My Work

Introduction:
My first year at the new university, I was given a senior-level linguistics course that had been taught by the department chair, Dr. Nancy Shankle-Jordan, for the last twelve years. Even though I had linguistics in graduate school (twelve hours), it had been over twenty years since I was last in a class. The ramping up for a true across-the-discipline introduction to linguistics was difficult. Thankfully the former professor is a good friend and she gave me her entire linguistics’ library, all her files, her quizzes and exams, and two hours a week of her time to review the coursework.

As presently configured—since I taught the course on her schedule again so that I could master it before deciding what to jettison—the course is eight weeks of boring rote work, the relevance of which is not readily apparent to the students in the class.

I like the linguistics class and using it as Nancy tailored it is an advantage because a lot/most of the work is already done. Also, while I have an entire drawer file drawer full of information, much of it is uninteresting to me and/or dated.

As one of my (many) summer projects, I intend to go through the file drawer and get rid of—or at least move to a box to consider getting rid of—a lot of that uninteresting/dated material.

Restructuring the course as a whole:
In order to appropriately restructure the course, I may need to re-think the whole entire progress of the course and see what potentially boring sections I can drop without impacting the integrity/quality of the whole. The most interesting sections of the course are at the end, which, unfortunately, encourages a ‘grit your teeth and get through it’ attitude to the rest of the semester—certainly on my part and I would posit also for the students.
Right now the schedule is:
introduce linguistics (chapter 1)
IPA work for 2 weeks, with in-class discussions and quizzes over related readings and material (chapters 3 and 4?)
use of tree diagramming for clauses and sentences, including ambiguous phrases—which are disambiguated using the diagrams, for 2 weeks (which chapters are these?)

At eight weeks, the course switches to more “interesting” topics like gender’s roles in language, age-implications in gender studies, history of the English language (vocabulary, writing, spelling, punctuation), and cultural miscommunications that have linguistic applications, among others.

These are the topics that typically interest the students more—and certainly interest me more. Perhaps I could begin with these topics, assigning students to preliminary and limited research in these areas to get their feet wet with scholarly secondary research. That is certainly an idea worth pursuing.
…

Things that went better this semester than last year:
Even though my father had already had his stroke last year, I did not think (during the course of the class) to abstract the realities of his condition as fodder for the course. This semester, however, the discussion of semantic fields was significantly informed by my recognition and understanding of those boxes of knowledge that the stroke clearly delineated in my father’s memory organization. While I cannot extrapolate to anyone else’s brain’s organizing boxes, this offers students a good/clear view of an organizing principle for memory.

Perhaps I should consider reviewing the literature to find out if (or when/how) other people’s memory organization has been studied.

Things that I expect will improve next year’s class:
Two weeks after the presentation of Broca’s aphasia from chapter two, my MIL experienced a stroke that left her with Broca’s aphasia. Having already introduced stroke experiences into the linguistics class, I believe that adding my MIL’s experience, including language processing and her awareness of garbling (where she knows what she wants to say, but her brain picks other words out of her boxes), will increase students’ understanding of aphasia.

I think that knowing someone who has experienced a difficulty like this makes it more real to me and, hopefully, I can make it more real to my students.

A problem with the set up of the course as presently configured:
Within all my courses, I attempt, as much as possible, to frontload the work. Since most classes and professors have the long/large projects due at the end of the semester, I try to shift them earlier in the semester.

This front loading is a preference, but is not always perfectly implemented. For the Brit Lit class my attempt to front load has meant a major paper due in late March rather than late April. For my freshman, with a fairly set schedule created by the director of composition, I cannot move the research paper to earlier in the semester, but I have re-oriented it so that it builds on academic work created and submitted earlier in the course. For the linguistics class, since I kept Nancy’s original schedule, front loading is not even an option, except in terms of “the boring stuff gets done early.”

Revising/reviewing the concept of a single or dual paper assignment:
Usually the course has two papers required, one due in March and one in April. These are papers which, as originally configured, required 8 pages each, for a total of 16 pages. However last year, due to the particular course load of a group of students, I changed the requirement to a total of 12 pages of solid content for the two papers (not the cover, abstract, or bibliography pages), to be spread out as the students saw fit, as long as each paper contained at least four content pages.

