Introducing the Corpus and Repository of Writing: Ethically Compiling and Analyzing Student Data
Channel: Corpus & Repository of Writing
Date: 28/06/2023

Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH 2023)
Poster session 18A (Sat July 1, 1:00pm Eastern/USA)

Shelley Staples, University of Arizona
Aleksandra Swatek, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland
Bradley Dilger, Purdue University
https://writecrow.org/ 

Projects like the Open Syllabus Explorer illustrate the potential of educational materials as digital humanities objects (Hubbard and Vaaler). Our project turns towards another educational object: undergraduate student writing. This poster introduces the Corpus and Repository of Writing (CROW; Staples and Dilger), illustrating how ethics of care,student work stewardship, and methodological choices are realized in an online corpus of student writing and repository of related pedagogical materials (e.g., syllabi, lesson plans). CROW shows the diversity of student writing in American higher education, with 33 assignment types from three institutions, representing 72 countries and totalling 16,007,868 words.

We developed sustainable practices and tools to ethically collect student writing (including drafts) and author metadata (Kwon et al.). Our project is a model for Open Science in DH, with safeguards against commercial appropriation and issues of academic integrity. In developing this project, we have made key methodological choices, curating data from an opportunistic sample to a structured dataset informed by the contexts in which the material was produced. For example, one research project conducted with CROW data showed that courses with equivalent goals designed to serve different populations are comparable in terms of writing outcomes, allowing us to argue against ideas that certain courses are “remedial” (Staples, under contract).

By illustrating successes in data collection, curation, and analyses, we provide examples of how researchers using other large opportunistic corpora can make similar informed choices in their own research.