February Meeting Followup

Thanks for attending our February meetings last week, and thanks Gae Lyn for heading the Wednesday session.

Just to catch everyone up and give everyone access to documentation, here's a link to the university policies on awarding UW grades and accommodating military leave. Gae Lyn followed up on questions about the last drop date (after which we should avoid giving any UW grades), which is February 19, later than I believed.

There was also some discussion about administrative drops. The department typically does not use the administrative drop option, but we're working on ways to get the institution to allow wait listing when students attempt to sign up for full sections, which we hope will--if used as we imagine--allow for more flexibility in the first few weeks of the term.

As we consider assessment plans for the coming academic year, it's likely that we'll follow up on Doug's suggestion last year of incorporating some kind of portfolio system into the existing assignment sequences. I'll link here to Basic Comp's portfolio guidelines so you can get an idea of what they've been doing, but we'll try to spend some time in our upcoming monthly meetings proposing some approaches and getting your feedback before we proceed with any new requirements.

Finally, I hope we'll be able to distribute schedule preference forms for fall 2009 soon. Since we're a few weeks out from our March meeting, you'll probably get the forms first via email, but we'll have hard copies available as well once we get a sense of the fall schedule.

See you in the halls.

Incorporating New Media in the Classroom

In my now 4+ years as a writing teacher and through my own experiences as a student, I've come to realize that one of the most valuable ways to improve as a writer is to get a great deal of feedback. (And recent neurological and educational research would seem to corroborate that.) Unfortunately, with class sizes as large as they are due to budget constraints, there is a limit to how much one-on-one feedback and personalized mentorship I'm able to provide to each of my students. (There is only so much that one person can do, after all!)

Not that I'm advocating this for any of you, but I tend to go a little above and beyond the call of duty and meet with each student via the phone for at least 20 minutes to discuss their rough drafts for every major paper. This is a tremendous sacrifice of my personal time and energy, but I keep doing it since my students say it's often the #1 most helpful thing about my class. Plus, I tend to find a big improvement in most of my student's writing as a result of these conferences. While part of me is always concerned that I may not be able to sustain this level of commitment in the future, another part of me wishes there was some way I could give them more feedback and guidance even earlier in the writing process.

That's why I'm starting to see some of the appeals of using new media (e.g. Web 2.0 applications) in the college writing classroom. I've been enjoying a blog and podcast called Academic Evolution recently. It was launched by Gideon Burton, a former mentor of mine and a professor of English at Brigham Young University. Academic Evolution is devoted to exploring the ways new media is changing (or should change) the way academic discourse is carried out---in both the college classroom and in scholarly research.

Episode 3 of the podcast was about Blogging in College Writing Instruction. I recommend downloading it and listening to it yourself, but for those of you who don't have the time (it's about 35 minutes long), I'll summarize it here. The episode is basically a discussion between Burton and Kathy Cowley, a graduate writing instructor who is trying an experiment using blogging as an integral part of her instruction this semester. In the podcast, Cowley argues that real-world writing involves a 3-way rhetorical interaction between the writer, the content, and the audience. The problem is that the classroom is an artificial rhetorical context because it lacks a real audience. Students spend 30+ hours on a writing assignment that is only read by their professor (and maybe a disgruntled peer or two). But it doesn't have to be that way. Using a term coined by Rosa Eberly, she argues that classrooms can become a "proto-public" space by fostering greater collaboration between peers.

Cowley is trying to foster greater peer collaboration through blogging. She requires her students to write three weekly blog entries on their class blog (one before each session of class). The entries must be at least a paragraph long and need to be semi-polished prose. The students also need to post 10 comments on posts written by their fellow students by the end of the week. Cowley posts weekly blog prompts and blog assignment directions for the students on a separate blog. For example, Cowley frequently requires students to post portions of the papers they are working on so that they can get feedback from their peers. Cowley reports that many students have revised their arguments and ideas based on the initial responses from their fellow students. She feels the experiment has been successful so far.

I can see how Cowley's blogging idea could have some good applications for assignments such as the Summary/Strong Response paper in 1010 and the Analysis/Synthesis paper in 2010. Since those assignments involve having students respond to a common text, I see value in having students exchange and debate the ideas in these texts in a more proto-public forum such as a blog. I try to get students to engage in these kinds of discussions during my class, but these good discussions often get cut off when class time ends. Plus, I think an online forum could entice some of my more shy or introverted students to participate in discussions a little more.

As a side note, I also recommend checking out Episode 2 of the podcast, The Facebook Experiment. In this episode, Burton discusses his own experiment using a Facebook group to foster better class discussions about literature. Burton's use of Facebook is another possibly good use of new media in the classroom that is in a similar vein as Cowley's. If you have a Facebook account, you can check out his class's Facebook group: BYU English 251 Sect 4 (Winter 2009).

Hopefully you'll find some of these ideas helpful and provocative!

February Meetings Coming Up

Our February meetings will be held next week, Tuesday and Wednesday in SC 206 G/H, 5:00-6:30.

I'm happy to announce that we'll be joined this month by Forrest Williams, Chair, and at least one other faculty member from the Basic Composition Program. They'll have a presentation on recent developments in their program that in many positive ways reflect our own, and then lead a discussion and answer whatever questions you may have about the ways they're preparing students for our courses, the relationship between 089/099 and 1010/2010, and so on.

