It's Saturday morning. Saturday is my day off, not only from work, but from the Internet.
That's funny.
It's Saturday morning on the cusp of Week 12 in a 15-week semester. My students are (ostensibly) revising and polishing their Classical Argument Papers, due Monday. I am (still) inventing the final Digital Project assignment, the prompt for which I should probably give my students, oh, Monday.
I don't want this to be hard. I want it to be awesome.
The concept is straightforward enough: I want my students to take their academic research public. I want them to remediate their CAPs into a (born) digital text for a public audience. I want my students to write for a really real audience. I want their work to be seen.
It's been pretty easy to figure out what I want them to do. I want them to build a website. My original idea for a group project, which I had come up with under the auspices that I am asking them to do something challenging, so working in a group would be easier, is gone. JL is right--it has to be an individual project. Having a website that's part body image and the media, part women in STEM, and part same-sex education is too messy. Each student needs their own space so that the project is devoted to one argument.
I want them to build a website (instead of a blog) because I want lots of things on there. I want them to have a robust reference area that includes their working bibliographies (hyperlinked, when possible) and stasis grids. It would also be cool to link other related sites--even each other's--devoted to their topic. And I want audience interaction--there needs to be some way for the audience to engage with the site, even beyond comments. I'm thinking polls and surveys.
Okay, so I have a pretty good idea of what I want. The question is: what do they need to get there? This is where it gets tricky. In order to build a visual argument, my students need some basics in visual analysis. Fine. Writing Arguments has an okay chapter on that, part of which they're (theoretically) reading this weekend. Last week's one-post discussion board asked them to find three images that have something to do with their topic and write about why they're strong. I did that even before assigning the readings, as I wanted them to come up with their own criteria for what makes a visual argument work.
I just looked at one of them, and it's great! The student pulled a pie chart, a political cartoon, and an advocacy ad, all of which make strong arguments about his topic (which I won't even include here, as I'm still hyper-cautious about identifying students on here. Which will likely shift dramatically over the next couple of weeks as my students, um, publish their work online). See, this is the kind of stuff I want them to add to their websites.
Maybe I should have them go back in this week and add to their analysis, once they have some formal understanding of fonts, colors, and C.R.A.P. (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity)? Here's Mike Rundle's blog on C.R.A.P., which I may use instead of the excerpt from Robin Williams's book, The Non-Designers Design Guide*. Or I could use this, from LifeHack.
*Wait, the second edition is available full text for free?
*blink*
What.
Okay, now I have an idea. Stay tuned (in theory. This is my second post this month, and it's the 19th). But seriously: I do want to post on this, if for no other reason than to post the links that I've found the most useful for creating this project.
I'm basically modeling the inquiry process for my students...next semester, of course.
Le sigh.
Showing posts with label rhetorical awareness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rhetorical awareness. Show all posts
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Instructor Presence
I love teaching synchronous classes online.
But I love it all the same. I wouldn't have predicted this two years ago, when I started teaching blended courses, but I really can do things in my synchronous online days that I cannot do face-to-face.
I always give my students ten minutes to get settled on synchronous online days. Most students come in by 9:30, but I don't start the live class until 9:40. This gives students time to run to the library, if they have class just before mine, or time to ask pre-class questions in the chat box. Meanwhile, everyone completes an opening activity:
At 9:40, I start my webcam and come on line. I'm not showing the full screen because doing so will reveal my students' names, which I will not do. But here's me, in my home office, smiling as students type in their warrants to these enthymemes.
I call on three or four students to write their answer in; this prevents students from dozing (or walking away from the computer entirely). "Adam, Beatrice, Connie, David: what's the warrant for the Starbucks enthymeme?...Good...Ernest, Frank, Gertrude, Henrietta, you're on deck for Fox News..." and so forth.
All three classes nailed this, so we quickly moved on to the next piece: finding "Viable" sources. This part was new. The day before, one of my TAs, K, and I were were trying to figure out how to come back to stasis theory in a way that would be most useful to students.
