I failed at #WEXMOOC this week. Though admittedly, I feel a little tricked by the nature of the MOOC (defined generally) as well. Our second assignment asked us to reflect on our identities as writers in relationship to three other writers. The assignment gave these instructions:
[W]rite 800-1000 words where you explore connections between your identity as a writer and other people’s identities as writers. Your audience is other writers in this class.
The assignment seems like the usual stuff of the composition classroom. The audience is quite often other students enrolled in the course. I hadn’t thought through how literally this fact was true however nor how different my audience is in the context of this particular course.
Audience analysis is, of course, my job in a writing project, and I blew it this time. The assignment tells us that we are writing to the “other writers in this class.” Unfortunately, I didn’t think enough about the people who make up WEXMOOC. I imagined the group as somewhere between a typical first-year composition class and what we called a trailing section (that is, students who either took a remediation course or had failed FYC the first time through, so they were off sequence, taking a first semester course during second semester). Some of the students in WEXMOOC are that sort of typical first-year comp student, but there are a lot more international students focusing on Global Englishes than is the norm. Many of the students in WEXMOOC mention other languages that they use. Writing what I think is a good piece or what I believe a typical FYC student would think met expectations fails to connect with these readers. I needed to pitch everything to a global reader and to avoid any moves that did not follow clearly from the assignment. I didn’t think about my audience thoroughly enough to realize that my approach was completely off.
The MOOC is an empty classroom. I can’t see the audience. I do not know them, and because of the huge number of students involved, I probably never will know them. I have to guess at their demographics. I’m not sure where to do research to find out the composition of this particular MOOC. The success of WEXMOOC relies on understanding your readers, but that information is hard to find. I wish the course included more discussion of the audience itself. I would never give an assignment like this without spending time analyzing the audience as a class as well as analyzing several other audiences for comparison. Given that we have limited ability to learn about the members who make up this course, we could benefit from a deeper exploration of this particular audience.
Audience analysis is only part of the problem however. The members of this course need significantly more training in peer review, especially given the structure of this MOOC. Peer review is actually the part of this course that matters. My writing doesn’t need to be what I would call good. It needs to be something that this group of students will peer review as good. Completion in the course relies not just on completing the writing and doing peer reviews, but also on earning a specific average on a 5-point scale from peer readers.
From what I can tell from the two peer responses that I have gotten so far, my readers expected a clear, optimistic conclusion in this assignment. I compared my own background to three others, reflecting with some pessimism on the unfairness of literacy acquisition. It was not an especially brilliant conclusion, but it did follow from what I had discussed. My readers, however, weren’t prepared for anything but an obvious, optimistic conclusion. They wanted me to end with some plan to fix the unfairness that I discussed. They want me to be a better person, not a better writer. One even suggested that I should take some classes in a foreign language so I could relate to the writers I used for my comparison. That is life advice, not how peer review advice. My readers wanted a pretty fable, tied up with a life lesson.
Completion in the course relies entirely on successful peer review. The WEX Training Guide is a good document, but I don’t think it’s enough. It includes only one example review, and that paper was written by a graduate student. That sample isn’t close to the reality of the four papers I gave peer feedback on. Students need more example papers and feedback, including some examples that deal with issues that reflect those students in the course face. An FAQ might even help if it addressed questions like “What if the text doesn’t match the assignment?” , and “Should I mention grammar problems?” As a teacher, I know how to deal with those issues, but I’m not sure that the average student in this MOOC does. Leveling a group of readers for a fair assessment takes time, but when peer feedback matters as it does in this course, you have to take that time.
I opened by mentioning that I feel a little tricked by MOOCs. The pedagogical necessities of MOOCs have created a writing classroom unlike any I have encountered before. This week, WEXMOOC reminded me that the teachers in a MOOC only supervise what is going on. Work is not assessed from a teacher’s perspective, but from the students’ point of view. Writing to peer reviewers is quite different from writing for an objective teacher. Everything relies on those peer reviewers in this course. The size of the course and the range of student writing abilities mean that the staff of a MOOC can never respond adequately to all the writing that students do. If peer reviews matter to the success of a MOOC however, students need more scaffolding to do the work effectively and need a better understanding of one another if they are to meet the expectations of MOOC students as an audience.
I covet beta site access. I download and install the newest tools. I try out and review apps before they catch on. I enjoy crash testing systems (even if their developers wish I wouldn’t). But MOOCs haven’t tempted me.
