dust, dust, cough, cough...
It's been long enough since my last post that I'm beyond feeling guilty about it; now it simply feels like reconnecting with an old friend.
My role here at TCC has changed a bit. Still teaching composition courses, but have picked up a couple of side gigs (both paid and otherwise) that have led to me spending even more time on the computer...as if that were possible. I'm building content for a couple of wikis, which I love, and also trolling around to pull the collective wisdom of the web into them.
In the process of such trolling, I viewed an online video that had been sitting in an email recommendation for months. This is a Nancy Sommers project, getting the student perspective on comments they get back on their essays. Dr. Sommers has visited our campus previously, and I enjoyed her presentation at the time. This offers a concrete way to hold onto the more salient points.
http://pages.mail.bfwpub.com/hackerhandbooks/authors/videos/
This video led me to a longer one on the same website, sharing a session of writing faculty discussing the same topic, which was very similar to what she did with us here at TCC.
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/webpub/catalog_videos/nancy_sommers_workshop_960x540/nancy_sommers_workshop_960x540_clearSkin_3/nancy_sommers_workshop_960x540.html
It's a longer one, almost 20 minutes, and if you're like me you may have little patience for videos that are over 5 minutes. It's worth it, though, I promise. My favorite takeaway: "When students talk about their best writing experience, it always had to
do with feedback. It always had to do with that sense of a
relationship, a transaction..."
Nice gems at the end for action items when the next pile of papers arrives on your desk, too.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Monday, January 17, 2011
Grammar Challenges
Long hiatus. Fall quarter swept by without any writing here, and I've missed it.
As we rolled into Winter quarter, I had two major revisions I wanted to implement in my fully online English 101 courses:
I'm now doubting whether I'll be able to implement a new group project, at least this quarter. I think I need more time to ponder my options, and pick the brains of others, before I continue with it. In the meantime, I'll build assignments in that can replace the learning objectives there.
I have, however, invested a good bit of time into the grammar assignments, and those I'm pretty pleased with. This said by the woman who's in the "honeymoon" period of a new idea, before the real-life challenges have yet to rear their ugly heads, I know.
How much grammar to implement in a 101 course is one of those questions that's sure to lose you some friends at your next department meeting, no matter how you answer it. Some feel that grammar is the structure of all language, and so improvement of writing can't happen before grammar is addressed. Others go to the opposite extreme, championing ideas over syntax and ever in fear that grammar correction will stifle academic progress.
As usual, I'm somewhere in the middle. I think it's important, but what a person writes matters more. Ultimately, grammar is a matter of confidence--give students the tools to master the mechanical challenges, and they'll feel more comfortable expanding their writing in other directions, too.
I've had a set of "Grammar Revision" assignments in my classes for the past four or five years, where students take pieces of their own essays and take a closer look at the structure of sentences, comma usages, and higher-end punctuation in three different assignments through a quarter. Those are somewhat successful, and I think they do well in focusing on writing the students have already created, rather than abstract sample sentences that someone else has written as an exercise, completely out of context. But they reward those who are already comfortable with the basic structures of rules, and lead to anxiety for those who don't.
Here's my plan for addressing that: instead of three one-size-fits-all assignments, this quarter, I'm creating a list of options for students to choose from. They'll have to complete 4 "Grammar Challenges" through the quarter: 2 tied to each of the first 2 essay assignments of the quarter. The first one for each essay will be open choice, whatever they want. The second will be one of 2-3 I suggest when I grade the essay and return comments. They will be able to duplicate challenges between the two essays, if they want further practice with a concept.
So far, I've built the following:
What I ask you--any ideas to round out this list even further? I figure I'll keep adding options into the mix throughout this quarter, and likely into future quarters, as well.
As we rolled into Winter quarter, I had two major revisions I wanted to implement in my fully online English 101 courses:
- revamp my group project
- update my grammar assignments
I'm now doubting whether I'll be able to implement a new group project, at least this quarter. I think I need more time to ponder my options, and pick the brains of others, before I continue with it. In the meantime, I'll build assignments in that can replace the learning objectives there.
I have, however, invested a good bit of time into the grammar assignments, and those I'm pretty pleased with. This said by the woman who's in the "honeymoon" period of a new idea, before the real-life challenges have yet to rear their ugly heads, I know.
How much grammar to implement in a 101 course is one of those questions that's sure to lose you some friends at your next department meeting, no matter how you answer it. Some feel that grammar is the structure of all language, and so improvement of writing can't happen before grammar is addressed. Others go to the opposite extreme, championing ideas over syntax and ever in fear that grammar correction will stifle academic progress.
