My Dreamy Dream Course; Or, I Can Be Super Impatient

Posted on by

I am not ready to dream about an online course. Mainly, I need to spend some time teaching online before I can really understand what works and what doesn’t in order to have the dream.

I do, however, often dream about onsite writing courses. My students are currently spending a lot of class time in the computer lab for our Media Literacy Group Project. I’m not sure if my dream is necessarily a flipped classroom model, maybe some sort of blend? The dream is that my composition course is very tech-enhanced. I want to teach it in a computer lab space.

Pedagogically, I want to spend class time moving back and forth between discussion and application of those discussions in the form of writing. Shocking! I know. It is a writing class after all. I already do this with a lot of in class writing because it is important to me that students practice whatever it is we are discussing related to writing in that moment, so we both figure out what they need more time with. We have discussed various forms of accessibility, but what practices will make the writing process more accessible to students? For me, it is engaging in it with them, teaching them how to keep moving forward.

I already do a lot of in class writing, but handwritten in class writing is limiting. It is limiting for purposes of practical revision. It is limiting for them turning it in and me returning it the next class period. They scribble to me, normally really great ideas. Then the moment is over. I scribble back. We are already in a different place; they are already thinking about it differently. It limits me engaging with students while they are actually writing. It is limiting for how we can use it during that class period; sometimes I really long for the days of the doc cam or a classroom that still has one.

The technology and its uses we have considered in this sequence have really pushed me more towards what technology provides for the experience of writing. I would prefer to use the technology to implement a lot more student drafting during class time, and by drafting, I mean the actual writing, not just the brainstorming, idea development, or handwritten introduction they can take home and type up later. I think about all the tools available through the internet that can change the purpose of student writing and how students understand themselves as writers, which also supports my anti-rubric world.

As shown in my course design video, I value a lot of transparency and being in tune with their actual experiences writing, not just the products of that writing. Since my pedagogy focuses on student writing over any other content, the lag of waiting for drafts slows down the momentum of the way I want the class to function. In many ways, some of the issues that have come up here with the delay of the discussion board for class discussion is an issue I have with delays created by students doing a lot of the actual writing outside of the classroom space.

Part of this computer and drafting in the classroom dominated approach also connects to how I function in the classroom space. I am a collaborator. When left on my own, I need a lot of time to work through my thoughts and ideas; I think and write very slowly. When interacting with my students and their work, my thoughts move really fast. I can show them in the moment how rethink nearly anything they produce for their purposes, not mine. For how hands-on I am, I am also oddly hands-off.

I had a glimpse of this once when I taught a M/W/F class. Fridays were drafting days, and I fought hard to get the coveted computer lab space. Even though we were sitting in the same room, we had an open chat through the WebCT LMS (was that early Blackboard? They looked a lot alike). Students would ask me questions through the chat or invite me into their document or I would just come into their doc to check on them and leave a piece of feedback. It is like a mass of individual mini-conferences happening every week and pushes students writing further.

 

Simple, yet barren.

Posted on by

Honest disclosure: I had every intention of finally investing in a webcam/microphone for this week’s post, but I get anxious when dealing with purchasing a new electronic (a silly analysis paralysis), so I put it off and here we are. On the bright side, I have finally read every review for every webcam/microphone combination in existence. So, instead of providing you with a wonderful video tour of my bleak Canvas page, I am going to have to use screen shots to guide this post.

Another honest disclosure: online presence in my F2F courses has always been rather minimal, so my Canvas page is pretty barren.

screenshot1

Home Page: Believe it or not, the above photo is actually an improvement for this semester. This is my first semester using Canvas, and I used to just have an empty landing page on my prior Blackboard page. Once again, the online community in my class has always been supplemental. Essentially, the online aspect of my course was just to send out emails, collect assignments through Turnitin and post files. Canvas has really pushed me into thinking about a more serious integration.

screenshot2

Announcements: I have started utilizing the announcement section a lot more this semester due to the Canvas App. Most of my students use the Canvas app on their phones, so sending out announcements is the fastest way to get my students information.

screenshot4

Modules: I started this semester by reorganizing my modules at my students’ request. I used to have these sections organized by types (prompts/readings/submission links), but students asked for them to be organized on a week-by-week basis. In the end, this reorganization has definitely worked for the better.

