Adventures in Blogging, YC Style

Hi everyone,

Here we are at the end of the 9x9x25 blog for the third year in a row. Each year it seems to get easier to come up with ideas to write about. My latest strategy is to gather notes when I go to conferences and then to blog about these. As long as I have been a teacher here at Yavapai College, I remember going to conferences and then coming home full of enthusiasm to put into action the new ideas I have gathered. Then I get back here and get overwhelmed with the pace of teaching and going to meetings and find little time or energy to initiate these new ideas. Just knowing I can write about these ideas helps me to keep my commitment to myself to remember and apply what I have learned.

Why just last weekend I went to an OnCourse one day conference at Paradise Community College and came home with a few new ideas. Will these end up in a 9x9x25 blog next fall? We shall see, but I do enjoy writing these thoughts down and sharing them with the rest of my colleagues who didn't go to the same conference. Just imagine how smart we would all be if everyone shared even a few of the top ideas s/he learn at conferences, workshops, and other training events.

I also find it is worthwhile to talk about practical experiences from the classroom. Many of my colleagues have been writing about their time teaching math, nursing, physical education, humanities, and so on. I enjoy hearing from faculty who teach other subject areas. We share many of the same challenges as well as blessings.

One more valuable topic for blogs is technology tools. I have written about using the Kindle, iPad, and iPhone in different blogs. Actually, I have found the Kindle to be best used for stress reduction after a long day of meetings. But I do find technology tools to be gaining more and more importance and availability for our students.

Lastly, I find the 9x9x25 blog to be a great place to share important changes here at the college. This semester I wrote about the First Year Experience class that Amber Davies-Sloan and I are co-coordinating. This blog was primarily written to let the rest of our colleagues know what changes are taking place with this class. This class is foundational to helping first-year students at Yavapai College become familiar with college success strategies, gain personal responsibility, and become familiar with all of the support built into our system.

Todd, thank you for creating the 9x9x25 opportunity. I have enjoyed writing each blog. Each blog seems to be easier to write as well. I hope that more of my colleagues will take the challenge next fall. You will be glad you did. Even without the cookies, ice cream, conference bags, plants, books, and so on, it has been worth it. Signing off one more time!

Involving Course Model

Recently I viewed a Cengage instructional video by Victoria Basnett, M.Ed. titled, Keeping them Hooked: Strategies for Student Engagement and Success. In this video, she highlights the Involving Course Model. This model promotes the concept that classes should follow the formula below to best engage students.

• 20% Lectures
• 20% Exercises
• 20% Conversations and Sharing
• 20% Guest Speakers and Media
• 20% Quizzes, Evaluation, Preview, Review, and Assignments

Examples of Exercises:

• Group work where students are placed according to their learning styles
• Role playing
• Scavenger Hunt
  
• Weekly self-evaluation
• Students teach concepts
• Team building exercises
• Case studies
• Top ten quotes no one told me
• Skits

Examples of Conversations and Sharing:

• Share highs and lows
• Share how students perceived an assignment
• Brainstorm at the whiteboard
• Discuss relevancy of lesson and when to apply it.
• Combine with writing activity.
• Share ideas
• Give presentations
• Use song lyrics to connect to course concepts
• Offer success quotes or stories
• Show how this class relates to other classes

Examples of Guest Speakers and Media

• Use motivational music to begin class
• Bring in career services, financial aid, academic advising, another faculty member, and/ or mental health counselor.
• Bring in librarian
• Invite industry and community leaders
• Bring in a second-year college student or student ambassador
• Use PowerPoint, Prezi, Facebook, TED Talk video, YouTube, etc.
• Have students create Google Drive shared activities

Examples of Evaluations, Previews, Review, and Assignments

• Portfolio or ePortfolio
• Jeopardy Game review
  
• Journals
• Money-Time Motivators
• Self-assessments
• Small Group review
• Discussion groups
• Quizzes
• Tests

Basnett also gave additional ideas to help teachers engage students. For example, she shared that we retain 10% of what we read but 95% of what we teach. The learner often constructs meaning in collaboration with other students. It is a myth to say we don't have enough time for engaging activities because we have too much content to cover. Active learning isn't just games or an easy A.

At the end of the session, Basnett offered a guide of additional activities. Please let me know if you are interested, and I will email it to you. If you would like to view the Webinar, I can forward the link to you.

