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.)

Analyzing Readability in a Blog or Website

This was the suggested blog post/topic assigned for my digital writing class on Nov. 18, 2008, in preparation, I think, for our creation of interactive PowerPoint (or SlideShare, or SlideRocket, or VoiceThread) presentations.

However, instead of doing the assigned post first, I jumped right into the creation of my interactive SlideRocket presentation, which has already been posted on my blog (see past posts below), but I thought I'd return to this post, if only for some reflection on the assignment ... since I don't think I'm going to actually do the assignment!

I think that this would be a great assignment to give to my college students, but I think the key ingredient for the assignment would be to make sure students have clear criteria for analysis and evaluation in mind before they go out in search of a blog or website to analyze/evaluate, but especially before they begin the actual analysis and evaluation. And, like I've done in the past, discussing and creating/developing this criteria together as a group is a better use of time than me just lecturing to them about what to look for.

I don't remember, now, if we discussed potential criteria for analysis/evaluation in class, but I remember that our course text, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, includes a nice discussion of this topic. My intial thoughts about criteria include:

• General, overall structure of the blog or website: top banner(s)? sidebar(s)? construction of the main body--one column, two columns, three columns, etc.? bottom banner(s)?
• Specific construction within these main structural components
  
• Use of colors
• Use of fonts
• Use of "graphics"--still images, and/or video, and/or other graphic-design features
  
• Use of "sound"--music, voice, etc.
• Use of text
• Length of text
  
• Readability of text
• "Interactive" components--comment sections, chat rooms, surveys, quizzes, games, etc.

This assignment now seems somewhat similar to two other assignments I used to give:

• A "rhetorical analysis" of an essay, focusing on how the "techniques" used in an essay (usually narrative or expository)--such as structure/organization, examples, details, introductory strategies, conclusion strategies, syntax, diction, style, tone, etc.--helped the writer accomplish her/his purpose for his/her audience.
• A "critique" of an argumentative/persuasive essay, primarily focusing on Aristotle's "three appeals"--ethos, pathos, logos--but also on other argumentative/persuasive strategies used by the writer to accomplish her/his purpose for his/her audience.

Yes, yes, I know: fairly straight-forward and very traditional assignments--and, students would say, both challenging and "boring." And not at all "digital" or Web 2.0.

I think a "blend" of the old and the new will be where I start, when I begin planning my courses and assignments for next year.

Analyzing My SlideRocket Presentation

A week or so ago, I posted my SlideRocket presentation, and at that time I promised to add more commentary later. Here's that commentary! Better late than never?

SlideRocket is a lot like PowerPoint, or KeyNote (on the Mac), I'm told, and there are other "presentation sites" out there on the web, such as Google Docs, VoiceThread, SlideBoom, or SlideShare. I've used VoiceThread already, so I thought I'd try SlideRocket.

An interesting assignment idea might be to have students compare-and-contrast, and evaluate, two different presentation tools, and then create a presentation about it!?! I've just done an informal survey, and students are reporting that a "PowerPoint assignment" should definitely be a part of a college-writing class ... perhaps especially since they are already required to use PowerPoint in their required Speech class.

In creating these presentations, my digital writing professor asked us to make them "as interactive as possible," and then I missed the next class where he demonstrated some very interactive ones.

So, instead of using SlideRocket as a lecture/presentation tool where A LOT of information is given, using A LOT of bullet lists, I envisioned and created it for a discussion-based literature class, where discussion rather than lecture is the dominant mode. I wanted to use it to guide the in-class discussion, to give students things to think about, to activate their background knowledge(s), to explicitly elicit comments from them, and to move us forward. (So many times, discussions can stall. However, sometimes it is also good if discussions get off track, or even back up a bit. Can these presentation tools handle that?)

I think this presentation does a fairly good job, but it is definitely for an in-class discussion, where I (or someone else) would be "moderating" and perhaps even jotting notes on the whiteboard -- or somewhere else ... is there a digital tool for that? (There's got to be; it's just not on my radar yet.)

A classmate, Brent Eckhoff, told me about a presentation he designed, with the idea that students would view it, and interact with it, OUTSIDE of class. This is my next step.

Evaluating a Podcast

I finally got back to this post, which I promised weeks ago!