As usual, I'm somewhere in the middle. I think it's important, but what a person writes matters more. Ultimately, grammar is a matter of confidence--give students the tools to master the mechanical challenges, and they'll feel more comfortable expanding their writing in other directions, too.
I've had a set of "Grammar Revision" assignments in my classes for the past four or five years, where students take pieces of their own essays and take a closer look at the structure of sentences, comma usages, and higher-end punctuation in three different assignments through a quarter. Those are somewhat successful, and I think they do well in focusing on writing the students have already created, rather than abstract sample sentences that someone else has written as an exercise, completely out of context. But they reward those who are already comfortable with the basic structures of rules, and lead to anxiety for those who don't.
Here's my plan for addressing that: instead of three one-size-fits-all assignments, this quarter, I'm creating a list of options for students to choose from. They'll have to complete 4 "Grammar Challenges" through the quarter: 2 tied to each of the first 2 essay assignments of the quarter. The first one for each essay will be open choice, whatever they want. The second will be one of 2-3 I suggest when I grade the essay and return comments. They will be able to duplicate challenges between the two essays, if they want further practice with a concept.
So far, I've built the following:
- Run-on Sentence Challenge
- Fragment Challenge
- Writing Numbers Challenge
- Apostrophe Challenge
- Semicolon Challenge
- Hyphen & Dash Challenge
What I ask you--any ideas to round out this list even further? I figure I'll keep adding options into the mix throughout this quarter, and likely into future quarters, as well.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Getting What You Pay For
After a month-plus hiatus, I'm back on the blogging wagon. Not that school hasn't been constantly on my mind, between the Faculty Retreat in early September, the 4 days of Professional Development two weeks ago, and the ever-crazy first week of Fall Quarter just past.
I wanted to ease back into my writing by reflecting on an NPR story that I heard on my way to Professional Development Day #1: "Student Loan Defaults Rise, Especially At For-Profits."
It makes sense that the default rate on repaying loans is soaring, along with all the other economic blowout we see around us. The facts covered in the story about the exponential rate of default among for-profit students, though, surprised me. Having four years working at one of those for-profits under my belt, you think I'd know...but really, the advising and financial aid side of things was so far removed from my experience teaching there, I had no idea what tuition even cost. As a matter of fact, I still don't, now that I'm solely employed for the state community college.
Lots of mitigating factors explain why the for-profits are creating these numbers, and I'm not out to defame those institutions here. (I'll save that for other posts....) Instead, this story is a helpful reminder to me that I shouldn't let my head get stuck in the sand about what my students are paying, for the privilege of letting me have my dream job. We instructors probably should be aware of what, exactly, college costs, and how the costs may vary among our student populations. (One factoid from Prof. Development days: international students pay 2-3 times what in-state students pay, and they don't have the typical financial aid structures available to help out, either.)
I'm not advocating for the student-as-consumer model, by any means. I often consider the time costs of my classes on my students--how long certain projects should take, and striking the right balance each week to keep things on target. I tend not to think about the monetary costs as much, especially since I don't choose the textbooks that are required for the courses. Now's a good time to for me to start.
One final note from the NPR story: "'Whereas only about 13 percent of students at community colleges are even taking out student loans, about 97 percent of students at for-profit two-year colleges are taking out federal student loans.'" Makes me even more amazed at what my students now must sacrifice to be in the classroom (virtual or physical) with me!
I wanted to ease back into my writing by reflecting on an NPR story that I heard on my way to Professional Development Day #1: "Student Loan Defaults Rise, Especially At For-Profits."
It makes sense that the default rate on repaying loans is soaring, along with all the other economic blowout we see around us. The facts covered in the story about the exponential rate of default among for-profit students, though, surprised me. Having four years working at one of those for-profits under my belt, you think I'd know...but really, the advising and financial aid side of things was so far removed from my experience teaching there, I had no idea what tuition even cost. As a matter of fact, I still don't, now that I'm solely employed for the state community college.
Lots of mitigating factors explain why the for-profits are creating these numbers, and I'm not out to defame those institutions here. (I'll save that for other posts....) Instead, this story is a helpful reminder to me that I shouldn't let my head get stuck in the sand about what my students are paying, for the privilege of letting me have my dream job. We instructors probably should be aware of what, exactly, college costs, and how the costs may vary among our student populations. (One factoid from Prof. Development days: international students pay 2-3 times what in-state students pay, and they don't have the typical financial aid structures available to help out, either.)
