While listening to some NPR chatter about the latest Emmy Awards, I was a little startled to hear that there were some four to five hundred television programs either currently, or soon to be, on air.  I thought I would look this up for confirmation, and discovered on Wikipedia (I apologize for the source, but it was far the most relevant and useful for my purposes) that there are some 1,266 television programs currently in production, including such shows as Meet the Press (start date 1947) and the CBS Evening News (start date 1948), which go back almost seventy years. Wow. More detailed analysis of the data shows, not surprisingly, that the number of new programs per annum really begins to ratchet up in the past five years, as new content producers in new media (like Netflix) get into the game.  The explosion in the sheer number of TV programs has apparently caused some concern among critics that it will be impossible to produce any really great shows with so many competing for talent and attention (nota bene: this, of course, has long been a complaint about mass culture itself), along with worries among producers that their productions will wither in the shadows of a cluttered forest of competitors. But that isn't what interests me. What does interest me is the question of what effect, if any, this mindboggling breadth of television programming may have on cultural consciousness.  A result of years of niche marketing in American mass entertainment, as well as of technological innovation (from cable to the Internet), the TV population explosion is part of an even larger historical moment that has seen the fragmentation of mass culture (often referred to as a "common culture") into ever more customized niche market groups.  To take one prominent, and often discussed, example: when the CBS Evening News premiered in 1947, it was the sole televised news source for the entire country; now, as the traditional network news programs continue their long slide, most viewers either get their news from sources (FOX, MSNBC, etc.) that package the news as their audiences want it packaged, or from infotainment hybrids (The Daily Show, Glenn Beck, Hannity), or, with increasing frequency, from Twitter, Facebook, and other user generated Internet platforms.  One might say—to modify an old 60's saying—we now have a system of different news for different views.  Goodnight, Chet. In a similar fashion, when there were only three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) broadcasting entertainment— all of which shut down late at night (I'm old enough to remember seeing that famous Indian-head test pattern on the screen when nothing was on)—there really wasn't very much television choice.  With so few programs to choose from, everyone pretty much watched the same handful of shows, and being a Nielsen #1 (like I love Lucy, or, later, The Beverly Hillbillies) really meant something. But don't worry, I'm not going to get nostalgic about all that here.  Those weren't the good old days; they were only different.  And after all, a monolithic news regime can broadcast stories that are little more than propaganda, while restricted television choice tends to reflect the ideology and interests of the dominant class that controls it.  As the ad that introduced the Apple MacIntosh to the world during the 1984 Superbowl intimated, lots of consumer choice (in the news, in entertainment, in information in general) has a lot of liberating potential.  But still, there is a difference, and differences are what mark moments of cultural significance. With a "niche culture" replacing the old "common culture," we can expect changes in consciousness.  What those changes are, or will be, are not clear, but we can try to discern them by reading the signs that today's entertainments are sending.  In this respect it is significant to me that the record shattering award winner at the Emmys this year was HBO's Game of Thrones, a niche-marketed blood bath dominated by personal betrayal and sexual violence. It is equally significant that the only cable show that can beat Game of Thrones in the Nielsens presents an apocalyptic world wherein your own child can go "zombie" on you, and need to be shot.  Not many years ago House, MD proclaimed, "everyone lies"; now, the motto of some of today's most popular series could be "trust no one." Has the fragmentation of American mass culture caused this apparent mistrust of everyone and everything?  No; correlation is not causation.  But, to borrow from the Frankfurt School's ideas about cultural "mediation," we might wonder whether both the niche-marketed proliferation of television programming and the appearance of such desperate shows as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead mediate a certain crisis in our society, forces that are pulling us apart as a nation rather than together. Stay tuned. ... View more

I wanted to spend a couple of posts talking about the Syrian refugee crisis, particularly given the enormous human costs involved.  And I thought I would start with Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy whose drowning placed a disturbingly young face on this crisis. Photographs of Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach are stark and quite disturbing—perhaps too much so for a first year writing classroom.  I’d like to suggest, then, that one way to teach about Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis is to focus on the ways in which the world has reacted to the tragedy of his death. Art is one powerful way to explore the impact of Kurdi’s death. You might start by having students use a search engine to locate images using the terms “Aylan Kurdi art.” Students can explore images that move them more closely through this approach while also getting a nice, quick overview of how people have represented this boy.  Be warned that even with a focused search some of the original images might appear in the results. Several essays in Emerging can frame this exercise.  You might also want to use the material on reading images and visual texts in the introduction.  Then, consider using Arwa Aburawa’s “Veiled Threat: The Guerrilla Graffiti of Princess Hijab” explores the guerilla art of Princess Hijab and in particular the complex intersection of art and politics.  Though it’s never quite clear whether Princess Hijab’s art is politically radical or conservative, that the images can be read both ways enriches a discussion about the political circulation of visual images that could be then fruitfully brought to bear on the art around Aylan Kurdi. Rachel Kadish’s “Who Is This Man, and Why Is He Screaming?” primarily focuses on the intellectual property rights of an image of Kadish’s cousin Noam Galai.  