Undergraduate Student Writing Partners Christine Harrington., Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, New Jersey City University Student voices are often missing from conversations on student success. At the community college I worked at previously, I hosted a student panel where students shared how their professors encouraged and motivated them to be successful. It was one of my favorite professional development events. Faculty loved it, and a long line formed after the event because faculty wanted to hear more from the student presenters. This is when I decided a book centering on student voices was needed. This led to my co-authoring the book, Keeping Us Engaged: Student Perspectives (and Research-Based Strategies) on What Works and Why, with fifty students.
Let’s Talk Logistics The first challenge was finding students who wanted to collaborate. Because I wanted to have a diverse array of student voices from a variety of institutions, I knew I would have to lean on my network. I used three approaches to find student contributors. When I reached out, I shared that I wanted to have a diverse group of student contributors in hopes that they would specifically invite students of color, LGBTQIA+ students, students with disabilities, and non-traditional aged students to participate in this project. Here are the recruitment actions I took: 1. First, I reached out to my colleagues on the National Resource Center on the First-Year Experience listserv as I know I can always count on the student champions in this network. This proved to work really well, with many colleagues answering the call to help identify students. 2. I also emailed faculty colleagues, directors of teaching and learning centers, and first-year experience directors whom I met previously at conferences or other professional development events. 3. Finally, I leveraged personal connections. As a parent of college students, I asked friends if their college students would like to contribute. Students were sent emails with a description of the book project, including a draft table of contents, and a link to a Google form. The Google form asked students to provide their contact information, a brief description of the engagement strategy or strategies they wanted to write about, and which chapter they thought their story or stories best fit. I was not sure how many students would be interested and was beyond thrilled when over fifty students volunteered to be contributors; however, to be honest, I was also a bit overwhelmed by the idea of working with fifty plus co-authors. I reviewed the student stories, and it became clear that the table of contents had to be amended. For example, several students wanted to discuss creativity with assignments, and that was not in the original table of contents. I created a table mapping out the different student stories that would appear in each chapter. Although it was not important to have the same number of stories per chapter, I looked for consistency and balance throughout the book. In some chapters, I needed additional stories, so I asked students who already agreed to write one story if they also had
another story they could share. I also asked students if they had a friend who might be willing to contribute. After revising the table of contents and assigning specific student contributors to each chapter, it was time to begin writing. Here is an overview of the steps involved: 1. Developed the contract with the publishing company and emailed the contract to all students interested in contributing. I established a due date that was one month before the end of the semester. This way, we would be able to exchange drafts before the semester ended. 2. I provided students with a template for their story and an estimated word count so there would be consistency across the stories throughout the book. 3. I sent several reminders about the upcoming deadline and invited students to respond with questions. 4. After receiving their stories, I reviewed them. In some cases, the storie submitted took a different approach, and no longer fit the assigned chapter. Because some students never submitted stories, moving their story to a different chapter was a solution. In a few cases, I had to email the student asking them to revise their story to fit the chapter. In every case, I eventually found a home for each student story. The missing chapters meant I had to find additional stories. I again reached out to the students who already submitted a story to inquire if they would be willing to write another one. 5. Editing the stories was the next step. I was very mindful of ensuring that edits were primarily grammatical and technical so that the student voice was not altered in significant ways. In some cases, students submitted stories that were significantly over the targeted number of words. In these cases, more significant edits were needed. 6. All edited versions were shared with students, asking them to review and ensure that that the edits did not alter their intent or voice. Students were given a few weeks to submit revisions if they desired. Most students approved the edits without making further revisions. However, a few students really engaged in the revision process and their final products reflected their growth as a writer. 7. After identifying and placing all the student stories in the chapter, I started writing the text around the stories. The goal was to introduce the importance of each engagement strategy and review theoretical and research support for the strategy. The student stories then provided a personalized perspective on the value of each strategy. 8. As with all writing, several drafts were needed. At each step of the process, I contacted all student contributors, asking them to review and respond with any edits. I also kept them updated on the publishing timeline which was adjusted due to the pandemic.
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