My blogging persona

I am writing my 100th blog post at the same time that many elementary school students are marking their 100^th day of school. For many of those students the 100^th day brings with it an assignment to collect/display/share 100 items of some sort (buttons, paper clips, etc). I can still remember my son agonizing over what he should collect. He wanted it to be something unique, but it also needed to be readily available and portable. Now I can’t even remember what he chose, but I suspect it was something we found in the kitchen. However, my recent consternation about what to do with my 100^th blog post combined with recent Facebook posts by parents and teachers of primary students celebrating the 100^th day of school reminded me of that dilemma and helped me put my own struggle into perspective. Yes, this is an exciting milestone, but there will be many more blog posts to come.

But what can I, or should I, use this occasion to discuss? I started two different posts (about alternate academic career tracks and my annual review) and considered a host of teaching-related posts (my recent experiments with badges and Google+ communities, for example) but in the end decided that these posts can wait for a less momentous occasion.

Then I contemplated whether this might be the best time to wrap up this blog – as a Blogger blog that is. I have a professional web site and have been considering for months the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining a separate blog and web site as well as the issue of Blogger vs. Wordpress. But I’m pretty sure I’m making the switch to a Wordpress blog on my own web site (the control and aesthetic issues I’m having with Blogger are simply beginning to outweigh the advantages of Blogger) so there goes that topic which many others have ably discussed such as this post on The Painted Hive and Build Your Own Blog.

Then I mulled over the idea of discussing my history and development as a blogger. This blog is three years old so I have been able to maintain a fairly consistent presence, but the fact that it took that long to arrive at the magical “100” is a clear indication of my inability to post weekly and doesn’t tell us much about me as a blogger. My tags are a little more telling, but also somewhat problematic as I haven’t always been consistent (or smart) about their use. I’m kind of interested in my Top 5 Posts (as indicated by readership) but that also says more about my readers than about me. In the end, I concluded that a picture was worth more than words and simply plugged my blog into a Wordle. This simple graphic summarizes what my blog is all about.

My description of my blog is:

This blog reflects my interest in writing pedagogy, agency and efficacy, and teaching with technology -- as a rhetorician and researcher as well as writer, teacher of writers, and teacher of writing teachers.

The Wordle clearly highlights the topics that I write about although some trends were a little surprise to me. Obviously as a teacher and National Writing Project site director issues surrounding students, classes, and education are of keen interest and I clearly write about them a lot. However, I tend to write from a more personal place about my own experiences and experiments in my classroom. As a social media proponent and online teacher/learner it is also not surprising to see that idea highlighted.  Similarly, as I am interested in the idea of community as a teacher, administrator, and researcher I was not surprised to see that featured prominently. But I was rather surprised to see that writing was not among the most prominent topics I write about. Perhaps I need to consider that as I plan future blog posts. I think using Wordle as a reflective and analytical tool can help a blogger consider the past and plan for the future. It was certainly a worthwhile exercise for me.

Finally, after reading Pat Thomson’s post about blogging identity I decided that this might be the perfect time to explore my own blogging identity. Like Thomson (and most other humans), I have multiple private and professional identities and have written about this identity problem before. However, I tend to keep this blog focused on my various professional identities (although I have upon occasion discussed more personal topics that connected with these professional interests). I do not do a good job separating the personal from the private when it comes to social media, but that is another post for another day. Unlike Thomson, I did not delete my rant about education, but then as someone who works (and writes and researches about that work) with teachers I think my concerns about my son’s education touch on (at least peripherally) what I write about in the normal course of blogging.

I really like two ideas that Thomson shares in her post. I, too, blog in an effort to “de-privatize” my own thoughts and struggles with teaching, learning, and researching. Yes, I sometimes worry that I overshare, but as someone who advocates reflection for her own students how can I not practice what I preach? I truly believe in the importance of reflection to learning and growth and this blog plays a tremendous role in my own growth and learning. Interconnected with this is the simple fact that I am a teacher and a National Writing Project site director. As such it is my job, my duty, my calling to make visible my struggles, failures, and successes in hopes that these experiences will provide lessons for others as well as my entrée into conversations about these issues. That is the power of blogging and social media – that I can connect/communicate and learn/share with someone like PatThomson who is not even on my continent.

Also, blogging is a powerful tool for creating that sense of “there” that Thomson discusses in her post. Face-to-face and real-time connections can be powerful and have a long-term impact, but they are also transitory. I have a terrible memory, especially when it comes to verbal interactions, but blogging can live on and remains accessible. It can provide a “just in time” spark or response -- at least I hope mine does.

