Our provost is going to run a Moodle stress test tomorrow, and
he says he has contacted students telling them to log in and check to see if it
all works. What throws me off is that he tells us (faculty) to include a “nonacademic
interactive element.” Go figure what that means! Next time I
see him I’m going to tell him to do something about his word choice. Darn
it.
I am hoping that this forum will serve the purpose. And I
have to tell you that I am wondering how you are all doing, but I will save you
all the way-back-in-the-60s-old-man wisdom. You all are probably
adjusting nicely. Me? I’ve been taking my dogs on long walks around
campus. I think I may have told you all (ye-aw–remember the Scots
dialect variant of Old English “eow” for you? Look it up if you
are bored.) that I snatched a pit-bull puppy out of the traffic on 544.
Thanks to her, my joy index is matching Dow Jones, but in the opposite
direction, at an all-time high. She has adopted my mean old Bernie as her
father, and he seems to have accepted her as his “daughter.”
That’s nice, but sometimes they square off against each other:
Bernie waits for his chance and strikes! Knock out Bernie! Champion of 630 Rusty Road!
Below: Ray on dogs, motorcycles, and “the most disgusting people that ever crawled out of a hole.”
Donna Corriher, lecturer in the Department of English, incorporated some fun into her English 102 course when she made the shift from in-classroom to the online atmosphere. In this piece, she explains how the study of argument and rhetoric became a classroom debate about the relative merits of two iconic superheroes.
Every
semester, in English 102, I have my students debate which superhero, Batman or
Superman, has most impacted American society. Although it may not appear to be
the best, most collegial topic to debate, it becomes so because I require
students to find only peer-reviewed articles in support of their character,
using Kimbel Libary’s databases. You would be surprised at the amount of
scholarly research that has been published about those characters.
During
a “typical” semester, I allow students to draw the name of the
superhero they will “represent.” I allow them to work in groups as
they find articles, using their laptops in the classroom. Five students are
assigned to be the jurors and judges, and they are required to research both
superheroes.
Since we
had to shift our classes online, I tweaked the debate. I assigned students to
teams (groups) within Moodle, and provided each team with a private forum. I
then assigned each team a superhero, AND two databases in Kimbel. Each student
on each team had to discover one article and post the MLA citation for and an
excerpt from that article into a team forum. Then, the team was required to
read each other’s articles and “reply” to each other in the forum or
communicate with each other via email to determine one great article to submit
to a “Courtroom Forum” as that team’s “evidence.” I, the
judge, selected the six, in my opinion, best, most credible articles and posted
them into another Moodle tool, “Choice.” I listed the pertinent info
about the articles and required all students to vote/choose which article they
felt to be the best article, considering Ethos, Logos, and Pathos; i.e., the
most convincing article. Students voted anonymously. The winner was determined
to be Batman.
I used
the time restrictions on Moodle for all tools, forums and choice.
To
announce the winner, I created a PowerPoint that included cartoons and music,
acknowledgements of team members and articles, and, eventually, named the
winner.
This
assignment allows students to actively engage with the core skills of Critical Reading,
Writing, and Information Literacy. Students
practice using the basic rhetorical tools of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
as they determine the best article in support of their superhero. Students read
articles written for a specific audience, scholars, and do so in a way that not
only engages them, but also surprises them and evokes curiosity. They learn how
to locate credible source materials using sophisticated databases, thus laying
eyes on the extent of databases, disciplines, and fields of study. They must
critically read the articles, analyzing the material as they seek out the very
best quote that they can find to submit in support of a particular superhero.
Students
learn the value and importance of group work as they communicate within the
forums. The forums are timed, so students must practice self-discipline and
timeliness in order to successfully submit an article to the Courtroom forum.
Student
grades were based upon whether or not they individually submitted to the
initial Team forum, and provided all of the required information in a timely
manner—a correctly formatted MLA citation (reinforcing the necessity of
providing source information), and an excerpt from the article (reinforcing the
need to correctly format in-text citations).
The
only aspect of the assignment that I will change is to weight the assignment
more heavily. The debate was a low-stakes assignment, and I graded student
submissions within the Participation category in my gradebook, a category that
did not seriously impact grades, and thus, some students did not participate at
all. I also attribute some lack of participation due to my offering extensions
on most assignments for the semester, due to our unusual circumstances, and
some students put it off until it was too late.
