulties are also on the list. Earlier, in 2008, Cottrell cited several reasons why students normally experience writers’ block. Among the most popular reasons were: the blank page is off-putting; my mind goes empty; I don’t know where to begin; I just can’t get down to it; I am not as good as other people; the ideas go round and round in my head; I am embarrassed about my handwriting; I am embarrassed about my spelling; I worry about grammar and punctuation, and other reasons. I ran a risk of being heavily criticized, but in most cases, these are the teachers/instructors, who, in my view, fail to instill all those skills that could minimize the block that the majority of novice students might experience. A recent observation of an academic writing class in Switzerland showed that there are teachers who walk the students through all possible challenges before they submit an assignment. Clearly set instructions, as well as clear-cut requirements, facilitate students’ work to a great extent. Yet, we still have those instructors who command their freshers: “go and write!” This will definitely bring to many problems such as empty-mind, deliberate distraction, “blindness”, and many others that will result in writers’ block. The list below summarizes general problems that lead to writer’s block.

3  Writing Is a Challenge  Anxiety

Fear of failure

Being lost in ideas

Tiredness Empty mind Perfectionism

Procrastination Mood disorders Outside distraction Empty mind Being lost in a task

Lack of confidence Language difficulties Time pressure/lack of time

Self-censoring Negative feedback

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Lack of knowledge and ideas Spelling, grammar & punctuation problems

Many authors suggest different ways to overcome writer’s block. Hartley (2008), for instance, recommends rearranging writing habits by committing oneself to a daily writing activity. The author encourages to write while fresh; write in small and regular amounts to avoid “binge sessions”; schedule writing tasks in small sizes to keep up; capitalize on post-­ writing thinking; make notes on the back of an envelope; use the mini dictating machine, or even phone or text ideas home to a message machine, and share the writing with supportive and constructive friends. According to Thomas (2016: 101), when writing a long and complex academic text, students must know when they are most productive and use this knowledge to their advantage, establishing suitable writing routines. For instance, if you are the type of person who can write in the morning, plan your time accordingly. However, sometimes, your morning writing routine may enter into conflict with other routines and the routines of those around you. Additionally, to fight writer’s block one should be determined; walk away from time to time; do something completely different; skip what you are writing and try another writing task; change the location where you write; change the time of day when you write, play some soothing music; offer yourself some kind of reward or incentive; talk to someone about the blockage; talk to yourself about the blockage; print out a section of your work and examine it off-screen; try to get inspiration from reading something relevant and, lastly, write to yourself before you walk away (Thomas, 2016: 167). Finally, to overcome writer’s block, Cottrell (2008: 172) encourages to consider the following: scribble ideas; write in pencil; write on loose paper, not on a book; ignore mistakes; write for your eyes only; experiment; start anywhere; mark the paper; write by talking; take one step at a time; use the computer; brainstorm on the computer; use specialist software; and finally, rest and relax.

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Looking back to our teaching practice, I wonder, how many of our students acknowledge these recommendations and follow them. Most of them probably wait for us, instructors, to say how to cope with the challenges. Chapter 4 will somewhat suggest some practical tools to act as a facilitator, capable to minimize our students’ blocks.

Lack of Confidence Individuals develop their self-efficacy beliefs from a variety of sources, including their prior achievements, their comparisons of their achievements with those of others, and the verbal persuasions they receive from other people, particularly those people whose judgments they value and respect. In turn, self-efficacy beliefs do not simply “cause” subsequent behavior. Rather, they affect behavior by influencing the choices people make, the effort they expend, the perseverance they exert in the face of challenges and difficulties, and their thought patterns and emotional reactions. (Pajares and Johnson 1994: 314)

Most of our writing happens as a result of the experience we’d like to share. This is the case in literature, when novels, poems, prose, short stories, detectives, thrillers, and many others are often the products of writers’ knowledge, experience, and feelings. Similarly, in the academic world, we all write to share our knowledge and experience. Had I no experience and knowledge to share, I would never commit myself to write this book. This is not often applicable to students, though. Most of the students’ writings are forced products steamed either by “artificial necessity to share” or just “fears”. Fears?—you may ask. Exactly! Fear of getting a bad grade, fear of losing a point, fear of being expelled, fear of losing a scholarship, and simply, fear of failure. It is quite normal, that students, particularly young ones, often, lack the maturity and life experience we mentioned above. This would definitely cause a lack of confidence later reflected in students’ writing. One of the ways to minimize students’ uncertainty and lack of confidence is to expose them to meaningful course content. That is why, in the classes of AW & IL, it is particularly important to select interesting content due to which students will delve into the knowledge and experience they never had before. This will help students exploit new expertise and produce interesting papers.

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Lack of Ideas Following the setback above, lack of ideas is another challenge students may encounter when starting writing. This might normally happen when a student is not familiar with the topic, or when the student has some information but does not know how to organize the ideas. Jones (2014: 52) suggests that before we write, we first need to know what we want to say. The author adds that the ideas may come thick and fast, requiring the writer to order and shape the text into a coherent purpose. Ideas can be illusive, and all writers, of all abilities, will recognize the blank page problem and being unable to begin. Ideas can be changed by the act of writing itself, such that what we thought we were going to write is transformed as we write. Jones (2014) describes this complexity as frustrating and demotivating, especially if the experience is combined with a perception that what good writers do is have good ideas and then just write them down. The relationship between ideas in the head and the words we eventually write on the page is complex (McVey, 2008: 290). If students struggle to express themselves, then they will lack the ability to express themselves. McVey (2008: 290) also believes that new students—like veteran novelists—often suffer from a fear of the blank page, unwilling to commit themselves to even begin a writing task. Writing is, to them, a strange land they don’t know how to explore; they fear that a wrong turning early on will lead them to a place from which there’s no escape. There are several ways and techniques to develop students’ abilities to generate and organize ideas. Student academic support service or a writing center can be of great benefit (see Chap. 8). Students are free to apply to these centers to get feedback from other instructors or their peers who will guide them on how to be committed to what they write. On the other hand, class discussions (see Chap. 4) that involve critical thinking development are helpful to make students get more ideas and to be able to organize them into a meaningful text. Conversely, many instructors acknowledge the impact of the Internet on shaping students’ ideas. Instead of formulating their own thoughts and opinions, many students resort to websites that are rife with information. These fears are quite justified; yet, Chap. 5 will discuss some techniques to tackle them.

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Deadlines Deadline is probably one of the most severe words in academic vocabulary; a state when one feels an agony that ends up with relief. However, its frequent occurrence is inevitable as every (graded) assignment has its deadline. Above all, teaching and learning would not witness any development as long as there are no deadlines. While the deadline is something that keeps students and teachers afloat, it may turn into a real (student) nightmare once it is not reasonably calculated and set. Practice shows that before setting a deadline, several things should be taken into consideration. Particularly in AW & IL class, the amount of time given for a paper submission should be well-tailored. It is important to consider time for a topic delivery (e.g., how to write a descriptive essay), its discussion and practice, formation of the idea, and time that students will use to produce and submit the assignment. To write a paper, students should have neither too much time nor too little time. The amount of time will also depend on the task complexity and the effort put into its accomplishment. For instance, the amount of time allotted to the writing of a reflective essay would be much shorter than that given to a review paper, since the latter needs extensive reading. Missed deadlines is another concern in many educational institutions. While some teachers choose to penalize their students, others do not pay particular attention. In their paper, Stoneham (2009) refers to several universities in the UK (e.g. Greenwich, Exeter, Plymouth, and the Open University) that adopt a zero-tolerance approach to lateness, which means students missing the deadline by even a few seconds can be penalized and have to do extra work for resits and have the assessment item capped at 40% or similar. The penalties for lateness across the university sector range from a relaxed “as long as I get it before the exam board” to draconian “zero if a late even by a second”. Opponents of zero-tolerance (Rovai, 2004; Nicolau, 2015) believe that the main penalty for students is a lost chance to get instructor’s feedback. As in process writing, for instance, students that accumulate their submissions at the end of the course are missing the feedback the teacher would have provided if they had delivered them previously on a regular basis (the feedback from the first submission could have been used to ameliorate the second submission, and

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so on) (Nicolau, 2015). Whatever the instructor decides, students should know that a late submission penalty is there. Otherwise, we run a risk of facing abuse and unjustified delays. We should also bear in mind that all deadlines should appear in the syllabi long before so that students can manage their time (Rovai, 2004). What is the optimal1 distribution of task delivery, then (Nicolau, 2015)? Stoneham (2009) tests several options to reveal the most convenient time to set a deadline. This included midnight options, 3 pm weekdays, weekends, and even multiple submission opportunities across the week. All along with face-to-face teaching, I have tried different deadline options to create convenience both for my students and me. I used to leave my paper box just behind my office door waiting for my students to submit their papers by 1 pm on one of the weekdays. Well, I always had someone who would say that the submission deadline conflicts with other classes, though it was never a case, as the box was there a week in advance. Additionally, some teachers practice giving extra points for early submission. Yet, issues like incomplete and semi-finished submissions for the sake of an extra grade, or imbalanced grade distribution may sometimes occur. Within the process of digitalization, many instructors chose online paper submission. Stoneham (2009) believes that a Computer Assisted Assessment often requires students to upload documents by some specified deadline. Implementing this deadline needs to be done in a way that is fair to all students and does not in itself increase the stress on students or staff. This can be achieved as a result of the following lesson considerations2 (Stoneham, 2009): –– Make the deadline early in the early hours of the morning. Students generally leave completing work to the last minute but most students will eventually submit and go to bed.

  Understanding optimal as that which allows students to maximize their performance (Nicolau, 2015). 2  Adapted from Stoneham, 2009. 1

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–– Put deadlines on Saturdays and Sundays. Most students have access to broadband at home or in halls of residence and most Learning Resources Centres are open at weekends. –– Prepare students for online submission with a practice run. Don’t say, but show how to convert documents into a PDF. Some may simply be unfamiliar with this. –– Warn students that they must have the file uploaded completely to the server by the deadline, and that server performance may be degraded at the deadline by excessive demand. Make sure they are in no doubt of the penalties for late submission, particularly if those penalties are draconian. –– Be steadfast in refusing to accept student’s own technical problems and bad work practices as valid extenuating circumstances for failure to meet deadlines; otherwise, the number of extenuating circumstances claims will increase dramatically. –– Ensure that the server is up to the task, and that server logs can be examined in cases where students feel they are being penalized unjustly. Taking the above-said into account, the submission deadlines should neither be stressful nor create inconvenience both to instructors and their students.

Procrastination Procrastination is a widespread phenomenon with potentially severe consequences, such as dropping out of school, compromised health, divorce, and job loss (Wieber & Gollwitzer, 2010: 185). While procrastination involves simply putting things off until the last minute, some people do this intentionally, maintaining that they do their best work under pressure (Andreou & White, 2010). But this, probably, is the case for a small number of people, whereas, the majority “puts things off until tomorrow, or from day to day” (Ainslie, 2010: 11) to avoid something burdensome or unpleasant and to do so in a way that leaves you worse off (Hartley,

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2008: 165). Elster (2010: 87) suggests that procrastination may be distinguished with regard to actions and with regard to tasks. While actions (such as proposing marriage) are punctual, tasks (such as writing a term paper) extend over time. Today, procrastination turned to be a real problem for many students. It is literally impossible not to put off most of what you actually can do. You have to continually make selections, not just among big alternatives but also among a continuum of middle-sized, small, and tiny ones (Ainslie, 2010: 18). A student will always select whether s/he will complete a fill in the gaps task for tomorrow, or write a short story on environmental pollution. You probably guess which of these activities s/he will start from. MacIntosh (2010: 69) equates procrastination with weakness of will. Right, but who said that we all possess a will? So, what can a person do to overcome procrastination? Wieber and Gollwitzer (2010: 190) suggest several strategies to overcome procrastination. These are interventions strengthening the expectation of one’s ability to enact the necessary goal-directed actions (self-efficacy); changing the value of the task (e.g. piggybacking distant goals onto more immediate goals), and reducing sensitivity to distractions through stimulus control (removing temptation cues in one’s environment) or automation (habitualizing action control). Zeigler (2010) believes that before we talk about the remedies, we have to recognize the source of procrastination: when we are procrastinating and why; what our favorite replacement activities are; and, steps we can take to manage and overcome our procrastination. The author enumerates several reasons to procrastinate: Major causes of procrastination: The task is unpleasant; The task is difficult; I am not in the mood; I don’t have time now; I don’t have clear or written goals;

I am not organized, or I lack information; I am overwhelmed; I have too many interruptions back to back; I don’t see why this task is so important; This isn’t due for a while.

Earlier in 2009, Bird suggested the following reasons to put off doing things:

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Why do we put off doing things? Fear of failure; You’ve got other problems that are worrying you; Boredom with the task; You don’t know how to do it; Being tired; You are setting yourself a very high standard; Lack of time; You don’t believe it’s worth doing You are scared of it; You haven’t defined your goals; Trying to do too much; Other things are more interesting.

Manser (2010) suggests the following strategies to help students overcome procrastination: Procrastination makes your job more difficult: “you may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again” “set a target to complete a task rather than simply fill a period of time” “avoid distractions and focus on getting things done to achieve more” “as far as you can, be proactive in arranging your working environment so that you minimize interruption.”

Finally, Bird (2010) suggests some ideas on how to start and not to procrastinate: Start now Define exactly what needs to be done Do the first task now Prioritize the tasks to be done

Decide on the deadline Eliminate interruptions Divide the cake—tackle the job in small steps Leave time for corrections, review, and collation

This, and many other strategies can help your students overcome procrastination. But, the most important is to discuss the problem with them and find the optimal solution.

Time Management Managing time is one of the biggest challenges students face. For younger students, a degree course may be the first time they have lived away from home and away from the support given by other people, particularly parents. They now have to juggle not only the demands of the course work

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but also all other aspects of life, including laundry, cooking, and part-­ time employment (Moore et al., 2010). In other words, the majority of students are incapable of distributing their time correctly, which causes problems in academic life. Berg and Seeber (2016) suggest that academic work by its nature is never done; while the flexibility of hours is one of the privileges of academic work, it can easily translate into working all the time. But working all the time is not possible, as brainwork is the hardest which makes people easily get tired. Moore et al. (2010) believe that most time-management problems are caused by students having no clear plans, or having plans that are vague and unrealistic. This can result in students falling behind with reading or writing tasks. Moreover, earlier in 2007, Silvia mentioned that students should use writing time just for writing, not checking e-mail, reading the news, or browsing the latest issues of journals. So, what are the reasons behind poor time management skills? Normally these are inability to control your time; using your time unproductively, wasting your time for unnecessary things; doing one thing at a time only; setting false (wrong) priorities, and so on. Dozens of books suggest ways to improve time management. Manser (2010), for instance, believes that students should use most of their productive time on something important, not a routine task. To learn to manage your time properly, the author emphasizes the importance of saying “NO” in response to unlimited requests to help others to do something. Student Academic Support Service (SASS) offers a range of workshops on how to properly manage your time (see Chap. 8). In addition, teachers may want to discuss the following opportunities to help students manage their time (Zeigler, 2010): –– Set strict deadlines; –– Start the day from the most important task on your list; –– Do it once; –– Break down the job into smaller parts; –– Cut down on interruptions; –– Let others know of your deadline; –– Give yourself a pep talk (stimulate yourself ); –– Create a reward for yourself (coffee, dinner, cake, etc.)

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According to Berg and Seeber (2016), students should keep a log to see where their time is “going”; schedule every day; establish short-term and long-term goals; organize the workplace; and, learn to say “no”, earlier recommended by Zeigler (2010). Finally, “walk your talk” put forward by Bird in 2009 is one of the best techniques for students to write on a paper what they find the most important for themselves, including their goals, targets, and even preferences. In conclusion, most of the problems discussed in this chapter can be surpassed, providing that we, instructors, acknowledge these problems as a part of our course, and communicate them in our classes. Chapter Highlights • Writing requires the use of a variety of skills. • Motivation is a key component to start writing. The main factors to motivate students for writing are goal-setting, sense of achievement, interesting course content, accessible and user-friendly technology, intrinsic and extrinsic goals. • To make Academic Writing and Information Literacy classes interactive and engaging, students’ interests and needs should be considered. • Digital devices are said to be the main distractors; however, instructors should make such reasonable use of them that students have no more desire to utilize them for private purposes. • Concentration as a most critical factor to implement effective learning activities may be restored on the application of several techniques: call for active learning that includes interactive exercises, questions, special assignments, group activities, and so on; favorable learning environment; and some physical activities. • Stress is an adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure. It should be timely identified and removed. • Writer’s block is a general issue both novice and experienced writers may face. Students should be well aware of the reasons that lead to writer’s block and communicate them with their writing instructors. • Lack of confidence is linked to a lack of ideas. To shape some understanding of a particular topic and formulate their ideas, students having little or no prior experience to share in their papers should first be imposed on course content and information literacy. • Deadlines should never be stressful either for students or instructors. The deadlines should be reasonable and set in advance in accordance with the class level and pace. • To fight procrastination, one needs to understand the underlying reasons. • In most universities, SASS offers a range of workshops on how to properly manage your time.

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Turel, O., & Qahri-Saremi, H. (2016). Problematic use of social networking sites: Antecedents and consequences from a dual-system theory perspective. Journal of Management Information Systems, 33(4), 1087–1116. Wieber, F., & Gollwitzer, P. (2010). Overcoming procrastination through planning. In C. Andreou & M. White (Eds.), The thief of time (pp. 185–205). Oxford University Press. Yang, X., Zhao, X., Tian, X., & Xing, B. (2021). Effects of environment and posture on the concentration and achievement of students in mobile learning. Interactive Learning Environments, 29(3), 400–413. Zeigler, K. (2010). Organizing for success. McGraw-Hill Education. Zhou, C. E. (2015). Motivation to learn and quality of life. In M. A. Henning, C. U. Krägeloh, & W. T. Glenis (Eds.), Students motivation and quality of life in higher education (pp. 5–10). Routledge.

4 Pedagogy of Writing and Digital Writing

This chapter emphasizes the indisputable role of academic writing teachers in developing students’ best writing skills. It reveals students’ needs and attitudes towards writing and suggests best practices to engage students in effective academic writing. The chapter focuses on such important items as goal-setting, content selection, and effective syllabus design. Developing habits of mind is central to the chapter. Going in line with the Council of Writing Program Administration (CWPA, 2011), the chapter gives count to the development of such skills as curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition—all important during the writing process. This, in turn, is achieved due to the implementation of critical reading, critical analysis, process writing, creative writing, and multimodal reading and writing into the modern syllabi. New approaches to the teaching of writing, including digital process writing and project-based writing, are covered as well. Finally, building upon theories of reading, writing, and literacy suggested by Lea and Street (2006), the chapter emphasizes an indisputable role of WAC to be considered when teaching AW & IL.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_4

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Students’ Needs Students come to the classroom with different interests and preferences, different first-language skills, and different learning styles in both the affective and cognitive domains (Birckbichler & Omaggio, 1978: 336). This is the key reason to consider the learners’ needs and adjust the course both to the target needs and the learning needs. Birckbichler and Omaggio (1978) distinguish several ways in which teachers can respond to the learning needs of individual students, that is, identify a general cognitive style or strategy; alter the structure of the learning environment; accommodate the learning preferences or styles of the student; provide opportunities for either small-group or large-group instruction, depending on student’s preference. However, this does not always seem feasible since most of us work in different educational environments that can be restricted either by university policies or any other internal or external factor. Instructors should beware of an approach that prioritizes learning without thinking, such as rote learning. This does not promote the construction of conceptual frameworks, nor does it include the use of active thinking skills, such as reasoning, questioning, analysis, conceptualization, creativity, comparison, communication, and interpretation (Owen, 2010: 26). Alternatively, to level up the general course program, instructors need to consider the following learner problems: poor memory, lack of flexibility, being too impulsive, too reflective, field-­dependent, broad categorizer, narrow categorizer, having low tolerance of ambiguity (c.f. Birckbichler & Omaggio, 1978: 337–338). To understand students’ needs with respect to AW & IL class, the application of a needs analysis (Paltridge, 2009: 48) seems to be relevant. Needs analysis is a way of finding out what kinds of writing students need to be able to do and what knowledge and skills they need to acquire in order to be able to do this. To conduct a needs analysis, different ways of gathering information about learners’ needs are important. These include questionnaires, analysis of sample texts, discussions with stakeholders, interviews, classroom observations, ethnographies, and language assessment. A needs analysis also establishes the gap between what students can write, at the present time, and what they need to be able to write to

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succeed in their studies (Paltridge, 2009: 49). This, in turn, will help to develop a curriculum that responds to the interests and needs of individual students (Birckbichler & Omaggio, 1978: 336). Today, when education has acquired a new digital paradigm, a key challenge for educators is linking learner needs, pedagogy, and technology in order to construct more interactive, engaging, and student-­ centered environments that promote twenty-first-century skills and encourage self-directed learning (Parker et  al., 2013). In line with the core skills, employers and communities are seeking graduates who can use creative problem-solving and critical-thinking skills extensively discussed in this book. However, many freshman students worldwide, regardless of differences in culture and educational background, do not possess the necessary academic literacy, thinking, ICT, language, and numeracy skills for them to fulfill these expectations (Owen, 2010). That is why the current text suggests that all these skills are tightly linked to AW & IL and should be taught within this discipline.

Students’ Attitudes to Writing “I do not like writing”—this is what I frequently hear once the semester starts.

There is a large body of literature that refers to students’ negative attitudes towards academic writing and their lowest interest in learning to write recognized as a time-consuming and unpleasant chore (Kulprasit & Chiramanee, 2012). Educators propose different reasons for students’ negative attitudes toward writing. Among the most common are the students’ beliefs that they have no capacity to write in the target language (Petric, 2002). The English language can be an obstacle for non-native speakers to produce high-quality papers. A focus on formulaic writing in teaching writing to increase the standardized test scores also makes the students lose interest in writing (Kulprasit & Chiramanee, 2012: 21). Some scholars (e.g., Verkade & Lim, 2016: 83) believe that individuals’ approach to writing is closely linked to their approach in reading, that is, those who do not like reading might not like writing as such. However, such an approach does not always seem to be justified. Following the

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principles of human nature, we may conclude that we normally do not like doing things we are not interested in or are not aware of. With this in mind, one of the teachers’ jobs is to enhance students’ positive attitudes toward writing (Kulprasit & Chiramanee, 2012: 21). The development of attitudes towards writing is an integral part of the process of writing development. Being consistent with Petric (2002), I would like to list a number of techniques to foster students’ positive attitudes toward writing: –– Positive writing experiences are essential for positive attitude formation or change. Writing instructors should aim to provide ample opportunities for students to gain positive writing experiences, which in many cases are achieved by the implementation of formative assignments that establish students’ writing behaviors. –– Student-initiated discussions are valuable as they show that students see the writing class as a place for exploring not only texts and processes but also affective issues they are confronted with. Questionnaires can be used both in the writing class, for students to interview each other about various writing issues, and in a tutorial, as a set of topics to discuss. –– A writing journal is a dual assignment where students both write their reflections and improve their writing as a subject matter. –– Students’ initial personal theories of writing should be taken into account as a part of sound writing pedagogy. Such pedagogy should create a space for addressing their change and development, as students become better writers. Within the last decade, I have tested different methods and approaches to foster students’ positive attitudes towards writing, and most of them worked perfectly well. For instance, before asking students to do any serious writing, they should be given a chance to write the way they like, that is, without any rules or structures. I will conventionally term such kinds of writing as freewriting, unstructured writing, or creative writing. Williams (2016: 368) states that to write often means that you need to write badly first. This will allow putting the ideas on paper, whether in an organized or disorganized way or simply to start thinking about the topic in an

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ampler and wider way. Bad writing is writing that is derivative, banal, and formulaic. Students imitate poorly crafted popular writing, along with its formulaic flat characters, trite plots, and sentimental melodrama (Williams, 2016: 368). Moreover, bad writing is also a good way to learn from mistakes. It goes without saying that bad writing is a technique that is normally applied to students who have just started writing. That is why, it is quite effective to ask students to do any creative writing, where they can simply express their opinions or visions on a particular topic. In this respect, as earlier mentioned, journal writing is a good way to ask students to write freely. However, journal writing should not turn into a daily routine that will eventually demotivate students. Freewrite begins by allowing bad writing, self-expression, and spontaneous prose. Let students write freely without judgment or criticism (Williams, 2016: 371). Finally, as diagnostic writing during the first class can implement several functions, it is a good freewriting tool as well as a fair tuning fork to detect plagiarism which is extensively discussed in the next chapter.

Students’ Engagement Students are becoming increasingly fundamental to supporting change processes at both national and local levels, and institutions are working in collaboration with students in new ways in order to understand and improve the learning environment (Dunne & Owen, 2013). It is not an easy task to engage students when there are so many teasers around. You can come to the class, teach it, and go, but a real engagement is about having your students happily involved in the learning process to achieve the set of learning outcomes. Most of us expect students to have sufficient maturity to work on their own (Cottrell, 2008: 13), that is, to be naturally engaged in the class. However, experienced teachers acknowledge the difficulty of writing as a discipline that requires too much effort and a set of particular skills. It is suggested that before starting the course, students read a pile of student-friendly books.1 However, instructors  The study skills handbook (Cottrell, 2008); E-learning skills (Clarke, 2008); The mature student’s guide to writing (Rose, 2007); Skills for success (Cottrell, 2010); Write your way to get a higher GPA (Hansen & Hansen, 1997); etc. 1

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should not heavily rely on it, but find their own ways and techniques to engage the students. Most universities around the globe offer a course in AW & IL within the first academic year. Practice shows that this is usually the time when students need to settle down and adjust to a new university life. Many universities pace the first year more slowly, to give students time to find their feet (Cottrell, 2008: 18). Yet, we, instructors, acknowledge the load of the university program that needs to be fulfilled. To this end, writing instructors are committed to a wide variety of tasks and responsibilities, with students’ engagement being at the forefront. We can go through several techniques to engage our students: –– A task-based assignment: To engage our students, we should think of assignments that would not only make them write but will engage them in some interesting and useful affairs. Opportunities to participate in a writing contest, publications in blogs or undergraduate journals can be a great encouragement for students. –– A project-based assignment: Similar to the task-based assignment, project-based writing may focus on a particular project. When students feel that this is not just a text to write but a project that may bring some benefit and be later produced on a paper, the quality of writing increases. A typical example is a project on the engagement of elderly people in social life. Students are divided into groups to collect the data from elderly people to see what sort of leisure activities they would like to have in order to actively engage in social life. The results of the data collection can later be reflected in a problem-solution essay or a report paper. –– Discussion-based assignments will engage students to a great extent. Students can read an interesting paper and reflect their opinions on a discussion board or a class blog. For instance, a topic on international student mobility or students’ employability may be one of the hot topics for students’ debates. –– Out-of-class activities may be a good source of students’ engagement. You may wish to visit a theater or a museum with your students and ask them to express their impressions in a reflective essay. When students understand that they are going to reflect their impressions on

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something newly seen or learned, they do not only follow the rules of academic writing but put their soul into their piece of script. Alternatively, virtual sightseeing (Rosa, 2015) has made it possible to get those impressions without leaving a classroom. Virtual museums2 like—The Louvre, The British Museum, the Vatican Museums in Rome, the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology in Italy, Hermitage in St. Petersburg—are excellent opportunities to extend students’ general outlook and engage them in productive pieces of writing. –– The use of short movies and videos as a source for discussions and journal writing can be a good technique to engage your students in hot written or oral argumentation. –– Telecommunication with other universities’ peers can motivate and engage students in various collaborative projects able to result in interesting writing. Finally, we can always think of more techniques to engage our students in the course and make them produce interesting and useful pieces of writing.

Goal-Setting Another important technique to engage your students is to set goals. Students may say that they do not understand the purpose of working on a particular assignment since they will not probably need it in their future life. They are right, in a way. With the expansion of a practical approach to education, no one wants to spend time on something they will never do or apply in their life. The IT guys probably think that the knowledge acquired from the academic writing course will remain a set of knowledge or simply vanish with time as they will never have a chance to apply it. But we, the twenty-first-century specialists, know that this is not true. Today, academic writing has penetrated every field where a mere employee  You may visit The British Museum: https://lnkd.in/dW8JVAJ, The Amsterdam Rijks Museum: https://lnkd.in/dgQh83q, Washington National Gallery of Arts: https://lnkd.in/dE6rAzh; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea: https://lnkd.in/da9E56Q, etc. 2

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may get promoted due to a published paper, or any well-written report. Students should realize that the goals are much longer in term, and that getting a grade should not be the only goal to achieve. In our writing classes, we talk a lot about audience. Danberg (2015: 59) suggests that people write better when they understand their audience, and students write better when they understand the purpose of their writing in terms of the goals they have for that audience. But who is the audience for a student paper? These are primarily teachers or peers. Yet we can expand the audience by setting different goals and objectives. One of my writing cohorts was working on a reflective essay based on a visit to a national musical theater. “Your target is to write such a good reflection that would engage all the university community once your paper gets published in a university monthly newspaper”—I said, pointing out that one of the (best) papers will have a chance to get published. It worked! I have got many good papers in the end. Thomas (2016: 101) suggests that there are different aspects of setting goals, and there are different aspects of planning, some of which appear to receive more attention than others. Yet, whatever our goals are, they might be circumstantial (Pecorari, 2008: 98). Silvia (2007) equates goal-­ setting with process writing. A paper like a research paper is a good piece of process writing when students with the instructor consider each step of the process. Such a step-by-step approach also leads to a final goal-­ product, which is a research paper itself. In other words, setting goals is important for students to understand what they are working for, and the bigger the goals are, the better the students’ engagement and motivation are.

Students’ Learning Experiences Every teacher has a particular teaching style. Each course has its own goals and learning outcomes. Students come to the university with a certain set of knowledge and skills which sometimes do not fit the requirements of university life. As a stand-alone discipline, academic writing develops students’ writing skills as well as other important soft skills applicable within the whole academic life. These soft skills include

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time-­management, problem-solution, decision-making, written and oral argumentation, self-study, and many others. To foster a climate conducive to the development of these skills, advanced AW & IL instructors use several introductory techniques, most of which take place in a digital environment. Questioning and discussions are the central part of any classroom learning experience. A productive class discussion is to some extent the indicator of teaching quality (Zhou, 2015). The way you formulate and ask questions can motivate your students to think before they respond. Good questioning is a part of good teaching and good learning because it encourages metacognition (Buoncristiani & Buoncristiani, 2012). It is important to examine the process of powerful questioning as well as the ingredients of good questions. It is ineffective to come to the class with a topic out of the blue and ask students to discuss it. Topics that appear during the term should be interconnected and based on information acquired both from reading, watching, or in some other way. You can ask students to do some home reading, or give a short in-class reading to discuss it in small groups or all together. To develop students’ critical and cognitive thinking abilities, ask as many questions as possible. That helps to understand the issue from various perspectives, find solutions to some problematic questions, or simply project some international situation into a national context. Online discussion boards are excellent to keep on discussions that were not completed during class. Students should be provided an adequate virtual space where they would see the question and get all necessary instructions including the discussion board netiquette. Teachers may provide their written feedback, or smoothly bring the discussion back to the synchronous teaching reality. Alternatively, many AW & IL instructors prefer journals to class discussions. They believe that if they teach writing, any production should be writing-based. Hence, a 5–10 minutes’ journal writing turned into a teaching habit for many colleagues around the globe. Writing without borders (rules) as they term it may sound good unless it turns into a routine that makes students bored. Moreover, we all know that journals are never graded and, to be honest, they are (almost) never read by the instructors. As soon as students realize that, they lose interest and ignore journal writing. Digital journals are good to develop students’ writing

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without borders skills. Journals can encourage a personal and emotional response of a student to experience. They can be used to record immediate experiences or can go a step further and start to analyze these experiences and draw conclusions from them. Teachers who practice a task-based or project-based approach to the teaching of writing may ask students to keep online journals that would constitute a final item for a summative assessment. Students should also be able to use the wiki and digital forums to get prepared for digital academic life. The ability to compile a portfolio is another key skill that students should possess. Portfolios provide a way for learners to demonstrate their progress and reflect on what has changed and what can be improved. According to Blackboard Academy (2020), learners may produce a series of works in different formats—graphic images, text, oral arguments, video production, and so on—and then gather artifacts in one place. The activity of selecting the representative pieces of their own learning and presenting them to others promotes reflection and documents their academic growth. Finally, creating a relaxed atmosphere where students can freely ask questions is another important technique in AW & IL class. You should let your students ask you questions about the material you present. This can help you ensure that you cover or clarify areas that you simply did not know require clarification and open horizons for new topic discussion (Moore et al., 2010: 166). Alternatively, accessibility to a FAQ button on an educational platform, or Q&A item where students may freely ask questions and get relevant answers are excellent techniques to instill the habit of question-asking important for general academic life.

