Category: Pedagogy

Posts that deal with ways of teaching

The Recommendation Report

On By guitarsophistIn Pedagogy2 Comments

In spring 2021, I am teaching two sections of English 3151, “Writing in the Professions.” I have taught the course many times before, but this is the first time I have taught it entirely online, so I had to redesign it quite a bit. It is essentially a business and technical writing course, heavy on workplace genres such as memos, emails, letters and reports. I resurrected it from oblivion in order to make English majors who did not want to teach more employable. It has become quite popular, not only among English majors, but for students in majors as diverse as nutrition and philosophy.

According to former students, it actually has helped them get jobs in diverse fields.

In addition to all the memos and emails (more on this here), the course has two major research projects. One is a rhetorical analysis of public documents associated with a scandal.  I discuss this assignment in a previous post.

The other project is a “Recommendation Report.” In this project, students define a problem, gather information, develop criteria for evaluating approaches, choose the best approach, and discuss implementation. This is a common writing task in many work environments. In some cases, the writer is asked to do the research and the analysis, but leave the selection of the best course of action to the decision-maker. This is a clear example of an inquiry-driven assignment.

The recommendation report is a very rational approach to problem solving. The thinking process can be used to address everything from family difficulties, to the problems of businesses, organizations, and communities. It is what our politicians should be doing instead of jockeying for partisan advantage.

Problem Solving

If you do a search on “problem solving” on the internet, you will find lots of different systems, sometimes offering contradictory advice. Often these systems are designed for business managers or military officers. Even the US Army’s seven-step system has different steps in different presentations. What follows is a distillation of what I consider the best and most flexible advice from many sources, based on my experience as a Writing Center director. It is also available as a handout for students.

Note that this process could easily be turned into a teaching module that might last about three weeks.

1. Define the Problem

Before you can solve a problem, you have to define it. Ask yourself the following questions, which are somewhat based on the journalistic pentad: who, what, when, where, and why (sometimes known as “the five W’s”).

  • Why do you, or others, think there is a problem?
  • When and where is it happening? (How long has it been going on? Where was it first noticed?)
  • With whom is it happening? (Note: Don’t jump to blaming individuals. People may be making mistakes because of bad equipment, bad information, a bad system, or other factors beyond their control. Also, if people think you are trying to assign blame, they may be less open about talking about the problem.)
  • What is the scope of the problem? (How big is it? How many people does it affect? How many parts of the organization?)
  • Who has authority over the problem? Who should you present your solution to?
  • Could there be more than one problem? What are other possibilities?

2. Gather information

Some say “You can’t solve a problem without understanding the cause” (McNamara), while others say, “If ever there was a time-waster in problem solving, it has to be the search for the cause of the problem” (Nikols). Nikols explains, “the concept of cause is frequently relevant, but its usefulness depends on the kind of problem being solved. It’s not relevant all the time and, for some problems, it’s never relevant.” The bottom line is not to get fixated on finding causes if they are too complex because of multiple variables, or are simply beyond your power to address.

  • What are the facts?
  • What do people affected by the problem think?
  • What assumptions do they make about the problem that might be questionable? Are any decision-makers influenced by political views or ingrained thinking that might cloud their judgment?
  • What are some possible causes? Is the problem caused by technology (or lack thereof), policy, procedure, scheduling, people, or some other factor?
  • What potential causes and solutions to the problem do you find on the internet?
  • What have other people done in the past to address similar problems? Were they successful?
  • Considering your research, should you re-evaluate your definition of the problem?

3. Develop Criteria for Success

To evaluate possible solutions and make a case for one of them, you need to have a list of criteria that the solution must meet.

  • What does an ideal outcome look like? What is the end goal of the problem-solving process?
  • What limitations exist in terms of costs and resources?
  • What standards must the solution meet in terms of physical space, capabilities, and other qualities?
  • Can you answer “Yes” to all of the following questions (These are deliberative stasis questions from ancient Roman rhetoric, but they are quite applicable here.)
    • Is it legal?
    • Is it expedient? (Is action necessary and will it work?)
    • Is it possible?
    • Is the anticipated effect positive? (Will it produce honor, happiness, satisfaction, or other positive effects for those who implement it? This is an important factor in persuading decision-makers to accept your recommendation.)
  • If more than one solution meets these criteria, how will you make a decision?

3. Identify possible approaches

Some experts avoid the term “solution” in favor of “approach” because some problems can only be addressed or improved, not solved. The military tends to use “Course of Action,” abbreviated as COA.

  • List approaches that people involved in the situation offered.
  • List approaches that appeared in your research.
  • Brainstorm for alternative approaches to the problem. (Brainstorming is collecting as many ideas as possible, then screening them to find the best idea. Do not pass any judgment on the ideas— just write them down as you hear them.)
  • Considering your evaluation criteria, select a short list of the best possible approaches and compare them. Try not to be biased in favor of a particular solution. Be as objective as possible.

