Advanced Technical Editing (Eng 6400/7400)
This online course is a requirement in the online masters program in technical communication. It focuses on teaching students how to edit documents with consideration to audience and context, including readability and accessibility issues.
Spring 2006 semester summary
This was the first time I taught Editing, and also the first time I taught in our online-only, practitioners-based MA program. (There were no doctoral students enrolled this term.)
- sections taught in department this term: 1
- number of students enrolled: 13
- numeric evaluations
teaching innovations
I modified an existing syllabus to introduce students to the procedures of editing scholarly, digital texts, and we used webtexts from the journal I edit, Kairos, as the major project. In groups of four, students collaboratively edited one webtext (including written content and website design) from developmental stages to the text’s final copy-editing and proofreading. In addition, they wrote introductions for their webtext, the themes of which were focused on the history and future of the journal. None of these students lived in the same area and so all group work had to be completed using online communication.
Another innovation was my use of an offsite FTP location where students could upload and view their in-progress websites. (USU doesn’t offer this ability to students, and so I used other resources at my disposal to accommodate learning.) Because of the theoretical and technical expertise students had to learn to complete the major assignment, I learned how to write more detailed assignment sequences.
The class progressed fairly well, with the exception of one problematic student group who had difficulty communicating and collaborating in the online environment. I ended up moderating their discussions, and group work progressed smoothly after that. From this experience, I learned how to react in appropriate ways to inappropriate online communication from adult learners.
Class feedback in the discussion forums was positive, and I was amazed at the level of learning that students exhibited in an area unfamiliar to most of them. Next time I teach online, however, I will need to better organize my Syllabase (or other CMS) site so that students can more easily find the information they need.
narrative evaluations
to come
accompanying materials
- Spring 2006 syllabus [PDF]
- example assignment sheet [doc]
Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (Eng 6890)
This course, targeted at masters students in the Literature and Writing program, is a graduate-level special topics class.
Fall 2005 semester summary
I was asked to teach this online class—my first online teaching experience—so that distance students in the now-defunct online Literature & Writing program could finish their coursework. I focused on literary hypertext and aesthetic new media texts. Students read theory about and produced several genres of digital literary texts. The course was taught completely at a distance through Syllabase (USU’s own CMS), primarily using discussion forums.
Although it was a new prep in a new medium of delivery for me, overall I believe the course went well despite a rocky start regarding my trying to understand differing time management and assignment issues in an online learning space. The students enrolled in this class included those in the Literature and Writing, Online Technical Communication, American Studies, and Theory and Practice of Professional Communication graduate degrees. Each strand of our graduate program is represented because the class fulfills requirements in each while crossing interdisciplinary boundaries, depending on the topic. This class’s focus on literary hypertext and new media texts crosses academic boundaries, bringing together the tech comm and literature students, for instance, into some insightful discussions from different viewpoints.
- sections taught in department this term: 1
- number of students enrolled: 13
teaching innovations
This was the first online class I taught. It is also the first graduate class for which I have been the instructor of record, and it was a new prep for me. Although it got off to a rocky start because of my inexperience teaching solely online, it matured into a class and a medium I enjoy.
The main innovation I feel I have introduced to this special topics class is that of having students produce complicated new media texts at a distance. Learning to troubleshoot technological (as well as pedagogical) issues from a distance has helped me to rethink how I teach the same information in face-to-face classes like Professional Writing Technologies (3410) and to not take that knowledge for granted. Several final projects from this course have been featured in conference presentations and articles I have published.
narrative and numeric evaluations
Because Fall 2005 was the first semester that online evaluation forms were made available to distance students, only one student participated in filling a form out. Continuing Education, the department which oversees online course evaluations, mislabeled which class this evaluation was from (attaching it to an onsite, undergraduate course from the same semester). Thus, I do not have reliable evaluation data to show from this course.
accompanying materials
- Fall 2005 syllabus [website]
- student example of final new media project [Windows Media Player or Quicktime required for viewing]
- scholarly webtext about student example (under review)