Happy Saturday!

I love that this assignment has me already thinking about the courses I teach and I can begin the process of HOW to transfer F2F collaborative work toward online interactions.

Janette’s video and Warlock definitely gave me some ideas as to WHAT I can do ahead of time to have online collaborative group work feel purposeful versus a goal toward points or desired grade.

Janette’s discussion on building a foundation for students to see the importance of collaborative work beyond grade and more toward: personal development and communication skills, as the more desired benefits, is a nice way to get students to think about the larger reward at hand. This is something I’ll definitely use as Janette’s methods communicate the importance of collaborative work for students who may already carry the stigmas about online course being isolated experiences.

One particular assignment I give students is a photography project that then goes on exhibit for the campus.

Based on the themes we’ve covered throughout the semester (English 100 or English 201) students collaboratively create a photo album of images captured in their own community that highlight the themes discussed. For example, if we read ‘Borderlands/ La Frontera’ by Gloria Anzaldua, they can create a series of photos that capture their own understanding of the tangible and nontangible borders that exist in their own lives.

The second objective is for students work on a critical response, where they pull supportive evidence from the text to prove their photograph is doing that work.

Once the assignments are done, we usually display the photography and responses as the event for public viewing.

So the F2F assignment does two things: 1) Create photography 2) Create a space in which the photography can be viewed publicly.

Some ideas on how to make this happen online is to have students possibly create an Instagram or Facebook account. They can creatively name their account and create a mission statement based on the theme they’re working with. I figured this would be cool location to exhibit their work for public display. The collaboration would not only be the creation of the account and photography, but to have different group members respond to each other’s photography using the course material.

*The team can work on gaining a certain number of followers, an expected amount of photos for display, and find organizations on line who’d be interested in viewing the work their producing.

*The rest of the class can also respond to a certain number of photos with course material as an additional form of engagement.

*Perhaps to close out the assignment the group can write a reflective response about their project, how ‘collaboration’ came into affect, and the benefits of working together via online.

So that’s as far as the brainstorming has gone, but I feel accomplished knowing there’s possibility to bring the existing projects into OWcourses.