my #clmooc journey so far

Our project for the third week of #clmooc was to make a map of some kind. I took the first option and created this map of my journey in this course so far. If the text size is too small, click on the Prezi logo to see the full-width version.

Audience, Peer Review, and the MOOC

More empty classroom stuff, UMBCI 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.

 

[Photo: More empty classroom stuff, UMBC by sidewalk flying, on Flickr]

 

The Tiresome Insistence of the MOOC

Say "MOOC"... 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.

[Photo: Say "MOOC"… by audreywatters, on Flickr]