4. Select an approach to resolve the problem

When selecting the best approach, consider:

  • Which approach satisfies the most criteria in your evaluation scheme?
  • Which approach is most likely to achieve the desired outcome?
  • Which approach is the most realistic to implement in terms of time and resources?
  • What is the extent of risk associated with each alternative?
  • Which approach do you think has the best chance of being acceptable to decision-makers? Can you make a case for it if you have to?

5. Plan the implementation of the best alternative

Carefully consider:

  • What will the situation look like when the problem is solved?
  • What steps should be taken to implement the best alternative to solving the problem?
  • What resources will you need in terms of people, money and facilities?
  • How much time will you need to implement the solution?
  • Who will primarily be responsible for ensuring implementation of the plan?
  • How will you know if the approach is successful?

An important aspect of this step in the problem-solving process is continual observation and feedback.

The Report

The assignment asks students to identify a problem at “a company, an organization or an institution with which you are connected.” University students often write about their part time jobs on campus or with local retailers. High school students might write about their schools, or clubs they belong to, or their jobs. Then they go through the problem-solving process. At the end of the process they prepare the report and a PowerPoint to present it.

I link to some sample reports to use as models. There is a lot of useful material on David McMurray’s Online Technical Writing site. He provides an overview of recommendation reports and numerous examples. I often discuss the sample report on “Fire Ant Control” with my students. I note that if “Use a natural product that does not damage the environment” were added to the criteria, a different recommendation would be made.

Conclusions

As an assignment, the Recommendation Report has many advantages. It is a research project with practical, real-world outcomes. It is a common workplace genre. It is flexible, adaptable to problems great and small. It unfolds in stages, so it is easy to monitor students’ progress over time. And finally, it models a rational approach to problem solving that includes fact-finding, critical thinking, and engagement with the needs and opinions of other stakeholders.

If more people had these abilities, the world might become a better place. Or at least a more rational one.

Works Cited

McMurray, David. “Recommendation and Feasibility Reports.” Online Technical Writing.  Accessed 20 Jan. 2021.

McNamara, Carter. “Problem Solving and Decision Making.” Free Management Library. Accessed 18 Jan. 2021.

Nikols, Fred. “Ten Tips for Beefing Up Your Problem-Solving Tool Box.” Distance Consulting. Accessed 18 Jan. 2021.

Smith, Miles Anthony. “The Ultimate Problem-Solving Process Guide: 31 Steps and Resources.” Initiative One Leadership Institute. 6 Dec. 2017. Accessed 18 Jan. 2021.

Thesis-Driven Versus Inquiry-Driven Assignments

On By guitarsophistIn Courses at Cal Poly Pomona, Modern Rhetoric, Pedagogy1 Comment

Does the strong emphasis on the thesis/support model in our schools have something to do with the polarization of our society?

In my previous post I described a “Survey of Opinion” assignment in which I asked students to find three op-eds taking different positions on an issue they were interested in and analyze the way each writer talked about the issue, how they framed it, what terms they used, etc. They found the articles, but instead of doing the rhetorical analysis, many of them crafted a thesis statement on the issue and used the articles to support their own positions, essentially writing their own op-eds. They were quite surprised when I told them they had not done the assignment.

In response I wrote the post “Why Do Rhetorical Analysis?” in which I argued that a rhetorician must cultivate a “moment of neutrality” and step back from the ideological fray in order to objectively analyze the discourse.

Later in the course I assigned another inquiry-driven project that was modeled on investigative journalism, inspired by Marilyn Cooper’s article “How Bruno Latour Teaches Writing” (185-201) in the collection Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition edited by Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers. Bruno Latour is a sociologist whose main contribution is something called Actor-Network Theory or ANT, which treats both humans and nonhumans (machines, animals, texts, and hybrids, among others) as potential actors or “actants” in a network.

Basic concepts from Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

  • None of us acts alone. Everything we do is part of an Actor-Network.
  • Actor-Networks are made up of both human and non-human actants, such as animals and computers. From this perspective, we might see the novel corona virus as an actant.
  • An Actor-Network is made up of intermediaries and mediators. An act flows through an intermediary without being changed. However, the input and output of a mediator is not the same, so the act is transformed to an extent.
  • Actor-Networks are constantly being formed and unformed.
  • We study an Actor-Network by describing it, not interpreting or explaining it.

I also told my students that in this assignment, “You don’t start with a thesis and look for ways to support it. That is actually not a legitimate way to proceed with research anyway. That is cherry picking items that support the thesis and ignoring conflicting information. Instead, you might start with a research question, such as ‘How did this happen?’ or ‘How did this get here?’”

A Model Text

As a model, I gave my students an article from the New Yorker (“Donald Trump’s Worst Deal” by Adam Davidson) about a Trump Tower in Azerbaijan, a 5-star luxury hotel which has been completed but never opened, so inconveniently located that local taxi drivers can see it, but don’t know how to get to it. How in the world did this hotel get there? The writer describes the scene of the hotel, then proceeds to trace the network of connections that caused it to be built, including politicians, financiers, investors, contractors, lawyers, oligarchs, and powerful families in Azerbaijan, Iran, and of course the Trump Organization. The writer has no explicit thesis for all of these connections, but part of the network extends to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and the most charitable conclusion that a reader can draw is that the Trump Organization is none too careful about whom it will deal with.

