As Warnock humbly admits (137), so shall I, too: I give a lot of feedback, probably much more than is necessary. In my f2f classes the vast majority of my feedback is handwritten—I collect hard copies of my students’ assignments and write comments on the margins and spaces throughout. Additionally, I like to compose an end-of-reading reflection paragraph encompassing my major points for consideration. I also provide students with a rubric showing them where their paper falls on the argument, development, organization, language/mechanics, and various other assignment-specific criteria. I like giving my students this variety—if one student is very cerebral and prefers the exact numbers, they can focus on the rubric, which is also useful towards showcasing the course standards. The comments and reflection paragraph are more specific and detailed to the students’ strengths and areas that could use some focus.

However, all this handwriting is exhausting. My typing speed is around 80 wpm—my writing speed, on the other hand, is probably something horribly slow like 11 wpm. With writing taking over seven times longer than it takes to type the same comment, I’m long-overdue moving towards these newfangled grading programs.

Tools:
I still think there is virtue in handwriting, specifically because it takes longer for me to write than to type. Handwriting makes me think carefully over how to comment, which means I usually write a bit more considerately than I would were I to type out the response instead. I never want to compromise the integrity of my feedback, especially when my students genuinely read and care about my observations. However, maintaining this care becomes a challenge when my hand starts cramping. And my head gets achy. And my wrist becomes sore. And oh, let’s not forget the stiff neck! We’ve all been down that road—I know many of us practically have timeshares on that street! Alright, the metaphor is running away from me, but my point is that grader’s fatigue is a very real thing that we all deal with. I’m hoping that electronic response can help to alleviate some (if not most) of it.

Since I still provide mostly handwritten feedback, I’m still new to these tools. However, here are a few I’m interested in:

1. SpeedGrader: This is the one tool that really seems to rule them all. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m excited to start and have grandiose plans. I especially love SpeedGrader’s comment feature, view rubric feature, and media file attachment feature—this last in particular is the tool of my dreams, because it translates directly into AV comments! More on that later.
   1. The rubric is lovely because students are able to specifically see how many points they achieved for each criteria. I like how dynamic the rubric is—you can give comments as well as show where each rubric score falls on a spectrum.
   2. The comments are of course extremely useful, and probably the most helpful tool available for English instructors. If some evil magician robbed me of all my methods of responding to student writing save one, I’d hope he’d leave me with my commentary. I truly feel students need to see exactly where their papers do well and where they fall short—otherwise, they’re left just guessing, which isn’t conducive to the learning-growing writing process. Besides, who of us in the past hasn’t had a teacher or professor who gave notoriously confusing feedback? I had several myself, and would never want to be considered as such! Comments are so important, and the one feature that seems to pop up in most tech teaching tools.
   3. I also really like SpeedGrader’s draw and highlight tools—I see these as being particularly useful for syntax, spelling, and other language mechanics. I imagine I’d start off trying to note everything via the comment feature, but I would probably eventually use color coding for sentence craft. For example: yellow highlighting = run-on, purple highlighting = fragment, etc. The combination of typing my comments and using coding will help to greatly reduce the time I spend on feedback while simultaneously increasing the amount itself.
   4. Finally, there’s SpeedGrader’s record/upload media feature: AV feedback!!!! I’m ridiculously excited to use AV feedback, and am already considering it for my f2f classes. I absolutely love that you can use both audio and video recordings in SpeedGrader.

I think my tools use would be a combination of all of these: comments and draw/highlight for specific response throughout my students’ papers, rubric for explaining how they did criteria and standard-wise, and record/upload media for the end-of-paper reflection paragraph I compose.

… also, this last tool (the AV feature) is the answer to the biggest concern I’ve had regarding writing response: how can we encourage our students to actually read our electronic feedback?

The one reason it’s taken me so long to move to electronic evaluation is my belief in the genuine feelings handwriting transmits. Something that continues to surprise and embolden me is how much my students seem to actually read and consider my commentary. When I’ve briefly attempted electronic feedback in the past (mostly through the comment feature in Microsoft Word), students would at times ignore or fail to read my responses. This, wonderfully enough, hasn’t been much of a problem with handwritten critiques. I really do think there is something personal in each of our handwriting styles; a handwritten note, then, seems to reach my students a bit more directly.

