Proof?

Here's a passage copied exactly from a student's end-of-semester portfolio reflection:

"Another thing that I have really improved in my writing is being too wordy. This is another problem that I did not realize before coming to my English class.  Throughout the class time in English I have became better at not being too wordy.  This is also why I chose to write my first [assignment] on the reason why I chose the video Nine Steps to Writing a Good Essay.  This piece is an opinion piece, and I knew that this could be an easy piece to be wordy in.  This is the reason why I chose to write an opinion piece, to challenge myself.  When reading this [assignment], I believe that you will notice that I am not as wordy as I use to be."

Well, I hope so - whew!

Maybe I'll use this passage in the future as an example of irony . . . it wouldn't be contradiction or hypocrisy, would it?

Of course

Because grades are due tonight, the email system at Metro State seems to have gone down - and I need to check my email to find the obscure password that I need twice a year to submit my grades.  I've been trying for a few hours.

Sheesh.

On another note: I've finished all the grading for that class!  I had 25 essays, 12 reading journals, and 14 final exams.

I've also finished creating the exam for my Intro to GLBT Studies course (and graded eight reading journals and six fifteen essays for that class - about a third of almost all the students).

I've also graded 10 of 36 portfolios for my writing students (five or six essays in each!).  A few students stopped by my office today to pick up their portfolios: naturally, the students who stopped by are not the students whose portfolios I've finished.

My tech writers are still working on the final exam (three submitted - two are definitely A exams), so I won't grade them all until they're all in.

The end is in sight.

Typos

Sometimes the student reliance on spell check results in funny sentences:

• "Actually, from these strengths and weaknesses I learned valuable lesions for myself."

Grading

I have tons and tons of grading to do (38 portfolios, 5 essays in each, some with final exams too; 45 final lit essays, 12 exams too; 14 tech writing projects and final exams), but all I want to do is read some Shakespeare.

Decisions, decisions!

*Update*
I use blogging in my courses so that students can practice low-stakes writing for their peers (and also to teach a bit about technology: many of my students have never heard of blogs or blogging).  This semester, students blogged about our college's common book The Good Soldiers.  Here's one student's final post (I post it here as evidence of the level of student I'm teaching this semester -- is she ready for FYC?  I don't think so, but we'll see . . .):

My last time.

For my last blog post I would like to put my final words about how I feel about the book we have been reading this second half of the semester. I feel that at first the book was really boring. I felt this way because I am not into reading and if I need to read something I need to read something that interests me. So I knew I had to suck it up and read parts of the book. The first two chapters I was very confused I didn't even know what they where talking about so I decide to just skip into the middle of the book and see if I could pick up what Finkel was talking about. I started to read maybe five pages and I was understanding what he was talking about and so I just kept reading. After just reading about three chapters in the book I understood what was somewhat going on in the war. I kept giving more and more respect to the solders that were over in war and what they were going through. I still get confused though when they use the privates numbers and say numbers with letters in the book because I still don't understand what they are talking about. I do want to say though I think Julie made a good choice of a book to pick for the English class.

Stretch

What *real* active learning space might look like - not what we have at Century.

Need This!

I just received an email from a student who took Tech Writing with me about five years ago (or maybe seven!).  He went to the U of M from Century, double-majoring in Computer Science and Asian Languages & Literature.  His message here a good antidote to the grumpy tech writers who are finishing the semester with me right now:

Hey there Julie! I was just thinking about you the other day!


I've been doing some tech writing at my new job, trying to fix some awful grammar meshing 30 'styles' that a designer thought would 'go together' well on a website.


I've been living it up China for the past year and a half since graduating from the U; last year I was a teacher in Suzhou, and since this fall I've been working for an website dev company in Shanghai. I miss beauty of our great state and I wish I could be around for it's changing seasons. I hope all is going well with you in MN! I'm glad you're still teaching, the world needs more teachers like you!


Just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks again for your help and support when I was at Century and afterwards. You made such a great impact on me and surely countless others!