I'm not advocating for the student-as-consumer model, by any means. I often consider the time costs of my classes on my students--how long certain projects should take, and striking the right balance each week to keep things on target. I tend not to think about the monetary costs as much, especially since I don't choose the textbooks that are required for the courses. Now's a good time to for me to start.
One final note from the NPR story: "'Whereas only about 13 percent of students at community colleges are even taking out student loans, about 97 percent of students at for-profit two-year colleges are taking out federal student loans.'" Makes me even more amazed at what my students now must sacrifice to be in the classroom (virtual or physical) with me!
Friday, August 6, 2010
Wordle, Take 2
I discovered Wordle at Educause last fall, where it was demonstrated in a session that covered a smattering of helpful websites all at one time. I was immediately fascinated by it, and after playing with it on my own for a while, decided to throw it in my English 101 courses as a self-evaluation tool.
Wordle generates "word clouds" based on text you feed it, and the words appear larger the more frequently they show up in the text. (By default, it ignores "common" words--otherwise it would just be a giant "AND" and "THE" and that's about all.) In English 101, I ask students to run their final drafts of Essay 1 through it. The essays are Evaluation essays, where they study one of a list of a websites I give them and analyze how well that given site meets the needs of its intended audience.
Here's one I found particularly charming from my summer section:
I ask students to share their word clouds with one another in a discussion, and then offer commentary on what they see. In a discussion post, Saylor shared her thoughts on the image she created:
"I really like my word cloud. It looks like a brain to me. The funniest part of that is that it looks like my brain felt while writing this essay. It is very colorful and clustered. The words seem almost disconnected from each other. Yet they all come together to make up a description of this one, very diverse website. I love that news is the largest word and that the smallest words are all adjectives that were used to describe the site. I think it is a very fair depiction of my writing style."
I just love the thought of this being an x-ray scan, so to speak, of the writing brain!
This activity tends to get a lot of positive response from my students, regardless of whether they're happy with what the word cloud shows them. It's a fun break for all of us, because who doesn't welcome an online version of coloring after just completely stressing over drafting (and in my case, grading)?
I've since learned of a website that actually does build clouds in specific shapes...Tagxedo. That might be overly deterministic for my purposes in English 101, so I'll stick with Wordle there. I'm ready to play with the shapes for my own blog and website, though--you are warned.
And, just for giggles, here's a Wordle reflecting all of the posted content of my blog thus far. I'm pleased to see that "students" gets primary billing, since that's what this whole venture is all about.
Wordle generates "word clouds" based on text you feed it, and the words appear larger the more frequently they show up in the text. (By default, it ignores "common" words--otherwise it would just be a giant "AND" and "THE" and that's about all.) In English 101, I ask students to run their final drafts of Essay 1 through it. The essays are Evaluation essays, where they study one of a list of a websites I give them and analyze how well that given site meets the needs of its intended audience.
Here's one I found particularly charming from my summer section:
 |
| http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2215844/Evaluation_Essay |
I ask students to share their word clouds with one another in a discussion, and then offer commentary on what they see. In a discussion post, Saylor shared her thoughts on the image she created:
"I really like my word cloud. It looks like a brain to me. The funniest part of that is that it looks like my brain felt while writing this essay. It is very colorful and clustered. The words seem almost disconnected from each other. Yet they all come together to make up a description of this one, very diverse website. I love that news is the largest word and that the smallest words are all adjectives that were used to describe the site. I think it is a very fair depiction of my writing style."
I just love the thought of this being an x-ray scan, so to speak, of the writing brain!
This activity tends to get a lot of positive response from my students, regardless of whether they're happy with what the word cloud shows them. It's a fun break for all of us, because who doesn't welcome an online version of coloring after just completely stressing over drafting (and in my case, grading)?
I've since learned of a website that actually does build clouds in specific shapes...Tagxedo. That might be overly deterministic for my purposes in English 101, so I'll stick with Wordle there. I'm ready to play with the shapes for my own blog and website, though--you are warned.
And, just for giggles, here's a Wordle reflecting all of the posted content of my blog thus far. I'm pleased to see that "students" gets primary billing, since that's what this whole venture is all about.
 |
| http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2276121/TLP_v._2 |
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Playing with Librarians
On Wednesday and Thursday, I attended the Librarian as Instructional Leader Grant Workshop on the campus of Seattle Central Community College. I was invited by awesome Tacoma Community College librarian Rachel Goon, whom I've been working with in some small ways about how we can better incorporate the library into fully-online classes at TCC. She viewed this workshop as a potential way to explore those ideas further. Though the conference was for Washington community college librarians, particularly, each library was encouraged to invite discipline faculty along.
