Learning Beyond Limits: Open Source Collaboration in the Classroom
April 22, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Adam Heidebrink
What happens to a student paper or project after the individual turns it in or presents it in class? Where does it go? What, ultimately, is at stake for the student when s/he sits down to apply his or her thoughts to paper? What mediums do these thoughts and ideas travel through and whom they reach? What impact does their effort make beyond the classroom? These are questions of vital importance to every educator and pedagogue practicing today. Yet, in many cases, the answers to these questions are not particularly noteworthy. Students’ efforts in the classroom ultimately solidify into one definitive mark or grade, which too often denotes the end of the assignment’s life. There is, of course, a small percentage of student projects and papers that make their way into a conference or journal; but more often than not, they will end up archived on a hard-drive, somewhere, for a little while, and then deleted.
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What happens to a student paper or project after the individual turns it in or presents it in class? Where does it go? What, ultimately, is at stake for the student when s/he sits down to apply his or her thoughts to paper? What mediums do these thoughts and ideas travel through and whom they reach? What impact does their effort make beyond the classroom? These are questions of vital importance to every educator and pedagogue practicing today. Yet, in many cases, the answers to these questions are not particularly noteworthy. Students’ efforts in the classroom ultimately solidify into one definitive mark or grade, which too often denotes the end of the assignment’s life. There is, of course, a small percentage of student projects and papers that make their way into a conference or journal; but more often than not, they will end up archived on a hard-drive, somewhere, for a little while, and then deleted.
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#digped Storify: Questioning Writing MOOCs
April 07, 2013 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris
The idea of teaching a subject as highly individualized as composition strikes many dedicated instructors as problematic at least. While technologists support the idea of "robo-grading", most writing instructors understand intuitively how technology will always fail to mimic the nuance present in human reading and evaluation. Our conversation developed primarily around three important matters: the role of students in their own assessment (peer-review), the role of the instructor in collective learning environments, and the matter of how we go forward as pedagogues upon whose innovation and knowledge the effectiveness of massive learning will depend.
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The idea of teaching a subject as highly individualized as composition strikes many dedicated instructors as problematic at least. While technologists support the idea of "robo-grading", most writing instructors understand intuitively how technology will always fail to mimic the nuance present in human reading and evaluation. Our conversation developed primarily around three important matters: the role of students in their own assessment (peer-review), the role of the instructor in collective learning environments, and the matter of how we go forward as pedagogues upon whose innovation and knowledge the effectiveness of massive learning will depend.
Read More...Making Composition Massive: a #digped Discussion
April 02, 2013 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris
Always when we talk about massively-scaled learning, we must first face the gargoyle of our resistance. Despite their inexorable march, and subsequently proliferating PR, MOOCs have not been embraced by the majority of educators. In fact, MOOCs are seen as an experiment rife with poorly executed pedagogies, troubling colonial overtures, and corporate origins that threaten to prey upon traditional higher education. And yet, MOOCs are upon us and resistance may well prove futile. Perhaps instead of erecting an ed-tech Berlin Wall, with MOOC adopters on one side and holdouts against this massive technology on the other, we should consider ways of making these MOOCs work for us, not against us.
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Always when we talk about massively-scaled learning, we must first face the gargoyle of our resistance. Despite their inexorable march, and subsequently proliferating PR, MOOCs have not been embraced by the majority of educators. In fact, MOOCs are seen as an experiment rife with poorly executed pedagogies, troubling colonial overtures, and corporate origins that threaten to prey upon traditional higher education. And yet, MOOCs are upon us and resistance may well prove futile. Perhaps instead of erecting an ed-tech Berlin Wall, with MOOC adopters on one side and holdouts against this massive technology on the other, we should consider ways of making these MOOCs work for us, not against us.
