We’re exploring the spaces in our classes where writing happens. Some of us met in Zoom to share our thoughts. Some of us are participating asynchronously. You can too. Today or whenever. 🙂
Each space offers a different frame and a different mode of writing-to-think and writing-to-express. We might think of these as models for designing spaces where writing happens in our classes. We might simply use these spaces for reflection and collaboration. Like all shared, asynchronous spaces, these are simply spaces for our conversation to have already started and to be ongoing.
If you’d like to catch the convo we had in the Zooms, you can watch here or listen on our Letters Department Podcast.
Your time listening/watching is eligible for FLEX.
This discussion is the fourth of a sustained series focused on our Online Teaching Principle for Communicating with Students. At the center of this deep-dive project, we’re asking this question: how do our communication tools, spaces, and methodologies promote student growth and student agency?
We will continue this series of professional conversations with one final conversation
First Impressions, Fourth Impressions: Communicating in Community Weeks 0-3, Thursday May 12th 3:30-5:00pm in Zoom
Your time listening/watching is eligible for FLEX.
This discussion is the third of a sustained series focused on our Online Teaching Principle for Communicating with Students. At the center of this deep-dive project, we’re asking this question: how do our communication tools, spaces, and methodologies promote student growth and student agency?
We will continue this series of professional conversations with
Verbs, Voice, and Grammar (of Canvas): Speaking to Students Through Course Design Decisions, Monday April 11th 1:00-2:30pm in Zoom
First Impressions, Fourth Impressions: Communicating in Community Weeks 0-3, Thursday May 12th 3:30-5:00pm in Zoom
As we approach the end of the first quarter of the 17-week semester and the middle of the 8-week semester (yikes!), I’m thinking a lot about how my students are doing and how they’re engaging with the reading and their writing.
A couple weeks ago in my asynchronous ENGL 202, I posted a short video of me talking about “critical thinking,” and below, I embedded this google doc asking students to share what comes to mind when they think about “arguments.” At the end of the week, I embedded a wordcloud generator that asked students to share “where you’re at” as they wrapped up the week.
This week, I’m reading and responding to the first set of essays submitted in my asynchronous ENGL 100. One category in the rubric asks students to respond to my comments after I’ve graded their essay. I don’t mark that category until they respond. When they do, they get 10 more points, and I get a chance to have an asynchronous conversation with them about their writing.
Hearing from my students in these different ways–sharing their knowledge as I introduce a new topic, sharing their confidence and uncertainty at the end of a busy week, and sharing their questions and goals about their own writing in response to my feedback–not only fosters a sense of comradery and belonging in the class, it allows me to value my students as collaborators and leaders in our shared learning experiences and writing processes.
So, how are you hearing from your students right now in Canvas, in Zoom, and in other ways? Below are a few ideas to consider, and if you would like, please share more tips and tricks here.
Hear from your students
This is a great moment in the semester to check-in with our students to get the pulse of the class. How easily are students finding things? Is the pace of assignments nuts, too easy, or intriguingly steady? Is there anything are students feel we could be doing that we aren’t doing yet to make participation more accessible and engaging?
Hearing from our students is so valuable to our teaching. Sharing back what we hear from them with the class can be equally valuable to their learning.
Embed Stuff
Most tools offer an embed code option with the < > symbol. If they don’t, you can use this html code to embed just about anything, even editible Google Docs! To embed the results of Google Forms, you can follow this dorkey tutorial.
Curate Stuff
Many of us create class playlists from the content students share. Make a regular place to spotlight student generated conctent in your weekly announcements, your instructional content, and your Zoom meeting activities.
Listen, lighten, and illuminate
Creating and managing formative feedback loops in my composition classes is THE ultimate goal. Sometimes these channels of communication are critical to the work of revision, and some time they are just plain necessary to helping each other get through challenging moments.
At the end of Week 2, as I finalize my rosters and settle into the emerging rhythms of another weird but promising semester, I’m thinking about how an asynchronous, classroom culture is forming and what I and my students are doing to shape it.
I’ve spent much of my time this week communicating with students. I’m messaging students who have missed a routine deadline or an important assignment with a quick, “Hey Susana. Did you intend to submit this assignment? Would you reply to this comment or email me to chat about how the class is going?” I’m using Canvas’ Rubric tool to grade early assignments quickly. I like to change the title of that 0 column from “No Marks” to “Please Resubmit” and sometimes “Please Email curry.” That way, there’s an invitation to a positive action communicated along with that low grade.
I’m also taking 15 minutes per class to identify student generated content from the week to showcase in my next Weekly Announcement. I’ve created an equity-minded roster that lets me promote students who are already showing signs of feeling overwhelmed or who may seem intimidated by writing or whom I identify as a student in a disproportionately impacted group. I begin the announcement celebrating an idea, a phrase, a structure, or connection to what we’re studying to honor that student’s knowledge and language and value their contributions. I keep a record of students whose work I have not yet promoted, so by mid-semester, everyone gets that spotlight.
Many of us do these sorts of things already; here’s a few great ideas from Mary, Chad, and Jade! These early interventions help us to cultivate a class culture and establish the routines we and our students will respond to going forward. Below are a few ideas to consider, and if you would like, please share more tips and tricks here.