First Year Experience

This semester Amber Davies-Sloan and I are working together as FYE103 Coordinators. We seek to build an even better first-year experience for incoming freshman here at Yavapai College. This Friday we will be attending an all-day workshop at Paradise Valley Community College. Faculty from Arizona will be gathering to hear new learner-centered methods for teaching as well as in listening to a MindTap presentation from Cengage.

What is best for our students? So far we have learned that at Yavapai College, offering a New Student Orientation and a First Year Experience class each dramatically increased student retention. The college has responded with a mandatory Student Orientation for incoming students in Fall 2016. Rules are being set right now to determine how this will look and which students will be included, but good data is actually being implemented into policy. That is great news!

The next step on the agenda will be considering whether to make the FYE103 class mandatory. Is that reasonable? We have data to show it is highly beneficial, but mandatory is a huge step for us. If the college does make a first-year experience class mandatory, who should it be mandatory for? Would a 1 credit hour option be a good idea? These will be the topics of discussion for next year, and perhaps years to come.

Coming in February, Dean Holbrook, Amber, and I will also be attending the 35th Annual FYE Conference. Here we hope to gain wisdom and data from similar sized two-year colleges to help us make some recommendations. Please also feel free to share your ideas with us. Perhaps you worked at a similar college elsewhere in the United States, and you have some success and/or failure stories to share. I for one realize that sometimes I learn just as much from a failure as from a success, and that is what we are seeking for ourselves, our college, and our students.

Working with quality administration, faculty, and staff here at Yavapai College continues to be a blessing in my life. Yes, I get frustrated and fatigued at times, but truly I have never worked in a more rewarding environment. And teaching FYE103 is one of the highlights of my career. There is no class in which I have had as much freedom to be a learner-centered instructor. We get to watch mini-videos, play learning games, dive deep in journal writing, bring in outside speakers, take college tours, and so on. If this class sounds like one you would like to support, teach, or build up in any way, please let Dean, Amber, or I know. We are eager to hear from you.

Locally Developed Classroom Rubrics

In another session from TYCA-West last fall, I will share one aspect concerning how Freshman Composition is taught at the University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP). This university has 23,000 students, 78 % Hispanic and 5% International students from Mexico. In the past they used the following system for assessment:

• A norming committee had assessed student writing
• The school had standardized rubrics for all major writing assignments in First Year Second Semester classes--mostly taught by graduate students.
• A collection of student work had been required.

During this season, UTEP maintained an English Wiki for student access. Change came because students and many instructors here and elsewhere felt that having students deal with a third party for grading seemed pointless in the sense that the student had no way of communication with the committee. (Brunk-Chavez and Fourzan-Rice, 2013).

Since that time, UTEP has moved away from doing norming, and now they look at innovative ways of assessing to make students part of the process. They have moved to a series of space observation assignments.

1) Space observation #1--Objectively describe a space in a descriptive essay.

2) Space observation #2--Observe people, behaviors, gender. What does gender mean in this space, how is the space constructed for gender?

3) Space observation #3--Interview 

4) Final Project--Space essay--Students create a field report--What does this space say about gender?

After completing these assignments, instructors guide students to create locally developed classroom rubrics. How, you may ask, can students create their own grading rubric?

• First students draft a paper based on assignment guidelines provided by the instructor.
• After students draft the paper, drafts go through peer revision.
• One entire class period is then set aside to have students do a second close reading of the assignment.
• Students write in their blogs about the most important things they should have in the rubric. (These blogs are in Weebly,)
• Students in groups of three to four share their ideas.
• Then each group comes to an internal census.
• The groups each write their list on the board.
• Groups compare their reports and come to a class consensus through negotiation.
• Next the class assigns point values for each category.
• The instructor has a non-negotiable category added to the rubric; it is for 10 points to go for APA Citation and for grammar.

The graduate assistants from UTEP said that students had better buy in for grades earned when they had written the rubric themselves. Students also were far more engaged in the writing process and truly understood the value of things such as cohesion, organization, support, and so on.

Another group of UTEP instructors use the Textual Analysis Essay. These instructors have students find an article related to a topic and analyze it for purpose, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, and so on.