But that the image has circulated so widely—and again with such varied meaning—offers students additional tools to think about the ways in which the art around Aylan Kurdi circulates through social and electronic media and the ways in which those images are used for a variety of political purposes. Steve Mumford’s “The Things They Carry” is one of Emerging’s visual texts, focused on war.  Mumford offers students a direct connection to the art around Kurdi and invites them to explore the ways in which art can contribute to peace. These essays make a strong core focused on art and politics. If you’re looking for other readings that might work in such a sequence, consider Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “Making Conversation” and “The Primacy of Practice,” which focuses on the obligations each of us has in a hyperconnected world; Francis Fukuyama’s “Human Dignity,” whose central and titular concept provides an ethical framework for looking at Kurdi; or David Savage and Urvhasi Vaid’s “It Gets Better” and “Action Makes it Better,” which offer a model for moving from social media to social change. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

We sometimes display an encouraging if not particularly forceful approach to handbooks. We might require one, or recommend one, or recommend any of several, either at our individual course level or as a writing program policy. We tell students that “It’s there if you need it.” We might reinforce the “as you need it” model with our marginal comments on student papers, sometimes encouraging students to “Look it up in your handbook.” We then go about teaching our courses, with little structured use of the handbook either in classroom or out. Some students figure out it’s not really all that important, and what they need to know is on the Web anyway. Others buy it and wonder why, selling it back if they can at the end of the term and taking a loss. I saw a very different approach when I visited the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign a few weeks ago and met with directors of the international writing program, a large program that delivers courses for an increasingly important population, international students, for whom English is a second language. Directors Jin Kim and Cassandra Rosado are faculty in the linguistics department. Linguistics divides teaching responsibilities with the English Department, which offers writing courses to native speakers. These program directors take the handbook seriously. As the author, I am thrilled they have chosen to use Writer’s Help, Version 1.0 and now, this fall, Version 2.0. But I am also impressed with their very methodical and intentional uses of a required handbook. What’s different? They require students to buy the text, meaning, in this case, access to the online site, good for four years. They train their instructors in their pre-term workshops to use the chosen books effectively (and show them how easy it is to determine if students have purchased access). They’ve created an in-house Web site to support the use of Writer’s Help, with technical documentation and useful information about how to use the resource. They provide model assignments to their instructors and TAs, showing how to weave the handbook content into the syllabus and into specific assignments. They require several common assignments over the first few weeks that take students into the handbook, help them learn to search productively, and demonstrate the value of the resource. Cassandra and Jin also take advantage of Bedford’s technical and instructional support staff to get the most out of the required text, customizing it for their specific program and their own students. They show instructors how the work of one semester and the creation of a syllabus and assignments can be carried over to the next term, and how they can use a source file for a course to build multiple sections. They have figured out ways as program administrators to create a standard syllabus, which can then be inherited by all the sections and customized at the section level by individual instructors. They seek analytics from Bedford, so they know what students are searching on, what is being emphasized in courses, and how to continue to create rich interaction among instructors, students, and the text. I used the terms methodical and intentional above. I think that captures their approach. If we require students to pay for books and instructional resources, to my mind we have an obligation to show students the value of the resources. Toward that end, we should be methodical and intentional in our uses of course resources. Bedford provides strong support for instructors who want to create the best value for students from Bedford products. You will find links throughout the Macmillan English Community to instructor resources. My Bits coauthors and I always try to share best practices. Sure, we authors all love to sell books, but even more, we love to see our books used to good advantage. Check out these links if you want to keep thinking about “using the book.” From me: On Using the Handbook Campus-Wide Handbook Adoption Making Use of Review Comments From Nancy Sommers: Use a Handbook, Start a Habit From Andrea Lunsford: So, Where's the Index? ... View more

Last month, I wrote about the importance of Bringing Up Accessibility as we plan and teach our courses. One of the things that I knew I needed to improve in my own course materials was the way that I talked about providing help for those who need it. After reading Tara Wood and Shannon Madden’s “Suggested Practices for Syllabus Accessibility Statements” on the Kairos PraxisWiki I knew I had to do a better job. The Original Accessibility Policy Up until this term, I used this basic statement that covered my official obligations, telling students where to find support on campus: On reflection, I’m quite ashamed of that passage. Not only is it fairly legalistic in tone, it even ends with passive voice. Even worse, it was buried in the policies section of the syllabus (example from Summer 2015). Without question, I can do better than that. Placement of My New Accessibility Policy The first change I made was to move a short statement to the top of the sidebar on my course websites. No longer would a student have to search the site to find out how to get extra support in the course. I decided to say, “I will try to provide what you need,” rather than “I will.” Not knowing what a student might ask for, I thought that the addition of “try to” would avoid making a promise I couldn’t keep. The result of this new placement is that students see the statement at the top of every page on the site. I hope that foregrounding the policy in this way makes it clear that I am serious about helping them if they need assistance. Further, if something comes up later in the term, and they need assistance, they can easily find