Read More...Vlogging Composition: Making Content Dynamic
March 28, 2013 | Filed in: Literacies
by Susan Gail Taylor
With technological innovations come opportunities for students to compose, communicate, share, collaborate, and express themselves in contemporary ways as well as opportunities for teachers to harness potential academic possibilities. Vlogging, or video blogging, is one way to introduce dynamic content and technologically enhanced pedagogical techniques to students in a variety of disciplines, specifically composition. From student-created vlogs that focus on reflection, collaboration, and community building to teacher-created vlogs that focus on interactive lessons and that introduce a spirit of play to the classroom, vlogs can be significant and practical learning tools; specifically in the composition classroom, vlogs can teach students the power of visual text and can allow them an informal way of exploring the composing process.
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With technological innovations come opportunities for students to compose, communicate, share, collaborate, and express themselves in contemporary ways as well as opportunities for teachers to harness potential academic possibilities. Vlogging, or video blogging, is one way to introduce dynamic content and technologically enhanced pedagogical techniques to students in a variety of disciplines, specifically composition. From student-created vlogs that focus on reflection, collaboration, and community building to teacher-created vlogs that focus on interactive lessons and that introduce a spirit of play to the classroom, vlogs can be significant and practical learning tools; specifically in the composition classroom, vlogs can teach students the power of visual text and can allow them an informal way of exploring the composing process.
Read More...Will MOOCs Work for Writing?
March 27, 2013 | Filed in: Literacies
by Chris Friend
When faced with a complex, fluid, and potentially uncontrollable situation, I’ve often heard people say, “It’s like herding cats.” I can think of no more complex, variable, and fluid task than writing. Its nuances and complexities seem to defy consistency; what works as “good writing” in one circumstance can be disastrous in another. Indeed, the push toward multimodality in student writing means even the products can vary: essays one minute, blogs the next, videos after that. We also strive to develop stylistic variation: the strongest students develop a personal voice that makes their work distinctive. Everything about writing activities makes them seem like one-offs: what works in each instance is different than the next solution. The complex challenges of teaching students to work within that degree of variability makes me despair.
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When faced with a complex, fluid, and potentially uncontrollable situation, I’ve often heard people say, “It’s like herding cats.” I can think of no more complex, variable, and fluid task than writing. Its nuances and complexities seem to defy consistency; what works as “good writing” in one circumstance can be disastrous in another. Indeed, the push toward multimodality in student writing means even the products can vary: essays one minute, blogs the next, videos after that. We also strive to develop stylistic variation: the strongest students develop a personal voice that makes their work distinctive. Everything about writing activities makes them seem like one-offs: what works in each instance is different than the next solution. The complex challenges of teaching students to work within that degree of variability makes me despair.
Read More...Learn Like an Arachnid: Why I’m MOOCifying
January 15, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Janine DeBaise
Every fall when I ask my first year students, “Why did you choose the College of Environmental Science and Forestry?” at least one will answer, “I want to save the world.” By the time they are sophomores, my students have taken rigorous science courses that focus on environmental issues. When they do group projects in the research/composition course I teach, I’m impressed with their topics, the depth of their knowledge, and their passion. What seems wrong is that their presentations are only to each other. Sure, they invite their friends, but at a small college where everyone takes a whole bunch of the same courses, that’s not a very satisfying audience. The students teach me and have changed me -- dramatically -- but I shouldn’t be the only person to benefit from their knowledge and fresh ideas.
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Every fall when I ask my first year students, “Why did you choose the College of Environmental Science and Forestry?” at least one will answer, “I want to save the world.” By the time they are sophomores, my students have taken rigorous science courses that focus on environmental issues. When they do group projects in the research/composition course I teach, I’m impressed with their topics, the depth of their knowledge, and their passion. What seems wrong is that their presentations are only to each other. Sure, they invite their friends, but at a small college where everyone takes a whole bunch of the same courses, that’s not a very satisfying audience. The students teach me and have changed me -- dramatically -- but I shouldn’t be the only person to benefit from their knowledge and fresh ideas.
