It has been well established that two-year students face enormous problems when they decide to complete a four-year degree. By one estimate, only 11 percent of those who indicate their intention to acquire a degree on the day they start in a two-year program actually do so. There are many reasons for this failure. Certainly,…

Here’s a visual representation of some of our work related to big data and writing studies, which is based on our observations of teachers’ comments on approximately 120,000 student essays over the past three years:

with Zachary Dixon Recently, through the Brookings Institute, Darrell West and Joshua Blieberg wrote about the promise that “big data” holds to improve the feedback loop and the quality of student writing assessment. Equally important was West and Bleiberg’s recognition that “[r]eal world demonstrations of how big data would fit into the classroom environment have…

Thanks to Aaron Barlow, Faculty Editor, and Academe  for publishing this account of the early history of Writing Commons: “Open Textbook Publishing.”  Academe.  (Sept/Oct 2013): 40-43 < http://www.aaup.org/article/open-textbook-publishing#.UkXER1Oi9GY> Since this essay was printed, Writing Commons has continued to evolve. During September, traffic at Writing Commons hit new highs: over 194,870 users—i.e., 6495 visitors/day—visited 577,902 pages.  Overall, the server logged 5,553,512 hits. It’s amazing to…