NOT The Trouble With Online Education

My Ph.D program recently shared a link to a New York Time’s Op-Ed piece about online education that still has my blood boiling. “The Trouble With Online Education” certainly does not present any new ideas or arguments about (against?) online education (nor did it when the piece came out in July), but I suppose the timing of reading the piece during the first week of our semester – a semester when I am teaching two online classes – sparked a need to respond. Whatever the reason, there are several points the author makes that are really bothering me as an educator in general and online teacher (as well as former/ongoing online student) in specific.

As an educator it really bothers me that Mark Edmundson is offended by the notion that professors might learn from their students. Yes, I am the content specialist in my classroom and as such usually know a lot more about my subject than my students, but I would argue that if you are not learning from your students then you are doing it wrong. Education is not just about transferring chunks of information from one head (yours) to another (your students). That is an outmoded and ineffective model and one of the things wrong with education today. Education is about exploring ideas and if you are not giving students the opportunity to explore, understand, apply, and share in your class then you are missing out and, worse, you are cheating your students.

Edmundson then goes on to ask the question: Can online education ever be education of the very best sort? This is a valid question and one we should continue to ask, but what irks me is the assumption that a lecture class is the gold standard by which education should be measured. Just this week Cathy Davidson argued that “If we profs can be replaced by a computer screen, we should be.” She makes many excellent points about the need for education reform and how/why online education will be a major player in that reform but she also points out that lectures are an economic expedient but not good pedagogy. Davidson points out lectures may (if done well by the expert performers Edmundson lauds) be entertaining, but research shows students do not retain information presented in this format or understand how to apply it. Just yesterday Matt Reed agreed with Davidson and noted that lecture has never been “a particularly effective way to teach.” Online classes can be and are designed and taught in similarly ineffective ways all around the world, but as Davidson and Reed point out there is also great potential for innovation in both the traditional classroom and the online classroom if we adapt to new circumstances and knowledge and employ new strategies and new tools. Whether we like it or not, times are changing and we profs need to reform and “turn into the skid” or the university will indeed be torn apart as Edmundson so fears. The fault will not be with online education but will instead be with profs (and institutions) that refuse to evolve and grow.

The idea that Edmundson presented which really made my blood boil is that an online class cannot be a genuine intellectual community because it is a monologue rather than a dialogue (ironic much?). He goes on to describe online education as anonymous, sterile, abstract, and lonely. I thought my head my spin off my shoulders after reading this opinion which was apparently formed after watching a pre-filmed online class. Well, of course that model of online education is not as rich as the live lecture (which is already pretty ineffective) but apparently Edmundson is not aware of the tremendously rich and varied pedagogy taking place around the world that harnesses the power of technology to make online and blended classes exciting and challenging places to learn. It makes me wonder how Edmundson would respond if his students present such a poorly supported argument.

I would urge anyone who questions the exciting class design possible in online and blended classes to visit such collectives as HASTAC and Hybrid Pedagogy to find overwhelming support to counter the idea that online education is anonymous, sterile, abstract, and lonely. I strive to make my classes an interactive community with dynamic, collaborative projects and my class activities and assignments are constantly evolving inspired by the amazing work being done by my friends, peers, and colleagues around the world. This is an exciting time to be an educator and I believe our students are enriched by the experience. Sometimes my class activities and assignments don’t work out as planned (or hoped) but then that was true when I taught face-to-face. Often my online space is messy but then so was my traditional class space – we were often loud too. But this week, our first week of classes at my institution, we have begun building a community. I shared personal tidbits about my hobbies, family, and dog and invited students to share as well. As we interact as a group, we have talked about favorite books, movies, TV shows, and video games as well as tattoos, crafts, and pets. We are finding out who is creative, who is nervous about technology, and who is incredibly busy. After only three days, 22 students have posted more than 150 messages to each other in our Community forum. Sure I have included some prerecorded videos to explain assignments but there are no lectures. Instead we will continue to share, discuss, challenge, and question – and I know that I will learn from my students just as they learn from me and from each other. I don’t know how Edmundson defines a “genuine intellectual community” but I’m pretty sure we’ve got one going on and I know we are not alone.

What does our writing studio program look like?

Last week I wrote about why the Morehead Writing Project is creating a writing studio and this week I want to explain how our studio looks during its pilot. Of course, we do not know what will come of this pilot so the final version could look very different. The Morehead Writing Project Studio is affiliated with the English Department at Morehead State University, but it is a separate program offered by the Morehead Writing Project which makes it different from most other writing studios. Our pilot program focuses on MSU students, but we hope the final version will grow to include K-12 students as well. While most studio programs grow out of a need to serve a student population, ours came from our mission to provide support to teachers of writing. We wanted to create a vehicle that demonstrated the best methods for teaching writing – methods in keeping with the beliefs of the National Writing Project. Ultimately, we end up in the same place as other studio programs – helping student writers; however, I believe this difference in orientation sets us apart.