I think providing students with even one minute of AV commentary can make a big difference between cold, almost robotic-sounding response and sincere, personal assessment. If they hear my voice, see my face, or watch a video of me going through their paper, I think they’ll be encouraged to pay more attention to my feedback. Warnock says he has a lot of success with AV feedback (131), and from a sociological standpoint, it makes complete sense. Therefore, when considering his success, I focused on two more tools I’m thinking of using when it comes to assessing student writing: Dragon and Skype.

2. Dragon NaturallySpeaking: I know very little about this program barring what I’ve heard from various colleagues at MiraCosta. It looks promising in that it allows a user to voice-to-text their comments. That’s all I know about it so far, other than I’d personally have to go through a serious learning curve to use it efficiently. Still, I definitely talk faster than I type, so it seems like a useful program.

3. Skype: I’m old-fashioned. I know there are spiffy new ways of conducting video-chats, but Skype—despite the occasional glitching—is fairly reliable. I’d like to use it to video conference students while reviewing their papers and going over revision reports. Again, anything to make the writing response process as personal as possible is my goal. In doing so, my hope is they’ll truly consider my feedback and advice.

Circling back, one last comment I want to mention is on Warnock’s advice to change our system of grading when teaching OWcourses. I think this absolutely makes sense and completely agree; there is going to be a lot more informal writing in an OWcourse, and I’d like to encourage my students to write as much as they can. Giving more weight to these informal responses seems like a very natural shift.

A risk in moving over to an OWcourse means students might feel like a brick in the wall or part of a machine (yep—I’ve had Pink Floyd stuck in my head throughout all of these chapter thanks to Warnock’s comments on robotic voices and inauthentic feedback!). Honestly though, I think this is a real risk. When taking online courses as a student, I never felt like my professors viewed or cared about me as an individual. As Warnock advises, by commenting on my students’ informal responses and weighing such posts, they will see that I am listening: I’m actually reading their posts, and my comments show I’m paying them attention.

A random idea I had during Chapter 10 was to create “icebreaker” posts for each lesson—I already take roll in my f2f classes by asking fun warm-up questions (like “where is the best place to get Italian food in north county?”). This proves, semester after semester, to be a lovely way to build classroom community. It’s also my sneaky way of getting them to relax and start talking. I think such an exercise would translate well into warm-up posts for each online session, and it wouldn’t take me very long to comment on them.

It is my hope that by implementing these practices paired with using AV that I’ll be able to develop just as much rapport with my OW students as I do in f2f classes.

Hi All,

It was lovely to be able to learn from you all. I have enjoyed reading your posts, thinking deeply, and talking back and forth. I look forward to fall and more discussions.

I think the big take away for me from all of this is how amazing it is that a community of educators can come together and share such great insights and that you have all created such a wealth of resources and things to think about. The one other central theme that stand out from my posts and the discussions in general is that our students benefit from the flexibility that online technology offers, and we have the ability to create such rich spaces of engagement with the tools at our disposal. It is exciting and a bit overwhelming, but I think we are all up to the challenge.

Here are my posts:

Post 1- Technology in the WC

Post 2 My Framework

Post 3 Student Centered Learning

Post 4 process and Feedback

Post 5 Reading in the Writing Class

In a writing class, the essay is almost always based upon class readings. So when students come into the writing center and ask why they need to mention the book, I usually ask them, “why do you think the instructor had you read the book?” and “How might the book help you write your essay?” these questions are usually followed by several beats of silence and deep thinking on the part of students.

When I was teaching writing at Sacramento State and Sac City College, I focused heavily on reading. I embedded modelling of how to read a text, created reading cohorts, did jigsawing, forced students to reflect on their reading process at the end of each paper they turned in. Their portfolio cover pages almost always had a nod to how often they re-visited a book or article, what type of notes they had to make to understand the readings.

Today, I tend to ask students who come into the center metacognitive questions about the reading for their class essay:

What part of the reading fits best into your intro paragraph? Why does that quote work as a hook and not the quote from your second body paragraph? So if a hook draws us in, how do you know that quote is hook worthy?

How did you come to choose this quote to back up your view that X is…..? How does this quote go back to your topic sentence?

What did you have to do to understand this article? Why did that reading strategy work for this novel? Did it work for the ted talk you watched on this topic? No? Why?

While I agree with some of what Wornock says about quizzing, I personally hate reading quizzes. One semester I asked students to create their own reading quiz questions based on some criteria I created. Then after they wrote them on the board, we revised the questions together and tightened up the “quiz” and each group gave their reading quiz question to another group. It was fun and it worked because in order to ask a really good, nuanced question meant they had to open their book and skim the reading again, think about how they would answer the question in order to write a good quality quiz question that made the reader think. I imagine it could be used in an online class.