the link to more information. An Expanded Accessibility Policy My original policy stuck to the basics, focusing on sending the student to obtain official documentation. It provided no details on the things that a student in the course would really need. Students want to know the concrete details on how things work in my classes, things that the Services for Students with Disabilities office can’t tell them. My revised policy is organized as a series of frequently asked questions. Some are questions that have come up in the past, and others are things that I realized I needed to add after conversations with colleagues this summer at the West Virginia University 2015 Summer Seminar: Access/ibility in Digital Publishing. Here’s the list of questions I have included: Future Improvements to the Policy I know there is more that I can do to ensure my policy covers the typical questions students have about getting help in the classroom. As questions or situations come up in the class, I am adding them to a list I’ll use when I revise the policies for next term. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I had a student show up on crutches, thanks to a badly sprained ankle. I realized that I needed to add some details about emergencies that come up after that first week of class. With some additional observation and research on making classes accessible, I’m sure I can make these policies even better next term. Can you help me? What does your accessibility policy say? How do you ensure students get the support they need? Please leave me a comment below and let me know. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Law Bohannon (see end of post for bio). As regular readers of Andrea’s Multimodal Mondays know, I often like to disrupt traditional notions of instructor-student communication and create new dialogic opportunities for providing feedback on students’ writing processes. I am calling my post this week a “reverse assignment,” because it is intended for instructors to complete in service to students and to provide a different experience for students as they “read” feedback on assignments. I also find a great deal of pleasure in turning multimodal writing lenses back on us as instructors! Context for Assignment Multimodal Feedback Loop is a reverse assignment, completed by the instructor in an online class to create dialogic growth and community in a class.  As part of a graduate digital rhetoric course, students submitted a blog assignment and received multimodal instructor feedback in the form of narrated screen capture videos. The students also had the opportunity to tag the instructor in the feedback forum and “talk back” about their writing.  Reverse Assignment Students submit any digital writing assignment; my students submitted research blogs. Instructors use a screen capture to record feedback based on assignment guidelines. Measurable Learning Objectives Assess student writing using multimodal elements Synthesize content-meaning through dialogic writing and shared semantics Background Reading for Students and Instructors Acts of reading and viewing visual texts are ongoing processes for attaining learning goals in dialogic, digital writing assignments. Below, I have listed a few foundational texts. You will no doubt have your own to enrich this list. The St. Martin’s Handbook: Section 18b: Planning Web-based texts Writer's Help 2.0 for Lunsford Handbooks: “At a Glance: Guidelines for Creating an Online Text” The Everyday Writer: Section 3a: Plan online assignments, including At a Glance box: “Guidelines for Creating an Online Text” Writing in Action: Section 6a: Plan online assignments, including Checklist box: “Guidelines for Creating an Online Text” EasyWriter: Section 4a: Planning online assignments, including Checklist box: “Guidelines for Creating an Online Text” After the Assignment Is Submitted: Instructor Action After students submit their digital writing assignments, instructors access the assignments and pull them up on a computer screen.  Using screen capture software or applications, instructors record their feedback as real-time audio accompanying mouse movements on students’ on-screen blogs. You may already have a screen recorder installed on your computer; here are a few free ones: Cam Studio (open source); Jing; QuickTime; TinyTake. There are many apps for smart phones as well.  After recording feedback, instructors can either save the multimodal feedback and send it to students as files or upload feedback videos to a private YouTube Channel, where students can securely access them using their YouTube usernames or email addresses. I embed my feedback videos in our course learning management system (LMS), which offers a loop of electronic communication based on the feedback. Video Link : 1192 An example feedback recording that reviews a student's blog. Reflections on the Reverse Assignment – Students I have found that students appreciate my multimodal feedback, even though some of my initial videos were quite elementary.  Some of the comments I received included praise for differentiated communication and gratitude for the attempt to participate as a colleague in multimodal writing.  I have not yet received any negative feedback. Below are some student reflections: My Reflection I tried this instructor reverse assignment because I wanted to experience creating multimodal writing along with students and because I wanted to revise dialogic communication with my students, especially in an online course. While I did spend more time recording and uploading screen captures and audio, providing a multimodal feedback loop also gave me the opportunity to experience digital composing just like my students. My practice also encouraged me to reflect on my own writing practices and actively participate in community-driven, digital conversations about writing. Try this reverse assignment and let me know what you think! Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! Jeanne Law Bohannon is an Assistant Professor in the Digital Writing and Media Arts (DWMA) department at Kennesaw State University. She believes in creating democratic learning spaces, where students become stakeholders in their own rhetorical growth though authentic engagement in class communities. Her research interests include evaluating digital literacies, critical pedagogies, and New Media theory; performing feminist rhetorical recoveries; and growing informed and empowered student scholars. Reach Jeanne at: jeanne_bohannon@kennesaw.edu and www.rhetoricmatters.org. ... View more