The pilot studio groups are embedded within three developmental writing classes taught by two MWP teacher-consultants. The class instructors divided their classes (which cap at 17) into three small groups which meet once each week for an hour. These teachers have coordinated their syllabi and assignments as well as class preparation so the classes (which total 45+ students) are very similar in content and approach. Of course, we are able to do this for our pilot project, but may not be able to do so as the program grows. The studio work is considered part of the required work and attendance for the class so there is no separate or extra credit awarded as a result. Many other models offer Studio as an elective or required 1-credit class as an adjunct to freshman composition.

Our pilot studio groups are led by Peer Writers who are junior/senior English Education majors at MSU. The five Peer Writers involved with the pilot project have all worked with MWP before as well as had a number of education classes and/or tutoring experiences. Typically, studio groups are led by faculty members and graduate students although there are some programs which also use advanced undergraduates. We know there is a larger pool of English Ed majors we could use at MSU as well as a number of Middle Ed majors. We are cautiously considering how many Ed students we can work with at a time to maintain the same level of quality. At our pilot stage, all of our Peer Writers were carefully selected and we can easily stay in contact to provide the support and guidance they need to lead studio sessions. Of course, experienced Peer Writers won’t need that level of support but how many novice Peer Writers can we work with at a time?

The first assignment for the classes we are working with is a literacy narrative. The instructors have provided writing prompts to guide the initial development of this narrative and the Peer Writers are familiar with both the assignment and the prompt so they can support their studio groups as they continue the work they began in class by writing, sharing, and talking through their challenges. We are finding this assignment to be an useful vehicle for the conversations we want to take place in both the studio groups as well as our learning community.

We have created a learning community which includes the five Peer Writers and the two writing instructors as well as two representatives of the Morehead Writing Project. During weekly meetings, our learning community shares stories about working with students, brainstorms solutions to challenges, and coordinates plans for the next round of studio meetings. We are finding this learning community to be a tremendous resource for supporting our pilot project, but as the program grows it will be increasingly challenging to gather all the instructors and Peer Writers together every week. Our task as we grow will be to find ways to provide the necessary support for our Peer Writers.

Although our pilot is still in its early stages, we are already seeing a number of benefits. Of course, the developing writers benefit from working in a writing group led by a skilled mentor who can model both good writing habits and good writing group participation. In addition, the discussions focused on the students’ previous literacy experiences help students unpack some of the issues blocking their progress and better position them to learn and grow as writers. It is also not surprising that the Peer Writers are finding the studio a great learning experience as both teachers and writers. However, both the faculty members and pre-service teachers have found working within a supportive community both more helpful and invigorating than expected. We are all energized and engaged by this collaborative teaching experience. Our excitement for this project continues to grow as we wrap up our third week and we cannot wait to see what happens next.

Creating a Writing Studio Program

This year the Morehead Writing Project has started a new program. The Morehead Writing Project Writing Studio Program provides peer writers to lead groups of student writers in developmental writing classes (now) and early college writing classes (coming). Why? The mission of the National Writing Project is to improve the teaching of writing and we believe this project can do so on three fronts.

First, we believe our program can help the students of our host institution. We know there is a need to support our developmental writing students. More than 50% of incoming college students must take one or more remedial courses (in writing, math, and reading). First-year attrition among all college students is high (25% nationally) and the three main reasons that students struggle (and often leave) is that they are underprepared academically, lack the necessary student and life skills, and possess low confidence in their academic skills. We believe a studio approach is more compatible with the approaches to teaching writing endorsed by the National Writing Project than a writing center or lab. We believe working within a supportive community of writers will help our developmental writing students learn and grow as writers as well as students. We hope providing peer writers to serve as mentors and advisers will help our developmental writing students attain the knowledge and skills they need to not only stay in school but succeed.

In addition, a writing studio program supports the growth and development of the writing instructors and the peer writers (English Education majors who will be writing teachers in a few years). We have created a learning community to support our studio program. The learning community includes me (as MWP Site Director and the peer writer mentor), the two developmental writing instructors (also MWP site leaders) whose classes are piloting the studio program, and five peer writers (upper level English Ed majors who have worked with MWP in the past). We are meeting weekly to discuss practical issues ranging from current assignments and discussion topics to cover the theoretical and pedagogical challenges the peer writers encounter in their studio group sessions. In addition, we all regularly reflect about our experiences with the studio project to help us document the process. I look forward to these meetings and love the give-and-take of our discussions. We are all learning and growing as teachers as a result and I know my enthusiasm about the project and teaching has only grown since we began meeting.

