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"May 25, 2010, 02:00 PM ET Integrating Digital Audio Composition into Humanities Courses By Prof. Hacker Edison Phonograph[This guest post is by Jentery Sayers, who is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2010-2011, he will be teaching media and communication studies courses in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. He is also actively involved with HASTAC. You can follow Jentery on Twitter: @jenterysayers.] Back in October 2009, Billie Hara published a wonderfully detailed ProfHacker post titled, "Responding to Student Writing (audio style)". There, she provides a few reasons why instructors might compose digital audio in response to student writing. For instance, students are often keen on audio feedback, which seems more personal than handwritten notes or typed text. As an instructor of English and media studies, I have reached similar conclusions. Broadening the sensory modalities and types of media involved in feedback not only diversifies how learning happens; it also requires all participants to develop some basic-and handy-technical competencies (e.g., recording, storing, and accessing MP3s) all too rare in the humanities. In this post, I want to continue ProfHacker's inquiry into audio by unpacking two questions: How might students-and not just instructors-compose digital audio in their humanities courses? And what might they learn in so doing? Designing Courses with Audio Composition in Mind One of the easiest ways to integrate digital audio composition into a humanities course is to identify the kinds of compositions that might be possible and then find some examples. Below, I consider five kinds of digital audio compositions: * recorded talks * audio essays * playlists * mashups * interviews Each entails its own learning outcomes, technologies, and technical competencies. The recorded talk consists of students reading their own academic essays a

The purpose of this experiment was to compare the effects of anonymous and identifiable electronic peer (e-peer) review on college student writing performance and the extent of critical peer feedback. Participants were 92 undergraduate freshmen in four English composition classes enrolled in the fall semesters of 2003 and 2004. The same instructor taught all four classes, and in each semester, one class was assigned to the anonymous e-peer review group and the other to the identifiable e-peer review group. All other elements-course content, assignments, demands, and classroom instruction- were held constant. The results from both semesters showed that students participating in anonymous e-peer review performed better on the writing performance task and provided more critical feedback to their peers than did students participating in the identifiable e-peer review.