So far, that is all I use Canvas for. After seeing all of your posts, I realize I need to step up my game. I do have a lot of goals for the upcoming semester in terms of polishing my course, and here there are in no particular order:

  • Get a webcam/microphone, and utilize more video feedback/discussion.
  • Polish my home page to utilize links (much like the Writing with Machines page). I think this is the one I am most interested in as it seems like any way to consolidate and streamline is beneficial (especially with the push to the Canvas App).
  • Utilize the syllabus section of the website and move away from just posting the .pdf.

 

 

Accessibility Across the Board

Posted on by

First of all, I want to apologize for the lateness of this blog post.

The assigned readings for this week were fascinating. I used to be a Luddite in terms of using technology in the classroom because I was concerned with access issues amongst students, and I preferred keeping the majority class in the analog world. I would use Blackboard for only the essential things (announcements/essay submissions/etc.), but I tried to keep the course grounded in the physical classroom.  Over the past year or so, and in response to this learning community, I have started to place more faith in the digital sphere. The shift to Canvas also helped facilitate this change. While reading through these articles, I picked out multiple points that I either need to think about, or points I thought about when making the shift.

  • The CCCC points out that a “proactive approach to physical and pedagogical access is superior to one that includes “added on” or retrofitted alternatives.” This point resounds with me because it really does represent how my class as changed over the past year. Whereas the Blackboard course was kind of forced to fit in the class, the redesign with Canvas allowed me to restructure and rethink my utilization of the digital sphere. Canvas is a part of my class, not just a supplement.
  • I discovered the Canvas app at the beginning of the semester and recommended it to my students with smart phones or tablets. I love that students can easily pull up prompts/texts to follow along, and it is very helpful during office hours when I am not in front of a desktop. This jump into the mobile platform has also made me aware of how I organize my Canvas course as well as how I upload my documents.
  • I received feedback last semester from a student about the way I organized files online. Based on the feedback, I believe my course has the clear, concise organization that the articles discuss.
  • There are definitely areas I need to improve on though; I have to admit that I did not do enough education on Canvas as I should have done at the beginning of the semester. I provided links to the Canvas tutorials, but I definitely could have done more to prepare my students. I just found the recorded workshop (Thanks, Jim!) on Canvas and will definitely go over that next semester. I also need to revisit my documents and make sure they are fully accessible.

These readings definitely pointed out a weakness that I never really thought of before. While I try to ensure that all of my students receive the help/accommodations they need in the physical classroom, I need to spend more time making sure my online classroom space does the same.

Candy, Culture, Context

Posted on by

Full Disclosure – My apologies for the late post, folks. My fiancé and I just had a baby, which has left me learning how to balance work and fatherhood mid-semester. Good times.

Thanks for Waiting – Reading “OWI Principle 1” about inclusivity and accessibility brought back memories of classroom moments where students would give me that look that essentially said, “Seriously, Tsuyuki, I wish you would have given this to us earlier. Now we have to go back and change things.” As I made my way through the guidelines and eventually the effective practices for “OWI Principle 1,” it didn’t take long for me to feel like the topic, “Accessibility and Universal Design,” could have come earlier. There was definitely that initial thought: Dang, Curry and Jim, why didn’t you give this to us earlier? Why wasn’t this our first topic? Now I have to go back and change everything. But then I snapped out of it, remembered how I tend to teach bottom-up vs. top-down, and wondered where I would have been had I started with such an explicit framework. In other words, thanks for saving this topic for later. Doing so allowed me to design authentically and unfiltered, which I see as good and bad, but mostly good. But now, after taking in this week’s readings, I have a chance to revisit, rethink, and refine. While some of this is already happening, much will happen later.

Today – In terms of recent upgrades, I recently addressed “Effective Practice 1.4” by adding Zoom to my online course. What a great resource! I mean, I had some sense of it though the online Canvas workshops that were offered during Flex, but hosting an unscheduled Zoom session after receiving an email from a student who wasn’t making progress with an essay was an amazing experience. It was spontaneous—similar to an onsite student who drops in when you’re not holding hours—yet surprisingly productive—similar to that onsite student who drops in and isn’t expect much but leaves with printouts and promising direction. While there’s still a sense of regret for not using Zoom sooner, I’m far more excited about my next session.

