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 Ratings
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| Reviewed: |
Nov 21, 2003 by World Languages Editorial Board |
| Overview: |
This website provides instructional material for a first-year college
composition course. The focus is on research strategies with an emphasis on
information literacy that will allow students to complete an effectively
researched argumentative essay assignment. The difference this site offers from
other online writing labs is that the site is humorously based on a hospital
theme. To have your writing ?fixed up,? one can go to the ?Grammar and Research
Hospital? to learn what one needs to know.
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| Learning Goals: |
The site is designed to help students see and hear,
step-by-step, how to go
through each phase of the writing process for an argumentative research paper.
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| Target Student Population: |
Advanced ESL or native English-speaking students of academic writing. The site
could be helpful to any instructor teaching the argumentative essay for college-
or high school-level composition.
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| Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills: |
Students with any experience using the web will be able to use this site.
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| Type of Material: |
On the course ?Silly Bus? (syllabus), there are four sections:
1) How to Research on the Internet;
2) How to write your paper using the research you've gathered;
3) How to proof your paper and find the common errors students make; and
4) How to put your paper into M LA Research Style.
For each section, there is a video lesson, practice, and a test:
Lessons: The first lesson is a PowerPoint presentation that contains voice
narration. Lessons two and four contain movies that are screenshots with
narration. Lesson three is a link to the Purdue Online Writing Center?s page on
how to proofread.
Practice: Each lesson has a specific task for students to perform using the
skills explained in the video lesson. In the proofreading task, the students
are required to make a copy of the errors they made and post them in a database
accessible through the page.
Tests: Each lesson has an interactive quiz.
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| Recommended Uses: |
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| Technical Requirements: |
The movies require RealOne player or Microsoft Windows Media Player and Internet
Explorer.
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| Strengths: |
The purpose of this site is fairly clear. The site is rife with information on
how to carefully and effectively construct a classical scholarly argument. Most
importantly, the instructor has broken all of his requirements down carefully
so that his students have a ready reference on exactly how to do each step.
This site is not one that could be used as a standalone, however; students would
need more information from a face-to-face lesson to understand complex ideas
such as logical fallacy and revision of their writing. The site surely provides
an excellent ancillary to academic writing courses.
The humor utilized on the site is one of its best features. Teaching argument
can sometimes feel dreadfully boring, and this site maintains a rollicking sense
of fun through its use of puns and silly music (e.g., ?The Witchdoctor?).
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| Concerns: |
Although it does address quite well how to perform scholarly research and how to
write an argumentative essay using that research, it does not actually address
revision or proofreading in substantive ways. Revision is a complex and
difficult (and sometimes painful for freshmen) process that may be better suited
for face-to-face instruction, which may be why it is not addressed in a video
lesson.
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Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool |
Rating:   |
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| Strengths: |
This site is charming. It provides some excellent resources that the author has
created, and it provides superb links as well. I particularly like and would
recommend to students ?The Fallacy Exorcist? part of the site ? in which the
author makes an interesting presentation of how to avoid fallacies of ethos,
pathos and logos. The lightheartedness of the approach is its strength.
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| Concerns: |
The videos would be most helpful to students who are truly auditory learners.
Many learning-disabled students would benefit from the audio component.
However,
for the majority of students, the videos do not add value to the site
because the information could have been presented in regular .html in an equally
or even more effective way.
The tests that are provided might serve as good pre-tests or advance organizers
for students. However, the tests on writing and proofreading do not really
serve as effective assessments for whether a student can actually write or
proofread.
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Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty |
| Rating: |
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| Strengths: |
The main page works well as a point of departure. Most screens open in new
windows so that the student would be less likely to get lost in the page. The
audio is extremely clear.
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| Concerns: |
The backgrounds on a few of the pages are very busy, making it difficult to see
some of the words. The video quality is poor on some of the lessons, as it is
difficult to read some of the words on the screen. The music might be annoying
to some people, causing them to avoid using the site.
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