The Way to Start Teaching AW & IL Planning a course is one of the key steps in the teaching process. To design a course, we need to identify learning outcomes, determine what content should be taught and how it should be organized and assessed, and choose a textbook or other reading material (Kennedy, 2017: 41). When planning a course for AW & IL, three main aspects should be taken into consideration: the subject of academic writing (i.e. types of

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writing we’d like our students to acquire: e.g. writing of paragraphs, essays, reports, research paper, etc.), the subject of information literacy (i.e. aspects of information literacy we’d like our students to focus on: e.g. documentation style, information assimilation techniques, digital library use, etc.), and the content (i.e. thematic field we’d like our students to delve into: e.g. intercultural communication, international student mobility, environmental problems, etc.). Additionally, having referred to Richards (2013), Kennedy (2017: 42) believes that when developing a course for the first time, several approaches to course development and design can be employed. These are forward, central, and backward designs as they each relate to the starting point for course development. Forward design starts with identifying content. The central design focuses on the process of teaching methods. The backward design begins with the learning outcomes. In today’s innovative pedagogy, it is important to foster the establishment of learning ecosystems through which learners build skills (Visvizi et al., 2019: 28). Innovating means providing resources and a learning environment that can be recognized as relevant by learners and stimulate their learning activity. The quality of the resources offered is less important than the learners’ relationship with them and the learning environment. Teachers help regulate the learning activity by acting in a “short loop” on the learners’ output and in a “long loop” by encouraging reflective feedback on learning and its meaning (Visvizi et  al., 2019: 28). Integrating explicit teaching for the transfer of writing knowledge better prepares students for future writing success and global citizenship. Learning to ask questions about new writing contexts also prepares students to inquire about the social-cultural diversity among those contexts. Asking “Who is my audience, and what do I know about their values and beliefs?” reinforces students’ perspective-taking, the value of cultural diversity, and any analysis of global systems (Bass & Moore, 2017: 64). These are the aspect to be considered at the beginning of the course. Turning to the digitalization of writing, the CWPA (2011) suggests including digital composition skills in first-year composition (academic writing) course outcomes along with rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking, and knowledge of conventions (Yu, 2014: 100). However, not all developmental literacy programs reflect this phenomenon. As a result,

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some developmental students lag behind in digital writing. To prepare them for technology-enhanced writing environments, developmental teachers need to understand the multiliteracies that students bring with them to class with a view to augment or build upon these multiliteracies to allow the students to develop the required compliment of literacies benchmarked for the first-year college level. The introduction of digital writing to their basic writing classes is an important component of this work (Yu, 2014: 100). To this end, the questions we pose ourselves at the beginning of the term should be: • How do [ ] students perceive digital writing? • What criteria do teachers use to evaluate digital writing? Finally, according to the CWPA (2011: 10): All forms of writing involve technologies, whether pen and paper, word processors, video recorders or webpage. Research attests to the extensive writing that students produce electronically; composing in or outside of school, students and instructors can build on these experiences. As electronic technologies continue to spread and evolve, writers (and teachers) need to be thoughtful, effective users who are able to adapt to changing electronic environments. For example, a writer might be asked to write a traditional essay, compose a webpage or video, and design a print brochure all based on similar information.

Based on this, the present-day AW & IL instructors should consider all the earlier-mentioned factors, both in real and virtual dimensions.

Right Content and its Value Why don’t we talk about astronomy? I could write a lot on this issue. You probably could! But, how about your classmates? Yeah, I haven’t thought about it 

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There is a profound difference between teaching about the discipline and teaching through the literature of the discipline. Teaching through the literature means that students get to study the actual materials that form the basis of research processes (Badke, 2012: 165). Gottschalk and Hjortshoj (2004: 17) believe that we should be able to design courses that put writing into solutions with learning and content. Moreover, for assigning and teaching writing in your discipline, it is necessary to base the course design, not on the body of content students should know but on the questions you want to raise, with plenty of occasions for students to raise questions of their own (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 23). Learning and writing then will become a process of looking for answers, examining sources of confusion, identifying further questions, and developing methods for solving problems. What is a good question in this field?—is a good question to start a course. Instructors may wish to select a wider topic able to be addressed from various angles. By selecting “Let’s save the world”, for instance, students are imposed to various aspects of universal problems including poverty, transport problems, pollution, orphanage issues, and so on. This is particularly useful when dealing with students coming from different core disciplines. In other words, if a student knows little about a topic, it is difficult to write well about it (Niiya et al., 2013: 111). When I first started teaching AW & IL, I remember a colleague of mine recommended applying political actors in a non-political environment as course content. This made my students happy, but only 15–20% of them (Political Science students), while others coming from IT, Computer Engineering, Economics and Business management courses suffered a lot. Finding a common ground and engaging all the students was real torture. Another issue is having international students in our classes whose cultural views of ethnicity, gender norms, sexual/affectional orientation, social class, religion, intersections (Arthur & Popadiuk, 2015: 48), and political visions differ to a great extent. To play safe, the selected content should be neutral, yet again interesting for the majority of the students in class. It has also been argued that students’ prior knowledge of content should be a major intertextual resource for their writing (Johns, 2008). Not always, I should say. Students appreciate getting new information that they have never encountered before. This puts more

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value on the course and triggers students’ motivation and engagement. Course content in AW & IL class is normally presented through reading materials, videos, movies, and other sources. One of the best ways to keep some records of the content is to create a glossary that would focus on the most important terms and definitions students meet within the course. Online platforms like Blackboard and some others have made it possible to keep electronic glossaries available at one click. More advanced undergraduate students have the opportunity to work alongside staff in designing and delivering their teaching and learning programs, and in the production of work of academic content and value (Rivers & Willans, 2013). This means that students can select a course content, suggest the assignments they would like to implement during the term, or simply participate in the syllabus design. Why not, if the students are not freshers anymore and are aware of their needs. However, several things will make this impossible. First of all, the number of students for the course may sometimes be quite high. Another point is not being familiar with the students before the classes start. Finally, it will be difficult to find a content that would satisfy everyone’s interests. Thus, we have to think twice before engaging our students in the course or syllabus design. As already mentioned, the best is to find universal topics that will interest the majority of your learners. Practice shows that topics which directly or indirectly deal with students’ life are the most popular and engaging. You may wish to consider the educational topics, say online education, MOOCs, education during the COVID-19; topics related to international student mobility like study abroad, mobility exchange programs, and so on; students’ employability and career perspectives, and many others related to our daily life. The uniqueness of the course content is key to an effective semester.

Syllabus Design Course syllabi serve multiple purposes. A well-thought-out syllabus can provide the needed structure. If the students are to be successful, self-­ directed learners, we must give them enough direction from the start in order to do so (Kennedy, 2017: 49). A course syllabus should help to

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define the course purpose, have clearly outlined course requirements, clearly explain what term participation means, and how points will be allocated (Richards, 2013; Kennedy, 2017; Chen et  al., 2021, etc.). Additionally, the syllabus functions as a contract, means of communication, a plan, and a cognitive map. It may also serve faculty as a planning tool to organize thoughts and schedule events. It is a fact that the syllabus should be consistent and contain headings that will help students easily navigate it. It should be professionally designed and avoid any misleading and incomplete information. With this in mind, below we can see the most important items to be considered for an AW & IL course. As most of the syllabi do, AW & IL syllabus normally consists of a general information part and a course-specific one. It is suggested that the general information part has the following items: –– a clearly stated course content title; –– course information (course schedule, instructor info, auditorium, etc.); –– course description (the goals, expected outcomes, teaching methodology, etc.); –– university honor code policy; –– attendance policy; –– grading policy (grading procedures, course assessment, etc.); –– grading criteria (deadlines, rubrics specificity, late submissions, extra points, etc.); –– instructor’s contact information and communication (office hours, consultations, instructors’ availability online and offline, etc.); –– instructors’ expectations from students (classroom etiquette, and other requirements peculiar to the instructors’ teaching style); The course-specific information provides a detailed course program normally organized by weeks and/or dates with a particular emphasis on two important points: (1) AW & IL topics; (2) Course Content. The syllabus should clearly reflect each topic within the academic writing (types of writing, some writing techniques, writing specific models, etc.) and information literacy (documentation style, the use of the digital library, methods to acquire knowledge, etc.) with respect to weeks and dates. Additionally, we should not forget indicating important deadlines

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and obligatory consultation dates, facilitating our students’ time management. To increase students’ motivation and engage them in meaningful participation, course content should include readings, short videos, and if necessary, content-related movies. The question of how much academic reading should be assigned is another academic legend, if you will, as little is written on this topic. What it has come down to is the speed at which students can read and type, the reading requirements of a typical discussion board, and the expectation of the number of hours that students should spend (Kennedy, 2017: 49). This should be decided by the course instructor who is aware of the general course hours, weeks allocated to the teaching of the course, or/and terms allocated for the subject. With the incorporation of LMS into our teaching which includes such teaching modes as hybrid, blended, flipped, HyFlex and mainly fully online classes, the requirements for the syllabus design vary to some extent. The course syllabus is an important document that guides the teaching, learning, and organization of the learning management system (LMS). When developing a syllabus, faculty should consider what it is like to be an online student who must juggle multiple courses, work, and family life (Kennedy, 2017: 49). Below, I would like to refer to the principle requirements established by one of the biggest LMS corporations, Blackboard Academy (see the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program Rubric). Among the compulsory standards are: –– Goals and objectives are clearly written, appropriate for the course level, and aligned to desired outcomes; –– Content is made available or “chunked” in manageable segments (i.e., presented in distinct learning units or modules); –– It is clear how the instructional strategies will enable learners to reach course goals and objectives (e.g., instructions or overview of course activities are provided and aligned to course objectives); –– Course design includes guidance for learners to work with content in meaningful ways (e.g., clear instructions, content outline, video, course orientation) and how to proceed; –– The design and delivery of content integrate alternative resources (e.g., transcripts) or enable assistive processes (e.g., voice recognition) for those needing accommodation;

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–– Course files (e.g., documents, PDFs, presentations) are easily readable by assistive technologies (e.g., screen readers, screen magnification); –– A rubric or equivalent grading document is included to explain how participation will be evaluated; –– It is clear to students how performance in an assessment(s) will be evaluated (e.g. rubric, equivalent grading document, a section in the syllabus); –– Assessment activities occur frequently throughout the duration of the course › Multiple types of assessments are used (e.g., research project, objective test, discussions, etc.); –– Orientation materials explain how to navigate both the LMS and the course › Contact information for the instructor is easy to find; –– Course/instructor policies (e.g., decorum, behavior, netiquette) are included and easy to find; –– Learners have the opportunity to give feedback to the instructor regarding course design and course content both during course delivery and after course completion. For further info, please consult: https://www.blackboard.com/en-­uk/ resources/are-­your-­courses-­exemplary Finally, learners’ voices may be considered when shaping academic, administrative, and legislative policies (Chen et  al., 2021). That is, we may involve our students in the syllabus design. Yet both positive and negative outcomes of it are already discussed in the section above.

Developing Habits of Mind Within the last few decades, the development of mind habits has become an integral part of a composition or/and academic writing course. A CWPA (2011) suggests that habits of mind—ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical—are crucial for all college-­ level learners and beyond. According to the tophat online glossary (https://tophat.com/glossary/h/habits-­of-­mind/), habits of mind refers to dispositions possessed by many intelligent people, who utilize deductive tools, drawing on preexisting skills, previous experiences, and tendencies,

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to act in a knowledgeable and insightful way when faced with a difficult problem. Teachers can do much to develop activities and assignments that foster the kind of thinking that lies behind these habits and prepare students for the learning they will experience in college and beyond. These habits include curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition (CWPA, 2011). Particular writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences contribute to habits of mind that are crucial to success in college. These experiences include the following: developing rhetorical knowledge; developing critical thinking through writing, reading, and research; developing flexible writing processes; and so on (CWPA, 2011). The current section will consider some of the mentioned skills that are closely related to academic writing class.

Critical Reading Today, in many colleges and universities, critical reading is included as any course objective mostly for freshmen but is not required in stand-­ alone courses (Bosley, 2008: 287). Reading is one of the most important steps toward writing, while critical reading is a path to effective analytical writing. It may become a good stem for argumentative papers, research papers, critical analysis, as well as many others which include source evaluation and analysis. Although colleges believe that students need to develop academic writing skills, they assume that students have the reading skills necessary to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate complex academic texts (Bosley, 2008: 287). Eller and Goldman (1966) suggest that critical reading ability cannot be assumed on the basis of good general or literal reading comprehension; critical skills must be taught specifically. In this respect, this is the primary duty of academic writing instructors to guide students toward effective critical reading. Back in 1946, DeBoer suggested some ways to help students develop their critical reading abilities. First, the teacher should help the readers to clarify their own thinking and to identify their own assumptions. Second, the teacher should help the reader to analyze the issues and assumptions in the reading material. Third, the teacher should help the reader to broaden the background of knowledge out of which adequate standards of judgment may emerge

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(DeBoer, 1946: 253). A short in-class text discussion may help students to develop their critical reading abilities. It is most important to show students what they should focus on, and which questions they should ask themselves in order to critically analyze the text. There are several basic things to consider when reading critically: –– reading critically does not, necessarily, mean being critical of what you read; –– students should be able to grasp the general idea of the text and be able to retell it; –– students should be able to think of their own examples comparable with the original ones; –– students should be able to reflect on what the text says. It is also important to identify: –– why you are reading the text; –– are you reading for general content? –– are you reading for data? –– are you reading for specific or general information? –– are you reading to find the pros and cons? Students should also mind: –– the pace of their reading; –– the main focus of the reading; –– the strategies they use for the reading; –– the importance of the reading; –– the importance of note-taking and highlighting, etc. Finally, through critical writing and reading, writers think through ideas, problems, and issues; identify and challenge assumptions; and explore multiple ways of understanding. This is important in college as writers are asked to move past obvious or surface-level interpretations and use writing to make sense of and respond to written, visual, verbal, and other texts that they encounter (CWPA, 2011).

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Critical Writing It is suggested that writing is not a linear process but rather a process that covers different back-and-forth strategies. Successful writers use different processes that vary over time and depend on the particular task (CWPA, 2011). A back-and-forth process may consist of the following steps: when a writer researches a topic before drafting and then receives feedback that urges them to conduct additional research as part of revising, writers learn to move back and forth through different stages of writing, adapting those stages to the situation (CWPA, 2011). This ability to employ flexible writing processes is important as students encounter different types of writing tasks that require them to work through the various stages independently to produce final, polished texts. According to the CWPA (2011), teachers can help writers develop flexible processes by having students –– practice all aspects of writing processes including invention, research, drafting, sharing with others, revising in response to reviews, and editing; –– generate ideas and texts using a variety of processes and situate those ideas within different academic disciplines and contexts; –– incorporate evidence and ideas from written, visual, graphic, verbal, and other kinds of texts; –– use feedback to revise texts to make them appropriate for the academic discipline or context for which the writing is intended; –– work with others in various stages of writing; and –– reflect on how different writing tasks and elements of the writing process contribute to their development as a writer.

Critical Thinking Critical thinking is probably one of the most important skills students should possess. However, the notion of critical thinking is perceived differently by different people. Some people believe that critical thinking is an ability to see things from various perspectives, whereas others may

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even consider it as an ability to criticize things. So, what is critical thinking in reality? Although the term has been defined in different ways, it is generally agreed that critical thinking is a form of inquiry that attempts to evaluate and justify statements (Karlin, 1963: 947). According to Schlecht (1989: 133), critical thinking abilities are whatever skills required to recognize, analyze, and evaluate arguments. In Jeevanantham, 2005, Jeevanantham adds that critical thinking, as a personal reward, develops the mind and apparently the brain, as it is claimed that the brain involved in complex mental processes shows more striations than the brain not so engaged. So by implication, the person becomes cleverer. Because of exposure to the forms of knowledge and thinking that develop critical thinking, the person has available a wider frame of reference and is able to formulate an own opinion based on this wider frame of reference. Already in 2011, the CWPA defined critical thinking as the ability to analyze a situation or text and make thoughtful decisions based on that analysis. As a result, critical thinking becomes an integral part of developing habits of mind. Below is an extract from the framework focused on the development of students’ critical thinking skills. “Writers use critical writing and reading to develop and represent the processes and products of their critical thinking. For example, writers may be asked to write about familiar or unfamiliar texts, examining assumptions about the texts held by different audiences. Through critical writing and reading, writers think through ideas, problems, and issues; identify and challenge assumptions, and explore multiple ways of understanding. This is important in college as writers are asked to move past obvious or surface-­ level interpretations and use writing to make sense of and respond to written, visual, verbal, and other texts that they encounter. Teachers can help writers develop critical thinking by providing opportunities and guidance for students to” (CWPA, 2011): read texts from multiple points of view (e.g., sympathetic to a writer’s position and critical of it) and in ways that are appropriate to the academic discipline or other contexts where the texts are being used; write about texts for multiple purposes including (but not limited to) interpretation, synthesis, response, summary, critique, and analysis;

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craft written responses to texts that put the writer’s ideas in conversation with those in a text in ways that are appropriate to the academic discipline or context; create multiple kinds of texts to extend and synthesize their thinking (e.g., analytic essays, scripts, brochures, short stories, graphic narratives); evaluate sources for credibility, bias, quality of evidence, and quality of reasoning; conduct primary and secondary research using a variety of print and nonprint sources; write texts for various audiences and purposes that are informed by research (e.g., to support ideas or positions, to illustrate alternative perspectives, to provide additional contexts); and generate questions to guide research.

In the next section, we will see how critical thinking is developed through critical analysis, both oral and written.

Critical Analysis Since critical thinking is perceived as a skill that develops during our lifetime, then, this should be something that we can learn in a process. D’Angelo (1971: 947), for instance, associates critical thinking with critical reading saying that critical reading consists not only of learning certain skills but also includes a critical attitude toward what we read. This, in turn, develops ones’ analytical skills, establishing the ground for a critical analysis. Moreover, Karlin (1963: 947) contends that if the reading process involves thinking, then critical reading involves critical thinking. As we can see, all of these skills are complementary, each being enhanced based on the other. So, how to teach critical thinking and critical analysis? Is it really possible to teach them? If so, what is the role of AW & IL in developing students’ critical abilities? In-class activities like discussions, brainstorming, problem-solving, material selection, outlining, and a critical analysis paper itself are key to developing both critical thinking and critical analysis. A fairly grounded course content able to engage students can lay the ground for the activities, both oral and written that would elaborate on students’ critical minds. Discussions of the course readings are key

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instruments to develop critical thinking and analytical skills. Providing that the course content is “teenage challenges around the globe”, the activity below can serve as a good example. 1. Students first read a short text below: Approximately 175.000 American girls have a child before they are 18 years old. Teenage pregnancy often turns out to be a personal tragedy for these young women, and it is also a very serious problem for the nation. in June 1996, the results of a study called “Kids having Kids” showed that teen pregnancy costs taxpayers almost seven billion dollars each year. Having a baby so early in life can lead to a number of social problems. Seventy percent of teenage mothers do not finish high school. Teen parents have higher poverty rates, and there is a greater chance of their having to depend on money from the government. The problems get even worse for their children. Babies of teen moms have a bigger chance of being born too soon and may suffer from more childhood health problems than children born to older mothers. The children of teenage mothers often have trouble in school, and they are more likely to fail a grade or drop out. These children are also twice as likely to suffer from poor care or from abuse. And the "Kids Having Kids" study reported that the daughters of teenage moms are up to 83% more likely to grow up to become teenage moms too. That may be the biggest problem of all because these sad circumstances get repeated from generation to the next. (retrieved from EF-English First, 1999)

2. In groups of 3–4, students discuss the text with respect to the table below:

Problem

Cause

Effect Solution

3. Students together discuss the text based on their group work. The instructor fishes for arguments and counter-arguments that will approach the topic from various perspectives. Alternatively, the same task may be sourced from a short video watched in class, or at home. The most important is to guide students toward relevant questions and answers. In other words, question raising is central for developing students’ thinking abilities, making them look for answers and find the solutions to complicated issues (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004). This will also help to understand the source of students’ ideas, that

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is, where they come from and what triggers their imagination (Donnelly, 2012). According to Cottrell (2008: 136), some problem-solving exercises are good opportunities to learn useful skills with many applications. Such exercises allow students to practice specific procedures, put theoretical knowledge to practical use, develop reasoning abilities and creativity in finding answers and develop students’ understanding of underlying principles. This is true, I should say. Moreover, students appreciate problem-­solving activities, since they believe they are capable of finding answers to something which should be treated reasonably and sensibly. Carefully considered slide decks to present a new topic or consolidate the old ones are another source to promote students’ critical approach to the course. Lectures provided by PowerPoint are another source for discussions. They are normally referred to the same materials presented on flip charts and overhead projectors in certain circumstances (Susskind, 2005: 96). Finally, critical analysis as a type of paper can be an excellent graded or non-graded activity where students need to express all their repertoire of ideas using both pros and cons. A typical critical analysis that normally consists of an introduction, a summary, an analysis or an evaluation, and a conclusion can be written based on a movie or a reading material either selected by the instructor or the students themselves.

Writing Across Curriculum—WAC Teachers throughout the college curriculum have always assigned and evaluated student writing (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 1). Today, as writing acquired a wider sense, and it turned into a powerful instrument of self-expression, there is a strong need to teach students different types of writing within all courses and disciplines. In this respect, the distribution of responsibility for writing instruction across the curriculum has led teachers in all fields of study to question what they can do to improve student writing and other communication skills, at least in their own courses and concentrations. How can they compose more effective assignments, provide better comments and guidance, engage students in investigative writing projects, encourage stronger reading skills, and foster the

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kinds of discussion and thinking from which sharply focused, interesting writing emerges? (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 1). Yet, the problem is that interdisciplinary teachers are often unaware of the standard types of written assignments, and may require students to write any paper that they would term in their own way. To be consistent and not confuse the students all along the university time, both academic writing and content instructors should agree on creating the generally accepted assignments, not the self-invented ones. According to Gill (1996: 166), despite the existence of cross- or trans-disciplinary generic academic writing standards and expectations, some teachers unaware of the existence of particular forms of academic writing may simply mislead or confuse the students. A European colleague of mine who teaches a course in pragmatics shares his experience of assigning his students a research paper. “I asked them to submit a research paper. We had a class of an hour and forty minutes where I explained to them how to find relevant sources and how to put them together into a meaningful text. I just needed them to write a paper of three-four hundred words. They had to include their arguments and counter-­ arguments as well”.

Another colleague, who teaches sociology, asks her students to write a critical analysis. Here are the requirements: Students need to write a paper of around two three thousand words. The paper should include an introduction, a literature review, a methodology, and a conclusion. A list of references should be provided in APA style.

Sounds weird, right? Since none of the assignment descriptions reflect its real nature. To this end, many factors contribute to poor writing skills among college graduates, and post-secondary educators have implemented several approaches to address the problem. One remediation is writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs designed to incorporate writing in all college courses with the expectation that writing will improve with practice and appropriate feedback (Dana et al., 2011). The American higher education links WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) and WID (Writing

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in the Disciplines) in whole-of-institution approaches to undergraduate pedagogy. WAC and WID both recognize that writing practices differ considerably across disciplines and, therefore, that writing cannot be adequately developed as a generic, mechanical skill. Writing in academic and professional disciplines communicates the outcomes of disciplinary thinking and at the same time constitutes the discursive methods of knowledge production specific to each discipline (Harper & Orr Vered, 2017: 693). Writing development is situated as a critical part of disciplinary curricula; rather than displacing content teaching, or being taught as a generic add-on, writing is employed as a means for learning disciplinary content and developing discourse competency within a field of study. Importantly, writing development is embedded in disciplinary studies across all subject areas and across the entirety of degrees. Operating in concert, WAC and WID constitute a systematic, whole-of-institution approach to undergraduate communication development (Harper & Orr Vered, 2017: 690). Writing centers are an excellent place for WAC programs to be located since they may successfully host students, teachers, and administrators (Mullin & Childers, 2020a: 267). The value of faculty development remains an important component that strengthens WAC and writing center partnerships, and also strengthens the goal to improve student writing (Mullin & Childers, 2020b: 272). It is suggested that each university department selects a committee representative who would visit nearby writing centers, and then each committee member would work with their own department to determine the scaffolding of writing within the duration of the curriculum. During the times of pandemics, most of the universities that practice WAC have understood the value of writing to learn, so creating forums for writing, breakout sessions to discuss pieces of writing, and using writing-to-learn activities in new ways on learning management systems like Blackboard, Moodle or Canvas, was merely a shift in the platform (Mullin & Childers, 2020b: 275). Alternatively, Farrington and Easter (Farrington Pollard & Easter, 2006) mention a pilot WAC program for university implementation. The WAC pilot program suggests several important implementation tactics for anyone attempting to set up such a program:

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1 . A well-trained group of writing assistants is essential. 2. The program must be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of assignments. 3. Students must be graded on their ability to write, in addition to course content. 4. The development of a WAC community infrastructure, emphasizing consistency among several different groups, is necessary. 5. Guidelines for grading and commenting on grammar are helpful for faculty. 6. WAC goals and initiatives should be communicated consistently and often. 7. A WAC program needs to be designed to get “buy-in” from faculty. In a faculty-centered WAC program, the key message is that the entire faculty is responsible for the effective communication skills of students and that it is in a college or university’s best interest to work diligently on the communication deficiencies of students. One of the benefits of making a WAC program faculty-centered appears to be the group of advocates who support student writing assignments and are willing to participate in the development and use of general writing standards. Whether a university adopts a formal WAC program or not, such results are of great benefit to students and faculty alike (Farrington Pollard & Easter, 2006). Finally, writing centers should heavily rely on the valuable scholarship already available, rather than the personal experience of individual instructors (Mullin & Childers, 2020b: 273).

Digitalization of Writing It has been mentioned many times in this book that today many educational institutions require both teachers and students to engage with technology in a variety of ways (Coffin et al., 2002: 130). In this section, we will slightly touch upon multimodality and digital storytelling as one of the forms of digitalization of writing.

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Multimodal Reading and Writing Academic texts of many kinds rely on the co-presence of writing and graphic material. Images are becoming increasingly important as carriers of meaning in a broad range of academic disciplines such as art, art history, architecture, film studies, cultural studies, media studies, communication science, historical studies, literary studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and education (Archer, 2010: 201). We all teach the class of composition or academic writing to different groups of students, so, we should always bear in mind that our students may come from different academic disciplines, and the production of multimodal text may become crucial for their future careers and academic lives. The teaching of academic literacy practices in Higher Education is inextricably linked to student access, which includes both retention and throughput. If the requirements of academic assignments are increasingly multimodal, we need to be equipped to help students with these new and emerging texts (Archer, 2010: 202). Recognizing the multimodal character of texts, whether print-based or digital, impacts conventional understandings of reading. Reading is affected by the spatial organization and framing of writing on the page, the directionality, shape, size, and angle of a script (Kenner, 2004: 326). The present-day learners get introduced to multimodality (Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Olivier, 2021, etc.) from a very early age. Therefore, the concepts of reading and writing are reconceptualized by being presented through image, sound, print, movement, and gestures (Berger & Zezulkova, 2018: 64). Print- and screen-based technologies make available different modes and semiotic resources in ways that shape processes of making meaning. New technologies and screen, as opposed to page, have led to the reconfiguration of image and writing on screen in ways that are significant for writing and reading (Jewitt, 2005: 315). Print-­ based reading and writing are and always have been multimodal. They require the interpretation and design of visual marks, space, color, font or style, and, increasingly image, and other modes of representation and communication (Jewitt, 2005: 315).

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The technology provided students with access to a range of images, including clip art, borders, word art, imported logos, digital photos, and downloaded images, as well as their own drawings made using Word Draw tools (Jewitt, 2005: 324). Students may be asked to produce any type of multimodal text, that would range from an ad leaflet to an essay accompanied by photos and graphs. In their research to engage students in a collaborative partnership where students learn to defend their arguments, both in oral and a written way, Fitzgerald and Palincsar (Fitzgerald & Sullivan Palincsar, 2017: 324) ask students to come to a consensus regarding the understanding of scientific phenomena presented in readings, videos, images, and simulations, and then to communicate these understandings through the development of shared drawings and models, students needed to articulate, question, clarify, and sometimes challenge and negotiate one another’s ideas. Pairs’ interactions around the sense-making tasks necessitated that they be able to explain their ideas clearly to their partner and provide evidence from the multimodal text and other observations to back up their claims. In multimodal texts, it is important to note the conventions surrounding the type of image, the function of the image, and the choice of a particular image. In terms of conventions surrounding a particular type of image, there are a number of ways of presenting summative numeric information, numeric ranges, and percentages (Archer, 2010: 206). Colors cannot be ignored while investigating multimodal text, insofar as they carry a significant semiotic potential. Additionally, Hardukiewicz-Chojnowska and Pol (2021: 911) reveal that when it comes to slogans, the authors need to pay a lot of attention to colors, insofar as they can strengthen the conveyed message and make the slogan more memorable and attention-drawing. Moreover, the process of reading and interpretation of multimodal texts demands paying attention to all the applied modes, insofar as both visual and verbal content contribute to conveying the complete message.

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Creative Writing You may wonder why the author includes the subchapter on creative writing once the book is fully devoted to academic writing. My answer would be: Sometimes, I just love the way my students express themselves without having to think of rules and norms of academic writing.

Students of a composition class, or/and mainly academic writing class are constantly engaged in the writing of the essay, research papers, and other types of academic text being overwhelmed with the source selection, the use of information assimilation techniques, and many other rules needed to produce a meaningful academic discourse. Particularly, freshers are concerned with having no opportunity to freely express themselves being, as they say, pressed by strict rules and requirements of academic writing. In other words, it is suggested that what motivates students to seek out creative writing workshop classes maybe because they want “freedom from an oppressive curriculum that demands too much rote critical thinking, dry textual analysis, and academic prose strangled by thesis statements” (Healey, 2009: 32). Creative writing consists of fiction, short stories, plays, poetry, and related genres. Not many opportunities present themselves in college to do creative writing outside creative writing classes (Hansen & Hansen, 1997: 83). Creative writing is expressing oneself—one’s experience or imagination or a combination of both—through the written word. It creates something new. It is found in fiction, poetry, and plays collectively referred to as literature. It is the writer’s subjective perception of reality that is shared with readers through words. But this subjectivity is acceptable to readers of literature. We do not ask creative writers to tell us the truth. We do not ask creative writers to provide evidence for any assumption they make or any conclusion they arrive at. We accept what they write because what it says feels right (Monippally & Badrinarayan Shankar, 2010: 76).

