News you can use

Northern professor creates online writing course for OPI

A paper by a Montana State University-Northern professor on the 13 most common errors in rhetorical writing will be made into an online course for teachers throughout Montana.

"This is something I am really proud of," said Fred Smiley, a Northern professor of education who wrote the paper on which the program is based.

Smiley said he was approached by Catherine Thatcher, Education Licensure Unit Manager of the Montana Office of Public Instruction, at a meeting of the Montana Association of School Superintendents in November. He said Thatcher told him she heard he had written the document and that the Office of Public Instruction was interested in working with him to produce it.

The unpublished paper details the errors people tend to make in writing such as run-on sentences, fragments and comma misuse, gives examples, and shows how to fix them.

Smiley says the paper will be posted as a course on the OPI's Teacher Learning Hub, an online network for K-12 Montana teachers that provides them with free online courses that Smiley says typically run one to three units.

The program will include language identifying the error, sentences with one of the errors and how to fix them. A 20-question interactive quiz and Powerpoint presentation will be posted on the Hub as part of the course.

Smiley said he began his work studying the common errors when he first began teaching at Northern six years ago. He said that whenever he graded student papers he would come across the same 13 errors all the time. He began keeping track of how often he saw the errors and at first just told people about his findings before then writing this document.

Some former students who are now teachers in the field use Smiley's findings about the errors, which is how he said he believes OPI heard about it.

By instructing teachers how to become better writers, Smiley said, they can better help their students.

Smiley said he should be finished writing the course for the Teacher Hub by the end of the semester and OPI aims to have the course and quiz available by the end of summer for educators to use.

 

Reader Comments(0)