Good evening colleagues,

It is a pleasure to finally join WritingwithMachines this semester.

When it comes to technology, I had always felt like a dinosaur. (My parents never allowed me to play PacMan or any other video game when I was a kiddo.) However, as an adult, I do my best to challenge myself and embrace technology because I consider myself a lifelong learner. A few years ago, I started teaching online introductory composition, using Blackboard, and I must confess it was a painful experience. (And I mean that—I felt like jumping out of a one-story building. Blackboard had so many glitches.) But lucky for me I survived.

Currently, the three campuses that I teach at, Palomar College, Mt. San Jacinto College, and MiraCosta College, have adopted Canvas. Teaching a fully online class for MSJC, using Canvas, has been a wonderful experience; students have an easier time navigating the LMS, and students ask less questions in my Q&A 24 Hour Forum. I have only had two questions since the start of the semester. Even though I do not feel knew to online teaching, after watching my colleagues, Jim Sullivan and curry mitchell’s navigation videos, I can see that I must continue to work on my course design since I realize it is missing the “cool” factor.

In Warnock’s “Chapter 1 Getting Started: Developing Your Online Personality,” I appreciated his ice breaker where he asks students about their debate topics without them necessarily sharing a standpoint (7). I will add Warnock’s idea to my Check-in Post next semester, so students start thinking about their research paper and continue the conversation throughout the semester.

What follow are four key principles I value in my online critical thinking and writing course I teach for MSJC.

Reciprocity and Cooperation among Students

In Teaching Writing Online, Scott Warnock shares what students write to test their professors and see if they are truly reading their work. “In extreme cases, students . . . test you by cutting and pasting from week to week, or by inserting nonsense in the midst of their posts,” writes Warnock. Because I value reciprocity and cooperation among students, it is critical that all students participate by replying since it is a Discussion Board Forum requirement. In my online class, every week/module requires at least two Discussion Board Forums. This week I added a Thesis Statement Workshop I do in my f2f classes since last semester I noticed that students need more practice crafting effective thesis statements. Students are expected to craft a working thesis statement and a present a revised thesis statement, based on all the feedback from their fellow classmates and myself.

Feedback

As a student, I valued my English professors’ feedback that allowed me to grow as a writer, so I do my best to present quality feedback. As a professor, I present feedback that is timely, and my students can utilize to strengthen their writing. I am the type of professor that comments while students post their work. (At times, I believe I provide too much feedback. Am I overworking myself?) And after reading Warnock, I wonder what effect I have on my students. Am I the harsh critic Warnock references? I hope not. I also input grades immediately—or two to five days after students submit their work with the exception of essays. I usually return essays with a week and a half at the most.

Learning in Community

I was able to migrate Ian Barnard’s teaching methodology, Whole-class Workshops, to the online setting. I believe this is where students shine and value each other’s writing styles. At one point in the semester, students are expected to upload or copy and paste their essays into Canvas. All students are expected to provide constructive feedback for their peers. I remind my students that they should be able to produce A work if they revise, by utilizing their peers’ feedback and my commentary. By adopting Barnard’s Whole-class Workshops in an online community, students recognize their strengths and learn from each other’s rhetorical approaches.

Humanity in the Classroom

Once I started teaching online classes, I learned I needed to reach, metaphorically speaking, inside students, so I created Metacognitive Journal Entries. These journal entries require a thoughtful reflection about their fears, the writing process, study habits, among other topics. I find that students open-up and learn that I am a professor that truly cares about them and their writing.

What follows is a video I created for you-all.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Cara Owens.  I am excited to participate in Writing with Machines to see how all of you teach and teach online. I believe it’s always good for me to get out of my teaching bubble.

A little about me: I started teaching for MiraCosta a year ago–English 49 and English 100. I have taught at SDSU in The Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies as a lecturer since 1998. I started teaching RWS 305W online Summer 2017 and am currently teaching three sections of RWS 305W Online at SDSU, and one section English 100 at MiraCosta.

I like that you are asking us to think of a framework for teaching online. When I first started teaching online last summer, I was so worried about how to transition my class over and how to work with some new technology, that I overlooked this question for the most part.

So here are a few of my key principles for my teaching and online teaching.

1. Creating learning/writing community. Students often come in to my class not feeling safe sharing their thoughts and writing. I do Roll Questions in my f2f classes such as something general, “What is the last movie you watched?” to questions about the homework, “What was your favorite sentence in the today’s assigned reading?” or “What is the title of your paper.” This gets students comfortable in class.  I also have all of my students homework on Discussion Board (Bb and now Canvas) even in my f2f classes.