Finally, as a result of both the hands-on experience teaching writing and working with writers as well as participation in our learning community, we believe our peer writers will be better prepared to teach writing when they graduate and enter their own high school classrooms as teachers. Our five peer writers are learning strategies they can employ in their own classrooms in the future and developing their own teaching style, but perhaps most important of all they are learning how to shape and direct their own professional development through a network of peers. I am so proud and excited to watch these pre-service teachers work through the challenges they face and can’t wait to see what happens next.

Stay tuned as I share the progress of our new program in the months to come! Soon I hope to share a description of what our writing studio program looks like and how it works.

Teaching with Google Docs: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

I have never been a fan of Blackboard for teaching online. I find it clunky and cumbersome. Worse, it seems to control the flow of the course in ways that directly interfere with what I want to do (such as build community). Specifically, there are two class activities that I have never been wild about running in Blackboard – discussion and writing workshop. I have experimented with using wikis, Edmodo, and blogs -- both stand-alone and with Blackboard -- but none of these options have come as close to satisfying my needs as Google Docs.

Google Docs, if you do not know, is a free suite of tools (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) combined with a data storage system. Users can create, upload, and store files as well as share and collaborate with others in real-time or asynchronously. Learn more by watching “Google Docs in Plain English.”

This summer I experimented with using Google Docs instead of Blackboard for a small online grad class. While it was not perfect, we (my students and I) all agreed that Google Docs was an improvement over Blackboard – and especially for discussion and writing workshop. Here are some things I learned from that experiment/experience:

The Good

One aspect that I didn’t think about early on was how easy it was to share everything for the class with my students by creating a folder for the class and then sharing it. No need to share new documents as I created them – simply upload or move into the already shared folder. Very handy!

Students also commented after the class that they could easily copy the folder (or a specific folder, such as a collection of course readings) to preserve for their own records. This is of greater value for graduate and upper level undergraduate classes than say freshmen comp but certainly handy.

For the type of collaborative class that I wanted to run I loved how easily I could give my students the ability to create, change, and generally collaborate not just on the documents but the organization of the course itself. I believe this sense of ownership contributed greatly to the overall satisfaction with the class.

Students commented that they liked how everything was in one place – as opposed to Blackboard. I admit I did as well. It was really easy to switch back-and-forth between assignments, discussion, and course documents.

Students also liked the ability to discuss in one document – rather than a discussion board thread – and to create thate discussion collaboratively. When we were done with each discussion we had a document that could easily be saved and read again in the future.

In addition, students liked being able to comment right on the work of their peers – in a comment thread that was very conversation-like. They noted that this seemed to remove barriers between writers and made writing workshop much more effective. Creating a sense of class community is important to me and students agreed that the Google Docs helped foster this through the easy-to-use collaboration and comment tools.

I must admit that I really like being able to talk with a student right on a document in real-time. This feature was a prime draw from the start to Google Docs and I was not disappointed. It also helped create some of those lovely side conversations that you get in a traditional class and can so easily miss in an online class.

The Bad

Of course that level of collaboration also created problems. Sometimes documents and whole folders got moved by accident and caused panic in the ranks until we figured out what happened and learned how to correct such mistakes. Next time I will try to prevent this problem by limiting the sharing (you can have editors, viewers, commenters).

Obviously not every document or folder needs to be highly collaborative so I will need to sort that out in the future. I admit that while it caused problems to give everyone the highest level of control (lost folders etc.), it was also really nice to share that responsibility. Often times the problems were solved while I was away from my computer.

The Ugly

Unlike most other course management systems, Google Docs does not come with a built-in structure. I worked around that by creating a Course Overview page with links to important documents (such as the Powerpoint assignment sheets) as well as descriptions of the activities and deadlines for each week. Even so, some students had some difficulty getting started and understanding how Google Docs works and even where to find it. For some students navigation was a constant problem.

And of course, you can’t really grade in Google Docs because it is an unsecure environment, but I actually like being able to clearly separate the workshop from the grading so this was not an issue for me – maybe even a benefit.

Some tips:

·         My first mistake was not to simply start with everyone creating a Gmail account. Sharing with other accounts was possible but it caused problems and cut down on communication possibilities. My advice, which I will follow next time, is to just start out with everyone creating a Gmail account if they do not already have one. This could be a drawback for some students.

·         Use folders to help you organize and practice careful naming protocols for your files as well as enforce those for your students. We quickly saw that inattention to either can cause problems and that was with just nine people – I shudder to think about a class of 20+.

·         Finally, carefully think through the levels of sharing – what roles do you want your students to have for specific documents and folders? When should your students be editors, viewers, or commenters?