To help my students engage with the lengthy text, I divided it into sections and annotated it. I also gave them a handout with just the annotations. I am sure that some of them only read the handout.

The Resulting Papers

I got some good papers from this. One student was investigating Planned Parenthood and found that the founder, Margret Sanger, had connections to the eugenics movement that also inspired Adolph Hitler. Another discussed a bridge over the Grand Canyon and looked at the plans and actions of a Native American tribe, environmentalists, politicians, investors, and the tourist industry, all pulling the project in different directions. Another investigated Mt. Rushmore, and found that not only had the land been stolen from the Lakota, but the sculptor had connections to the KKK and had also been involved in a project, never completed, to make a similar monument to Confederate leaders. These projects followed the dictates of the assignment. No thesis, trace a network of connections, let the reader draw the conclusions.

However, many of the papers took the standard thesis/support approach. They thought they knew that a “research paper” was a paper in which you stated your thesis and found facts to back it up, while mostly ignoring contrary facts and views. They fired up their “research paper generation process” and largely ignored the particulars of the assignment. A middle group did some network tracing, but lapsed into editorializing at various points. I guess we could say that their “moment of neutrality” was brief and unstable.

Conclusions

Of course, this kind of writing is never entirely objective. When the author of “Trump’s Worst Deal” began his investigation, he undoubtedly thought he would find corruption. But going into the investigation with an open mind, following the connections where they lead, and letting the reader draw the conclusions is ultimately more persuasive than the standard thesis-driven op-ed. And both the writer and the reader learn so much more.

I might be stretching things a bit, but I think that the strong emphasis on the thesis/support model in our schools may have something to do with the polarization our society experiences today. The “Survey of Opinion” assignment has behind it the question “What do people think and how do they talk about it?” The network tracing assignment asks “Who are the actors, what are the facts, and where do they lead?” The thesis/support model, at least in its most simplistic form, is about “This is what I think and this is why I’m right.”

Perhaps we should diversify our assignment game a bit.

Why Do Rhetorical Analysis?

On By guitarsophistIn Classical Rhetoric, Modern Rhetoric, Pedagogy1 Comment

In my writing courses I teach a lot of rhetorical concepts and assign a great many rhetorical analysis activities and papers (a basic post with instructions for rhetorical analysis is here.) However, instead of analyzing what a writer is trying to do and how they are doing it, many students respond by agreeing or disagreeing with the position the writer takes. For example, I recently asked students to find three op-eds taking different positions on an issue they were interested in and analyze the way each writer talked about the issue, how they framed it, what terms they used, etc. They found the articles, but many of them crafted a thesis statement on the issue and used the articles to support their own positions. My instructions were detailed (perhaps too detailed, when many students misunderstand an assignment it is almost always the instructor’s fault), but in this case disregarded.

In part, I think this happened because students did what they had been taught to do. They had an issue, so the thing to do is take a position and support it, something that at this point (a junior-level course in college) they had done many, many times before. They thought that they already knew how to do this.

Taking Things Apart

When I read drafts of application essays by engineering students, they almost always talk about how when they were kids they took everything apart to see how it worked. It’s such a cliche that I usually advise them to take that part out. However, why don’t English majors want to take texts apart to see how they work? That is essentially what rhetorical analysis is. And just as when you take a machine apart, you need wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, pliers, and other tools, rhetoricians have their tools too.

Tools from Classical Rhetoric and Beyond

Aristotle’s three appeals allow us to investigate the role of the writer, the nature of the arguments, and the effects of emotions on the attempt to persuade the reader. The concept of the enthymeme helps us break down the arguments into premises and tease out hidden assumptions.

The sophistic concepts of “mythos” and “nomos” help us think about the big narratives we all share and the unwritten expectations for behavior that guide every community and shock us when they are transgressed.

Stasis theory and Toulmin argumentation help us figure out where the parties disagree and how well their claims are supported. Dissoi Logoi helps us see who benefits and who is hurt by whatever policy we choose. The concept of “exigence” helps us define the rhetorical situation and our reasons for responding to it.

Descriptive outlining updates the classical concept of “arrangement” and helps us see how a text is organized and how the parts work together.

To move to modern rhetoric, Kenneth Burke’s “pentad” helps us Look at the same situation from different perspectives and track different sources of motivation for acts. We can think about, for example, whether it is just to blame an individual or a particular environment for an act. His concept of “Terministic Screens” can help us see how the language we use affects the world we see. His concept of “identification” can help us see how groups form and re-form and how the terms and symbols they use to signal membership relate to arguments and persuasion.

The Right Tool and the Right Attitude

Selecting the right tool for the text and the purpose is a skill gained through practice. Students will gravitate toward the tools they find most useful to them, but they need lots of practice.