My first discussion board post is always “Getting to Know You.” Students have
to post a picture of themselves standing in front of my office. However, for my
Online classes this doesn’t work so I just have them post a pic of themselves
as well as tell us about themselves. For all my discussion board homework,
students have to read and respond to at least three student posts to earn full
credit.

2. Writing as a Process. For each paper my students write, I guide them through the writing process by creating a series of reading/learning/writing opportunities. So basically, my calendar is set up to mimic the reading-thinking-writing (and back and forth since it is not so linear) process. I hope is that by doing this four times over the semester, they will have an idea of what they need to do when they are assigned a paper to write in their other courses.

3. A Safe Place for Risks and Mistakes. I try to lower my students affective filters by talking about my struggles with reading and writing. For example, I don’t read an text and get it the first time. In fact, many of the texts I assign my students to read, I have read multiple times over many semesters, and I still need to read it again every semester. And every semester, I get a new view of the text.

Same with writing. I talk about my procrastination and fears. How my house
gets clean when I have something to write, etc… I always have my students
start their papers before they know they are starting their papers. My
discussion board homework typically has questions they must write on
directly related to the prompt for the paper. I tell them “ Don’t worry about
perfect grammar and punctuation. Just get your ideas in writing–we will work
on the other stuff later.”  By the time they have done their discussion
homework assignments (3-5), they have enough writing to actually use for
starting their rough drafts.

I also tell students hat no one writes an essay/paper/letter perfectly their first
try. In fact that Ernest Hemingway rewrote/revised his ending to Farewell to
Arms thirty-nine times(some say forty-seven times?). Depending on what I
am writing, I may revise six, seven, eight times or more; until I am sick of it or
there is a deadline. (Thank God for deadlines!)

This relates back to Writing as a Process. Writing a paper really starts out
with when we start discussing a topic and read a text. The reading and
thinking, the mistakes and misunderstandings are all part of the process that
leads to an understanding.

4. My Role as Co-Learner. Warnock quotes George Collison and his coauthors as “describ(ing) three key facilitator roles tht you can take in an online  environment: guide on a side, instructor or project leader, and group process facilitator (33)” (3). I think this on the right track, but for me there is something missing from these roles. I really think of myself as a lifelong learner. I am not an expert, but I do have a lot of experience in reading and writing! I set up a series of learning experiences in my classes that lead my co-learners/students through our courses. I guide and facilitate, but I also learn alongside my students. And, most importantly, I learn from my students.

Ideas I connected with from Warnock:

Intro

“The continuous writing environment makes it ever possible for students to learn through their own work in a studio-like environment (Grego and Thompson 8)” (xii)

“I think that most dedicated teachers–writing or otherwise… go through periodic moments of malaise during which they suspect that everything they are doing is wrong… “ (xv).

“…I realize the humanistic potential of this environment. Writing teachers have a unique opportunity because writing-centered online courses allow instructors dn students to interact in ways beyond content delivery. They allow students to build a community through electronic means” (xix)

Chapter 1

“Initially, I felt very unsure about what kind of persona–what kind of voice–I would have as an online teacher” (1).

In the online writing class, you might be surprised to discover that (possibly for the first time) you are a real audience for your students’ writing” (3)

“Students no longer write just at assignment time. They must always be thinking about their writing practices in their course interactions” (4).

“Because the students don’t actually see me, I try to create links between us, not just to develop a sense of camaraderie, but to create an audience for them” (8).

“‘Setting up an appropriate learning climate is key to establishing a successful learning experience’(qtd in Conrad and Donaldson 46)” (9).

Here’s a short video of my online course at SDSU–RWS 305W (upper division writing requirement)

Something funny and perhaps a bit counter-productive about me is, while I’m completely comfortable presenting and speaking in front of groups f2f (see, I’m already using Warnock’s lingo!), I become quite anxious at the thought of POSTING my thoughts where people can read them. (Perhaps a little old-school social media PTSD? Fear of appearing the “fool” (Warnock 5)? Who knows.) Well, regardless of that, here I go!