Sincerely yours,
Nathan

Contraindications

This week has been a short work week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  I started my week with the usual full Monday: I have three classes that day plus office hours, so I'm working from 9:45-3:45, pretty much non-stop.  This past Monday, I had asked a student to come by my office hours to chat.  Here's why:

A couple of weeks ago, two technical writing students (I'll call them Mo and Jeff) stopped by my office to express themselves, wondering where their most recent assignment was because they "needed feedback" so that they "wouldn't mess up" the next assignment.  Never mind that I had devoted half a class period to providing feedback to the whole class based on what I noticed on all their assignments.  On the board, I'd listed the things that had been done well and things that needed to be improved.  I had given individual feedback to about half the class, but not yet personally to Mo and Jeff.

Jeff also complained that I "didn't lecture enough" and so he didn't ever know what to do in class: if I talked individually to another student during workshop (after giving the whole class a task), he didn't know what he was supposed to do.  So the next class period, I "lectured" and then gave the students an exercise to apply that lecture.  Unfortunately, Jeff spent most of the lecture browsing through his grades on our course website instead of listening.

The biggest shock came that evening: my dean called me at home to say that Mo and Jeff had come by her office to complain that I didn't get their work back to them in time.  Mo in particular said that she thought I had "too much to do" and couldn't get my work done.  (I guess I should be impressed that Mo would take this strategy: it shows she's listened when I've talked about audience analysis and technical writing.  When my students have asked whether or not they have to remind me what projects they're working on, I answer with the fact that I am teaching 120 students this semester, and it's entirely possible that I would not remember their exact project.  Mo took this information and concluded that I had "too much to do.")

Anyway, the call from the dean was a shock.  I asked about contacting the students individually to say that I'd talked with the dean; she said okay.  I asked Mo to come to my office because I must have misunderstood something since our face-to-face conversation in my office the previous week had seemed to have ended well.

This Monday, Mo came by and said, "We talked with the dean because after we talked with you, nothing changed."  (Timeline update: they talked in my office on a Wednesday after class; the next class meeting was Monday, the day they expected to see some type of change.)

When I mentioned about the class "lecture" that Monday, she responded that she gets nothing out of class and it doesn't matter to her what happens in class.  When I mentioned that I also had returned her assignment *and* given her extra time to turn in the next assignment, she said that I should have done that for everyone because "probably other people have the same issue" (they don't).  She then spent quite a bit of time saying that 1) she was a bad writer 2) she was only taking the class because it was required and 3) she didn't get anything out of coming to class - it was a waste.

Hmmm.  So I flat-out said something like "You'll have to help me understand what seems to be a contradiction here: you say that you are a bad writer, you don't get anything out of class, yet you seem to want a good grade: how do you think that is going to happen?"  She didn't know.  She didn't think I could do anything in class, and she didn't think she could do anything.

I'm extremely puzzled: did she just want to vent?  Who, exactly, would she be mad at, and why?   She's told me that she's already earned her nursing certificate (but she can't find a job - I wonder why).  So I'm not sure why she's saying that this course is required for her program.  Maybe she just needs to get a B and sees that it might not be possible?

She also complained to the dean that she was active military and that I didn't give her the accommodations required.  First time I heard she was active military is when the dean told me.

So I'm a bit pissed off at Mo and Jeff: they're team.  He makes fun of her every chance he gets - he fancies himself the class clown - and she seems to need his large bulk as protection somehow.  The two of them will get through the course, but I can't imagine a grade higher than a C for either of them, given how they write and how they contribute to class discussion (two primary ways of earning grades in our class).

It's that time of the semester

This week, my tech writers have been unhappy with their workload (even though they have chosen their tasks and their timelines) and thus with me.

Two came into my office last week to tell me how to teach the class: you should lecture more to the whole class; don't talk to people individually in the classroom because "then I don't know what to do: should I start reading something else?"

This comment came after I had given students an activity (to support that day's "educational objective," which I had written on the board and which I had introduced with some talking to the class that evidently the student did not find sufficient as a "lecture").  While students were doing the activity, I circulated around the classroom, commenting on their work, asking if anyone had questions.  A couple of students had questions, so I stopped to talk and answer.

The fellow with this complaint is someone whose only contributions to class discussion come in the form of jokes, often at the expense of his friend, the woman who came into the office with him to "discuss" my teaching.  This young man also spends less than 30 minutes composing his most recent assignments (I ask all students to complete a "cover sheet" with assignments, recording what they did to complete the writing task; most students spend two to four hours creating these current memos.)