Tomorrow – In terms of what’s ahead, I greatly appreciated the tips in Emily Moore’s Faculty Focus article, “Improve Accessibility in Tomorrow’s Online Courses by Leveraging Yesterday’s Techniques.” The recommendations made perfect sense, and I was glad to see her include examples throughout to illustrate her ideas. (In thinking about Warnock and some of my comments about his chapter on collaboration, I think his text would benefit at times from these types of concrete examples.) During the upcoming winter break, I look forward to revisiting my course and applying Moore’s ideas to my content—everything from succinct writing and annotated links, to pronoun usage and captioned videos. I’m also going to revisit Bill Pelz’s JALN article, “(My) Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy” (2004), which focuses on letting students do most of the work, interactivity, and types of presence. While I’m still making my way through it, the article seems like a nice supplement to Moore’s.

Candy Contributions – That being said, while I found Moore to be helpful overall, for new and experienced online instructors, I had a hard time getting on board with her thoughts on cutting extraneous material. According to Moore, “Sighted students can learn to ignore extraneous ‘eye candy’ and text. That’s not the case for students relying on screen readers, which give the same presentational weight to long-winded, repetitious material and critical course concepts. Make sure every paragraph, image, activity, and video clip you add to an online course contributes directly to your course’s stated learning objectives.” Really? Every element? Everything has to tie back to an objective? Personally, that sounds awful. I mean, I’d probably have to scrap my class photo! I understand the concern in terms of those students relying on screen readers, but I can’t imagine a course that’s “all business, all the time.” Community is often rooted in that which doesn’t tie back to objectives. I won’t get into specific examples that are meaningful to the course experience yet don’t tie back to objectives, but if the concern is screen readers being unable to ignore optional/extraneous content like a sighted student, couldn’t we simply add a brief disclaimer to non-objective-based moments in the course? What am I not seeing? Help me, Jim J!

Rethink Culture – Ultimately, what I like about this week’s topic is how it feels familiar. It reminds me of some of the subcommittee work we’ve done in PG&E. It calls to mind how MCC has evolved since I was hired back in 2010. By evolve, I’m referring to what we now offer, who we now represent, those we now celebrate through PDP, for instance, and opportunities like the Cultural Competency Conference. Consider this month and how we’re experiencing this evolution via a robust number of events dedicated to celebrating distinct heritages and histories: Pilipinx, LGBTQIA+, Latinx and Chicanx. In my mind, when I think of how we’ve evolved and where we are today, I can’t help but place ideas like “inclusivity” and “accessibility” in the same space as, or maybe under the umbrella of, cultural competency. Am I alone in thinking WwM is enabling us to become increasingly competent in the dynamic culture that is OWI?

Larger Context – The other day I received the latest issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College (TETYC). This particular issue is a special issue dedicated to preparing two-year college English teachers. In the feature article, “TYCA Guidelines for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College,” the task force makes one explicit reference to online pedagogy. It’s included toward the end of a curriculum bullet point: “Expand graduate course offerings to include topics valuable to faculty teaching in open admissions and teaching-intensive colleges and universities, including two-year colleges. Such topics include basic writing, literacy education for culturally and linguistically diverse students populations, writing assessment, writing program administration, writing center theory, online pedagogy, and multimodal composition (Calhoon-Dillahunt et al. 15). As someone who hasn’t been subscribing to TETYC for all that long, I was wondering: “To what extent are WwM-ish conversations being addressed by TETYC and TYCA?” This year’s TYCA Pacific Coast conference at Miramar was dedicated to “Inspiration, Innovation, Inclusion,” for instance, but I’m not sure what it looked like or to what extent OWI was represented because the ECCTYC link is broken 🙁

Still, I do wonder how two-year college scholarship has addressed this world in which we find ourselves so immersed these days. If the answer is that it really hasn’t, perhaps our posts are at the beginnig stages of something bigger.

In the Online Environment, Nothing Is Until It Is

Posted on by

I, as well, felt a bit befuddled by the scope of the accommodation discussion.  There is a lot that needs doing.  I am happy to see that I have many successes, according to the best practices we have been introduced to in the reading, in addition to the improvements I am committed to making.  I do well with making my course easy to navigate and the information easy to consume for many kinds of readers.  I don’t hide information behind a cascade of clicks, I don’t wall it off in ways that might confuse a screen reader, and I label links in descriptive ways.  I need to be better at communicating feedback in multiple modalities.