This post first appeared on August 10, 2015. Playwriting teachers occasionally encounter students interested in musical theatre writing.  Unfortunately, they may feel that they do not have the skills or time and may, unwittingly, discourage potential authors.  To combat this tendency, I have lately made a concerted effort to nurture students interested in writing musicals.  After all, one could argue that musical theatre is where theatre is healthiest.  Musicals represent a theatrical genre that does not need to justify its existence:  Broadway continues, thanks to the musical, and musical plays sell seats in high school and community theatres across the nation.  We should, therefore, not discourage those who want to write in this form. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to musical theatre writing is that scripts require many separate skills that hardly ever reside in the same person.  They are usually written in teams—book writer (script writer), lyricist, and composer.  Whereas most playwrights would be perfectly happy writing the script—and, possibly, the lyrics—it is unusual that they would have the musical expertise to write all those darned notes.  Musical theatre writing then would best be taught as an interdisciplinary endeavor—music and creative writing—possibly with students taking different roles within the class.  While I believe that such team-taught courses exist in larger universities, I doubt that the average college would have the resources.  What to do then at a smaller school when faced with a musically-inclined student? From a practical point of view, I do a few things.  First, I lay out the realities:  I am not qualified to teach music theory, but can help with words.  I make sure that the student knows that musicals are extremely time-consuming and usually written in teams.  Second, I urge students to become acquainted with musical theatre literature—especially the integrated book musical, as exemplified by Rodgers and Hammerstein, one of the U.S.A.’s most significant contributions to drama.  I also make a few general statements regarding musical numbers.  I discuss basic formatting:  song lyrics are written as verse, with line breaks, and in all caps.  I describe how songs are used in the integrated book musical:  the action of the play does not stop for the song; rather, the song comes at the height of drama.  An old adage states that what cannot be said in words must be said in song; and what cannot be said in song must be said in dance.  Songs, then, are for intense moments—climaxes and decisions.  Last, I suggest that the student have a melody in mind while writing lyrics:  the melody does not have to be good, but it will allow the student a stronger sense of structure as the lines are written. Usually, with just these bits of advice, students can make forays into musical theatre writing.  Later, more advanced students continue in independent studies with me or with faculty from the Music Department.  Most important, though, is acknowledging that budding musical writers should be encouraged, not discouraged. ... View more

A blog is a public writing space where you share information, thoughts, and ideas that you want to be read by an audience.  Similar to online journals, blogs are only rhetorically successful if their authors are able to draw web traffic to them.  A blog is part of your (or your client's) electronic Identity (e-dentity). Blogs are trending right now as composition spaces that are both dialogic and multimodal in their design and a means of disseminating mass information, corporate training, and innovative ideas for schools and companies alike. I want you to create a simple blog and write SIX blog posts in two spurts that incorporate multimodal elements.  You may use your choice of platform, but if you haven't blogged before, I suggest WordPress( general) or Edublogs (educational).  If your school or company already has a website, you may want to write your posts for those spaces. NOTE:  This assignment has TWO PARTS.  For the first part, submit and provide a link to THREE 800-Word Posts.  For the second part, you will produce and submit a link to THREE 800-word posts, but on different topics.  For Part I, write your posts about your worldview, different research methods, and source selection for a literature review. For Part II, write more about your research design and methods (surveys, interviews, observation, etc). Resources: What is a Blog?   Educational Blogging   Audiences for Educational Blogs   Business Blog  Royalty-Free Music  Dr. Bohannon's Example Assessment:  Grading Criteria Content Item located in Course Content Tab For this assignment: Objective (Purpose): writing about (your choice of topic) for a specific purpose (marketing; promotion; educational communication for parents, students, teachers); or your own defined purpose. Requirements: a. Minimum Word Count: 800 words per post. b. How Many: Minimum of SIX posts. c. Multimodal Elements: visual (video, images), audio (podcast), links AT LEAST ONE IN ADDITION TO TEXT PER POST. Please make sure that your multimodal elements are copyright-free or that you have permission from your company or school to use them. d. Tags at the bottom of each post.  Think about your purpose and audience for each post, then tag each post with at least three keywords.  These keywords will help readers find your post when they search for these keywords on the Internet. e. Reflection:  Post your textual script and link to your blog in the D2L Dropbox for this assignment.  I also want you to write a brief reflection on your experiences with this assignment.  Let me know what you think about the guidelines, the purpose of the assignment, and how I might improve it for future students. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on June 5, 2015. In a blog post titled, “We Need More Crappy Plays,” theatre scholar Scott Walters makes a claim that should be obvious:  healthy theatre requires a healthy dose of new plays.  Walters lauds the Goodman Theatre in Chicago for declaring that it will produce four world premieres as part of its 2015-16 season.  As he wistfully states:  “Imagine if every regional theatre in the country devoted half of its mainstage productions to new works . . . .  What would be the result?  An American Renaissance in the theatre as our stages became [sic] once again to be relevant and vibrant.”  Unfortunately, the field of theatre—especially professional theatre, which often makes conservative choices in the name of increased ticket sales—is not always eager to support new work. As teachers of playwriting, we must realize that we and our students are part of a community of artists.  Whereas writers in other forms—poetry, for example—can imagine that they operate exclusively in a world of writers, playwrights have no such luxury.  Their work depends on a vast network of artists – actors, designers, stage hands, etc. – who are not primarily literary.  