semesters & syllabi

• Spring 2008: Audio Essays

description
I taught English 246 as an Audio Essay class, in the spirit of radio stories and documentaries like those heard on This American Life. We started by making playlists of favorite songs to introduce each other through musical choices (in order to discuss the rhetoric of music and other forms of audio). We then worked on audio poems for Poetry Radio on WGLT (the local NPR station), moved onto 5-7 minute audio documentary-like stories, and concluded with This I Believe reflections about the class and learning experience.

teaching innovations

• I installed Moodle, an open-source content-management system, for the first time on my personal server for students to use as a place to hold online discussions and to upload their audio files. I used about half the features in Moodle, students preferred it to Blackboard/WebCT, and so I may use it again, although the freely available ning platform, which was not available at the time, may be easier.
• This semester was the first time I used a blog platform for an entire syllabus. All schedules, policies, readings, resource links, and class news was posted to the class blog, which students seemed to like. (Still, however, I did not have students using their own blog; there wasn’t a purpose for that kind of blog-portfolio for this class.)

teaching challenge
A challenge I faced in teaching this course had to do with the available hardware in my classroom. Because this course isn’t always taught in a computer lab, I had originally been assigned a “dumb” classroom, which is what my field calls a classroom with no technology, as opposed to a “smart” classroom, a common term in instructional technology that refers to a classroom with at least a teacher’s computer station and projection equipment. So I switched into a computer classroom with 27 older stations and furniture that was literally falling apart. (Given that the building was currently undergoing life-safety renovations and this particular classroom was being phased out for the following year, I was happy to have it.) Although the machines did not have CD burners, which would normally be a must for an audio essay class, we made do. (It turns out that despite students’ lack of technical production in multimodal composition, they know how to burn CDs on their home computers. :) However, I had another challenge with this room, which was both technological and ideological: It was built to house a large seminar instead of a smaller-sectioned writing class, but the room layout was too long and narrow to conduct discussions. Each of the 3 classes assigned to that room that last semester of its existence had less than 22 students, so (with permission) I removed 5 computer stations and the worst of the broken desks, which made the room feel more cozy and condusive to discussion.

accompanying materials

• student’s audio poem from class, published in Euphemism

semesters & syllabi

• Fall 2008 (2 sections; 12 Masters & PhD students enrolled in my section)
• Fall 2009 (2 sections; 10 Masters & PhD students enrolled in my section)

description
The first time I taught this required course, I created a syllabus that addressed a different composition pedagogy each week, building from historical options (e.g., current-traditional, expressivist, process, etc.) to more recent additions to the field (e.g., feminist, critical, multimodal, etc.). I chose not to use the traditional anthology for this class because it lacked any readings about more current theories, especially on visual rhetoric, multimodality, or teaching with technology, so I added readings relevant to those topics to each week, as appropriate. (I did this because students teach in computer-assisted classrooms and otherwise they wouldn’t get any theory on teaching in those spaces.) In addition to the theoretical/historical focus, students studied the professional aspects of being a rhetoric and composition scholar, to give them a look at how different fields (since only two or three of the 12 students had a rhet/comp emphasis) enact their professional goals. Students reviewed journals and textbooks, did brief ethnographies on a blog or conference, led class discussions, created short videos about their or others’ writing processes, and drafted teaching philosophies. I was happy with the course, but the evaluations showed otherwise. I realized, after the fact, the level of buy-in needed from students in a required course outside their field. (Apparently, according to others who have taught this course, such reactions to 402 are not unusual.)