Teachers who sometimes exhort creative writing ask students to write about what they know—their own experiences (Hansen & Hansen,

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1997). Alternatively, some authors (Healey, 2009; Donnelly, 2012) suggest that a creative writing class could segue from professional stories to their own by letting the fiction students read resonate with their own stories. Students might link stories with their own, talk about their social impact and the cultural and historical considerations that influence what and how we write (Donnelly, 2012: 33). This can definitely bring to imitation which, as some scholars believe, would help students to identify and comprehend techniques and patterns of writing by experienced writers, yet, the abuse of imitation may also result in the loss of the students’ originality and design of a personal style. Instructors may want to invite some famous writers to their classes upon availability. On the other hand, social media, as well as educational platforms, have facilitated the reachability of famous writers by educational institutions. Such meetings among students and writers can be a good point to foster creative writing skills among those who would like to pursue it. Finally, the development of creativity in our students grounds their romantic abstractions in reality, in concrete vivid details, in down-­ to-­earth experiences and research (Donnelly, 2012: 55). In an effort to investigate alternatives to students’ romantic consciousness, we should examine with our students where ideas come from, what triggers an image, an emotion, and a character’s actions.

Digital Storytelling Digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view. However, as the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and music.

Following the previous section on creative writing, digital storytelling can be the best way to dress a creative paper into a technologically enhanced piece of writing. Storytelling is an effective means of imparting

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knowledge, beliefs, and traditions. In its multimedia form, digital storytelling has been made popular by the digital storytelling movement led by the Center for Digital Storytelling (www.storycenter.org) since the late 1980s (Suwardy et al., 2013: 110). Digital storytelling has emerged over the last few years as a powerful teaching and learning tool that engages both teachers and their students (Robin, 2008: 220). It is now an integral part of many classrooms used as a useful tool for expanding writing instruction with media technology at different levels (Jocson, 2016: 106). According to Churchill (2020: 275), digital storytelling, when appropriately applied in the classroom, may effectively meet the challenges of digital literacy learning and can provide a strategy for teachers to effectively move beyond print-based texts and engage students in working with digital multimodal texts. Digital storytelling requires students to bring together various modes, such as typewritten words, images, narrations, and sounds, in their own multimodal representations. Recent research (Robin, 2008; Suwardy et  al., 2013; Jocson, 2016, etc.) shows that at its core, digital storytelling allows computer users to become creative storytellers through the traditional processes of selecting a topic, conducting some research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story. This material is then combined with various types of multimedia, including computer-based graphics, recorded audio, computer-­generated text, video clips, archived photos, sounds, music, and other texts to create a newer work of art through media production so that it can be played on a computer, uploaded on a website, or burned on a DVD.  It is also a suitable strategy for the research skills project (Churchill, 2020: 274). In some twenty-first-century contexts, digital storytelling is said to support and develop students’ digital literacy skills (Robin, 2008; Churchill, 2020). It generally encompasses media literacy, visual literacy, global literacy, information literacy, technology tools literacy, and traditional literacy. There are also ways (Churchill & Barratt-Pugh, 2020: 145) in which digital storytelling supports digital literacy learning: –– Engagement—digital storytelling provides opportunities for student-­ centered practices and student engagement;

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–– Meaningful context—digital storytelling offers authentic activities that help students build a greater understanding of the content and skills developed by engaging with the tasks; –– Structure to work with media—digital storytelling tasks provide scaffolding for students to locate, save, retrieve and represent with multiple media; –– Work with technology tools—digital storytelling allows the use of a wide spectrum of technology tools to plan, produce, present, and review a digital story; –– Research skills—digital storytelling supports students in coping with the enormous growth in the information available on the Internet; –– Critical thinking and problem-solving—digital storytelling provides opportunities for teachers to design activities in which students learn to manage the complexity of ill-structured problems; –– Traditional literacy—digital storytelling allows students to communicate their ideas with more complexity than in traditional writing. Well, if we carefully look at the above-mentioned list, all of these constitute the parts of the AW & IL course which means that digital storytelling should become an integral part of the AW & IL course. Finally, digital storytelling can be represented in many different forms. For instance, instructor-created stories may revolve around familiar experiences and events that are relevant to students; instructional materials that rely heavily on voice narration; documentary videos detailing a recount of historical events; or student-led productions which enable users to create their own stories and share their developments with others (Suwardy et al., 2013: 110). Digital storytelling may play the role of an effective platform that makes abstract content more accessible and facilitates discussions about topics in the story, hence engaging a large group of students (Suwardy et  al., 2013: 110). In other words, digital storytelling may become an excellent tool to engage students in a quality product for AW & IL course and beyond.

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Chapter Highlights • AW & IL students’ needs can be measured through the needs analysis that includes the application of questionnaires, analysis of sample texts, discussion with stakeholders, interviews, classroom observations, ethnographies, and language assessment. • The development of students’ attitudes towards writing is an integral part of the process of writing development. • There are different aspects of setting goals, yet the most important for students is to understand these goals and tend to fulfil them. • The application of questioning and discussions, journal writing, writing without borders, digital journals, digital forums, portfolio collection, and others are good techniques to enhance students’ learning experiences. • To design a course, we need to identify learning outcomes, determine the context, define the assessment criteria and choose materials. • A selection of course content that caters to the needs and interests of the majority of students is key when designing a course. • A course syllabus should help define the course purpose, have clearly outlined course requirements, clearly explain what the term participation means, and how points will be allocated. • The habits of mind include curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition. Particular writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences contribute to habits of mind that are crucial to success in academic life. • Writing development is embedded in disciplinary studies across all subject areas and across the entirety of degrees. To this end, academic writing instructors should be put in collaboration with the content instructors to level up the general approach to academic writing and establish a common framework. • Multimodality refers to the interplay between different representational modes including image, sound, print, text, video, audio, and so on. • Creative writing is a way to let students express themselves freely, without using any rules or norms of academic writing. • Digital storytelling is a tool to develop students’ abilities to create a text and present it in a multimodal dimension, that is, using images, text, recordings, videos, and music.

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References Archer, A. (2010). Multimodal texts in higher education and the implications for writing pedagogy. English in Education, 44(3), 201–213. Arthur, N., & Popadiuk, N. (2015). International students’ wellbeing, relationship, and quality of life. In M. A. Henning, C. U. Krägeloh, & G. Wong-Toi (Eds.), Students motivation and quality of life in higher education (pp. 47–56). Routledge. Badke, W. (2012). Teaching research processes: The faculty role in the development of skilled student researchers. Chandos Publishing. Bass, R., & Moore, J.  L. (Eds.). (2017). Understanding writing transfer: Implications for transformative student learning in higher education. Stylus Publishing, LLC. Berger, R., & Zezulkova, M. (2018). A remaking pedagogy: Adaptation and archetypes in the child’s multimodal reading and writing. Education 3-13, 46(1), 64–75. Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: A social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication, 25(2), 166–195. Birckbichler, D. W., & Omaggio, A. C. (1978). Diagnosing and responding to individual learner needs. The Modern Language Journal, 62(7), 336–345. Blackboard Academy. (2020). Fundamentals in Digital Teaching and Learning. Available at: blackboard.com Blackboard Exemplary Course Program Rubric: https://www.blackboard.com/ en-­uk/resources/are-­your-­courses-­exemplary Bosley, L. (2008). I don't teach reading: Critical reading instruction in composition courses. Literacy Research and Instruction, 47(4), 285–308. Buoncristiani, M., & Buoncristiani, P. (2012). Developing mindful students, skilful thinkers, thoughtful schools. CORWIN. Chen, C., Landa, S., Padilla, A., & Yur-Austin, J. (2021). Learners' experience and needs in online environments: Adopting agility in teaching. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, 14(1), 18–31. Churchill, N. (2020). Development of students’ digital literacy skills through digital storytelling with mobile devices. Educational Media International, 57(3), 271–284. Churchill, N., & Barratt-Pugh, C. (2020). The digital entanglement of humanities, literacy, and storytelling. In K. W. S. Kung (Ed.), Reconceptualizing the digital humanities in Asia (pp. 141–154). Springer Nature. Clarke, A. (2008). E-learning skills. Palgrave: Macmillan.

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Coffin, C., Curry, M. J., & Goodman, S. (2002). Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. Taylor & Francis Ltd. Cottrell, S. (2008). The study skills handbook. Palgrave: Macmillan. Cottrell, S. (2010). Skills for success: The personal development planning handbook. Palgrave Macmillan. Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project. (2011). Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Available at:https://ncte.org/statement/coll writingframework/ Dana, H., Hancock, C., & Phillips, J. (2011). A research proposal to evaluate the merits of writing across the curriculum. American Journal of Business Education, 4(5), 15–20. Danberg, R. (2015). Teaching writing while standing on one foot. Sense Publishers. D'Angelo, E. (1971). Critical Thinking in Reading. Elementary English, 48(8), 946–950. DeBoer, J. (1946). Teaching critical reading. The Elementary English Review, 23(6), 251–254. Donnelly, D. (2012). Establishing creative writing studies as an academic discipline. Multilingual Matters. Dunne, E., & Owen, D. (2013). The student engagement handbook. Practice in higher education. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Eller, W., & Goldman, J. (1966). Developing critical reading abilities. Journal of Reading, 10(3), 192–198. Farrington Pollard, R.  P., & Easter, M. (2006). Writing across curriculum: Evaluating a faculty-centered approach. The Journal of Language for International Business, 17(2), 22–41. Fitzgerald, M. S., & Sullivan Palincsar, A. (2017). Peer-mediated reading and writing in a digital, multimodal environment. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 33(4), 309–326. Gill, J. (1996). Another look at WAC and the writing center. Writing Center Journal, 16(2), 164–179. Gottschalk, K., & Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The elements of teaching writing. Bedford. Hansen, R., & Hansen, K. (1997). Write your way to a higher GPA. Ten Speed Press. Hardukiewicz-Chojnowska, J., & Pol, A. (2021). Reading multimodal texts: The analysis of the influence of colors on the interpretation of tourism slogans by polish students. European Research Studies, 24(4), 901–913.

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5 Information Literacy and Digital Literacy

Since the concept of literacy has shifted over the years from basic reading, writing, and speaking practices to a multifaceted skill set that includes the integration of digital literacy skills, the influx of technology and social media has created a dynamic set of core competencies that are needed to be digitally literate. The chapter provides a clear definition of information literacy and digital literacy and identifies a digitally literate student. Having juxtaposed reliable and unreliable sources, the chapter distinguishes the methods to acquire knowledge and shows the best practices for filtering, assimilating, and using the information for academic purposes. Academic misconduct being an integral part of the educational process, the chapter explores those technological means that would detect, prevent, and treat such issues as plagiarism, patchwriting, ghostwriting, and some others. Finally, the chapter will explain the importance of Respondus LockDown and browsers alike to prevent possible cheating during timed-writing and so.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_5

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Information Versus Knowledge Probably most of you would agree that it is easy to get confused when talking about information and knowledge. While the first one may stand for data, or a raw material to be processed, the latter would signify the results inferred from the data through the analysis, understanding, connections, categorization, and other functions of the brain. Information is usually organized data obtained from different sources like the Internet, radio, television, newspaper, communication, and so on. Knowledge refers to the understanding of the information acquired from those sources (Braf, 2002). Despite this, there is a large body of literature that defines knowledge and information; however, in this chapter, we will mainly focus on the methods to acquire knowledge, as well as the ways to evaluate information and choose the most reliable one.

Methods to Acquire Knowledge The term “knowledge” is multifaceted by its nature. Cambridge Dictionary provides several characteristics of “knowledge” defining it as (a) understanding of or information about a subject that you get by experience or study, either known by one person or by people generally; (b) the state of knowing about or being familiar with something; (c) awareness, understanding, or information that has been obtained by experience or study, and that is either in a person’s mind or possessed by people generally; (d) skill in, understanding of, or information about something, which a person gets by experience. In other words, we can define knowledge as a set of information acquired by experience or study being processed and understood by a person or people generally. The ways to acquire knowledge vary greatly and may range from reading, listening, observing, asking up to experimenting, practicing, defining, writing, and even desiring. Students should be instructed to think about where the information comes from and who is responsible for it. Knowing how many times the information has been manipulated or what biases might be reflected in the presentation of the information is very important (Burkhardt et al., 2010: 13). Unfortunately, many teachers do not explain

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to students where and how they can acquire reliable information. Most of them simply order to “go and find”. The situation is particularly challenging for the first-year students when they are in need of being directed. This is why I keep on saying that Information Literacy goes hand-in-­ hand with Academic Writing, the former being communicated to students at the initial stages of the course. According to ACRL (2016: 22), the act of searching often begins with a question that directs the act of finding needed information. Encompassing inquiry, discovery, and serendipity, searching identifies both possible relevant sources as well as the means to access those sources is very important. Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the ability to understand this information. In this vein, we must explain to our students the peculiarities of a Google search, the role of Wikipedia, the ways to define reliable sources, and the distinctions between the physical library, e-library, and various databases. Johns (2008) argues that students’ prior knowledge of content should be a major intertextual resource for their writing. But, how long can students rely on their prior knowledge? Does this knowledge always match the requirements of the course which become more and more cumbersome? Doesn’t the university offer an AW & IL course to build upon students’ knowledge? Of course, it does! With all these questions in mind, we should once again consider the ways to direct our students towards those sources of information that will best match their academic needs. On the other hand, considering the ways to acquire/learn information is another question. Buoncristiani and Buoncristiani (2012: 5) contend that we learn best when we are actively engaged in the process of our own learning. In emphasizing the importance of engagement in learning, we have in mind not only the experience of hands-on or inquiry-based activities but more importantly the direct involvement of the learner in thinking about his or her own thought processes—that is, metacognition. Finally, while learning is mainly enhanced by observing, imagining, and connecting, it will be relevant to consider Dale’s Cone or Bloom’s Taxonomy within the teaching process. The former will reinforce the understanding of how our memory works, while the latter will categorize learning objectives in terms of the level of complexity.

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Information Literacy Information literacy has been recognized as one of the key abilities which people in society should have for the twenty-first century. Since the world today is fast-paced, and humans are daily bombarded with a fascinating amount of information, this information needs to be processed, interpreted, and acted upon to function in a workplace, at schools, or in someone’s personal life. Having had a significant impact on the educational system, information literacy is mainly about finding, interpreting, evaluating, managing, and sharing information. According to the ACRL (2016), information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning. Because of the rapid expansion of technology and the ever-growing amount of complex information in a range of formats, which students, school staff, and the general population need to review, select, evaluate, and use effectively, information literacy is one of the fundamental aspects of education for today’s students (Herring, 2011: 62). Badke (2012: 15) contends that an information-literate person needs to have a grasp of the sources and nature of whatever information is being addressed so that he or she can more comfortably access it while at the same time being aware of its biases. Badke (2012: 23) suggests that information literacy is a difficult concept for most academics and that it is not possible to speak intelligently about information itself as a topic of discussion. Information is an abstraction that appears impossibly vague, only really making sense when we are speaking about the actual content. In this respect, Herring (2011: 63) describes information literacy as a critical and reflective ability to exploit the current information environment, to adapt to new information environments, and to practice it. In the academic domain, information literacy is often referred to as part of students’ lifelong learning and there is an assumption that students will transfer skills and abilities learned in school to higher education or the workplace (Herring, 2011: 70).

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While some three-four decades ago library was the principal place to get information, with the appearance of the World Wide Web (WWW) getting information became equally easy and challenging. Selber (2004) writes that technological literacy refers to a complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating. This, in turn, results in information anxiety which is a helpless feeling that comes with the realization that there is more information than one person can ever hope to process, that is, something as “So much information, so little time” (Burkhardt et al., 2010: 10). To this end, it is a primary goal of AW & IL instructors to teach students how to process and manage digital information. Burkhardt (Burkhardt et  al., 2010: 4) believes that making information literacy instruction student-centered, rather than instructor-oriented, improves learning and retention for the students and makes the class more interesting and less predictable for the instructor. Students should understand that a huge amount of information is simply not available via the Internet, for free or for a fee. For example, “only about 8% of all journals are on the Web, and an even smaller fraction of books” (Burkhardt et al., 2010). This is especially the case with older information. That is why, the instructors should instill the culture of “library use” (see Chap. 8) which will allow students to confidently use the library, either physical or digital. It is also true that not every university is in the disposition of rich library facilities, and to get access to fresh and updated sources, students need to address the Internet which abounds in reliable and unreliable information. Hence, before asking students to produce a high-quality text, AW & IL instructors should show them the ways to acquire healthy and relevant academic discourse. In other words, since learning and teaching is the main basis for activities in schools, developing information-literate students to be effective web users depends on schools, colleges, and universities having a clear focus on what students learn, how they learn, and what teaching strategies will be the most effective (Herring, 2011: 14). In the light of this, the chapter will proceed with the distinctions between information literacy and digital literacy and present the methods and techniques to find, filter, and utilize the information for various project productions.

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Digital Literacy It is a myth that digital literacy and information literacy are the same things. While the two literacies are very similar, it is arguable that digital literacy evolved from information literacy and that they are not equal in their scope (Becker, 2018). The traditional perspective of information literacy existed before the digital age, and digital literacy’s roots are in information literacy, but there are nuances that keep them separate (Becker, 2018). Cordel (2013) contends that information literacy and digital literacy are not competing concepts; they are complementary areas for students in higher education. Digital literacy concepts and skills can provide the fundamentals of managing digital environments that students need to succeed in information literacy and their other areas of study. In their paper, Pangrazio and Sefton-Green (2021) mention that defining what is meant by digital literacy has become more complicated over time. The authors trace back to the early definitions of digital literacy which was described as knowledge assembly that involves how to assimilate the information, evaluate it, and reintegrate it. Later, with the continuous changes of digital spaces, texts, and tools, the term “digital literacy” has adopted broader definitions. To this end, we will define digital literacy as the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate digital information, an ability that requires both cognitive and technical skills (Becker, 2018). Cordel (2013) mentions that when a librarian helps search for articles in a database, there is an interplay between (1) information literacy, and (2) digital literacy. 1. which database to search, which terms to use, which limiters to employ, how to evaluate the articles in the results, how to use the information found effectively and ethically, and so on. 2. how to navigate the library website, how to get to a search page or find the advanced search page, how to find the help files, how to save or export the citations and full text, how to set up an account in a social media site, how to upload files to that site, how to comment on others’ postings, and so on.

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According to the London School of Economics (LSE), both digital and information literacies are important in teaching, learning, and research. These two prepare students for living, learning, and working in a digital society. As a trainee of the Excellence in Digital Teaching and Learning course and a certified specialist from Blackboard Academy, I would like to give a count to some of the digital competencies teachers and learners should concentrate on: –– Media Literacy: Critically read and creatively produce academic and professional communications in a range of media. –– Information Literacy: Find, interpret, evaluate, manage and share information. –– Digital Scholarship: Participate in emerging academic, professional, and research practices that depend on digital systems. –– Learning Skills: Study and learn effectively in technology-rich environments, both formal and informal. –– ICT Literacy: Adopt, adapt, and use digital devices, applications, and services. –– Communications and Collaboration: Participate in digital networks for learning and research. With this in mind, I believe that the present-day classes will ultimately have an impact on AW & IL teachers, which means that the degree of responsibility will automatically augment. Teachers must not only cultivate these skills for their own use but also become promoters of digital competencies in their learners. The more teachers model these proficiencies in the online classroom, the more adept their learners will be at implementing these skills in their own lives.

Digitally Literate Students Digitally literate [student] is someone who appropriately and effectively uses diverse technologies to search for and retrieve information, interpret search results, and judge the quality of the information retrieved (Becker, 2018). It is suggested that a digitally literate person is one who

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understands the relationships among technology, lifelong learning, personal privacy, and appropriate stewardship of information. If we really want students to be digitally literate, they need to have a personalized learning space online that provides more than just a snapshot of their participation in one class or one school year (O’Byrne & Pytash, 2017). This should be a virtual study room where on the one hand, students can keep their academic staff (books, papers, notes, etc.), on the other hand, using a domain of one’s own, students can access their academic records beginning from the elementary school up to the final academic destination. All this may help students to acquire a basic level of digital skills, needed to be digitally fluent in educational settings: knowledge of computers, Wi-Fi, Web2.0, digital identity, information management, evaluation, critical thinking, information ethics and legal digital privacy challenges, and source authentication and reliability. This is a rather fantastic collaborative effort between university departments for training in digital skills for the entire university community (Fernandez-Villavicencio, 2010).

Digital Natives The term digital natives is a categorization of a person born or brought up during the age of digital technology (Prensky, 2001; Prensky & Berry, 2001; Becker, 2018). Digital natives are supposed to be familiar with computers and the Internet from an early age. However, being familiar and being literate is not necessarily the same thing. As a result, the stereotype of a digital nativity may turn into a fallacy for the young generation, who is not always exceptionally skilled for technology, and the old generation which may be unfairly accepted as technologically unskilled just due to their birth year. With this in mind, Fernandez-Villavicencio (2010) contends that the new way of socially interacting is primarily used at the moment by digital natives, but, more and more, the concepts, the applications, and the tools are being picked up and used not just by the younger generation but also by middle-aged and older generation citizens, sometimes called “digital immigrants”, in a rather natural, everyday manner, through whatever free time they may be able to enjoy during the day or in the evening after work, as well as while engaging in social activities online rather than in person.

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Digital Immigrants Digital immigrants did not grow with technology and were introduced to technology later in life (Prensky, 2001; Prensky & Berry, 2001; Chesley & Johnson, 2014; Hoffmann et al., 2014). Despite digital immigrants continuing to have slow and lower rates of new communication technology adoption than the general public and younger generation, they report higher levels of technology adoption than digital immigrants in the previous generation. Among the most popular technological tools used by digital immigrants are their own tablets and e-book reader. Digital natives over 65 normally constitute a greater number of tablet and e-book consumers than in any other age group. To conclude, digital immigrants are newcomers to the Internet and the World Wide Web. This category often includes the unemployed and underemployed, and they have a great deal to learn about Web2.0 tools (Fernandez-Villavicencio, 2010).

Digital Citizens Digital citizens are those who use the Internet regularly and effectively, that is, on a daily basis. Digital citizenship is the ability to participate in society online; this normally requires both skills and access for regular and effective use (Mossberger et al., 2007: 1). Digital citizens are those who have the ability to read, write, comprehend, and navigate textual information online, and who have access to affordable broadband. According to Becker (2018), the present-day reality is that many people struggle with digital literacy. Younger generations might have the technical skills, but lack the refined cognitive skills to find, evaluate, create, and communicate. Older generations might have the cognitive skills but lack the refined technical skills. Despite all, within a constant shift of everyday reality into a virtual environment, more and more people become Internet consumers. This, in turn, automatically turns them into digital citizens.

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Digital Literacy Toolkit It is suggested that the present-day teachers and learners possess a digital toolkit that would guide them towards the effective use of technology and the content within it. According to some content designers, a digital toolkit includes finding and consuming digital content, creating digital content, and communicating and sharing digital content. Most of these digital toolkits are discussed all along with this book (Google, library search, videos, etc.), while some of them are provided in the section below.

Web Search Engines If you enter some search terms and get several sites, Google provides no help in assessing their value; the “ranking” used suggests a value judgment, but Google works purely by the number of links and hits to a site, so it may favor popular sites over ones with more intellectual rigor, in effect, this is just arbitrary as the alphabetical listing in printed telephone directories, except that no-one would believe that a company beginning with “A” gave better service than one beginning with “Z”. (Grix & Watkins, 2010)

Internet is an interactive medium for seeking and obtaining information for the following reasons: (1) It is accessible 24 hours a day; (2) You do not have to visit a library; (3) It is possible to find and obtain information relatively quickly and conveniently; (4) You can choose between saving, printing, or reading the information from the computer screen; (5) Sources on Internet are often more up-to-date than sources in paper format (Junni, 2007: 132). However, such an approach was seen feasible some 10–15 years ago when the World Wide Web was not flooded by an immense number of fake websites and non-credible sources. Today, search engines need a more elaborated approach when both teachers, teacher librarians, and students not only depend on the choice of words and phrases but also use the quality of thinking behind those words and phrases (Herring, 2011: 28). The best form of monitoring available websites for teachers and students is the use of critical thinking skills and constant questioning about the validity and quality of the information

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being encountered on the Internet (Herring, 2011: 36). The most important reason for teachers and teacher-librarians to evaluate websites is that they have a professional and ethical responsibility to use the best available information they can find for their teaching and for their students to use (Herring, 2011: 37). Burkhardt et al. (2010: 53) believe that present-day students are likely to begin a research project by searching for information on the Internet. They will use other information sources and formats only if the Internet fails them. This undergoes serious criticism of many educators who complain about students going directly to search engines, mainly Google, wasting their time on fruitless searching (Herring, 2011). Unfortunately, website evaluation guides autonomously used by the students are not always effective since the terminology suggested in the guidebooks may be too difficult to understand. To this end, instructors should dedicate some of the class time to explaining those criteria of website evaluation. Additionally, students need to practice finding and evaluating monographic information so that they can develop a command for when and how to use books in research (Burkhardt et al., 2010: 53), not the net. Hence, without a helpful introduction to the value and use of books in research, students might easily glide right by the bookshelves, assuming that the information in books is old and therefore useless. Instructors may also introduce students to the Google Scholar facility where students can find freely available journal articles on curricular topics (Herring, 2011: 23). Yet, universities “privileged”1 to hold universal databases should implement a different approach to foster the culture of working with reliable and credible sources.

Open Educational Resources—OER Open Educational Resources (e.g. OER Commons, Khan Academy, Merlot, etc.) are now viewed as a natural way to implement distance learning, open education, and new pedagogical approaches (Tuomi, 2013). These resources gained its visibility in 2002 when UNESCO  Unfortunately, due to the considerably high prices of the databases, not all universities, particularly those in developing countries, may afford to purchase them for academic use. 1

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organized the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in developing countries. According to Atkins et al. (2007: 4), OERs are defined in the following way: OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

In other words, OER provides affordable material to students, allows faculty to enhance their own work, and provides faculty with content for classes.

Library Databases This book as well as most of my publications would have never been possible if the educational institutions within my whole educational journey did not have rich libraries with unlimited access to the most substantial databases. I keep on telling my students that they are lucky to have all those physical books and databases in our library that provide us with unlimited access to the most outstanding papers, old and new, that cater to the needs of the course content. Few professionals and thus few institutions realize that incorporating accessibility features into websites, interfaces, and digital materials can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner, with the negligible expenditure of monetary and human resources. Likewise, few are aware that making digital resources accessible actually increases the usability of digital resources to the benefit of multiple-user groups, not simply adaptive technology users (Tatomir & Durrance, 2010). Availability of JStore, Taylor & Francis, EconBiz, ProQuest, Ebook Central, HeinOnline, EBSCO, Chronicle of Higher Education, and many others have made our lives easier to a great extent. Students should understand that universities invest a lot of money to maintain all those facilities that would communicate them to the most

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recent empirical data provided by international scholars from all the corners of the world. One of the advantages of the databases is their accessibility through different devices—laptops, computers, mobile phones, tablets, and so on. Yet, it is also true that in the light of diverse financial conditions, not all educational institutions are able to purchase those databases. In this case, instructors should consider a scrupulous evaluation of web sources extensively discussed in this chapter.

Reference Generators For authors, writers, and publishers, citations allow readers to locate and further explore the sources consulted, show the depth and scope of the research done, and give credit to authors for their ideas. For students, citations provide evidence for their arguments and lend credibility to their work by demonstrating that they have sought out and considered a variety of resources (PR Newswire, 2013). In the light of numerous documentation styles, each offering its particular format to design references and citations, it becomes more and more difficult for students and similarly for the instructors to remember the peculiarities of each of the formats. Luckily, today there is a huge number of online citations and references generator platforms, each offering a wide variety of documentation styles to be selected by the user. PR Newswire enumerates such generator platforms as CitationProduces.com, Wordvice, QuillBot, and many others (2013, 2021). The tools are extremely user-friendly and intuitive to use and include sources like books, websites, journals, newspapers, and magazines. Once all the required information is entered and a user reviews and edits the information for every source, the Citation Tool automatically creates the Works Cited page that can be directly copied and pasted into the reference page of an essay (PR Newswire, 2013). These tools format citations in several of the most-used academic styles: APA Style, MLA Style, Chicago Style, and Vancouver Style. Authors can create reference lists, save their citations, and copy-paste citations directly into their paper’s References section for MS Word documents (Presswire, 2021). Despite this, library databases have been recently equipped with citation generators that offer a wide variety of documentation styles.

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Export Citations Having completed a database or catalog search, users can identify references that they wish to save. It is possible to export individual citations, or select whole groups of citations to export at one time for articles, chapters, reference work entries, and others in various formats. We can check the box next to each result we would like to export or add a result to a folder. Citations can either be exported directly to the citation management tool or saved as a file. University Libraries at Washington University in St. Louise distinguish among three main citation management tools: Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote. The website (https://libguides.wustl. edu/choose) suggests several criteria to choose the one that would best fit the author’s purposes.

Sources: Reliable Versus Unreliable Writing is a skill, and writing from sources is an important subskill for academic writers, yet the instructions students receive about the source use and plagiarism are often in the form of warning and information sheets emphasizing declarative knowledge about the act, rather than the skills needed to avoid it (Pecorari, 2008: 2). Today, merely quoting a source of information is not enough. The source has to be reliable and additionally the information provided has to be credible (Quiggin, 2013: 104). The Internet has revolutionized our ability to research topics at speed. It is now highly unlikely that anyone would attempt to produce a serious piece of work without making use of the Net (Rose, 2007: 67). Online journals and books are two of the main resources for academic work, but there is also a wide variety of other resources that students can access online. The web pages of government departments, academic research projects, non-governmental organizations, professional associations, and other organizations often have material that is of a standard that can be used in the work (Grix & Watkins, 2010). Using information from a website can be particularly challenging. One of the greatest strengths and

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weaknesses of the World Wide Web is its anonymity. For the researcher or peer reviewer, this is a metaphorical minefield full of potentially destructive information that can destroy or undermine their work (Quiggin, 2013). Students will, however, need to demonstrate their ability to work with those sources, and there are certain dangers in working from the Net that they need to be aware of (Rose, 2007: 67). However, the problem is that many students arrive at university without significant previous experience in the sorts of skills that are required to use and report sources according to academic conventions (Pecorari, 2013: 36). The fixed brain idea leads to the notion that each student is, in some sense, an empty vessel, to be filled with knowledge from various trusted sources, and thus suggests that teachers should encourage classrooms in which students are passive absorbers of information (Buoncristiani & Buoncristiani, 2012: 14). To teach about source use effectively, students and teachers must work together on writing from sources, and collaborate to identify and fix problems (Pecorari, 2008: 146). One of the good activities is a process writing that requires the use of a limited number of sources to support the thesis. Students can start from a mere keyword search, either in Google or in a library database, and continue with the evaluation of the sources through discussions and under the teacher’s guidance. A quick divulge of the source credibility can be fulfilled once the instructor uses relevant criteria and checklists. Quiggin (2013: 105) suggests two checklists that establish the key criteria to evaluate the sources which they term an A1-E5 methodology. The source of the information is assigned a level of reliability based on a scale of A (high) to E (unknown). The information that is being presented is rated on a scale of 1 (highly credible) to 5 (credibility unknown). Once this is done, the material is assigned a rating such as A1 or B3. The assessment can be fulfilled by an individual, a group, or an organization. In line with this methodology, researchers are additionally advised to ask the following questions: (1) Who wrote the material on the page? (2) Is it authoritative? (3) Is it objective? (4) Is it current? (5) What is the coverage of the page and can you see all the information on that page? Finally, a pedagogy for promoting good source use and thereby eliminating plagiarism would then have as its starting point a set of learning

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objectives relating to what students should be able to do on completion of the assignment, the module, the degree course, and so on (Pecorari, 2013: 78).