This semester, however, I ended up requiring a single 12-page paper.

While the single long paper was somewhat problematic this semester, since it came as a result of most of the class’ dismal performance on the first research paper, I actually like the idea of having one long paper. I wonder if not having the first short paper would pull down the quality and I do think it would, based on the poor showing the first paper had this semester (though not last semester).

So maybe I could do something like divide the paper up and have students do the secondary research for their topic first and write a paper over that and then do their primary research? That would still allow me significant input on the secondary research section. I could also, perhaps, still have conferences over the final product and review the students’ primary research at that time, offering means to triangulate their research as necessary.

Honestly, the quality of the second paper exceeded most of last semester’s papers, except the graduate student’s paper, but that is to be expected, since they spent twice as much time on it and had two times the amount of primary research included.

Revising the assignment sheet for the research project:
One thing I DEFINITELY need to do, whether I go with one or two papers, is revise the assignment sheet so that it matches the information that will actually get the students reading scholarly secondary source material. As Nancy had it, it encourages more popular sources and does not provide/detail an avenue for expanding to scholarly research.

The present assignment sheet is very clear on the need for primary research. But the students need to not only do their own primary research (one of last year’s papers won an award and is being published this summer and one of this year’s papers is in a newly established field without much scholarly research and another rhetoric professor and I think it can be published), but also focus on what has already been done.

Note: I stopped what I was doing and updated the assignment sheets. Rather than three single pages handed out at different times, it is now a continual, interrelated set of instructions, with specific examples and guidelines.

Expanding the rubric:
I think I should expand the rubric, as well, to incorporate types of primary research such as:
continuation of work that has already been done on a topic, but with a new subject matter (so violations of Grice’s Maxims as humor, but focusing on The Big Bang, instead of Friends, for an example from this semester’s work)

work that is ground-breaking, but definitely in areas of interest (such as a student’s work this semester with the vocabulary of table top fantasy role playing games)

Clearly work that is a continuation and expansion can be good, but it is potentially less important than ground-breaking work. Students both last year and this year have had research studies that could be/are ground-breaking seminal projects for their areas of research.

An advantage to incorporating this sort of focus into the assignment sheet and paper grading is that the students can see more specifically the ways that scholars can build research. Publication is possible with significant continuation projects, but is more likely to happen with ground-breaking research. Of course, the idea that they have to find a new area is overwhelming to graduate students, much less to juniors and seniors (and the occasional very brilliant freshman who has already completed freshman and sophomore college English before enrolling in the university).

While I think that the two types should be rated/valued appropriately, I do wonder about how to grade this. Perhaps I can differentiate between good work, that is a continuation of scholarly research, and good work that is ground-breaking with a category of good added to the rubric’s present categories of needs work, acceptable, and superior. (How I will fit all those on the page is a different and difficult puzzle.)

Maybe I will simply offer on the assignment sheet the two options and talk about work which falls within those two categories and then, at the end of the process, if the ground-breaking research is well done, award bonus points for that.

New this semester:
This semester I had the students give an elevator speech, a one-minute talk, introducing the primary research they planned to do, after they had chosen that. I referred them to this video, which is about a thesis/dissertation project involving linguistics, as an example of the kind of information included in an elevator speech. These worked very well and students did GREAT. One student handed out a visual, which improved his grade because it was so perfectly relevant.

After all the research had been done, students had to present their findings in a three to five minute digital presentation. Several students went over the very strict time limits. Several forgot their opening title frames. A few had no text and a few had no images. One had competing sound tracks. Despite all of these things, they were very well done overall.

I will definitely repeat both of those assignments next year.

Having trouble typing some of the more obscure IPA diacritics for your phonetics work? Try this web-based tool.

I had my faculty evaluation with my chair today. I didn’t make poor grades on anything. They were all good.

However, my teaching, which I have worked so hard to do well on did not receive an excellent. I am, believe it or not, devastated by that. (Sitting in my office crying. Good thing I am not visible from the hall.)

I read my student evaluations and I thought they were wonderful. In fact, after I read them I was like, “Wow! Wish I had read these earlier. They are incredible!”

