Giving Digital and/or Online Feedback to Students

The presentation by Kristen Jameson and Linda Clemons, from the University of Minnesota's "Student Writing Center," in class on November 25, 2008, was very eye-opening for me. It looks like they are doing some great things with "SWS Online"--very much advanced from the traditional sit-down-together-one-on-one writing conference. See their website for more information. Also, check out the more general website on the writing center at UMN.

My first reaction to their presentation was, "This would be great to do with my own students, especially if I begin teaching fully online courses, or even partially online "hybrid" courses. I was a big "fan" of Donald Murray in graduate school--and one other guy who's name I can't think of right now--and I have twice tried courses where the students and I met as a group very infrequently, and the rest of the time was spent in individual conferences.

My second reaction to their presentation was, "Wow, this would sure take a lot of time" ... time, Time, TIME ... which is already an issue for all writing instructors who use a process-approach to writing and who try to provide their students with various forms of feedback, both formative and summative, throughout the process of each paper and throughout the course. (And not an issue at all for more traditional teachers who don't assign or read multiple drafts, and who only put a few comments and the grade on the final product ... much like my own freshman composition instructor!)

Of course, an "online" conference, using IM-ing or even Skype, might help to engage and motivate students who are not challenged, engaged, or motivated with more "traditional" teaching methods. But it would have to be carefully thought through and planned.

And I even like the idea of online peer review, but again, sorting out all the logistics seems daunting! And, would an online peer review even make sense to do in a computer lab where students are sitting right next to each other? Maybe, even quite possibly or probably. Students might write more, and they might approach response differently, given this new "medium" for peer review. But what would I use: a wiki, a chat room, a discussion board in D2L, ...?

I also like the idea, given either in class or in the textbook, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, where a rubric is kept in digital form, opened each time a professor grades a paper, comments inserted directly into the rubric, the rubric saved under a different file name, and the rubric then attached to the paper, or, more digitally, emailed to the student. But, again, my concern is TIME.

TIME is also a concern for students emailing their papers to me, me saving and then opening each one, me reading and commenting using MS Word's Insert Comments and/or Track Changes features, and then me saving and emailing the paper back to the students. I like the idea, in theory, but in practice it still seems daunting. But I might have to give it a go to see how it goes.

Finally, TIME is also a concern for me if I choose to digitally record comments about a student's work, as both of my professors--Dr. Richard Beach and Dr. David O'Brien--are doing for me/us this semester. I think I heard that I would actually need two computers, one for the blog, or wiki, or document, or whatever, that I was looking at, reading, analyzing, and evaluating, and another one for the recording, with Audacity open and ready to go. The recording would have to be made, the MP3 encoding would have to be done (using LAME), the file would have to be saved, and then the file would have to be emailed back to the student--perhaps along with their paper. My college doesn't have a Media Mill server or feature, as the U of MN does, so I couldn't just email students a link to their comments.

And I wonder if students would listen to their comments, right away or even at all. When I received my digital comments from both professors this semester, I didn't immediately "open" them and listen, as I would if I got a hard copy of my paper handed back to me with notes in the margins. It's a new way of thinking for me. Maybe my students are already there, maybe not.

Also, my regular teaching load is 3 writing courses and 1 literature course each semester. Writing courses enroll 26 or 28 students, depending if the course is college-level or developmental, respectively, while literature courses can enroll up to 50 students. With this load and number of students, I don't think there's any way to give the kinds of feedback I've gotten this semester. Prof. O'Brien not only gave me recorded comments but also used the Word commenting feature to insert specific comments throughout my paper. And Prof. Beach gave me extended recorded comments. (Of course, there's also the difference between undergraduate and graduate level courses, I don't think my UMN professors are teaching more than 1 or 2 courses each semester, and my Reading course has only 12 students in it while my Digital Writing course has between 20 and 25.)

Reflecting on Creating a Podcast and Editing Audio

I've already posted my podcast, as you might already know, but I promised to come back and blog about the process and how I might use it in my teaching. And, if you've already read my reflection on editing video, you might already be able to guess what I'm going to say here.