They also need to cultivate what might be called “a moment of neutrality.” They need to step back from the issue and analyze what is really going on in the text at hand. If we really disagree with the writer, but the text also seems very persuasive, our question is “How do they do that?” To combat the opposition, we need to understand their moves. But it is also the case that if we can cultivate this moment of neutrality, we may be able to understand where they are coming from and find some common ground.

Finding common ground is the most effective persuasive strategy of all.

Kenneth Burke on Terministic Screens

On By guitarsophistIn Modern Rhetoric, Pedagogy3 Comments

The terms we use to discuss something have a big effect on our perception of it. In his book Language as Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke says, “Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (45). Burke calls a terminology a “terministic screen.” We might also call it a terministic “filter.”

What he means is that though we see through words and think about reality in words, no set of words accurately represents reality. The words we use influence how we see. When we speak or write, the words we use can make others see things as we do. Analyzing the terms that a writer or speaker uses can therefore tell us a lot about how they see the world. It also means that if we can get an audience to start using a different set of terms, we might change their views.

Burke’s fundamental example is the distinction between “action” and “motion.” Where Burke sees a motive and an act, a behaviorist sees a “stimulus” and a mechanistic “response.” In the behaviorist terminology, human action is reduced to a serious of chemical reactions, turning us into chemical machines (A Grammar of Motives, 59-60).

An Activity

In this activity, find two articles that take very different positions on an issue. As you read them, collect a list of three to six key terms for each article. These “terms” could be nouns, verbs, adjectives, or phrases. For each term, you will think about the following questions and record your findings in a chart like the one below.

  • What object in reality does the term reflect? What is the denotation?
  • What qualities does the term select from or emphasize about the object? How does the term draw attention to this particular object and away from others?
  • What qualities does this term deflect or conceal?
  • What other terms are related to this term in the system of this terministic screen? What relations do they have?

Here are some examples of different terms that might be used to describe fighters in a political situation:

When you have a set of key terms for each article, compare them to see how they overlap and how they differ. Finally, what is the effect on the attitude of the audience when seeing through these terministic screens?

A copy of this post as a .docx file plus a chart for tracking terms is provided in the link below.

Kenneth Burke on Terministic Screens

Using Kenneth Burke’s Concept of Identification

On By guitarsophistIn Modern Rhetoric, Pedagogy1 Comment

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book in which you “identified” strongly with the main character? This is what Kenneth Burke means by “identification.” We want to be like characters we admire. But this is also true in real life.

I took up the topic of Kenneth Burke’s concept of “Identification,” in a previous post, “Identification and Division in the Current Crisis.” In this post, I want to delve further into the concept and explore some possible uses of the concept.

Identification and Division

Burke notes that “Identification,” (and rhetoric itself) is necessary because there is division. In The Rhetoric of Motives he says,

Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division. If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. (22)

“Division” is our natural state. However, humans are also social creatures. We form families, tribes, communities, nations, alliances, and movements. Each of these groupings has ways of signaling membership and recognizing outsiders. Problems arise when different groups want to occupy the same territory, or use the same resources. But where there is division, we can try to overcome it by finding common ground.

It is likely that some identification is unconscious. We see or hear a person and we immediately “identify” with them. They seem to be like us in some way, or to be someone we would like to emulate or believe, but we don’t know exactly why. It might be gestures, a tone of voice, a remembrance of someone we admire who is similar in some way. But identification can also be consciously attempted.

Current Politics

We see this in our current politics. A politician has a core “base” of supporters who think like she does. These people strongly identify with their candidate. However, it is usually the case that the “base” is not enough to win the election. The candidate has to find ways to appeal to a larger group, without alienating her base. She has to find ways to signal to other groups that she is one of them too. Sometimes this involves using terms that have one meaning to the base, but have another to an outside group. This strategy is often called a “dogwhistle.” An actual “dogwhistle” is a whistle that when blown produces a sound that is too high pitched for humans to hear, but can be heard by dogs, who can hear a higher frequency range. In politics, by analogy, a “dogwhistle” is term that sounds positive to the base, but neutral to outsiders, who may actually disagree with the implications it has for the base if they understood them.

Identification is not just in politics, however. It is part of persuasion in schools, workplaces, corporate boardrooms and in the news. It is part of families and communities. It is even part of friendships. How does it work?

Tracking Identifications

One way to think about this is to track ways to signal identification. A short list might include:

  • Clothing including uniforms
  • Colors such as gang colors, school colors, red states and blue states, Dodger blue and Angel red
  • Symbols such as flags, insignia, designs, logos
  • Images and memes
  • Words identified with particular viewpoints (including “dogwhistles”)
  • Slogans, maxims, and stock phrases
  • Gestures such as salutes and handshakes
  • Associations with occupations, regions, social classes

Of course, there is some overlap in these categories.