Source Evaluation There has been much debate about what skills and abilities today’s students need to possess in order to be effective learners at school and in higher education. The implication is that students need different skills than they did in the twentieth century (Herring, 2011: 128). One of these particular skills is the ability of students to evaluate sources, that is, differentiate the reliable and unreliable ones. Sorting out through the sources, evaluating those sources, and selecting the information that best supplies the answer to the information need are the heart of information literacy (Burkhardt et  al., 2010). In this vein, Neely-Sardon and Mia Tignor (2018) reveal that academic librarians understand the challenges that false, misleading, and unreliable sources in all their forms and degrees pose for college students. Librarians called one another to action with the reminder that librarians have always been in the business of educating people about evaluating sources and verifying facts (see Chap. 8). Material and source evaluation are said to be the hardest in the process of writing. Grix and Watkins (2010) contend that when searching the Internet, you have to make sure that you take extra care to evaluate everything. It is important to use only reputable sites where the identity of the author is known and where the academic and professional credentials are clear. Practice shows that the majority of students worldwide are not familiar with the process of material evaluation, which often results in unintended plagiarism and cheating. Coffin et  al. (2002)) believe that students need to learn to be critical of the information they find on the Internet, asking questions such as: what is its source, what is the status of the information, who is the author and why did she or he write it? According to Breakstone et al. (2018: 27), a checklist approach may help navigate the deluge of information—much of it false or misleading—that floods students’ phones, tablets, and laptops. One of the checklist examples is a famous CRAAP evaluation criterion, which stands for currency,

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relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose, created by librarians at California State University, Chico (Breakstone et  al., 2018). Another example is a RADAR evaluation criterion which stands for rationale, authority, date, accuracy, and relevance (Neely-Sardon & Mia Tignor, 2018). It is believed that this infographic displaying the five criteria with a few questions for each is a quick reference tool for students. Conversely, it is unrealistic to believe that [students] will have the patience to go through a long list of questions for every unfamiliar site they encounter (Breakstone et al., 2018). In turn, they need to see how skilled readers evaluate deceptive sites, and they need to have structured opportunities to practice this approach (Breakstone et al., 2018). CRAAP and RADAR checklist could be useful when students accessed the Internet using a dial-up modem, but it is no longer effective in an age when anyone can publish a sleek website with a $25 template (Breakstone et  al., 2018). As a solution, we can show students how search engines generate and encourage them to think about why they choose to navigate to particular sites. Teachers can model ways to think about the information that search engines provide, dispelling common misconceptions along the way. Additionally, providing information on publication identifiers that include ISBN, ISSN, DOI, and some others can help evaluate sources to some extent. Moreover, providing that “peer-reviewed journal” has turned to a frequently encountered key phrase, an anecdotal number of students may explain its real meaning. To this end, you may find it quite relevant to dedicate some of your class time to the explanation of a peer-review process, which in my view seems to be of great interest to students. Finally, a new generation of digital natives should be aware of such terminology like “open access2”, “free access”, and some others. Yet, whatever criteria we choose, teachers and teacher-librarians should engage future students more in discussions about assessing and interpreting learning resources and information sources, so they might be more reflective in their use of sources (Herring, 2011: 133).

 Open Access  refers to content or learning materials that are free of all restrictions on access or use. Open source refers to the computer software being used and the ability to study, change, or distribute the content or platform for any purpose (O’Byrne & Pytash, 2017). 2

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Information Assimilation Techniques Much importance has been attached to how students integrate sources into their writing. The effectiveness of students’ arguments is judged by their ability to build on what other people have said and, at the same time, show that they can take a position and be heard (Ramoroka, 2014). Having integrated with reading, listening, and discussion about the core content and collaborative and independent research growing from the core material (Shih, 1986: 618), academic writing goes hand-in-hand with such notions as referencing, argumentation, citation, and so on. It is believed that the way students integrate sources into their writing is supposed to reflect the voice of the utterer as well as the voices of those who are cited (Ramoroka, 2014). However, most of the students, particularly the novice ones, face considerable difficulties when integrating the sources into their writing. In this respect, instructors’ explanations on how to find the needed information and how to apply it to your writing will be of great benefit. It is also true that in line with information selection issues, the application of various assimilation techniques will be handy as well (Hansen & Hansen, 1997: 81). To build a foundation of source integration among college and university students, they need to learn to summarize, paraphrase, and cite/quote from sources (Shanahan, 2015). Writing from sources is shorthand for several micro-skills which make up the process, and which can be practiced. These include enclosing verbatim language in quotation marks and placing citations in the appropriate place and format, note-taking, summarizing, and paraphrasing (Pecorari, 2008). Today, there is an immense number of practical handbooks that offer some tips to teach and practice those skills. The most important is to communicate them to students before we ask them to produce a meaningful text with integrated sources.

Note Taking As mentioned earlier, writing is closely related to reading mainly in the sense of integrating sources into your own writing. Note-taking constitutes a central but often hidden phase in the transmission of knowledge

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(Blair, 2004: 85). If students are not used to taking notes, they are likely to fall back on what they did at school (Rose, 2007: 3). An effective way to take notes is to preliminary use color diagrams, highlighters, and colorful ink to underline the key ideas. The note-taker can process many texts in this way and can integrate the selections from different sources into one set of references (Blair, 2004: 86). Notes recorded from reading or experience typically contribute to one’s conversation and compositions, from which others can draw in turn in their own thinking and writing, thus perpetuating a cycle of transmission and transformation of knowledge, ideas, and experiences (Blair, 2004: 85).

Paramedic Method Turning simple easy-to-read sentences into complicated ones is very tempting (Osmond, 2013: 130). Even more tempting is turning complicated academic sentences into simple ones (Mammadova, 2017). Developed by Richard Lanham, the paramedic method is used to facilitate students’ poor understanding of complicated texts and paragraphs. It improves clarity and readability and makes texts effective and concise. The Paramedic Method offers several steps to make confusing syntax comprehensible. –– Circle the prepositions (of, in, about, for, onto, into); –– Draw a box around the “is” verb forms; –– Ask, “Where’s the action?”; –– Change the “action” into a simple verb; –– Move the doer into the subject (Who’s kicking whom); –– Eliminate any unnecessary slow wind-ups; –– Eliminate any redundancies. This method may be used by writing instructors at the very early stages of the writing course to teach students how to easily manage those materials that they find incomprehensible and hard.

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Quotation Citation is an important convention of academic writing. It enables writers to develop their arguments persuasively and effectively and thus establish their authority and credibility (Ramoroka, 2014). Quotation stands for using the exact words of other authors to support or contradict your standpoint. Students should know that when quoting, they should include the words and ideas of others in their piece of writing exactly as they have expressed them. Normally, quotations are placed in quotation marks accompanied by the in-text citation inside the brackets.

Paraphrasing The ability to provide an adequate paraphrase of a text is a necessary component of the ability to understand that text (Uemlianin, 2000: 347). Paraphrasing involves reading an article, understanding the author’s concepts, and writing the concepts in your own words (Breen & Maassen, 2005). In other words, paraphrasing is a new way of expressing ideas that are attributable to a source, an independent rewording (Pecorari, 2008). However, paraphrasing may carry two risks of its own: either the nuances might be lost, or the meaning might be distorted (Pecorari, 2008). To this end, paraphrasing should be treated as a technique to re-express another person’s thoughts in your own words, to show the grasp of the ideas you have been studying to express them for yourself in your own words (Uemlianin, 2000: 347).

Summarizing A summary is used to indicate a greatly condensed retelling of the large themes in an extended part of the source text, while paraphrase is reserved to indicate rewording of a specific idea (Pecorari, 2013: 69). Summarization requires that students recognize main ideas and key details, disregard unimportant or repetitive ideas, construct topic sentences, paraphrase, and collapse or combine lists or events into general statements (Shanahan,

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2015). Summarizing skills are essential to academic success; they are required to produce study summaries, complete various types of summary assignments, and complete tasks that call for the incorporation of source material in academic papers and presentations (Kirkland & Saunders, 1991). To teach summarization effectively, the texts need to be carefully selected. Summarizing paragraphs is a different experience than summing up to more extensive texts. It is usually best to focus on paragraphs first, and then as students gain proficiency, to move on to longer texts. It is also better to start with clear, explicit, well-organized, and straightforward texts, and then to move to more complicated ones (Shanahan, 2015). Students should bear in mind that in every summary assignment there is a complex, dynamic interaction between the features of the audience, the implicit and explicit purposes, and the other operative constraints of the assignment, such as required length, nature of the material to be summarized, degree of synthesis necessary, and number of sources to be summarized (Kirkland & Saunders, 1991).

Academic Misconduct Academic misconduct or academic dishonesty is an attempt to gain academic advantages unfairly, without putting any effort. The most outrageous forms of academic misconduct are cheating, fabrication, falsification, misrepresentation, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, personation, deceit, ghostwriting (buying), duplicating the assignment, and some other. To cater to the purpose of this book, we will just delve into some of them.

Plagiarism Today it seems so easy to be literate, particularly for those with practical hands-on technology. Availability of any information has become so common that humans have no longer got fears of not being able to find what they need. This mostly refers to students who feel informational power coming from palm-top devices such as cell phones, tablets, or

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laptops (Mammadova, 2020: 166). Alternatively, such delusive literacy turns into a frequent source of plagiarism, either intentional or unintentional. In other words, plagiarism increases through the accessibility of Internet sources and services (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004). In colleges, universities, and research institutions, plagiarism can cause big problems. Many institutions have very strict guidelines and punishments for those who plagiarize. The electronic environment has changed the way people use the information and has made it very difficult to attribute credit to the creator and very easy to borrow the information without attribution (Pecorari, 2008: 45). There is a large body of literature that defines plagiarism as a technical term for stealing someone else’s intellectual property. If students cut and paste something created by someone else and do not give credit to the creator, they are plagiarizing (Rose, 2007, Pecorari, 2008, Muller Moore & Lan Cassel, 2011, etc.). Studies show that plagiarism is a growing epidemic students rely on to complete their assignments. According to Muller Moore and Lan Cassel (2011: 19), there are several forms of plagiarism. It can be an omission, where someone fails to acknowledge or give credit to the creator of words, pictures, or ideas. Or, it can be a case where a person uses someone else’s ideas and gives credit but invents the source. That is what we generally call intentional or prototypical plagiarism and unintentional plagiarism or patchwriting.

Prototypical Plagiarism Prototypical or intentional plagiarism is a form of cheating, an act of deception in an attempt to gain unearned credit (Pecorari, 2013: 28). It is suggested that prototypical plagiarism happens due to students’ inability to resist electronic media which makes information more easily accessible to them. Without putting any effort, students simply copy and paste the information into the document. Since prototypical plagiarism is an acknowledged step of an individual, everyone has their own reasons to commit it.

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Patchwriting Patchwriting is a merging of sources that is not intentionally deceptive but is indicative of a developmental stage in learning the skills and techniques of academic writing (Pecorari, 2013: 28). There are numerous reasons for patchwriting. For instance, Pecorari (2008: 45) enumerates the following: –– many students, especially those versed in the cut-and-paste world of the computer, do not understand what plagiarism is; –– some students have vague notions about not using the exact words of others, but for the most part, students are unsure about what they must cite; –– students may know that they may use information that is common knowledge without attribution, but most have no clear idea of what “common knowledge” is; –– students tend to think about quoting, citing, and plagiarizing only with reference to traditional sources of academic knowledge—books and journals. They need to be encouraged to think about other sources of information and how it is protected as well. Within the last decade, I have tried different methods and approaches to teach students working with sources. I tested students’ autonomous use of sources as well as a guided one. Unlike the students who were strictly guided on the use of reliable sources and their assimilation into the assignment, students who were exposed to uncontrolled material selection were more likely to plagiarize. To this end, several steps should be taken to prevent students from plagiarism as a whole: –– time management: teachers should spend time teaching students ways to manage time. This will directly aid in the lowering of overwhelming shock students often experience when entering college and will hopefully decrease the temptation of resorting to academic dishonesty (Muller Moore & Lan Cassel, 2011: 21);

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–– establishing university ethical principles: students should get familiarized with the university ethical principles and an act of conduct (Pecorari, 2008); –– students need to know how very seriously plagiarism is regarded in the academic community, and how heavily it is penalized (Pecorari, 2008: 37); –– teachers should know how to respond to plagiarism; –– certainly, students need to learn how to use sources properly, and they need to learn that they are subject to penalties if they present the work of others as if it were their own. And they need to understand that the ready availability of, and ease of copying from, the Internet does not relieve them of that responsibility (White, 2007: 43). More tips on plagiarism and its avoidance are provided in the following sections.

Ghost Writers “I wrote a paper for one of your students but unfortunately he or she got a mere ‘B’ that cost me my payment. I have been writing papers for students across the world and they always pass. I dunno what went wrong!”

Believe me or not, this message was received by one of my colleagues a few years ago. Despite all the attempts to clarify who this student was, all efforts were in vain. Recently, ghostwriting has turned into one of the most profitable businesses among students and beyond. You can find thousands of ads on various social media platforms which offer services for academic writing, at any price, shortest time, with a result guaranteed. Unfortunately, considering ghostwriting as one of the infallible ways to get a higher grade, a high number of students resort to these services from semester to semester. The rise of Internet-based paper mills, sites where students can either order bespoke assignments written to the terms for their assignment, or download essays “off the rack”, has garnered a great deal of attention (Pecorari, 2013). Nevertheless, very little has been done to prevent

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ghostwriting, particularly when it turned into mass academic chaos. The interest in Ghost Writing mostly arises as many students arrive at university without significant previous experience in the sorts of skills that are required to use and report sources according to academic conventions (Pecorari, 2013: 36). Based on this, the solution is just at the corner. Why not instill those skills that will detach students not only from ghostwriting itself but from any idea of applying to ghostwriting? In their handbook, Cottrell (2008: 81) suggests that students generally find mentors very helpful in providing support. Ideally, a mentor is someone who knows the pressures the student might be under and can help to negotiate access to data using relevant tasks. Moreover, study time should be carefully crafted, resources should be made available. A sounding board for ideas about what is feasible can provide professional and practical perspectives on issues. Additionally, I have already mentioned that a carefully tailored syllabus that considers students’ academic level, background, interest, and most importantly, their needs will motivate students to self-­ writing. Finally, most of the techniques earlier discussed in this book can help to a great extent. As a result, students might be interested in their own product rather than relying on someone they have never seen or met.

Ways to Prevent Academic Misconduct In this sections, we will try to delve into several specific and unspecific tools to prevent academic misconduct, with particular attention to plagiarism. This will range from digital plagiarism preventers and detectors, up to traditional and generally accepted ways to minimize cheating and patchwriting.

Plagiarism Detectors Because it is impossible to prevent all forms and cases of plagiarism, teachers often devote their attention to detection and punishment, partly in the interests of deterrence. To a great extent, however, prevention is possible and coincides with the goals of education (Gottschalk &

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Hjortshoj, 2004: 119). A growing number of electronic plagiarism detection tools are in use at universities around the world, each university being engaged with particular software. Given the difficulty in detecting plagiarism and the importance of identifying it to be able to respond pedagogically, these tools are an attractive option for many teachers and universities (Pecorari, 2008). Today, there is an incredible amount of plagiarism detection software, most of them possessing similar service packages. Among the most popular are Turnitin, SafeAssign, PaperRater, CopyLeaks, PlagScan, Plagiarisma, and many others. However, their use is associated with a number of problems and flaws. According to Pecorari (2008: 115), most of the plagiarism detectors include the following problems: (a) electronic detection packages can only identify electronic sources; textual plagiarism based on print sources will not be found; (b) nor will they identify all electronic sources. Information from a password-­ protected database (such as the ones students might access through their university libraries) will not be found; nor will the text of essays sold by “paper mill”, which some deceptive plagiarists purchase and submit as their own work; (c) because of the impossibility of comparing the full text of all student essays submitted to an electronic detection service to the full text of all the other documents stored in the service’s database and on the Internet, detection software typically makes a “digital fingerprint” for each document to be compared. Because the comparison is not made with the whole document, it is possible for some copying from sources to escape detection. Moreover, plagiarism detection software has become accessible to students as well. Before submitting a paper, students have a chance to go through its most problematic parts that “need a better paraphrasing” for the sake of dissimilarity. Alternatively, some teachers simply abuse the functionality and accessibility of plagiarism detectors. Having heavily relied on the operating system, academic writing teachers manage to entrust the assessment of the whole assignment, that is the language, grammar, formatting, and even the content, to the software. Unfortunately, these teachers disregard the possibility of the program producing technical errors or functioning in a unique single-programmed way, which frequently results in students’ failure. On the other hand, due to these flaws of the software, electronic detection systems do not often find all instances of textual plagiarism

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(Pecorari, 2008), which favors the students. Burkhardt et al. (2010) contend that when information comes up on an Internet website, it is extremely difficult to know where it came from. In a “cut-and-paste” environment, any piece of information could come from almost anywhere. To this end, reasonable use of plagiarism detectors facilitates the work of AW & IL instructors.

Respondus LockDown Technology has gone too far in many ways. One of them is the development of a custom browser that is capable of locking down the testing environment within a learning management system (web.respondus. com). Designed to prevent academic misconduct, Respondus LockDown Browser is a secure browser used when taking some quizzes and tests online. It prevents students from printing, copying, going to another URL, or accessing other applications during a test or a written assignment. The browser locks the computer screen down and prevents students from seeing anything other than an assignment canvas. It also hides or forces students to close other applications. Currently, the official website (web.respondus.com) of Respondus suggests the following features of the browser: –– Assessments are displayed full-screen and cannot be minimized; –– Browser menu and toolbar options are removed, except for Back, Forward, Refresh, and Stop; –– Prevents access to other applications including messaging, screen-­ sharing, virtual machines, and remote desktops; –– Printing and screen capture functions are disabled; –– Copying and pasting anything to or from an assessment is prevented; –– Right-click menu options, function keys, keyboard shortcuts, and task switching are disabled; –– An assessment cannot be exited until the student submits it for grading; –– Assessments that are set up for use with LockDown Browser cannot be accessed with other browsers.

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The use of the browser is particularly important when applying a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach, or assigning any home-taken graded tasks (exams from home, timed writing from home, etc.). Writing classes can benefit from the Respondus Lockdown browser when timed writing, both in-class and out-of-class, is assigned to students. Alternatively, the browser can proctor and monitor the exams (quizzes, tests, etc.), discussed in Chap. 8 of the current book. The application of the browser into current education was particularly feasible during the times of pandemics when schools moved fully online (Dick et al., 2020).

Generally Accepted Techniques to Prevent Plagiarism With the advent and development of technology, more and more young people are practicing cheating from the Internet, and things are getting worse each year (Ma et al., 2008: 198). While some scholars claim that we can no longer rely on .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and others as they become less and less reliable (Warnick, 2004: 264), Wikipedia and other public websites remain “best friends” of many students, turning them into “unintentional cheaters” (Mammadova, 2020). In this vein, instructors are in a continuous search of ways and techniques to prevent plagiarism. Yet, I believe that one can hardly find any solutions without knowing the underlying reasons for the issue. One of my recent studies (Mammadova, 2020) tends to reveal the fundamental reasons that lead students to plagiarism. Among the most common ones are: –– students are lazy; –– students lack time to prepare for the assignment; –– students see plagiarism as an easy way to get a grade; –– students lack interest in the topic of study; –– students have little or no knowledge on the topic of the written assignment; –– course demands are too high; –– students cannot freely express themselves; –– students lack skills necessary to cite the references; –– students lack moral responsibility.

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With this in mind, the study gives an account of the following techniques to prevent plagiarism: –– students should receive proper instructions on written assignments; –– students’ course workload should be reduced; –– students should be informed that their work will be analyzed via a plagiarism checker; –– plagiarism detectors should be used; –– the penalty for those who committed plagiarism should be more severe; –– students should learn what is and is not allowed through education; –– students should be able to manage their time; –– students should not undergo constant time pressure; –– students should be taught how to prevent unintentional plagiarism. Despite this, there are numerous other techniques to combat plagiarism: Acknowledging borrowings: There is nothing shameful about borrowing other people’s ideas. We can borrow and synthesize ideas from different sources and create new knowledge. That is how science grows (Monippally & Pawar, 2010: 178). Unfortunately, some students do not understand this, presenting someone’s ideas as their own. Source transparency: To avoid plagiarism, writers need to understand the two closely related principles that source use should be transparent to the reader and serve a function in the text (Pecorari, 2013: 73). Often, students have unclear ideas about what they are and are not allowed to do with their sources. As a result, they do not understand how seriously plagiarism is viewed by their teachers and other gatekeepers. Accurate note-taking: Students fail to cite a reference because of faulty note-taking. When students are writing from these notes, the question arises: Whose idea is this? (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004). Hence, when undertaking a literature review, it is a very good idea to take clear notes from the start, indicating which book the notes are from, the author, place of publication, and so on (Grix & Watkins, 2010: 46). To this end, teachers should make sure that their students take notes correctly and accurately, without missing any important information (title, year, names, etc.).

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Accurate annotation of the literature: At the very start of a project, the best thing to do is to understand an initial review of the relevant literature (Grix & Watkins, 2010: 32). Students should learn to do annotation of the literature that will later turn into a relevant literature review. Accurate citation: Citation is an important convention of academic writing. It enables writers to develop their arguments persuasively and effectively and thus establish their authority and credibility. Citation can be viewed as “attribution of propositional content to another source” (Hyland, 2002: 115). To avoid plagiarism, it is necessary to maintain a firm distinction between your own opinions and thoughts and the opinions and thoughts of the authors in your sources. In this respect, referencing and citing properly enables you to indicate the work of others and to give credit where it is due (Grix & Watkins, 2010). It is important to know how to use quotations from your sources and how to summarize someone else’s opinions by paraphrasing. According to Robillard (2006: 59), students are taught that “the primary function of citing references is to avoid plagiarism by giving credit where credit is due”. Understanding quotations: Many students adore using quotations since they believe there is no need to paraphrase anything but put quotation marks. Students should acknowledge that a direct quotation ­reproduces word-for-word material taken directly from another author’s work, while an indirect quote is a source quoted within another source. Moreover, make sure that they differentiate between the parenthetical and narrative quotations (citations). Accurate referencing: Referencing your research correctly is a vital part of academic writing. It is impossible to separate the mechanics of referencing from how we effectively bring our research into our own writing and our own arguments (Osmond, 2013: 5, as cited in Mammadova, 2020). Students should also be aware of the documentation style, necessary to compile the references. A staged approach to the assignment: Assigning (research) papers in stages, prevents or greatly reduces procrastination—one of the main causes of plagiarism (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 119). This will allocate some time to students to realize the essence of the external sources and the way to incorporate them into their paper.

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Proofreading: Through the lens of grading, teachers often view revision as a second chance for students to produce solid, fluent papers that will receive good grades Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 67; Cottrell, 2008). Providing that most students avoid proofreading, instructors should instill the habit of proofreading among the students. Diagnostic writing: In-class diagnostic writing is a good non-graded activity for teachers to get familiarized with the students’ writing capacities. It can serve as a good tuning fork for teachers to compare and contrast students’ submitted assignments. Once being familiar with the average writing competencies of the students, it will be easy to distinguish academic misconduct, including falsifications, ghostwriting, and others. Specific Rubrics: Clearly designed rubrics will help students to better understand the requirements of the assignment and to focus on its implementation, rather than posting unclear requirements that urge students to search for alternative ways to get ready-written papers. Specific Requirements: Instructors should make sure that they have included some specific requirements that would distinguish their assignment from any other assignments that can be found on the Internet. This may include the limitation of sources to be used for the assignment (only three research papers; sources taken only from the JStore database, etc.); asking students to write an argumentative essay that will consist of the following items: argument/argument/counter-­ argument/refutation, and so on. Unfortunately, such an approach will limit students’ academic freedom; however, it will help teachers track their integrity and prevent any attempts of cheating. There are definitely many more ways and techniques to tackle academic misconduct. Most of them are discussed in different chapters of the book.

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Chapter Highlights • Information and knowledge are different terms. Information stands for data or a raw material to be processed; knowledge refers to the understanding of information acquired from the source. • Among the most common ways to acquire knowledge are reading, listening, observing, asking, experimenting, practicing, defining, writing, and some others. • Information Literacy is about finding, interpreting, evaluating, managing and sharing information. • Digital Literacy is about managing digital environments, navigating the library websites and databases, saving and exporting citations, and so on. • A digitally literate student is someone who appropriately and effectively uses diverse technologies to search, interpret, and judge the quality of the data. • A digital native is a person born during the age of digital technology. • A digital immigrant is a person introduced to technology later in life. • A digital citizen is a person who effectively uses the Internet on a daily basis. • Digital toolkit includes finding and consuming digital content, creating digital content, and communicating and sharing digital content. • Web search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and so on can be useful for those students who possess strong source evaluation skills. • Availability of JStore, Taylor & Francis, ProQuest, and other library databases communicate students to the most recent and empirical data. • Material and source evaluation is the hardest in the process of writing. To teach about source use effectively, students and teachers must work together on writing from the sources. • Information assimilation techniques include note-taking, quotation, paraphrasing, summarizing, and some others used in academic writing. • Academic dishonesty is an attempt to gain academic advantages unfairly, without putting any effort. • Plagiarism is one of the most common academic misconducts that occur in academic writing. • There are two major types of plagiarism: intentional (prototypical) and unintentional (patchwriting). • Among the most common ways to prevent plagiarism are plagiarism detectors, lockdown browsers, accurate use of documentation, diagnostic writing, process writing, proofreading, design of specific rubrics and requirements, and many others.

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References Association of College and Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Retrieved from: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework Atkins, D. E., Brown, J. S., & Hammond, A. L. (2007). A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, and new opportunities. Menlo Park. Badke, W. (2012). Teaching research processes: The faculty role in the development of skilled student researchers. Chandos Publishing. Becker, B. W. (2018). Information literacy in the digital age: Myths and principles of digital literacy. School of Information Student Research Journal, 7(2), 7–15. Blair, A. (2004). Note taking as an art of transmission. Critical Inquiry, 31(1), 85–107. Braf, E. (2002). Knowledge or information. In K. Liu, R. J. Clarke, P. B. Andersen, R. K. Stamper, & E. S. Abou-Zeid (Eds.), Organizational semiotics. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing (pp. 71–90). Springer. Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., Smith, M., Ortega, T., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Why we need a new approach to teaching digital literacy. The Phi Delta Kappan, 99(6), 27–32. Breen, L., & Maassen, M. (2005). Reducing the incidence of plagiarism in an undergraduate course: The role of education. Issues in Educational Research, 15(1), 1–16. Buoncristiani, M., & Buoncristiani, P. (2012). Developing mindful students, skilful thinkers, thoughtful schools. CORWIN. Burkhardt, J., MacDonald, M., & Rathemarcher, A. (2010). Teaching information literacy. American Library Association. Chesley, N., & Johnson, B. E. (2014). Information and communication technology use and social connectedness over the life course. Sociology Compass, 8(6), 589–602. Coffin, C., Curry, M. J., & Goodman, S. (2002). Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. Taylor & Francis Ltd.. Cordel, R. M. (2013). Information literacy and digital literacy: Competing of complementary. Communications in Information Literacy, 7(2), 177–183. Cottrell, S. (2008). The study skills handbook. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Dick, G., Akbulut, A. Y., & Matta, V. (2020). Teaching and learning transformation in the time of the coronavirus crisis. Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, 22(4), 243–255. Fernandez-Villavicencio, N. G. (2010). Helping students become literate in a digital, networking-based society: A literature review and discussion. The International Information & Library Review, 42(2), 124–136. Gottschalk, K., & Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The elements of teaching writing. US. Grix, J., & Watkins, G. (2010). Information skills: Finding and using the right resources. Palgrave Macmillan. Hansen, R., & Hansen, K. (1997). Write your way to a higher GPA. Ten Speed Press. Herring, J. (2011). Improving students web use & information literacy. Facet Publishing. Hoffmann, C.  P., Lutz, C., & Meckel, M. (2014). Digital natives or digital immigrants? The impact of user characteristics on online trust. Journal of Management Information Systems, 31(3), 138–171. Hyland, K. (2002). Activity and evaluation: Reporting practices in academic writing. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 115–130). Longman. Johns, A. (2008). Situated invention and genres. In M. Roberge, M. Siegal, & L.  Harklau (Eds.), Generation 1.5  in college composition (pp.  203–221). Routledge. Junni, P. (2007). Students seeking information for their masters’ theses. The Effect of the Internet, 12(2), 305. Kirkland, M. R., & Saunders, M. P. (1991). Maximizing student performance in summary writing: Managing cognitive load. TESOL Quarterly, 25(1), 105–121. M2 Presswire. (2021, Jun 02). Wordvice Releases Free Citation Generator for Academic Research Authors. Ma, H., Wan, G., & Lu, E. (2008). Digital cheating and plagiarism in schools. Theory info Practice, 47(3), 197–203. Mammadova, T. (2017). Paramedic method – facilitator between argumentative reading and writing. ESP Professional, 1, 12–14. Mammadova, T. (2020). Writing and information literacy: Major steps to impede the use of unreliable sources for academic purposes. Azerbaijan Journal of Educational Studies, 1(1), 163–176. Monippally, M., & Pawar, B. S. (2010). Academic writing. A guide for management students and researchers. SAGE Response.

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Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C. J., & McNeal, R. S. (2007). Digital citizenship: The internet, society, and participation. MIT Press. Muller Moore, K., & Lan Cassel, S. (2011). Techniques for college writing: The thesis statement and beyond. WARDWOTH, Cengage Learning. Neely-Sardon, A., & Mia Tignor, M. (2018). Focus on the facts: A news and information literacy instructional program. The Reference Librarian, 59(3), 108–121. O’Byrne, W. I., & Pytash, K. E. (2017). Becoming literate digitally in a digitally literate environment of their own. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(5), 499–504. Osmond, A. (2013). Academic writing and grammar for students. SAGE Publications LTD. Pangrazio, L., & Sefton-Green, J. (2021). Digital rights, digital citizenship and digital literacy: What’ the difference? Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 10(1), 15–27. Pecorari, D. (2008). Academic writing and plagiarism. Norfolk. Pecorari, D. (2013). Teaching to avoid plagiarism: How to promote good source use. Open University Press. PR Newswire. (2013, Jul 30). CitationProducer.com launches their citation generator that automatically creates the citation for research papers in the APA or the MLA format. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6. Prensky, M., & Berry, B. D. (2001). Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1–9. Quiggin, T. (2013). Sources and information in academic research: Avoiding mistakes in assessing sources for research and during peer review. Perspectives on Terrorism, 7(1), 103–111. Ramoroka, B. T. (2014). Integration of sources in academic writing: A corpus-­ based study of citation practices in essay writing in two departments at the University of Botswana. Reading & Writing, 5(1), 1–7. Robillard, S. R. (2006). Young scholars affecting composition: A challenge to disciplinary citation practice. College English, 68(3), 253–270. Rose, J. (2007). The mature Student’s guide to writing. Palgrave Macmillan. Selber, S. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Southern Illinois University Press. Shanahan, T. (2015). Common core state standards: A new role for writing. The Elementary School Journal, 115(4), 464–479.

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Shih, M. (1986). Content-based approaches to teaching academic writing. TESOL Quarterly, 20(4), 617–648. Tatomir, J., & Durrance, J.  C. (2010). Overcoming the information gap: Measuring the accessibility of library databases to adaptive technology users. Library Hi Tech, 28(4), 577–594. Tuomi, I. (2013). Open educational resources and the transformation of education. European Journal of Education, 48(1), 58–78. Uemlianin, I. A. (2000). Engaging text: Assessing paraphrase and understanding. Studies in Higher Education, 25(3), 347–358. Warnick, B. (2004). Online ethos: Source credibility in an ‘authorless’ environment. The American Behavioral Scientist: Thousand Oaks, 48(2), 256–265. Washington University in St. Louise. https://libguides.wustl.edu/choose White, E. (2007). Assigning, responding, evaluating: A writing teacher’s guide. Bedford/St. Martin’s.

