Teacher-Student Discourse

One thing I have noticed in taking the video for our group project (with Lauri, Kim C, and Megan from Dr. Rickly's section) is that students are very unclear about the aims of freshman composition. A question we asked them was, "Why do you think Tech is teaching composition with TOPIC?" The answers were all over the board, ranging from "to make it easier on the CIs" to "I honestly have no idea." Most students seemed to think that TOPIC/ICON is a way for Tech to take the "easy way out," that the program is a sort of institutional laziness or cheapness (and in few ways, isn't it?). This problem approaches something that has been brought up in class often--the necessity of communicating educational and pedagogical aims to students. Why aren't student's briefed on the nature and purposes of TOPIC? Why don't we tell them that we're trying to avoid having them write to their professors, that doing everything online saves paper, and that online comments help prevent graders from imposing their style on students? Why don't we inform them and then let them tell us how the program is or isn't working towards these goals? The only recourse students have against the TOPIC program is to test out of it (many students we interviewed advised incoming freshman to "take freshman comp somewhere else") or give negative evaluations at the end of the semester when grades are mostly set. This is similar to a need to inform students about other issues in class; to mention something that came up in class today, professors should let students know if they will be using their papers anonymously as examples in other sections or later in the course and give them the opportunity to opt out of such use of THEIR work (after all, we pound "intellectual property rights" and anti-plagiarism rhetoric at the beginning of class, but avoid these issues ourselves when it comes to using "student writing" as examples--thusly implying that when they turn in words to us, their writing becomes ours--or using turnitin.com). Students are in class to learn, but we as teachers need to be responsible for not only transmitting information, but also informing our students as to WHY we teach the way we do and HOW these strategies will help them learn. We also need to give students the chance to critique our aims and methods because, let's face it--as a teacher, you already know how to write. Your job is not to emphasize your intelligence or mastery of writing craft, but to foster this knowledge in students. If they find your methods lacking and can think of ways to improve it, then we have a responsibility to listen to them. After all, how can you reach the post-process aim of student-teacher discourse if these concerns are avoided?