Whereas the decision makers for the printed genres (for example, editors of creative writing journals) can be presumed to have a literary background, decision makers for theatre (for example, artistic directors of professional theatres) may have found their way to the profession through any number of fields unrelated to writing.  For this reason, they do not always see playwriting as important.  It is up to us, then, to insist that it is. Scott Walters points out that popular music does not rely on covers of past hits, nor does the motion picture industry confine itself to remakes.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that our most vibrant contemporary art forms—popular music, stand-up comedy, video, and, to a lesser degree, movies—are predicated on originality.  Of the arts, only classical music shares theatre’s obsession with re-creating works of the past.  In contrast, visual artists must create afresh, and poetry and fiction become mere book-making without original contributions from today’s writers.  Puzzlingly, theatre is an unwitting oddball in its preference for works of the past. What we have today is a karaoke theatre, where contemporary artists recreate yesterday’s hits.  While karaoke is entertaining, no one thinks of it as high art because it lacks the ability to further the field.  No one looks to karaoke singers to define what art and culture will become.    Regrettably, theatre today is largely karaoke theatre and satisfied to remain that way.  It excludes the contributions of today’s writers; paradoxically, amending this exclusion could be the solution to many of contemporary theatre’s problems. Playwriting teachers must be aware of the issues facing the theatre community and must be prepared to make cases like I have made.  If teachers do not advocate for playwriting, there will be no need for the playwrights that we train. ... View more

This post first appeared on May 4, 2015. When I was finishing my PhD in creative writing, my boyfriend was a rhetorician.  He was a bit older, and a professor (not mine). I was very influenced by him. He taught me how to close-read, how to make Stromboli, how to play tennis, and how to interact properly with a cat.  All new to me.  I was enthralled. Except for one thing. Instead of “grading papers” he always said “responding to student work.” As we were both teaching full course loads, we talked about teaching every day, at every meal, and in the evenings on our walks. So, I said “grading” a lot and he said, all the time, “responding,” and it irritated me.  Obviously, by “grading” I meant reading, writing comments, reflecting, and then assigning a grade. His term seemed tedious, and perjorative, and complicating unnecessarily a simple thing. Grading. Ultimately, we became collaborators instead of romantic partners, and ultimately, I stopped using the word “grading.” He’d written many articles and a terrific book on all the different ways teachers comment on student work—and when we began analyzing the comments creative writing teachers make on student work (with everyone’s permission), I slowly but profoundly came to see our collective endeavor as So Much More Than Grading. Response.  The word means answer or reply and I found that when I wrote comments on my students’ writing, I was much more focused on a relational and empathic conversation with them than I was on an evaluation. I spent my comments playing back what they had written, and suggesting places where they could go further, write deeper, say more. I mentioned exactly what I wanted to know more about. I absolutely said what I felt the strengths were and listed the two or three areas they’d want to focus on. In revising that particular piece, yes, but more importantly, what to focus on as a developing writer.  These “assessments” required a lot of discernment and I liked that process, a lot.  It sure wasn’t “grading.” I was in conversation with my students; we were on the page together. So, as I read more deeply into the pedagogical literature on teaching writing and response (Rick Straub, Wendy Bishop, Patrick Bizarro, Andrea Lunsford), and worked on the project analyzing what we say to our students in the creative writing classroom, I gradually changed my language. “Do you have a lot of grading to do?” I’m asked frequently this time of year. Well, no. Kind of. The grading—figuring out which letter grade to assign the students based on how well their work displayed what we set out to learn this semester—isn’t what takes up my time. It’s reading and responding meaningfully to their pages. Maybe the distinction seems picayune. But what used to irritate me has become a profoundly important distinction. In this age of STEM, with rapidly declining enrollments in the Humanities, it’s more important than ever that we articulate what it is we do, why it’s necessary, and exactly how it matters. (I highly recommend Peter Meinke’s article, “Double Major.”) Our students will likely have jobs where giving and receiving responses to work in progress is a crucial part of success. Not grading. In fact, delaying evaluation and judgment in order to learn how to build rapport, work in a group, and think more creatively is essential. At the end of the term, we’re not grading. We’re discerning, with empathy, and I call that response. ... View more

This post originally appeared on July 9, 2015. I’ve taught courses online during summer sessions for the past several years.  I find it a challenge, and I’m constantly retooling the courses to make sure that students are getting the most out of the experience — and particularly to make sure that I’m providing enough resources for the students who are in the course, beyond my responses to their exams and their written work. So over the past few years, I’ve been slowly adding features to my online courses.  When I first began to do this, I simply used discussion boards, my personal blog (as opposed to lecturing), and exams with essay questions.  Last year, I began adding short video lectures to my courses — I simply use pre-loaded software on my MacBook to record, and then upload everything to my YouTube channel.  This year, along with those video lectures I added narrated PowerPoints about important literary terms, which were uploaded to my Google Drive and linked to through our Moodle page.  I also had students write daily journal responses (informal), weekly blog posts (a bit more formal), and interpretive papers (most formal of all).  And this summer I finally figured out how to create a timed exam in Moodle. In previous summers, I’ve taught 200-level courses designed for and taken by English majors.  This summer was the first where I’ve taught the introduction to literature course as an online course.  In thinking about how it went, I’ve recognized a few things about the problems of online education, but I’ve also begun to think about how I can incorporate some of these features into my traditional classroom in the coming academic year. First: the downside.  