• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

2008G37Hochman

Designing New Media Systems of First-Year Composition Delivery across Multiple Institutions
Reviewed by Will Hochman
hochmanw1@southernct.edu

Fred Kemp began by describing a Texas grant for Texas Tech University and Dallas Community Colleges to redesign composition. TTU has an online program, and the Dallas CCs use instructional videos; thus, the grant was intended to blend and advance uses of both technologies. The Texas coordinating grant board wanted to build resources for a range of blended and online courses. Many of the teachers were a “captive group” with varying experiences and attitudes toward teaching and learning composition. At TTU, there are two types of writing teachers—“The Classroom Instructor” and “The Document Instructor,” and teachers at TTU do both. However, the “Document Instructors” actually read and grade student work anonymously, and all student work is graded by two “Document Instructors” to regulate grading fluctuation. This grading innovation was an attempt to achieve standardized evaluation.

The Dallas CC model had more independent teaching models, and the TTU model was thought to be able to add more consistency to the Dallas CC approach to the teaching of composition. The grant is intended to create a portable (from institution to institution) administrative structure and a video structure to advance composition instruction and avoiding assessment biases. Kemp stresses that he knows this works at TTU, but he sees the real value of this technologically advanced pedagogy in the portability and adaptation of it for other institutions of higher learning. Kemp ended his presentation with two questions for the rest of the presenters:

• Can video increase “writing transfer”?
• Which practices support instructional change institutionally and are easily adaptable to other universities?

Rich Rice from TTU talked about the course delivery structure as a new kind of hybrid course using media and text. He mentioned exploring different modalities to explore a unified or universal design for learning; this involved using recognition networks, strategic networks, and affective networks. Rice explained how Post-Process Theory and Andragogy (the teaching and learning of adults) add to the thinking about UDL for “just-in-time, practical learning” to offer the theoretical underpinnings of this work. Videos were watched, and, with the addition of a CMS system, Rice intends to study frequency and effectiveness of viewing. He also explains that videos were “problem-centered,” and that “problem-centered” videos appeal to adult learners because the instruction is immediately available and relevant.

Marc Wilson discussed what “we’re up to at Ivy Technical Community College” and explains that his focus was on changing teaching culture. He focused on Andragogy at Ivy Tech and stressed that adult learners need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of course materials, and that this concept poses a potential clash for CC teachers who may not be teaching at an institution for a long time and who are used to teaching more independently. Wilson understands that adults and instructors can learn about new communities or at least stretch their understandings of community with the use of online resources. Wilson is in the process of gathering data to see what works with the TT distributed grading approach. He thinks doors “between” classrooms will be opened, teachers will collaborate better, and the culture of teaching composition will be improved.

Nathan Jahnke discussed the well done videos that are problem-centered and contextualized this with actual writing challenges not “top-down” instruction. At TTU, they went through 6-7 hours of video and “chunked” the video concepts to address specific learning contexts after students wrote. The chunks were then embedded in the TTU composition cyberspace, and thus they were able to be inserted by teachers in their comments to students about their writing. Jahnke explained that the program will evolve from using the Dallas videos to more of a teacher-generated, youtube style of teaching videos.

The work being discussed in this session evidences a collaborative pedagogy that is fused with technological exchange. And this work seems to offer improved online learning resources and cultural learning transformations.