The problems mentioned were lack of preparation and too many personal comments.

I cannot think of a class time when I told personal stories or references that were not related to the subject. I don’t remember ever talking about something not related to the subject we were studying, unless by that they mean explaining how to do emails appropriately or something like that.

I couldn’t find what he was talking about in this year’s evaluations. BUT…

Maybe he looked at last spring’s evaluations as well. (There was one class where I did a lot of personal mentions. And I was not very effective in that class, despite the fact that I spent a lot of time working on it–twenty hours a week.) Since he hadn’t seen those last time we had evaluations, that is possible. In that case, yes, I probably did talk too much about my life.

And in that case, it’s not as devastating as it felt. I have improved that.

Update: I asked and, yes, the spring evaluations were part of the review. Okay. That makes sense.

Now I feel a bit ridiculous for having been so upset.

Last year I spent 16 hours a day working. I got everything I needed to get done finished. Some of it I didn’t get done on time, but it got done.

This year, I am working ten to twelve hour days. For some reason, I am not getting as much done.

I get my classes prepared.

I get the students’ papers graded and returned to them. Homework the next day; essays within a week.

But I don’t do a lot of other things.

The honor society brought in a poet. I spent two days with her, learned a lot, and didn’t get all my grading done. But I did it all on Sunday after she left.

The poet is the only thing the honor society has done and/or is doing this semester. I am not even having the officers come eat breakfast and clean up the street. My co-sponsor quit and the students aren’t gung ho about doing things, so I am not doing more.

I wrote two abstracts and one paper for this semester. Too bad the paper isn’t the one that is due next. (Guess what I am working on this weekend and week? Finishing that paper…)

For me writing a paper at the last minute for a conference is a change. I usually have the entire paper written before I submit–or at least written a solid month before the presentation… I still change it, but it is written. (Of course, if you have been reading here for a long time, you can probably name every other time I didn’t have the paper finished early, because I wrote about them here.)

Just to give you an idea, I have the paper for the October conference written already.

But not the one for the April conference.

I took most of today off from work and did a photography outing with a bunch of people from town. (It would have been really good if I had met more of them and remembered their names.) Then I spent several hours crashing my computer trying to get the pictures uploaded and saved. That’s done. They look good. I like a few of them quite well.

I still have grading tonight and I will get to that soon, even though it is already almost midnight.

However, you know how when you put something off because you don’t have time… and then you have some time, but you don’t want to do it because you’ve put it off for so long. That’s where I am on writing the paper. So I decided to post about it here.

I will come back and tell everyone when I get it finished.

That’s me trying to be accountable.

…So what am I doing with the four to six hours a day I am not working? I’m reading novels. Calling friends. Sleeping.

I hope that means that I will be able to keep teaching for a few decades. And it is very nice to be reading for fun again. (Even if I do have a novel I need to read that I borrowed from a student.)

My spouse is a Mac programmer and thanks to him a major problem with iBooks Author has gone away in my Introduction to Early British Literature collection of iBooks.

Finally students will be able to upload all four of the books on their iPads at the same time.

Yay!

I got up this morning without my clothing pre-planned. I wanted to wear jeans, but those are not professor wear at my university, so I didn’t do that. Instead I wore the one pair of capri pants my husband actually likes, a nice blouse, five inch heels, and a hat. It’s a lace covered fedora and I added a silver satin pin to the side of it. I guess I’ve got a very different view of “casual Friday” than most people.

Certainly I have a different view of it than the frosh who showed up for her 7:40 am meeting in pajamas. But she showed up and it wasn’t lingerie, so I’m good.

Half of the 8 am students apparently started their spring break early. They weren’t there. So everyone who was there got 100 for their in-class work (which was generally very good) and got all the answers to the questions for today’s readings. I’m also thinking a final exam question for extra credit on today’s readings…

After my 8 am class I had three freshman conferences scheduled. Two of the three showed up. That was good, too.

One was surprised that I was surprised he made it. Since he’s missed the last two weeks of class, I think my surprise was reasonable, although perhaps it would have been better not to express it!

After the two conferences concluded, I headed home to see my dad. Then I realized I had not finished grading some papers I thought I had not only graded but recorded. So back I went to work for another two hours.