Every week, as I browse the higher ed news and the TechRhet Facebook group, I find at least one new article on MOOCs, but I rarely read more than the first paragraph. When my colleagues merrily enrolled in Duke MOOC and the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC, I not only refused to play along but also questioned the worth of the entire endeavor.
MOOCs looked like nothing more than jazzy distance education to me. All I saw was oversized distance ed courses that employed as many digital bells and whistles as possible. Now to be clear, I have no problem with distance education. I don’t even have an issue with online distance ed. I taught Virginia Tech’s first online distance business writing course back in 1994. I have no complaints about using the digital tools to teach writing. I’ve been using digital tools for teaching for decades. I don’t see anything particularly revolutionary in the basic capabilities of a MOOC.
In fact, when I see the world of higher ed so titillated over something we’ve been doing in the computers and writing classroom for years, I’m mainly ticked off. What about a MOOC makes teaching with discussion forums, videos, and online peer review suddenly seem amazing? Seriously, world, I’m asking. Why is this approach exciting and revolutionary? As a writing teacher, I just don’t get it.
No matter how hard I try, what I see in MOOCs is pedagogy that just doesn’t fit with what I know about the best ways to teach composition and rhetoric. There’s a reliance on “sage on stage”-style video presentations. The courses are ridiculously oversized, with thousands of times more students than is recommended. From what I have seen, the students have widely differing levels of ability and need, making it difficult to make sure they get the support they need. It’s hard enough to reach every student when you only have a class of 20 or 25 students. How can you possibly reach every student when there are anywhere from 25,000 to 250,000?
When I teach, I try to reach individual students. Naturally, there is general advice that I share—show, rather than tell; meet the needs of your audience; and so forth. When I talk about these concepts however, I try to fit them to the students with specific examples that they will understand. Education is rarely a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Different students require different examples and approaches. As a teacher who prizes communication and values connecting with her audience, I struggle to understand how MOOCs can teach as well as the much less massive and less open writing instruction that I am used to.
It’s not the OC part of the MOOC that worries me. I champion online courses. It’s the MO I am trying to figure out. I want to understand how to make writing instruction work in a massive, open classroom. There are parts of my heart that really want this kind of global educational outreach to work. I would love being able to help anyone, anywhere increase their literacy skills. But are MOOCs the way to do it?
I see a tiresome insistence on pedagogy that doesn’t match with what I know about teaching reading and writing. Yet, a lot of teachers I respect see potential—and that’s why I’ve signed up for The Ohio State University’s Writing II: Rhetorical Composing (#WEXMOOC). If Susan Delagrange, Cynthia Selfe, Kay Halasek, Ben McCorkle, and Scott Lloyd DeWitt are devoting their time to this strategy, there has to be something there.
The more I have looked at what they are doing and the more I read about MOOCs this past week, the more questions I have:
Is my error comparing MOOCs to the classrooms I know? Are MOOCs a new kind of classrooms where the rules have changed?
How is the college campus norm of course credit confusing my understanding?
In what ways have the relatively even level of literacy skills on a college campus spoiled me? Has my experience with evenly matched students blocked my ability to imagine how to teach dramatically uneven classroom populations?
Why is the completion rate for MOOCs so low? If they are a revolutionary way to reach this population of learners, why aren’t they working? Do we need to change our definitions of success and completion?
What more do students need to succeed? Can we figure out why students who flourish in MOOCs do so, and then use that knowledge to identify students who needs additional support or preparation and give it to them? How can we provide personal guides to help students navigate this massively open landscape?
How do issues of digital access come into play in the success or failure of a student?
In what ways does successful participation in a MOOC relate to environmental and cultural parameters that have nothing to do with teaching and the MOOC?
How do my own questions of labor, workload, and job security color my understanding of the MOOC? How much of my dissatisfaction with this strategy relates to my fear that it is an attempt to balance the budget by computerizing instruction and removing the teachers?
How can a MOOC accommodate a range of student needs without exhausting those who design and teach in it?
How can we focus on the benefits of collaboration on such a large scale? How can we help students make personal connections? What do we need to do to ensure that there we build a community of learners that benefits everyone?
Are there ways to give credit for the informal or at least non-traditional learning of a MOOC in the more formal systems of higher ed?
How can the MOOC fit into the future of higher ed? Do they fit? Do they change the conversation about education and public outreach?