My students (all teachers) talked about how we could use Google Docs in larger classes as well as younger students and most were eager to try it out (in middle and high school as well as college). We think for both discussion and writing workshop that it would be a good idea to use groups and other protocols and tools to organize larger classes. We were OK with an instructor and eight students interacting all the time in everything but the consensus was that going much above 10 would make this unwieldy – especially for discussion.

Look for future posts offering more details about my experience with class discussion and writing workshop in Google Docs.

You can read more about teaching with Google Docs with “Revisiting Google Docs for Classroom Use” and “Google for Educators.” 

Can I use learning contracts to escape grading jail? Stay tuned!

I admit I have always been intrigued by the idea of a grading contract. Some of it is part of my ongoing desire to help my students become self-regulating and independent learners, but there is also that seductive notion of using grading contracts to avoid “grading jail” as Ryan Cordell suggests.

However, the time has never seemed right for a number of personal and professional reasons, but I now believe the time is right – the stars are in alignment – for me to venture into this pool. Fortunately for me, there are wealth of resources and advice and examples available for me to follow. I love teaching in this day and age.

Profhacker’s Billie Hara writes about Using Grading Contracts and raises some of my own concerns and questions about their use that I possess. I was then and remain skeptical about their use with a first-year writing class. How many of my students actually possess the self-discipline and self-knowledge that such a system requires?

However, I continually struggle with organizing and grading two specific assignments in my first-year writing classes – class reading and discussion and writing workshop. I value both assignments for what we learn and discover as a class about our class content as well as ourselves, but participation is always uneven no matter how I enforce or structure it and grading and keeping track of participation is always a huge time suck. Both are collaborative assignments, which is part of the problem, and for both assignments I want students to focus more on exploration and learning and process than on perfection, which is also a challenge. While I was mulling over possibilities for yet another assignment revision. Dave Cormier blogged about Avoiding Resistance to Grading Contracts and I began to consider the possibility that a grading contract might be the solution I was seeking. I am still wary of using a grading contract for the course, but I think using grading contracts for specific assignments, such as these collaborative endeavors, might shift the focus off the process and the burden and responsibility from me to the student. I’ve got some time to mull this before I dive into course planning for the fall but I am excited about the possibilities. Jeffrey McClurken writes about using Student Contracts for Digital Projects and that is an approach that I could certainly adapt for my Professional Writing class in which students develop a large project over the course of the semester.

Even as I dismissed the notion of using a grading contract for my first-year writing students, I realized that grading contracts might work very well for my upper level and graduate classes. This is especially true as my graduate students are all teachers as are the majority of my upper level students (OK, pre-service teachers for the latter). Once I realized that we could use the contracts not just to solve my problems but also as teachable moments within the class my imagination was caught. Cathy Davidson explains how she uses Contract Grading and Peer Review for her digital literacies class. Dave Cormier also shared his early version of his learning contract.

I am very excited about the opportunity to lessen my grading burden but also to shift my focus to learning rather than assessment which is where I want it to be. Under a more traditional model there always comes a point when you have to focus on assessment and it often seems to undermine the confidence and perceived success of some students. Of course, this is how I feel now, at the first-date stage, when anything seems possible. We’ll see how I feel after we’ve had our first disagreement and I run this plan by my students.

How well did my semester plan work?

As Robert Burns noted: “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley” or the more popularly known “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry.” While my class plans rarely (I hope) lead to grief and pain or even joy, this quote is apt for my teaching experience. Every teacher knows that the “best laid” lesson plans rarely work out exactly as planned but as WC Fields wisely noted: “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Perhaps it is the second part of that quote that most applies to my blog post: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

If I want to learn and grow as a teacher then I must evaluate and reflect on the successes and failures of my past classes – and perhaps most important I must learn from them so I can avoid making the same “damn fool” mistakes. I try to keep this in mind every semester as I embark on the 3x3semester evaluation suggested by Profhacker.

First, three things that went well: focus on community, reading groups, and emphasizing reflection. This semester I focused on developing class community and teaching my students about why community is important (as students and as writers). I deliberately used Twitter as a tool to build community in my class as well as to teach students about community. I think this worked well and I’m finally realizing the potential of using Twitter as a teaching tool. I also created reading discussion groups to further support community and to solve some of the problems I’ve been having with my reading assignment. These were a definite improvement over letting students go solo and forming them around student interests solved some of the problems I experienced with past reading groups. Finally, I placed even more emphasis on reflection than before. I continued with literacy narratives as before but I added journals, reflection discussions, and Twitter notes to provide further opportunity for reflection throughout the semester. I had used all these in the past but was much more deliberate about connecting them this semester and I was pleased with how that worked out.

