August 1, 2008

"How Do You Grade a Conversation"

In this article, Trent Batson talks about grading a written conversation. Batson talks about "academic conversations" and how a professor he talked to graded his students on how well their conversations on-line went. If they got off topic while on the chat, the conversation was no longer academic and became a social chit-chat. He also talks about criterion for grading conversations. The first criterion is creating coherence. This is creating a coherent conversation, a conversation that is understandable. The second criterion is awareness of audience. If you're talking to someone, but you're directing the conversation to someone else, you're not showing awareness of your audience. He also talks about how "conversation" has evolved over time. We now have conversations over the internet using blogs, chats, and e-mails.

I think he is right about how conversations have evolved over time. When conversation began, it was always face-to-face or through letters. Then it evolved to phone conversations and then finally to conversations over the internet; chat, e-mail, blogs, and personal IM's. I like the way the professor did his graded his work and how he had his students have academic conversations on-line with each other.