Having all the material online — and having students do the work asynchronously — means that students must be extremely motivated to get everything done, and that includes watching the videos.  While I tried to keep most of the videos brief (fewer than 10 minutes), I admit that some of them went longer than that.  Because I use YouTube to store all the videos, I can also see how often they were viewed, and in some cases, it was rarely or not at all.  This definitely constitutes a problem, particularly for students who are unused to textual analysis of literature.  I realized in reading the journals and blog posts that students were simply not getting some things.  Even though I make it a point to avoid complaining about my students publically (only praising them for their awesome work), I actually reached a point where I complained on Twitter something to the effect of  “Anyone who thinks online education is the way to go has never taught Yeats online.” So, teaching introduction to literature, when the students don’t make use of all the materials available, has the possibility of being disappointing.  Nevertheless the experience of teaching online — and trying out the different tools at my disposal — does give me some ideas about how to more effectively use our Learning Management System during the regular academic year. One thing that I’m considering is moving the exams online, rather than taking up time in the classroom for them.  This would be particularly useful in my survey course (British Literature before 1798), because I typically run an exam after every major time period — and we lose two class days to those.  I could reclaim those days for more readings, or those could be days of workshopping student papers.  It’s a matter of mashing those 1,000 years of literature into 15 weeks. Another thing that might be useful is to create short (5 minute) videos about some of the literature, highlighting the most essential ideas that we’ve covered in class, or talking about things that are essential for students to understand.  For example, when talking about Chaucer, I talk to the students about what Middle English sounds like — but what if I were to have a short video (or audio) linked to the Moodle page so that students could go back to it?  Or what if I were to have narrated PowerPoints talking about important literary or historical terms for that survey course?  While I certainly want students to continue to develop their note taking skills, I’m probably most concerned with making sure they know the material and can use it in the classroom. While I don’t know which of these things I’m going to incorporate into my courses — particularly that survey course — in the fall, I think it’s important to be open to better ways to connect the students with the ideas.  I certainly don’t want the tech to obscure the teaching — but rather I want to let it be a tool towards a better educational experience for my students. ... View more

This post first appeared on January 28, 2015. One of the great challenges for many of us is getting students to really engage with the readings. Students may read before class, but don’t annotate. Student may not read at all. And many students don’t necessarily think on their feet about the readings at hand. One of my challenges in the classroom is getting students to go back to the text itself, rather than simply talking in abstract terms about what happened in a story or a play. As a member of my university’s faculty development committee, I’ve found myself in charge of a workshop on this very topic: getting students to engage with the reading. Given that’s it’s time for a new semester, I thought it might be useful to share a list of activities to use in the classroom to help foster thoughtful engagement with the text itself. Some of these are things I’ve written about before, some are ideas from other people that I’ve found helpful. In-class discussion questions Everyone approaches classroom discussion differently, and every class dynamic requires some different approaches to the way we present the questions to the students. I’m a frequent user of small groups in my classrooms, and I’ve developed a number of ways to get the groups working on ideas. This particular exercise is one that encourages students to consider their own answers — but then to also evaluate the quality of other people’s answers. This semester I tried something new with students who were reluctant to jump into full-class discussions. I projected 4-5 discussion questions (usually culled from the instructor’s manual to the textbook) and gave students the first 5-10 minutes of class to find information that would help answer those questions. I wish I could tell you where I ran across this idea, but it worked wonders with a class that was reluctant to join in discussions. I’ve long used student-generated discussion questions in my upper division classes. This guest post by Ben Bunting has some nice ideas about literature and contexts as discussion openers. Writing as Discussion Many of my courses are writing intensive courses, so I try to integrate written analysis of the literature into classroom participation. I’ve found success with having students write analytical paragraphs as part of their approach to the texts, which can work in any classroom where analyzing information is central. Barclay Barrios suggests having students write argument haikus about complex informational texts, which could certainly be translated into discussion-openers in a literature classroom. I will be doing this next semester, most assuredly. (Barrios has also suggested a way to do this with Vine. In class reading Actually having students read in the classroom can be useful, particularly early in the semester when they’re just figuring out how to do the work of the literature classroom. Critical Reading , as exemplified here, is a technique I picked up from the Foundation for Critical Thinking. It can be useful when students are approaching a really challenging work. It helps students recognize the need to slow down as they read, and can build confidence in the idea that they can actually do the difficult reading. I also like to have students make use of contexts sections in anthologies. Having students view characters through the eyes of other characters in the text can be a useful way to understand character motivation. Multi-modal approaches Encouraging students to have fun with the literature, while still looking carefully into the text itself can be a useful way to engage students who are not English majors. I recently had students create comics about Charles Dickens. In teaching “The Things They Carried,” I’ve had students create categories of the items in the book — and I think this is something that could be adapted for a wide variety of stories and poems. Barclay Barrios has written both about drawing the argument (which I’ve adapted as drawing the poem) Joanne Diaz also has her students use the Woodberry Poetry Room to teach students about active listening. I think that all of these are adaptable for different levels and for different texts, which is generally how most of my teaching goes: I see what others are doing, and I adapt it to what works with my particular groups of students. I’m looking forward to another semester of teaching — and I certainly plan to adapt some of these activities in new ways for my classrooms. ... View more