"Maybe..." I suddenly thought, "maybe I should make some sort of presentation that walks students through the research process, like Narrowing Topic --> Finding better sources --> evaluating sources --> choosing the most useful sources, as in the ones with actual arguments--> adding those sources to your stasis grid. Maybe?"
"YES!" K responded. "Students will definitely find that useful, 'cause most of them are like "what is this stasis thing and why am I doing it. This will totally be helpful."
"Okay. I'm on it."
I made a rough map, popped it into Google Presentations, and asked my TAs to help by finding images and making the presentation pretty. K added a lot, and I worked on it until 1 am (of course). It worked out. After walking through the presentation and taking a sudden detour into Academic Search Premier, I explained exactly what to do with their "top" sources: enter them on the grid, like this:
After students identified the two categories with the most claims and questions, they went into their group Googledocs from a couple of weeks ago to find a two-source stasis grid for them to fill out with two of their sources:
They had about twelve minutes to do this (my second two classes did, anyway; we were short on time in the first class), and my TAs and I watched them in their Googledocs while I kept an eye on the AdobeConnect chat box in case students had questions. I put myself on mute for this activity, unmuting myself halfway through for "You guys are all doing great! About five more minutes" and then "okay, we're about two minutes away..."
And then, when everyone came back into AdobeConnect, I explained that they would copy this activity into their own stasis grids that was part of their homework this weekend. Six sources in the stasis grid by Monday.
And voila. Toulmin + Finding and Evaluating Viable Sources + Stasis Grid Lesson Accomplished.
Why do I love days like this? Because it was a research-focused day. Student had to be on their laptops to search in Google and Academic Search Premier and then work on their stasis grids. Why would I do that in a face-to-face class? I want students to be talking with each other when we're face to face, not staring at their laptops. This is a perfect synchronous online day lesson plan. They need me, a live instructor with a face and a voice, to walk them through Google and especially Academic Search Premier, to show them Diigo and Storify and Pocket, to reinforce why stasis theory is useful. If this had been an asynchronous day, many students would have either been confused, completely lost, or wouldn't have done it at all.
This is what blended learning and teaching looks like with Team Lyra. I love it.
Yes, AdobeConnect isn't perfect. Yes, my wireless can go on the fritz. Yes, a student or two may have a hard time getting into Googledocs.
But I love it all the same. I wouldn't have predicted this two years ago, when I started teaching blended courses, but I really can do things in my synchronous online days that I cannot do face-to-face.
I always give my students ten minutes to get settled on synchronous online days. Most students come in by 9:30, but I don't start the live class until 9:40. This gives students time to run to the library, if they have class just before mine, or time to ask pre-class questions in the chat box. Meanwhile, everyone completes an opening activity:
At 9:40, I start my webcam and come on line. I'm not showing the full screen because doing so will reveal my students' names, which I will not do. But here's me, in my home office, smiling as students type in their warrants to these enthymemes.
All three classes nailed this, so we quickly moved on to the next piece: finding "Viable" sources. This part was new. The day before, one of my TAs, K, and I were were trying to figure out how to come back to stasis theory in a way that would be most useful to students.
"Maybe..." I suddenly thought, "maybe I should make some sort of presentation that walks students through the research process, like Narrowing Topic --> Finding better sources --> evaluating sources --> choosing the most useful sources, as in the ones with actual arguments--> adding those sources to your stasis grid. Maybe?"
"YES!" K responded. "Students will definitely find that useful, 'cause most of them are like "what is this stasis thing and why am I doing it. This will totally be helpful."
"Okay. I'm on it."