Week 1--Prewrite the essay
Week 3--The rough draft is due
Week 4--Instructor returns rough draft with feedback
Week 5--Final drafts are due

Now rubric creation begins. Students study the assignment and decide what three attributes of writing are most important. Students base their decision on comments made from the instructor and peer review from the first assignment. This activity gets students looking at their own writing more actively in a new light. This process helps students grasp the elements of what constitutes a well-written paper. Finally, students test their rubric on a sample essay provided by the instructor prior to actually using it on future essays.

When students truly engage in the process, everyone benefits. And when students create the rubric themselves, they are more likely to understand the assignment. 

Kindle for Reading Improvement?

My husband recently went to Phoenix to a computer training session, and he learned about the new Kindle Fire coming out at $49. He ordered me one, and when it came in the mail, I was surprised and not so sure I would use it. After all, I really do like paper versions of books, and I do have a Kindle app on my iPad, but I have found it really comfortable to hold, and the text breezes across the screen like silk.

Another discovery I made with this device is that it has a few tools that may help English language learners quite a bit. The first tool is Word Wise. Readers can Hide or Show the Word Wise mini-definitions for selected words in the book. Readers can also adjust from Fewer Hints to More Hints depending on their personal preference. I find that these tips aren't too helpful for me, but for someone learning English, I believe they would be very helpful. Imagine learning a language and having a small group of easier words in that language showing up immediately above the word you don't know yet, and that is basically what Word Wise offers.

Word Runner is the other tool I find intriguing as a Reading instructor. Notice how in this image on the left the text rolls through one word at a time. Readers can adjust the reading rate up or down. The words are also paced differently with complex words coming up more slowly, and easier words coming up at a faster rate. This pacing is an enhanced form of speed reading technology that is sure to catch on for more than English language learners. I have even enjoyed practicing speeding up my own reading rate. Imagine the possibilities this tool can have in K-12 schools all around the country!

And alas, it is still a Kindle. This tool has Internet, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, Camera, Help, Auto Rotate, and Settings buttons. The Home page has Silk Browser, Amazon Freetime, Goodreads, Calendar, Photos, Contacts, Docs, Calculator, and many other apps already loaded and included in the low $49 price. Audiobooks, Newsstand, Kindle Books, and other apps can easily be used for all kinds of homework and classroom activities. Maybe Canvas will even decide to add some of these apps.

 For now I will practice learning the capabilities of the Kindle Fire 5th Generation. I am seriously considering asking the college to get a set of these for classroom use for the ENG085 class. Another idea is to have students order one as part of their textbook supplies for the semester. And if any of you have children or grandchildren who may benefit, for $49, it is not a bad investment in their education. Be blessed, and have a great week!

Contextualized Writing for First Year Composition

How do we get students to see writing contextualized in their world as a literate activity? We first need to help students see themselves as capable writers. Students must practice using multiple methods of researching and thinking about literate activity in general and writing in particular.

One way some colleges approach this issue is by using modified writing-about-writing curriculum. Teachers can use knowledge domains as ways to explore how and why language matters. For example, students can evaluate Strava comments, Pinterest quotes, Facebook posts, etc. They can then ask themselves, "How do these literacies matter and affect the student's life?"

Another idea for helping students value and interact with writing is to have them create an auto-ethnographic report on themselves and analyze their daily written activities for two weeks. Students can then post their findings into a blog, which adds a visual aspect to the text. Some examples of research methods are as follows:

• Culture grams: to visualize social selves, literate activities, audiences, and texts
• Self-observation: to examine textual artifacts and their contextual influences
• Audience interviews: to gain new insights about textual practices and participation in literate activities through multiple perspectives (interview Pinterest audience member and a member of another social media source or sources.)
  

Students can ask themselves if the statement "I am what I post" is true. Is what I post upon next influenced by how many comments I received from a previous post? Are we constantly shaping who we are by the feedback we receive? Or are we more driven by internal or other external motivators?

Students can answer questions such as, "What is my purpose for sharing my healthy cooking recipes online? What messages am I trying to convey when sharing Facebook posts involving corruption in the food industry? Why do I share pictures and videos of my family on vacation? What political posts will I share?

I hope you can see how using the world of social media can indeed help students to grapple with written literacies and how these shape their sense of self and the world around them. Next, we can drive them into modes of research by taking the familiar and pressing that knowledge base into the more formalized college system of making meaning with documentation, scholarly articles and literature, and train them to indeed value the world of written academia. And if you have any doubts or wonder how we can make meaning with Math, check out Dataclysm by Christian Rudder. I just heard about this book and hope to read it soon.