Rachel and I definitely got the chance to brainstorm together about ways to focus on TCC specifically, but it was also eye-opening to me just to see more about how librarians work and think, behind the curtain. I've always been of the impression that librarians are secret magic wizards, and these two days further solidified those beliefs.
To recap, here are some things I think it's helpful for faculty members to be aware of...
- librarians have to deal with almost every assignment we create. Of course I knew this on a cognitive level, but hadn't really considered this in a practical way. They have to be able to figure out how to approach every assignment in order to guide students on how to complete it. This means they know what good assignments look like, and what bad ones do, too. Having a librarian on hand to run assignment ideas by BEFORE distributing an assignment to students would be a very, very practical matter.
- librarians have a lot of ways to help students, even from a distance. I've only recently become aware of "pathfinder" help guides that librarians routinely create, as a guide for researching for a specific discipline, topic, or class. These are published online, so students can access them anytime it seems appropriate, no matter where the physical library is in relation to them. I get the impression that at TCC, at least, librarians are happy to create specific guides upon instructor request. How useful this would have been to know as an adjunct, as a way to harness the librarians' expertise in a meaningful way exactly when students need it.
- librarians love playing with technology to reinforce learning. We saw demonstrations of flip camera presentations, Jing videos, Delicious implementation for academic databases, Prezi shows, and wikis. This particular workshop repeatedly asked the question about whether standard practices of libraries and librarians encouraged "deep learning" on the part of the students they served. In many cases, the traditional way of doing things no longer seems to provide the best outcome, since publishing information has become so wide-spread and freely available. Showing students how to find information is no longer a problem. How to find the BEST information is. Technology can answer some of those challenges.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Sloan-C & Social Media
Wow, a whole month away from posting. Finals week kicked my butt, and then I found it hard to climb back on the wagon again. It's a shame, because I really love having this outlet for examining my teaching practices in the light of day.
So, this will be a fairly quick run to get my feet wet again. Over the week break between Spring and Summer quarters, I took a 10-day online class through the Sloan-C Consortium. This was the first time I've ever been a student in an online class, amazingly enough. It was worth the whole experience just to find myself facing a new platform I was unfamiliar with (Moodle) and trying to manage navigation features, find what work I was supposed to complete and by when, and see another instructor's methodology for building meaningful discussion platforms.
The course: "Supporting and Engaging Students through Social Media." Pretty appropriate for a blogging instructor, right? I figured it would let me talk about Facebook, if nothing else. The range of experience with social media in others taking the class was insightful--lots of newbies, lots of hard-core online geeks, and a few like me who fell somewhere in between. Twitter seems ubiquitous...maybe this pushed me one step closer to joining it. Maybe.
Here's one pretty image that I'll refer back to for personal use. Nice graphic categorization of tools available:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jess3saves/3509300772/
I think only one or two other comp instructors were in the course. Most others were instructors in other fields, or department managers or IT folks. Some of the ideas shared were not very applicable to my own needs (though maybe will be worth passing along to others at TCC if the situation comes up). I built a project submission around furthering my online group activity and taking it one step further using a wiki at WikiSpaces, which I'll continue to play with the rest of the summer.
In all honesty, I'll admit that the content of the class was fairly light (it was only a 10-dayer, after all). I found it to be one of those get-out-what-you-put-in situations, and so I got what I needed. It's awesome that the state pays for us to sit in on these seminars, and I'm sure I'll complete another in the near future...though definitely NOT during finals week or off week again.
So, this will be a fairly quick run to get my feet wet again. Over the week break between Spring and Summer quarters, I took a 10-day online class through the Sloan-C Consortium. This was the first time I've ever been a student in an online class, amazingly enough. It was worth the whole experience just to find myself facing a new platform I was unfamiliar with (Moodle) and trying to manage navigation features, find what work I was supposed to complete and by when, and see another instructor's methodology for building meaningful discussion platforms.
The course: "Supporting and Engaging Students through Social Media." Pretty appropriate for a blogging instructor, right? I figured it would let me talk about Facebook, if nothing else. The range of experience with social media in others taking the class was insightful--lots of newbies, lots of hard-core online geeks, and a few like me who fell somewhere in between. Twitter seems ubiquitous...maybe this pushed me one step closer to joining it. Maybe.