I made a rough map, popped it into Google Presentations, and asked my TAs to help by finding images and making the presentation pretty. K added a lot, and I worked on it until 1 am (of course). It worked out. After walking through the presentation and taking a sudden detour into Academic Search Premier, I explained exactly what to do with their "top" sources: enter them on the grid, like this:
After students identified the two categories with the most claims and questions, they went into their group Googledocs from a couple of weeks ago to find a two-source stasis grid for them to fill out with two of their sources:
2/19 - Stasis Grid
author/publication/date
|
categorical
|
definitional
|
causal
|
value
|
action
|
jurisdiction
| |
Source 1
| |||||||
Source 2
|
They had about twelve minutes to do this (my second two classes did, anyway; we were short on time in the first class), and my TAs and I watched them in their Googledocs while I kept an eye on the AdobeConnect chat box in case students had questions. I put myself on mute for this activity, unmuting myself halfway through for "You guys are all doing great! About five more minutes" and then "okay, we're about two minutes away..."
And then, when everyone came back into AdobeConnect, I explained that they would copy this activity into their own stasis grids that was part of their homework this weekend. Six sources in the stasis grid by Monday.
And voila. Toulmin + Finding and Evaluating Viable Sources + Stasis Grid Lesson Accomplished.
Why do I love days like this? Because it was a research-focused day. Student had to be on their laptops to search in Google and Academic Search Premier and then work on their stasis grids. Why would I do that in a face-to-face class? I want students to be talking with each other when we're face to face, not staring at their laptops. This is a perfect synchronous online day lesson plan. They need me, a live instructor with a face and a voice, to walk them through Google and especially Academic Search Premier, to show them Diigo and Storify and Pocket, to reinforce why stasis theory is useful. If this had been an asynchronous day, many students would have either been confused, completely lost, or wouldn't have done it at all.
This is what blended learning and teaching looks like with Team Lyra. I love it.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Macklemore, the Rhetorical Triangle, and Toulmin Logic
I did it!
Yesterday's lesson plan was awesome. Why? Because half of it was designed by one of my TAs. My newest TA, to be specific.
Last week, I subbed for 388V, the "how to be a TA" seminar. In it, the TAs/ students split into groups and came up with a lesson plan. The lesson plan that my TA's group came up with was so awesome that I told her I wanted to use it this Monday.
TA Lesson Plan from 388V: The Rhetorical Triangle
Yesterday's lesson plan was awesome. Why? Because half of it was designed by one of my TAs. My newest TA, to be specific.
Last week, I subbed for 388V, the "how to be a TA" seminar. In it, the TAs/ students split into groups and came up with a lesson plan. The lesson plan that my TA's group came up with was so awesome that I told her I wanted to use it this Monday.
TA Lesson Plan from 388V: The Rhetorical Triangle
- 4 minutes of a video clip covering the Grammy weddings. In 388V, the TAs used a video clip of an "Entertainment Tonight Style" host recapping the performance. I adapted it to be a video clip of the actual performance: Macklemore "Same Love" Grammys 2014 (3:22 to 6:00)
- Ask students to ID the message, speaker, and audience
- Draw the rhetorical triangle and explain how the three points relate to each other
Continuation: From Rhetorical Triangle to Toulmin Logic
- Ask "What would happen if we changed one of these? What if the audience were different?" What if the audience was a group who was not supportive of gay marriage?"
- Use "a conservative congregation" as the new audience.
- Would Macklemore and Queen Latifah be good speakers for this audience? Would they be able to deliver this message as effectively? No? Why not? Okay, who would be a good speaker?
- ID reverend/ preacher (all three sections came up with this on their own).
- Pairs: In pairs, come up with the best way to deliver this message to this audience. Frame it as a complete enthymeme: a claim + reason. (2 minutes)
- Ask pairs to give their claim and reason. Write on the board. Have class ID which claim and reason would be the strongest and why.
Brilliant. "Okay, what you guys have just done is figured out which values and beliefs to appeal to in order for the audience to accept the message. In so doing, you've completed the enthymeme with the warrant.
Enthymeme: Claim + Stated Reason. That's your skeleton of the argument. In order to make sure it works, you need to identify the unstated assumption, or warrant, embedded in the enthymeme.
Complete Argument: Claim + Stated Reason
Warrant
Bingo. Then, students took out their homework exercise, in which they had identified the claims and stated reasons for two articles that made arguments about their research topic, and worked on identifying the warrants in those arguments in groups.
