Lindsey Gay's blog

Surveying Perspectives

Lindsey Gay — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:06:54 +0000

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Lindsey Gay

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Lindsey Gay

As the semester winds down, I have been thinking about my students’ responses to my course topic. Death and dying are universal facts, but our various responses to them are far from universal. This week I asked them to complete a short, anonymous survey that summarized their individual responses to the different topics we covered and conversations we had.

This semester marks the third time I’ve taught RHE 309K: Rhetoric of Death and Dying (Summer ‘13, Fall ‘13, Spring ‘14), and it’s gone a bit differently each time. As the semester winds down, I have been thinking about my students’ responses to my course topic. Death and dying are universal facts, but our various responses to them are far from universal. As part of my students’ Learning Records, I asked them to reflect on their own perspectives on death and dying, and to chart how their perspectives or feelings change as the class progresses. “Perspectives” was in fact one of our central course strands, along with Analysis, Research, and Writing. From the very beginning, I assured my students that my goal with Perspectives was not to change their belief systems or their values, but to get them accustomed to determining where their own perspectives originate, how they are formed and influenced, what is valuable about them and why, and what influences their perspectives have in their own lives. This week I asked them to complete a short, anonymous survey that summarized their individual responses to the different topics we covered and conversations we had.

In their Learning Records, my students have often offered profound insights into their own ways of considering death and dying. They report that though they perhaps gave the subjects little or no thought prior to enrolling in this course, they have since found that death and dying are quite interesting topics. Some students realize that their views, whether liberal or traditional, were certainly not the only valuable ways of approaching these topics. Some students have been introduced to death and dying at young ages, having had siblings or parents pass away; in these cases, I have found that the individual may be either much more reluctant to enter class discussions, or much more apt to do so with the confidence that comes from personal experience.

In fact, my students this year have offered so many different perspectives on death and dying that I’ve found it hard to collate them. For my own course development skills, I wanted some way of generalizing their reactions. Were there any specific aspects of the course materials or topics that they agreed on? Did we as a group sufficiently address our Perspectives course strand--that is, did we respectfully, critically, and analytically engage our own experiences, feelings, biases, and beliefs? Admittedly, this idea came to me pretty quickly as I was looking over the day’s lesson plan, so I had to devise the survey only hour before class began. Depending on the results, I may reconsider the utility or worth of some questions.

The results (zoom in!) were interesting. Though I expected the students’ responses to the first seven questions (based on discussions during class and in their Learning Records), I found their responses to #8 unexpected. Some of our most spirited classroom discussions were about legislative or unusual issues, but those received low interest ratings. I wonder whether my ranking system (where 4 = highest interest) ended up being confusing. The responses to #9, where I asked students to tell me what they wish we’d discussed, were incredibly varied: subjects ranged from suicide, to death rituals in other cultures, to Halloween.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results. I wanted to engage the students in a slightly different medium, which an online survey accomplishes. Mostly I just wanted a way of gauging their responses that was geared directly toward the course material, as opposed to the depersonalized Course Instructor Surveys they fill out at the end of each semester. I have also been fairly confident of the rhetoric-specific material I’ve presented in class, so I left that out of the survey. I thus confined the survey to purely topical issues of death and dying, rather than issues of rhetorical skill and practice.

On Weather Cancellations and Digital Media Experiments

Lindsey Gay — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:20:21 +0000

Author:

Lindsey Gay

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Ralph Hockens

Normally we have very mild minters here in Austin; however, this winter has been colder than usual. As a result, we’ve had a number of days where ice coated the roads, making the region’s many elevated highways and bridges very dangerous. For better or for worse, UT has closed the campus several times and initiated late starts several times more. Normally these delayed starts began between 10am and noon. As my Rhetoric of Death and Dying class runs from 9:30 to 11 am, any weather delays impact the course. In fact, we’ve had two classes cancelled and three others delayed by at least half an hour! For a course that meets only twice a week, every class day is very necessary; therefore, being almost two weeks behind in my curriculum before Spring Break has proven very challenging.

When my class was full-on canceled the first time, I was already on campus. UT officials made the call rather late, to the ire of many, but I decided to make the most of the situation. Since I had a quiet DWRL room, a computer with a webcam, and several hours at my disposal, I decided to record the day’s lecture and part of the lesson. I figured that not only could I reduce the amount of catch-up my students would have to do, but I would hopefully familiarize myself more strongly with the same digital media projects I’ve been asking my students to create.

