Warnock’s guiding concept of approaching online composition instruction as a process of migration rather transformation helped alleviate my anxieties about never having taught online before. Two of Chickering and Gamson’s principles that I am most concerned about migrating to online modalities are “contact between students and faculty” and “respecting diverse talents and ways of learning” (xiv). In my on-ground classes, the first week of f2f instruction is so pivotal in learning who the students are through various ice breakers and establishing who I am in order to build a rapport of trust, empathy, and (comm)unity that carries us as a team through the rest of the semester.
As Warnock points out, the slightest decisions in an online setting can alter that rapport—for example, the greeting of the introductory email. The tenuousness of the author-audience relationship seems to be compounded by the increased pressure and volume of writing in an online forum (xi). Whereas I teach my f2f students to direct their assignments to various audiences—for example, MCC students reading The Chariot or, in another assignment, a relative with whom they’ve had a disagreement, or each other in some classes in which I have assigned blog posts—in an online space I am now their audience. Despite Warnock’s positive spin on using that as an opportunity to teach the concept of audience, that seems nervewracking. I’m having a meta moment right now: this is our first blog post and I’m feeling nervous about how to write in this online space (oh my gosh, what will Curry and Jim think of my use of parentheses?!?!). Writing online, I feel I have to be more serious/academic in fear that my voice will not come across. Indeed, I’m feeling echoes of the codeswitching that I felt I had to perform throughout college and that I continue to do in my career. In what ways can we help students translate their codeswitching through online modalities?
Understanding that codeswitching brings me back to my second principle of concern: “respecting diverse talents and ways of learning” (xiv). One of the primary reasons that I am interested in learning about online education is student equity. Online classes provided increased access for our students who (at least in my experience of meeting students who take or have taken online courses) are parents, bearers of financial responsibility for their parents and/or siblings, reliant on unreliable public transportation, reticent about just being the first in their family or community to be on a college campus, and/or in a variety of other situations that make traditional, on-ground education untenable. I want to be part of providing those students access through online education, yet I want to be very careful about how I establish an inclusive, equitable, and welcoming environment to allow those diverse ways of reading, writing, and thinking and unique voices to be expressed. Warnock suggests that most online instruction is intensively asynchronous (xviii), but are mandatory synchronous sessions the best way to do that and create digital sense of community and collaboration? Would students participate in them if they were voluntary? Or do required/voluntary synchronous sessions somewhat compromise the equity issue in that they would impose pressure on online students’ time that may already be restricted given the various situations listed above?
Without doubt, these are questions that will continue to inform the development of my nascent voice as an online educator, as they do my role in f2f classrooms. Most of all, I am interested in moving forward to learn about the specific programs and pedagogies employed in online classes that can help to achieve these larger goals. As I was browsing through Blackboard Exemplary Courses, I found a couple videos useful:
This English instructor’s sense of humor sounds like a parody of an English teacher, but I am interested in further exploring her use of Snagit, Podomatic, and YouTube transcripts to serve students with various learning styles. I also thought her thorough hyperlinking could be useful, if not too frequent to be distracting, to direct the reading and resources so that students don’t merely Google key terms and get led astray. Lastly, I like the organization of units into “Read, Watch, Listen, and Do.”
This CompSci class likewise used a “Teach Me, Show Me, Let Me Try” organization for each module. At two minutes in, there is a program that allows students to click and drag into a graphic organizer. Is there anything like that for writing process, e.g.: brainstorming maps?
I’m going to continue browsing examples of online foreign language classes because in my college education, my French instructors best used interactive exercises and created a lasting sense of community.
Jade,
I enjoyed reading your post! In my own experiences with online education, the synchronous meetings were not required, but they were encouraged. There was usually a small written assignment to be completed if you were unable to make it to the synchronous meeting. Also, the video of the meeting was always available, so anyone who missed it could watch it later. I found it worked quite well, and having the opportunity to communicate in real time with the professor and other students did help build a sense of community and connection.
Posted by: Katharine Prescott | 02/18/2017 at 02:15 PM