Calificar privilegios o escritura, un dilema para resolver mediante el uso de Contratos de Calificación basados en el trabajo personal. Grading privileged or writing, a dilemma for resolving by using labor-based Grading Contract

Abstract

Digital writing instruction practices have a 20-year tradition in the US (Handa, 2004). Current university students, although they belong to generation Z, show a lack of ability for digital writing in the academic field. The question is to find out if this absence in educational context is due to a deficiency of digital competence or a lack of written competence. Therefore, this study aims to analyze two possible factors causing difficulties in performing writing tasks online. At the same time, once the cause was detected as a lack in technologically experienced students, but lacking practice in academic fields, due to a persistent scourge of sophisticated technological means for the educational field; it is intended to examine the digital writing tasks requested in a writing course, with the aim of showing an inclusive and equitable practice: the generation of rubrics in an equal and shared manner between the teacher and the students. This practice is proposed as a solution to the deficiencies detected, since it has been observed that students who are not experienced in pre-university education in submitting online writing tasks persist in their difficulties with technological educational platforms at university. The creation of a rubric in collaboration and with your classmates –at first–, promotes knowledge, motivation, involvement or commitment to the task; so digital writing tasks go from being an unattainable goal to being a feasible task to be dedicated. Likewise, the cooperative creation of this online writing with an easy-to-use platform (Co-Rubrics) encourages them to persist in the following tasks, since they have already reflected on them and have already found out among their peers what they consist of and how to face these tasks.
In our research we present a case study of a course based on online writing instruction. The data comes from the use of mixed methods that combine qualitative information collected through interviews, document analysis and classroom observation field diaries, with the quantitative methods of a survey. The results-to-date show that the three factors of success in the task are promoted after the contract signed by the teacher with the students, called Labor-based Grading Contract Handout (Dickson, 1974, Inoue, 2019). The writing tasks are not strictly from a scientific field, since it is about developing a portfolio with personal writing discursive genre, such as letter, self-study, review and blog entry.
The systematic observation of this writing course aims to deeply understand its provenance, objectives, taxonomy and functionality, with the final purpose to highlight the capabilities of this methodology to achieve a fairer and more equitable education.