Reading through the first two articles we have been presented with for this week’s thinking, I was reminded, again, of a topic that came up in our last session of Writing with Machines: In the online classroom, everything must be manufactured.  One way to consider this is in terms of our online persona.  As instructors in a traditional classroom, our persona emits as a function of our presence.  We don’t really have to consciously create it.  We are who we are.  Mannerisms, tone of voice, the way we walk a room, our handwriting — these all communicate something about us.  In the online environment, these cues don’t exist, for the most part.  If we want to have a personality when teaching online (and all of the literature suggests we do), then we have to manufacture it, quite consciously, in addition to teaching, rather than as a byproduct of teaching.  Community was another element that required manufacturing.  Whereas in the classroom there are opportunities for community building that just happen because we all inhabit the same space once or twice a week, in the online environment, neither the space nor the inhabiting exist unless they are manufactured by the instructor.

I find this discussion relevant when considering accommodation, as well.  In the traditional classroom, there are elements of accommodation that are, in essence, automatic, either through institutional support or the ease with which the accommodation can be met in person.  I recall a student I had my first semester as a teacher … er, some number of years ago.  She was, essentially, deaf, though she could make out some sounds.  She stopped me after class one day and told me that she could do without an interpreter if I would make sure to face the class, rather than the white board, when lecturing.  I, at times, like to scribble while I talk.  Turns out she was a top-rate lip reader.  In the span of time it took to have the conversation, the accommodation had been made.  Now, in an online environment, if I post a PowerPoint, for example, with a voice over lecture, I need to manufacture the accommodation by captioning the presentation.  And, when I read through the list of effective practices in this week’s reading, I see that, for the most part, accommodation requires manufacturing, and the manufacturing is largely left to the instructor.

Accessibility is a compelling topic.  We have moral and legal obligations to meet the accessibility needs of our students, and I believe that, as educators, this is something we are committed to doing.  However, the online environment creates both opportunities and perils for students in need of accommodation — and for instructors trying to meet those needs.

Our reading appropriately acknowledges this, and acknowledges the strange situation that most online instructors face when moving from on-the-ground teaching to online: that when they leave the comfort of the classroom, they also leave behind a suite of institutional support for ensuring that students get the accommodations they need.  Such inequities exist across numerous forms of needed accommodation in the online environment, and in most cases sorting them out falls to the instructor, where the same wouldn’t be true in a traditional, on campus teaching assignment.

Why this is, I do not know.

Accessibility and User Friendly Design

Posted on by

Wow,

Where to begin?   It is as if this chapter was written just for me and the struggles I had (have) with my online and Hybrid classes.

First of all, thank you for the great links and resources (I have bookmarked them and plan to refer to them often.

There are several sections of this week’s reading that I feel failry confident I present in a user friendly ( for all of our students) such as: Flexible Methods and Materials, Timely Progress Monitoring, and proactive planning.   I feel like these elements, with trial and error, have settled into an effective format.

However, I find great comfort knowing that the elements of online learning that I still struggle with and constantly stress over, are common in our community. I am a huge fan of Zoom, but it does not allow subtitles, and I am forced to upload to Youtube, which is less than ideal.  I plan to investigate some of the other options until I find a system that works better.

Some changes that I plan to make now:

No folders inside of folders – this makes so much sense; I do not know why I did not identityfy this potential struggle/frustration for our students

Chunk Videos – I will limit my videos (both white board and screen shots) to 20 minutes each with short specific/clear instructions (rather than one long video).  I will indicate more clearly to watch the lesson all the way through and then give detailed/organized request both before and after the video.

Also, Canvas has taught me to break down units by week and present and imbed all necessary items (handouts/videos) within this week, rather than placing all documents in a folder of their own.

Honestly, this week’s material was a bit overwhelming, and I plan to revisit the sections in more detail.  There is so much important stuff here, I feel like I need to breakdown the readings and re abosorb them

 

Accessibility and Information Overload

Posted on by

I experienced information overload with this week’s readings. There are so many elements to take into consideration. I am very thankful that technology and free technology keeps advancing because stuff is available now that wasn’t available when I taught online in the past.