Military uniforms have a long history. At a very basic level they function to help soldiers tell friend from foe and combatants from civilians. Military organizations also have various badges and insignia that indicate rank and achievements. The uniform and various attachments signify to all that this individual is a member of this organization and what role they perform in it. Of course, members of this organization are more skilled in interpreting these signals than outsiders, which increases the insider/outsider effect of identification.

Outside of the military, uniforms and other clothing choices can help observers tell employees from customers, students form teachers, and identify members of social groupings such as athletes, “goths” or other groupings defined by choices in music, sports, gaming, or other cultural activities. Of course, if an individual attempts to identify with a group by wearing its clothing, but gets it wrong in some way, that will unintentionally signal outsiderness. There is nothing more embarrassing than attempting to identify with a group and failing.

Of course, symbols such as flags and logos also define groups. Recently, there has been considerable controversy about the Confederate battle flag, the “stars and bars.” Does it signify “southern pride” or racism and slavery? Does it unify through identification or divide? The answer will probably be found by exploring what groups want to be identified with the symbol.

Internet memes are now a powerful way of signaling identity. Images from films and other media are combined with short phrases to make concise points that often signal a specific point of view.

Inducing Identification (The Ethos Move)

An interesting exercise is to read an article or listen to a speech with identification in mind. We might ask

  • Who is the audience (or audiences) that the writer/speaker wants to persuade?
  • What are some of the things that this audience identifies with?
  • What moves does the writer/speaker make to identify with this audience?
  • How successful is the writer/speaker in getting the audience to identify with them? What goes right and what goes wrong?

Responding to Identification (The Pathos Move)

Another exercise is to analyze your own response to an article or speech. We might ask

  • What are some of the groups I identify with? What are some of the things that I associate with those groups?
  • Do I identify with this writer/speaker? Do I feel part of their group? Why or why not?
  • What moves does the writer/speaker make to try to win my identification? How do I react to these moves?
  • What could this writer/speaker do better to make me identify with them?
  • How much does identification influence my willingness to accept their arguments?

Recognizing False Identifications

Sometimes attempts at identification simply don’t work. The banker in a cowboy hat does not make a convincing member of a group of cattle ranchers. The white politician who doesn’t know how to eat a tamale is unsuccessful in convincing a Latino group that he is simpatico. The democratic politician from Massachusetts looks ridiculous wearing a helmet and sitting in a tank.

However, sometimes identifications are consciously deceptive. They are an attempt to fool the audience into believing that the writer/speaker is something they are not.

For example, from sea stories by Patrick O’Brian I learned that in the 18th century, it was considered a legitimate ruse of war to fly a false flag when encountering and approaching an enemy warship, as long as the true flag went up before a shot was fired. Many English warships were captured French ones because the French built better ships, but the English sailed them better, so this ruse often brought victory. The French saw a French ship flying a French flag. Then suddenly they saw an English ship and an incoming broadside. But firing a shot under a false flag was a court martial offense, in any navy. It was against the rules of war and highly dishonorable.

In our society, is it ever acceptable to pretend to be someone or something you are not by using the terms, symbols, and other signals of identification of another group? If so, under what circumstances? I’ll leave that up to the reader.

This post as a .pdf.

How ERWC Informs My Online Instruction

On By guitarsophistIn Courses at Cal Poly Pomona, ERWC, Pedagogy2 Comments

In face-to-face, you can think “If it can go wrong, I’ll fix it in class.” Online, “If it can go wrong, well, I’d better make sure it doesn’t.”

It has now been two years since I stepped down from the ERWC Steering Committee after chairing it for 15 years. (For those who don’t know ERWC, it stands for “Expository Reading and Writing Course,” a California State University project designed to prepare high school seniors for reading and writing in college. The course is now taught in more than half the high schools in the state. There are lots of ERWC materials on this site, but for an overview of the approach, you might look at ERWC in a Nutshell and What Will ERWC 3.0 Be Like?)

I have lost track of how many ERWC modules I wrote and I have written others that are on this site that never became part of an ERWC course. I am now out of the loop on what ERWC is doing, as it is in the capable hands of Jennifer Fletcher at CSU Monterey Bay. However, as I plan my courses for fall 2020, I find myself falling back into ERWC ways.

Bridging Gaps on the Fly

A good course needs learning goals, accessible materials, effective pedagogy, structure, connections, and assessments. This is true whether the course is face-to-face or online, but in the face-to-face situation, a lot of gaps and disjunctions can be bridged on the fly. For example, if I have assigned a difficult reading, when I walk into the class meeting I can tell from silences, body language, and facial expressions that the class didn’t read it or didn’t understand it. I have to change strategies in the moment. On a Zoom session, I don’t have enough resolution or bandwidth to assess the situation in this informal way.

An Imaginative Process

ERWC has always been highly structured by the common template that forms the skeleton of every module. (You can see an outline of this template in “What Is a Mini-Module?“) Whenever I wrote an ERWC module, I felt like I was engaged in an imaginative process. I had to imagine a teacher teaching the material and students, who were not my own, doing the tasks. I had to imagine what the students were capable of doing at each point in the module and what they needed to learn or do to perform the next set of tasks. The module would unfold in time, but it was also connected in sort a timeless moment because every element had to connect with every other element. The template was the foundation of this imaginative process.