I started out following the directions given in Podcasting for Dummies, second edition, by Tee Morris, Chuck Tomasi, and Evo Terra. It's a great book if you're starting out with podcasting, and the sections about finding and listening to podcasts have great examples and recommendations. I agree that one should "browse" through many podcasts before starting out ... but I plunged right in, after reading most of the book first, and only later did I start to listen to some.

I'm using both Juice and iTunes as "podcatchers," but I'm not sure which one I prefer. There are some things about the different "screens" in Juice that I don't understand, but Juice is clearer than iTunes, it seems to me, in the step about "going-out-and-seeing-if-anything-is-new," whereas this step seems more hidden in iTunes. With Juice, you get a clear list of all available "episodes" and can see at a glance which ones you have or don't have. I haven't found this yet in iTunes.

The podcast I listened to was Episode One, "Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?" produced by Digital Campus and the Center for History and New Media. It originally "aired" on March 7, 2007. I think I'm going to like the Digital Campus podcasts, if I can work more of them into my schedule. The focus is definitely more on higher education than "Teachers Teaching Teachers," but I think there'd be some good stuff there as well.

This episode had the host, Dan Cohen (?), and two guests. It was pretty informal, the three speakers seemed to know each other, they worked off of each other pretty well, and they seemed comfortable with a few seconds of "dead air" here and there.

The episode started out with a "News Roundup," which covered many different topics and was very interesting. Oddly, though, it took up about half the time of the podcast. Here's a "run-down" of the topics discussed:

• MS Vista
• Google Docs
• A reminder that "students are not automatically technology literate" -- even though we might think that since they're mostly in the 18-22 age group
• A reminder that some students do not have MS Office -- due to cost or other issues
• A discussion about open-source class management systems vs. commercial ones such as BlackBoard and WebCT -- and how "tagging" works in various systems
• Flickr -- and the Ken Albers study
  
• Delicious

At this point, the discussion about Wikipedia began, and they made many good points. Instead of saying to students that they can't use it and/or they can't cite it -- which they're going to probably look at anyway -- we should "train" our students in a better use of Wikipedia. We should even ask and discuss the question, Is an encyclopedia an appropriate college-level source?

One speaker then described an extra-credit project in his Western Civ. class, a project which soon became a required project. He asked his students to either write or substantially edit a Wikipedia entry and then to track the commentary and changes made to the page. He argued that an important part of an entry that is often overlooked is the History of a page. His students soon discovered how quickly and how drastically a page can change, and not always for the better. However, the other argument is that the more people who are involved in a page, the better the article might be. His hope was that, through this project, his students might better understand both Wikipedia and the "scholarly process," the creation (and maintenance?) of knowledge.

The discussion also included, several times, the phrase: "Community of Enthusiasts." We need to recognize that these communities drive Wikipedia and that our students probably already belong to one or more "communities of enthusiasts," based on their personal and/or professional interests. We should capitalize on this and work the concept into our classes.

(As a side note, I already often teach my First-Year Writing course, especially when I focus explicitly on "academic writing," using the ideas of "community" and "conversation." Students need to recognize that, in coming to college, they are joining a new community, and they are going to be "listening to many different conversations." And every conversation is going to have different "conventions" to follow when/if one joins the conversation. We then start in with summarizing, then analysis, then evaluation, then synthesis, then argument, where they actually join or contribute to a conversation after doing all the "listening.")

Finally, the podcast ended with some recommendations for the listeners. If you want to use a wiki for personal or professional reasons, these two were highly recommended:

• wetpaint.com
• pbwiki.com

If you teach history or geography, you might be interested in:

• worldmapper.org

If you teach your students research skills, you might be interested in:

• the Open Content Alliance, a rival to Google Books (the Google Library Project), which has upward of 187,000 books online with searching and downloading capabilities -- archive.org/details/texts

I'm glad Digital Campus was recommended to me by my Digital Writing professor. I've already downloaded several more podcasts and hope to listen to them soon. I tried to listen while doing other things on the computer, but I'm not one to be able to do that, whereas I know others who can multi-task. It makes me question using podcasts for my classes: Will my students be paying attention, or will they be distracted with other things and come away with only a fraction of what was on the podcast? Maybe in asking them to find and evaluate some before actually doing their own, they might actually realize that their audience won't be paying as much attention as they hope? Is this too much to hope for?

My Professor's Audio Feedback on My Blog

I can't get this to open in my email, so I'm going to try this:

Click here to listen to Dr. Richard Beach's feedback and evaluation about my blog. He's a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. The course is CI 5330: Teaching Digital Writing.

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.