6 Facilitating Collaboration

This chapter on Facilitating Collaboration reveals the benefits of using technology for collaborative purposes. Based on contemporary cutting-­ edge theories, the chapter considers a large variation of student communication tools and the ways to use these tools for the sake of collaborative reading, writing, presentations, and projects. Tools like Zotero, Google Drive, or Plugin will prove efficient for collaborative writing, while Microsoft Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, Zoom, and so on will be used as the most rapid and user-friendly platforms to facilitate communication among peers. Moreover, the use of technology will be observed while providing peer review, peer feedback, and peer assessment. The chapter also highlights the importance of technology in group conflict resolutions, emphasizing the role of digital contracts and agreements.

 ollaborative Learning and Student C Communication Tools Collaborative Learning (CL) is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving a joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together. Usually, students are working in groups of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_6

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two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product (Smith & MacGregor, 1992: 1). Abrams (2005: 24) defines collaboration as a process in which participants are collectively responsible for developing knowledge through structured activities, and in which the instructor’s role is to facilitate and co-­ participate in the learning process. Today, collaborative work or team/ group work is among the most important soft skills students need to possess. While in 1981 the primary aim of collaborative learning was observed in helping students test the quality and value of what they know by trying to make sense of it to other people like themselves—their peers (Bruffee, 1981), the aims of collaboration today go far beyond that. Collaboration is about bringing together people with different knowledge, skills, experiences, and cultural and ethical backgrounds for the sake of proposing, creating, and producing something new, as a result of common agreement and consent. Following this, group assignments have occupied a stable position in the modern syllabi. In past studies, formative assessment was usually applied to the individual learner’s learning environment, but it was rarely applied to the collaborative learning environment. The social network analysis applied to interactive web-based collaborative learning has become more and more important in recent years (Chen et al., 2021: 849). Having referred to a large body of literature, Laal and Ghodsi (2012) summarized the following benefits of collaborative work: social, psychological, academic, and assessment. Social benefits: Collaborative learning helps to develop a social support system for learners; leads to building diversity and understanding among students and staff; establishes a positive atmosphere for modeling and practicing cooperation; and develops learning communities. Psychological benefits: Collaborative learning builds students’ self-esteem as a result of student-centered instruction; reduces anxiety; and, develops positive attitudes towards teachers. Academic benefits: Collaborative learning promotes critical thinking skills; involves students in the learning process; improves the classroom results; models appropriate student problem-solving techniques; personalizes large lectures; and, helps in motivating students in a specific curriculum.

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Assessment benefits: Collaborative learning uses a variety of assessment techniques to provide self- and peer-assessment.

Communication Tools Digital tools, both synchronous and asynchronous, prove to be the best to establish communication among the group members. However, we should keep in mind that students may not be familiar with some of the tools. For this purpose, a short orientation session on how to be using these tools will be of great benefit. Web Conferencing Tool is an excellent opportunity for students to meet synchronously online. Instructors of those universities that exploit a particular LMS, for example, Blackboard, can always create a virtual classroom where students would be able to meet whenever they want. Alternatively, the use of Skype, or any other educational platform, for example, Zoom, Microsoft Team, and so on can be perfectly used by the group members to organize constant meetings. Apart from this, students may wish to be using some mobile applications, for example, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Room, and so on, for any regular meeting. Going back to traditional classes, it is possible to meet on-campus or outside it to have a face-to-face interaction. Discussion Boards are another tool for students to communicate asynchronously. Such platforms can be excellent for instructors to pace students’ workflow and be aware of the process. Creating a FAQ thread where group members can pose questions is another strength of the discussion board. Wikis are excellent for note-taking, documentation, and knowledge construction. This tool is excellent for writing a plan, creating a to-do list, and following the work progress. At the academic level, wikis are good to include an annotated bibliography, a list of terms, keywords, and so on Social media can be employed for instant messaging, chat rooms, group messages, and so on. Among the most popular tools are Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Telegram, Twitter, and many others. However, practice shows that despite all the tools indicated above, online word processors are best to foster effective collaboration among

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team members. Google Docs, Zoho Writer, Share Point, Pages, Dropbox Paper, Evernote, and so on are excellent to allow all group members to work simultaneously on the same document. Robinson (2017) emphasized the essence of Google Keep and Evernote, both used to digitalize documents. Evernote is a free, cloud-based software service designed for creating, organizing, and archiving various media files. Google Keep is a more recent cloud-based, a note-taking app with a simple interface that may be more appealing to users. Unlike Evernote, its storage is unlimited, and the app can be accessed on many devices at the same time. In conclusion, the current section revealed some of the communication tools used for group collaboration purposes. In the next sections, we will be talking about collaborative assignments and the way students behave when working on them.

Collaborative Assignments Group assignments can take any form. Project types may include collaborative reading, collaborative writing, group presentations on a topic, joint projects, case study analysis, capstone projects, topic discussions, role-playing, and many others. Final products might be submitted in various forms that include written, audio, and video presentations. In this respect, technology would play a key role to allow better achievement of the project objectives.

Collaborative Reading The literature of the twentieth century refers to Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)—a research-based instructional practice in teaching reading comprehension to students to enhance content area learning while working cooperatively (Vaughn & Kettman Klingner, 1999). CSR consists of four reading comprehension strategies that are applied before, during, and after reading: preview the text, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up. Already in the twenty-first century with the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), we may

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refer to collaborative digital reading that facilitates reading annotation systems by easily storing, sharing, and discussing the contents of the reading annotations (Chen et al., 2021: 848), both for individuals and for members of collaborative groups. Compared with individual learning and competitive learning, collaborative learning has confirmed its advantages in promoting learners’ learning motivation, learning performance, learning interests, communication skills, and social interaction. Therefore, the collaborative reading annotation system has become the current mainstream of development to support digital reading (Chen et al., 2021). Collaborative reading is a key step to producing a collaborative paper. Students who work together on a research paper, a review paper, a capstone project, or any other paper that deals with the exposition of a literature review would need to read first. As mentioned in Chap. 5, the availability of a library database affords a group of students to read the same paper, annotate it, take notes, and later discuss it using a communication platform. Digital access to the written sources allows students to read papers simultaneously, or/and share long readings into parts assigned to each group member. Online word processors (Google Docs, Share Point, etc.) would help to keep the annotation records, while an open-source reference management software like Zotero will manage the bibliographical data.

Collaborative Writing Academic work at university generally focuses on the achievements of individuals. In part, of course, this is to ensure that each person is awarded a degree for their own work (Cottrell, 2008: 93). Whilst collaboration by students in the process of gaining their academic credentials has traditionally been discouraged or even seen as “cheating”, it is a widely seen practice in the world of work, wherever collaborative activities in pursuit of common goals are found. In recent years, however, more attention has been paid to the importance of training students in the skills of working with others referred to as “people skills”, “interpersonal skills”, or “social skills” (Rimmershaw, 1992; Cottrell, 2008: 93). Working as part of a group can feel more complicated and difficult than working on our own

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(Moore et al., 2010: 153); however, presently there are many useful tips to orientate students towards working effectively, productively, and happily in groups. Collaboration offers special challenges and possibilities to the writing class. Some instructors regularly establish teams to produce papers: the team divides the tasks among its members, compiles the drafts, and submits a single paper for evaluation as written by the team (White, 2007: 63). Hartley (2008: 169) enumerates several conditions that establish effective collaborative writing: efficiency—because different aspects of the task can be shared out; better quality—because different individuals can contribute different expertise; better-written papers—because each individual contributor can assist in the writing and the editing of the paper, each seeing it from different perspectives. To involve students in meaningful team writing, instructors usually assign a process writing that can range from simple essay writing at lower levels up to longer papers such as a review paper, a research paper, a case-study paper, or a capstone project. Reither and Vipond (1989) offer a view of writing as a process involving three forms or realms of collaboration which are coauthoring, peer-editing, and knowledge making. The main purpose of collaborative writing is not only to demonstrate collaboration competence but to construct and advance knowledge claims. With the advancement of technology use in present-day classes, the process of collaboration in writing has completely changed. Classroom management software (CMS) offers features that enhance classroom learning, including the ability to create groups of students for collaborative work and quick polls. Depending on the features of the software, students may be able to share files with others in their groups and deliver demonstrations to the class from their seats. These tools may also allow instructors to direct students to a particular resource simultaneously or administer a quiz and collect assignment submissions (Burkhardt et al., 2010). Google has tremendously reshaped the forms of collaboration. With a Google account, users can create basic word-processing documents and presentations and invite other users to edit or collaborate with them. Basic spreadsheet software allows users to create and manipulate charts, but collaborative spreadsheet programs allow students to update and manipulate data at a time that is convenient for them (Burkhardt et al.,

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2010: 7). Rather than requiring students to e-mail various versions of projects to other group members, Google Docs support simultaneous or asynchronous creation and editing, so each group member has access to the most recent version at any time (Burkhardt et al., 2010: 6). Despite all, Google Forms, Google Meet, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Slides, and so on have eased the process of collaboration. Cloud-based technology has become increasingly popular due to its accessibility, convenient interface, and sharing features that may support efficient collaboration (Yim et  al., 2014). A cloud-based platform holds some specific advantages, including the opportunity to access cloud-based documents from multiple locations and the ease with which multiple students and their teacher can synchronously and asynchronously collaborate on writing through sharing of comments, revising each other’s drafts, and co-­ authoring documents (Yim et al., 2014). Finally, the list below will demonstrate some of the steps of collaborative process writing of a literature review paper: –– students divide into groups of 3–4 (see the division into groups below); –– students meet (online or face-to-face) to divide a workload; –– students decide on the work plan; –– students work on keywords to be applied to the library database and store papers on Google Drive; –– students create Google Docs with shared access to the document; –– students find necessary library sources and share the annotation on Google Docs; –– students use Zotero to create a bibliographical list; –– students meet to discuss the work and make another share of a workload; –– each student works on his/her part; –– students merge the parts and create a rough draft of the paper; –– each student reads the paper and makes comments for improvement; –– students meet for final corrections; –– the work is submitted (printed, published as a webpage, presented, etc.) This is just a scarce example of group writing, while I believe the instructors can elaborate on it and suggest more steps.

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Group Projects The creation of a cooperative and collaborative learning environment advances and equips students as independent learners. Peer support focuses on what they achieve through their interactions rather than what they attain (Ody & Carey, 2013: 294). This is especially true for students in universities when reliance on the family shifts to reliance on peers. Peer relationships become extremely important in ensuring that students feel secure in and attached to their groups. The importance of belonging is a key issue in how students experience their time at university, and has a direct impact on their attachment to both social groups and the institution itself, in turn affecting their academic experience (Ford, 2015: 168). The social nature of a small group adds to the trust and comfort of the class (Werder & Skogsberg, 2013); students enjoy working in small groups and getting to know one another. They also learn more from one another than we suspect (White, 2007: 65). In addition to studies, life as a student would not be complete without events away from university (Zhou, 2015: 7). Volunteering can be a good out-of-class experience to feed students’ individual and academic needs. Volunteering can be defined as any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group, or cause, outside of one’s immediate family (Wilson, 2000). Moore et al. (2010: 36) believe that one of the best ways for students to learn, particularly those with high scores in interpersonal intelligence, is to teach or at least explain to others what they have learned. When you have to explain things to others, you start to think hard and seriously about it. Talking to other people about the subject requires you to organize your thoughts into a logical sequence. With this in mind, in 2018 within the AW & IL course, I have launched a semester-long project that resulted in paper productions, both individual and collaborative, and two group presentations. At the beginning of the semester, students were divided into groups of four with respect to the subject they would like to teach to SOS Village orphan kids aged 5–16. The next division was with consideration of kids’ age groups, that is, students who would treat kids aged 5–8, those who would work with the kids of 9–12, and those who would manage the teens of 13–16. Following Gottschalk and Hjortshoj

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(2004), students were provided clear methods for establishing roles and distributing labor and given the guidelines of what they should do. Initially, it was planned that each group of students would deliver four interactive classes (the subjects selected are: English, Geography, History, and Math) to the target audience using the content gamification technique. The visits were planned for the mid of term. During the first part of the term, the students worked in groups, prepared materials, and presented them to the class for further discussion and feedback. At the end of the term, having completed their four visits, each student submitted (1) an individual reflective essay paper; (2) a final report project was submitted by each group. To get a better understanding of the project, please, follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq3ShvS5OJo In conclusion, with a large number of students enrolled in your course, the mathematical advantage of the group project is fairly obvious. If 100 students are working in teams of 4, you will have only 25 reports or papers to read rather than 100. Team presentations, in turn, will require considerably less class time than individual presentations (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004). Likewise, team projects will require less feedback than individual projects. Because most of the professions students enter require teamwork, including reports and presentations, these projects also offer kinds of learning that are often neglected in undergraduate studies, which emphasize individual, competitive performances (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004).

Collaborative Presentations Collaborative presentations in AW & IL class normally appear as a part of collaborative process writing when students prepare a presentation to demonstrate their workflow, an outline, the goals, and the ideas with respect to the intended written project. Unlike public speaking and persuasion class where teachers measure students’ rhetoric as well as their verbal and body language via oral presentations, teachers of AW & IL would most probably evaluate the contextual aspect of the group presentation. On the other hand, group presentations can be delivered as a result of a joint project discussed in the section above. The most

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important is having all these group works serve a unique function, which is developing students’ soft skills, with oral and written communication being at the forefront. Moreover, group presentations can reduce the class time required if two or three students are working on related topics. Preparations for the presentation will also give students a chance to learn about others’ projects in some depth. Occasionally, the teachers give these presentations in the format of a professional conference, with topical panels of student speakers (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 117), or simply ask students to make a simple presentation within a certain amount of time. In other words, oral presentations may take different forms and intentions (for more details about oral presentations, please see Chap. 7). According to White (2007: 9), any assignment demanding substantial student effort is worth discussing in class as the work progresses. The most valuable discussion often emerges from presentations of what the other students in the class are working on. As students listen to their peers’ plans, they begin to envision new possibilities. As they express their own thoughts on the subject, they begin to acquire ownership of their topic. With group presentations, students learn to come to the common ground, share the workload, resolve the conflicts, manage their time, or simply, demonstrate their abilities to work in teams. Cottrell (2010: 156) believes that when negotiating, you may have to make a decision very quickly. Creating an environment conducive to productive questioning (Buoncristiani & Buoncristiani, 2012: 112) is another advantage of group presentations. Possessing good listening skills as well as having the ability to formulate meaningful questions are as much important as having good presentation skills. Students in the class may take different roles, that is, the role of presenters and the role of listeners. While one group of students presents their topic, others may be asked to prepare a couple of questions that would catalyze further topic elaboration. The online environment has offered another opportunity for students to provide their feedback. Students can use polling to vote for the best presentation or any component of the presentation, for something they liked or disliked. Polling is a great way to help students acquire instant and quantifiable input from the learners, and engage the minds. Polls help to build quick engagement, they offer an outlet to participate even when a learner is

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hesitant to speak or chat, and they are scalable to any size class or group. Moreover, polls are easy to use, fun, and provide immediate feedback to both the teachers and the learners. Alternatively, discussion forums at any educational platform can create a good ground for students to express their attitudes and provide their feedback towards any group presentation.

Peer Support and Its Challenges Peer collaboration among learners has acquired different forms and functions. It may range from peer review up to peer feedback and peer assessment. However, the establishment of a favorable peer-to-peer environment is not an easy task for instructors that requires careful consideration and a well-tailored course design.

Peer-Feedback Feedback plays a vital role in facilitating students’ learning processes and improving their learning outcomes in higher education (Yu, 2021: 35). Feedback in academic writing plays an instrumental role in promoting academic literacy, improving writing quality, and introducing writers into the academic community (Man et al., 2018: 528). Peer feedback is frequently applied within the higher education context as an instructional method beneficial to students’ learning of domain-specific skills that stimulate them to actively consider the task-specific processes and criteria (Huisman et  al., 2018: 955). It refers to the learning activity where learners at similar proficiency levels give each other comments on strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions for improvement based on class artifacts like essays or presentations (Su & Huang, 2021). The literature suggests that peer feedback has been seen as a methodological asset that benefits student writing in many ways, some of which include developing critical thinking, understanding research standards, reflecting on your own work, raising writers’ audience awareness, enhancing the quality of students’ interaction, facilitating revision, and improving writing quality (Man et al., 2018; Phuong Pham, 2021).

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In recent years, feedback in higher education has been conceptualized from a one-way transmissive or delivery model to a process-oriented and learner-centered dialogic model that emphasizes student engagement with feedback and self-regulated learning (Yu, 2021: 35). It is suggested that in the context of feedback as dialogue, learners are not just passive recipients: they actively act on the feedback they receive, and also provide feedback and evaluate their peers’ work (Yu, 2021: 36). In other words, peer feedback can activate the student’s role in generating and providing feedback, help students self-regulate their learning processes, and provide opportunities for students to develop their evaluative judgments (Yu, 2021). In addition, peer feedback is able to boost enjoyment experiences in writing once it is used as a scaffolding activity (Su & Huang, 2021). Students’ learning gains are similarly affected by providing peer feedback and receiving it (Huisman et al., 2019). Students who provide peer feedback may gain experience in problem detection, become more aware of types of writing problems, and may discover different revision strategies. These feedback processes include students taking different perspectives, comparing others’ work to their own, and the assimilation of new knowledge, which can be coherently referred to as reflective knowledge building (Huisman et al., 2019). As a result, they are expected to improve their writing at least as much as students receiving peer feedback. Yu (2021: 37) suggests that within a dialogic process students share their knowledge and understanding to inform ongoing learning. Alternatively, Huisman et al. (2018: 956) contend that if students receiving peer feedback outperform those providing it, this would indicate that the learning mechanisms involved in the act of providing peer feedback are not as strong as those involved in receiving and utilizing peer feedback. Then the question is: which mechanisms should we involve to ensure a balanced approach to peer feedback? To get the answer to the question, we should first think of the basic categories of peer feedback in academic writing. Yu (2021: 36) distinguishes between form-based feedback (e.g. vocabulary use and grammatical errors, i.e. language) and meaning-based feedback (e.g. content and structure). This categorization is reflected in the focus on students’ lexical resources, grammatical accuracy, and the development of meaning in peer feedback. It is evident that the acknowledgment by students of these two categories without any provisional

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training or explanation is equal to failure. Having referred to the contemporary literature on peer feedback, Zakharov et al. (2021) suggest that although self- and peer-assessment have cognitive, social, and linguistic benefits, this feedback may have questionable validity and reliability, especially when completed by inexperienced undergraduate students. Students may not be qualified to review each other’s written assignments, may not be objective especially when assessing themselves, and may offer nonconstructive feedback. In this respect, all students should be trained in using a rubric for assessing the writing assignments. Each writing assignment normally involves several steps: the instructor creates a writing prompt and set of instructions that students respond to by submitting essays; students then learn how to grade through assessing the instructor-written relevant samples (calibrate/learn) using an instructor-­ produced rubric that is closely related to the instructions and writing prompts. Peer feedback is provided as a result of a peer review discussed in the section below.

Peer-Review The increasing number of peer reviews in assessment and the growth of peer-assisted learning (PAL) schemes marks a trend towards viewing students as mentors and facilitators of the learning of others, acknowledging that they have experiences to offer by way of guidance and support to others (Rivers & Willans, 2013: 119). By asking students to read and evaluate a fellow-student’s work, peer review activities cast students in the role of tutors (Burke & Pieterick, 2010). Such activities require reviewers to apply the knowledge and experience they have gained in class and in producing their own work. These activities engage students in the cognitive process of elaboration by having them relate their criticism and advice someone else, an activity demonstrated in the literature to improve the learning of its practitioners (Burke & Pieterick, 2010). According to Zakharov et  al. (2021), peer review has been proffered to harness the energy of students, improve their knowledge and skills through training in the review process, and provide feedback in the language and at a level more similar to the students themselves. The goal of a peer review is to

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have someone else read your essay while it is still a work-in-progress. Students working on a similar project, peers, can get together to exchange ideas about each other’s writing. This can guide the process of revision work (Muller Moore & Lan Cassel, 2011: 114). However, the value of peer review will mainly depend on the way teachers structure and supervise the activity, in line with the design and goals of the class (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 73). Professional writing teachers who emphasize the writing process sometimes devote most of their class time to collaborative work on drafts, in pairs, or in small groups. These teachers gradually train their students to provide useful feedback at different stages of the writing process, and their students learn to assume responsibility for helping one another (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 73). The importance of student guidance is particularly seen when we ask students to do peer review without any detailed explanation on how to do it, and they tend to do rough error corrections accompanied by some unjustified comments. To provide some guidance, the instructor may schedule a workshop in the classroom (Muller Moore & Lan Cassel, 2011: 114). During a peer review workshop, students exchange essay drafts and read one another’s work to assess its strengths and weaknesses. The absence of teacher guidance may result in misunderstanding of the activity, and even chaos in the class. Another important point is to provide several peer review worksheet samples (Muller Moore & Lan Cassel, 2011: 127). Peers can also use rubrics to give each other feedback (Brookhart, 2013: 104). The rubrics provide structure for peer discussions, making it easier for the students to focus on the criteria rather than a personal reaction to the work. The rubrics also aid dialogue. As the students use the language of the rubrics to discuss each other’s work, they are developing their own conceptions of the meaning of the criteria while they are giving information to their peers (Brookhart, 2013). The example below is provided as an illustration of the above-mentioned. Example: Students complete an individual argumentative essay that consists of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. To support one of the essay arguments, students are required to use one external source only. The paper should be written in Times New Roman 12, space 1.5, margins: 1 inch from each side (see Table 6.1).

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Table 6.1  Peer-evaluation and peer-assessment rubrics

Rubrics 1. The introduction: Does the hook sentence grab your attention? Is the topic clear? What do you think should be improved? 2. The body: How many arguments does the author use? Do you think that the arguments are well-grounded? Is there any counter-­ argument and refutation? 3. The conclusion: Do you think that the conclusion restates the thesis statement? Are there any new ideas in the conclusion? Is the author biased when making further suggestions? 4. Is the physical appearance of the essay acceptable? Typed, spaced, margins, intended paragraphs? How can it be improved? 5. Does the paper have sources cited within the text? Do you think the source used is relevant? Give suggestions. 6. Underline the transitions. Do you think they are effective? Make suggestions. 7. Go for language. Underline unclear sentences and grammatical errors. Make suggestions.

Peer Comments/ Feedback

Peer-­ Assessment 1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

Once the peer- review/feedback is complete, each student works on his/her own paper and submits it together with the peer feedback form. The teacher evaluates the quality of the peer review and the ability of a student to react to the comments and improve as a result of it. Of course, we can always think of more improved methods to organize peer review and peer feedback processes among our students. Most of these will mainly depend on the course goals, types of assignments, the level of students’ preparation, course content, learner needs, and other factors important in the teaching and learning processes.

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Peer-Assessment Peer assessment, often understood as a part of collaborative learning (van den Berg et al., 2006), mainly complements a peer-review and a peer-­ feedback process. Compared to collaborative, cooperative, or peer learning in all of which students produce a collective outcome, share knowledge, and learn from the collaboration (van den Berg et al., 2006), peer assessment is an effective instructional way of promoting formal writing competencies in an active learning scenario in different educational contexts, such as high school and university (Ramon-Casas et al., 2019: 653). Examples of peer-assessment activities would be reviewing work written by a classmate or receiving reviews on one’s own work from fellow students (Carlsson Hauff & Nilsson, 2021). Peer assessment has a considerable number of advantages that include the development of teamwork skills and promotes active rather than passive learning (Topping, 1998: 256). It also develops verbal communication skills, negotiation skills, and diplomacy, and involves students directly in the learning process that promotes a sense of ownership, personal responsibility, and motivation. As a result of students’ reflection on their peers’ work and on their own strengths and weaknesses (van den Berg et al., 2006), peer assessment develops students’ self-regulation, strategy learning, motivation, and most importantly, their formal writing skills (van den Berg et al., 2006; Ng & Yu, 2021). Finally, peer assessment can force students to reflect on assessment tasks and pay greater attention to what factors lead to a good or poor assignment. In subsequent tasks, students are believed to demonstrate a better understanding and greater confidence and produce better-quality work (Ng & Yu, 2021). Conversely, peer assessment cannot be considered immaculate because it has some disadvantages. Often students do not take peer assessment seriously, making its quality and effectiveness decline (Ng & Yu, 2021). The probability of fear among students that their fellows would put in an insufficient amount of effort into peer assessment (Mulder et al., 2014) as well as a possibility of peer pressure that results in the less objective and prejudiced assessment are drawbacks that instructors have to deal with. In other words, problems during the collaboration may vary from frustration to perceived exploitation (Melzer, 2014), up to biased responses in peer evaluation, and a lack of perceived fairness (Ramon-­Casas et al., 2019: 654).

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To establish a climate conducive to healthy peer feedback, several techniques should be considered. In the peer assessment process, it is important that students acknowledge the seriousness of a feedback component on peer feedback (Ng & Yu, 2021). In addition, when students work with structured instruments (rubrics, checklists, gradebooks, etc.) during the evaluation of their peers’ work, the validity of both the peer-­assessment process and the perceived fairness of the method increase (Ramon-Casas et  al., 2019: 654). In their study, Berg et al. (van den Berg et al., 2006) emphasize that peer assessment approaches relative fairness once oral and written peer feedback is provided. While written feedback mainly concentrates on evaluative comments, oral feedback provides arguments and suggestions. Similarly, written feedback concentrated more on content, oral feedback more on style. From this, we can conclude that, for peer assessment to yield the most complete feedback, a combination of written and oral feedback is essential (van den Berg et al., 2006). Today, peer assessment has acquired both paper-based and digital forms. Both of them are based on a set of criteria and a grading scale. A traditional paper-­based form would include a set of rubrics accompanied by 1–5 or 1–10 Likert scale. A digital assessment form may appear in Peer Collaboration Google Form or any other software with similar functions. Each instructor works on a peer assessment form with respect to the course requirements and the expected learning outcomes. A group of scholars and educators consider that there is a strong correlation between peer assessment and self-assessment. According to Clarke (2008: 47) in all forms of learning, it is important to be able to assess your own performance. This allows you to seek help when you need it or to make an extra effort when required. In conventional courses, you have many opportunities to judge your progress. The study conducted by Carlsson Hauff and Nilsson (2021) demonstrates an impact of self-assessed knowledge and trust on receiving peer assessment so that individuals low on self-assessed knowledge and high on trust have a more negative experience than those high on knowledge and low on trust. Alternatively, strong self-assessment skills are formed as a result of an effective peer assessment. For example, Tsai and Chuang (2013), as cited in Ramon-Casas et  al., 2019: 654 showed that participants improved their qualitative writing and revision skills after participating in a structured peer-assessment activity. Importantly, they became critical of their own work and more motivated to improve their own writing competencies. Finally, self-assessment and

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peer-assessment are painful and difficult processes for students; yet without assessment, students will not revise or will do so reluctantly and without the requisite personal involvement (White, 2007: 67).

 isunderstandings Among the Team Members M and Their Solutions One of the major drawbacks of collaboration is unequal and disruptive participation behavior among the group members that often results in complaints and conflicts. To mitigate any possible conflicts among the team members, instructors have to establish some teamwork etiquette and rules.

Student Complaints and Peer Pressure Instructors who frequently include the collaborative assignments into their syllabi should be quite familiar with the complaints students frequently make with respect to any group member(s) or the group itself. We may often get e-mails from our students asking to change their groups/to put them in a different group due to several reasons. In a most outrageous scenario, instructors may witness serious conflicts that need resolutions. Complaining often refers to morality (Pakkanen, 2011: 386). By complaining, the complainer makes his or her norms and expectations visible: the complained-of situation has violated the expectations of the complainer. Besides, the complainer also displays his or her suggestion about the responsibility for the complained-of situation. Most of the students’ complaints are linked to the diverse approach to the time-­ management among the group members, their vision of the assignment implementation, domination of one student over the others, unequal distribution of the workload, disregard of one student by another (others), unequal contribution, missed deadlines, personal grudge, probability of getting a low grade (low-grade panic), cultural issues, schedule conflict, free-riders, peer pressure, and some others. The enormous educative power latent in peer influence derives from that emotional aspect of learning, tapped through the relationship, the emotive tie, developed among several students organized to work collaboratively (Bruffee, 1981:

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746). Interestingly, despite possessing a negative sense in academic literature and public, peer pressure may acquire a positive connotation when talking about teamwork. It is not without reason that Rae Clasen and Bradford (1987) defined peer pressure as a positive force in adolescents’ lives as it can exert a positive influence on school involvement and academic achievement. Hence, once the group is dominated by hard-­ working students, they are more likely to affect a less industrious student(s). For instance, using peer pressure, teams can help students with procrastination issues, making everyone meet milestones that support the group effort. Despite all, using some methods and techniques mentioned below, instructors remain the key stakeholders to establish a favorable atmosphere in groups.

Group Formation Peculiarities Many educators believe that the groups should be normally established early in the course to allow group members time to get to know each other, to build a relationship, and to determine their working strategy. It is also suggested that groupings should be kept the same within the course time to maintain the workflow and coherence. Another valuable point is the number of students per group. A large body of literature suggests that groups typically range from two to six members. However, practice shows that groups that consist of an odd number of students (3 or 5) are better in sharing the workload and acting as a single mechanism and are less likely to split into pairs within the same group.

Group Types Collaborative learning groups exist in many sizes and forms and work together to achieve an array of objectives (Barkley et al., 2014). In their book Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, Barkley et al. (2014: 76-77) classify three main types of groups: formal, informal, and base. The selection of the groups will mainly depend on the group activity, purpose of the group, type of assignment, time allocated to the assignment, expected outcomes, and some others.

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–– Informal groups are formed quickly and randomly and are primarily used in onsite classes as a break-out to a longer class activity A teacher might, for example, take a break during lecture and ask students to work with others to respond to a question, solve the problem, or brainstorm ideas. –– Formal learning groups are created to achieve a more complex goal. They may last from one class period to several weeks, whatever it takes to complete a specific task or assignment such as writing a report, writing a research paper, or developing a presentation. –– Base groups are long-term groups that work on a variety of tasks. They stay together for the entire term or even the academic year. The authors also distinguish between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups with respect to homogeneity and heterogeneity of gender, cultural background, age, and some other demographic peculiarities of the group members. Instructors fairly familiar with their class, its norms, as well as students’ views and attitudes to the above-mentioned factors, are in charge of assigning either homogeneous or heterogeneous groups. Groups in LMS are normally manually enrolled, self-enrolled, and randomly enrolled (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate). However, this may vary from platform to platform.

Division into Groups The division into groups is fulfilled on a random, teacher-determined, and student-selected basis (Barkley et al., 2014: 78). –– Self-selection allows students to work with their friends or with the learners they earlier met or familiar with. This will mitigate extra social interaction and discomfort for an introvert and shy students. –– Teacher selection allows teachers to form groups based on some criteria, for example, gender, age, cultural background, interests, experience, and so on Additionally, students learn to communicate effectively and establish a working environment with those they barely know. –– Random selection can be done based on alphabetical order, topic selection criteria, or any chance-based criterion. It is suggested that online groups do not typically share the same physical space; instead, group members connect with each other from their

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own space, and although members in an online course may share the same time if they are meeting synchronously, technology allows for students to work quite well in the asynchronous environment (Barkley et al., 2014: 88). Interactions both in synchronous and asynchronous space were earlier discussed in this chapter.

 etting Ground Rules for Effective Group S Collaboration Today, instructors can come across numerous tips and suggestions on rules to be set for effective group collaboration. Without refereeing to a particular author, I would probably focus on the compilation of the most favorable and effective tips to foster productive interaction among the group members: Students should: –– Agree on clear objectives of the projects; –– Equally treat each group member; –– Be respectful; –– Ensure equal contribution to the project; –– Communicate openly; –– Be flexible; –– Avoid conflicts (otherwise immediately inform the instructor of any serious arguments among the group members); Give constructive feedback; –– Be time-efficient; –– Complete tasks assigned to you; –– Meet deadlines, and so on In turn, teachers should ensure the following: –– Clearly explain the activity; –– Set the requirements; –– Explain the objectives of the project; –– Explain the procedure; –– Set the time frames;

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–– Set clear grading criteria; –– Be available; –– Establish some netiquette rules (if necessary); –– Create virtual classroom(s); –– Create an online space (e.g. Google Docs, Online Forum) to answer students’ opinions or concerns (e.g. FAQ); –– Provide all necessary worksheets and any other group work documents, and so on. More tips on the group work ground rules setting can be found in Johnson and Johnson (1984), Barkley et al. (2014), Gillies (2016).