Remote Course Design

I am now in the midst of an online course for the faculty at my institution called “Remote Course Design Course” (RCDC). It has been very helpful. We are using a Blackboard template (Blackboard is our course management system) based on the principles of “Quality Matters.” Students begin by clicking on “Start Here!” In “Course Content” they find folders for each week that contain the learning outcomes, a step-by-step guide to all the materials and assignments, and links to all the texts. Everything they need for the week is right there. Although we still produce a syllabus, one of the participants commented that the syllabus is actually redundant because the whole structure of the course is visible in Blackboard. Here’s a screenshot of Module 1 Week 1:

Blackboard Screenshot of Advanced Expository Writing, Module 1, Week 1
Advanced Expository Writing, Module 1, Week 1

The Course Introduction video and the video on the first chapters of Performing Prose are not posted yet because, while I have done the PowerPoints for them, I haven’t shot them yet.

I used to have all of the materials of a course in two Blackboard folders: “Course Documents” and “Online Resources.” Students had to read the syllabus and then hunt down the documents, which were not organized in any particular order. I now realize how confusing that was!

Advanced Expository Writing

I am designing a junior-level “Advanced Expository Writing” course. I have five modules:

  • Thinking about Style and Narrative
  • Thinking about Rhetorical Strategies
  • Thinking about Argument and Evidence
  • Thinking about Research
  • Thinking about Publication

Each one takes between one to four weeks. As I design the assignments and populate the folders with links, I find myself thinking about ERWC modules. I am not using the ERWC template, or any template really. But I find myself imagining moving through time with the students, anticipating their needs and questions, structuring activities, and designing little formative assessments to make up for the lack of resolution in Zoom.

As I said above, in face-to-face, you can think “If it can go wrong, I’ll fix it in class.” Online, “If it can go wrong, well, I’d better make sure it doesn’t.”

I got some online teaching experience in spring when we had to shift from face-to-face to online in five days because of the pandemic. I am drawing on that experience, but I think that right now, ERWC is informing my teaching design more than that, and more than the RCDC course. It is good stuff.

Literature Program Outcomes

On By guitarsophistIn Courses at Cal Poly Pomona, Pedagogy, teaching literatureLeave a comment

As I noted in my previous post, I am teaching a section of our capstone course “Senior Symposium” in the fall. One feature of this course is a portfolio that counts as part of the course grade, but is later used to assess the program. Those of you who are high school teachers have been living with Common Core learning outcomes and other top down standards for some time now. In higher education, outcomes assessment has been a topic among administrators for more than a decade, but departmental faculty are still pretty much doing their own thing.

I was on the Learning and Teaching Committee, responsible for developing and assessing Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), for many years. At first it was fun and it seemed important. University faculty tend to think seriously about their own courses without ever thinking about what the whole program adds up to. This was a way to make faculty think about the whole.

I came to think about outcomes assessment in terms of four questions:

  • What are we trying to do?
  • How are we doing it?
  • How do we know we are doing it well?
  • How can we improve?

A discussion of just those four questions can help a department come together and function as a team with a vision of the big picture beyond individual courses.

However, administrators tended to want to make things much more complicated than a discussion of four questions. And teaching literature is not quite the same as teaching engineering or science. The administration kept asking for lists of the knowledge and skills we were teaching and matrices that indicated in which courses those skills were introduced, reinforced, and mastered. We called these “lego matrices” because they appeared to assume that a degree was built up out of a series of small pieces. This never worked very well for an English Department. They kept asking for more and more detail and it became clear that many thought that if you had trouble filling out the matrix, you weren’t teaching anything of real substance.

Another problem was that over the years, we kept changing the outcomes and the assessment procedures. That probably surprises high school teachers, who usually don’t have much control over the SLOs or the assessments. However, because we kept changing them, we don’t have a baseline, so we can’t answer the “How can we improve?” question.

As part of the portfolio for the “Senior Symposium,” my students will have to write a cover letter that argues that they have met the current outcomes and point to evidence in the rest of the portfolio, which contains a critical paper and some other materials, including papers from past courses if they want to include them, to support their argument. I created a worksheet including the current outcomes to help them prepare to write this paper:

ReflectiveCoverLetter-wrksht-colors

We used to have an “Oral Communications” outcome that caused most faculty to require student presentations in their courses. Some students reported in exit interviews that this practice had made them much more confident about speaking in front of people. However, other students complained that they didn’t get enough guidance in creating the presentations or enough feedback afterwards. The presentations were also difficult to evaluate on a program-wide basis. Rather than taking steps to improve, the department decided to eliminate the outcome. Again, I am sure high school teachers are surprised. I was too.

However, I do think the above outcomes represent a reasonable set of goals for the program. I also think that having students connect their own experiences to the SLOs and think about work they have produced that demonstrates that they have met them is a very useful culminating activity. Students are often surprised at how much they have learned.