Now, three things that didn’t work so well: reading groups, writing workshop, and rubrics. Organizing the reading groups by interest worked really well and I think helped students connect with each other and the material in more meaningful ways. However, I am still doing too much of the heavy lifting here to organize them. I need to get out of their way and let them do the work. I definitely need to micromanage less next semester. Same is true for writing workshop. I need to orchestrate the process but be careful about stepping in too soon or they will never learn to do it without the training wheels. Finally, I need to redo/rework/reconsider my use of rubrics. I don’t feel they are adequately representing evaluation.

Finally, I plan to restructure both my reading group and writing workshop assignments as well as redo my rubrics. This last will be the most challenging because I’m thinking about making it a collaborative exercise with input from my students. I’m not prepared to totally relinquish my control over this but I think making it a collaborative exercise could be a good learning/teaching tool which will fit in well with my intended focus for the spring semester. I’m teaching Writing I for the first time in a while and I intend to focus on not only how we become (more) literate but why it is important. Our reading and writing will focus on that topic which still falls within my writing-about-writing interest of the past but will allow me to work with my increasing interest in reflection and community as well as the citizenship aspect my program assessment requires.

I define myself...

I define myself as a rhetorician. Much like Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric, I consider myself a student of rhetoric. I agree with Booth that the quality of our lives – indeed our survival – depends on the quality of our rhetoric. Rhetoric has the power to change the world. However, decades of working with writers has also taught me that the lack of agency and efficacy too often impedes the power of their rhetoric. The lack of confidence in their ability to communicate effectively and the lack of power to enact rhetorical agency results in an inequitable distribution of power in communities both large and small. This is what drives me to study the interplay of agency and efficacy with community and collaboration on communication in general and digital rhetoric in specific. Today, many communities and much collaboration involves digital communication and social media. As a rhetorician, technical communicator, and teacher, I am interested in the ways that communication is helped and hindered by digital rhetoric in the classroom, in the workplace, and in the world.

Am I collaboration crazy?

If you know/follow me then you also know that I am interested in collaboration, negotiation, and community. I just had an epiphany, as my collaborations appear to reach a sort of critical mass, that I might have gone a bit collaboration crazy. Of course, only time will tell if I am crazy like a fox or just plain crazy.

My work as a National Writing Project site director naturally includes collaboration within my site and my state network as well as the national network – and it is one of my favorite things about my job -- but I also need collaboration to feed my research and scholarly needs so I have entered into research collaborations studying community (is that meta-collaboration?) in the writing classroom as well as from the broader issue of a rhetoric/technical communication perspective. As a teacher in Appalachia, I’m also involved in two different groups studying education in Appalachia. I’m also embarking on a MOOC focused on education, learning and technology and am quite excited about the opportunity. In my role as a site director, I am also working on establishing some campus collaborations that I hope will serve the Morehead Writing Project as well as Morehead State University. Finally, I am involved in a professional learning community to help me put my best foot forward as I embark on the job market. Yes, that is a whole bunch of collaboration.

I worry that it might be too much, but I also know that I need to feed myself. I am at my best, my happiest and most productive self when I am collaborating with people I like on topics of mutual interest. That is the reason I have collected four college degrees (well in part anyway) and why I’m attracted to the work that I do. I like to learn and I like being around others who do as well. I know that I am happy to be engaged in all this collaboration this year, but of course have yet to determine how productive I am – with all this collaboration.

Creating a Classroom Community

Lately I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the idea of community. In part because my current research focuses on that topic and I’m fortunate enough to have a great group of likeminded friends and colleagues with which to collaborate (my own little research community about community) but also because this is the time of year when I am building my fall courses. I have always included ice breakers and various “get to know your classmates” activities. I am not alone in this effort. Just last night I helped my 10-year-old son fill a paper bag with items to share with his fifth-grade class for precisely that purpose. I imagine all across my county (and beyond) there were school children engaged in similar activities.

Of course, simply placing people in the same room and sharing a few facts about each other does not a community make. It certainly relaxes the classroom atmosphere and helps the teacher learn names, which are of course worthwhile results, but what does make a classroom community and why should we care?

I care for two reasons. In the short term, I believe that creating a learning community supports writers and writing and fosters learning. Rovai (2002) reports that studies have shown that strong feelings of community increase persistence in courses, flow of information among learners, availability of support, and satisfaction. In addition, according to Rovai, students who are part of a classroom community are less likely to cut class or come to class unprepared. Finally, Rovai says community decreases student burn out and increases overall retention. Obviously, classroom community can’t replace teaching and learning but my own experience (as well as the research) tells me that it makes teaching and learning more fun and everyone benefits.