The second time I taught this required course, we had hired a new Writing Program Administrator, and she and I decided to write a shared syllabus. It was completely different than my previous syllabus, with a focus on genre studies, which helped us rethink the goals of ISU’s writing program. The assignments were shared across the two sections and included discussions on a shared ning (online learning space with characteristics of a social networking space); ethnographies of others’ writing classes to study the physical, material, and ideological ways writing is taught; group and individual manifestos about ways to change the current writing program practices at ISU; short praxis-based articles for possible publication in one of two scholarly venues; and proposals (based on manifestos) for enacting change in the ISU writing program.

teaching challenge

• My evaluations for the Fall 2008 semester were not as good as I am used to, and many of the students commented that the homework I assigned seemed more like busy work to them, although I had discussed at length during several classes how that work was professional development and would help them see the kinds of scholarship rhetoric and composition scholars often undertake. For the Fall 2009 class, the new Writing Program Administrator (Joyce Walker) and I are team-teaching our sections with a new syllabus and new assignments that we hope will reinvigorate the writing program at ISU. Compared to last year, overall there are less assignments that focus on professionalization in rhetoric and composition since we decided that the point of 402 should be about the teaching of writing, broadly construed, and not just how rhet/comp scholars engage with the teaching of writing. We did, however, keep some assignments that were similar to those I assigned last year, such as the short articles, but these assignments are pitched as performances of pedagogical scholarship, which is appropriate for all students in our program, rather than on service to the field.
• In Fall 2009, the only challenge that this class has faced is an issue of classroom space. The 3-hour course was originally split between two classrooms (50 minutes in the seminar room, two hours in the computer lab), which did not work with the open discussion style of this class. After looking around, Tara Reeser (Publications Unit Director) offered us the Publications Unit lab, which has suited us extremely well (even though it displaces Tara from her office because of its location to the lab). It doesn’t have enough computers for all my students this semester, but it does have excellent wireless access, which Stevenson (where we normally meet) does not, so some students bring their laptops. The challenge here is recognizing that English studies courses need technologically rich spaces in most cases, and that we need more of these spaces on campus. I hope to work with the department’s Associate Chair to resolve this issue in the coming years.

teaching innovation
The Fall 2009 semester was the first time I’ve co-taught a course (even though we each have our own section that meets at different times). Dr. Joyce Walker and I co-created the syllabus, readings, and assignments, and we’ve visited each others’ classes to meet the students and discuss assignment options with them. This is also the first time I’ve used a ning in a class, with both sections sharing the same class syllabus/blog and ning so that they can “meet” each other virtually throughout the week and share ideas across sections. It has worked seamlessly because both Joyce and I have administrative control in the blog and ning, so we add users ourself. (This would be difficult, if not impossible, in Blackboard, while the ning allows us the same, if not better, features and usability. Plus, using the ning and blog (both of which are open-access and free) allow us to show students technologies that they can use in their own teaching.

accompanying materials

• see syllabi above
• Fall 2008 student videos
• Fall 2009 (Section 01) manifesto

semesters & syllabi

• Fall 2007 (paper syllabus not currently available; lost in a hard-drive crash)
• Enrollment: 18 students (16 undergraduates, 1 Masters, 1 PhD student)

description
In my first semester at Illinois State, I taught English 350, modeling it on previous publications classes I taught, with the modification that this class didn’t need to focus on pre-press issues because the intro course in the publishing sequence does that. Students started by focusing on how the design of written text, including use of fonts, makes meaning for audiences/readers and designing small documents (flyers) in Microsoft Word. Then transferring that knowledge to larger projects and more complicated software programs (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop). Projects included collateral material (résumés, business cards, letterhead) and final projects of their choosing, which included chapbooks, children’s books, sets of print advertising material, etc.

teaching challenge
The challenge for me was two-fold: figuring out how to adapt a service-learning syllabus focusing on a single class project (i.e., a literary magazine) to individual projects, and accommodating learning needs at the undergraduate through PhD-level in one class. I didn’t feel very successful in doing this, and although I love teaching print design and visual rhetoric, I asked to be taken off the rotation for this course until I could figure out a better strategy. Another faculty member is teaching that course regularly now (and with seeming great success), so if I need to teach it again, I will sit in on her class to borrow some of her teaching strategies. Despite my hesitancy about the way I taught this class, I won a Sigma Tau Delta Teaching Award after undergraduates in that class nominated me.

accompanying materials

• none available
  

see also

• Sigma Tau Delta Teaching Award

SPRING 2006 summary
This was the first time I taught Capstone, and I adapted a weekly schedule based on the common syllabus that USU professional writing faculty members Kelli Cargile Cook, Charlotte Thralls, and Mark Zachry produced in the early 2000s.