Read More...Bring Your Own Disruption: Rhizomatic Learning in the Composition Class
December 30, 2012 | Filed in: Literacies
by Tanya Sasser
Too often, rather than inviting First-Year Composition (FYC) students into the disruptive experience of being a writer, we try to shield them inside the safety of the walled garden of neatly ordered paths that is the traditional, instructor-driven composition classroom. Even while some of us have refocused on the process, rather than products, of writing, we continue to hamstring students with scaffolded compositional tasks and writing “prompts,” assuming that by allowing students to choose between various (artificially-created, instructor-mapped) paths, we are endowing them with an autonomy so empowering that they will arrive at the end of their journey through our garden as self-identified writers.
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Too often, rather than inviting First-Year Composition (FYC) students into the disruptive experience of being a writer, we try to shield them inside the safety of the walled garden of neatly ordered paths that is the traditional, instructor-driven composition classroom. Even while some of us have refocused on the process, rather than products, of writing, we continue to hamstring students with scaffolded compositional tasks and writing “prompts,” assuming that by allowing students to choose between various (artificially-created, instructor-mapped) paths, we are endowing them with an autonomy so empowering that they will arrive at the end of their journey through our garden as self-identified writers.
Read More...Editorial Pedagogy, pt. 1: A Professional Philosophy
November 04, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Cheryl Ball
Sometimes, my esteemed colleague, Jim Kalmbach, understands my academic identity better than I do. His most recent revelation for me was this: “I see you transforming yourself in ways you don't understand yet. It is true that your definition of DH will be richer than most people if for no other reason than it will include comp. You should stand in front of a mirror and say ‘I am a digital humanist.’” He’s right. My academic identity most easily fits into a digital humanities notion of technology-infused writing, publishing, and pedagogy. And in the month since I got Jim’s most recent identity-cometojesus-email, I’ve been able to reconcile these sometimes-competing disciplinary identities to form a holistic approach to my teaching, research, and service. In revising my teaching philosophy recently, I realized that my pedagogical approach wasn’t limited to classroom-based teaching, the typical scope of such statements. Instead, my philosophy -- an editorial pedagogy -- is fundamentally linked to my academic identity and performance as an editor, scholar, teacher, mentor, and administrator in digital writing studies. Or, more specifically, a juggling act of digital writing studies and digital publishing under the big tent of digital humanities.
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Sometimes, my esteemed colleague, Jim Kalmbach, understands my academic identity better than I do. His most recent revelation for me was this: “I see you transforming yourself in ways you don't understand yet. It is true that your definition of DH will be richer than most people if for no other reason than it will include comp. You should stand in front of a mirror and say ‘I am a digital humanist.’” He’s right. My academic identity most easily fits into a digital humanities notion of technology-infused writing, publishing, and pedagogy. And in the month since I got Jim’s most recent identity-cometojesus-email, I’ve been able to reconcile these sometimes-competing disciplinary identities to form a holistic approach to my teaching, research, and service. In revising my teaching philosophy recently, I realized that my pedagogical approach wasn’t limited to classroom-based teaching, the typical scope of such statements. Instead, my philosophy -- an editorial pedagogy -- is fundamentally linked to my academic identity and performance as an editor, scholar, teacher, mentor, and administrator in digital writing studies. Or, more specifically, a juggling act of digital writing studies and digital publishing under the big tent of digital humanities.
Read More...Seeing Composition Three Dimensionally
November 01, 2012 | Filed in: Literacies
by Lori Beth De Hertogh
One of my favorite childhood memories is of me helping my dad in the garden. A hardworking individual who dealt with a lot of stress, dad was always at peace among his veggies and flowers. The garden was a place where he could spend time with plants that needed (but did not demand) his attention; among his many plants, dad could be creative, whimsical, relaxed; absolved from the everyday stresses of work, family, and life.
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One of my favorite childhood memories is of me helping my dad in the garden. A hardworking individual who dealt with a lot of stress, dad was always at peace among his veggies and flowers. The garden was a place where he could spend time with plants that needed (but did not demand) his attention; among his many plants, dad could be creative, whimsical, relaxed; absolved from the everyday stresses of work, family, and life.
Read More...