Teaching Online in Fall 2020

On By guitarsophistIn Courses at Cal Poly Pomona, Pedagogy, teaching literatureLeave a comment

I am teaching English 3150 “Advanced Expository Writing” in the fall. I have taught it several times before, but never in a completely online asynchronous situation. When students enrolled in it, it was listed as face-to-face. It is still three months before classes start, but I wanted to contact the students to make sure that they knew what was in store, so I sent the following email to the class:

Dear English 3150 Students:

You recently got an email informing you that the course you signed up for has been switched to an online format. We had to do this because of decisions made by the Chancellor’s Office and Cal Poly Pomona to protect students, faculty, and staff from Covid-19. It is disappointing, but is probably a wise decision.

I want to tell you a bit about how English 3150 will be designed. During the summer, all faculty will be taking an online course about best practices for teaching online, so this may change a little as I learn new techniques, but here are my plans at the moment.

The course will be designed around the theme “How Life Has Changed.” I have Covid-19 in mind, but the theme could go beyond that. I will produce podcasts and videos on the course content and provide feedback on the submitted projects. We will also have weekly Zoom meetings.

Throughout the course, you will work together in small writing groups. Your group will be able to form their own discussion places on Blackboard and elsewhere to give each other feedback, advice, and encouragement. You will get to know your group very well.

In the first part of the course we will work on style with exercises, experiments, and other activities designed to stretch your stylistic repertoire. This will result in a personal narrative about your own experiences of change in the world and in your life.

In the second part of the course we will focus on rhetorical strategies, argumentation and persuasion. We will explore different organizational patterns and ways of persuading audiences. In this part of the course you will write an op-ed arguing for a particular change or course of action in how we do things. You might be writing about employment, racial disparity, medical issues, social practices, protests, supply chains, scarcity, art, literature, technology, politics etc., anything that is interesting to you.

In the final part of the course you will begin a research project that will look like investigative journalism. You will choose an issue and go on a research expedition to take a deep dive and follow links and connections to discover the truth about the matter. You will do this through online library databases and other online resources.

I have several blog sites that I maintain. I plan to convert one of them into a sort of online magazine. In the final weeks of the course, your group will decide which pieces–the narrative, the op-ed, or the investigative piece, one from each writer–should go up on the public website. At this point you will be functioning as editors, choosing and revising pieces for a new audience.

That’s the plan so far. I look forward to working with you in the fall.

Synchronous or Asynchronous?

I learned a lot in the past three months about teaching online. The first question is whether the course should be synchronous, with the students meeting online with the professor through Zoom or another platform at the designated class times, or asynchronous, with online lectures and online work to be done according to the student’s schedule. In the spring, I kept my graduate seminar in teaching writing synchronous through Zoom and Slack meetings every Tuesday evening, as originally scheduled. This worked well. It was a small class with engaged, well-prepared students. They all finished the work.

My Genre Fiction course became asynchronous. I created podcasts, and at the end a video using Kaltura, a video capture and hosting app. I had blogs and discussion boards. I felt I was losing track of some students so I started doing a weekly voluntary Zoom meeting that attracted pretty much the same seven students every week. A number of students were not participating in the discussion boards, so I created alternative extra credit assignments. I ignored due dates. By the end, I lost only two students. One other student got a D. The rest passed and there were many A’s because of the extra credit and the relaxed due dates.

The upshot? A synchronous course provides structure and can build community. However, student work and family schedules under lockdown or semi-lockdown can vary widely. An asynchronous course provides much more flexibility. My informal surveys of students were inconclusive. Some students prefer synchronous, some asynchronous. What was clear was that they preferred face-to-face meetings.

I am going to go asychronous with voluntary weekly Zoom meetings. In the spring, these turned into group office hour sessions that were as helpful for me as for the students.

Discussion Boards?

The other thing I learned was that students hate discussion boards. In a face-to-face class, there are always five to seven students who are eager to participate, while the majority of the students prefer to sit back and listen to smart people talk. Even in a face-to-face course, I usually have an online discussion board of some kind, but it is usually low stakes. However, the discussion board in the newly online Genre Fiction course was high stakes because it was replacing the class meetings. It became a big part of the grade. I had multiple discussion questions for each week. Many students listened to the podcasts, read my notes, but did not post to the discussion boards. I felt that a major component of my teaching was simply not working.

Story Response Sheets

However, I found that students liked another aspect of the course, something I called the “Story Response Sheet” or SRS. This sheet asks questions about themes, characters, exposition devices, plot, point of view, style, and other aspects of story craft. Then it asks for a rating on the “Read-O-Meter” from 1 (Totally Dreadful) to 10 (Totally Awesome) and a paragraph about why they gave the story that rating. They happily turned these in and reported that filling them out caused them to think about aspects of the stories they would not normally think about.