• sections taught in department this term: 1
• number of students enrolled: 13

teaching innovations
I made one major change to the standard syllabus for this class, and that was to assign the capstone students to work two hours in the departmental computer lab. I instituted this pilot program to see whether those in their final year of school—who knew the lab and its software best—would make ideal lab consultants. However, the students misinterpreted my reasons for wanting them to work in the lab and assumed that it was so that the lab didn’t need to have to pay consultants. (I was Acting Lab Director at the time, so this class assignment was received as my trying to get the students to work for free.) Thus, the majority of the students complained that the experience was a waste of their time. Sadly, they didn’t take advantage of the many professional development opportunities I knew this work would provide for them, and my suggestions on how they might make the situation more useful for themselves remained unused. I’m still considering what I might learn from this situation that will be of use the next time I think about implementing professional development and service learning into my course goals.

teaching challenge
In addition to the above challenges to my innovation, this course proved to be difficult for me not because of subject matter (professionalization, which is right up my research alley) but because I intervened in an incident involving one of the students overstepping her boundaries in the departmental lab prior to the semester starting. A lab consultant had to call the campus police, and as Acting Lab Director, I revoked her privileges. However, she had to take my course, so we agreed on terms of proceeding before the semester. In the end, her behavior did not improve and class was disrupted, evidenced by a downward trend in my teaching evaluations for that class. Should this unique situation happen again, I believe the solution would be to work with advisers and find alternate class arrangements for the student.

narrative evaluations

• The interview process was fun and very helpful. Cheryl gave some good stories and examples from her life that helped us see what the real world is like.
• I have two great portfolios now! I’m ready to get a job, or at least apply for one, and I wasn’t before this class.
• Cheryl was interested in what the students want to do with their future. She has good networking and interviewing examples to share.
• Dr. Ball is a talented designer and she has enthusiasm for design and online teaching. She has contemporary insights into the job market and the skills required to get hired and be a competitive tech writer. Dr. Ball is great at what she does.
• I liked the immediacy of our concerns, the reality and importance of everything we’ve been learning at university. Cheryl’s attitude of professionalism without too much idealism/stuffiness was nice.
• She has a weird idea of what a good design is and those that didn’t use pink flamingos had a poor design even if it refleted us. We should be able to choose what works for us, otherwise she needs to design portfolios for each student so that we do exactly what she wants.
• Good things: Cheryl was happy. She has energy. She fed us poundcake. Once. We got the recipe. We built portfolios. This is good.

accompanying materials

• Spring 2006 syllabus [pdf]
• PhD student observation of one class (assigned by another teacher)

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Fall 2004 summary
Fall 2004 was the first time that I taught English 3040. The focus was on multimodal composition, and the students created websites that demonstrated their rhetorical understanding of writing and design. Due to technological and scheduling constraints, however, the students were aggravated by their inability to complete what I was supposed to be teaching: video-editing, which I had been asked to teach but the lab was not capable of handing. This class was a huge teaching challenge for me, and I rewrote the syllabus several times upon discovery of each technological hindrance. I quickly learned what the lab could accommodate and worked closely with the systems administrator to update the hardware that I would need to teach this class in future semesters.

• sections taught in department this term: 1
• number of students enrolled: 25

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Spring 2005 summary
This course went much better than the Fall 2004 version. I changed the syllabus to accommodate the technological resources the department had, and the focus was on literary hypertexts. The course objectives — which included having students read about, analyze, and produce creative, digital texts — were spelled out for them from the beginning of the term. We were able to produce new media videos as a final project.

