Simple Steps For Teaching Online Spring 2020

I first became a certified online teacher in 2010. I taught online in both Moodle and Blackboard 2-3 classes of 30 students for three years. I also designed high school classes in both. From 2013 on I taught at the university level, both hybrid classes and totally online 75+ student classes. My online teaching has changed a lot in those ten years, as my face to face pedagogy has. It's looser, more student centered, less concerned about rules and compliance. I've written a lot about it here over the last few years.

There's a great scene in Auntie Mame where she's sent Patrick to some "progressive" school in the Village, that is absolute chaos, with the adult reading while the children run amok. I think of this a lot, and wonder if this is what my classes look and sound like to others- little emphasis on grades, students telling me what grades work earns, talking and listening and unessays versus more traditional assignments.

I know that there are a lot of resources, advice, how-tos for professors moving their classes online for the rest of this semester and potentially much longer. I also know that I'm seeing a lot of "I just recorded a two hour lecture" posts. I know many k-12 schools photocopied massive worksheet packets for parents to pick up.
Some of these parents' thoughts have gone viral.


Like many parents, many professors are not trained teachers. So the idea of suddenly moving all their classes online is a lot. There have always been plenty of jokes about many professors thinking teaching online meant just uploading every PDF they use in their class. I know that teachers, professors, and staff, in Centers for Teaching and Learning, technology departments, and others, have worked very, very hard to help professors with little to know pedagogy training make this transition.

Once upon a time I thought that "best practices" were a good idea. The problem is somewhere along the line teachers sharing cool things they did in their classrooms, as ways to serve their students best, translated into a checklist of things that if only you did X you too could improve Y. This checklist mentality stripped all of the context and empathy and community from WHY these things worked. At the beginning of every school year and semester there is a flurry of teachers and professors asking something along the lines of "I'm teaching X, what books/texts should I use?" I stopped answering these a while ago, mainly because when I used to answer, I'd answer with questions- who are your students? What is your community like? What are their needs? that people didn't seem to appreciate. They wanted easy answers, a simple to-do list. And that's not what good teaching is.

HOWEVER, I'm seeing a lot of posts from folks describing how they're moving classes online and they're focusing on moving content online which is not the same as teaching online. Look, as many people have pointed out, what we're doing is "triage pedagogy" it is not the same as teaching an online class we've spent months building. But it shouldn't just be dumping video lectures and PDFs online either. One, hour long lectures (as many are finding out) are not accessible or reasonable. They take forever to upload for one, finding ones that sync to PowerPoints or other resources can be expensive, and they are incredibly time consuming. There's also the issue few are talking about, that these massive preps are going to become impossible to maintain as people get sick.

This graphic popped up into my feed the other day and it reminded me of two things. The first was how valuable this was as a resource for professors about what TEACHING online would look like. The second was how familiar it was to the very restrictive "guidelines" I was given when I first started teaching online.

https://twitter.com/finleyt/status/1241819385339293697?s=20

Like I said, I'm not a fan of prescriptive teaching but I do think in this situation, it'd be helpful to share some of the prescriptive things I first taught as "best practices" for teaching online.

• Announcements:
• Create a document with your announcements in them. Even if you're teaching multiple classes a lot of the information sharing will probably be the same across them, so make it easy to copy and paste 
• Post regular but not overwhelming announcements
• Once a week with an overview of what they should focus on that week is fine
• Bullet information so it's easy to follow
• Be clear to use action verbs so students know what to do: "post to discussion board," "submit assignment," "read this article." 
• Put a gif, meme, funny image at the top. Bonus points if it relates to that week's content but not necessary. As people feel alone and isolated, this is a simple, easy way to build community.
• Set your announcements to email out so students get used to seeing them, using them as resources.
•  Student Outreach:
• Make a document/spreadsheet with all your students names on it. Every day email 5-10 students. Not about missing work, or grades, or performance. Just hey- wanted to check in and see how you were. Put a check or something for those students. Then do the next 5-10, and the next. If you get through your list, start again.
• Students may or may not remember any of the content from the next few weeks. But they will remember the kindness, the humanity.
• Be clear and consistent about when you're holding virtual office hours. Students may prefer email, but encourage them to use Skype or Hangouts or Blackboard Collaborate. Seeing each other, interacting will help, especially as this becomes the new normal.
•  Content:
• I'm not going to rehash the lectures suck, students don't learn that way debate. But I will say that lectures online, out of context REALLY suck. Consider what your learning objectives are, and then chunk and vary how you present content that will help students interact with and apply this content while demonstrating progress on those objectives. 
• Videos are good for introducing content. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, there's lots of stuff online and it might not be exactly what you'd say but you can save the time recording and uploading something and instead create a cheat sheet document or PowerPoint/GoogleSlides that fills in what you saw as a gap.
• Texts can be webpages, stories, articles. Encourage students to copy and paste into things like Google Docs or Word to annotate (a lot of students will not have printers). Consider providing guiding questions so students know what to look for as they read.
• Images whether they are comics, paintings, art or museum displays, can be great ways for students to apply what they're learning. How does this show X concept? What connections can you make between this and what we've been doing? Put an image or video in a discussion board to start conversations.
•  You may have a lot of students who have never taken an online class. Providing your content in a variety of ways can help. For example, you could introduce what a narrative is in a video TED Talk, you could then have them read and annotate a narrative short story for literary elements in Google Docs, and then have them respond to the narrative told in a comic in a discussion board. Introduce, review, respond.
• Be sure you're reading and responding to these things. Focus more on community and feedback than "post once, respond twice" approaches.