What do we need to do to ensure that the best pedagogy drives the future of the MOOC and other online education, rather than the budgetary needs of the university or the business decisions of companies like Coursera and Udacity? Where are we willing to make compromises, and what is non-negotiable?
That’s a lot of questions. Over the next few weeks, maybe I can find some of the answers.
This post originally appeared on the NCTE Inbox blog. I happened upon it today and found myself reminiscing on the paths that I’ve traveled to get to who I am. I thought I’d copy it over to my site to make sure I didn’t lose it. I edited it to remove dated references
Chances are high that you wouldn’t be reading this if it weren’t for online professional development. I don’t mean that in the clichéd “If you can read this thank a teacher” way. What I mean is that I would never, ever have had the connections that led to writing these blog entries if it hadn’t been for the online professional development opportunities that came my way.
People who know me may not believe it, but I kept to myself as a teacher before I found opportunities to connect with other educators online. I read a lot about teaching, but I rarely discussed teaching strategies with others. I had some connections in the department where I taught, and I was a fellow of Writing Project site that no longer exists.
And then I got an email address and found that other college composition teachers were out there discussing what they do in the classroom online. I signed up Megabyte University, an email discussion list that was active from 1990 to 1997. There, I connected with other teachers who were interested in using computers in writing instruction, and I eventually found my voice and began participating—asking questions, sharing strategies, and planning projects. I found that the people who were names on the articles I read in College English and College Composition and Communication were kind, friendly folks who were willing to chat with a relatively inexperienced person like me.
To my conversations on email discussion lists, I added real-time chats on MOOs and IRC. I attended online conferences related to the face-to-face Computers and Writing Conference. Before I knew it, I had connections with colleagues in all corners of the country, and I had actually chatted with CCCC presidents and NCTE Committee Chairs. I even got up the gumption to send a personal email message to Peter Elbow to tell him how much I loved Writing with Power.
Without any reservation, I can say that I ended up writing this blog because of those first connections that I made online in the early 1990s. Online discussion led to new jobs, new teaching opportunities, and new ways to support other teachers using online tools.
None of the resources I tapped when I got started still exist in the same form today. Computer resources have evolved, and we teachers have developed new ways to connect and keep in touch today. Today we have new ways of keeping in touch, like discussion lists, Twitter Chats, and Facebook Groups. You’ll find wonderful teachers who will share their ideas, listen to your strategies, and, if you’re just lucky, bring you opportunities that will invigorate your teaching every day.
I wasn’t blown away by the Super Bowl commercials this year. There were a couple that seemed cute to me. The GoDaddy commercials, as usual, annoyed me. WWE fan that I am, I enjoyed The Rock’s Milk commercial, and like several of my friends, I teared up over the Clydesdale commercial.
Play this commercial in the classroom and talk about writing extended definitions. It’s a wonderful example and can inspire students to create their own video definitions.
If you’re looking for some activities to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this month, read on! This post includes materials on the ReadWriteThink site that fit three categories:
Resources specifically focused on Dr. King and texts he wrote
Biographical activities you can use to explore Dr. King’s life and writing
Family activities that relate to Dr. King
The materials range from mini-lessons to complete units and cross the grade levels. So read on, and celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his work.
Entering History: Nikki Giovanni and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nikki Giovanni’s poem “The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.” is paired with Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, taking students on a quest through time to the Civil Rights movement.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Me: Identifying with a Hero
This lesson provides ideas for celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by encouraging students to explore the connections between Dr. King and themselves through journaling and inquiry-based research.
Living the Dream: 100 Acts of Kindness
This lesson provides the “action piece” for any study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this project, students participate in Dr. King’s dream by doing 100 acts of kindness.
I Have a Dream: Exploring Nonviolence in Young Adult Texts
Students will identify how Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of nonviolent conflict-resolution is reinterpreted in modern texts. Homework is differentiated to prompt discussion on how nonviolence is portrayed through characterization and conflict. Students will be formally assessed on a thesis essay that addresses the Six Kingian Principles of Nonviolence.
A Biography Study: Using Role-Play to Explore Authors’ Lives
Secondary students read biographies and explore websites of selected American authors and then role-play as the authors. Adapt this lesson to ask students to consider Dr. King, as the author of the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “I Have a Dream” speech, and other texts.
Biographies: Creating Timelines of a Life
Elementary students explore a number of sources to create a biographical timeline about a selected person. Students collaboratively research and resolve conflicting information they find during their investigation.