This post originally appeared on May 18, 2015. This was the year that I embraced creative projects in my literature courses.  My department chair has been doing them for ages, and he’s been very encouraging.  His only stipulation is that English majors must write a long seminar-style paper at some point in an upper-division course- but we leave the choice of when to write that paper to the students.  Additionally we’ve got lots of non-majors taking our courses, and we want them to see connections across disciplines, so working on something other than pure literary criticism is useful to them. So this year in addition to the traditional term paper, I’ve given students the option to put together creative projects or write papers based on their own majors, using the literature. For example, several psychology majors have described the pathology of characters. In the fall, I had the students put together an exhibition of their work. This spring, I coordinated with my department chair, who taught the other upper-division literature course, to have the students put on a mini conference where students gave brief presentations about their work. Students who take the creative option must still write a researched introduction, but they’re otherwise given free rein to do what they want.  Letting them explore literature in this way not only gives them the opportunity to make connections between the material and their own interests, but also gives them the opportunity to really shine. And shine they did. One student used social media to explore Katherine Mansfield’s stories, another created a board game based on Northanger Abbey; someone created a commonplace book of tips for how to get by in Bath (also based on research about Jane Austen), while another wrote and performed songs based on Wide Sargasso Sea.  Students in both semesters developed thoughtful lesson plans using the works that we read; both semesters, students reworked pieces of literature as film scripts. And the students who opted for traditional papers wrote some incredibly thoughtful and thorough scholarship. Sometimes I bemoan the fact that I don’t know how to teach students to be creative.  This semester in particular, I was reminded that they already are — and that I just need to give them room to be so. ... View more

This post first appeared on March 24, 2015. In preparation for our university’s re-accreditation process, my department has been reviewing the goals and objectives for our majors.  One of the things that we want to make sure our literature majors understand is the distinction between the major eras of British and American literature. Our upper division courses are broadly defined — Students in British Literature, Studies in American Literature, Studies in the Novel, and so on — which allows us to break out of the periodization paradigm. However, we run four survey courses that all literature majors,  and most writing majors, take: the standard issue Brit Lit before and after 1798, and American Lit before and after 1860. Thus, our goal is for students at the freshman/sophomore levels to form an idea of what constitutes each major era of literature — in their junior and senior year, they may engage in a more intensive study of a single time period (I’ve taught early modern drama) or a study of a theme across time (in the fall, we’re exploring concepts of trauma and disability through an examination of monsters and monstrosity in British Literature). But how to get students to remember the differences between the eras in order to help them gain a sense of literary history?  At this point, my own understanding of literary history is intuitive — and sometimes I forget that it’s not as obvious to students why Tennyson is a Victorian or why Swift is clearly a product of the eighteenth century.  I may lecture at the beginning of each new era on what the essential components and hallmarks are (and I’ve written previously about using fashion as a way into each era), but that doesn’t mean students are putting the pieces together as we read through the literature. To deal with this, I tried something new when finishing up my last survey course.  To help students review for the final exam and to help them get a sense of the shifts from Romanticism to Victorianism to Modernism/Postmodernism, I decided to have them work out analogies from pop culture to explain the differences.  My example was from Friends: Phoebe is Romanticism, Monica is Victorianism, and Ross, with all his overwhelming anxieties about the world, is Modernism.  And then I set students to the task of coming up with their own analogies and explanations of their choices. When students shared their ideas, we had a range of things — Twilight, zombies, superheroes — that made sense to them, and looking over the comprehensive essays on their final exams, I think that the exercise helped students delineate the time periods.  I plan to try this again in the fall with the pre-1798 course, and I’m looking forward to whatever weird analogies my students determine. ... View more

This post originally appeared on March 10, 2015. About four weeks into the semester, I write these words on the board, inside a pyramid: Proofing and Grammar Editing Revision Then, I explain the pyramid to my students, but in a very careful way. I learned a lot about how to teach from being a step-parent and in the classroom, as on the step-homefront, I don’t tell them what to do, I share what I do. I teach from the side. I even act slightly puzzled, just slightly disinterested—probably this wouldn’t work for you slides my tone. Nothing to see here. But I’m also very engaged—with my own process: I act like I’m sharing a secret, too—step inside my studio, if you want to. I don’t let everyone in. This is not the standard curriculum. This is a writing class. We are co-alchemists and my job as teacher is to be sly and stealthy. Here’s what I want to get across to my students in my revision lesson sneak attack. Revision is writing.  