#TeamLyra

Why have I yet to publish this blog?

Because I don't post enough. That's all. A blog is useless if it isn't updated frequently. So, this is on my daily to do list, as is Twitter (way easier), as is working out. The idea is that if I start with even just a ten minute blog post, I can then transition into non-101 writing time...

We'll see. The writing time trumps the blog, but the blog can act like a freewrite. A warmup. And I need to keep priming the writing pump lest the well run dry.*

*The well is never dry. It's just getting the water up regularly. Examine mechanics of this to make the prose pretty.

SO: I have been ensconced in 101 all week. 10-14 hour days every day. I've officially taken today (Saturday) off--I'm even cutting dance class. And I'm okay with this. I'm taking care of me. Dance class is taking care of me, but today, it's sunny, I didn't go to bed until 4:30, and I crave time on the home front. Cleaning, organizing, creating. Doing tangible things. Visible things. Stuff with my hands. Clearing clutter is as important to semester prep as miniscule format changes on the course site.

At the same time, I feel as though all of my work this week has been quite helpful; I've pretty much finished Nilson's Teaching at its Best (on top of her Graphic Syllabus)  and O'Brien et al's The Course Syllabus: A Learning-Centered Approach. All excellent, and all have helped me improve my syllabus, especially the grading and evaluation sections. Students have the right to know on Day 1 exactly how homework is counted and how much quizzes contribute to the preparation grade. It's only been since I've started working with TAs that these details have been hammered out, and it's taken two semesters to get it right. Having TAs look over the syllabus, too, has been invaluable (how did I not do this last semester?!) To that end...well, I could go on a big thing, but I think that after the initial stages of college teaching prep, many instructors don't share their syllabi with each other, which is a shame. Too much of this profession's standard modus operandi still seems to be solitary. I have no idea what other instructors do, and am always asking my TAs to share their other syllabi with me and to let me peek at their course sites for other courses. I crave this stuff. Maybe it's different at other institutions, but even with the support of the program and department, I still don't feel as though we have easy ways of collaborating, or even just sharing ideas. We have an instructor's website for 101...but I think it's underutilized. How could that be improved?

Anyway, a couple of things I made and added are graphics, and they're just lovely. I have three: one of the major assignments, one of how the learning outcomes correspond with the assignments, and one of the weekly progression of the linked papers over the course of the semester. This last one I think will help a lot, though it's only a table. A more dynamic chart would be better, I'm sure. The learning outcomes one in particular I'm most proud of, as it's forced me to figure out how, indeed, the program's learning outcomes fit with all of the major assignments. Here's what I came up with:

I love it. I actually redid it all in Word, not Powerpoint, and it's even sexier because the assignments are staggered, showing how they overlap with each other, chronologically over the semester.  I couldn't get that one to transfer over to here, so this will have to do. I think this will help students a lot. It certainly helps me, anyway.

Here are the assignments:

And here is the linked papers progression:

Progression of Linked Papers by Week:

Week 1: Introduction of Linked Papers and Course Themes
Week 2: Exploring Topics
Week 3: Narrowing Topics, Inquiry, Research
Week 4: Inquiry, Research	Conferences w/ TAs
Week 5: Evaluating and Synthesizing Sources, Drafting
Week 6: Reviewing and Revising
Week 7: Defining Debate, Research		Paper 1 Due March 6
Week 8: Choosing Stasis, Determining Audience and Purpose	Conferences w/ Lyra
Week 9: Research, Audience, Purpose, Structure, Drafting
Week 10: Reviewing and Revising
Week 11: Inquiry Process and Research Summary/ Proposal		Paper 2 Due April 10
Week 12: Choosing Stasis, Research, Structure
Week 13: Drafting, Style, Revision
Week 14: Reviewing and Revising
Week 15: Linked Papers Summation, Semester Reflection		Paper 3 Due May 8

Nice, huh? I guess it would be better to have a horizontal bar graph...but whatever. Just having any graphic is helpful, I think, and the three papers are color-coded, which is nice. This semester, I'm fighting for Paper 2 to really come in on Week 11 so that we have more time for Paper 3. This is vital, especially for the Fall semester, because Thanksgiving is a hard interruption for the Paper 3 trajectory. So, in order to make this happen, I've pushed Paper 2 up; in order to do that, I've split the rhetorical analysis into four individual assignments--small ones. Maybe one of them can be a group thing...I don't know. I don't really care. They do plenty of group work. What I care about is that the summaries and RAs are about the LP topics; they are mini assignments that, in their own way, feed the papers. 

Duh.

Every semester, I find myself pitying all students in previous semester. Ah! Why didn't I do it this way before?! But that comes with the territory, I guess. And plenty of my former students did just fine, graphics or no. 

Speaking of rock star students: #TeamLyra13 has been phenomenal so far!! Every time I put something on the to do list, it's done within hours. I can hardly keep up with them. They ROCK. We recorded and published the "How To Use Conferences and Collaborations in Canvas" video in under four hours, and I even made them five short videos on "Playing with Canvas 101" so that they could watch them and do it on their own time. Far, far more efficient than trying to do it live. I have Part 2 coming tomorrow (Modules and Assignments), as well as the Welcome Video for the site. This is important--several students are already looking around the site, and I claim that a video is coming soon...I'll make it tomorrow, after I've gotten the recent items up (add grading/ evaluation pages plus the LP progression graphic). Scan remaining HW and get that set for Day 1, too, for wicked eager students.

Okay. I'm seriously taking the rest of the day off. I'm going to make curtains now (oy...)