composition

Using the iSearch Model to Improve a Previously Dreadful 5-week Online Comp Course #TeacherFail Last year, I taught my very first online class. I thought I"d be awesome at it, seeing as I'm so connected to social media and constantly using the internet. Gosh, was I wrong! The whole class felt like a trainwreck to me. It was hard to keep students motivated. I realized I was not always as clear as I thought I was being, and I didn't get final projects that demonstrated the kind of in-depth thinking and writing improvement that I was used to seeing in my 15-week face-to-face classes. Changes had to be made. The problem with my first summer online course was that I was unwilling to try something I hadn't done before. While I was up for trying new technologies, I was sticking closely to what I had done in my face-to-face classes, simply trying to reshape time frames and assignments. Online is not the same thing as face-to-face, and a 5-week class is not the same thing as a ...

Today, my Facebook newsfeed was covered with stories about government-mandated oppression and silencing across the world. At least 94 protestors were killed in Egypt by state security forces. A US woman was deported from Bahrain  after writing articles and comments on social media that the Bahraini government decided  "incited hatred against the government."  As I read these headlines, I was also moved by an email I received: a student could not participate in my course because the government of the nation where this student resided blocked access to many sites. The student could not perform unbiased research-- or perform research at all, in some cases-- so the student was forced to withdraw, hoping to take the course again when back in the U.S. This made me think hard about the globalization that many universities aim to promote. In my online summer course, for example, I have several international students, and they are taking the course from their home country. While ...