My spring break plans:
1. Enjoy two days with my dad.
2. Read several new novels.
3. Write the paper for the April conference.
4. Have lunch with a friend in town to celebrate our birthdays.
5. Head out of town to eat and antique with a buddy.
6. Finish the last quarter of the iBook.
7. Go to a steampunk convention.

I think I’ll also try to sleep in at least one day.

I was searching for publication CFPs (not that I have time to write anything) and I found a whole series of fascinating ones. After I had posted a few here at TCE–just in case I do come up with some extra time–I noticed that most of them were from two individuals: together, separately, or with someone else.

I could NOT edit ten books at once. I am guessing they don’t have contracts for all those but do have interest in doing the work.

I will probably look at one or two of them and see if I can make time.

But really? Who can do multiples of these?

One idea:
“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” Etienne Wenger (ewenger.com)

This tactic also calls on research that demonstrates “students working in small groups tend to learn more of what is taught and retain it longer than when the same content is presented in other instructional formats.” Barbara Gross Davis. “Collaborative Learning: Group Work and Study Teams,” Tools for Teaching (1993). http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/collaborative.html

My thoughts:
This idea is similar to earlier educational models. It is particularly related to the apprenticeship model where a student who is more experienced, such as a journeyman, might instruct the neophyte. However, usually this was done under the careful oversight of the master. I do not think that instituting students-teaching-students will allow the university to create larger classes (or at least not significantly larger classes) for the professor to administer.

Second idea:
Numerous studies suggest that intensive courses produce equivalent or superior learning outcomes compared to traditional formats. Students are more easily able to focus on the material and are less likely to become distracted by the life events that may happen over the course of a long semester.

Sources for this idea:
Pascarella, E. and Terenzini, P. 2005. How College Affects Students, Volume 2. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.
Daniel, E. June 2000. “A Review of Time-Shortened Courses Across Disciplines.” College Student Journal: 34(2).
Kucsera, J. and Zimmaro, D. 2010. “Comparing the Effectiveness of Intensive and Traditional Courses.” College Teaching. 62.
“Shorter Classes Are More Effective.” Machine Design. 80(11): 110-111.

My thoughts:
I am actually teaching a more learning intensive course, during the regular semester, but I don’t think that is what they are talking about here. I know that my three-week British literature course studied the same things and had the same homework as my long-semester British literature course, when I was teaching at the community college.

My students DID do better in the short course, but those were also generally students who were home for the summer from UT, A&M, or SHSU. They were taking an “easy” course (which it was not!), but it was certainly a different experience from their long semesters in classes with 100+ students.

Musings for the future:
If the university decided to offer courses in three-week blocks throughout the long semester, so that a student could take five courses in 15 weeks, would I want to teach those courses? (When I would be teaching one more course than the normal load for faculty at my university.)

I have taught business writing and British literature in three-week courses and would be perfectly happy to continue to do that.

I would not mind teaching my third of the intro to rhetoric grad class in a week instead of five weeks (assuming I still get to assign the same reading/writing responsibilities).

I would NOT want to teach fyc in a three-week course and, indeed, don’t think that I could do so without significantly impacting the quality of my teaching.

The three-week courses are INTENSIVE, not just for the students, but also for the professors, and five back-to-back intensive courses would be exhausting. A month off would not lead to time to do research but simply be used to recover for the next fifteen-week sprint.

Perhaps offering students two six-week courses at a time, over an eighteen-week semester, where students could do twelve hours in a shorter early or late semester, would be an alternative that allows for more concentration (two courses rather than four to six) but without quite the same pressure to get the grading done–especially for writing intensive courses, which all of mine are!

Colorado College has a three-week intensive course series, which requires only four classes per semester to be taught.

Some courses would be far easier than others to do this way.

Third idea:
Problem-based learning, which is “a curriculum and a process. The curriculum consists of carefully selected and designed problems that demand from the learner acquisition of critical knowledge, problem solving proficiency, self-directed learning strategies, and team participation skills. The process replicates the commonly used systemic approach to resolving problems or meeting challenges that are encountered in life and career.” Barrows, H., and Kelson, A. C. (1995). Problem-Based Learning in Secondary Education and the Problem-Based Learning Institute (Monograph 1), Problem- Based Learning Institute, Springfield, IL.