• sections taught in department this term: 2 (mine & ‘medical writing’ which is technically offered through the Biology department, although they use our course number)
• number of students enrolled: 18

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Summer 2005 summary
I taught this version of the class as a 5-day workshop (which at Utah State counted as a full, 3-credit class). I truncated the syllabus dramatically to overview all history and theory about electronic literature in the first day and had students working on video poems by the beginning of the second day. They had three days to complete all progress on the videos, which they presented to each other and to department colleagues in an open house on Friday morning.

• number of students enrolled: 18
• no other sections

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Fall 2006 summary
This is the third time I taught this course (in a full semester), although it was still a new prep because I kept changing the theme and major projects as the lab gathered more resources. The focus for Fall 2006 was on digital narratives. Students read about and produced a range of digital, narrative texts including iMixes, voiceovers, vogs, video or audio documentaries, and a final project of their choice. The assignments focus on how to rhetorically choose media that will meet the purpose and audience expectations of a given genre (or mixed-genre text).

• sections taught in department this term: 2 (mine & ‘medical writing’, offered through the Biology Department)
• number of students enrolled: 17

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teaching innovations
By the time I taught this class for the second time, I was able to procure [through the department and the Vice President of Research] digital video cameras for the students to use as well as hardware updates to accommodate digital video-editing in the English department computer lab. Thus, I was able to have students complete the final assignment of a new media video poem. (The assignment is included in the accompanying materials.)

For the Fall 2006 class on digital narratives, I used blogs for the first time in my teaching as a way for students to explore public/private issues when composing narratives and also as a way for them to communicate mid-week since the class meets once a week. A single blog was used for both this undergraduate class and my graduate class on multimodal composition, so that students could play with issues of audience in their comments. (The students themselves didn’t have blogs; an innovation I didn’t pick up for another two years.)

narrative evaluations

• “I didn’t know what to expect, but I have really learned a lot from being here. My computer literacy, which was very low, grew a lot. I like how you have style and personality but still have the respeect because you know how to do it all.”
• “The learning about rhetoric was subtle and fun!”
• “Overall it was a fun class and was unexpectedly helpful with other classes and presentations. I liked learning about the 13 terms [from the ix: visual exercises CD, which we looked at in class] and how they relate to different kinds of communication. It’s cool to apply some of those terms to other things I’m doing in school. Thanks”
• “I love Cheryl…her outlook and assignments were great.”
• “Dr. Ball did really well in presenting the design considerations from the CD, and in teaching the class how to create web pages in Dreamweaver.”
• “I am very satisfied that the university hired Cheryl Ball to teach this new style of English course. I was able to learn more applicable communication skills in this class than I did in all of my years in AP/Honors English. Great job!”
• “Your teaching style really engages the class and makes it a fun class environment. I particularly liked the level of class discussion which you allowed. This really facilitated learning the subject matter.”
• “It was the most interesting English class I’ve ever taken. You got me looking at writing and the formats of my papers in a whole new way.”
• “Cheryl was very knowledgable and enthusiastic. It is a hands-on course that she actually gave us time to put our hands on.”
• “I really liked the way the class was more of a discussion. It helped me feel a part. I also thought the assignments were both educational and fun.”
• “It was good to learn new ways of looking at all things.”
• “She has studied this a long time and is good at it. She assigns the right amount of workload for the class. I liked discussing the readings; it’s more helpful than just taking a quiz on them.”

accompanying materials

• Spring 2005 syllabus
• Spring 2005 final project assignment
• Fall 2006 blog

see also

• “Reading the Text: A Rhetoric of Wow” (under Peer-Reviewed Articles; features discussion of an undergradute’s project from Summer 2005 course)
• “(Multimodal, multimedia, multigenre) Composition” (under Chapters; co-written with 2 undergraduates from the Fall 2006 semester)