Professor Kysar First draft



Kathryn Kysar’s Online AWP 2015 presentation

I teach at a community college in Minneapolis. As part of the state system, we use Desire to Learn (D2L) as our online platform. I have been teaching online for many years and mentor colleagues new to the format. I have also taught as an adjunct in the creative writing programs at Hamline University and used Blackboard for online support for a seated class. As many of you may just be starting out with online teaching, I am going to offer some simple tips that I share with my colleagues to assist them in cleaning out the correspondence feel of their courses, maintain trust, establish community, and set boundaries in your online classes.

Cleaning out the correspondence feel of your courses:

• Use photos with your posts. I organize my classes into weekly assignments, posted in the general news/home page area. As I sometimes post reminders and other information over the week, I include a photograph with the weekly assignment to draw the eye and attention and as a cue that it’s an important post. I also add photos to attached PDF documents to break up the text.

• Use online materials. Integrating online videos, podcasts, and websites into your course is one of the most essential things you can do for getting rid of the “text only” feel to an online course. If you are on the Internet, use it! There is a wealth of resources. I recommend doing your research before the semester starts to select your online materials. I keep additional online resources available for curious students as references through the class. Creating such a repository gives the online class depth and creates a rich learning environment for students. It supports individual research, varies activities, and appeals to different learning styles.

• Welcome questions! Have a general questions/comments conversation area. Answer questions rapidly and with cheer. Encourage students to ask even what they think are dumb questions. There will be other students thinking the same thing. However, if the answer is already available in other resources, such as the course syllabus, refer them to the document rather than answering the question directly.

Creating Community

• Require discussions and small group work whenever possible. Small group critiques are ideal for larger classes, as are large group discussions for smaller classes. Students will learn how to critique by seeing your models and the work of their peers. Meaningful guided interaction in the course is the main building block for creating community.

• Require a photo of each student’s face in your format. This sounds silly, but students react with more compassion and thought when they connect a face with the name. The online faces become iconic. Students often want to post photos of their pets, their children, their motorcycles, but I insist on faces to humanize the class.

• Create a student lounge. Give students a space where they can go “off topic” to relax and interact with each other. Students can discuss where they live, vacation plans, other classes. One class of mine got crazy sharing recipes. By having a space to relax and get to know each other, their interactions can create trust and a sense community.

• Post cartoons. I sometimes post writing-related cartoons in my news and “student lounge” areas. When teaching a seated course, I throw a few bad jokes into my lectures. I try to do the same thing in my online classes. Though the cartoons may be taking us momentarily off topic, humor relaxes people and helps to establish trust.

Establish Trust

• Create a private area where students can communicate with you one-on-one. I find that online classes with their absence of face-to-face lectures often require more individual conversations. Giving students a space to “speak” to you privately is like creating an online office, a safe space. Encourage them to use it by requiring occasional private notes to you about their progress over the course of the semester. In addition, having all of your conversation in an online thread rather than in a series of emails helps you track students’ problems and progress.

• Have clear interaction policies in the syllabus. Students will feel safe to disclose and share creative work if you establish clear interaction policies at the beginning of the semester. This should include comments that are harassing or racist, agist, ablist, etc. Stating this explicitly at the beginning of class let’s students know that can share their work without the fear of personal attack.

• Monitor students’ interactions carefully. You need not respond to every peer critique, but let students know that you are watching over them. This means that critique cannot happen in other online formats—you need to be present—either via copies of documents or online discussions—during the critique process. (Students may want to use social media to interact, but do not let them go there.)

• Be active and present online. Some professors are “hands off” setting up discussions then floating away. By establishing a regular (daily?) online presence, students will know the class is a safe space.

• Have structured critiques. Students will feel free to share experimental and newer work if there is an expected framework for their critiques. They will know that the critiques will not get personal or be flippant. By putting time into creating structured critique lesson plans, you can avoid peer complaints later.

Set Boundaries

• A detailed syllabus is the best way to set boundaries for your interaction with students. Lay out the rules and regulations. You can then play “good cop, bad cop” with the syllabus later, allowing you to say things like “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’d love to read your 400 page fanfiction novel, but if you see the syllabus, I only read work written for this class.”

• Create structured critiques. Critiques of work should follow a prescribed structure. This helps students from getting out of bound with their comments. In addition, you can create small groups and manipulate course interaction by selecting the groups.

• Create appropriate spaces for conversations, and direct students to the right places. If a student is complaining about his grade in the general comments and questions area, send him to the individual discussion area. If the discussion about a new action –based Netflix show is happening in a theoretical discussion thread, send them to the student lounge. You never want to shut students down, just redirect them.

• Don’t interact with students via social media and steer emails into the online platform. There is nothing more difficult for me than to receive an email from “Jessica” (no last name) asking about the assignment in her class at the beginning of the semester. Keep all of our interactions with students in the online platform and reserve your email for your beloved committee work. Likewise, though it’s a nice idea to meet students where they are, interacting on social media can cause documentation problems for you and also give the impression of constant availability to students. It can also lead them to behave with you too informally. “Friend” students as a gift when they graduate is my policy.

• Create expectations about grading turn around time. My comment on grading on my syllabus says “This is an online class, but your professor is not a robot. Expect your assignments back in two weeks.” Usually I get assignments graded within a week, but by establishing the two weeks expectation early in the class, they are delighted to get their work back in a week rather than complaining that it took a week.

• Set clear expectations about your time online. Students will often message me at 10:30 p.m. and expect a response before an 11:50 p.m. deadline. They are used to 24 hour call centers staffed by people in India for their consumer purchases and sometime interact with online professors in the same way. I highly recommend that you set your “online hours”—probably during the day--and stick with them. I also warn against getting online when you are tired or later in the evening. Let the “late Lennies” deal with their situation themselves and respond in the morning. Many professors I know do not go online during the weekend, though I find it helpful to check in on Sunday evenings, when many of my students are working. Whatever your rules, make them clear and stick to them, giving the class an appropriate amount of time, as you could be online constantly.

• Take care of yourself. My online classes require twice the amount of time as my seated classes. That’s a lot of hunching over the computer, so make sure to stretch, take hourly breaks, etc. If you are working online all day at home, make sure to add exercise into the day’s plans. Setting boundaries for yourself will make the class more enjoyable for yourself and your students.

I hope these comments were not too simplistic. I’d be happy to chat with people later after the presentation.

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