I HATED the podcasting assignment, but I'm not quite sure why. It might have to do with struggling to find a topic that others might be interested in hearing about. But are my students always interested in what we talk about in class? No, not really, I'm a realist, but at least they are "present," with few distractions, to be able to take in, and perhaps contribute to, the discussion. With a podcast, they can listen to it whenever, wherever, but I'm guessing that they will NOT be sitting, listening, and doing nothing else.

Hating the podcasting assignment might also have to do with never having done any audio editing before, and the "learning curve," at least for me, was steep. Downloading Audacity and LAME wasn't a problem, but it seemed that "fine-tuning" the volume and other set-up things, and then actually recording the podcast, was excruciating. However, the editing was better, and was more fun the more I played with it. I even managed to find the Podsafe Audio site and was able to include some music in my podcast for my "intro" and "outro." Really cool music, I might add. (Thanks, again, to Mauricio Cuburu for "Disco Viejo.")

I should also say here that the Podcasting for Dummies book, second edition, by Tee Morris, Chuck Tomasi, and Evo Terra, was helpful ... but it was also a way for me to prolong the project, because I convinced myself that I had to read almost the entire book first, before sitting down to do anything.

Finally, how might I use podcasting in my classes? I'm not sure, but I do know who I could talk to, to get some ideas. A former colleague of mine, Jerry Shannon, who is now a Ph.D. student in Geography at the U of MN, used to teach freshman composition, both at ARCC and the U of MN. He was light-years ahead of me, and many others, in terms of technology, and he also had a service-learning component in his classes. While teaching at the U of MN, he affiliated his classes with a radio station somewhere, perhaps in one of the Minneapolis high schools, and he had his students create podcasts. I'm not sure what they created podcasts about, but here might be some ideas, based on the kinds of writing normally assigned in freshman comp:

• Personal Writing -- create a podcast about an event in your life that changed your thinking about others. Use the podcast to tell the story, to set the mood, and to get people thinking and reflecting on their own lives. Check out NPR's "This I Believe" for some ideas.
  
• Informative Writing -- create a podcast to inform your listeners about a process they know little about. Use the podcast to teach your listeners the process, to introduce them to an expert in the process, and to let them know where to find more information. Check out various NPR/MPR "stories" for some ideas.
  
• Argumentative Writing -- create a podcast to state your position on a local controversial issue, or to present your solution to a problem in your community. Use the podcast to state and support the reasons for your position, to acknowledge and address the various opposing arguments, and to persuade your listeners to either change their thinking about the issue or to at least consider your position more carefully. Check out various NPR/MPR "editorials" and "opinion pieces" for some ideas.

All of these podcasts would, of course, be preceded by the full reading, research, and writing processes, resulting in at least one draft, a peer review, a revision, and then a "script" for the podcast. Digital recorders would be required for interviews in the field, and microphones and headsets would be required in the computer labs. Skype interviews might have to be arranged and recorded somehow (Camtasia Studio? Gizmo?). Arrangements would have to be made with my college's Technology Department for storage space and for "processing," similar to the U of MN's Media Mill, so that the MP3 files could be "subscribed to" using RSS feeds or downloaded for playback.

And, now, all of this seems so clear and straightforward, and yet so time and resource intensive!

Reflecting on Editing and Posting Video

While this project was actually for an assignment in the Digital Writing course I am taking, it began at home with my wife and I anticipating some fun with our cat, Charm. We set up a black-cat Halloween prop for Charm to find, and at the last minute we thought to get the camera. I should say here that Charm is extremely sensitive to anything new and she especially does not like other animals about. I should also admit that we weren't as prepared as we should have been. Good photographers and videographers know to always have their equipment pre-checked, ON, and ready to shoot. We were a bit slow, but we still managed to get some good material. We should have gotten the camera sooner, and we should have made sure we had fresh batteries! Live and learn, I guess.

