Dialogic Conference
Purpose: This is an activity meant to be done in preparation for one-on-one conferences with students. It's meant to keep the dialogue of revision going and move students towards thinking about the suggestions that were made by the teacher so that a dialogue can be better supported during the conference itself. If you are not marking papers beforehand, this can be adapted to a post-conference, reflective activity that students complete on the Discussion Board after their individual conferences.
Description: Students read the teacher's notes ahead of time and prepare four elements of discussion pre-conference. During the conference, these four elements act as a focal point for the conference itself so students are driving the pacing and direction of their own conference and engaging the teacher in meaningful dialogue.
Expected Time: 10 minutes, plus time commenting on drafts
Procedure:
This can be done for individual conferences during whatever project the students are working on. It requires a bit more work on your end, but the students (and you) will likely find conferences more productive this way. You'll need to provide students with feedback on their drafts 24 hours before they conference so they can prepare for this activity. You might consider focusing on large issues or recurring errors, and leaving significant comments in total (10-15) on each draft, including an overall statement of where you think the paper is. Tell students to access the comments via Blackboard’s/Canva's grades. They should click on the class, scroll down to the conference draft, and click on the attachment. You can use the comment feature in Word to do this or place them on the draft itself through the site's add comment grading interface. If this amount of feedback is too much, just writing but end comments would also suffice and may work better because students then have to find areas that those comments pertained to.
Ask students to read the comments before the conference, to process them, and to bring four responses:
One thing they agree with.
One thing they disagree with.
One thing they want to change.
One question they still have about the assignment.
Go through each of the four points. With the second, utilize praise. Because most students find disagreeing with the instructor uncomfortable, always praise them, regardless of what they disagree with. If the point they disagree with warrants correction (for instance, a citation rule), then still praise them, then try to pull up an example to show them just to demonstrate, modeling how to search the information they were looking for. Then encourage them do to the same for other things they are unsure of in their paper.