Conflict Resolution Documents Creating and keeping a good team is, amongst chief executives, the most highly rated ingredients of success (Taylor & Humphrey, 2002), both academic and professional. However, few people have developed outstanding team skills, the absence of which may sometimes cause some arguments and conflicts among the team members. Additionally, our natural self-interest in our own needs, moods, beliefs, wants and feelings can make it very easy for us to sabotage the teams or groups that we find ourselves in (Cottrell, 2010: 139). In short, the value of collaborative learning is that it affects the emotional element in learning contextually, through the social context of peer influence, not through the teacher’s conscious application of pedagogical or psychological techniques. This is why counseling and sensitivity training techniques are largely superfluous in organizing collaborative learning (Bruffee, 1981: 746). One of the ways to mitigate the conflicts inside the groups is to ask students to sign a learning contract which is a formal agreement with some guidance from the teacher that articulates the shared responsibility for learning. The best way to design a contract is to discuss its points with the students with the purpose to foresee all possible conflict triggers. These may include the deadlines, workload distribution, number of formal and informal meetings, timesheet, schedules, number of online and offline meetings, availability of students, and so on. Also, teachers may want to prepare a group complaint form in case, the group wants to report the member who

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violates his/her duties and responsibilities. Another version of it can be a complaint form filled out by a group member as a result of being unfairly treated by the group member. A complaint form should be immediately sent to a teacher to decide further actions. The learner contract can either be sent to the instructor via email, uploaded on an educational platform, or stored in a special portfolio. Finally, to create an effective group-work environment, instructors should consider the following: ask learners if they have concerns about the groupwork that they'll be doing; create a safe environment for open dialogue and encourage them to voice their concerns about roles that others take; focus on the process and ask learners to come to a consensus beforehand; provide students with information and tips on how to interact with classmates (Zheng et al., 2020). In a virtual environment, the best way to follow the process is to create an online forum where the instructor can react to students’ questions and concerns, make regular announcements, create a FAQ, encourage community-building, mark the timeline, and many others. The simplest technique is to create a Google Forms document creating a five-point Likert scale for each student. Once the assignment is complete and submitted, you may ask students to enter the link and evaluate each group member’s work with respect to their engagement into the project. You may also leave a space for extra comments. The results obtained can be calculated and included as a rubrics item to constitute the final grade.

Assessing Student Collaboration There is no single answer to the question of how to grade collaborative learning because faculty, institutions, and the courses have widely divergent value systems (Barkley et  al., 2014: 102). The basic collaborative grade components are the following: 1. Student self-assessment is designed for students to evaluate their personal input into the project based on criteria earlier established by the teacher. The criteria may range from mere time management, up to the amount of work implemented within the group work. Information

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may be provided both in the form of written comments and a numerical rating scale (e.g. from 1 to 5). 2. Peer assessment (anonymous) is done by the group members with respect to each other’s performance within the project timeline. The rubrics are established by the instructor who decides on aspects of the teamwork s/he would like to evaluate. To extract the grade for each student, teachers calculate the average mean for each student evaluated. 3 . Group assessment (anonymous) is implemented by all members of the group with respect to the overall group performance on the project. Students normally leave their comments (positive/negative) and grade the overall group commitment using a numerical rating scale (e.g. 1–10), or an opinion scale (e.g. excellent, very good, fair, etc.). 4 . Final product assessment is fulfilled by the instructor following the rubrics set for a particular assignment (see Chap. 7). Resulted of an average calculation, each student gets an individual grade, not a team grade (see Table 6.2). Back in 1971, Taylor (1971: 311) suggested the use of a grade contract that seemed to offer real hope for improved communication between students and teachers. Based on an underlying belief in individual freedom, the necessity of commitment, and personal responsibility, the grade contract operates on an individual one-to-one relationship as other grading procedures do not. The grade contract is a program of study and experience which is mutually agreed upon by the student and his professor, or by the student and other group members. It is predicated upon the assumption that the objectives have been clearly stated and ordered in terms of quantity and quality (Taylor, 1971: 311). Table 6.2  Rubrics to assess student’s collaboration e.g. Group B

Self-­ assessment

Peer assessment

Group assessment

Final product

TOTAL

Jessica Sam Emily

4.5/5 3/5 5/5

4/5 3.5/5 4.5/5

4/5 4/5 4/5

4.5/5 4.5/5 4.5/5

17/20 15.5/20 18/20

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Chapter Highlights • Collaborative learning aims to bring together students with different knowledge, skills, experiences, and cultural and ethical background for the sake of creating a final product as a result of common agreement and consent. • Digital communication tools, both synchronous and asynchronous, include the most recent tools such as web conferencing tools, discussion boards, wikis, social media, online word processors, and some others. • Collaborative assignments may take different forms that will mainly depend on course goals and learners’ needs. • Collaborative reading is a key step towards a digital reading that promotes a simultaneous reading and annotation of a paper by a single group. • Collaborative writing frequently involves the form of a process writing to develop students’ soft skills. • Group projects create a cooperative and collaborative learning environment aimed to increase students’ motivation and interest in the class. • Collaborative presentations measure students’ abilities to deliver relevant content resulting from the joint project. • Peer feedback aims to improve the writing of students who give and receive feedback. Effective peer feedback takes place when the instructor provides clear rubrics and writing prompts. • The peer-review process engages students in the cognitive process of elaboration on criticism and advice. • Peer assessment forces students to reflect on assessment tasks from the tutor’s point of view which helps to develop objectivity upon your own work. • Group members may sometimes experience conflicts to be resolved. Instructors need to carefully craft the group work to mitigate any possible misunderstanding. • When forming a group, instructors should consider the time of group creation, the number of students, the type of the group, group selection criteria, group work ground rules, and conflict resolution documents. • The assessment of a collaborative assignment may be based on a calculation of individual and group work assessment features as well as the final product. • Soft skills involve such skills as critical thinking, problem-solving, time-­ management, conflict resolution, work ethic, public speaking, writing, teamwork, leadership, professional attitudes, digital literacy, and so on.

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Yu, S. (2021). Giving genre-based peer feedback in academic writing: Sources of knowledge and skills, difficulties and challenges. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(1), 36–53. Zakharov, W., Li, H., Fosmire, M., Pascuzzi, P. E., & Harbor, J. (2021). A mixed method study of self- and peer-assessment: Implications of grading online writing assignments on scientific news literacy. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 28(1), 67–84. Zheng, L., Bhagat, K. K., Zhen, Y., & Zhang, X. (2020). The effectiveness of the flipped classroom on students’ learning achievement and learning motivation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 23(1), 1–15. Zhou, C. E. (2015). Motivation to learn and quality of life. In M. Henning, A. Krägeloh, U. Christian, & W. T. Glenis (Eds.), Students motivation and quality of life in higher education (pp. 5–10). Routledge.

7 Grading and Feedback

Providing feedback to students is a critically important step in the learning process, and yet in many classrooms, feedback only occurs at the end of assignments, almost serving as a postmortem in justifying a student’s final grade (Percell, 2017: 111). This chapter discusses the importance of grading as a means of formative and summative assessment. The chapter is in search of ways to substitute graded activities with non-graded portfolios, quizzes, and exams for the sake of providing healthy feedback aimed at developing effective writing skills. The chapter also reports on the ways to treat students’ attendance and participation, claiming that both of them should be implicitly assessed, yet should not constitute a part of a final grade. Such a traditional approach is juxtaposed with a digitalized one, where the role of technology is to facilitate communication between a teacher and students, making it possible to deliver oral and written support to students online and on campus.

Grading and Its Essence Throughout the years, writing assessment has been troubled by its dependence on subjective judgments, and the major challenge has been how to reduce or eliminate that subjectivity to produce consistent assessments © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_7

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and, conversely, how to embrace that subjectivity as part and parcel of the social construction of knowledge (Ross & LeGrand, 2017: 231). Students hate to be graded; most teachers hate to give grades; everyone hates to talk about grades (White, 2007). Enter any faculty room and you are sure to hear at least one exhausted educator lamenting over the stack of papers that need to be graded (Lucas, 2012: 136). Despite all, grading remains one of the crucial components of teaching, as well as a good grade stands for the best incentive for students. Gottschalk and Hjortshoj (2004: 53) believe that teachers often feel that they are primarily graders because they assume that undergraduates are most concerned about the grades on their papers. Every teacher knows from experience that students interpret the markings on a paper in terms of the grade. Particularly if the grade is a low one, every other mark on the paper will be read as a justification of the grade (Veit, 1979). Low grades may either signal students that they need to study harder and devote more time to the course or discourage them causing students to disengage from the course which presumably results in lower grades (Gray & Bunte, 2021). One of the key grading-related questions in academic writing is whether teachers should put only grades on assessments of student learning (Guskey, 2019: 42), or the grades should be justified by comprehensive comments and feedback. Schwab et al. (2018) contend that grades represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg as a measurement tool because grades do not capture the fullness of human potential. They believe that developing more robust multi-dimensional measures of student learning accompanied by detailed feedback to help guide students in their capacity as self-propelled, self-guided navigators of their own learning is a laudable and attainable goal. In other words, a grade on a paper, with no comment or only a cryptic phrase or two, will not add much to student learning (Guskey, 2019: 46). We must also keep in mind, however, that criterion-based, task-involving grades alone do not help improve student learning. Students get nothing out of a letter, number, word, phrase, or symbol attached to the evidence of their learning. Grades help enhance achievement and foster learning progress only when they are paired with personalized comments that offer guidance and direction for improvement (Guskey, 2019: 46). Comments that identify what students did

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well, what improvements they need to make, and how to make those improvements, provided with sensitivity to important contextual elements, can guide students on their pathways to learning success and ensure that all learn excellently (Guskey, 2019: 46). Students indeed respond better to positive than negative reinforcement, better to encouragement than to threats (Veit, 1979). Moreover, sarcastic or harsh comments will allow the student to displace dissatisfaction with the paper (the teacher’s intention), with a dislike of the teacher and thereby short-­ circuit learning (White, 2007: 50). If we want students to grow as writers, we need to create a different environment where experimentation is encouraged. We need to burden them with the sense that each word they write will have a bearing upon their academic careers (Veit, 1979). That is why we should consider the provision of meaningful comments and constructive feedback to indicate the areas that need further improvement. Another reality is that while some students (mainly graduates) expect profound and detailed comments on their pieces of writing (Pecorari, 2008), others simply ignore them. Lucas (2012) mentions a frustratingly common occurrence in her classroom that resulted when she returned papers. After spending hours correcting, editing, and constructing feedback to help students refine their work, they would glance at their papers, scan for their grades, and then jam the paper into their binder. The author admits that even her best students barely glanced at the comments she crafted for hours, which resulted in the repetition of the same errors. One of my students complained of a low grade notified by the online “grade book”. “Have you read my comments below the grade”—I asked. “Which comments?”—he answered. I then realized that students wait for the grades to appear, and almost no one goes for comments and feedback. Hence, how to write individualized and useful comments and feedback in a reduced amount of time, making it essential and visible to students? There is a large body of literature on that. One way to accommodate the changing learning environment is to utilize group projects (Vander Schee & Birrittella, 2021). Group projects reduce the grading time needed for instructors who find themselves with many more students. At the same time, involving students in the grading process can reduce assessment time even further. Large groups of students are divided into small ones, each having 5–6 students. The peer grading process normally

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takes place under the instructor’s control who provides students with carefully crafted rubrics. Lucas (2012) suggests slicing writing instruction into five specific types of writing, each with a purpose and clear expectation. Each type of writing would state explicitly what students must produce and how it will be assessed. This eliminates guesswork from grading, both for students and teachers. The author mentions Collins Writing Program (Lucas, 2012), which balances effectiveness with efficiency. In other words, we need to teach fewer skills and do a better job of teaching, assessing, and providing formative feedback. By focusing on those skills, we may emphasize the importance of feedback in each assignment. Using technology has made the grading process much easier. The availability of anonymous grading helps to provide an unbiased and healthy appraisal of students’ papers. Moreover, inline grading made it possible to involve student-assistants (TAs) to help mark the papers. Digital tools like highlighters, comment bars, markers, and many others used for inline grading, permit to provide quick and target-oriented feedback. Online plagiarism detectors (Turnitin, SafeAssign, etc.) incorporated into the LMS platforms do not only save teachers’ time but give access to the sources inaccurately used by the students. Finally, the appearance of a grade together with the comments facilitates communication between the instructor and students.

Constructive Feedback Feedback is largely accepted as an effective intervention comprising both positive and constructive comments aimed to improve students’ performance (Bottini & Gillis, 2021; Lee, 2016). Instructors in higher education are generally aware of the importance and benefits of providing quality feedback on students’ written assignments to enhance the learning process for students, that is, to close the gap between where the students are at a point in time, to where the instructor hopes for the students to land (Sarcona et al., 2020). Giving information that highlights shortcomings in students’ work has the potential for both positive and negative consequences, simultaneously encouraging students to learn and also undermining their motivation and self-confidence (Fong et al., 2021). In

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this respect, teachers, lecturers, and writing tutors are often confronted with the challenges of giving constructive and encouraging text feedback on students’ texts. From an instructor’s perspective, the practice of giving feedback itself frequently remains undefined and evasive (Sigott et  al., 2019). Fong et al. (2021) believe that giving and receiving feedback are complex processes as they involve interactions between characteristics of the feedback giver, multiple components of the feedback message, and individual differences among feedback recipients. It is highly important to avoid an overabundance of feedback that would be overwhelming for students who receive it and teachers who provide it (Sieben, 2017). The situation where teachers exhaust themselves in marking pile after pile of compositions without seeing the effectiveness of their practice, while students find their writing inundated with red ink and yet unable to figure out how they can improve their writing is described by Lee (2016) as a no-win situation. Within the last two decades, scholars, as well as academic writing instructors, have shared numerous ways to provide comments and feedback. Sigott et  al. (2019), for instance, suggest directive versus non-­ directive feedback instances in the form of text commentaries, directive feedback being defined as identifying the error in the text and providing suggestions for improvement, while non-directive feedback doing the same without giving suggestions. Lee (2016) proposes a conventional approach by giving primarily error-focused feedback to single drafts without engaging students in peer feedback. In contrast, within the higher education context, Huisman et al. (2018) frequently apply peer feedback (see Chap. 6) as an instructional method beneficial to students’ writing as it stimulates them to actively consider the task-specific processes and criteria. Fong et al. (2021) give a count to constructive criticism often layered between initial and closing positive statements called a complement sandwich or a feedback sandwich (positive-negative-­positive). Finally, some practitioners (Guskey, 2019) simply avoid giving feedback within the semester, putting a checkmark for the assignment next to the students’ names in a grade book. We can definitely apply any of these types, yet, we should be aware of the students’ motivational orientation and their acknowledgment of a feedback essence. Feedback literacy emphasizes how students respond to feedback in four related ways: appreciating

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feedback, making judgments, managing affect, and taking action. Specifically, when students perceive a high degree of constructiveness in a feedback message, they appreciate the role of feedback to improve their work, making judgments about their own work in light of the feedback (Fong et al., 2021). Often, rather than simply implementing something ready-made, students prefer to choose freely when and how they take on suggestions (Sigott et al., 2019). It is easy to provide feedback indeed, yet, it is not easy to provide meaningful feedback that would lead students towards improvements. Sieben (2017) contends that we should learn strategic ways of providing concise yet comprehensive feedback. Using scaffold assignments structured so that students can demonstrate improvement from one task to the next seems to be effective to increase students’ use of instructors’ feedback. Learners must have an active role in feedback, and it should include them being able to review feedback, make a self-evaluation of their work, and then interpret how to make improvements (Sarcona et al., 2020). Despite all, we should bear in mind that feedback should not be personal. When feedback is personal such as, “You did a great job!” or “You are a smart student!” it is ineffective in enhancing learning (Higgins & Simpson, 2011, as cited in Sarcona et al., 2020). Students are more receptive to skills development comments that are usable for future work (Sarcona et al., 2020). Moreover, it is not necessary to respond to every mistake that students make. Sieben (2017) suggests six effective feedback strategies through a strengths-based approach that would make writing matter to students. 1 . Relate and react to the content and ideas in the piece; 2. Provide a balance of compliment and critique; 3. Use minimal marginal notes and summative endnotes; 4. Keep it conversational and ask questions; 5. Ask students to write feedback response letter and highlight paper revisions; 6. Use emoticons (speak the digital language) The three final strategies seem particularly attractive, as they promise to involve the students in the self-evaluation to a great extent.

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Guskey (2019: 46) stresses out the essential aspects of feedback in the following way: 1. Always begin with the positive. Comments to students should first point out what students did well and recognize their accomplishments; 2. Identify what specific aspects of students’ performance need to improve. Students need to know precisely where to focus their improvement efforts; 3. Offer specific guidance and direction for making improvements. Students need to know what steps to take to make their product, performance, or demonstration better and more in line with established learning criteria; 4. Express confidence in students’ ability to achieve at the highest level. Students need to know their teachers believe in them, are on their side, see value in their work, and are confident they can achieve the specified learning goals. Above all, one of the most important conditions for constructive feedback is to be able to answer students’ queries and task-related e-mails on time, to be accessible during office hours and consultations, and to organize individual or group meetings to treat students’ errors and mistakes (see Chap. 8). However, when instructors deal with dozens of students, writing comments and text marking turn into real torture. That is why, if the educational institution is indeed interested in growing skillful and knowledgeable students, they should not overload the instructors with a high number of learners, and leave enough time for the instructors to treat each student individually. Finally, feedback on language-related errors, produced by the students who are non-native speakers of English, takes most of the teachers’ time. To facilitate teachers’ jobs, more experienced teachers should compile the most commonly occurred language errors and forward them to a writing center where academic writing assistants would organize extra-curricular meetings with students aimed at working on the elimination of those language errors and mistakes.

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Technology-Mediated Feedback Changes in pedagogical approaches with the use of technology have broadened the feedback topic. Higher educational institutions have adopted learning management systems (LMS) that provide a means to connect students and faculty online and are intended to provide a more efficient assessment process (Sarcona et  al., 2020). With technological advances, computer-assisted assessment tools have been developed to automate the submission and assessment processes and help students benefit from learning how to give and receive meaningful reviews (Zakharov et al., 2021). One of the simplest ways to provide written feedback (see Photo 7.1) is to use a “new comment” in a word document where teachers can add their comments in the right-sidebar boxes (image 1). More advanced versions allow using voice comments or audio feedback (image 2), well discussed in Sarcona et al.’s (2020) paper. According to the authors’ findings, audio feedback is more efficient than written assessments which reduces time spent by instructors supplying the feedback and provides more details to students. Yet, audio feedback is a relatively new tool in academic writing classes that needs careful study. LMS platforms are rich in functions that enable the provision of various types of inline comments (image 3). One of the advantages of LMS is to provide anonymous grades and feedback. The anonymity of the online assessment tool motivates students to assess their performances authentically. The assessment can also be performed more conveniently and objectively (Zakharov et al., 2021). Phuong Pham (2021) reveals that feedback provided via blogs may be quite effective and convenient as it can be done at any time and by anyone, including peers. Google Docs or Share Point remain the most effective tools (image 4) to provide feedback both by instructors and peers, mainly through sharing and comparing the work and using various highlighters to point the spots for improvement. Finally, a combination of any synchronous LMS platform (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate, Microsoft Teams, Zoom) with the Google Docs (image 5), where instructors can have an online meeting and simultaneously indicate the errors using the Google Docs link, is one of the most effective and convenient ways to help students improve their writing.

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Photo 7.1

Graded Versus Ungraded Assignments Tasks and activities are the best assessment tools to measure students’ comprehension of the materials delivered within the course frame. In this section, I will differentiate between the graded and ungraded tasks and activities, arguing that the latter ones stand as an effective means of developing students’ writing abilities and skills. I will also avoid the terms “summative” and “formative” assessment (Spector et al., 2016) as well as “formal” and “informal” assessment (Chan & Luk, 2021) as I believe all of them deal with grading. Comparing ungraded activity with active e-learning, Drabick et  al. (2007) define its nature as highly learner-­ oriented rather than content-oriented. Most of the students indeed expect any activity to be graded. However, students should understand that this is not the grade that makes them develop, but the feedback delivered for the sake of improvement. Activities used in an academic writing class may range from a simple blog post, a summary of readings, responses to study questions, tests, up to some solid paper submissions. And this does not need to be graded at all. In fact, we do not need to assess every piece of writing that students give us. Sometimes an encouraging word or a

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simple checkmark indicating satisfactory work is more appropriate than a grade (White, 2007). Indeed, ungraded activities may be considered an integral component to good teaching, student motivation, engagement, and higher levels of achievement (Spector et al., 2016). In their paper, Kenneth (1990) sets several questions to understand how often teachers should grade students’ compositions to achieve the maximum positive results. It is also important to acknowledge the goals and nature of the assignments that would work for improvement. Spector et al. (2016) suggest that with the advancement of new technology and the popularity of MOOCs, various types of tasks and activities are available online. It may include close- and open-ended questions, tests, polling, surveys, blogs, wikis, journals, discussion boards, and many others capable of working for students’ progress. Tasks like journal writing or rough-draft writing frequently required by academic writing instructors should stand among the non-graded activities. The process-writing known for its five steps, that is, researching the topic, planning the structure, drafting the text, revising, editing, and proofreading should turn into the non-graded one aimed at developing students’ writing and soft skills. In other words, process writing should turn into the catalyst that would instill the culture of “writing for improvement and not a grade”. Alternatively, any task may turn into a process of writing. For instance, a simple argumentative essay can be divided into several stages: brainstorming, outlining, submission of the first rough draft without using the sources, submission of the second rough draft using external sources, and submission of the final draft graded by the instructor. While passing all these steps, students should not be afraid of getting a bad grade once they make a mistake in the selection of secondary sources to support their argument. Such an approach benefits both students and the instructors who observe their students’ growth path and make sure that the papers produced are original and written by the students themselves. Two students of mine submitted their final drafts without having me seen them in the process. Being completely unaware of the process we went through, they had nothing to do but confess the engagement of a ghostwriter into the production of the final draft. Finally, both non-graded and graded tasks are important for the AW & IL class.

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Rubrics for Graded Assignments There is general agreement in the broader educational community that rubrics is a meaningful and useful tool for teaching and assessing writing with rubrics viewed as increasing assessment transparency and leading to greater fairness and consistency, as well as providing a means for students to advance their own assessment skills (Ross & LeGrand, 2017: 236). A rubric is a coherent set of criteria for students’ work that includes descriptions of levels of performance quality on the criteria (Brookhart, 2013: 4). As they clarify the qualities that students’ work should have, the rubrics are extremely important. Rubrics help students to understand the learning targets and criteria for success while helping teachers to teach and coordinate their instructions and assessment (Brookhart, 2013: 11). Each assignment has its peculiar criteria of evaluation, and to avoid confusion, students should be familiar with these criteria. In other words, the main purpose of rubrics is to assess students’ performance (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 9). There are two major types of rubrics: general and specific. Brookhart (2013) defines several advantages of general rubrics over the task-specific ones, claiming those general rubrics: (a) can be shared with students at the beginning of an assignment, to help them plan and monitor their own work; (b) can be used with many different tasks, focusing the students on the knowledge and skills they are developing over time; (c) describe student performance in terms that allow forming many different paths to success; (d) focus the teacher on developing students’ learning of skills instead of task completion. Overall, general rubrics can be applied to different assignments and used within a long period. For instance, among the constant items of general rubrics for academic writing, we can name “language use,” “content,” “organization,” “the use of external sources (citations and references),” “structure of the paper”, “format” and some others. Task-specific rubrics (Burke & Pieterick, 2010) are designed for a certain assignment with particular emphasis on learning outcomes. Rubrics specifically

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applied to one assignment or by one instructor, will probably not work in a different assignment and feed the needs of a different instructor. Moreover, specific rubrics would make the instructors and their subject unique, and will often help to detect plagiarism at an early stage. Examples of specific rubrics include the use of a “hook sentence in the introduction”, “two sources from the JStore”, “four body paragraphs instead of regular three”, “creativity”, and so on. To avoid long and monotonous rubric design, some teachers adapt rubrics found in open access online, yet, not all of these rubrics fit the requirements of the course and the task in particular. Rubrics should help keep teachers focused on criteria, not tasks. One and the same activity may have totally different criteria of evaluation depending on the course/ task goals and expected outcomes. Critics of rubric-based assessment argue that it does not take into account the complexities of writing and instead promotes a narrow, formulaic approach to writing (Ross & LeGrand, 2017: 236). However, if we ignore the use of rubrics, both the production and evaluation process will be vague and chaotic. Moreover, carefully designed rubrics can help provide students with reasonable and insightful feedback, as well as in justifying discouraging grades. The criteria and performance-level descriptions in rubrics help students understand what the desired performance is and what it looks like. Effective rubrics show students how they will know to what extent their performance passes muster on each criterion of importance, and if used formatively can also show students what their next steps should be to enhance the quality of their performance (Brookhart, 2013: 12). In this respect, we can provide rubrics before announcing the assignment to make sure that students prepare themselves to meet certain criteria.

Grade Distribution You probably wonder how a grade distribution relates to the rubrics, thinking that the author may have mistakenly added it here. Not really. Grade distribution stands as the best indicator for the accuracy applied to rubrics and demonstrates instructors’ competence and sophistication. As

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shown in Photo 7.2, the bars of FL17 and SP17 indicate an inaccurate application of rubrics due to which the majority of class members are scored between A & B (we can use any grading measurements, i.e. percentage, letter, score). The grade distribution in FL18 and SP18 is obviously better since most of the bars are gathered between A & C (a wide-range scale). How is this normally achieved? Practice shows that narrow grade distribution (FL17 & SP17) takes place when the instructor uses general rubrics without going into the details of the assignments. In other words, students get an overall grade expressed by the letter A (Excellent), B (Good), C (Satisfactory), and so on. On the other hand, carefully crafted rubrics that consider the details of the paper are capable of providing a wide variety of grade distribution, where each item will have its own weight and, as a result, students will not be assessed in an equal manner (see FL18 & SP18). In other words, grade distribution can serve as a “tuning fork” to analyze the quality of the rubrics used.

Photo 7.2

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Grade-Oriented Concerns in AW Classes Inaccurate grade distribution, as well as vague and unclear rubrics provided to each activity within the semester may cause serious consequences. Many students believe that they have done much better within the course and there is still room to inflate their final grade. By the end of the term, your mailbox may explode from the messages with a specific subject line: “Dear Instructor, HELP” followed by the text that explains an acute necessity to get a higher GPA that would increase students’ chances to get a scholarship or to take part in a study abroad program, or so. While you go by your gut and help your students, the administration office makes serious warnings in respect to grade inflation. This is a good reason to think that something is not working properly. Developing more robust multi-dimensional measures of student learning accompanied by detailed feedback to help guide students in their capacity as self-propelled, self-­ guided navigators of their own learning is a laudable and attainable goal (Schwab et al., 2018). It has been a while I have no message saying “increase my grade” since some of the techniques have been carefully reconsidered and implemented to the course: • From the very first class, students are notified about the impossibility of grade inflation; • Grade distribution is carefully thought out; each activity was given a reasonable and justifiable grade point; • Students are communicated about the late submission policy; • Assignment rubrics are well-tailored and detailed; • Students know that whatever happens, the instructor would not make a concession that may humiliate other students’ rights; • Students understand that they should focus on more important issues than a grade; • All the above stated is clearly specified in the syllabus and discussed with the students.

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In the next sections, I will show the ways to deflect students’ attention from grade to more important components of the teaching and learning process. Also, I will suggest alternative assignments (graded or not) that would help students gain better results.

In-Class Participation Most educators would agree that the ideal educational experience is one in which students come to lectures and tutorials prepared to actively engage in the learning process, rather than passively absorbing information (Cook & Andrea Babon, 2017: 24). That is what many of us would call class participation, that is, an action that ranges from mere in-class discussions up to the implementation of different in-class activities (Precourt & Gainor, 2019: 105), group works, and even home assignments checking. Comparing participation to take-home reading, many instructors fear that students are not doing the assigned reading and that they are therefore unprepared for class. In this respect, instructors impose class participation requirements to hold their students accountable (Jones 2008: 59). To make students speak, some teachers encourage them by the phrase: “your participation works on your grade”. However, participation-­ grading methods often depend on a mode of classroom participation and are usually somewhat subjective in nature (Precourt & Gainor, 2019: 103). For instance, when the intent is to get more students to speak up, we involve students in active discussions being satisfied with hot debates. But which student actually participated in this heady conversation? Was it the same one who would catch you in the hall or come by the office to have the same kind of discussion? What evidence do you have about what most students were doing, or how most students were thinking, during the otherwise delightful give-and-take? (Jones 2008). Do we really keep records of those students who expressed clear and meaningful ideas? Or, did we notice those who did talking just for talking? By equating class participation with reading and its in-class discussion, can we ensure students’ total involvement in the class, or can we ensure objective grading of our students? In addition, we all try to grade participation, but do we really understand what we expect our students to do in order to grade

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their participation? Hence, sooner or later we, instructors, struggle with assessing it; likewise, many students struggle when it comes to accepting these assessments (Heyman & Sailors, 2011: 605). Endless arguments with those confident students who believe they have done much better than their peers during the participation put many teachers at disadvantage, making them feel guilty at some point. So, should we really grade the participation? We may answer this once we clearly understand what participation means. For me, participation is a complete involvement of students in my course, that is, their engagement in the following: –– read all the take-home texts; –– be able to answer the questions during the text discussions; –– actively participate in group work (s); –– be aware of all the topics/themes presented in class; –– be aware of all graded activities included in the syllabus; –– attend all mandatory consultations; –– submit the assignments on time; –– keep journal; –– take part in online discussions; –– contribute to wiki; –– take notes, etc. One may notice that we cannot keep records of all those activities presented in the list, yet Table 7.1 may be helpful to some extent: Of course, this is just a sample list you may delete or add the components to, yet, whatever we choose to include as a participation measure, it should be communicated to students in advance, both within the written syllabus and once we discuss it in the introductory class.

Class Attendance Far in 1999, St. Clair contended that if students are able to obtain degrees without good attendance, an institution’s reputation is likely to suffer. The question of students’ regular class attendance is still debatable for many educational institutions, some insisting on it by issuing various

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Table 7.1  Rubrics to evaluate student’s participation The activities to measure students’ participation and involvement Read all the take-home texts; Take part in text discussions; Answer the questions related to the text

Participation in online activities

Active participation in group-works

Being aware of the course flow

Implementation techniques Students can keep a journal by writing their reflections on the assigned text-reading; The text can be discussed on an online discussion board; Students can answer some text-related questions via online or a paper-based quiz; Students can take part in online polls answering text-related questions; Students can take part in a group activity (problemsolving; decision-making) by discussing some points from the text; etc. Keep records of wikis; Keep records of journals; Keep records of portfolios; Keep records of online discussion boards, etc. Student participation in group assignments including presentations, collaborative writing, group projects; Use peer-grading and peer-­feedback; Use student contract; Use student self-report, etc. Keep records of students during the mandatory consultations; Keep records of students who meet/don’t meet deadlines; Keep records of those students who never know what their homework is and what the next graded assignment will be (providing that this has been announced many times). etc.

attendance policies. Having resorted to the strict attendance policy of the institution, many instructors incorporate the attendance item into their grading protocol. However, setting a fair and pedagogically justifiable attendance policy is not straightforward (Moores et al., 2019) since we should consider students’ individual factors, scheduling issues, and new digital opportunities. On the other hand, to achieve the learning outcomes, it is not clear whether we need our students to be physically present, or we should have them successfully complete the course without any regular social presence in the class. Moores et al. (2019: 381) believe

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that despite the proliferation of digital alternatives, student attendance at teaching sessions is still associated with better outcomes for students in terms of both retention and attainment and so it is an important aspect of student engagement for Higher Educational Institutions to consider. Moreover, deep down, most of us probably feel incomplete when performing in front of the class where a considerable number of students are absent. So, if academics wish to encourage students’ attendance, they should seek to make their lectures interesting and interactive and try to create enjoyable social occasions (Moores et al., 2019: 374). Today, with the appearance of online course delivery (blended, hybrid, or online synchronous), the question of students’ in-class attendance became more complicated than ever. Many educators have addressed the importance of making instructors and students aware of the significance of the development of social presence in the online learning process (Whiteside et al., 2017), while others justify a complete course availability through digital tools. Gbadamosi (2015: 199) illustrates the use of Blackboard as a digital means to reduce the need to take notes in the class since detailed PowerPoint slides are made available later on. Audio and video recording of lectures, an online database, and e-reading become totally accessible once the instructor uploads it on the platform. Then, the question is: “Why should students come to the class if everything is accessible with one click?” Practice shows that many online instructors and their students feel disconnected from one another, and this perceived separation leads to disengagement and loss of learning (Whiteside et al., 2017). To fully attract students to our classes, they should understand a certain set of things: –– not all the materials will be uploaded on a digital platform; –– the classes are not made of a fitful set of topics but represent a chain of topics where one theme comes out of another, and having missed one of the classes, the chain will break; –– the teachers with their rich experience will be talking about some things that students will never find in any written sources; –– unlike delayed email replies, students have a chance to get an immediate answer to any queries, and so on.