In the long term, I am also interested in helping my writing students understand how communities shape the communication that takes place within them. I am not interested in teaching my students context-less forms and rules. As NCTE’s position statement about the teaching of writing notes: “Literate practices are embedded in complicated social relationships.” I want to help my students learn about the ways that different communities use communication (written communication in particular) and how writers can learn the rules and expectations of those communities. This is our class project. I hope that by making the goals of my classroom activities and assignments explicit and discussing the formation of our own classroom community as well as their developing knowledge will help them negotiate future community memberships and communications.

However, before we begin with that challenging work we will need to work to become a community. This, of course, does begin with those ice breakers and introductory activities. As my class is online and asynchronous I have chosen to use Twitter and the six-word memoir as our initial activity. Then, during the first weeks of the semester, we will Tweet about our lives and activities and thoughts. In the past when I have used Twitter this has been one of the ways that I have developed a sense of my students as people. I hope encouraging (requiring) this activity will help us get to know each other and lay the foundation for our classroom community.

Of course, to truly become a community we need more than “mutual engagement” (which I suppose is pretty expected of any class), according to Zucchermaglio & Talamo (2003). We also need joint enterprise. I hope that my planned ongoing discussions of our class project and the continued sharing of the individual projects that contribute to our larger work will help us create and sustain a classroom community.

Reading Workshop Still A WIP

For the past two semesters I have struggled with the implementation of a reading workshop for my online writing classes. My institution requires the use of a reader and my writing-about-writing approach also necessitates some reading, but I was resistant to using the old model of reading discussion that I once used. I simply didn't want to devote so much of our semester to reading and, while I consider reading important, I did want to use it primarily as fodder for our writing rather than a large focus of the class.

So I came up with a two-pronged approach to incorporate reading that is my own version of a Reading Workshop. The first part of the workshop is centered around building a class annotated bibliography of our reading lists with each student making three contributions to the annotated bibliography and then reviewing the contributions of other students. We build the class annotated bibliography on our class blog and I like the option of using labels on the individual AB entries so students are able to find readings that connect with their interests. The student contributions include one selection from the book we are required to use by our department and one selection from a list of online readings that I have generated and one peer-reviewed journal article that they locate and then submit for my approval. After we have completed the class AB, I then have students develop discussion questions that connect to their reading and then we hold class discussions using those questions.

I like many things about this assignment. I have always liked including some version of an annotated bibliography assignment in my classes as I think it is an useful skill for students to have and can scaffold their use of citations and summaries. I also like the fact that by cooperating in this way the students can cover a large number of readings in a relatively short amount of time and assemble the AB entries in an usable format that can serve as a resource for future assignments. I also like giving students some choice so they can pick readings to work with that either interest them or serve their writing in some way.

What I don't like is mostly about logistics. Giving students a choice means that there is a lot of back and forth with me and it is a time-consuming nightmare for a few weeks. I need to find a better way to do this for the fall semester. One solution is to push the assignment further into the semester by a week or two at the least. One of the drawbacks of teaching a general education class online is that there is a lot of fluidity to the rosters during the first week or two of classes. Maybe pushing the assignment past the worst of this will make it logistically easier to manage. I think I also need to break the assignment up into smaller bite-sized chunks. Apparently I overwhelmed students with too much information this semester. I also plan to stretch out the time that we work on this assignment. Last semester I had it stretch all the way to midterm but this semester I thought I could get it out of the way sooner. I think the midterm method is better. I think compressing the time was one of the contributors to my logistical nightmare. Honestly the assignment is not so burdensome that students shouldn't be able to finish it in the time I've allotted but clearly their perception is different.

And so my Reading Workshop is still a work-in-progress but hopefully next semester I will have it down pat! Stay tuned...

Tweet, Tweet: This is My Class on Twitter

I admit it. I'm an avid reader of ProfHacker and often find myself inspired by ideas I find there -- ideas such as teaching with Twitter (Framework and Practical Advice). I also have several colleagues who tried Tweeting with their students and so it has been something I've thought about for a while. This semester I was inspired to use Twitter with my students for these reasons as well as the fact that my basic focus for the class was to explore the idea of writing for different audiences and for different purposes. Also, as I frequently teach online (as I am this semester) I was looking for a way to improve communication and increase the connections we make in class.

In the past I have worked to channel class communication to take place within BlackBoard and restrict the use of other channels of communication, such as email, to specific discussion of private issues, such as grades. I did use online chat programs, such as Instant Messenger, to confer with students about papers but this was hardly a daily occurrence. While the restriction of class interaction to BlackBoard did make teaching dozens of students more manageable and make all information available to everyone -- and not just the student who asked the right question -- it doesn't really promote a lot of give-and-take (in general). I have had (and am participating in some right now) great discussions in BlackBoard but there is also a lot of one-way communication rather than an actual conversation. Plus, the simple truth is that you have to log into BlackBoard to join the conversation. For busy students (and teachers) this doesn't happen as frequently as is possible using a communication channel such as Twitter. I have Twitter on the home page of my computer and mobile devices. I never just glance at BlackBoard like I do Twitter.