So I understand this guy as a lazy, below-average student (he's in law enforcement), and I recognize the type (blame someone else for my own faults).  The young woman, on the other hand, she's a puzzle to me.  After a call from the dean yesterday (yes, after the students talked to me, evidently they were still pissed enough to talk with the dean), I found out that the student is active-duty military.  She's never mentioned that to me before (except in my office to tell me that I had "not given her" extra time to complete a quiz about a month ago when she was at Camp Ripley).

This student is mad at me because she hasn't received a grade for a September assignment: that's true - only two students have received grades because these assignments came in the same time as my grandma's death and funeral, and I had computer problems with the assignments, so I got behind.  I've been up-to-speed with other assignments instead of going back to those -- a problem, to be sure, but one I've explained to students and asked for their patience, something I would appreciate as I continually tweak the course to meet their needs: moving due dates, moving online class dates, adding another hour of "chat" even though it's a huge struggle for me to attend, giving them more chances to do open-book online quizzes.

*Sigh*.  I'm just so tired of trying to teach students to write -- it means I have to read and comment on what they write, such a time-consuming activity.  I have at least one colleague who assigns two papers in a 16-week semester (I have many, many more), the first of which is due week 9 of the semester.  These students are not learning to write: they are just writing anything (I worked with two of them in the writing center, and their "research papers" consisted of a pastiche from Wikipedia and other sources, a cut-and-paste that would cause an F in my course).

I am struggling with knowing how to be a good, ethical teacher in an environment that doesn't support those kinds of teachers.  What do I sacrifice?  How do I compromise?

The Serial Comma

So using the Oxford Commas (as it's also known) is really important, I tell my students. Click on this news clipping to make it bigger (and to see the joke).

Thanks, Dave Beard.

Meetings

I suppose it's good that I go to meetings . . . they're opportunities to share, tell stories, learn about other people's problems so that I don't feel alone with our IT shenanigans (no, that's not the right word: not negative enough - it's IT irresponsibility or arrogance or ineptness or all of the above).

The worst story I heard today was an instructor whose course -- a course teaching students how to use MS Outlook -- could not / would not have said software loaded on to the classroom machines (or the instructor computer).  The head of IT (AKA our CIO and Assistant Vice President for Technology) said that he didn't think it was "pedagogically sound" to teach Outlook skills in a hands-on lab setting.

Right.

Sure, I think it's unethical to charge our students college tuition to learn a software package, but our college has two programs that basically do just that (Office Technology and Computer Applications - these are programs left over from the "merger" when a community college and a technical school merged to form Century).

The things you learn . . .

Midterms

Here's the list so far since Sunday:

• created two exams based on student input (ENGL 90: Introduction to Writing and WGST 1071: Intro to GLBT Studies) = 6 hours
• graded ENGL 90 student portfolios (three pieces of writing, the exam, and two blog posts; wrote individual letters to each student, including their point percentage at this point in the semester) = 9 hours so far for the first 28
• scored discussion posts and quizzes for ENGL 1025: Technical Writing = 1 hour
• conducted 27 conferences in my office (had to clean up office a bit first) = 6 hours (have 10 left; 5 missed, one because she had a baby!)
• chose my courses for summer at a "blood-letting" meeting today = 1 hour
• worked half of my Writing Center shift = 1.5 hours
• met with two of my classes = 2 hours

To do before tomorrow:

• finish grading WGST 1071 exams (18 half-done)
• finish ENGL 90 portfolios (11)
• eat supper

My eyes are bleary!

Images of teachers

I missed UNESCO World Teachers' Day (Oct. 5). 

But here are a bunch of pictures of teachers around the world.

Amen

William Shawn, New Yorker editor: "Amid chaos of images, we value coherence. We believe in the printed word. And we believe in clarity. And we believe in immaculate syntax. And in the beauty of the English language."

Where Good Ideas Come From

Double-click to make this video big enough to watch (it's good!)

For Patty

see more Funny Graphs

Confusing: update

So I offered to talk directly to John Doe, apologize face-to-face, tell him that I had no intention of insulting him -- only trying to give real, specific feedback that I thought would make the website better.  I told the dean that it seemed to me that the misunderstanding could be cleared up by a real conversation.

Dean said that I couldn't talk directly to John Doe: " Before you talk to [John], I feel that I should find out if he is OK with the conversation--again, since [John] and I don't work together and I have been asked to step in.  Can you give me a little time to make sure [John] is comfortable with this approach."