Even though we shot the video on the Kodak EasyShare Z885 camera, we were able to use a cable we got with our Canon camera to transfer the video files to our PC. No problem so far. But then when I went to begin editing the video in Windows Movie Maker, problems quickly arose. The video was in Quick Time Movie format (.MOV), which is not supported by Windows Movie Maker. So I had to take A LONG TIME searching the web to find a file conversion site that was reviewed well on several discussion boards. I settled on Media Convert, and was eventually able to successfully convert my four .MOV files to .AVI files. Since I am, by nature, obsessive compulsive, this whole ordeal probably took me much longer than it would take anyone else, but slower is sometimes better.

Ironically, by this point, I had to leave for class, so I took all the video files with me, on a USB flash drive, and I ended up beginning the editing process, in class, ON A MAC. So, I didn't need to do the conversions after all, but I do eventually want to go back and learn Windows Movie Maker, if only because my college does not really support Macs, except for the Art Department.

As you might already guess, the video editing took me A LONG TIME also. I began it in class, but had to spend about three-and-a-half additional hours outside of class to produce a 3-minute video. I was then able to compress it, upload it to the U of MN's Media Mill, process it there, and have it ready to embed on my blog and upload to YouTube. The first upload to YouTube did not "take," for some reason (which, based on past experience, I'm guessing had to do with my poor relationship with the U of MN's servers, or with doing it on a wireless laptop), but the second upload to YouTube from my PC at home was successful.

In all, however, in spite of the video file format conversion problem, and in spite of the uploading to Media Mill and to YouTube problems, I enjoyed the video editing process MUCH MORE than the audio editing process (for the podcasting assignment) even though the two processes are very similar and the editing environments (Audacity or GarageBand, and iMovie) have many similarities--e.g., multiple "tracks," adding in music or sound effects, cutting, rearranging "clips," etc. And I'm not sure why I enjoyed it more. Was it because I had already gone through the "hell" of podcasting and editing audio, so I had more "background knowledge" when it came time to do the video editing? Or was it because I am a more "visual" person so I enjoyed that element more? (This second reason I'm not as sure about, since I also tend to learn better from reading than from hands-on lessons--for example, I loved the chemistry formulas, math, and "book work," but I hated the chemistry labs.)

So ... would I use this in class? I'm not sure yet. I would first want to learn Windows Movie Maker, so that I could "teach" it to my students, at least in a rudimentary way. Second, my college does not loan out cameras, I don't think, whereas the U of MN does, either in the Curriculum & Instruction Library or out of Walter Library, so I'm not sure if my students would have as good of access to equipment as I did. Third, I'm not sure yet what assignment I could give that would lend itself to video. I could see an argumentative-inquiry project involving not only research but some type of video component, but that's as far as my thinking has gone.

Charm's Writing Process

Our cat, Charm, is finally a "star" on the famous YouTube site! And it's actually related to writing! Check it out:



The video was recorded on a Kodak EasyShare camera and transferred to a PC--the file types were "Quick Time Movie." The editing was done, however, on a Mac laptop, using iMovie 2006 (I think). The video image was sharp on iMovie, but when compressed and uploaded to the U of MN's MediaMill, and then "processed" there, the image quality has decreased. Obviously, as soon as I get a second (or three hours), I'm going to look into improving the quality.

Using Podcasting in My Classes

Forthcoming. Stay tuned!

My First Podcast

There. It's done. Finished. I've finally done it. And who says that worrying and carrying on aren't useful?

This particular podcast is "Episode 2" (no, there's no "Episode 1" yet) from a podcast "show" which might be titled "American Literature to 1865." Oddly enough, this "show" also happens to be a course that I teach at Anoka Ramsey Community College. (But I won't get into educators as entertainers in this particular blog post.)

In this podcast, I talk about why we are reading some texts but not others; particularly, why we are not reading exploration narratives/reports by Spanish, French, Dutch, and other non-English writers, and why we are not reading the Native American Origin and Creation Stories.

So, without further ado, here are the various links created by the University of Minnesota's Media Mill:

Public Download URL

Public Playable URL

RSS2.0

This podcast was created on a PC using Audacity and LAME. The podsafe music by Mauricio Cuburu was found on PodsafeAudio.com. The mp3 file is stored on (hosted by) the U of MN's Media Mill, which also generated the RSS feed.

Thank you, thank you very much!