My thoughts:
Not quite sure how this would work for a literature classroom. Less confident of fyc courses here, too. Rhetoric classes, on the other hand, might work like this, though the approach would significantly change what we are doing now.

I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing. Just different.

Fourth idea:
Hybrid classes. Elements of face-to-face and distance learning are combined in a single course.

“Hybrid courses — those that are offered online but also involve substantial face time — can produce better outcomes than those that are delivered exclusively on the Web or in the classroom.”

Kolowich, S. (September 22, 2009). Sustainable Hybrids, Insider Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/22/hybrids#ixzz2HzNPiSLM

“The hybrid flexible model is delivered using a combination of face-to-face seminars and electronic delivery and communication tools. It is found that academic performance is higher for students who studied under the flexible delivery model…”

Dowling, C., Godfrey, J. M., & Gyles, N. (2003). Do hybrid flexible delivery teaching methods improve accounting students’ learning outcomes? Accounting Education: An international journal, 12(4), 373-391.

My thoughts:
I actually like this idea. I think it would be good to teach a course where, perhaps, every two weeks the class got together for class discussion and in-class work that would help students develop, while normally they have time outside of class to read, write, and prepare for the course.

If the hybrid were set up with flexibility, some students might do better because they would be able to get their work done, but not have to have it done every two days. On the other hand, some students would do worse because they need the schedule.

Fifth idea:
Flipped class.

The traditional course model (content delivery in class, practice outside of class) is reversed. Class time is used to practice, answer questions and address problems.

Because of its emphasis on information application, rather than transmission, flipped teaching offers potentially better learning outcomes (Eric Mazur).

“It’s a whole different paradigm of teaching,” says Mr. Wieman, likening the professor’s role to that of a cognitive coach. “A good coach figures out what makes a great athlete and what practice helps you achieve that. They motivate the learner to put out intense effort, and they provide expert feedback that’s very timely.” http://chronicle.com/article/How-Flipping-the-Classroom/130857/

My thoughts:
I have read Robert Talbert (Casting Out Nines, writes for the CHE) for years and his talk of flipping his calculus course was my first introduction to the concept.

One of my friends is doing a flipped literature course this semester. She said that it is very labor intensive before the semester begins and less so once the class has started. In fact, she says, one day she felt superfluous and sat in the corner of the room creating a reflection on the students being so engaged in what they were doing that they wanted her to not be there. (She did say that towards the end of class they wanted to show her what they had done.)

She doesn’t use as many writing assignments as I do in my literature courses (probably shows my writing background/bias), but she does have some amazing projects. The students do dramatizations, write sonnets, and create art as a group. Very cool.

I think that digital presentations and group assignments would be particularly useful in this venue.

For CCTE’s conference that is this week, I also volunteered (or at least did not say no when asked) to create the program brochure.

I thought that was fairly simple. I could take pictures, put stuff in the program, and organize it.

Even those parts turned out to be less simple than I expected.

First, how to I get the pages right for the program? Thankfully someone pointed me to Create Booklet. Create Booklet is an incredibly helpful application if you need to fold pages for a program. It lets you create your work in MSWord and then it formats it into the correct pages afterwards. Thank you to the creators!

I went to take pictures, which was fun. I did not, however, get as many good pictures as I wanted, so I ended up using other photographs that I had taken–which was fine–but I really wanted some pictures that I did not get.

I didn’t realize that when I said I would create the brochure that I would be in charge of organizing all the panels. That worked out all right, but it was work I wasn’t expecting.

I also didn’t realize that when I said I would create the brochure that
1. folks would not go check out the spelling of their names, etc, until AFTER it was printed and
2. folks would not tell me who the chairs for different sessions were until after the work was taken to the printers.

It’s not a perfect brochure and I wanted it to be. I did the best I could with what I had at the time, though. I think it looks nice, even if it isn’t perfect.

The BEST parts of doing the program?
I know who is presenting. (Although not everyone I wanted to hear ended up coming, which was sad.)

I know when they are presenting.

I got to take the photographs and figure out which photographs I could put in the brochure.