Turning Chaos into Order: Organization and Online Writing

One look at my desk at home or in the GTA office and someone who did not know me would be able to discern that I am lax on my organizational skills. I would argue that I know where everything is, so it is more like organized chaos. To counterbalance that, I do try to present my class materials to my current students on Blackboard in a very careful manner. I have weekly folders, which contains folders for each day of the week that the class meets. Within these daily folders, I have the materials that were discussed in class. I also have a page just with folders for each project. That way, students can go to that page and easily find the projects requirement or peer review rubrics for each project. 
However, before enrolling in Teaching Writing Online, I had not even thought about how to organize my course materials for this hypothetical online class. Luckily, after reading the chapter on organization in Scott Warnock’s amazing book Teaching Writing Online: How and Why, I was able to get some good ideas about how to organize for an online writing class.  According to Warnock,  he argues that online writing teacher shouldn’t “underestimate the importance of being organized in the online teaching environment…Make sure your files and folder systems reflect the kind of structure that you want for the class and allow you to use student texts to good advantage throughout the course” (49). I was a bit upset at myself by being shocked by this statement. Of course, I should be thinking about how I am going to organize my online writing class, because my current system is not going to work for the type of classroom.  First and foremost, I cannot do folders for each day that the class meets, since the class will never meet in person. 
But, then, I was stumped. I was left to wonder then how do I organize this online writing class? Luckily, Warnock strikes again with a suggestion that would work wonderfully in my hypothetical online writing class. His idea, the Weekly Plan, is organized to allow his students to have “a complete set of the activities they must accomplish, broken down into specific (and easily completed tasks)” (Warnock 54). He even includes a sample of this Weekly Plan in his book at the end, which was extremely helpful for me to see. I especially like his point that the Weekly Plan is a way for students to stay on top of the coursework (55). After all, in my experience, online courses are often the ones that get put on the backburner, especially if the students have on-campus classes on their schedule. 
As someone with a propensity to being disorganized, setting up a class calendar is probably my least favorite thing to do as a teacher. How can I determine what I am supposed to teach when I do not even know how my students will handle these lessons? That is why this particular chapter was so crucial for my understanding of teaching online writing. In this chapter, Warnock was able to express why organization is so crucial of not only the success of my hypothetical online writing class but also extremely imperative to the success of my hypothetical online writing students. Without organization, it, and by default my students, will surely fail. I guess, with that motivation, I need to find a better way to organize my desks. 
 
Works Cited
Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2009. Print.

The Results to My "Serial" Experiment

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that so far, my class’s reaction to the first episode of the podcast Serial was almost universally positive. Now that I have finished that particular unit, I can say that almost all of them really liked it! I even had a student who mentioned that he was happy that he wasn’t reading “boring textbook material”. That sort of response is exciting and proves that reading for class can be fun.
However, I did have some students who didn’t like the material. I mentioned the first student that was neutral on the material because she wanted to see the whole case and wasn’t big on crime shows anyway. I had another student who didn’t like the podcast because she thought that Sarah was a bit too obsessed with the material. But, these reactions are natural. Serial is not going to be a grand slam with everybody. But, the fact that it worked for almost everyone makes me rethink my entire reading schedule.

A "Serial" Experiment: My Trial with Multimodal Reading

I have taught first year composition in a traditional classroom for four semesters and I know one key truth: As much as students hate to write, they hate to read even more. I often notice on my teaching evaluations that the lowest marks are often given to the question dealing with the class reading material. This is a sad but expected realization for any composition teacher working today. However there are many remedies for this common plague that infects our classes. One of which is multimodal texts. Scott Warnock in his book Teaching Writing Online discusses that a major advantage of multimodal texts is “to create a different kind of ‘reading’ experience for students” (62). If that means that students would enjoy the experience more, I am on board with anything.

In fact, this week was my first experiment with multimodal texts. In concordance with a discussion on cognitive biases and ethical citizenship, I had my students either listen to or read the transcript of the first episode of the popular podcast Serial entitled “The Alibi”. I started by having them think about whether they would automatically assume someone killed their former significant other if they were convicted of doing so by a court of law at the end of the class before our discussion was held. Most of them said there was not enough evidence, but some said that they would stand for the judgment that the court brought forth on the hypothetical defendant.

The next class had a conversation about cognitive biases, some of which they were not aware of. After that, we discussed the first episode of Serial in regards to biases and ethical citizenship. Some of the main areas for discussion include the reliability of witnesses, the ethics of law, and the ethics of journalism. It was a very lively conversation, especially since they only had to listen to the first episode for homework. Some students assumed that Hae pushed Adnan to kill her because she was being abusive to him. Others thought that the “Alibi Girl” was doing it for the fame that came with being associated with an infamous murder. Needless to say, the discussion portion of this experiment was a success.

The next components happened after class. The first involved a metacognitive journal about their reading experience. In my composition classes, they have a weekly journal based on certain prompts. This week’s journal focused on their comprehension and reaction to “The Alibi”. Based on the journals that have been turned (I will post later about the others), most of them really enjoyed it. Some of them even mentioned that they enjoyed it due to the fact that they were able to listen to it instead of reading it. I only had one person who was ambivalent on it because she said that she was a type of person who needs to see the case solved, not in the process of being solved.

The final component to the Serial assignment was a “quiz”. This “quiz” was simply a writing prompt asking them to discuss an ethical issue discussed within the Serial episode. The few that have been turned in have been interesting. Some quizzes have focused on the lack of episode required to find Adnan guilty. Others have focused on the reliability of the star witness for the prosecution, Jay. I look forward to reading the rest of their quizzes.

Overall, I would say that my first experiment with multimodal reading texts was a success. I look forward to doing more activities like this, especially if my classes react this well to it. But, I would preface that working with multimodal texts can be disastrous at times. Scott Warnock even discusses this by saying, “For some of us, the move to multimodality may come with growing pains, simply because we haven’t always been trained to think in those terms as teachers” (62-63). But, I strongly urge any teacher, regardless of format, to try multimodality at least once. It can work really well and will have your students actually enjoy the reading!

Works Cited

Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2009. Print.