Before discussing the key principles of teaching composition I hope to organize my online teaching around, I did want to comment briefly on our reading. (Sorry, I can’t resist! It’s the literature student in me!) I both agree with and deeply appreciate Warnock’s approach stating effective online teaching happens through a natural transition of moving “teaching talent zones”—from f2f to OWcourses. However, and perhaps this will be brought up later, although I agree teaching online can be effective—even more effective than f2f meetings in some circumstances—as an English instructor, part of my natural transition means holding onto a few effective f2f activities. At risk of seeming a Luddite, the one I’m currently primarily fixated on is having students use hard copies of texts rather than eBooks. I say this in response to annotating my own copy of Warnock’s text and considering the learning that happens through the act of annotation. There are several studies illustrating how important annotation is to reading comprehension; one such study done by Carol Porter-O’Donnell (no relation!) titled “Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension” is a fine exploration of the skills students pick up during this process. While I concede there are ways to annotate eBooks as well, I personally feel there is something more organic and natural when students use a combination of highlighters, post-it notes, and their own handwriting. They can see where they’ve marked important moments, read what they thought in response to significant passages, and flip through the book with their own hands. Perhaps I’m just a little old-fashioned in this sense. Ah well! And, again, this is not me saying anything against online teaching itself; in fact, I think online teaching combined with students using hard-copies of texts can quite successful. Here’s a link to the aforementioned article in case you’re interested, by the by: cool article on annotation 😀

Alright, and with that small and humble note of dissent, my principles.

Right away, my impulse is to jump to my key-est of key principles of teaching composition, which also happens to be Chickering’s and Gamson’s seventh principle: respect diverse talents and ways of learning. Rephrased, to make what I teach accessible to everyone, from any social, economic, political, or cultural background. Of course, I know this is a challenge that we as teachers are called to meet again and again, and along with my various attempts there have been quite a few failures. Still, when designing my courses, considering their content, and actually teaching those lessons, I try to consider if and how the content will be effectively understood by my students. To that point, I really enjoyed what Warnock acknowledges: OWcourses “provide a needed method of delivering courses to people whose lives have undergone significant disruption” (xix). He calls this the “humanistic potential of [the OWcourse] environment” (xix). This is a lovely thought. Just as my content needs to be relatable for all my students, I need to also present it in a way for all students to easily understand and consider. I admire the ability for online courses to reach out to all students, regardless of who they are and where they live. 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! Anyway. Daydreams aside, I feel having a strong consideration of the multiple learning styles when designing a course is absolutely essential. Face to face teaching allows us to make up for any short-comings in a lesson plan on the fly; if I’m teaching an article and notice several students look stumped, I can switch up my activities in hopes they’ll comprehend the material in a different format. Online classes don’t have that advantage. A wall of text might do for a few students, but by also incorporating videos, links, discussion forums, and (as Jim does) a blog for hands-on work and reflection can all lead to a higher level of success.

Another principle I have is to make the online platform as easy-to-use as I can. I appreciate what Warnock—I’m so tempted to continually type “Warlock”—has to say about the importance of using a writing context in which students are comfortable (xxii). Frankly, I somehow never considered this. I think who I usually end up noticing more are the students who are UNcomfortable with technology, those who I believe Warlock—that’s what I’m calling him now—references as “traditionally aged students” (xxv). Even with my very limited grasp of teaching-based technologies and simplified Canvas course shells, I’ve noticed there are almost always a handful of students who have trouble finding readings I put online—even when I post them directly on our course shell’s front page. This usually translates into me spending quite a lot of time with each of my more traditional students on a one-on-one basis as I attempt to slowly and carefully guide them through the mechanics of Canvas, Blackboard, or in the past, Moodle. However, for every student who struggles to find various readings and essay dropboxes, I have seven or eight who would appreciate more material being available online. So, finding a middle ground between my students who practically live on the internet and my students who begrudgingly open a web browser will be a bit of a challenge for me. This concept does, for me at least, directly tie into my first principle of reaching students from every background.

Yet another of Chickering and Gamson’s principles that I share is their first tenet: good practice in undergraduate education encourages contact between students and faculty. This seems to transition into Warlock’s (that’s his name now.) discussion of teachers as audience. He quotes Tisha Bender in contemplation of our “voice” and the necessity of having confidence, enjoyment, and enthusiasm (2). He also thoughtfully regards how teachers can appear as “unapproachable sages” (3-4) which of courses can scare students away from candid interaction and comfortable participation. He also points out we should not be the “chum,” but to be honest, if this were a scale, I would much rather tip towards the chum side. It’s crucial to me that I stay the “teacher with a capital T” (5), but I simultaneously deeply value my students feeling comfortable and safe. For that reason, I try to incorporate humor, jokes, small stories, and silly metaphors to add some spice to my lessons. This usually invites students to make their own jokes, and more importantly, often leads to a relaxed environment. Again, in my experience thus far, my students seem to learn better when they are happy, relaxed, and—at least to some small degree—enjoying themselves. Therefore, in my online teaching, I will make sure to incorporate gifs, images, and videos that while on the topic of whatever we are currently talking about, are also a bit silly. I try and will continue to try maintaining a “voice” that is both confident and guiding while also warm and, at times, entertaining. One concept Warlock briefly touches on is the “level of formality in your greetings and complimentary closings” (9). My salutation of choice is “Kindest regards,” something I admittedly stole from a previous professor of mine in grad school. Once in a while if I feel the need to be more formal I’ll state “Best” instead, but I often worry that I send out the wrong impression with it. Anyway, I am constantly metacognitively considering my voice, and the balance between warm and authoritative is one I strive to maintain. That balance will hopefully lead to students feeling comfortable with sharing their thoughts and responses.