One of the reasons that I like Twitter for myself (the person, not the teacher) is that it allows me to communicate with friends and colleagues immediately. I can glance at my Twitter feed (as I do several times a day) to see what they are doing and/or thinking. Sometimes it is something interesting to me professionally and sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is poignant. I love these glimpses into the lives of my friends but I also love the ability to stay in touch with what is going on in the world as well as my profession.

I have found that pushing my students on to Twitter offers me similar glimpses into their lives. Whenever I check my class Twitter feed I gain new insight into who my students are and what interests them. Granted sometimes there is Too-Much-Information because some students don't filter but in general I know when someone is feeling under the weather or overwhelmed by life. I would not have known either of those things in a traditional online class although probably would have in a face-to-face one. While I might not really care what my students ate for dinner last night, I do like knowing more about their lives outside of class as it makes them more real and more accessible. I think for that reason Twitter has made me a better teacher.

However, more than simple personal benefits, Twitter has had a direct impact on my teaching and the class in other ways that are beneficial. I can push out messages via Twitter that I would have previously had to send via announcements or email. Those methods work but also require more effort on the part of the students to access (they have to log into BlackBoard or their email server to see if there is anything new). They also seem so formal and heavy handed that I try to use them sparingly. I do post a new "Announcement" in BlackBoard every week (more if something comes up) but hate to overuse it. I can Tweet once or twice a day and it feels much more informal and more accessible. Of course that is my perception. We'll see how the students feel about it.

I have not required a certain number of Tweets from my students but instead required that they Tweet about certain things at certain times -- for example, Tweet about the reading selection you just posted to the class annotated bibliography on the class blog. This seems to have worked fairly well. Students are posting regularly about class business as well as personal lives. What I have found is that these posts help me keep track of the various subjects that students are working on (they were tasked to choose a theme for the class that included their intended profession) because I am getting regular reminders of these subjects. I hope the students are also seeing these trends and intersections among their work.

A month into the semester and I feel that Twitter has helped me get to know my online students better and to stay connected with them, so I feel my experiment has been worthwhile. In the end, the proof will be in the pudding -- did it improve my students' experience in the class? Some students have already commented that they feel more connected and like knowing there are real people "out there" reading their messages and classwork, but other students have complained that there are too many places where information must be posted and tracked. This is a valid complaint as I am using a class blog in addition to BlackBoard and Twitter. I wanted to open multiple channels of communication this semester and we'll just have to wait until the end of the semester to determine if that was a good choice, but, right now, from where I'm sitting, I'm pretty happy with my choice.

My 2010 CCCC Experience -- Remixing and Rethinking in Progress (Part Two)

I started the day with G.14 "Theorizing Agency in Writing Studies" and was interested by Clayton Walker's "The Embodied Act of Writing: Toward a Theory of Affects and Agency" and its connection of agency and classroom discourse.

Then on to H.21 "Research on Learning Transfer, and How We Use That Research to Improve Classroom and Institutional Success". Was particularly interested in Anne Balay's study of transfer at her institution and her call for more longitudinal research on transfer.

That brought me to preparing for my own presentation as part of J.26 "Daring to Remix, Renegotiate, and Reassess Writing Assessment" with Rebecca Rickly, Fred Kemp, and Ronda Wery. I talked about "Negotiated Assignments and Rubrics" and am more than happy to provide notes etc. for any interested in my experience with collaboration and negotiation.

After rehashing our talk and chatting with others following our talk it was too late to attend the last session of the day. Had intended to see K.08 "Revising Genre Theory: Reporting on the Emergence of Online Health Communication Genres" to be a supportive friend.

Enjoyed a leisurely dinner with Ronda Wery and Liz Pohland and then on to celebrate Rebecca Rickly's 50th birthday party at a party hosted by Joyce Locke Carter. Very exciting combination of folks and lots of fun.

Saturday morning meant dealing with business of checking out and finding car in huge underground garage beneath Galt House then having a very productive meeting regarding Morehead Writing Project with Tom Fox.

Managed to squeeze in one last session -- O.12 "Web 2.0: Problems and Possibilities". Was interested in John Alberti's discussion of power and pedagogy as well as Annie Mendenhall and Elizabeth Brewer's discussion of interactivity and power.

Then was called away by family emergency so I couldn't attend P.10 "Creating Narratives for Technical to Professional Communication" which promised to include very interesting work by Christina Low, http://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/dragga/, and Alissa Barber Torres.