I created a video in Windows Movie Maker by combining webcam footage of me lecturing with screen captures of the readings and other course material I had planned to discuss that day. Using the screen-capture tool Camtasia, I attempted to navigate through the material as if I were showing it to the students in real-time. There were several drawbacks: the lighting wasn’t optimal (thanks, fluorescent overheads!); I struggled with the audio capture (for some reason, about half of my sound files recorded but were incompatible with Camtasia, resulting in me having to record some portions of audio two or three times); overall the video ended up being VERY amateurish (to my eyes!). Nevertheless, at least my students had something to take away from an otherwise throwaway class day. After emailing them the video link and cautioning them that they’d be responsible for viewing it, doing the activities discussed, and knowing the material for the next class, I hoped they’d watch it.

Polling them the next class day, I found that only about one-third of them had watched the video. I warned them that we didn’t have enough time to go over the material (important stuff about ethical and pathetic appeals) so if they fell behind, it would be their own fault. Needless to say, I also found their scanty participation a poor repayment for my efforts. Cue hurt feelings.

The second time the university decided to cancel morning classes, it at least gave everyone plenty of notice, so I didn’t make an unnecessary trip to campus. This time, I thought I would turn my lecture on definitional arguments into a PowerPoint, and I wanted experiment by adding a voice-over. This would add important discussional elements into the presentation by making me write less and talk more.

Writing the PowerPoint took only half an hour. Then, I tried to use the audio recorder function built in to PowerPoint, because I hoped to avoid having to merge audio and PPT files in some other program. Unfortunately, once again, audio recording was my downfall. Though I made several test runs to ensure the sound was recording AND that I could advance through bullet points and slides in sync with the audio, the recording ultimately failed. I spent 40 minutes talking at my computer, only to find when I played back the whole presentation that the audio cut out about halfway through each slide. I was too frustrated to troubleshoot the problem, and I had afternoon meetings to keep, so I just rewrote the slides to be more text-heavy than I’d usually prefer. I sent it off to my students with instructions to view the PowerPoint and my apologies that I couldn’t get the sound to work. On the plus side, when I polled the class the next day asking how many of them viewed the presentation, about three-quarters of them raised their hands. It seemed they learned a lesson from the first cancelation, and the other shortened classes, AND from my lamentations about these course-shortening problems.

By the time Spring Break rolled around I was still about a week behind in my syllabus. Over the break, I reworked the rest of the term’s schedule slightly. This resulted in the next few weeks emphasizing skill development and leaving less time to luxuriate in discussing the many arguments around death and dying. The main lessons I learned—besides keeping my syllabus somewhat flexible—is that I have a long way to go before I make a really solid foray into the realm of the audiovisual. These experiences gave me a greater respect for my students’ efforts making their final projects (in various multimedia formats). My failures also gave me some ideas on how to better prepare my students for frustrations they may encounter as well.

The Modified Jigsaw Classroom

Lindsey Gay — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 16:13:57 +0000

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Lindsey Gay

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ACSD.org

Last spring I participated in a seminar through the Center for Teaching and Learning, and one of the biweekly sessions was on effective classroom organization. I resolved to try the Jigsaw Classroom model for my Fall 2013 class.

The Jigsaw Classroom is based on permanent student groups of around 4 students. More or fewer could work, though I've always liked the 4-person size. The basic idea is that the group members will work with each other throughout the semester. The advantages of this model are that activities retain some level of consistency, and students grow more comfortable participating within a stable group. Additionally, within each "home" group, each student is assigned a number--1, 2, 3, or 4--and when appropriate, the instructor separates all the groups into each number category. All the 1s will get together, all the 2s, etc. Each new group can work on a separate part of an activity or instructional concept, then when the main group of 1, 2, 3, and 4 gets back together, each student can instruct his or her home-groupmates about each concept. You can see an example of this structure in the image that heads this blog post.

For my first foray into the Jigsaw Classroom, I ended up seldom using the second part of this organizational strategy. My students remained in their home groups for nearly every group activity. First, I'll discuss how I organized the groups. I wanted their composition to be deliberate instead of random, especially because teaching in a computer classroom introduces the hurdle of some students not being familiar or comfortable with technology. I therefore created a Google Doc in which each student gave some information about their comfort level and experience with the types of tech we'd be using in our class. After each student had added their information, I began organizing the groups. I wanted each group to have at least one person with high skill and comfort levels, and one person with very low levels. I also tried to make the groups as gender-balanced as possible. I divided my 21 students into five groups (one group had five people), they chose their group name, and we got down to business.

In general the groups functioned just like groups randomly-chosen each day: class activities such as locating examples of certain concepts within a particular reading, or performing a rhetorical analysis of an image or song, were much as they had ever been. However, when we planned more in-depth activities, such as a group presentation or a trip to the Oakwood Cemetery, the permanent group idea really paid off. The students were more comfortable working on activities outside of the classroom with people they had already gotten to know. Group dynamics in general seem to be pretty high-functioning. At our individual midterm conferences, I asked each student their opinion of their groupmates' participation levels, functions, leadership, work ethic, and the overall effectiveness of the group. The vast majority of students felt that the workload was evenly shared, that certain roles (like note-taker or class reporter) were fulfilled on a generally rotating basis, and that the group experience was overall rewarding. One group became so close-knit that they elected to do their final digital research project together instead of individually, which puts them in each other’s' company for quite a while.