Frankly, I share all seven of Chickering and Gamson’s principles. I want my students to learn from each other through cooperation, feedback, and comments. I’ll probably steal in cold blood several of Jim’s and Curry’s ideas. I also, as Jim does, feel both rubrics and models are essential for my students, many of whom have often never written an analysis before. I think rubrics are great ways to communicate the expectations I have for them, while my feedback (oh so essential in a composition course) helps to (hopefully) build, nourish, and foster their skills. In my classes, active learning happens most often through student response, participation, and discussion. Doing that also builds reciprocity and cooperation: when the answer can be found by students working and thinking together, it invites them all to join in.

So, in short, while I have an endless array of principles I hope to always reflect, the key three are to make my online teaching accessible to every type of student, to incorporate a variety of media in teaching assorted lessons, and to make sure students feel comfortable communicating with me and with each other.

I really hope this was an accurate response to the assignment!

I have yet to teach a fully online or hybrid course, and my course shells are auxiliary places for my students to discuss and post work more than anything. Therefore, I wanted to share a model course I’ve seen. This one is a wiki from when I was a TA during grad school. (Does a wiki count? I can find something else if it doesn’t!) I’m pretty rusty on my video skills, but here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKnytGMSlO8&feature=youtu.be

In all of my syllabi, I include a list of “Top Ten Reminders.” The last reminder is dedicated to interaction and sharing: “Avoid learning in a bubble. Interact. Take chances. Risk embarrassment. Help your peers become better writers and thinkers. Help build a unique community. If you discover something on YouTube that’s related to a reading, share it with the class. If you watch a movie that’s relevant to our discussions, share it with the class. If you find a brilliant sentence that makes you jealous and keeps you from sleeping at night, share it with the class. Don’t be selfish with the good words. Sharing is better than not sharing.” With this in mind, I just wanted to thank you all for sharing the goods. I feel super lucky to have ongoing access to all of you and your amazing ideas. My students will no doubt benefit from your generous minds.

In terms of my dream class, at the recent mid-semester meeting, Violeta Sanchez, Tyrone Nagai and I shared six approaches or six ways of thinking about the shared lens assignment:

• Overt vs. Covert
• Discovering vs. Rediscovering
• Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up
• Narrow vs. Wide
• Backwards vs. Forwards
• Bound vs. Unbound

On the one hand, these approaches were offered as a way to sort of breathe new life into the assignment. On the other hand, they were really about teaching and calling attention to the options we have as writing instructors. To use a food metaphor, in my mind, they are some of the best ingredients we have available to us. How we’re able to cook with them, however, changes based on the kitchens in which we cook and those for whom we do the cooking.

In the F2F classroom, I feel free and excited to play with these kinds of approaches. Using them here feels far more doable and like I have a greater chance of creating those magical “ah-ha” moments we strive to create. I love teaching covertly, for instance, and introducing without introducing, so students can rediscover that which they had just discovered but in a way that’s suddenly meaningful. In the OWC, it ain’t so easy. I mean, using these approaches is possible, sure, but at this point, because of my lack of experience and execution, I find the effect to be far less magical. It’s like experiencing bananas foster tableside versus onscreen: there’s fire and yet there isn’t.

In addition to featuring holograms and teleporters, my dream course would be one that enables me to utilize these kinds of approaches in a manner that somehow feels more like the tableside spectacle. There would be heat and smell. Speaking of which, early celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse used to remind his audiences during Emeril Live to call their cable providers to request Smell-O-Vision. He wanted them to experience what he was smelling in the studio from their couches. In many ways, my OWC could benefit from something like Lagasse’s Smell-O-Vision. If I could find ways to migrate these approaches to the OWC, meaningfully and frequently, and ultimately use them to build rich communities, that would probably be better than a hologram and pretty close to a teleporter.

Here are my posts. Thank you again, folks:

• Unit 1
• Unit 2
• Unit 3
• Unit 4

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.