The 80-Minute Challenge: Just to prove it can be done

Art Lightstone

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If you're a teacher who requires your students to write essays, I highly recommend that you consider implementing a practice that I've been doing in my law course for a number of years. Essentially, I write an essay in front of my students. I call this annual custom the "80-Minute Challenge." 

The 80-Minute Challenge is a demonstration that I will do once a year during an essay-writing work period. During this challenge, I attempt to research and write a complete 800 to 1200 word essay within 80 minutes. I do not know the topic going into the challenge. Rather, the students in the class brainstorm a selection of positions on a variety of legal issues. A student volunteer writes the propositions up on the board, and then we number the propositions (Proposition 1, Proposition 2, Proposition 3, etc.). Finally, a random number generator picks one of the topics. The topic being selected, I then begin to write the essay while a timer counts down the eighty minutes. Everything I do during the 80-Minute Challenge is projected onto the screen at the front of the class, so students can turn to observe my progress throughout the class. At the end of class, the students can see how far I've progressed. By that same afternoon or evening, I share the completed essay with the class. Admittedly, over the years I have found that some essays go a little better than others, but most essay topics end up being quite a lot of fun to research and write.  

Purpose:

Too often, students put off essay projects out of a sense of fear and dread. Particularly desperate students will even resort to plagiarism in order to avoid facing the task of legitimately writing an original essay. The purpose of the 80-Minute Challenge is to demonstrate that essay writing is not just an academic skill, but a fun, stimulating, and exciting endeavour. Embarking on a good essay is actually very similar to setting out on a treasure hunt or rally. The act of searching for and locating compelling sources that support one's thesis is actually a great deal of fun, but students can only access that sense of fun after they learn their requisite skills associated with essay-writing. For too long, schools have failed to expose students to the shear fun of essay writing. Once we add in that sense of fun, the technical skills associated with essay writing become something that students are little more inspired to learn, and the actual writing of essays becomes something that students start to embrace.

The Skills:

Various points of skill, strategy, and technique are demonstrated and discussed during the 80-Minute Challenge. Students see actual demonstrations of:

• producing an effective introductory paragraph (A complete introductory paragraph includes an attention-grabbing hook, an outline of the issue to be examined, the position taken on the issue (i.e. the thesis) and the arguments forwarded in support of the essay's position.)
• source surfing (A student researcher can easily track down the source of information that might be discussed within a particular resource, such as a news article. That will lead the researcher to more authoritative resources with comprehensive bibliographies and citations, and those will unleash a tidal wave of highly relevant resources.)
  
• limiting hearsay sources (It's always better to find a study that is cited within a report, just as it is better to cite a report than a news article that discusses the report. News articles should be used primarily for the interviews they may contain.) 
• organizing online sources within bookmark folders (The snowballing of resources that occurs when students learn how to source surf can very quickly generate an overwhelming number of sources. Students should be encouraged to use sets of bookmark folders that contain a folder for each argument within each essay folder.)
  
• using online citation generators (Online citation generators can quickly assist students in overcoming one of the single most confusing and daunting aspects of essay-writing: citations and references. Consider these tools to be training wheels for essay writing. After a while, the students won't need them, but they can help a lot of students get past their essay anxiety.)
  
• incorporating and punctuating citations properly (Allowing students to watch an experienced writer incorporate and punctuate citations can help clarify one of the confusing issues associated with essay writing.)
• differentiating assertions from facts (One of the best things students can learn from watching someone write an essay is how to utilize assertions and facts. I advocate a "three-punch combo" of i) assertion, ii) fact, iii) citation.)
• utilizing and punctuating quoted material (A very good skill to demonstrate to young writers is the value of quoted material. Too often students will either fail to quote a sentiment that really should come from an authoritative source, or they will quote material that doesn't need to come from an authoritative source. At the end of the day, the student is the writer of the essay, and quotes should be used to support - not state - the student's argument, position, or perspective.)

Caveats:

• The 80-Minute Challenge is certainly not intended to encourage students to complete their essays in eighty minutes the night before they're due. Rather, the 80-Minute Challenge is intended to demonstrate that essay writing can be a fun, exciting, and rewarding process. 
  
• I do not guarantee that I will complete the essay during the 80-Minute Challenge. Nonetheless, students will certainly be able to see how far I get in the course of the eighty minutes.
• I do not claim that the work I produce within eighty minutes would net a perfect mark in a high school or university course. Nonetheless, I do attempt to write an 'A' quality paper during the challenge.
• If the essay produced during the challenge were for a real course, I would consider that essay to be a first draft. I would then augment and revise that draft over the course of several days or weeks.   
• Part of the 80-Minute Challenge process involves debriefing the experience and reviewing the first draft of the 80-Minute Challenge essay. The class discusses any inherent challenges of the topic as well as the effects of the unusual time constraint. The class then attempts to identify weaknesses in the essay and determine areas for revision.
• Finally, the 80-Minute Challenge is intended to convince students that writing a legitimate, original, well-supported and fully-cited essay can be just as quick and easy as trolling the Internet for pre-written essays or articles that can be reworked into essays.
  

In Summary:

Essay writing is one of the most critical skills we demand of our students in both high school and university, yet the fact of the matter is that essay writing is also one skill that we as educators do not actually demonstrate to our students. Contrast how we teach essay writing to almost any other skill. Do we not demonstrate everything else from physics formulas, to financial statements, to jump shots? I would argue that we continue to see both poor essay writing and high rates of plagiarism because essay writing is the one skill that we attempt to teach without actually demonstrating. 

Admittedly, writing an essay in front of our students does seem a bit extreme... possibly even eccentric, but I maintain that this is simply because we've never been able to provide such a demonstration until very recently. These days, if a teacher has i) a computer, and ii) an LCD projector in their classroom, then they have the ability to take the 80-Minute Challenge. Having said that, this final point does give rise to what may be the most important point of introspection a teacher could ask themselves on the topic: if they have the tools, and they have the time, then why wouldn't they? This question will be explored more fully in an upcoming article. 

Resources:

The Art of Argument: Exploring the foundations of essay writing. (See link below.) 

Some Past 80-Minute Challenge Essays:

• April, 2010: The Scourge of Social Media: Why Ontario Schools Should Ban Access to Facebook and Other Social Media Sites
  
  
• April, 2011: Ban a Pit Bull, Save a Life: Why the Ontario Ban against Pit Bull Terriers Should Remain in Place
  
  
• February, 2015: Does it Pay to Drive Downtown? The Benefits of Implementing a Downtown Toll System in Toronto