Hi everyone! My name is Erica and I am looking forward to working virtually with all of you 🙂

Chickering and Gamson’s seven principles were clear articulations of many of the values I hope we already emphasize and model in our face-to-face courses, but I understand these can be more challenging to communicate and model in an online course unless one is being very intentional with course design.

One value I especially connect with is “respecting diverse talents and ways of learning.” In my face-to-face classes I constantly move between different modalities to give students as many roads to Rome (I like to call them) as possible. As I begin designing what will be my first 100% online composition course for this summer, I find myself looking at the activities, lessons, and resources I already use in person and asking myself how or if they will be as effective in an online environment. One resource I love to use is TedEd. Those lessons are customizable and I typically assign these as supplements or homework. These could easily become an assignment or lesson in an online class. They incorporate video, additional readings, and a place for discussion. For all of these reasons, I like TedEd and feel it might be a good fit for my online class. But, what else? That was an example of a tool that can support “different ways of learning,” but what am I doing in my face-to-face class that “respects diverse talents?” This was harder for me to answer. Although I recognize it as one of the core values of my class, I also had trouble identifying a clear assignment that supported that value. Upon examination, I feel I mostly model this via in-class discussions and activities — who do I task with being a discussion leader, for instance? How do I determine working groups in class, when I assign them at all versus allowing students to choose? These questions are easily answered: I learn my students strengths and talents and then try to group them up in ways or assign them tasks that will help to either shine a light on those talents or challenge them not to rely on that talent and push them to develop a weakness. I may pair a student who has trouble developing ideas with a talkative student who constantly asks questions, for instance. I want to think about this more and imagine the ways that I can move some of these practices online. I want them to be effective, and I want them to feel flexible. I want students to feel understand and feel that I am stoking their curiosity and individuality, but I also need to make sure there is a clear structure for doing all of this exploring. 

Finally, for my online course exploration I chose to look at a MOOC offered by Stanford University. I’ve used it before as a supplement in my own composition class, and wanted to re-examine it this week with a focus on its pedagogical design and user-friendliness.

https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cqnQq23d78