Acrostic Poems
Have students write acrostic poems about Dr. King or events from his life with the Acrostic Poem tool.
Writers’ Workshop: The Biographical Sketch
Students use the faces and places they learn about in their research to write a biography about a contemporary or historical figure.
Family Activities
Amazing Biographies: Writing About People Who Change the World
After reading about historical figures and other important people that have changed the world, children choose someone that they consider to be “amazing”—either someone they’ve heard about or someone they know—and create a book page that highlights this person.
Think Peace
Podcaster Emily Manning shares books that serve as a springboard to discuss how children and adults alike can use peaceful, nonviolent methods to affect change in society. This is episode 21 of Chatting About Books: Recommendations for Young Readers, a Podcast for Grades K–5.
Celebrate Heroes
Encourage children to spend a little time thinking and writing about just what makes a hero and who their personal heroes might be.
Dr. King Bio Cubes
Families and children can gather or summarize information about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Bio Cube interactive.
I’ve been using Twitter for years for everything from keeping in touch with colleagues to sharing professional development and curriculum materials with other teachers. In the years since I’ve joined, I often first learn about current events from Twitter (@BreakingNews is my favorite).
Since I’ve been doing this for a while, I have some links I can share, from blogs that I’ve written for NCTE, Bedford/St. Martins, and my own site. They were written over the past few years, so forgive any links that are broken please.
If you’re interested in collecting Twitter links in a simple way for students, Paper.li can be a useful option. The tool gathers Tweets from your feed that include URLs and lays them out in a newspaper-style format. I’ve written several pieces about using Paper.li:
Most recently, I’ve written a series of posts on using Twitter Chats, which are real-time, online conversations that use specific hashtags to help organize the discussion. Twitter Chats can be a powerful tool for students and colleagues. You can read more about them in these posts:
Also, if you’re even slightly interested in how you might use Twitter in the classroom, take a look at William M. Ferriter’s essay “Why Teachers Should Try Twitter” from Educational Leadership. The article explains, “For educators who use this tool to build a network of people whose Twitter messages connect to their work, Twitter becomes a constant source of new ideas to explore.” It includes some tips and how-to’s as well as a personal story on how the experience affected the author’s understanding of differentiated instruction.
Hope that helps any readers who are interested in expanding how they use Twitter. I’m willing to share whatever advice and experience I have, so contact me if you need more or have a question I might be able to answer.
Making a New Year’s Resolution is easy. Keeping it? That’s a different story altogether. Personal goals end up competing with teaching goals. The busy whirl of heading back to the classroom crowds out all those plans, and the next thing you know, it’s March and those teaching resolutions are long forgotten.
How about some help with those goals? I’ve gathered some of the best resources from ReadWriteThink and Thinkfinity to help make sure your good intentions all become accomplishments in 2013!
Learn something new: Did you set the goal of learning a new technique or strategy to use in the classroom? Try these resources to get started:
Collaborate more with other teachers: You can share ideas, give other teachers some advice or feedback, and ask questions about your classroom and students on the Thinkfinity site.
Plan activities further in advance: What teacher hasn’t found herself scurrying at the last minute to figure out what to do in class tomorrow—or even later this afternoon! I know I have. Use these calendars to find activities and sketch out your month in advance:
Help families and students learn at home: Families are often eager to try fun, educational activities at home, but it takes time to round up the materials and get them into a parent’s hands. Here are some ready-made materials you can use right now:
Publish your ideas: Want to share your teaching strategies with teachers everywhere? ReadWriteThink welcomes contributions from educators who want to write or review for the site. Fill out our online interest form and you’ll be on your way to publishing a lesson plan, a classroom printout, or a strategy guide on the site!
Whatever your goals, I hope you meet them and have a fantastic 2013.
Bedford/St. Martin’s Bits bloggers posted on topics ranging from working with new TAs to how we teach research projects. Be sure that you check out all the great ideas for talking about pop culture (like reality TV shows) and how to teach with comics—and don’t miss Holly Pappas’s reflection on the end of one term and the beginning of the next in the Classroom Strategies and Resources section:
It’s the gift-giving time of year, and if you’re giving someone an iPad, you can start getting it ready with these great apps for children, teens, and teachers.
Download Reading and Writing Apps
Word Mover App Take poetry on the road with this ReadWriteThink app. Kids and teens can create “found poetry” by choosing from word banks and existing famous works like “America the Beautiful” and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream.” Kids can pull up a famous work or the word bank, find words that inspire them, and arrange them into an original poem!