Well, yes, I told her to let me know what John said.  Here's that message: "Hi Julie--I received an email from [John].  He does not want to meet.  Thanks for your patience."

Patience, indeed.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to convey feedback at our college -- especially tech-related feedback.  I watched a college Facebook video about Learning Communities today and noticed one misspelled student name (my Hannah is not Hannan), one misspelled instructor name (PaKou is not the same as Pakou) as well as the wrong name of my friend (who is Cullen Bailey Burns, not Cullen Burns).  The video kept pausing, too, not for "buffering" but to "load" while it was in Facebook (this pausing doesn't happen in YouTube).  Hmmm . . . did the creators actually watch it after they created it?

Our tech infrastructure is so tenuous -- and evidently so are the egos of our IT folks.  Today's college-wide network crash (at about 2:00 p.m., as my students were trying to save and print the work they'd completed in class) provided another real-world example of the fragility of our IT infrastructure.

How to talk about all these things on my campus?  I'm not sure . . . .

Confusing

On Tuesday night, I received an email from my dean, asking me to a meeting she'd set up so that we could "have a conversation about a concern that she'd been asked to address."  When I asked for a bit of info so that I could prepare, she said it was "best" that I just show up.

So I did, today, after conversing with quite a few people yesterday about how weird it was that I was being asked to talk about a "concern" yet not told what it was.  One friend said it was a "set up"; other friends encouraged me to bring along a union representative.

Anyway, the dean started the conversation with "I need to talk to you about your email to John Doe."  John Doe?  I wracked my brain, trying to figure out who that might be, what email I might have sent or someone else might have sent.

Turns out I'd sent feedback, submitted via the "feedback" link on our new college website, that insulted the recipient, John Doe.  Feeling hurt and insulted, John had told his supervisor, who'd told the academic VP, who'd asked my dean to handle it.

It never occurred to me that the "feedback" link would be a *specific* email to a *specific* person.  Usually, info given via feedback is routed to the folks who can deal with the concerns.   Not at my college: our "feedback" goes directly to the webmaster himself.

Evidently, what upset him so were my capital letters on "EXTREMELY" and my final comment that our college website has been used by other colleges as what not to do (I'd heard that this summer, and was a bit chagrined).

*Sigh*.  Our college's infrastructure and communication has been bad for all the years I've been there, and now the technology is exaggerating the gaps.  It's worse than I've ever, ever seen, anywhere.  Our "public face" embarrasses me and confuses students.  We have put the entire design of our college's website in the hands of a easily-offended fellow who does not have a four-year degree and therefore is intimidated by faculty.

Why didn't we hire a webmaster who had earned at least a bachelor's degree?  It seems shortsighted to choose someone with an AA degree as the designer for a *college*'s web presence.

Telling the Truth

I've been thinking of using this blog to tell what really goes on at my college: the happy stories are easy, of course -- like the goofy summer-school student who stopped by my office today, pleased to spend an hour chatting because she had two hours "to waste."

She wanted to show me a book she'd checked out of her public library -- "The Gay Rights Movement" -- wondering how she could buy it.  I spent 45 minutes with her, analyzing "The Children's Hour," hearing about her classes, including ear-training and logic (the textbook's cover photograph of trees in mist really confounded her: how is that the image of logic?).

But what about the not-happy things that occur all around me?

• Tech writing students who, asked to talk about "usability," immediately begin sharing horror stories about our college's new website.  
• The faulty registration system that did not screen the students for honors courses; as a result, both students and faculty have been surprised this week to find that what they thought they were signing up for is not what they've received.  
• Faculty and student training sessions led by someone who treats all the participants like children ("If I raise my hand, that means you should stop talking!").  
• Financial aid not distributing vouchers for book purchases until the second week of the semester -- so students cannot begin the reading unless I lend them my personal books (which I continue to do). 

I could write a longer list.  It might be healthy for me to purge in this blog, but I'm not sure . . . should I tell the truth about how much worse the infrastructure has gotten since I arrived 9 years ago?  Many, many things are worse, and part of the reason I think is that our president has hired his pals instead of smart people: young men who are protecting their fragile machismo by treating others badly (especially the women who run the joint).  It's just so classically sexist that it's almost funny.

