Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Notes on Teaching Writing Online (Warnock)

What have I found useful about this book?
  • The three specific rationales for teaching online writing courses ("I specifically find online writing instruction promising because I believe--and this is a core premise of this book--that online writing instruction provides the opportunity for not just a different approach, but a progressive approach to the way teachers teach writing--an evolution of sorts in writing instruction" [xi])
  • Chickering and Zelda Gamson's seven principles for undergraduate teaching (p. xiv)
  • Icebreakers (p. 6-8)
  • The idea, throughout the book, that students should use a specific subject line when sending me emails. For example, Section 15: Homework Question. I've never done this before. This, along with teaching them how to write an email to a professor, is a good idea. Then, set up Smart Folders in Apple Mail to accommodate these different kinds of emails.
  • Helping students decide whether an online course is the right one for them--have them fill out a learning style survey (p. 43)
  • Escape Clauses (giving students info on how to drop the class without penalty, etc.) (p. 43)
  • Does BB9 have "pop up" reminders? ("scheduling reminders are often embedded in course documents") (p. 57)
  • Rather than give students the PDFS, give them the citation information and have them go to the library page and download the documents themselves. This gets them at least a bit of exposure to the library website and learning a bit about how databases work and where academics publish their work. (p. 62)
  • Quizzes (p. 64-65)
Chapter 8 is very useful--it's all about online discussion.
  • Useful language on p. 79-81 for how to talk with students about online posting
  • Primary and Secondary (follow-up) posts, how to grade them and language to explain all this to the students 83-84.
  • Offering multiple prompts instead of just one per week.
  • Student generated prompts (87)
  • Having students use Discussion Board posts in their coursework (88-89)

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