Initially I wanted to experiment with the Jigsaw Classroom because my previous Course Instructor Surveys noted that more groupwork would have been beneficial in those classes. I had never really considered myself "good" at setting up group activities, so I consciously pushed myself to try something new. I'd say that I have increased by at least two- or threefold the number of group activities I've incorporated into my teaching. Though it took some additional effort at first, I have definitely become more comfortable and confident with designing group activities and monitoring my students' participation through their home groups. It helps that the students consistently work with classmates they have come to know and are comfortable with, instead of having to navigate a new group dynamic every time. (I have also been lucky that no students have complained about their group members, though I made sure that any complaints or concerns would be addressed with the utmost respect and seriousness!)

Field Trips in the College Classroom

Lindsey Gay — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Lindsey Gay

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Lindsey Gay

I can remember taking only one field trip after I left the K-12 system. Between three universities in my undergraduate and graduate career, only one lone little undergrad geology course featured an off-site learning experience as a standard part of the curriculum. Therefore, when I realized that I had the chance to take my own RHE 309K students on a field trip, I jumped at the opportunity.

Some background: I am teaching The Rhetoric of Death and Dying, a class which combines the analysis of public discourses about death with cultural and personal study. The past few weeks have comprised our unit on rhetorical analysis, and just prior to the field trip the students had been preparing for a group presentation analyzing a notable public memorial somewhere in the world. I knew when I developed the course that I wanted to combine analysis of a large-scale public memorial with analysis of small-scale private memorials, so I planned on taking my students to Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery. Oakwood is one of the oldest public cemeteries in Austin, with gravesites dating from the 1840s. It is also conveniently adjacent to east campus. My class period is also 75 minutes, which was a good length of time in which to accomplish this trip.

My students were very excited about the field trip, but I quickly found that this trip would be as much about learning how to be a responsible citizen in the world as it would be about the arguments that tombstones and cemeteries make. The week before our trip, I polled the class to see how many students had ever actually been to a cemetery. Only about half raised their hands, and of those most said they had just gone for a graveside service and had not walked elsewhere in the cemetery. They essentially had no practical experience of how to conduct themselves in such a space. We talked about constructing the ethos of a mourner as opposed to a visitor, and what it meant to maintain a respectful vocal volume and physical presence in a cemetery.

The other thing that most of my students had no experience with was taking the city bus. There is a bus stop near to our classroom on campus that takes riders directly to the cemetery in a mere 7 minutes, so I encouraged my students to take the bus with me rather than drive their own cars. When I mentioned in class that Capital Metro bus service is free for students, there were a lot of open mouths! I described how swipe one’s student ID in the payment station on the bus, and how to follow bus etiquette about not hogging two seats to yourself. I sent out an email with information about which stop and when we should meet and which bus we should take, and about half of my students (10 out of 21), accompanied me on the bus. Afterwards, the same group caught the same bus back to campus. I noticed that some of those who rode the bus with me were the same ones who expressed concerns about never having used a city bus system before, so I was glad that they stepped out of their comfort zone into this real-world activity.

At the cemetery, students split into assigned groups and I gave everyone a Cemetery Scavenger Hunt worksheet I created. I wanted this assignment to be about more than just finding interesting things at the cemetery, so I designed the worksheetto reflect on the types of arguments students found on tombstones and in the general situation of the cemetery and its parts. While I wandered on my own taking pictures of the groups and the cemetery, I kept an eye on my students and checked in with each group every now and again. Everyone was working their way through the scavenger hunt; no one littered, engaged in horseplay, or moved any personal objects lefts at gravesites; every group I checked in with had their own favorite tombstone or family plot. They enjoyed speculating on the histories of some of the families buried in Oakwood and hypothesizing why some grave markers were so much smaller and closer together than others. When they saw the stark difference between the white section of the cemetery versus the “colored” grounds, they discussed what arguments were created by the lack of durable gravestones and non-central placement of that section of the cemetery.

Overall, my first foray into fieldtripping was a success. I wanted my students to interact with rhetoric in the real world and on a smaller, more intimate scale than indicated by their group projects. They considered not only the written rhetoric of epitaphs and inscriptions and the visual rhetoric of common figures and images carved into the stones, but also the rhetoric of experience. Walking around a quiet, grassy, semi-wooded space filled with other people’s memories creates a rhetorical situation in and of itself. I was glad not to lose track of anyone in the cemetery or on the bus, and it turned out to be a good lesson for everyone in rhetoric, planning, responsibility, and appropriate behavior. Learning does indeed continue outside of the classroom.