Here's one pretty image that I'll refer back to for personal use. Nice graphic categorization of tools available:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jess3saves/3509300772/
I think only one or two other comp instructors were in the course. Most others were instructors in other fields, or department managers or IT folks. Some of the ideas shared were not very applicable to my own needs (though maybe will be worth passing along to others at TCC if the situation comes up). I built a project submission around furthering my online group activity and taking it one step further using a wiki at WikiSpaces, which I'll continue to play with the rest of the summer.
In all honesty, I'll admit that the content of the class was fairly light (it was only a 10-dayer, after all). I found it to be one of those get-out-what-you-put-in situations, and so I got what I needed. It's awesome that the state pays for us to sit in on these seminars, and I'm sure I'll complete another in the near future...though definitely NOT during finals week or off week again.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Facebook Groups, what a disappointment
It's about time I owned up to something that hasn't worked in my classes. A couple of weeks ago participation in my hybrid English 102 section started flagging, and so we spent some time in class discussing ways that we might re-energize ourselves. One idea that came out of it was the creation of a Facebook Group page dedicated to the course. We're all addicted to Facebook, so I thought, why not?
That weekend I created a Group page, my first-ever experience in doing so. It wasn't complicated: I just added a photo, built a couple of initial posts, and then sent out invitations to my students using their TCC email addresses. I set the group as "private by invitation only" so the world didn't have to spy on us.
My goals were to have a forum outside of Angel that members of the class could interact, ask me questions, and be reminded (okay, nagged) towards completing upcoming assignments. I didn't want to make anything available in Facebook that wasn't also available in Angel. In other words, I didn't want to require anyone to participate in the Facebook experiment.
Hilarity ensued. I immediately had two members of the class submit a request to join. By the end of the weekend, another member of the class had somehow added himself to the group without my allowing it. And I received several more emails saying folks were trying to join, but didn't know how to request a membership.
In class the next week, we happened to be in the computer lab for other reasons, so I spent a few minutes trying to figure it all out together. It was true--some users simply didn't have the option on the group page, if they found it, to request a membership. (The link that was included in the email invitations I sent everyone simply sent them to Facebook's home page, not the group page.) Others couldn't find the group page at all, even using the exact wording I had created it under. The ones who had successfully joined then didn't see the group status updates in their live feed, nor could they go back to the group page. It was just gone.
I can't find a lot of other specific posts out in the world about how Facebook group pages are working for other groups, though I do see a lot of generalized angst and frustration that indicate our experience is not isolated. Any feedback from others attempting to use the groups?
In the meantime, I'm taking another tack, and have just created a Page for "Alexis the TCC English Teacher." You all are welcome to become fans! This option may not allow for as much single-class interaction as I was hoping for, but at this point, if people can simply see the updates in their feeds, I'll be content.
That weekend I created a Group page, my first-ever experience in doing so. It wasn't complicated: I just added a photo, built a couple of initial posts, and then sent out invitations to my students using their TCC email addresses. I set the group as "private by invitation only" so the world didn't have to spy on us.
My goals were to have a forum outside of Angel that members of the class could interact, ask me questions, and be reminded (okay, nagged) towards completing upcoming assignments. I didn't want to make anything available in Facebook that wasn't also available in Angel. In other words, I didn't want to require anyone to participate in the Facebook experiment.
Hilarity ensued. I immediately had two members of the class submit a request to join. By the end of the weekend, another member of the class had somehow added himself to the group without my allowing it. And I received several more emails saying folks were trying to join, but didn't know how to request a membership.
In class the next week, we happened to be in the computer lab for other reasons, so I spent a few minutes trying to figure it all out together. It was true--some users simply didn't have the option on the group page, if they found it, to request a membership. (The link that was included in the email invitations I sent everyone simply sent them to Facebook's home page, not the group page.) Others couldn't find the group page at all, even using the exact wording I had created it under. The ones who had successfully joined then didn't see the group status updates in their live feed, nor could they go back to the group page. It was just gone.
I can't find a lot of other specific posts out in the world about how Facebook group pages are working for other groups, though I do see a lot of generalized angst and frustration that indicate our experience is not isolated. Any feedback from others attempting to use the groups?
In the meantime, I'm taking another tack, and have just created a Page for "Alexis the TCC English Teacher." You all are welcome to become fans! This option may not allow for as much single-class interaction as I was hoping for, but at this point, if people can simply see the updates in their feeds, I'll be content.
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