• Grading and Feedback
•  Some professors have control over what they can and cannot do with grades. Most of us will have to post some kind of grades.
• Consider focusing on 100 for completion and feedback. 
• Consider suggesting deadlines (for time management and skill scaffolding) but don't penalize for late work or missed deadlines.
• Be flexible and understanding but not to move the goal posts on students. Cut assignments if you need to, pare them down, but always make decisions about grades that don't penalize students.
• Give detailed feedback. Consider keeping a document with feedback starters. A list of what you're looking for, what the assignment required, so it's easier to "teach" through feedback. Then add the personal feedback.
• I use grade conferences, and will continue these online- students present the work, tell you what grade it earned and then explain why. It's a great way for them to learn and demonstrate skills, and if you think it needs more work or content you can always push back. I think it is better for students but I also think with everything going on it might also help your students feel some confidence and control over their learning.
• General Tips:
• Don't focus on online "seat time," instead focus on goals, things to be achieved, and provide those as the to-do list.
• Be clear about what you expect.

A lot of your students may struggle with the content and delivery. Be prepared to have to say or explain things more than once. Be patient with this. Be kind. Your students are juggling a lot on top of all the stress and anxiety we're all feeling. Consider not building in hours and hours required each day for your class. It's okay too to build what you can do. Consider setting aside mornings or afternoons for work, but that's it. You too are dealing with a lot. Be kind to yourself.

Trite

The problem with being an English professor is you know when you write something and it's trite.

I've drafted a hundred posts and Tweets about our current situation and then deleted them, often mid-sentence.
Posts about how current reading of desert mothers, how doing less, paring down, self-reflection, can help us, lead us, in times of trouble.
How reflecting on the past, plague emphasis or not, can help us see that there's a way through today and in the future.
The really cliche post I drafted last week about how planting seeds, throwing wildflower seeds to the wind, was a perfect metaphor for our current situation-making moves that we won't see the payoff for weeks yet.

Other Tweets or posts I've started and then deleted when I realized there were a hundred, thousand, better voices already saying all those things.

There are shared thoughts that small things, like videos of birdsong in the morning, coffee on the deck, silly animal poses, connect us and remind us of small joys.

I've seen others return to hobbies, activities like photography, drawing, doodles, knitting, crochet. I can see how producing something, making something, pushes back against feelings of powerlessness.

Like other professors I have spent a good chunk of the last week reassuring students, checking in on them, trying to make sure they're okay, while also preparing for teaching the rest of the spring and the summer semester online.

We started spring break early, to get students home, and give faculty time to plan. Technically today is our original first day of break. But I am not relaxed.

I had planned on planting the front of my house, bare at the moment. Yucca and Russian sage and wildflowers and lantana. I planned on planting honeysuckle, jasmine, and roses along the rough cut side fence. Wildflowers interspersed. Screening evergreens along the property line so I'm separated from the rotating door of rentals next door. Hydrangeas.

But staying at home means only leaving for grocery shopping, prescriptions, the essential stuff. So no Lowe's run. Plus, even though my job has said they're not planning on firing anyone, the panic of growing up poor has kicked back in. So I'm saving money other than $10 on wildflower seeds from the grocery store.

A week ago when I went to grocery shop after work there was no toilet paper or Clorox wipes, but plenty of soap left on the shelves.
Friday, it was a different story. No meat. No rice. No frozen foods, cheese, milk. Still no toilet paper but now that entire aisle was empty- paper towels, wipes, napkins, all gone. The Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer still gone, but soap still on shelves. As I waited in line it took everything I had to stuff down sheer panic.
I made it to my truck then cried. It all seemed pointless, and awful, and there was nothing I could do.

I know this is most people's experience. Some larger cities have more options, local, smaller stores, bodegas. But I'm in rural NC, so your options are Walmart outside of town, three Food Lions, and a handful of Dollar General/Dollar Tree stores. All empty-ish.

Nehi and I's lives ares similar to our long weekends and breaks. We get up, there is morning coffee and news, walkies, shower, breakfast, work til lunch, lunch, read, watch tv. We are homebodies, so staying at home is our default not a hardship.
I am worried about my students. I am worried about online friends stuck in cities. I am worried about online friends with wee ones at home. Friends with health issues.

I sent real mail out last week and ordered some cards and stamps to be able to continue to do that. I love real mail, so thought I'd share the world.

The rest all seems like treading water. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
More cliche, trite sayings. But what else is there?
There is little to reassure us, make us hopeful. Except the small things we create at home- animals, plants, singing and dancing.

I worry that so many people are being so selfish, so self-centered when people's live are on the line.
I worry that we're not doing enough as a collective.
I worry that we'll reach the other side of all this and not have learned anything about caring for our most vulnerable, how to burn down, toss out, improve systems for the good of all.
I worry.