I have dealt with a variety of student needs in the face2face classroom. One thing that was really big for me was meeting with Disability Services counselors to discuss what works best for the different needs of my students. This was fabulous because, for instance, they explained why certain file types were preferred. From these experiences, I already convert everything to .pdf for my students, even readings from websites, and with Canvas I am working on using the correct headings options instead of the general paragraphs. I also switched from a non-cc documentary where 50% was captioned to a cc one; I was a little sad, but it was getting way too dated anyways.

My own learning preferences make me really interested in some of this. I always click away from the main screen when “watching” online videos, including the ones for this course and just listen, or the other side to that is when I watch videos with my computer on mute which is 90% of the time, so it is all about the cc. I also read magazines from back to front, so in general I have a variety of practices that are not intended by the creators of the materials.

When I taught online before, one of my struggles turned out to be an asset. I cannot record improv videos for my classes. It is always disastrous. Some may assume it is a time issue and I go on and on which is a problem I know others struggle with. For me it is the opposite. My mind goes blank without a script. I guess I don’t talk to myself well enough, but I really need an interactive audience to do my natural thing. So for online teaching, I embrace the unnatural and script everything which means I have a transcript for every video. The video service I had to use through my previous college did not do the cc, and I had an international student who requested the video transcripts because it went too fast for him, and lucky for me, I had them all ready to go! With youtube’s cc service now, there is a lot of support for that area.

MiraCosta’s transition to Canvas should hopefully take care of compatibility issue with it being a phone friendly LMS; Blackboard most definitely was not. I am very selective of other supplemental sites that I incorporate into my classes, but How To videos would be appropriate. I recently made a How To video to teach some colleagues how to use google Calendar; it is surprisingly more complicated than it seems, mostly when it is trying to be smarter than us and messes things up. There were lots of them already posted on youtube, but they were way too involved when I just needed some very specific basics. It was super simple to do, 60 sec long, and I actually succeeded with it as improv!

There are some basics to hit like making a site that is compatible with audio and visual needs students my have. Also, having different types of activities that take into account different strengths and learning styles would be a way to plan ahead with course design. But it could also be effective to do some sort of needs assessment the first week of the class. This would involve having students reflect on how they use the internet to get a sense of the varying abilities and practices that we could consider incorporating into the course for that semester.

Here is a resource I recently came across that provides videos, orgs, articles, and books about Inclusive Pedagogy for those who are interested: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_7fqdsTPbmHogdmNL1-n7t1eybQBlKY3Z6TefYZQ8qI/edit

Unit 3: Accessibility and Universal Design

Posted on by

After reading through the material assigned this week, I decided that the best way for me to reflect on what I will do to ensure that my online classes are accessible is to make a checklist of sorts to reference if/when I get the opportunity to teach online.

Technical

Docs – When I create documents and web pages, I’ve been careful to use standard HTML tags and to use true formatting (lists, columns, and tables). I already convert all of my documents into PDFs, but I will add HTML-like tags so screen readers can effectively translate the material.

Images – One thing I need to check on is my use of ALT tags; I need to revise them with a concise description—I didn’t know I could use up to 100 characters, which is a helpful guideline.

All links should be meaningfully annotated.

I also will take advantage of accessibility checkers.

Videos – When I create videos, I will be sure to provide a text transcript and/or closed captioning using YouTube’s free captioning. I will also be sure to chunk the videos.

Check my docs/sites on mobile phones.

Pedagogical

Keep instruction short.

Write in a direct, personal tone.

Be aware of use pronouns to ensure clarity for non-seeing populations.

If sending students to third-party website, be sure it’s accessible or provide alternatives.

When choosing modality and media for my assignments and activities, I will consider the probability of students ability to use and to access the technology.

Learn about which types of services our DSPS offers–Braille, large-print, recorded, or electronic texts, etc.

Create a quick mandatory technology orientation session for students to complete prior to beginning the course. The goal of this orientation will be twofold:  to explain to students the technology to be used in the class and  to solicit info from students about their technology skills and confirm they have access to the required technology.

Offer alternatives to meeting students—phone class, Skype, on-site, etc.