Think Outside the Canvas for Students Sake

What inherent effects do online classes make to the sense of self and empowerment for the average college student? Feminist theorists claim that when we place a course into the online environment, there are consequences. Learning Management Systems such as Canvas tend to heighten instructor presence and flatten student presence. Most online courses primarily function with the student reading what he/she is to do and then turning assignments in for grading. Much less interaction typically takes place between students in the online setting.

In addition, social scientists Fyvbjerg, Landman, and Schram claim it is more difficult to send "ethics of care" or caring messages to students. This situation is labeled phronesis--the kind of knowledge that grows out of intimate familiarity with practice in contextualized settings. You can read more about their research in their book, Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, Cambridge University Press, New York. 2012.

Because of this research, we need to rethink our current practices in the online environment. It is important to remember that those taking our classes are students, not customers. We need to keep academics at the top of our priority list and not "customer satisfaction." Just this week I had an online FYE103 student tell me that my class had given them the most homework of any online class this semester. I scratched my head, asked my face-to-face class students what they thought, and they similarly scratched their heads. Our teaching practices need to continue striving toward student excellence.

On the other hand, we can embrace phronetic online spaces for teaching. Students can be given spaces to posture individuality and sharing of the self. Blogs, Wikis, Facebook, YouTube, and many other online spaces are available for us to allow creativity. We should work against getting students stuck in the Canvas-only environment when creating assignments.

For example, a few years ago I created space in Ning for students to post their picture, write responses to critical thinking questions, and use multi-media tools to enhance understanding of concepts taught in the course. The students' space was still available semester after semester, and students had access to return and visit with new students along the way. The experience was rich and meaningful. Using external tools does increase grading time to check an outside location, but the rewards were worth it. Ultimately Ning began charging money. Otherwise, I would still have this site up and running.

While exploring likely external tools to build student efficacy, remember that K-12 schools do not have digital literacy outcomes. College students did not have standards for these in the past, so some will know random areas of digital skill based on personal interest and digital access. For this reason, don't introduce new tools without making tutorials available, but be brave and think outside the Canvas.

Minding the Gap

College is a transitional space for incoming freshmen. Instructors who recognize this gap will do well to create space for students to transition in a safe and comfortable environment. We need to remember that these incoming students do not have the same cultural, economic, academic, or social situation that we maintain. Some are coming with little English-speaking ability. Others come with a lack of familial background in the college environment. These first-generational college students are especially vulnerable to anxiety in the new environment.

I am not sure about your experience, but in these past years I find my classroom shifting from a multi-age population to one that is averaging students of about 19 years of age. We can take advantage of this change and ask students to explore articles relevant to their generation. One English instructor suggested an assignment where students read articles that are negative about millennials and then asking the students to write rebuttals. 

And I know you have heard this before, but it is so important to repeat that these digital natives, although many have strong multi-tasking skills and strong Twitter, Facebook, and texting skills, they may not really know how to use many other tools we would expect. Some struggle with simply asking them to write a paper in Word. Others don't know how to attach a file in email, and be sure to remind them to check their YC email daily!

With the switch to Canvas this fall, we have also made a better choice for students. They are finding the simplicity of this new Learning Management System (LMS) to enhance their ability to download and do the homework we assign on their smartphones, but again, remember that not all students have smartphones. And it is not fair to assume that they do or that they should spend their hard-earned money to buy these, so please take care when creating assignments that you don't expect them to whip out their phone and do your instant survey. Enough said.

Getting back to Canvas, let us be more willing to use the tools inside the LMS once we get comfortable with it. We can embed lots of cool tools to enhance student learning experiences with no cost. We can also encourage students to create blogs like this one outside Canvas. When students do so, they create a space that is permanent, one where they can return and read, share and explore long after the class is over.

And lastly, please encourage any students in your classes who struggle with the new college landscape to take the FYE103 class next semester. This class focuses on helping students navigate the college system, develop study skills, and build self-responsibility, motivation, and self-management skills up front. It is never too late. Please also support the new students with mentoring them whether you officially signed up to be a mentor or not. All of our students, whether first-generation or not, can use a good friend in the faculty or staff of Yavapai College. Blessings as we reach out to help them and build a positive learning environment.