Trading Cards App With this ReadWriteThink app, kids and teens can create trading cards for fictional people and places, real people and places, objects, and Events. Imagine the fun of having kids create trading cards for favorite holiday characters and places. How about making trading cards as place cards for a holiday dinner—one card for each family member! Going on a family trip? Make a card for each place you stop. The possibilities are endless!
Download Apps for Other Content Areas
For other content areas, try these apps and reviews to find tools that will encourage kids and teens to learn while exploring their new iPads:
Illuminations has created a range of Mathematics Apps including the games Math Concentration, Deep Sea Duel, and Okta’s Rescue.
Science NetLinks reviews STEM-related apps for both the iPad and the Android.
Nat Geo Mobile offers apps, games, mobile video, and more. Everything for a geography explorer could ever want.
Build an App!
If you’re working with teens, also look at The Verizon Innovative App Challenge, which provides the opportunity for middle school and high school students, working with a faculty advisor, to use their STEM knowledge, their ingenuity, and their creativity to come up with an original mobile app concept that incorporates STEM and addresses a need or problem in their school or community.
Earlier this year, I spent some time learning and posting about Connected Learning, in particular in the context of the college writing and literature classroom. Most of my posts focus on trying to define what Connected Learning is and thinking about how the strategy would work with college students in programs that often have strict guidelines about what courses must cover.
Here is a round-up of those posts, most of which appeared on the Bedford/St. Martin’s Bits blog:
I returned to my Connected Learning notes today to prepare for a discussion with Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold, and Jon Barilone on the future of Connected Learning and how to grow and expand the movement. As I reflected, I kept returning to the same issues that made explaining and recommending Connected Learning so difficult for me:
I want to create a version of the definitions, the strategies, and the reasons that they are valuable in approachable language that meets the needs
of busy teachers who do not have the time to do extensive research,
of the families who see students engaged in non-traditional activities and wonder why this is an effective system,
of administrators who want to understand how these experiences will help students meet curriulum goals, and
of students who push back from these strategies and who need a better understanding of why teachers are choosing these ways to teach.
I want to better understand how various learning strategies relate to each other, where they overlap, and how to explain when and where Connected Learning is the most effective strategy. During the various webinars I attended in 2012 and in my reading elsewhere, I encountered a variety of terms: Connected Learning, project-based learning, problem-based learning, gamification of learning, participatory learning, participatory culture, and so forth. I need resources, even a simple glossary, to help me understand them all.
I would like to have a collection of position statements, rationales, and pathways to support teachers who are trying to get started. I would love to be able to provide some responses that teachers can use when they are asked questions at the strategy. Knowing in my heart that this is the right approach doesn’t help much when I’m trying to convince someone to adopt Connected Learning.
Finally, and most significantly, I wish I had the funding to pursue all these documents that I want to write. It’s so frustrating to have an idea of the kinds of documents and resources teachers need and not to be in a position where I can create them because I need to pursue work that will give me a paycheck.
Hi, I’m Traci Gardner, known in most circles as Tengrrl. I’ve been exploring and writing about the best ways to teach composition using digital technology for over 20 years. You may have come here because you’re looking for my Lists of Ten or because you know my work on the ReadWriteThink website. You can also find my daily collection of links to news stories about technology and the teaching of writing, literacy, and literature. You can read more on my About page, or connect with me on one of the networks below. Thanks for visiting the site.
I failed at #WEXMOOC this week. Though admittedly, I feel a little tricked by the nature of the MOOC (defined generally) as well. Our second assignment asked us to reflect on our identities as writers in relationship to three other writers. The assignment gave these instructions: 
Take poetry on the road with this ReadWriteThink app. Kids and teens can create “found poetry” by choosing from word banks and existing famous works like “America the Beautiful” and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream.” Kids can pull up a famous work or the word bank, find words that inspire them, and arrange them into an original poem!
With this ReadWriteThink app, kids and teens can create trading cards for fictional people and places, real people and places, objects, and Events. Imagine the fun of having kids create trading cards for favorite holiday characters and places. How about making trading cards as place cards for a holiday dinner—one card for each family member! Going on a family trip? Make a card for each place you stop. The possibilities are endless!
Hi, I’m Traci Gardner, known in most circles as Tengrrl. I’ve been exploring and writing about the best ways to teach composition using digital technology for over 20 years. You may have come here because you’re looking for my 