But back to the meta questions. I think students need more practice reading and using meta questions as they read. They can create those questions both about their reading process and the content of the reading itself.

Auf Wiedersehen, not goodbye!

In German we have this wonderful word that means, until we meet again (in the Fall). So, it truly is not goodbye.  First and foremost a special thanks to Curry and Sullivan and the team for helping us navigate through the adventures of online teaching.  Secondly, thanks to all of you, my classmates, for your creative insight and feedback. I’ve certainly learned some great new methodologies, practices and ideas that I plan to implement into my online teaching.  Thank you and I wish you all a wonderful summer and I look forward to part two!

Below are my reflections on our class discussions:

• Unit 1: Framework for Teaching On-Line
• Unit 2: Mobilis in Mobile – Nemo and the Nautilus 
• Unit 3: Level up; You Get a Badge! Thoughts on Translating Teaching Styles and Preparing for Online Instruction.
• Unit 4: “The Cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek.”
  Joseph Cambell,  The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Unit 5: The Book is not Dead – “It’s Alive!”  – Mary Shelley

Once again I will point out that I have not yet taught an exclusively on-line class, yet. However, I have begun the process of migrating my onsite strategies into the online instructional environment in the form of a hybrid class or an onsite class heavily supported with a content management system.  As I reflect on teaching the writing process for this week’s assignment, I am going to discuss how I approach a writing assignment for one of my Adult ESL intermediate reading and writing classes.  Although this is a f2f classroom, it is an example of a class I support with an online classroom. I integrate the use of content management systems to expose students to the online environment, as many of them are unfamiliar with using these types of interfaces. Not only will this benefit them in future classes academic /non-academic courses, but it also is a useful workforce skill.  So, that means all materials including support articles, presentations, videos and other additional resources can be found online in the virtual classroom. I also require them to use the message board for responding to prompts as well as discussions.

As the language is still challenging for many of my learners (not to say that it is not for some of our more advanced learners), the thought of having to put their ideas on paper can be a frightening endeavor, to say the least. So, my first challenge is to create an environment in which they feel they will not be embarrassed. In Teaching the OWI Course, Warnock provides us with an example of high-stakes vs low-stakes writing environment.  With the diversity of my students’ backgrounds and educational levels, it is essential for me to create a low-stakes writing environment allowing them to explore and engage with the writing as they learn to incorporate academic writing conventions into their texts. My secondary focus is to guide them along the process of writing as I work with them on content, fluency, finding their own voice, peer review/feedback and revisions.

As mentioned above, for many the thought of putting ink on paper (or keyboard stroke to screen), it is something is something to be dreaded.  My first challenge is to try and overcome this and get students motivated enough to actually be excited about sharing their ideas on a subject and to write them down.  In any new writing assignment I focus on strong pre-writing activities aimed at providing learners with confidence-boosting experiences and essential vocabulary.  As I do this, I try to find subjects that will allow me to incorporate some of the students’ backgrounds so they can activate their prior knowledge and draw information from a familiar place as they take on these new challenges.

Below is a sample of one class in a larger unit on narrative writing.

Assignment: Narrative Writing Assignment

Telling Stories to Incite Writing – Re-telling a story, Summarizing.

“The Cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek.”
Exploring the Hero’s Journey (Joseph Campbell)

1. The pre-writing activity begins with a question prompt, What makes a hero?
2. I ask students to work with a partner to discuss their understanding of the word hero and what defines it. I often will post a prompt like this online on our message board (Canvas or Google Groups) prior to the class meeting so that students will have responded to it prior to the lesson.
3. We collectively explore some of these ideas that students have presented and then I ask them to work in small teams to create a graphic organizer, mind map, or other diagram to visually express the idea of the question prompt. Students then share their maps either f2f or post them online, to which other groups are to respond to and provide some feedback or ask questions.
4. I follow up on this pre-writing activity with a secondary prompt, “the cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek.” Having already worked on the ideas of what defines a “hero”, students often make a correlation between these two prompts in their responses.
5. Following this, I introduce the theme of the writing assignment, to explore the Hero’s Journey in literature and culture. My introduction draws on, naturally as a total Star Wars geek, Luke Skywalker, but also Frodo, Indiana Jones, and the wizard boy himself, Harry Potter! We then explore the arc of the Hero’s Journey as defined by Joseph Campbell.
6. We then analyze written synopsis of character development in Star Wars (and some Pixar movies) and we work on identifying the transitions that occur to the hero. Students use a Hero’s Journey worksheet to take notes of the transitions as they try to identify them.