But I don’t want to say that sentence. Not ever. Because I have a feeling this sentence makes little sense to a new writer, a young writer, a college student/writer. “Revision is writing” certainly made no sense to me as a student: it sounded to my nineteen year old ears as something teachers say to sound teachery when they are trying to make something boring and time-wasting sound helpful, like broccoli. But the truth is every single working writer I know creates a draft, a piece, and then she begins to work. And it’s the act of “revision”—re-seeing—on which we spend most of our time as writers.  I don’t think students are lazy; I really believe they want to improve as writers. I think students simply don’t know how to spend the time on a piece of writing. They don’t know what to sit down and do for hours, all the hours it takes to craft something potentially substantial and significant. So, I show them exactly what I do. I draw the pyramid. I tell the truth: about 80% of my time is spent doing what I call re-seeing the piece.  After I writing out the images and scenes, I read the piece aloud and see what I have. I read to stabilize the narrative in place and time, layer in the dialogue, and clarify confusion. I print, read the piece it aloud again, and adjust, cutting and adding, sharpening and tuning, over and over. I will do this for as long as I have time (depending on the deadline). For a poem to take to my writing group, I will do ten or twenty rounds of this seeing and re-seeing on the page, in the course of a week. I read the work aloud to my writing partner, aloud to myself, aloud to a close friend who happens to be an editor, catching, each time, parts that aren’t clear, parts I need to see more fully. Editing—making the sentences more artful, fact-checking, formatting, etc., takes about 15% perfect of my writing time for any given piece and proofreading for typos, spell checking and grammar checking—5%. When I gave this lesson last week in my introductory poetry class, Aaron sat up, took his feet off his skateboard-cum-footstool, and he said, “This is the most helpful thing so far.”   “Like ever.” Natalie took a cell phone photograph of the board, and several others followed suit. Yuni got out a Hello Kitty notebook for the first time this semester, and drew the pyramid, which now had the percentages written by it and she said, “Could you say this one more time?” “Why does no one tell us these things?” Danica said. “Do other people do this?” Chantelle asked, holding her hand in the air as she spoke. I nodded solemnly. My friends who are writers, they do this. We have talked about it, I say. And I make sure to always say each one of us has to find the way that works best, our own way. It’s very individual. Then, I pull out from a folder one of my poems in progress—a thick packet of pages. I  make it seem like I just happen to have this with me. I say I don’t usually share my work in progress or talk about my process with my students. In this case, I pulled out a poem about meeting my 80 year old aunt in St. Augustine, very near the Fountain of Youth, as it happened.  I held up the first draft, which was written on the inside cover of an issue of Poetry while I was in the car. I hold up the printed out typed versions with all my many notations, all my re-seeing. I show them the drawing I did after struggling to get the opening of this poem clear, a quick sketch of the fountain at Columbia House with my aunt and her partner and my friend and his hat. Then I show them the copies my writing partners have written on, and I hold up the printouts of the emails I got back with notes on various versions of the from Dylan, Elaine, Norman, and Stephanie. Elaine’s—with track changes and many, many more words of commentary than are in the poem—draws a gasp. “How freaking long does this take?” Joe asks. I’m dying for Joe to spend more than five minutes on anything, ever. I look him dead in the eye and say “The whole thing? From start to finish?” I hold all the pages in my palms as though I’m weighing time itself. Long dramatic pause. “Probably 25 hours?” “For one poem?” Ken says. “Shit.” I nod. “Shit,” Coral says. “I need to spend more time.” “I’m editing,” Danica says. “I thought I was a great reviser. I’m editing.” “You’re a great editor.” I don’t ask the students to track their time or do anything with the revision pyramid. Most semesters they ask about it again, later in the course. I see their work improve, week by week. I think learning how to spend more time on a piece of writing takes time.  For my introductory courses, presenting the pyramid and a cold hard sausage-being-made look into one writer’s folder of drafts is enough. ... View more

I just found out that I missed the Fifth Annual Boring Conference, held on May 9, 2015 in Holborn, England. What a bummer! The Boring Conference began in 2010 after the cancellation of The Interesting Conference. The one-day conference opens at 10:30, and “things start to get boring” very soon afterward; it’s all over by 5:00 and attendees (over 500 this year) are encouraged to get on with their lives. At this year’s meeting, a 7-year-old kid stole the show with his disquisition on elevators (“lifts” to him). But there were many others, like George Egg, who coached listeners on how to compose a meal using nothing but what can be found in motel/hotel rooms. Or there was the presentation on the joys of sleeping out on a British roundabout (merry-go-round). The Boring Conference website provides additional examples: People have talked about sneezing, toast, IBM tills, the sounds made by vending machines, the Shipping Forecast, barcodes, yellow lines, London shop fronts, the television programme Antiques Road Trip and the features of the Yamaha PSR-175 Portatune keyboard.” The Shipping Forecast sounds like a winner to me. Source: Boring Conference Since I’m a teacher of writing, my mind immediately goes to how we could make use of this concept in our classes. I have a colleague who assigns “elevator speeches” to her students, and sends them out to elevators in small groups to see if they can really deliver a compelling overview of their projects between floors. Why not a contest for “most boring elevator speech”? I can also imagine the “boring” concept applied to Pecha Kuchas, to two-minute speeches, to thesis statements – the sky’s the limit! Of course many of my students would say that they have already listened to Boring Conference winners in many of their college classrooms and lecture halls. So what about a new category on Rate My Professor with an award to “most boring teacher ever?” My guess is that some of such events would actually end up being interesting, even fun and engaging. So if I try this with my students, I would like to get them to define the line where something interesting swerves into boring, and vice versa. And what are the stylistic and even syntactic characteristics of truly boring prose/speech? Now . . . this is getting interesting! ... View more