Affordances Analysis

Affordances Analysis:
This summer I taught online for the first time. Needless to say, I learned a lot about what doesn’t work so well in my pedagogy as I translate it to an all-online medium. While theories of writing instruction are relatively portable (“what” we’re looking for), the application of tools sometimes requires tweaking. When faced with the dilemma of how/when to use ELI Review, I learned something about varying review types. Here I offer you what I recognize as the affordances and disaffordances of the ELI Review system under a few common circumstances I encountered.

Conducting a Presence/Absence Review
Sometimes we just need students to double check the assignment requirements. This is among the simplest styles of review, and one that I found most useful toward the end of a review phase (but not the last review itself). Students seem to appreciate the double check, and often times learn more about their own work as they briefly review the work of others (compare/contrast). However, this type of review can only be so useful. To really teach writing we need to assemble different kinds of reviews for different purposes.

Conducting a General Review
For example, a general review—or one that focuses on a structural or interpretive element of a piece of writing—can be used to teach about the concept of audience. By asking a series of affect questions about a text in an ELI Review, students can formatively assess the affect of each other’s work. I’ve found these reviews to be most successful when applied after students have been wrestling with their topics and have at least a draft of their project. If done too early or too late, students seem to view it as busy work.

Conducting a Highly Focused Review
Because ELI encourages the use of multiple metrics it is fairly simple to coordinate measures in a way that engages students on a writerly strategy or tactic. A highly focused review is one in which students engage in a variety of different review processes (rating, commenting, checking boxes, etc.), all geared toward a very specific writerly move (such as a thesis). The affordances of this review can best be seen when reviewing a partial—not a whole—document. Because the cognitive load is high for the highly focused review process, students will get more out of the exercise if they extrapolate the lesson, paying most attention to a few carefully selected processes can convey more than working with an array of lessons and mediums.


So overall ELI is worth appreciating at least for its capacity to be versatile. Unlike some technologies, ELI has been designed to give the user a high degree of agency over the application of the software. With a little strategic (scaffolded) thinking it can be turned into something that’s mighty useful, especially when timed appropriately for the writing needs of a group.