Conclusions

In fall 2020 I intend to continue to use a discussion board, but I will make it mostly about personal responses–things they noticed, things they liked, things they didn’t like, things that surprised them, etc. I will use something like the SRS assignment for more substantive questions. Those will be submitted to me and will not be available to other students.

Fall 2020 will be an adventure for the students and for me. All faculty will take an online course in teaching online starting in June, so I will have more ideas by the end of the summer. I will report on those too.

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

On By guitarsophistIn Courses at Cal Poly Pomona, Pedagogy, teaching literatureLeave a comment

A-Stranger-in-Olondria-ds

One of the novels my genre fiction class is reading is A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, a Somali-American who has taught in Sudan, Egypt, and California. She has received or been nominated for numerous literary awards. The novel is about Jevick of Tyom, an islander whose father grows pepper. Jevick’s father is a wealthy, respected leader in the community. Once a year, he travels to Bain, the capitol of Olondria, to sell his pepper. After one of these voyages, he brings Jevick a tutor, Lunre, a scholar from Bain. Jevick learns to read and to love books, and dreams of Olondria. His father dies suddenly, and Jevick goes to Bain to sell pepper. On the boat, he briefly encounters Jissavet, a girl with a genetic illness that causes her hair to turn red. This is a fatal encounter that immerses Jevick in a struggle between two religious cults, the cult of Avalei, the goddess of love and death, and the cult of the Stone, supported by the king but not the people.

The novel is rich with beautiful sentences and sensory detail. Because I am teaching online, I made a podcast for each of the six parts of the novel. I am including the podcasts and my notes below. Each podcast has questions for discussion. I highly recommend the novel. The religious and political conflicts are not unlike our own, though the world of the novel is very different and Jevick is a hero of an unusual sort.

I suppose that outside of my course, these materials could be used for a book club discussion, or in a different class. My podcasts may contain spoilers, so it would be best to read the appropriate section of the novel before listening. On the other hand, if you don’t intend to read the novel, or are not sure, the podcasts may be interesting, or may inspire you to want to read it.

Because they were created out of the need for converting to an online format during the Covid-19 pandemic, there are references to this difficult situation.

Book One: The Wind of Miracles

Notes

Book Two: The City of Bain

Notes

Book Three: The Holy City

Notes

Book Four: The Breath of Angels

Notes

Book Five: A Garden of Spears

Notes

Book Six: Southward

Notes

Genre Fiction: Week 11

On By guitarsophistIn Courses at Cal Poly Pomona, Pedagogy, teaching literatureLeave a comment

We are in spring break at the moment, though the concept of spring break seems meaningless under these circumstances. I am continuing to create podcasts and grade assignments. Next week, we will finish up the stories from Peter Beagle’s Secret History of Fantasy. After that, each student will choose one of the two novels I have assigned, A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar (who I found out yesterday is an Assistant Professor in English at our sister campus, CSU Channel Islands) or Bourne by Jeff Vandermeer. Because I am letting them choose, I will essentially be teaching two novels simultaneously! The prerecorded podcasts should make that possible, but I hope to finish the podcasts for Stranger during this break so that I can record the podcasts for Bourne next week.

Week 11 Podcasts and Notes

Peter Beagle, “Sleight of Hand”

Peter Beagle is the editor of the collection and the author of this story, “Sleight of Hand.” He is most famous for his fantasy novel The Last Unicorn, about a unicorn trying to find out what happened to the rest of her kind, aided by a powerful but somewhat incompetent wizard, Schmendrick. “Sleight of Hand” is about a woman who makes a fatal decision that accidentally results in the death of her husband and daughter, but is given a chance to remake that decision by a mysterious magician.

Here are the notes.

Robert Holdstock, “Mythago Wood”

This novella was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (to which I have subscribed at various points in my life. The magazine, unlike most in these genres, is still in publication, though I no longer have a subscription). Holdstock later turned it into a novel, and then wrote numerous other pieces in the same universe. The story is set in Ryhope Wood, a three square mile tract of original, primeval oak forest. The Huxley family lives in Oak Lodge, on the edge of the forest. The father believes that the forest contains wild boar and manifestations of ancient heroes. When he dies, one of the sons takes up his explorations. It is a memorable, haunting story, grounded in a theory of Jungian archetypes.

Here are the notes.

Kiji Johnson, “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”

A woman buys a monkey show for $1.00, including 26 monkeys of various types and a tour bus. The monkey act climaxes with the entire troop of monkeys vanishing from a suspended bathtub. They return hours later, in ones and twos. She doesn’t know how they vanish or where they go. The story explores the meaning, or meaninglessness, of life.

Here are the notes.

The students, at least most of them, seem to enjoy the podcasts. The discussions on the discussion boards have been interesting. I think what is key to this is that I am not telling them what the stories mean. I am pointing things out, drawing attention to stylistic features and writerly decisions, and asking questions that could have many possible answers. They seem to feel free to express their opinions, which means they are engaged with the stories.

I read their mini-proposals yesterday. All of them want to write stories rather than a critical paper. More on that later.