Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

An issue I had to really deal with for the first time this semester was moving a class from a three day week to two days. I had done this before, but never in the way I had to for the fall semester. We moved to a mostly two day a week module and I had to create two versions of my 101 course: a Tuesday/Thursday and a Wednesday/Friday. Because of how holidays fell during the semester, they ended up on pretty different schedules as time went on. This was harder than I thought it would be because I had to keep a consistent schedule for both classes, but also make sure their schedules fit the days we were meeting.

For the most part, this ended up working. However, I can see some need for improvement. For the spring, I am dealing again with odd schedules because of Spring Break and other holidays.

Some random observations from the fall semester…

• My Composition I classes wrote four papers this semester. A process analysis, reflective, argumentative, and then a research paper. For the first two, they didn’t have to do much outside research. For the second set, I saw a pattern emerge. The argumentation paper became the heavy research in books, EBSCO, and JSTOR paper. For their term papers on online privacy, most students relied heavily on technology blogs like ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GDGT, and even the Security Now! podcast, which is one of my favorites. A few student’s papers looked like This Week in Tech panels, filled with articles from Dvorak, Winer, Prager, Malik, and others.
• Mapping out my classes so I didn’t double up on papers being due really helped me out as the semester went on. I was able to easily grade 20-25 papers each week and send them all back on Sunday afternoons. I will be doing that every semester from now on.

• The AV Club on what makes a good book to film adaptation. My lit218 class is going to use this article to frame their final paper…project.
• I have been thinking a lot lately about making a digital edition.
• An excellent review, deeply critical, from Al Jazeera of Rachel Maddow’s new book. Why do “liberals” become so blood thirsty and fine with the Military Industrial Complex when a Democrat is President?

One of the best decisions I made during the fall semester was allowing students to dictate new class policy. Before this semester, I had never really had a formal policy about extensions. The few students who asked for them did it in a timely and respectful manner. In the fall, I began to have students asking for them the day a paper was due and even days afterward. This was intolerable and I decided that I needed to brew a new extension policy.

Then an idea came to me. Why was I writing it? The policy will be one that my students use, so why not let them do it? I took three of my best students and put them in “Team Extension Policy” to create a new policy for extensions. My students spent about two weeks emailing back and forth and having a rather vigorous debate about what should go into the policy. I spoke with each in person (but never all at once; unfortunately, only two of them could meet in person) and I took notes on their emails as they worked out the intricacies of various issues.

Finally, I drafted policy and showed it to both Team Extension Policy and our Paralegal Director Sherri Block. After some suggestions from both, and a few final in person discussions, we came up with this:

Extension Policy
Extensions are gifts, not a right. College work involves responsibility and ownership over your individual situation. With that in mind, here are a few caveats about extensions. First, I need to know 48 hours before an assignment is due if you need an extension. This will be clearly addressed on the class schedule. To apply for an extension, we must speak in person or over email immediately. A rough draft of your paper in progress will be required to be handed in at this time. I will then decide whether to grant or deny the extension and how much time would be allotted for it.

To apply for an extension beyond the 48 hour mark for reasons of hospitalization, bereavement, military service, observance of religious holidays, legal reasons (jury duty, etc), or work related issues (ie: getting called into work at the last minute), written documentation not given before the due date must be in by Saturday night after the due date.

For the following reasons, extensions will not be permitted: short term illnesses and family vacations.

Only one extension will be granted per semester, although an “emergency” extension can be granted under certain circumstances.

Something new I tried this past semester in all of my classes was “Peer Review Speed Dating” for paper revisions. I saw a presentation at a conference about it once, but Prof Hacker’s post about it in November was the primary catalyst for adding it to my courses.

Here’s how it worked for me: I asked students to bring two printed copies, or their laptop, of their paper. On our Mt. Laurel campus, classrooms are already set up in long rows, so setting up “stations” wasn’t a problem, but in Pemberton we had to move chairs to set up eight stations. I assigned a student to each station and told the other students to move to each station every five minutes. I kept a timer on my cell phone. After a student passed by each station, they would release someone at a station so that student could go around. At the end, each student end up at my station, where I looked over their paper.

I thought this went really well. A lot of underperforming students were able to get advice from not only me, but from others in the class. In a few classes, long lines formed at certain students’ stations that were deemed by the class to be doing well in the course. Sometimes I think it is important to hear something needs improvement from not only an instructor, but from another student as well.

Problems: In some courses, I had a lot of students skipped the session. I have decided in the future to make participation in this session part of their course contribution grade. I also had two students in one class slip out after I looked at their paper. Some late students did not get a chance, depending on their class size, to get around the room all the way. I did not have much sympathy for those students or those who forgot to print their paper and had to waste time running to a computer lab.

For my Composition I classes, I had three different class sizes, so I could see different ways that this can be done in the future. In the first one, I only had nine students show up (that is about how many passed as well), so we just passed papers around the room at the five minute intervals. The informal nature of this setting really worked with that group. Two of the classes were around 15-20 students and easily got everyone in during our longer final exam week schedule. My English Literature I class had over 20 (probably around 25) show up, which complicated matters a bit. We decided in that class to put two students at each station, which allowed more students to get around the room before the time expired.

• Lifehacker takes a look at the next Ubuntu release. I had Ubuntu 10.11 on my work laptop for awhile; I really didn’t like it that much. I have moved completely to Linux Mint (11 at home, 12 at work).
• The spring issue of The Quarterly Conversation has a number of interesting articles.
• Katherine D. Harris on adding acknowledgement to your syllabus. I will have a post about this sometime in the summer.
• Scott Rettberg on the Electronic Literature Organization’s archives.

I ended my day at a panel on bring personal passions to the classroom.

Mike Walsh from County College of Morris spoke about the paperless classroom.

• Paperless classroom
• Books used to be used until they were beat up
• Powerpoint, internet, etc have led to obselence of books
• Walsh can get five years out of books in his field
• Textbooks filter out unnecessary stuff
• College bookstores are no long subsidized by schools (profit and bottom-line)
• Book writing is not financially viable for authors
• Supplemental DVD/LMS/etc add to price for students
• Has semester on a flash drive

Harold Kahn from Bergen spoke next about bringing your “cause” into the classroom

• Kahn uses articles about dog rescues to teach reading comprehension
• A cause can lead to a correlation to service learning projects

• Students often come in “blind” to student placements
• Nationally, only 31% of developmental math students pass college level math
• Students often don’t have college ready skills…they don’t understand how to keep up with syllabus or check email…they often don’t know they have an advisor
• Students are often lost with one on one advisement
• Learning communities are very important
• Student comments: “I’m just here to get out of here” “I don’t have time to socialize”