After a few minutes, I wrote a couple of their enthymemes on the board and we identified the warrants as a class, e.g.,
Orca whales should not be kept in captivity because no killer whale has ever killed a human in the wild.
Warrant: Only animals who have killed a human in the wild should be kept in captivity.
And so forth. Tomorrow: back to stasis theory and evaluating sources, with a splash of Toulmin for reinforcement. Both stasis theory and Toulmin logic will be reinforced almost daily for several weeks--these take awhile to really click. But the triumph: both concepts are in by Week 4!
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Lofty Ambitions: How Much Theory Can I Introduce in One Week?
Well, that depends.
What's my objective? To stick to my syllabus? To frontload the theory before students tackle the first major paper? Or to ensure that students are learning the material in a manageable way?
Hm, I don't know. The last one seems like a laudable goal. Some might say it's the only important goal up there. In fact, I'm one of them.
Look: the stuff I teach is harder than students expect. It's harder than most people imagine when I tell them what I teach. First-year college writing: two parts process writing and one part research skills blended with peer review and served with a slice of grammar and punctuation?
Sure, I do all that. I also teach argument theory, digital literacy, and rhetorical awareness and analysis. That doesn't happen quickly, as I am grudgingly remembering this week.
The first two weeks were devoted to rhetorical context and summary. As I stand here at the end of Week 3, I'm rethinking that unit--I'm asking them to summarize an argument before they even know how an argument works. Whatever--I'll revisit that at some point. I need them writing within the first week, and the articles I choose at the top of the semester are easy enough to digest:
We start with two sample summaries of Gabriel's 2010 Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age. Then, groups of students summarized either Steve Kolowich's 2011 What Students Don't Know, Peg Tyre's 2012 The Writing Revolution, or Josh Keller's 2009 Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers.
This past Monday, they submitted an individual summary on either Carr's Is Google Making us Stupid, Shaahin Cheyene's 2012 How the Internet is Changing our Brain or Clive Thompson's 2012 Is Google Wrecking Our Memory, which they'd already discussed in a Lyra Classic: an overcomplicated discussion board prompt that asked them to put their article in conversation with Eli Pariser's Ted Talk on Internet Filters (everyone needs to watch this--everyone--and assign it in class. Do it because we all need to know this, and do it because the discussion that this generates is brilliant).
I asked them to submit these summaries as an ungraded assignment. I've never done this before--it's usually associated with maybe ten lousy points--but I like it. I told them that this was their chance to receive feedback from me before handing something in for a grade. Makes sense, right?
Back to my dilemma: I introduced stasis theory last Monday, which is easy enough to do in fifteen minutes. The trick is to follow up with it well in the next class. This went okay yesterday, but I was more distracted by the fact that students clearly didn't grasp rhetorical context--that thing I've been pounding every day for three weeks now--and had to. I spent more time on that by tying it in with the other big piece of yesterday: simple online research skills. It was an online synchronous day in AdobeConnect, so we all hit Google and searched for a few things. We got to reinforce Pariser--"Who has a different results page than I do?" and then go over simple things like using quotation marks and filtering for dates (2011..2014). And then we got to the good stuff, which I hadn't even planned on:
"Okay, before I even click on this link--what do I know about this article? Here's my results page, and I've taken three nanoseconds to decide I want to click on this one. Why? What am I looking for?"
The most important clue: "Where is it published? What can we detect from the website? That's the first step. What else? Date. Okay. Let's click on it. Here's the link in the AdobeConnect chat box so that you can go to this article on your own computer. Alright, let's check this out. I've never read this article before. Let's pretend that we've all been assigned a short, 750-word assignment about blended learning in college. A basic expository piece to be published in The Diamondback next week. Take a few seconds to scan this. Would you use this source?"