   

7. The following videos are either posted on the CMS (or shown in class):
   1. Ted Ed: What makes a hero?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhk4N9A0oCA
      
   2. Netflix’s Myths & Monsters: Joseph Campbell & The Hero’s Journey      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwnxYXOTy94
   3. Every story is the same:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuD2Aa0zFiA

Students are then asked to think of a hero in their own culture and using the Hero’s Journey worksheet, map evolution of that character’s arc.  This worksheet then serves as an outline for them to work on their first draft of the narrative writing assignment, writing about a hero from their native culture.

The class goes on from here as we work through the writing process, planning, organizing, writing, editing, revising.

 

It has been such a pleasure working with all of you this semester. I really have enjoyed learning about what you do in your classrooms. I feel honored that you shared this with me.

After reading over my posts, I really have realized how much I miss interacting with my colleagues and talking/reading/writing/thinking about teaching. For the last five years, I have really just focused on being in the classroom with my students, which I love, but I see how most of my writing has been directed to my students.  I really want to work on my writing–with and for– my fellow/sister teachers.

For example, my writing sounds like giving directions to students and/or my about experiences in the classroom. Which is fine, but I need to get back to writing about the theories which have always informed my teaching. Theories that have become so part of what I do (Freire for example, theories about creating real writing situations, the benefits of making student writing “public,” and my MOST favorite–using mentor texts in the classroom to teach writing strategies that real, published writers use).

This makes me start going to conferences again and thinking of writing for publication.

I realize that despite my love for working with my students, I really also love working with other teachers.

Thank you for waking this part of me up!

Kind regards,

Cara Owens

May your grading be swift and your summer long and leisurely.

Unit 1 “First Post-Thinking about My Teaching and Teaching Online”  2/19/18

Unit 2 “Keep it Simple Sister” 3/1/18

Unit 3 “Warnock Chapters 4 & 5” 3/20/18

Unit 4 “Writing Process/Assignment Sequence” 4/9/18

Unit 5 “Don’t Get Me Started on How Important Reading is in a Writing Class.” 4/25/18

It is not often that we get an opportunity to play and share ideas on pedagogy and I am so very grateful for the knowledge that I have gained from each of you this semester. I am thankful for the creative, non-judgmental and wholistic space created by Curry and Jim. I have grown tremendously from the insights you all shared and my teaching tool kit is full to overflowing with new techniques, technology and approaches. I truly wish to continue the dialogue with you…even though I must admit that it was time consuming and sometimes difficult to make the deadlines. Whooohoooo! I am glad we made it to the end of this sequence. Happy summer y’all. Here are all my posts:

Post 1 – Framework 

Post 2 – Use Tech, Don’t Let it Use You

Post 3 – Video – Backward Design

Post 4 – Teaching the Writing Process – Thesis Journey

Post 5 – Print Book Need Not Fear

Rereading my posts highlights one key objective: to migrate my pedagogy, teaching, and assignments into accessible, easy-to-understand online courses. I seem to have focused primarily on creating a dynamic space which appeals to all seven learning styles. To that end, I’ve tried to visualize how I can variate my activities as much as possible while also maintaining strong scaffolding and plenty of interaction (both peer and instructor). But, an undercurrent to this desire is my goal to make lessons graspable for students of all backgrounds. It is important that I find the balance between a fun, interactive, and progressive class and one that minimizes confusion and frustration. It was a bit of a jest, but as I mentioned in my first post, “I have grandiose daydreams of humble farmers in Nebraska, metropolitan business people in Chicago, lobster fishers in Maine, and tech-savvy entrepreneurs all taking an online English course of mine, commenting on each other’s posts, and coming to new and enlightening revelations about the world we all inhabit!” Perhaps this is a bit eclectic, but the theme is there: a compelling class people of all walks can enjoy and learn from. Striking the balance between dynamic and accessible is going to be a fun challenge, but I’m game!

My deepest gratitude to all of you for your thoughts, support, advice, and encouragement. This was a great experience, and I’m excited to put some of these many ideas into action!

My posts: 1. Principles for OWCourses  2. LMS and The Perplexed Instructor 3. Content Creation for the Online Class 4. Online Lesson Plan for English 100 5. The Wonderful World of Reading and Discussion