Assignments You Value = Assignments Your Students Value
We all have certain assignments and policies that we tell students are important, and then we have certain assignments and policies that we show students are important. This is the week when students start to realize what they need to prioritize and what they can let slide based on what we grade, call out, ignore, put off, and simply forget. So which assignment or policy has the greatest potential value to your student writers and readers? What can you do at the beginning of next week to show students this value?
Policies
Meeting deadlines
Resubmitting revised work
Visiting office hours
Seeking Campus Resources
Assignments
Low-stakes Reading Responses/Quizes
Discussion Posts and Replies
Active Participation in Zoom
Essay Drafts
Metacognitive Reflections
Spotlight Student Work
We know the most powerful ways we can increase retention is to foster real, meaningful connections with our students. We have the chance this week and next to do that proactively and with equity. Who in your class right now could use a boost? For whom would a simple positive message or shout-out of their work make the difference? We know there is something to celebrate in every students’ work–an idea, a phrase, a structure, a reflection, a triumph. Let’s get into a routine for doing that this week and next.
Shout-out students by name or by their work in your weekly announcements
Start Zooms session with “What’s Great from Last Week”
Integrate student generated content into your assignments and instruction
Turn Around Time
Quick, encouraging communication with students this week and next can be the thing that alerts them to take action within their abilities to meet your expectations and succeed in your assignments. We all want to provide comprehensive, formative feedback, but maybe what students need this week and next is a simple encouraging check-in. How can we be more efficient and timely in our communication with individual students?
Short responses to email with a template of links to office hours and campus resources
Spare feedback on assignments with an invitation to reply with more questions or meet to talk
If you missed the Writing with Machines professional development workshop on culturally sustaining and equitable feedback and grading of student work, check out the following Google slideshow with embedded readings, videos, and other resources, as well as the recording of the Zoom session. Add your own ideas and questions to the comments!
In my English composition classes, I really, really hope to promote reading as an essential step in the writing process. Since I started teaching, I’ve relied on low-stakes writing assignments–journaling, in-class writing, annotations, etc–to promote mindful reading habits linked to larger writerly tasks. When I started teaching online, I simply adopted a digital journal inside the LMS, that is, until we switched to Canvas, which does not have a journal tool. Time once again to bend Canvas to my pedagogical will.
In this video I share two approaches that provide students with a space to explore texts and experiment with ways to value the act of reading; space that also provides me an opportunity to intervene, celebrate, and nudge students as their develop their own unique reading process.
https://youtu.be/kMxXziJIQo8
Here’s a guide for how to highjack Canvas’ Discussion tool to create a reading journal:
1. Navigate to the People tab and create a new Group Set
2. Title the Group Set, select the “I’ll create groups manually option,” and click Save.
3. Find the tab for the group you just created and then click the +Group button. Create a group for every student in your course. Once you have a group for each student, drag their name into their group. This may take a little while…
When your students log in, they will see they have access to a link under Course Groups. When they click on this link, they will have access to their own space in your Canvas course where they can upload files, create pages, etc.
Here’s what that looks like on a desktop
Here’s the view using Canvas’ mobile app
I find it a little hard to find everything students include in this space, so to make things a little more simple, I create a Discussion board and set it up as a group assignment.
I place the link to this discussion on the home page, and when students click into the discussion, they only have access to their own contributions.
Once they access the Discussion link, they simply click the “Reply” button and add their latest journal notes and reflections. This space becomes a repository for their ideas throughout the semester. Check out minute 2:06 in the video above for what this journal-discussion-Canvas-thing looks like for students.
The tools and features in Canvas’ SpeedGrader allow students to respond to instructor comments. This creates the possibility for one-on-one conversations with students about their writing and about our feedback on their writing.
Here is a simple, additional requirement I have added to the major essay assignments in my ENGL 100 class that promotes the potential for these conversations.
https://youtu.be/PQbpz4u3g0s
To meet this additional requirement, students must complete three steps. Here’s the language I use:
Respond to Instructor Feedback
After your essay has been graded, review the feedback you received and write or record a response that identifies 1) one comment you found helpful, 2) one comment you plan to work on or that you found unclear, and 3) please state if you plan to revise or move on to the next project.
The additional 10 point I assign to this requirement amounts to 3% of the total course grade, which means a student who chooses not to complete this additional step is not penalized and can still earn an ‘A’ in the course overall.
I discuss the major benefits of this assignment in the video above. In addition to these, I also find that I am
leading students directly to my feedback in Canvas with instruction on how to use Canvas’ tools
dialoging with my students about their writing and my feedback in the same space their essay drafts reside
understanding who in the class is really benefiting from my feedback and who is not accessing my feedback, which helps me to be more effective in my intrusive practices and to use my time more efficiently
In the video below I discuss how to create a consistent course that both satisfies regular and effective contact hours and allows you to still be creative and flexible. Maybe there’s something in there that can benefit you as you think about further developing your online courses? Oh, and I give a shout out to the Talking Heads! Why? Why not.