Fifty-three
of sixty students participated. I had hoped for 100% participation, but was
pleasantly surprised that two students who had basically disengaged from the
course suddenly reappeared and submitted articles. One of the students who had
selected a winning article sent me an email within minutes after I announced
the results, asking me to vote for his article. Students were waiting, enjoying
a little competition.
It’s
amazing what a little comic relief will do for you.
Kris McIntyre, lecturer in the Department of Theatre, took a moment to share her thoughts and experiences transferring her instruction to a fully online model. On the way, she made great use of her professional network, discovering a wide array of materials available that guided and inspired her. Ultimately, she passed on that collaborative spirit and approach, offering her own expertise to other instructors and teachers. Meanwhile, her students keep her busy and motivated as she continues her innovative practices in teaching acting and voice in an online environment.
From Professor McIntyre:
Welcome to “A View from a Desk”! I teach in the Theatre
Department, which you can imagine makes for an interesting transition into
online teaching. This semester, my academic load consisted of teaching two core
courses: THEA 130, Principles of Dramatic Analysis, and THEA 149, Acting for
the Non-Major; and three majors courses: two sections of THEA 242, Vocal
Production, and one section of THEA 142, The Speaking Voice. In addition, I was
working with BA senior Shaughnessy Burns on overseeing her direction of the
Second Stage Production of The Women of
Lockerbie, which was also to be her Honors Thesis project.
In recent years, I completed the Distance Learning program
through CeTEAL, as well as received a grant from the COOL office to create
Dramatic Analysis as a fully online course, so I initially felt prepared to go
to online instruction with my literature course. Moodle has been integrated
into all of my courses for years, and knew I would be proficient in making ECHO
360 videos of me teaching from home, uploading audio-guided Power Point
lectures, creating assignments for my students to be able to upload videos and
journals and connect with their peers, and in linking library resources and
videos to easily supplement their learning.
But how to teach my performance classes was another thing
altogether. Theatre is an interactive discipline, and I needed to see and hear
my students while working on their monologues to help them clarify choices,
adjust their posture, make distinctions in articulating sounds, and other
factors. How was I going to teach scansion and iambic pentameter to 53 voice
students, many of whom had not performed Shakespearean text before?
Just when I reached the peak of my consternation, which
literally consisted of walking around my house saying, “How do I teach voice
and acting classes online?!?”, I noticed that hundreds of theatre friends
across the country were on Facebook expressing the same quandary. It prompted
the creation of the Theatre Education Distance Learning (Resource Sharing and
Support Network), where every day people were adding hundreds of links to
online teaching ideas, portals, software, streaming services for theatre…you
name it! It not only made me feel far less alone, but I gleaned many ideas for
how to maintain a sense of connectivity and interaction among my courses. And
the theatre community world-wide has truly come together to provide free
streaming videos of world-renowned theatre, music, and dance performances for
educators, as well as all arts lovers. One common theme that has come from this
that keeps motivating me is, “When the world is in a crisis, and we are looking
for a little bit of connection to our humanity, where else would we turn but to
the arts?”
So, in that week we were given to prepare for going fully
online, I decided to turn my angst into assistance. I work for innumerable
secondary theatre teachers through my service as the Vice President of the
Southeastern Theatre Conference and as the South Carolina Theatre Convention’s
auditions coordinator, and I told them that if any of them could use a “guest
teacher,” I would be happy to host a class for them. I have since held sessions
on Shakespearean text, how to audition for college theatre programs, selecting
a monologue, and applying tactics to text work, and I’ll be doing many more of
these before the school year has concluded.
This thinking helped me to prepare better for my own
courses, which are now a combination of prepared lectures that I can upload,
ECHO 360 video tutorials of me teaching them a specific skill, video and
homework submissions from them that I can correct and scan back to them for
review, and my favorite part: Zoom classes. Each week my students and I log
into Zoom, an online meeting portal in which every person who logs in can be
seen and heard in real time, and I answer their questions, watch and provide
feedback on their monologues, and just check in with them as human beings. It is
now the highlight of my week, although I am limiting it to one hour a week with
each class so as to not overload them with obligations. They love being able to
check in with their classmates and see each other’s work and progress.
Zoom has also been the way we have been maintaining
committee meetings, watching the teaching demos of job search candidates, and
weekly faculty meetings.