This was not in my lesson plan. But this was the perfect way to introduce (introduce?!! Then why didn't I do this on Day 2?) rhetorical context. Now they get it (I hope. I should still reinforce it Monday so that it totally sticks...). But in essence, they've got it. Great. So then the trick was to bounce from there to stasis theory, picking up from Monday, which I thought they could nail as preparation for...
...Toulmin theory this Monday?
I must be Out. Of. My. Mind.
Stay tuned for Major Syllabus Adjustment #1 in Spring 2014.
What's my objective? To stick to my syllabus? To frontload the theory before students tackle the first major paper? Or to ensure that students are learning the material in a manageable way?
Hm, I don't know. The last one seems like a laudable goal. Some might say it's the only important goal up there. In fact, I'm one of them.
Look: the stuff I teach is harder than students expect. It's harder than most people imagine when I tell them what I teach. First-year college writing: two parts process writing and one part research skills blended with peer review and served with a slice of grammar and punctuation?
Sure, I do all that. I also teach argument theory, digital literacy, and rhetorical awareness and analysis. That doesn't happen quickly, as I am grudgingly remembering this week.
The first two weeks were devoted to rhetorical context and summary. As I stand here at the end of Week 3, I'm rethinking that unit--I'm asking them to summarize an argument before they even know how an argument works. Whatever--I'll revisit that at some point. I need them writing within the first week, and the articles I choose at the top of the semester are easy enough to digest:
We start with two sample summaries of Gabriel's 2010 Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age. Then, groups of students summarized either Steve Kolowich's 2011 What Students Don't Know, Peg Tyre's 2012 The Writing Revolution, or Josh Keller's 2009 Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers.
This past Monday, they submitted an individual summary on either Carr's Is Google Making us Stupid, Shaahin Cheyene's 2012 How the Internet is Changing our Brain or Clive Thompson's 2012 Is Google Wrecking Our Memory, which they'd already discussed in a Lyra Classic: an overcomplicated discussion board prompt that asked them to put their article in conversation with Eli Pariser's Ted Talk on Internet Filters (everyone needs to watch this--everyone--and assign it in class. Do it because we all need to know this, and do it because the discussion that this generates is brilliant).
I asked them to submit these summaries as an ungraded assignment. I've never done this before--it's usually associated with maybe ten lousy points--but I like it. I told them that this was their chance to receive feedback from me before handing something in for a grade. Makes sense, right?
Back to my dilemma: I introduced stasis theory last Monday, which is easy enough to do in fifteen minutes. The trick is to follow up with it well in the next class. This went okay yesterday, but I was more distracted by the fact that students clearly didn't grasp rhetorical context--that thing I've been pounding every day for three weeks now--and had to. I spent more time on that by tying it in with the other big piece of yesterday: simple online research skills. It was an online synchronous day in AdobeConnect, so we all hit Google and searched for a few things. We got to reinforce Pariser--"Who has a different results page than I do?" and then go over simple things like using quotation marks and filtering for dates (2011..2014). And then we got to the good stuff, which I hadn't even planned on:
"Okay, before I even click on this link--what do I know about this article? Here's my results page, and I've taken three nanoseconds to decide I want to click on this one. Why? What am I looking for?"
The most important clue: "Where is it published? What can we detect from the website? That's the first step. What else? Date. Okay. Let's click on it. Here's the link in the AdobeConnect chat box so that you can go to this article on your own computer. Alright, let's check this out. I've never read this article before. Let's pretend that we've all been assigned a short, 750-word assignment about blended learning in college. A basic expository piece to be published in The Diamondback next week. Take a few seconds to scan this. Would you use this source?"
This was not in my lesson plan. But this was the perfect way to introduce (introduce?!! Then why didn't I do this on Day 2?) rhetorical context. Now they get it (I hope. I should still reinforce it Monday so that it totally sticks...). But in essence, they've got it. Great. So then the trick was to bounce from there to stasis theory, picking up from Monday, which I thought they could nail as preparation for...
...Toulmin theory this Monday?
I must be Out. Of. My. Mind.
Stay tuned for Major Syllabus Adjustment #1 in Spring 2014.
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