*Sigh.*

Better Blogging

While I have been taking a break from this julie@century blog this summer, I have been working with another blog with my online tech writing students.

The course ended yesterday, and I have to say that asking students to write and share blog posts has been a *terrific* learning experience for them, the best blogging I've read since I've been using this assignment. Here's how it works:

• I asked them to sign up for Google Alerts to get messages about "Technical Writing" in the news (analogous to the in-class discussion we would have if we were meeting f2f). The news stories show up in their email inboxes, usually 4 or 5 a week.
• I put the instructions for how to set up this alert right in the syllabus -- it's a first example of instructions, which is the second assignment students write for the class. (A syllabus is a piece of technical writing, after all.)
  
• I have created a private blogspot blog for the class, and I add new students to the blog every semester. I keep adding students instead of creating a new blog for each class because I want students to see what others have written over the years -- examples of good and bad blog posts (practicing genre analysis!) help them write their own.
• Students should post eight times in the eight-week semester: 4 times before midterm and 4 times after midterm. Commenting on 3 classmates' posts can substitute for one of their own posts. They can decide when to post, but only one post per day counts. (I used to ask for weekly posts, but students would forget. And one semester, students posted all their posts at once, which defeats the purpose of getting them to think and share.)
• Posts are worth 10 points each -- totaling about 1/10th of the points for the course.
• I don't check spelling, grammar, mechanics -- the only comments I make are about analysis: simply summarizing or copying the news item is not sufficient. Students must post what they *think* about what they've read.

Overall, this semester the students have realized that technical writing is all around them. Some profess to have more respect for technical writers, seeing for the first time all the hard work that goes into creating documents at their workplaces. Here are some example student posts, just as they appeared (weird formatting, spelling errors, and all -- be sure to notice that one Ethiopian student liked a W.B. Yeats quote!):

You can Learn Writing Style- What is Techncial Writing

I received this article in my inbox this morning and thought it would be interesting to read through it since it pertains to what we have learned in our online technical writing class. This article was written by: stevesheriw. he describes technical writing as a way to inform, instruct or persuade, argue within a document. He also goes on to say that what ever you write is some form of technical writing as in resumes, memos, letters, reports, instructions, etc. Some of these forms of technical writing styles were some of our required assignments for this class which made it clear as to why they call it technical writing. Steve also points out that there are 7 steps to consider when writing a document, these steps are; Purpose, audience, content specific to it's purpose and audience, write clearly and precisely, make good use of visuals, and last but not least; be ethical in your writing.

Where have I heard this before, oh yeah, I read about it in the reading assignments and the introduction of our handbook.
http://www.technicalyp.com/?p=372

Top 5 Technical Writing Skills That Pay Big

http://technicalwriting.phoenix-blogs.com/top-5-technical-writing-skills-that-pay-big/

The article goes over the top 5 tech writing jobs that pay big- the reason that I enjoy the article is because over the past semester I have truly payed respect to technical writing. It is a field that will be around forever to meet the needs of people from all types of society. The top 5 payed jobs are as follows:

- Information design

- Information architecture

- Training material development

- Illustration

- Typography

Everyone in the class should appreciate what a vast field technical writing is. It effects everyone (especially college students) in their day to day lives! I have enjoyed the short and challenging semester of technical writing, and I truly believe that it is something that everyone should have a basic understating of. Writing skills are a necessary thing in a society that is based around commercialism.

Technical Writing involves many things that need to be considered before writing a plain draft and Audience analysis is one of them.

This article points out about the kind of audience we need to consider while writing a document. There are 3 main types of audience: a non technical, a semi-technical and a technical. Gender and age also plays a role. As a technical writer we need to focus on the audience’s interest. When considering translation into another language for the document it is even more important to write a simple but clear language to avoid meaning changes. All those information make it clear that it is hard to write a document for multiple audiences. Satisfying all the readers is a hard task.

I liked the statement of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) used in this context: “Think like a wise man but communicate in language of the people” Not only in technical writing gives this success but also in other fields of life.

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/321195_why-keeping-your-audience-in-mind-while-technical-writing-is-important

Student typo

I love this line from today's Technical Writing student discussion post to another student: "I am sure you will do great in technical writhing this summer."

We all might feel like the course is "technical writhing" by the end of the summer! :-)