DePaul’s School for New Learning has an annual initiative called the Month of Writing (MOW) every October. The initiative is loosely based on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and challenges the school’s students, faculty, and staff to write as many words as possible during the month.

This year I worked with a faculty member developing an online course designed to coincide with the MOW, where one course objective is to complete 25,000 words of a designated writing project by the end of the five week course. The emphasis here is on the writing process—on quantity over quality—to get students over the idea that every piece of writing must be perfect, and just start writing.

As part of this course development, the instructor requested a word-counter tool similar to the one provided by NaNoWriMo. Her dream requirements were that her students could copy/paste their text into a field that would not only count, but also record the number of words written, so that she could verify her students’ progress—without an additional submission directly to her.

I thought that surely there must be a ready-made tool to do this, but after searching around, I found many tools that would count the number of words copied/pasted, but none that would also perform the record-keeping task. Since the record-keeping was the most important requirement, I had to create my own tool. My solution was to use a trusty Google Form along with a data sheet, which came with some added perks since I was able to customize it to meet our needs.

Students are on the honor system to count their words and submit them weekly in the form, which is linked in the course. The instructor has access to the data sheet and can award points to students for submitting their word count. I added some calculations so that the form automatically tallies the running word count, and also created a bar graph that updates in real time:

The graph is also embedded in the course, so students can see the progress of the whole class toward their goal.

 I’m pretty happy with the outcome, especially with the data visualization—which was not part of the original requirements. Sometimes having to DIY a solution allows for customization that a ready-made product wouldn’t.