Keep track of students with poor participate and find out why (might be an accessibility  issue.)

Offer instructional material in more than one medium.”For example, a photograph or other graphic on the course Web space should be described textually. For another example, critical textual material should be described orally using an audio feature. Similarly, a teacher’s video should be transcribed or closely paraphrased textually to accommodate a deaf student or one with auditory learning disabilities. Students should have a choice about whether to receive an essay response orally (through digital recording) or textually; alternatively, students might receive one essay response orally and the next one textually. If these practices seem onerous, it is helpful to remember that multimodality assists all learners and not just those with special challenges” (from Conference on Composition & Communication, Effective Practice 1.10).

Anti-Rubrics and Purpose Driven Writing (1st week catching up post)

Posted on by

I know rubrics are quite popular for writing assignments. Warnock supports with with his several subtle reassurances that rubrics are easy to move to the online space. I have tried different forms of traditional rubrics but I have not found them helpful to me as a grader. I also don’t find them helpful to students as writers, when students write to rubrics as opposed to identifying a purpose and writing to that.

All that said, I am interested in a different kind of rubric. Maybe a rubric that I wouldn’t necessarily call a rubric. But then, I don’t really know what that looks like. One of my biggest forms of feedback to the entire class through alternating student papers. I have students all look at one or two paragraphs from the same draft and offer one piece of feedback for each paragraph. Using track changes, I go through and comment or cut, paste, add, delete those suggestions on the screen. This gives them elements to think about in their own drafts. Using discussion board followed by some sort of screen capture technology, I think this could be recreated in the online classroom.

Since we go through 4-5 drafts of the paper, I am only committing fully commenting on the next to last draft. We look at one to two paragraphs as a class and then they are tasked with assessing and coming up with a plan for their own revision based on peer responses and much of what their peers are saying comes from the modeling from the different student papers as a class. For me, this is an effective way of managing the amount of grading and feedback in face-to-face classes and would just be one piece of managing it in the online classroom.

Another thing I have really liked in the online classroom was group papers because I could give continuous feedback as they worked because I was only responding to 8-9 papers. This allowed the amount of feedback to go up while keeping it manageable and teaching a group of students individually.

Media Literacy Group Project

Posted on by

In addition to group work and peer  groups for various activities, I do a lot of group projects in all of my classes that have included any or all of the following: papers, online essays, videos, and presentations. Since I set up google docs for my students as one collaborative space to support students with very different schedules to meet asynchronously. For collaborative papers, students’ common issue is failure to communicate effectively. My most successful groups are in contact through multiple media at once from texting to DM to email to the google doc. Others find at least a hour when they can all be logged onto the computer working on the project together at the same time in addition to the work they do on it solo. My groups that struggle, do not do either of the above. But lucky for them, they have multiple opportunities to improve their collaboration practices.

One collaborative project I would definitely want to work on adapting to the online class is my media literacy unit. There are 3-4 formal group writing elements connected to it. Here is the gist of the project and its parts:

Step 1: Choose a news site to explore and from which to pick an article to be the focus of the project. I use Vanessa Otero’s chart and methodology for creating it to help students think about how to identify political slants to the representation of news stories. (Note: This is the 4th or 5th version of the chart. She has incorporated feedback a few times; I actually prefer the earlier versions. She didn’t know it would get traction when she originally created it and posted it to social media.)

Students choose one of the sites from the bottom two corners for their main text.

Step #2: Groups write a two page evaluative essay, assessing all the questionable elements of their chosen article.

Step #3: Groups create an annotated bibliography, two entries per group member. The purpose of this is for them to find sources that provide more in depth and even reporting on the same issue as their main article.

Step #4: Groups compose an online essay (images, hyperlinks, videos, etc.) of 1,500 words challenging their main article. As a part of this, they also compose a peer response letter to two other groups to give feedback on their drafts.

Step #5: We compose an introduction as a class that addresses the content of all their online essays and link them.

This online essay puts a lot of pressure on successful group work because it is really a full project, not just one assignment. Students do get a lot out of it both for their own writing and for their ability to assess online sources. We spend most of our class periods in the computer lab while working on this article, which is good for transitioning it to the online classroom, but there is still the big issue of students communicating effectively enough to complete the project.