I've got nothing new or special to contribute here. I don't write as a way to offer answers. I write because the other option is screaming into the void.

I am grateful for all the folks working so hard to save the ignorant and ungrateful.
I am grateful for the puppy and kitteh videos.
I am grateful for Nehi, in all her weirdo, passive-aggressive, hysterical, joy.
I am grateful for my Internet friends who continue to be present.

I don't know what tomorrow, or next week, or next month looks like.
I know our stories don't stop, that life finds a way. And despite it all we'll write our ways out.

Capture 1.4

Grading/Not Grading Midterm Conferences

Last year, when I was still teaching high school, I moved to grade conferences for all my classes. I still had to report grades, but the students and I came up with the list of things assignments should include together, and based on that they told me what grade they thought their work deserved and why. We talked about "C"s including the basic requirements, and there was above and less than. Students could always revise for a higher grade, and we focused on feedback more than the grades. Most of my students said it made them uncomfortable, but they grew to like it.
Last semester, my first teaching here, for my upper level classes I did the same, grade conferencing for assignments based on made-together checklists of what the assignment should include. For composition we grade conferences over their three major writing assignments, and each major writing assignment had two low stakes assignments that built up to them. The low stakes assignments were 75% of their grade, the major writing assignments and writing portfolio were 25%.

This semester I wanted to build on this and push further. So for the composition class we still do the low stakes assignments but they're not graded. They have three major writing assignments and their final portfolio are each 25%. Students still brainstorm the list of what the genre should include, and then tell me during grade conferences what grade they think their work should get and why. They can still revise if they want. A C meets the minimum, a D is work turned in but didn't do what was asked, an F means nothing turned in. As and Bs show revision, creativity, outside the box. These are not ideal things to dump grades entirely, but the composition courses under our general education label have a lot of requirements I'm conforming to.
We are required to post midterm and final grades in Banner, so that's the basic (other than GE for composition) requirements I have.
By the time we meet next week for midterm conferences they will have turned in two of their major writing assignments. Their midterm conferences are really more of a check in. How are you doing, what can I do. We'll talk about the grade they have now, how they feel about that, if they think it's accurate, plan moving forward for the rest of the semester.
For my upper level classes, they have their writer's notebooks which are 50% of their grade and their unessay/final papers which are 50 % of their grade. So for their midterm conferences they will show me the work they're most proud of in their writer's notebooks and present a proposal for their unessay project/final paper. They'll tell me what grade they think I should post in Banner and why.

With all of this, I reserve the right the push back if I think the grade they tell me is not reflective of the work they've done, but I try to focus on what they're doing/not doing, quality of work, feedback to improve, move forward.

Midterm Grade Conferences
I cancel classes the week of midterms because I know students have a lot of classes they actually have midterms for, and may need to study for. However, they sign up for a conference time to come see me. I have snacks in my office, and I try to make it an informal situation. To help them, I made guide sheets about how to prep.

• Composition II
• fairly basic, focus is more on how they are, if there's anything I can do
• History of the English Language/Gender and Literature
• for these classes the students pick a theme or big idea that they want to focus on, and choose 5 pages out of their notebook that shows their best work on that
• Research Methods and Capstone
• since the capstone class is producing a lot of professional documents their list is quite a bit longer for the stuff they're supposed to be working on

I'm interested to see how these changes/revisions work.

Pedagogical Practice 3: Easy steps to literary analysis

My Gender and Literature students don't write traditional essays for my class. We practice close reading, we talk about themes, we analyze in class discussions, and they can choose to do a final paper, but most choose unessays instead.

All that being said, understanding the steps for literary analysis is still important. In one of my past classes I had students work through the steps of an essay (wrote introduction, sample body paragraph with integrated sources, Works Cited page) without writing the whole essay since I wanted them to learn the process.
Thinking of this, as we finished Between the World and Me, I wanted to walk my students through literary analysis, so this was what I gave them:

Steps in literary analysis

• What do you have to say about the topic?
• What evidence supports your stance/analysis?
• What key scholars have written about this?
• Do you agree or disagree with their scholarship?
• Use sources to support YOUR stance, don’t just summarize
• Sandwich:
• Thesis
• Textual evidence
• Citation
• Explain how evidence shows thesis
• Color coding ensures you do everything you’re supposed to
• Introduction: roadmap to argument, outline, mention all the sub-topics
• Body paragraphs: parts of analysis
• Close reading
• Theme
• Other big ideas
• Conclusion: now that you’ve done all this micro work take a step back. What is the big picture? What have you learned? Why is it important?
• Works Cited

I particularly like the color coding, and when I HAVE had students turn in papers, I have them keep it. It helps me see where misunderstandings may happen, they think they explained their evidence, but they just restated it. Their thesis is just a description. It also helps them as they draft, to see during revision if they've missed anything.

I also always suggest they write their introductions last, and that I should know the outline of the paper when I finish reading it. 

I make sure too to tell them that this is not the ONLY way to write a literary analysis, but it's a way I like, and that once you have something you like, you can riff off of it.