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Let me bring you an example from one of my classes. We discussed a “peer-review process within the scholarly journal publication” going through all its stages that start with paper submission and end up with publication. While some students described the process as pure anxiety that ends up with an excitement of the author, others simply asked about the “money”—“Who earns money from all this process?” This became the title of my class on reliable sources and a peer-review process that intrigues students to a great extent. And they know that the classroom, either virtual or real, is the only place where they will hear something which is neither written in books nor found on the net. Finally, should we grade students’ physical attendance? I’d say we should mark students’ absence for occasional academic purposes but not grade it. Yet, students should understand that everything has its limits, and in case of abuse, the university may impose various penalty measures that would vary from restrictions to taking part in exams up to being expelled from the institution.

Quizzes The class quiz is a part of the educational toolkit, and like any such device, its impact on student learning depends, in large measure, on how it is used (Haigh, 2002: 19). Quiz questions can be very effective teachers. They may condition students to study in particular ways, to attend to some types of information, and to ignore others, and, may also determine how the students process information (McKenzie, 1973: 281). Quizzes in AW & IL classes are very important in terms of measuring students’ understanding of the texts read, and the way students analyze and process them. In addition, quizzes can measure students’ understanding of some writing techniques, say, finding the definition of a Thesis Statement or defining the elements of a Research Paper. The understanding of information literacy as a stand-alone discipline is well-assessed through the quiz. Questions on the reliability of sources, documentation style, academic misconduct, information assimilation techniques, and others may formulate a solid ground in understanding the liaison between academic writing and information literacy. Above all, regularly assigned in-class

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quizzes help reveal whether the students follow you within the term, or they simply attend their classes to pass the course. Quizzes may be conducted every week, twice a month, once a month, or be substituted by a single testing activity, exam, which I will discuss in the next section. Quizzes may contain a variety of question types including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, yes and no questions, true and false questions, analytical questions, short discussions, and some others. Today, technology has assisted in creating online quizzes, where instructors can easily design any type of question, and most importantly, some question types like multiple choice, yes or no, true or false, matching, and other close-ended questions are automatically graded by the program/platform which saves teachers’ time to a great extent (e.g. Mentimeter, Kahoot, Quizlet, etc.). In classes with limited technological opportunities, paper-based quizzes remain very popular among instructors and their students. In other words, quizzes are good to check students’ midway knowledge, as well as technical and content issues. The most important is that quizzes respond to the teaching and learning needs and facilitate the achievement of the learning outcomes. Cook and Babon (2017: 25) characterize quizzes as highly practical since they help students learn in advance and apply, challenge, critique, and refine their learning through engagement with educators and other students. Particularly in academic writing classes, when students constantly complain of having too many written assignments, quizzes that contain closed-ended questions may become a real relaxation for many teachers and learners. Finally, quizzes can be graded and ungraded, yet if the purpose of the quiz is to increase student’s awareness of the material grasped or simply indicate their progress, we may exclude the quiz grade from the total course weight.

Exams Exams are not set merely to make life difficult (Cottrell, 2007). Emphasizing the multi-purpose nature of exams, Cottrell (2007: 19) distinguishes the following features: a) they provide one means of measuring how much students have learned; b) they enable the tutors to be sure the

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work they are marking is students’ own work, not copied from friends, books or the Internet; c) they serve as a focus for students’ study, encouraging them to draw together what they have learned. Yet, the principal purpose of exams is for instructors to check that students have understood the work covered in the course and that there is obvious progress in respect to the discipline recently studied. Unfortunately, the majority of students are skeptical about exams and believe that there are other means, much softer, to measure students’ learning outcomes. Cottrell (2007: 19) contends that students do not like doing exams, most of them suffering from the idea of taking an exam as such. Instead, she suggests that spending time thinking negative thoughts about exams, such as that they are unhelpful or difficult, does not help achieve better marks. Yet again, it is important to come to terms with the reality of exams. Now, you probably think that the author of this book has completely forgotten to address AW & IL, which normally foresees different ways of student evaluation. No, I haven’t! It is obvious that students of AW & IL do much better when they acknowledge the existence of an exam at the end of the term. We all may visualize various ways to conduct the final exam, yet several effective ways are suggested below: –– the exam question should be designed with respect to the reading texts assigned during the term, some technical questions discussed in the lectures, and some questions that require the application of soft skills (critical thinking, decision-making, problem-solving); –– question types should include both open-ended questions and close-­ ended questions (true/false, yes/no, multiple-choice, multiple answers, matching, etc.); –– AW & IL exam with the duration of one hour may be both paper-­ based and online or onscreen (Clarke, 2008: 201) and is designed to assess students’ literacy. –– providing complete accessibility of technological tools, a digital quiz canvas can be used (see the Photo 7.3); otherwise, instructors may address to a paper-based format; –– to keep students focused, the duration of the exam should be kept short (up to one hour);

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Photo 7.3

–– the number of questions should be kept short as well (up to 30 questions); –– the grade from the final exam should be included in the course total weight; –– to get prepared for the exam and to recap the course, students should be given reading time (up to one week). Reading time helps to consolidate the materials for those who missed some details, or to familiarize with the content for those students who earlier overlooked it. The most important is not to require students’ rote memorization and recall of facts, making the instructor consistently play the role of teacher-examiner, looking for correct answers (Melzer, 2014: 49). The key advantages of the exam are to motivate to learn things; make students look back over what they have already covered; show what students know; require students to manage their time; provide them with a challenge; gain certificates; give value to other things; show objective knowledge; catch up with something that students didn’t learn during the term; feel like expertise after taking an exam (Cottrell, 2007). Finally, being highly recommended for AW & IL, exams can be designed in the most convenient and relevant way to serve upper-presented functions.

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Presentations Oral presentations, either individual or in groups, take very different forms among academic disciplines (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 138). The strongest point in favor of oral work in the composition or academic writing classroom is that it enables students to feel that they are taken seriously as people with minds, and this confidence can increase motivation to write well and even to tackle research papers or any other papers with some sense of pleasure and accomplishment (Saunders, 1985). Back in 1985, Saunders distinguished two major elements in fostering good presentation: providing guidance that allows students freedom in choosing topics and mode of delivery; encouraging brief discussions after each presentation that focus on its content. Today, presentation skills constitute the key soft skills important to each university graduate. By implementing presentation skills into the AW & IL syllabi, we do not only foster students’ speaking skills but extensively develop their listening competencies. Any assignment demanding substantial student effort is worth discussion in class as the work progresses. The most valuable discussion often emerges from presentations of what the other students in the class are working on. As students listen to their peers’ plans they begin to envision new possibilities. As they express their thoughts on the subject, they begin to acquire ownership of their topic (White, 2007: 9). Good listening skills are invaluable to forming a rapport with others. Most people react very strongly to a feeling they are “not heard” or that “someone really listened” (Cottrell, 2010: 137). Skillful listening is more than “hearing the words”. To be a skillful listener means to understand the message, the situation, and other people. Good listening skills enable other people to feel at ease, trust the listener, and express more easily what they wish to communicate (Cottrell, 2010). With this in mind, it is important to motivate students to ask questions once the presentation delivered by their peers is complete. To increase students’ commitment to their work, the discussion after each presentation must center on content. Students should be asked to make quick notes as they listen and to comment on or question afterward anything that has puzzled them or that they want to hear more about (Saunders, 1985). You may also consider including the question-asking element into

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your grading criteria and rubrics (Brookhart 2013, 2017). This will create additional stimuli for your students to actively take part in a questionand-answer session. In other words, creating an environment conducive to productive questioning involves learning how to be a good listener (Buoncristiani & Buoncristiani, 2012: 112). As to presentation itself, the following skills are enhanced: –– the design of presentation slides; –– the ability to work in groups; –– time-management skills; –– verbal language; –– body language; –– listening skills; –– question-asking; –– preparing notes; –– stress management; –– anticipation of favorable or hostile face expression of the public. An audience almost always begins by being favorably disposed towards a speaker. People nearly always want you to do well and will often ignore small slips. Frowns may have nothing at all to do with you. So if the audience looks hostile in any way, assume it’s had a bad morning and aim to cheer it up. (Rose, 2007: 164) Currently, some of the following presentation types can be applied: –– Face-to-Face Presentation—Students prepare their presentations individually or in groups using the slide decks to perform in front of the class. –– Video Presentation—Using various technological devices like mobile phones, tablets, computer apps, platforms (Zoom, Blackboard, etc.), or others, students video record themselves and submit their presentations upon the teacher’s request. The teacher may ask the students to upload their video to various web platforms, including YouTube or any other, and submit the link to the teacher’s e-mail. On having more sophisticated technological opportunities, students may upload their video presentations on the educational platform used for the class.

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–– Online Synchronous Presentation—Using one of the educational platforms (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, etc.), students are asked to turn their microphones and cameras on to deliver their presentation both individually or in groups. One of the advantages of such a presentation is using the polls (e.g. Mentimeter) where other students may vote for the best presentation or simply express their feedback. –– HyFlex Presentation—This type of presentation envisions the teacher and a certain group of students to be physically present in the classroom, while other students may join via any technological device. Group HyFlex presentations allow some students to present in class, while others would deliver their parts using any technological device that would make them visible on a big screen. Certainly, in the nearest future, we will be dealing with new forms of presentations to be added to this list. Finally, we should think of presentation grading. Of course, most of the students heavily count on being graded for such a laborious, time-­ consuming, and responsible assignment. Once we deal with small cohorts in our classes, we can spend some time providing personalized feedback to each speaker and finalize the evaluation by giving a grade. Each rubric used for evaluation should be clearly communicated to students and may include the following (see Table 7.2): Providing that instructors’ teaching load is high, it is quite reasonable that the instructor cannot apply a personalized approach to each student. In this case, an instructor may use a checkbox with descriptors and ask students to evaluate themselves with respect to the items in the box. To analyze their performance, students may revisit their video presentations taken either online or on-campus.

Table 7.2  Items to evaluate student’s oral presentation Content Visual aids Verbal language Body language Team work TOTAL 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% (optional) 10%

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Portfolios Before analyzing the value of a portfolio, we should understand its essence and function for students, particularly those engaged in academic writing. Portfolios have been used for many years in education and training. They are often linked to creative fields such as art and design, and they have been employed extensively in vocational education and training as an alternative to traditional examinations or tests (Clarke, 2008: 204). There is a wide range of portfolio definitions (White, 2007; Cottrell, 2007, etc.), yet we will be addressing the one that feeds the needs of academic writing. Ross and LeGrand (2017: 228) consider that writing portfolios contain multiple documents and genres and are produced and assessed under conditions significantly different from those of timed essay measurement, for example. Coffin et al. (2003: 88) define a portfolio as a folder of a student’s work completed during a course or program. Portfolios can be beneficial in that they allow students to preserve, build upon, and improve their writing over time. Students have an ongoing record of their progress and can include different drafts of their work as evidence of achievement. In some situations, students are asked to select several pieces of their best work; in others, all of their work is included to show their development over time. Because of this emphasis on drafts, revisions, and feedback, portfolios are one way in which students can be encouraged to assess their own writing and respond to feedback (Coffin et al., 2003). If so, then should the instructors engage themselves in such a time-consuming process as portfolio assessment? Ross and LeGrand (2017) suggest that writing portfolio assessment in many cases is more advantageous than a subjective writing assessment. Conversely, White (2007) argues that one particular strength of portfolio assessment is its capacity to include reflection about the portfolio contents by the students submitting portfolios. Practice shows that writing portfolios are nothing but a folder stuffed with a huge number of useful and useless papers to impress the instructor. Moreover, teachers are not in favor of assessing each portfolio since its density and size simply terrify. A robust rubric designed for an in-class writing assignment might be much more objective and useful than a portfolio assignment having no clear purposes (White, 2007: 119). Finally, e-portfolios (Clarke, 2008: 46), nowadays, can serve a variety of purposes such as a showcase of achievements, evidence for assessment, and

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reflection on work undertaken. Overall, teachers may decide whether they want to see the portfolio in the course syllabi or not; grade them or not. What we need to know about the portfolios is that the disadvantages of portfolios mainly relate to time considerations, for both lecturers and students (Coffin et al., 2003). Yet, a portfolio compilation may serve well in cultivating neat, accurate, responsible, self-reflective, well-organized, and dedicated students. Chapter Highlights • The grades given for a written assignment should normally be accompanied by individualized comments and meaningful feedback. • Constructive feedback is an effective intervention comprising both positive and constructive comments aimed to improve students’ performance. • Technology-mediated feedback is steamed from the accessibility of technological tools that made the submission and assessment automated. • Not all tasks and activities practiced in an academic writing class should be graded. Ungraded tasks are an integral component to good teaching, students’ motivation, engagement, and higher levels of achievement. • Rubrics are mainly general and specific. Both should be carefully crafted and designed with respect to the instructor’s course peculiarities. • Grade distribution may serve as a food “tuning fork” to measure the quality of rubrics. • Grade-oriented concerns are the outcomes of unhealthy grade distribution, poor-rubrics, and ineffective grading. • To assess students’ in-class participation, it is necessary to understand actions and activities we shelter under the in-class participation umbrella. • With the appearance of online course delivery, both synchronous and asynchronous, the issue with students’ physical presence is not homogeneous. In this respect, we should find alternative ways to measure students’ engagement in our course rather than mark their presence/ absence or, more critically, grade it. • Quizzes (online or paper-based) used in academic writing and information literacy class are excellent tools to understand students’ awareness of the course, both in its structural and contextual sense. • The final exam taken at the end of the academic writing and information literacy course helps students revisit the course, understand what they have missed, and fill in the gaps. • Presentations, both face-to-face and digital, enable students to express themselves being taken seriously. That will increase their confidence when writing a paper. • Portfolios are excellent in that they allow students to preserve, build upon, and improve their writing over time. Portfolio compilation serves well in cultivating near, accurate, responsible, and well-organized students.

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References Bottini, S., & Gillis, J. (2021). A comparison of the feedback sandwich, constructive-­positive feedback, and within-session feedback for training preference assessment implementation. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 41(1), 83–93. Brookhart, S. M. (2013). How to create and use rubrics for formative assessment and grading. Virginia: Alexandria. Brookhart, S. M. (2017). How to use grading to improve learning? Chicago: ASCD. Buoncristiani, M., & Buoncristiani, P. (2012). Developing mindful students, skillful thinkers, thoughtful schools. CORWIN. Burke, D., & Pieterick, J. (2010). Giving students effective written feedback. Open University Press. Chan, C. K., & Luk, L. Y. (2021). Going ‘grade-free’?—Teachers’ and students’ perceived value and grading preferences for holistic competency assessment. Higher Education Research & Development, 41(2), 647–664. Clarke, A. (2008). E-learning skills. Palgrave Macmillan. Coffin, C., Curry, M. J., Goodman, S., Hewings, A., Lillis, T. M., & Swann, J. (2003). Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. Routledge. Cook, B. R., & Andrea Babon, A. (2017). Active learning through online quizzes: Better learning and less (busy) work. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 41(1), 24–38. Cottrell, S. (2007). The exam skills handbook. Palgrave Macmillan. Cottrell, S. (2010). Skills for success: The personal development planning handbook. Palgrave Macmillan. Drabick, D. A. G., Weisberg, R., Paul, L., & Bubier, J. L. (2007). Keeping it short and sweet: Brief, ungraded writing assignments facilitate learning. Teaching of Psychology, 34(3), 172–176. Fong, C. J., Schallert, D. L., Williams, K. M., Williamson, Z. H., Lin, S., Kim, Y. W., & Chen, L. H. (2021). Making feedback constructive: The interplay of undergraduates’ motivation with perceptions of feedback specificity and friendliness. Educational Psychology, 41(10), 1241–1259. Gbadamosi, G. (2015). Should we bother improving students’ attendance at seminars? Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 52(2), 196–206. Gottschalk, K., & Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The elements of teaching writing. Bedford. Gray, T., & Bunte, J. (2021). The effect of grades on student performance: Evidence from a quasi-experiment. College Teaching, 70(1), 15–28. Guskey, T. R. (2019). Grades versus comments: Research on student feedback. The Phi Delta Kappan, 101(3), 42–47.

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Haigh, M. (2002). Using class quizzes for weekly review. Planet, 5(1), 19–23. Heyman, J. E., & Sailors, J. J. (2011). Peer assessment of class participation: Applying peer nomination to overcome rating inflation. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(5), 605–618. Higgins, S., & Simpson, A. (2011). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. By John A. C. Hattie. British Journal of Educational Studies, 59(2), 197–201. Huisman, B., Saab, N., van Driel, J., & van den Broek, P. (2018). Peer feedback on academic writing: Undergraduate students’ peer feedback role, peer feedback perceptions, and essay performance. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(6), 955–968. Jones, R. C. (2008). The “why” of class participation: A question worth asking. College Teaching, 56(1), 59–62. Kenneth, C. (1990). Characteristics of graded and ungraded compositions. The Modern Language Journal, 74(1), 10–14. Lee, I. (2016). Teacher education on feedback in EFL writing: Issues, challenges, and future directions. TESOL Quarterly, 50(2), 518–527. Lucas, L. (2012). Write more, grade less: Five practices for effectively grading writing. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues, and Ideas, 85(4), 136–140. McKenzie, G.  R. (1973). Quizzes: Tools or tyrants. Instructional Science, 2(3), 281–293. Melzer, D. (2014). Assignments across the curriculum. Utah State University Press. Moores, E., Birdi, G. K., & Higson, H. E. (2019). Determinants of university students’ attendance. Educational Research, 61(4), 371–387. Pecorari, D. (2008). Academic writing and plagiarism. Norfolk. Percell, J.  C. (2017). Lessons from alternative grading: Essential qualities of teacher feedback. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues, and Ideas, 90(4), 111–115. Phuong Pham, H. T. (2021). Computer-mediated and face-to-face peer feedback: Student feedback and revision in EFL writing. Computer Assisted Language Learning. Precourt, E., & Gainor, M. (2019). Factors affecting classroom participation and how participation leads to a better learning. Accounting Education, 28(1), 100–118. Rose, J. (2007). The mature student’s guide to writing. Palgrave: Macmillan. Ross, V., & LeGrand, R. (2017). Assessing writing constructs: Toward an expanded view of inter-reader reliability. Journal of Writing Analytics, 1, 227–275.

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Sarcona, A., Dirhan, D., & Davidson, P. (2020). An overview of audio and written feedback from students’ and instructors’ perspectives. Educational Media International, 57(1), 47–60. Saunders, M. (1985). Oral presentations in the composition classroom. College Composition and Communication, 36(3), 357–360. Schwab, K., Moseley, B., & Dustin, D. (2018). Grading grades as a measure of student learning, schole. A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education, 33(2), 87–95. Sieben, N. (2017). Building hopeful secondary school writers through effective feedback strategies. The English Journal, 106(6), 48–53. Sigott, G., Fleischhacker, M., Sihler, S., & Steiner, J. (2019). The effect of written feedback types on students’ academic texts: A pilot study. AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, 44(2), 195–216. Spector, J.  M., Ifenthaler, D., Sampson, D., Yang, L.  Y., Mukama, E., Warusavitarana, A., Dona, K.  L., Eichhorn, K., Fluck, A., Huang, R., Bridges, S., Lu, J., Ren, Y., Gui, X., Deneen, C. C., San Diego, J., & Gibson, D. G. (2016). Technology enhanced formative assessment for 21st century learning. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(3), 58–71. St. Clair, K. L. (1999). A case against compulsory class attendance policies in higher education. Innovative Higher Education, 23, 171–180. Vander Schee, B. A., & Birrittella, T. D. (2021). Hybrid and online peer group grading: Adding assessment efficiency while maintaining perceived fairness. Marketing Education Review, 31(4), 275–283. Veit, R.  C. (1979). De-grading composition: Do papers need grades? College English, 41(4), 432–435. White, E. (2007). Assigning, responding, evaluating: A writing teacher’s guide. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Whiteside, A. L., Dikkers, A. G., & Swan, K. (Eds.). (2017). Social presence in online learning: Multiple perspectives on practice and research. Stylus Publishing. Zakharov, W., Li, H., Fosmire, M., Pascuzzi, P.  E., & Harbor, J. (2021). A mixed-method study of self-and peer-assessment: Implications of grading online writing assignments on scientific news literacy. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 28(1), 67–84.

8 Student Academic Support Services

This chapter suggests that student academic support services (SASS) that provide extracurricular services to undergraduate and graduate students play a crucial role in shaping students’ writing abilities and skills. While Writing and Multiliteracy centers are said to be the most user-friendly corners for many students, IT and e-Library sessions, often overlooked by Academic Writing and Information Literacy instructors, offer the best digital practices in the field. Moreover, the chapter advocates the unprecedented role of extracurricular meetings and office hours, both in a traditional and digital environment.

Extracurricular Meetings Office Hours The availability of an instructor during office hours is very important. Since the majority of students feel shy to ask questions in front of their peers not to sound ridiculous, or, for some other reasons like they do not want to interrupt instructors or take class time for something which can © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2_8

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be clarified later on, some of them heavily rely on instructor’s office hours where they would feel more secure and confident. Moreover, writing as a process being quite versatile, when faced with long and complicated assignments, students will definitely ask for help. Given that many instructors indicate office hours in their syllabi, not all of them keep up with the indicated schedule. Inaccessibility of the instructor during office hours may discourage students and leave them to struggle with the difficulties all on their own. Conversely, we cannot blame teachers for not being in their offices during office hours, as for this or that reason, students may simply never appear. Though outside-of-the-classroom faculty–student interactions improve student performance and satisfaction, students rarely use office hours (Joyce, 2017). In addition to office hours, scholars suggest drop-in tutoring held for two hours, say, on alternating Monday evenings. Tutoring, like office hours, allows students to come to the office to receive answers to questions about course material, study tips, and preparation for exams and assignments. Despite this similarity, students attend tutoring twice as frequently as during office hours. Additionally, students who attended tutoring sessions generally attended more than one session, whereas those who visited during office hours generally only visited once. Joyce (2017) believes that tutoring sessions have a different atmosphere since students typically attend tutoring in groups of three or four. Despite this, Guerrero and Rod (2013) contend that faculty–student interactions during office hours are positively correlated with course outcomes. If we can make office hours more appealing, and get more students directly interacting with faculty, then we can promote student success. This sounds quite convincing as a complete understanding of the course material often comes as a result of the instructor’s feedback provided during office time. However, when planning office hours, several things should be taken into consideration. –– office hours should fit the instructor’s weekly schedule; –– office hours should not overlap with students’ day-time classes; –– office hours should not exceed two weekdays; –– office hours should not last more than three hours a day.

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Provided that none of the options above feed your students’ needs, alternative extracurricular meetings can be considered. This would include appointments arranged via email, face-to-face consultations, online consultations, and public space.

Public Space Glynn-Adey (2021) suggests a new form of extracurricular meetings described as a re-positioning of office hours from private faculty offices to public spaces such as student centers and cafes. The scholar argues that this shift promotes faculty–student interaction, lowers barriers to help-­ seeking behavior, and facilitates collaboration among students. Glynn-­ Adey (2021) highlights the power dynamics of private office hours and argues that public office hours support [ ] learners and other marginalized populations in academia. This will definitely have a positive impact on teacher–student interaction, yet, the time of such meetings should be agreed upon in advance.

Online Meetings The importance of online meetings with students, and the ability to contact the instructor for feedback or advice on a regular basis is emphasized in the study of Hajibayova in 2017. The participants of the study valued not only the flexibility of online education that allowed them to learn at their convenience but also the teacher’s engagement regularly through various modes of communication. Most participants preferred weekly or semi-weekly communication through email, course management tools, and either virtual or face-to-face office hours. Participants especially valued communication with the online instructor. Practice shows that most students prefer evening time to complete their assignments, and for those who commit themselves to writing a paper, it is particularly important and inspiring to get timely feedback. Due to technological enhancement, instructors may want to allot some 30–40 min in the evening time to answer students’ topic-related emails or meet them online via educational

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platforms (Blackboard Collaborate, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc.). Finally, academic writing being a laborious and motivation-needy process, we should consider some time to meet with our students when they need extra help.

Obligatory Consultations Consultations, individual or in groups, are another opportunity for students to get the instructor’s feedback. The term consultation may mean a lot to different people, but in the sense of teaching academic writing, I would refer to a mandatory meeting(s), online or offline, between an instructor and a student or a group of students to discuss a particular assignment or/and its progress. During the process writing consultations are of particular value. The process may vary from the simplest one— brainstorming, making an outline, having a rough draft—to a more complicated one—a review paper or a research paper writing that constitutes a lengthy process of various steps and components. During the writing process, students should be required to submit plans, outlines, drafts, bibliographies, and other components because an open assignment makes it easy for them to omit parts of the complex task (White, 2007). When students deal with step-by-step assignments, it is very useful to get feedback about your performance before you have to test your skills during graded assignments or exams (Moore et al., 2010: 19). If you get low-­ stakes feedback on aspects of your learning, then it gives you time and information to allow you to improve before it affects your formal grades. In this respect, consultations are best to profit extra interaction with an instructor and get some recommendations on how to improve a paper. Consultations are normally held between a teacher and a student, or a small group of students (2–4) and last within 5–20 minutes. During this time, students show how they progressed on a particular assignment. For instance, if you ask your students to write a review paper in small groups (e.g., 3 students per group), you would probably consider 2–3 mandatory consultations to see how your students progress when (a) formulating a research question and searching for relevant papers in the library database; (b) writing an introduction that would follow Swale’s CARS

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Model (1990) you earlier explained in the class; (c) organizing the literature in a due manner, or so. Some instructors may want to break the process with respect to the writing of several drafts: (a) giving feedback to a first draft; (b) giving feedback to a second draft, and so on. Yet, students should clearly understand whether these attempts would be graded or not. Given the priority to develop students’ writing abilities and skills, students are not likely to get a grade for the “process of learning”, but a final product they would submit. Issues related to fair workload distribution among students working in groups were earlier discussed in Chap. 7. Unlike office hours and out-of-class meetings, mandatory consultations can be incorporated into the syllabus mainly in two ways: 1. by canceling the regular class and breaking the class time into a 5–20 min slot for each student or a group of students1; 2. by canceling the regular classes, and suggesting students or a group of students an alternative time slot(s) during the daytime. In both cases, students get access to a Google Docs schedule link where each student or a group of students can choose a time slot to meet with the instructor either online or face-to-face. Years of experience demonstrate that students highly appreciate consultation time that helps them to have a better grasp of the material and to develop their academic writing skills to a great extent.

Writing Centers Writing Center is one of the most student-friendly spaces that has reflected many different designs based on the institutional context and pedagogical values of each particular center (Kinkead & Harris, 1993). Writing Center is normally expected to provide instructional support for faculty and students, particularly in those classes where the number of students is quite high (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004: 159). The services provided by Wiring Centers mainly differ from university to university 1

 The duration of consultation will depend on the number of students working on an assignment.

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and may vary from individual consultation and workshops for faculty to individual student tutoring. In other words, no Writing Center or WAC program can be simply lifted from one institution and used successfully in another; it must be adjusted to each school’s objectives and demographics (Mullin & Childers, 2020). To understand how Writing Centers function at different universities and colleges around the globe, editors of “Writing Programs Worldwide” Thaiss et al. (c.f. 2012) address 42 educational institutions in various countries. In their early history, Writing Centers offered students peer tutoring on the writing process to supplement classroom instruction. This approach relied upon the assertion that, in a new age of accessible higher education, many students would need additional support, and that this support should come from other students, in an informal context apart from the perceived power dynamics of professor–student interaction (Kilgore & Cronley, 2021). Today, the aims and scopes of Writing Centers differ to a great extent. In their study, Okuda (2020) finds that Writing Center should serve as an academic space for learning and negotiating academic language that students cannot otherwise learn from their busy supervisors or their peers’ editing. Many instructors expect campus Writing Centers to help edit writing (Melzer, 2014). Selfe (2010) suggests that Writing Centers provide close readings and consultations, emphatic listening, collaborative problem-solving, assignment translation, and even institutional orientation. In North American universities, the Writing Center is a common student support service where students can consult a tutor about their writing (Moussu & David, 2015). Additionally, instructors invite representatives from the Writing Center to give input on academic writing in their seminars. Then, the question is: Who are those representatives that work in a Writing Center? Studies show that those who usually work in Writing Centers are undergraduate or graduate students who completed their writing course and are ready to share their experience with their peers. These students are specifically trained to guide their peers but not to do things for them. That is, many universities prepare student associates who work for Writing Centers possessing certain abilities and skills to help students improve their writing. According to Fishman (2010), to prepare studio associates to work with the students who come in seeking their help, the

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associates are required to take a semester-long course during which they read about the history and theoretical positioning of literacy centers, roleplay various scenarios in which they help (each other) with real writing and technology issues, and engage in research related to the studio. Moreover, like writing instructors, Writing Center tutors need to be sensitive to the variety of genres students will bring to their campus Writing Centers (Melzer, 2014: 120). Writing Centers are student-centered spaces in multiple senses. Those who work in Writing Centers know that peer consultants can facilitate collaborative learning precisely because they are peers and they share cultural space with the writers they serve (Sheridan & Inman, 2010: 194). It is true that peers who are studying the same module have shared learning experiences and may be able to offer important support as they are following a similar learning journey (Burke & Pieterick, 2010: 118). Moreover, discussion with peers outside students’ cohort, perhaps students from other years whom they do not know, can offer a non-threatening opportunity to discuss feedback with someone they can ask questions of. This support may be both practical and psychological. On a practical level, such students are familiar with the feedback regime within the subject, and also know something about the subject content (Burke & Pieterick, 2010: 119). Recent research and practice in higher education show that more experienced student-peers can be very helpful indeed in facilitating new students’ adjustment to university life and learning (Moore et al., 2010: 20). Moreover, in the Writing Center, the director and tutors see syllabi and writing assignments—from those that are questionable to those of high quality—from across the disciplines; they see faculty comments—or the lack thereof— on papers; they hear students’ interpretations of classroom environments and teaching practices, and they collaborate with teachers on ways to improve student learning through writing (Mullin & Childers, 2020). This helps to a great extent to provide timely and reasonable support to student writers. Hence, is there any particular time or reason when students need extra support? According to some recent observations, most students apply to Writing Centers on having a graded assignment. Students are looking for someone who could help with generating ideas, an outline design, formulation of a research question, or simply doing proofreading for them. EFL

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students struggling with language are in search of a friendly hand that would improve their language in terms of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Hence, I believe, universities hosting international students should consider having a language support unit inside a Writing Center that would provide language improvement services for those whose L1 is not English. I remember one of my French colleagues said, “I am not going to read badly written papers! I asked my students: ‘use Grammarly to correct your language mistakes before you submit your papers.’” Frankly speaking, this did not sound pedagogical at all. In turn, I believe, experienced instructors can summarize the most frequently occurring grammatical errors that appear in students’ writings and ask the Writing Center consultants to organize regular seminars on working those mistakes out. This would constitute good collaborative work between the teacher and the Writing Center, and minimize the language problems students usually face. Another interesting approach is observed with respect to the Writing Center activity and a WAC program earlier discussed in Chap. 4. Universities have at times responded with writing across the curriculum (WAC) initiatives, attempting to train all faculty to “teach writing” within their coursework (Kilgore & Cronley, 2021). In conjunction with faculty members in the disciplines, the Writing Center staff determines how students need to meet assignment and course objectives, and it incorporates the teachers’ disciplinary perspectives into the tutors’ interactions with students (Mullin & Childers, 2020). It is believed that conversations between Writing Center staff and faculty serve as in-services where teachers reflect on ways in which knowledge in their discipline is constructed and where they begin to reassess how they have represented their objectives in their assignments. As a result, the Writing Center becomes instrumental in changing curricula and pedagogical practices, and WAC serves as a vehicle through which such change is possible (Mullin & Childers, 2020). Moreover, Kilgore and Cronley (2021) emphasize the collaboration between the Writing Center and WAC instructors, mentioning that full-time instructional faculty may not be able to meet all of the students’ writing-related needs but contends that, particularly as students enter

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more advanced classes, content-neutral peer tutoring will not be sufficient. Finally, as earlier mentioned, Writing Centers may provide various services that would differ from country to country, and from university to university. The most important is that they work on the improvement of students’ individual writings as well as writing programs as a whole.