While I would normally be working long hours every day due to rehearsals in the evenings after my days spent teaching, I am now working long hours because most lessons must be taught in four different ways, and the amount of emails from students has grown incredibly. I have managed to maintain my sanity by turning my spare room into an office, complete with a spare bed-turned-filing-system, regular breaks for walks with my family, and a never-ending supply of snacks! And while my previous office mate in the Edwards building, Shawna Roessler in the Department of English, was a fabulous person to share a space and time with, my new office mate, my miniature dachshund Fiona, is incredibly adorable, and it has made my students happy to see her in the background of our Zoom meetings.
Jen
Boyle, professor in the Department of English and co-creator of the Digital
Culture and Design program, is a prolific scholar as well as a dedicated
professor. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from Brown University,
the Folger Institute, and the Dibner Library for History of Science and
Technology, as well as CCU’s 2018 HTC Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer.
Boyle
took a moment to discuss her teaching, scholarly, and home lives during the
time of COVID-19.
While
she’s familiar and experienced in the online teaching environment, other
elements of Boyle’s professional roles – such as coordinating both the B.A. in
digital culture and design and the minor in new media and digital culture —
have posed challenges.
“Currently,
I am teaching 2 sections of ENGL 231: New Media, Film, and Digital Culture; the
media unit of WGST 105 for three weeks; and DCD 488 Capstone,” said Boyle. “I
teach online quite a bit (I just completed a COOL grant to retool my ENGL 231
class for the online environment!), but other aspects of my work as a program
director have been more challenging in the online environment. For example, I
do a lot of one-on-one advising with students. I am using Zoom to create
conversation possibility spaces, despite being remote. I think when people hear
“digital” in our program or professional titles that it means we
embrace the virtual everywhere, when in reality, our studies and teaching
instruct us on the limits of online interactions. One of the positives that may
emerge from this very difficult time is a more nuanced conversation about what
we can do with digital spaces — and what we can’t do.”
Boyle
talked a bit about her academic field and current projects, including how they
impact the classroom.
“I teach and write about media transformation and
theories of mediation. My books and digital installations explore ‘new’ media objects and performance, bodies and technology, and
the mediated flows of objects and information through networks, from the
seventeenth century to the digital present,” said Boyle. “I am currently
writing a textbook (under contract with Palgrave Macmillan) on approaches to
teaching with new media and working with archival and regional collections as
an alternative learning model. The textbook will be both in print and a digital
open resource that professors and universities can utilize to import project
based new media curriculum.”
And,
during all that time at home? What’s Boyle been up to?
“I am reading and writing, BUT, also catching up on all those films and series I have been wanting to work into my classes (minor binging: Black Mirror; BBC detective series; movies I missed),” said Boyle. “I am also cooking–a lot! Cooking is one of those activities that is solitary but always connected in some way with the idea of togetherness, of breaking bread with others. Even when that fuller scenario is not possible, cooking keeps me connected to those ideas, those future get togethers.”
Christina Selby, associate professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Culture, is keeping her academic, scholarly, and family lives all spinning during the COVID-19 isolation period.
From her home office, Selby teaches two upper-level health communication classes and a communication capstone course. Though she’s experienced in online teaching, she’s expanded her pedagogical repertoire this semester.
“I have
learned new tools through this process that have allowed me to interact on a
more personal level with all of my students, especially in the virtual format,”
said Selby.
Selby’s scholarly field is health communication, and her work is quantitative, survey-based research. Her current project is on children and eating habits – a particularly relevant topic these days of home-based cooking and eating.
“Right now, I
am knee-deep in research about factors contributing to healthy/unhealthy eating
and picky eating among children,” said Selby. “My colleagues and I are
wondering, who has the control over children’s diets? Is it the parents
(or caretakers), the kids themselves, the media, or is it some other influence?
Who has the most influence – female or male caregivers? How is this
influence different for younger and older children? We are currently
digging into our data and drawing some interesting conclusions.”
A mother of
two, Selby is also becoming experienced in home schooling as well as spending
time with family and (one at a time) friends.
“I have currently been brushing up on cold-blooded and
warm-blooded animals (or some other topic that I have not thought about in
decades) while homeschooling my second grader; social distance walking outside
with a friend; cooking dinner every night, which I previously did not have time
to do; spending time with my husband and kids (we are usually pulled in some
many different directions); and establishing new norms and a new routine.”
