8/14/2019 Gerald Graff

1/4

Annual Activity Report, School Year 2006-2007, Terry Elliott

In the 2006-2007 school year I taught all of the general education English classes.They continue to prove a fresh challenge to both my teaching methods and my

teaching content. I doubt I will ever be a burnout. A rust-out, perhaps, but nevera burnout.

English 100

In English 100 I continue to require in-class and out-of-class essays using variousdiscourse forms. I allow for constant revision, but with an increasing emphasis onsignificance. In other words I am requiring that students truly re-view what theyhave written in light of comments and class work so that revisions are at minimummore in line with the publishing worlds 20% new material requirement.

I discovered Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graffs They Say, I Saythis pastyear and find it to be a revelation. When my enhanced 100 students begin the fallsemester, many have no clue as to the tribal rules of academic writing. They dontknow the game and they dont know the moves. The idea that reading might be aconversation to which they are a party is new and strange to them, but TS/ISclues them in on some of the biggest secrets. The templates that the authorsprovide are a real comfort to students who are thrashing about for something tosay in a way that wont get them bloodied on their papers. This book provides a

way out of this difficulty that makes sense and a way in that is useful for all of theiruniversity writing contexts.

I am beginning to move toward using weblogs more in my classes. Their capacityfor generating public writing available for public comment is unparalleled. One ofmy arguments for creating a university-wide blog presence was that Blackboardcouldnt do this revolutionary job of providing a printing press for each studentwhile blogs can.

Last year I confined much of my blog work to the students semester long I-

Search projects. Students used the weblogs to thrash out their topics, togenerate first drafts, to get feedback from others, and to sometimes get responsesfrom outside the classroom community. This year I plan on doing this again, but Ialso will be creating a class weblog, which will have its own rotating editorialboard. This board will gather information from their classmates weblogs and fromother sources relevant to the class community to be published on the classweblog.

8/14/2019 Gerald Graff

2/4

Lack of confidence is the mark of most of my enhanced 100 students. I hope thisresponsibility will give them greater facility in their ability to enter into even moreinteresting conversations both inside our academic community and out.

All of the new initiatives are made possible by our new lab and by our roomassignment there. The document camera alone makes for interesting newimprovisations every day.

English 200

I spent 2006-2007 totally online with English 200 and I was totally uncomfortable.I thought that my experience with weblogs and other social writing platformsonline (forums, wikis, etc.) would give me a leg up on this online business. In some

ways it did, but mostly I discovered that teaching online is exactly the same asteaching face-to-face. It is about creating communities.

I discovered that my greatest strength as a teacher in the classroom had to betransformed. I am able to read a class in a F2F setting quite readily much as asalesman sizes up a potential customer. Their body language always gives themaway and that thin slice of information from the first few minutes of class alwaysstood me in good stead. It should have been obvious that I would not have thatrich vein of data in an online class, but it was still a shock to me.

I spent the better part of the year re-configuring my teaching style for this newand alien community of learners. Teaching a winter term literature course onlinehelped accelerate the process by allowing me to, as Richard Saul Wurman puts it,Fail faster. This sounds bad, but it really wasnt. I think of online teaching lastyear as similar to the hundred little mid-course corrections a pilot makes in thecourse of a flight. The passengers get to their destination, but rarely even knowabout all the changes.

But I knew I had to have a better plan this year. This summer I went to two

professional development courses that helped in very concrete ways. The firstwas an online seminar via the Sloan Consortium (http://www.sloan-c.org/) titledWorkload Management Strategies for Online Educators. This course hasprovided me with dozens of immediately useful techniques to help create thatonline community.

http://www.sloan-c.org/http://www.sloan-c.org/http://www.sloan-c.org/

8/14/2019 Gerald Graff

3/4

For example, my students always had a hard time gathering all of the assignmentsfor the week into a clear view of what needed doing and when. I put thedeadlines down in what I assumed was clear view and assumed it was their job topull it together. Wrong.That approach was not disastrous, but it was hardly seamless. I found out a simpleapproach at Sloan-C that solved the problem. I now create a simple chart, whichstudents can print out and check off as they complete the assignments. Thesecharts have the added benefit of providing an excellent way to plan content and tosee at a glance what my weeks workload will be. As usual, whats good for thestudent is good for the instructor.

The second PD course was Quality Matters (http://qualitymatters.org/) OnlineCourse Peer Review Program. This one-day course made me realize that I wasleaving out important, navigational and learner engagement tools out of my online

course. I also was re-introduced to the continuous improvement model that is atthe root of all creative dissatisfaction. The QM rubric was thorough and useful inhelping me re-view my own course with student eyes. I plan to undergo arigorous, format review of my Introduction to Literature class this spring so that Ican become a reviewer myself at WKU.

English 300

English 300 has always been a bit of an enigma for me. I understand our

departmental goals and I am happy to work toward them, but it always seemedthere was something missing from my research emphasis. When I walked throughthe doors of our new computer lab, Room 102, I knew what it wasthe Internetand its connected power. Even though I was using the same text and much thesame syllabus, I felt it was a completely different course, much more relevant anduseful to my students.

I began to emphasize new tools for old tasks. For example, I taught students howto gather information in new ways. I demonstrated how to use USB drives tomake their information portable. Let me explain. The problem many university

students have with gathering research information online is that the tools theyhave in one lab might not be the tools they have at home or somewhere else oncampus. If students put the browser, Firefox, on their own USB drive, then theycan add any number of useful tools to that browser which might not be availablein our labs. Once installed these extensions can be used anywhere that yourUSB drive can be used. That means that hard won research travels with thestudent and can be added to anywhere.

http://qualitymatters.org/http://qualitymatters.org/

8/14/2019 Gerald Graff

4/4

I always taught the use of these tools within the context of English 300 and neverfelt that they stole time from the larger goals of the course. On the contrary, Iknow they increased my efficiency as well as theirs. At the same time weintroduce them to tools they will be expected to know in their work worlds.

Many of these tools have odd sounding namesBloglines, Zotero, Diigo,de.licio.us, Google Alert and Notebookbut their function is to increase theefficacy of student research, learning, and writing. It is a rare tool that enables usto do more and do it better in the same amount of time so I will likely use thetools more often not less often.

Conclusion

Last year was my third one teaching at Western. I feel that my world here ismostly mine to define. I appreciate that gift, but I never know when somethingnew will re-order my place in that world. Take the new critical thinking initiative. Iam finding many of the suggestions from Dr. Pauls remarks working their way intomy courses. I am beginning to respect group work more and am teaching itbetter. I know that this three-year initiative will prove invaluable to me personallyand professionally. May we be cursed with interesting times? I cant wait.