Modernist and Postmodernist Writing Centers Presently, some specialists differentiate between the Modernist Writing Centers and Post-Modernist Writing Centers. Modernist Writing Centers exist to improve the clarity, order, and correctness of student writing since modernist literacy needs individual autonomy, rational thinking, and the transparent communication structure of the system (Selfe, 2010). Postmodernist Writing Centers support students’ ability to simultaneously maintain multiple viewpoints, to make quick shifts in discourse orientation, to handle rapid changes in information technology, to work elbow-to-elbow with people differently positioned in the university hierarchy, to negotiate cultural and social differences, to handle the inevitable blurring of authorial boundaries, and to regularly renegotiate issues of knowledge, power, and ownership (Grimm, 1999). However, in order not to get confused, we will resort to Writing Center as the most commonly accepted name for the center that encompasses all previously mentioned functions and help students improve their writing.

Multiliteracy Centers Because the theory and practice of teaching writing have changed over the past decades, writing programs have embraced digital, networked writing (Hicks, 2010: 159). In this respect, Writing Centers have also invested in and helped students use communication technologies for decades, whether those technologies were electronic typewriters or desktop computers (Sheridan & Inman, 2010: 8). In some universities, Writing Centers work to establish the basics about how to post to the

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blog and wiki, how to record with the iPod, and how to edit and post a podcast (Hicks, 2010). For this, many Writing Centers today have been renamed into Multiliteracy Centers as well as Online Consulting Services which not only provide students writing services but facilitate their technological use and its involvement in their studies. Multiliteracy Center can be both a part of the infrastructure that supports new media composing and a space where students critically reflect on and learn to exploit the infrastructural resources available to them. It can facilitate a professionally responsible approach to functional computer literacy (Sheridan & Inman, 2010: 81). In short, it can be a site that welcomes the author as a producer. From this perspective, the nightmare of students who come to the multiliteracy center to scan is no longer scary. In addition, Multiliteracy Centers should be spaced equal to the diversity of semiotic options composers have in the twenty-first century (Sheridan & Inman, 2010). Students working on web pages, digital slide presentations, desktop-published documents (flyers, posters, brochures, chapter books), digital videos, and digital animations would all be welcome. In other words, Multiliteracy Centers should facilitate the competent and critically reflective use of technologies and other material, institutional, and cultural resources. Those involved in literacy instruction are increasingly asked to confront the material and the technical, to help students be sophisticated users of communication tools (Sheridan & Inman, 2010: 7). According to Clarke (2008), a college learning center may well encourage the establishment of a quiet structured climate in which to study, and most will provide you with technical and learning support. In other words, while Writing Centers mostly deal with the literate aspect of the writing, which aims at the improvement of students’ writing skills, multiliteracy centers are more likely to provide some technological assistance, namely designing students’ writing and presenting it in various digital forms. Though these two centers are to be merged, one can see them as interdependently functioning centers, each having its own tasks and duties.

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Online Consulting Services Online Consulting Services can provide unlimited support to writers through online handouts, but that support is inconsistent with principles of consulting that many centers consider fundamental (Sheridan & Inman, 2010: 194). Among the advantages of online consulting services, one is being reachable from any place and mainly at any time during the day. In this respect, it should be good if Writing Centers include online consulting services as an alternative to face-to-face services during those hours when students cannot get face-to-face assistance, namely evening time and weekend. This will increase the effectiveness of the center and provide students with more opportunities to get help when necessary. We should bear in mind that students normally apply to a Writing Center to prepare for graded assignments, the deadline of which may vary from evening time to Saturdays and Sundays. In order not to demotivate students, an immediate online consultation will be of great assistance. For this, some consultants who work in a Writing Center may prefer working a couple of hours in the evening time and weekends to day-time work during the week.

Library Session It is fantastic seeing rows of students in their T-shirts sit in a warm library spot with their heads in a book.

The ability of an instructor to instill in their students the sense of library addiction is an exceptional one since the library is one of the most important spots to get knowledge and expand horizons. However, there are still communities where students are simply not accustomed to go to the library since many of them believe that teachers, and, sadly, computers are the most authoritative sources of knowledge. The first few attempts at using college or university libraries can be a difficult experience for many

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learners (Burkhardt et al., 2010). Many students are fearful of appearing foolish in libraries, especially when using library technology such as online catalogs, consulting special collections, or working out the numbering system (Cottrell, 2008: 22). Catalogs usually try to include everything the library has, including printed and online books, printed and online journals, CDs, DVDs, maps, and so on (Grix & Watkins, 2010). Additionally, the library resources are often termed in a variety of ways including electronic resources, e-Resources, eResources, eLibrary, Online Resources, Online Library, Digital Library. Another issue with which students and faculty are struggling is the availability of full-text articles that can be downloaded onto a computer (Donnelly, 2012: 81). Of course, this may confuse students and generate reluctance to use a library in its broad sense. In this respect, providing students with a variety of hands-on opportunities to explore the library’s catalog allows them to become effective searchers able to find and locate books in the library (Burkhardt et al., 2010). Within the last few decades, due to the rapid digitalization of education, academic libraries have elaborated new operational forms. As online populations continue to grow in higher education, a larger percentage of library collections exist electronically. According to Yu and Durrington (2005: 318), with the rise of fake news and predatory journals, librarians play an essential role in teaching students how to critically evaluate information. As the information literacy landscape is evolving, workshops such as news information literacy and data information literacy should be considered to supplement the course. To this end, several library sessions may be needed as a one-shot library session cannot cover in detail. Hence, it is vital for libraries and librarians to connect academic users to online research services and resources that lead to successful academic careers (Harlow & Hill, 2020). Academic libraries select, acquire, synthesize, disseminate, interpret, apply, and archive information. At the same time, they enable users to navigate, discover, obtain, understand, use, and apply information (Ismayilov et al., 2019). These, in turn, require new competencies and skills from librarians working in educational institutions. Today, the list of required competencies appears to be growing, as “new

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technologies, such as virtual worlds, are appearing in addition to rather than replacing older technologies” (Saunders & Jordan, 2013). Librarians working online will need to be familiar with and adept at using the related technology and online resources. They need to be adept at online searching and understand how to use sophisticated information retrieval techniques, be able to work across different platforms and software systems, and be familiar with online sources (Saunders & Jordan, 2013). Recently, many universities have engaged librarians in instruction (Harlow & Hill, 2020). This seems to be the most effective in partnerships between teachers and librarians and libraries and schools (Pihl et al., 2017). Effective outreach to the teaching faculty to training them on how to incorporate digital literacy into their assignments and exercises moves the agency away from a single library or librarian, and into the different learning communities (Becker, 2018). Instruction may take place in a variety of formats, both formal and informal. In addition to workshops, in-class sessions, and courses, librarians aim to incorporate guidance in the location, selection, and use of materials into the reference transaction, rather than just providing an answer. The instructional role extends to the online environment as well, where reference librarians are expected to integrate instruction into synchronous and asynchronous remote reference interactions. As a result, some reference librarians are beginning to identify themselves more through their teaching roles (Ismayilov et al., 2019). Tran et al. (2018) believe that collaborating with faculty members to redesign a library session is of equal importance to increase student learning outcomes. Jacobs and Jacobs (2009 as cited in Tran et al., 2018: 276) acknowledged that engaging students of an English composition class in the research and writing process during a one-shot library session was a model which could stimulate discussion and collaboration between faculty and librarians in other courses across the campus. Instruction librarians involved in research instruction (by any name) understand that students need to be able to create and store folders and files on a computer or tablet, on-campus shared drives, or courseware such as Blackboard, and on the web. However, they should not need to teach students how to create a folder—online, on a portable memory

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device or computer, or on a network drive—and save files in that folder, changing the default names of files to something meaningful and moving files around among folders (Cordell, 2013: 181). This and many other skills should be considered in IT sessions that I will discuss in the next section. I am happy our library assistants eagerly provide my students with the fundamentals of library use. Each academic year they visit my first-year undergraduate students to explain the importance of library and to show the essentials of library use. Students learn to employ Boolean logic, an alternative to using symbols in keyword searches. The ability to use “and”, “or”, “but” for a correct keyword search suggested by a Boolean Operator makes a student’s life much easier. Moreover, the World Wide Web is rather like a huge database (Clarke, 2008: 79) which also needs careful treatment. Librarians explain the benefits and the harm of Internet use, showing students the right ways to get reliable data. Finally, having classes in the library space is another advantage for students. To feel the atmosphere of silence, to be able to use catalog and then, to fetch the selected book, make students feel like “a fish in a water”. Thinking about what learning might be and how it might be best encouraged in the classroom, library is important for teachers and teacher-­ librarians as developing students as effective learners is a key purpose of school/university education (Herring, 2011: 4). Some librarians may indeed find themselves in a position to contribute to a class in an ongoing way, through repeated in-person or virtual visits. This may lead to becoming “embedded” in some fashion in a learning management system (Burkhardt et al., 2010: 5), yet, the most important is that your students understand the importance of library in education and place it above all other possible sources of information and knowledge.

IT Literacy Session There is no doubt that the rapid evolution of new technologies, which is significantly linked with changing trends affecting teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education, will change the landscape of

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higher education worldwide (Popenici, 2013). The new technologies used in academic writing, however, do not simply support teaching but change the nature of the writing process itself as well as the ways writing can be learned and taught (Strobl et al., 2019). Computers are good at keeping records, presenting information, and manipulating data—all fundamental requirements of any form of education. Communication technology provides additional advantages by allowing anyone to locate sources of information on the World Wide Web or within the college’s online resources as well as being able to communicate quickly with tutors and other learners. A range of new web applications are becoming part of e-learning and these offer you the opportunity to create content as well as to fond it (Clarke, 2008: 61). Due to the fact that extensive penetration of technology into an academic life coincides with the beginning of a new millennium, it is believed that the young generation, born some 15–25 years ago, has much better competence in using technology than any other generation, including teachers and instructors. It feels like Generation Z students no longer need any guidance in the technology, as most of them have got an “innate ability” to exploit the devices. However, such a fallacy impedes many educational institutions from having implemented the IT sessions into academic programs, giving no consideration to the technologically illiterate students. Technological illiteracy includes such challenges as the inability of the students to create folders, share files, format the word documents, and use all those technological commands pivotal for academic life. While Burkhardt et al. (2010: 5) contend that students of any age have varying levels of comfort with new technologies, when it comes to academic life, things totally change. In the study of Yu and Durrington (2005), the instructors of the courses indicated that the students were not competent in the operation of computers at the necessary levels. Today, despite some positive changes with respect to the use of technology for academic purposes, many students experience the same difficulties as before when exploiting their devices. Moreover, students entering the work world today face unprecedented challenges. Two of the most important of these challenges are: (a) the necessity to adapt to rapidly evolving

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demands for new knowledge, skills, and competencies, many of which were not anticipated during their formal education; and, (b) the need to learn information technology skills, both as an end goal and as a means for other learning. These challenges in turn present a challenge to educational institutions: how should students be educated to meet these needs? (Kirby et al., 2002: 47). To prevent technological illiteracy, some teachers engage in collaboration with the university ICT department that would organize ICT sessions for technologically illiterate students. Currently, some instructors of AW & IL work in close collaboration with the SASS that offer a number of out-of-curriculum courses, IT courses being in great demand. Based on competency areas identified in the literature (Yu & Durrington, 2005), IT instructors are invited to the AW & IL classes to teach and develop students’ competencies in basic computer skills, file management, word processing, databases, spreadsheets, presentations, desktop publishing, and Internet skills. Within this course frame, students learn how to format their papers, how to store files, how to design the PPT slide decks, how to convert a word document into a pdf document, and vice versa. Today, with a rapid expansion of online learning, many students need some guidance in managing the LMS. That is why ICT instructors have included it in their programs. However, it is quite possible that universities do not offer SASS, and there is no specific department that would conduct ICT classes for students. In that case, the instructors of AW & IL either incorporate the ICT session into their syllabus to explain the abovementioned within one or two classes per course or invite any IT specialist to conduct the session within the same timeframe. Finally, with a rapid expansion of new challenges in academic life, the role of SASS is immense. Universities should consider the organization of SASS for the sake of developing students’ baseline skills, otherwise, AW & IL instructors should incorporate extra sessions as an IT session, a library session, extracurricular sessions, and others indicated in this chapter into their teaching programs.

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Chapter Highlights • Some students heavily rely on instructors’ office hours where they would feel more secure and confident. That is why, the instructors should carefully consider the hours they would allot to the office hours, either online or offline that would fit the schedule of the instructors and their students. • Extracurricular meetings in a public space are another opportunity to build a friendly and trustworthy relationship between a teacher and students. • The flexibility of online meetings between an instructor and a student(s) permits the students to get timely feedback on a particular assignment. • Obligatory consultations are an effective teaching tool normally used during the process writing. Students have a chance to get the instructor’s step-by-step feedback on the accomplishment of each part of the processed assignment. • The services provided by Wiring Centers mainly differ from university to university and may vary from individual consultation and workshops for faculty to individual student tutoring. However, the most important is that they work on the improvement of students’ individual writings as well as writing instructors and writing programs as a whole. • Multiliteracy Centers, either merged with a Writing Center or being a separate university department, should help students within the writing programs that have recently embraced digital, networked writing. This would include working on web pages, digital slide presentations, desktop-­published documents (flyers, posters, brochures, chapter books), digital videos, and digital animations. • Online Consulting Services is another opportunity for students to get timely feedback from their peers using advanced technology. • University libraries remain the most student-friendly and useful areas of the institution. Due to the rapid digitalization of modern libraries, AW & IL instructors need to closely cooperate with the instructor librarians who will equip students with the necessary knowledge on the use of the physical and digital library, retrieve information, and choose secure and reliable sources. • To avoid technological illiteracy among students of AW & IL classes, instructors should closely cooperate with the IT or ICT departments that would arrange short meetings to introduce the basic technical skills as to create folders, share files, format the word documents, and so on that would cater to students’ academic life.

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References Becker, B. W. (2018). Information literacy in the digital age: Myths and principles of digital literacy. School of Information Student Research Journal, 7(2), 1–8. Burke, D., & Pieterick, J. (2010). Giving students effective written feedback. Open University Press. Burkhardt, J., MacDonald, M., & Rathemarcher, A. (2010). Teaching information literacy. American Library Association. Clarke, A. (2008). E-learning skills. Palgrave Macmillan. Cordell, R. M. (2013). Information literacy and digital literacy: Competing or complementary? Communications in Information Literacy, 7(2), 177–183. Cottrell, S. (2008). The study skills handbook. Palgrave Macmillan. Donnelly, D. (2012). Establishing creative writing studies as an academic discipline. Multilingual Matters. Fishman, T. (2010). When it isn’t even on the page. In D. Sheridan & J. Inman (Eds.), Multiliteracy centers: Writing center work, new media and multimodal rhetoric (pp. 59–73). Hampton Press. Glynn-Adey, P. (2021). Public space office hours. College Teaching, 69(3), 180–181. Gottschalk, K., & Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The elements of teaching writing. US. Grimm, N. (1999). Good intentions: Writing center work for postmodern times. Heinemann Press. Grix, J., & Watkins, G. (2010). Information skills: Finding and using the right resources. Palgrave Macmillan. Guerrero, M., & Rod, A.  B. (2013). Engaging in office hours: A study of student-­faculty interaction and academic performance. Journal of Political Science Education, 9(4), 403–416. Hajibayova, L. (2017). Students’ viewpoint: What constitutes presence in an online classroom? Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 55(1), 12–25. Harlow, S., & Hill, K. (2020). Assessing library online patrons use of resources to improve outreach and marketing. The Serials Librarian, 79(1–2), 200–227. Herring, J. (2011). Improving students’ web use & information literacy. Facet Publishing. Hicks, T. (2010). Engaging K-12 students and teachers through technology-­ based outreach. In D.  Sheridan & J.  Inman (Eds.), Multiliteracy centers: Writing center work, new media and multimodal rhetoric (pp.  151–172). Hampton Press.

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Ismayilov, K., Ismayilov, N., & Mammadova, V. (2019). Library information services in academic libraries of Azerbaijan: A comparative study. Library Management, 40(6–7), 461–477. Jacobs, H. L. M., & Jacobs, D. (2009). Transforming the one-shot library session into pedagogical collaboration: Information literacy and the English composition class. Reference and User Services Quarterly, 49(1), 72–82. Joyce, A. (2017). Framing office hours as tutoring. College Teaching, 65(2), 92–93. Kilgore, C.  D., & Cronley, C. (2021). In-house writing support: Who uses supplemental resources, and how, and for what purpose? Teaching in Higher Education, 26(2), 265–282. Kinkead, J., & Harris, J. (Eds.). (1993). Writing centers in context: Twelve case studies. National Council of Teachers of English. Kirby, J. R., Knapper, C. K., Maki, S. A., Egnatoff, W. J., & Melle, E. (2002). Computers and students’ conceptions of learning: The transition from post-­ secondary education to the workplace. Journal of Educational Technology and Society, 5(2), 47–53. Melzer, D. (2014). Assignments across the curriculum. Utah State University Press. Moore, S., Colin, N., Murphy, M., & Connolly, C. (2010). The ultimate study skills handbook. Open University Press. Moussu, L., & David, N. (2015). Writing centers: Finding a place for ESL writers. In N. Evans, N. Anderson, & W. Eggington (Eds.), ESL readers and writers in higher education: Understanding challenges, providing support (pp. 49–63). Routledge. Mullin, J. A., & Childers, P. B. (2020). The natural connection: The WAC program and the high school writing center. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues, and Ideas, 93(6), 267–270. Okuda, T. (2020). The writing center and international students in a Japanese university: A language management perspective. Higher Education Research and Development, 39(4), 778–791. Pihl, J., van der Kooij, K.  S., & Carlsten, T.  C. (Eds.). (2017). Teacher and librarian partnerships in literacy education in the 21st century. Sense Publishers. Popenici, S. (2013). Towards a new vision for university governance, pedagogies, and student engagement. In E. Dunne & D. Owen (Eds.), The student engagement handbook. Practice in higher education (pp.  23–43). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Saunders, L., & Jordan, M. (2013). Significantly different? Reference services competencies in public and academic libraries. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 52(3), 216–223.

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Selfe, R. (2010). Writing centers: A safe educational haven. In D. Sheridan & J.  Inman (Eds.), Multiliteracy centers: Writing center work, new media and multimodal rhetoric (pp. 109–133). Hampton Press. Sheridan, D., & Inman, J. (2010). Multiliteracy centers: Writing center work, new media, and multimodal rhetoric. Hampton Press. Strobl, C., Ailhaud, E., Benetos, K., Devitt, A., Kruse, O., Proske, A., & Rapp, C. (2019). Digital support for academic writing: A review of technologies and pedagogies. Computers and Education, 131(1), 33–48. Thaiss, C. (2012). Writing programs worldwide: Profiles of academic writing in many places (Ser. Perspectives on writing). Parlor Press. Tran, C. Y., Miller, C. A., & Aveni, D. (2018). Baseline assessment: Understanding WISE freshman students’ information literacy skills in a one-shot library session. Science & Technology Libraries, 37(3), 302–321. White, E. (2007). Assigning, responding, evaluating: A writing teacher’s guide. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Yu, C., & Durrington, V.  A. (2005). Student perceptions of computer skills needed when enrolled in online courses. The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, 53(2), 12–23.

Index

A

Academic misconduct, 107, 127–137 Affect construct, 45 Analytical skills, 88, 89 Annotation, 136 Anonymous grading, 176 Anxiety, 52 Apps, 17, 19, 26, 30–32 Assessment tools, 180, 181 Asynchronous class, 27 Audio feedback, 180 B

Bad writing, 71 Base groups, 162 Bichronous class, 27 Blended class, 28 Blended learning, 25, 28 Blog, 45, 46

Blogging, 34 Boolean operator, 216 C

Checklist approach, 122 Citation generator, 119 Citations, 112, 119–120, 124, 126, 136 Class attendance, 188–191 Classroom management software (CMS), 148 Cloud-based documents, 149 Cloud services, 17, 19, 34 Collaboration, 143–166 Collaborative assignments, 146–153, 160 Collaborative grade components, 165 Collaborative learning, 143–147, 150, 158, 161, 164, 165

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Mammadova, Academic Writing and Information Literacy Instruction in Digital Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19160-2

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224 Index

Collaborative presentations, 151–153 Collaborative reading, 143, 146–147 Collaborative strategic reading (CSR), 146 Collaborative writing, 143, 146–149 Comments, 174–180, 195 Communication and collaboration, 113 Communication tools, 143–146 Competent AW & IL instructor, 9 Computer Assisted Assessment, 57 Computer-assisted language learning, 18 Concentration, 41, 48–49 Conflict resolution documents, 164–165 Constructive feedback, 175–179 Content knowledge, 42 Course content, 44, 54 Course planning, 76 Course syllabus, 80, 82 CRAAP, 122, 123 Creative writing, 67, 70, 71, 96–97 Critical analysis, 67, 84, 88–91 Critical reading, 67, 84–85, 88 Critical thinking, 77, 84, 86–89, 96, 99 Critical writing, 85–87 D

Deadlines, 41, 48, 56–58, 61 Definition of academic writing, 2 Diagnostic writing, 137 Digital citizens, 115 Digital citizenship, 22, 115 Digital classroom, 26 Digital composition skills, 77

Digital devices, 46, 47 Digital environment, 17, 19–21 Digital forums, 76 Digital immigrants, 114, 115 Digital journal, 75 Digital Library, 214 Digital literacy, 107–137, 215 Digital literacy toolkit, 116–120 Digitally literate student, 107, 113–114 Digitally native generation, 25 Digital natives, 25, 114, 115, 123 Digital scholarship, 113 Digital storytelling, 93, 97–99 Digital tools, 17, 20, 25, 30–34, 145 Digital writing, 67–99 Directive feedback, 177 Discussion-based assignment, 72 Discussion boards, 72, 75, 82, 145 Discussions, 68, 70, 73, 75, 76, 83, 85, 88, 90, 91, 99 Distractions, 41, 47–48, 52, 59, 60 Doubts, 42, 43, 45, 51, 58 Drop-in tutoring, 204 E

EFL students, 209 EFL program, 5 E-library, 109, 214 Emotions, 49 E-portfolio, 198 eResources, 214 Error-focused feedback, 177 Exam, 173, 191–194 Expectancy construct, 45 Export citations, 120 Extracurricular meetings, 203–206 Extrinsic goal orientation, 45

 Index  F

H

Face-to-face presentation, 196 Faculty-student interaction, 204, 205 Fatigue, 42, 51 Fear of failure, 52, 54 Fears, 54, 55 Feedback, 45, 51, 52, 55, 56, 151–156, 159, 173–199 Feedback literacy, 177 Feedback sandwich, 177 Final product assessment, 166 Flexible processes development, 10 Flipped class, 28–29 Formal groups, 162 Form-based feedback, 154 Fundamental literacy skills, 42

Habits of mind, 67, 83–84, 87 Handheld smartphones, 30 Heterogeneous groups, 162 High attrition rates, 44 History of technological integration, 5 Homogeneous groups, 162 Hybrid education, 27 HyFlex class, 29–30 HyFlex presentation, 197

G

General rubrics, 183, 185 Ghost-writers, 130–131 Ghost-writing, 131 Goal-setting, 44, 67, 73–74 Google, 148 Google search, 109 Grade contract, 166 Grade distribution, 184–186 Graded tasks, 182 Grade inflation, 186 Grades, 44–47, 51, 54, 57, 173–199 Grading, 173–199 Ground rules of collaboration, 151–153 Group assessment, 166 Group consultations, 206 Group division, 149, 150, 162–163 Grouping mechanisms, 161 Group projects, 150–151 Group types, 161–162

225

I

ICT literacy, 113 Images, 76, 94, 95, 97, 98 In-class concentration, 48 In-class participation, 187–188 Individual consultations, 208 Individualized comments, 175 Informal groups, 162 Information, 107–137 Information and communication technology (ICT), 18, 23 Information anxiety, 111 Information assimilation techniques, 124–127 Information literacy, 107–137 Inline grading, 176 Instruction librarians, 215 Instructor’s feedback, 204–206 Intentional plagiarism, 128, 135 Interest, 43, 46 Internet, 108, 111, 114–117, 120, 122, 123, 128, 130, 132–134, 137 Intrinsic goal orientation, 45 IT instructors, 218 IT literacy session, 216–218

226 Index J

Journal, 70–73, 75–76 K

Knowledge, 107–110, 112, 114, 118, 120, 121, 124, 125, 129, 134, 135 L

Lack of confidence, 48, 52, 54 Lack of ideas, 51, 52, 55 Lack of time, 43, 52 Language-related errors, 179 Language support, 210 Learning contract, 164 Learning management system, 20, 26–30 Learning performance, 49 Learning skills, 113 Librarians, 214–216 Library catalogs, 214, 216 Library database, 118–119, 121 Library session, 213–216, 218 Listening skills, 195, 196 M

Meaning-based feedback, 154 Media literacy, 113 Memory, 49, 50 Mentor, 131 Microblogging, 34 Missed deadlines, 56 M-learning, 49 Mobile learning, 30 Mobile phones, 46

Mobile technology, 17, 30–31, 47 Modernist Writing Centers, 211 Mood disorders, 52 Motivation, 41–46, 50 Motivational engagement, 44 Motivational factors, 44, 45 Movies, 73, 80, 82, 90 Multiliteracy centers, 203, 211–212 Multimodality, 22, 24–25, 93, 94 Multimodal reading and writing, 67, 94–95 N

Needs analysis, 68 New technology, 4, 8 Noisy environments, 49 Non-directive feedback, 177 Note-taking, 124, 135 O

Obligatory consultations, 206–207 Office hours, 203–205, 207 Online Consulting Services, 212, 213 Online learning, 44 Online Library, 214 Online meetings, 205–206 Online quiz, 192 Online resources, 214, 215, 217 Online synchronous presentation, 190, 197 Online word processors, 145, 147 Oral feedback, 159, 163 Oral language fluency, 42 Oral presentation, 195, 197 Out-of-class activities, 72

 Index 

Out-of-class concentration, 48 Outside distraction, 52 P

Paramedic method, 125 Paraphrasing, 124, 126, 132, 136 Patchwriting, 107, 128–131 Peer assessment, 143, 153, 155, 157–160, 166 Peer collaboration, 153 Peer feedback, 143, 153–155, 157, 159 Peer feedback form, 157 Peer-grading, 175 Peer pressure, 158, 160–161 Peer review, 143, 153, 155–157 Peer review workshop, 156 Penalties, 56–58 Perfectionism, 52 Personality factors, 52 Physical library, 109 Plagiarism, 107, 120–122, 127–131, 134–137 Plagiarism detectors, 128, 131–133, 135 Polling (polls), 148, 152, 153 Poor ideas, 48 Poor writing, 42, 43, 47 Portable devices, 46 Portfolio, 76, 173, 198–199 Positive writing experiences, 70 Postmodernist Writing Centers, 211 Presentations, 195–197 Presentation types, 196 Print-based technology, 94, 98 Process writing, 148, 149, 151, 206 Procrastination, 41, 42, 51, 52, 58–60

227

Proctoring, 46 Project-based assignment, 72 Proofreading, 137 Prototypical plagiarism, 128 Public office hours, 205 Public space, 205 Published work, 45 Q

Questioning, 68, 75 Question types, 192, 193 Quiz, 173, 191–193 Quotation, 124, 126, 136 R

Randomly selected groups, 162 Reading fluency, 42 Reference generator, 119 Regulation of attention, 42 Reliable sources, 109, 129 Respondus LockDown, 107, 133, 134 Right content, 79–80 Rubrics, 155–157, 159, 165, 166, 176, 183–186, 189, 196–198 S

Scaffold assignments, 178 Search engines, 19, 30, 33 Self-actualization, 44 Self-assessment, 155, 159, 165 Self-censoring criticism, 52 Self-determination, 43, 44 Self-efficacy, 44, 45, 48, 54, 59 Self-monitoring capacity, 42 Self-selected groups, 162

228 Index

Social media, 17, 19, 22, 23, 30, 33–34, 145 Social networking, 33 Source evaluation, 122–123 Sources, 107–111, 114, 116, 117, 119–132, 135–137 Source transparency, 135 Specific rubrics, 137 Stand-alone discipline, 3, 5, 8 Storytelling, 97–99 Stress, 41, 49–51, 57 Student academic support services (SASS), 203, 218 Student associates, 208 Student complaints, 160–161 Student self-assessment, 165 Students’ engagement, 71–74 Students’ expectations, 1 Students’ learning experiences, 74–76 Students’ needs, 67–69 Stumbling blocks, 47 Summarizing, 124, 126–127 Syllabus, 11, 12 Syllabus design, 67, 80–83 Synchronous class, 27

Technology-integrated education, 17–19 Technology-integrated language learning, 18 Technology-mediated feedback, 180 Telecommunication, 73 Time management, 48, 49, 60–62, 129 Time-pressure, 52 Tiredness, 52 Transcription fluency, 42 Tutoring sessions, 204 U

Undergraduate journal, 46 Ungraded tasks, 181 Unintentional plagiarism, 128, 135 Universal challenges, 42 Unjustified delays, 57 Unreliable sources, 107, 122 V

Value construct, 45 Video presentation, 196, 197 Videos, 19, 21, 29, 33, 34, 73, 76, 78, 80, 82, 89, 95, 97–99 Voice comments, 180

T

Task-based assignment, 72 Task delivery, 57 Task-specific rubrics, 183 Teacher-selected groups, 162 Teachers’ expectations, 1 Teaching writing, 2, 3, 7–10 Technological illiteracy, 217, 218 Technological literacy, 111

W

Web conferencing tools, 145 Web search engines, 116–117 Website evaluation, 117 Websites, 17, 19, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32–33 Wikipedia, 109, 134

 Index 

Wikis, 23, 34, 76, 145 Workload, 49, 50 Writer’s block, 41, 42, 51–54 Writing across curriculum, 90–93 Writing across curriculum program (WAC), 208, 210 Writing centers, 92, 93, 207–216 Writing Center staff, 210

Writing contest, 46 Writing teachers, 7–10 Writing without borders, 75, 76 Written feedback, 159 Z

Zero-tolerance approach, 56

229