We should also have some time to discuss other questions and matters of concern regarding your classes, including folllowing up on last month's topics as necessary.

Please feel free to email me (gosherjo@uvu.edu) if you'd like any issues added to our agenda or have any questions you'd like us to address as a group. Otherwise, see you next week.

downloading/starting micrograde

Steps for downloading Micrograde

Login to UV Link (use Windows Explorer rather than Mozilla)
· Open the help tab
· Open “Employee” file in Download Manager window
· Choose your platform (Mac/PC)
· Open Micrograde file and click on “Micrograde Setup exe”
· Run installer

Setting up courses is pretty intuitive, and the micrograde program will walk you through each step:
· Name your course and term
· Select grading methods (points or percentages)
· Set grade standards (either confirm the default grade breakdown or adjust as you wish)
· Fill in grade categories and weights.
· Add student names to populate your class roster. Blackboard/Web CT users can import class roster into Micrograde, but in my experience, it simply doesn’t take long to type in student names.

Don’t hesitate to stop by or email if you have any questions about using the program.

Of course you need not use Micrograde, but you have to maintain a detailed record of grades --rather than final grades alone--over the term that you can give to Meredith after finals.

See you later--next month at the latest.

Welcome Back--January Meetings Next Week

Welcome back to campus. Hope your first classes--today, tomorrow, Saturday--go well.
I wanted to remind you that our first meetings of the term will be held next Tuesday and Wednesday, the 13th and 14th, from 5-6:30 in SC 206 g/h. As a reminder, and for the new instructors who are joining us this semester, you need only attend one meeting a month, since the content of each is roughly the same.

This month we'll be joined for the first part of the meetings by Professor Mark Crane, who will be talking about online technologies that facilitate communication between instructors and students, and between students themselves. I hope that--particularly since office space and predictable times are difficult to come by--emerging technologies will help mitigate the lack of physical space.

Also, we'll talk about maintaining grade books electronically. We'll be asking you to turn in a detailed grade book (rather than simply a final grade report as in the past), so part of the meeting will include an introduction to the Micrograde software--which is free and which I find pretty user-friendly--and to writing Excel spreadsheets--which Grant will talk about, particularly for Mac users. Certainly, we invite you to briefly describe your own book-keeping strategies, including keeping paper grade books, at next week's meetings as well. Any approach is fine, as long as you're able to provide Meredith an electronic or paper document with a detailed report of your grades.

Finally, I know a number of you were hoping to get additional classes, especially since there remains significant enrollment pressure this semester. Unfortunately, budget cuts have prevented us from adding more sections, so your schedules are most likely to remain as they are. We hope to return to being able to offer everyone the number of sections they'd like in the fall. On that note, because of the additional enrollment pressure, we're likely to face unusual pressure from students and administrators to over-enroll our writing classes in the first weeks of spring. Regardless of that increased pressure, we strongly encourage you to keep your classes at the enrollment cap (23 in regular classrooms, 20 in computer classrooms), using, if you'd like, the department's add policy as leverage. Copies of the add policy are in your mailboxes.

I think that's about it for now. Write me if you need anything in the first week of class--otherwise, see you next week. In case you reply to the email listserv, don't forget that when you reply to a listserv message, the default reply is to the entire list--so make sure you select "reply to sender" if you want your message to come only to me.

See you soon.

--John

A (now typically) last minute reminder:

Our final part time faculty meetings of the term will be held Tuesday and Wednesday of this week; as usual, we'll be in SC 206 g/h from 5-6:30.

We'll take some time to talk about any questions or concerns you have regarding final projects, grading, and anything else that's pressing as we head toward the finish line. We'll also try to devote the byulk of our time to a presentation by Library staff--both letting us know about instructional resources (especially library introductions for students) and fielding questions and suggestions from you.

Thanks to everyone for responding to your proposed schedule. There have been a small number of changes, and I may be contacting a few of you to make adjustments in your schedules. As always, it's a moving target, so thanks for your patience.

Talk to you soon.

November meetings this week/spring schedule out soon

A bit late on the reminder, but don't forget that our part time faculty meetings will be held Tuesday and Wednesday of this week; as with last month, we'll be in SC 206 g/h from 5-6:30.

This month, in addition to the usual starting point of addressing any questions or concerns you have, we'll be talking about your students' research projects. It's likely that at this point in the term most of you are beginning, if not in the midst of, your students' culminating projects. You might consider in advance of the meetings some of the following:

• How do you help students get their research projects started?
• How do you help them find sources (i.e. an adequate number and type)?
• How have you helped students develop (in 1010) or sustain (in 2010/2020) an acculturation in one or more academic conversations?
• How effectively are the course texts and sequences of assignments supporting your work in relation to teaching research writing to lower-division students?
• What can Grant, Gae Lyn, and I do to more effectively support your work in class?
  

OK, that's probably enough to get us started, so we'll get to it when we get together this week.

We should have a draft of the spring schedule ready for you either later this week or early next week. Please keep an eye on your mailboxes for your schedule and acknowledgment.

Talk to you soon.