Regina Mills's blog

Reflections on the Learning Record

Regina Mills — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 17:53:00 +0000

Author:

Regina Marie Mills

Image Credit:

principalmusings.wordpress.com

For my third time teaching "Rhetoric of Revolution," I am using a non-traditional method of assessment - The Learning Record (LR). This method has really changed some of my in-class methods and has also made me reexamine my teaching persona.

Here and here are a few previous blog posts by other DWRLer's regarding the Learning Record, which can help give a bit more context for my own reflection. The main thrust of The Learning Record is that students argue for their grades in a pre-assessment (what they know and don't know coming in), at mid-term (as an advisory grade, establishing their progress mid-way) and at the end of the semester (which is their final grade for the course). Their argument must refer back to the four course goals and the holistic rubric I established at the beginning of the year. At the time of writing this blog, my students have turned in their mid-term assessments but I have not yet looked at them.

This blog post allows for me to reflect on what I wanted out of the LR and how that has and has not changed my teaching. I see two major areas for reflection: 1) the rethinking of reading quizzes and other smaller assignments and 2) my teaching persona and class policies.

In regards to the first area, I have found myself more carefully considering the outside work that I give to students. Indeed, one issue with any college class is getting students to do the reading, and in the past, I have used reading quizzes to "force" reading. But without a traditional grading system, this is not a viable option as doing poorly on the quiz doesn't effect your "grade" in a measurable way. Indeed, with the LR, I have to depend on students to see the long-term; it is easy for me to tell the students who have not read and since class participation is part of the holistic rubric, not sharing in class (which I keep track of in a not-very-scientific way; notes I take during class) is something I can bring up as a possible reason for lowering the grade a students argues for. And the student themselves will need to assess their participation, which means that any honest student will have to recognize their lack of participation.

In this same vein, since I can't give quizzes, the assignments I create are now more focused on writing production. Since students' writing is their primary source of evidence for their grade argument, I feel it is important to give them more formal and informal, short and long writing assignments, both in-class and out-of-class. I had one student, who has really embraced the LR, tell me in an after-class conversation that this is the first class where she feels like she is truly being taught how to write. This is a great compliment for me because it can be difficult to balance teaching content (manifestos and revolutionary rhetoric) with teaching the process of writing. I feel like less of my work is busywork and more of it is meaningful writing.

My reflections on the first area are generally positive; I feel good about how the LR has given my assignments a better connection with what I want my students to learn and demonstrate. However, reflecting on the second area - my teaching persona and class policies has left me rethinking several things. First, my LR holisitic rubric takes into account attendance and on-time rate for class assignments. However, I also have a pretty strict tardy, absence, and late work policy and this just doesn't seem to fit into the spirit of the LR. To me, it seems like the LR works on natural consquences; instead of a one-size-fits-all framework, the LR can help students punish themselves for missing class or missing several deadlines, rather than having it be the onus of the teacher. I could have eliminated these punitative policies (ex. 3 tardies equals an absence) before the semester started, but I know that I am a very structured teacher (I'm sure it comes from my 3 years of teaching 9th grade in a Title I school, where structure was super helpful to my students). This makes me wonder about what I will do for my next teaching assignment in the English department - will I continue using the LR? Is it more realistic to provide top-down punishment for late work? Should I be trying to mirror the "real world" in my classroom or is a classroom a place that cannot and should not simulate the real world? These are some of the questions that I will continue to reflect on as the semester continues and I prepare for my next class outside of the Rhetoric department.

The Learning Record

Making the Most of Digital Tools in a Class on Black Public Intellectuals

Regina Mills — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 13:01:10 +0000

Author:

Regina Mills

Image Credit:

The Atlantic

I am teaching a literature course next term (African American Literature and Culture). Thankfully, when I teach in the fall, I will be in the Digital Research and Writing Lab (DWRL). However, unlike a research-based writing class, literature classes do not seem as easily tailored towards the digital tools we have available. Thus, I’d like to take this blog post as an opportunity to throw out some of the ideas I have for class projects and activities.

First, the tiniest bit of background. My syllabus is a work in progress but currently revolves around the theme, “Black Public Intellectuals.” I was inspired by the current debates over the need for more public intellectuals (written mostly by older white men) and whether or not Melissa Harris-Perry (lovingly known as MHP) is a public intellectual (as claimed by Ta-Nehisi Coates in this Atlantic article). I plan on reading intellectuals from Frederick Douglass, WEB Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Cornel West, and of course MHP. Some of the questions I’ll be posing are: What is the role of the public intellectual? Is the role of the Black public intellectual different in any way? In what ways have Black public intellectuals broadcast their ideas in the past? In the present? Who are the Black public intellectuals of our times?

With this in mind, I want to discuss some of the activities/prompts I’m considering for this class. First, I’m thinking that I am so tired of having to answer questions about things on my syllabus and resources (that are underused!). I have tried syllabus quizzes, refusing to answer E-mails about questions I’ve already answered, etc. but I want to try something new. So, here’s my idea: A scavenger hunt of class policies from the syllabus and key resources/locations. I’m considering requiring students to visit the DWRL Open Lab, the Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC), and the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, plus certain helpful websites. I would need to ask if the UWC, the Open Lab, and the Warfield Center could help me out. Maybe they could have business cards or some proof of being there as part of the Scavenger Hunt completion. This could be done on the first day of class as the major activity for the day, with a debrief at the end of class.

As for writing projects, I’m considering having students create a website on a Black public intellectual we did or did not study in class. Since I intend to give only one or two readings per intellectual, this makes it so students can go deeper into a public intellectual that intrigued them in class or they can research others that might speak more to their own social justice and/or intellectual pursuits. I would imagine this website having to include: close readings of a few texts, historical context and biography of the Black public intellectual, and a list of recommended readings (with short annotated bibs/previews of what the sites/resources offer). I could make this an end-of-the-semester project (though it really does ask a lot), but I could also see it being done in piecemeal with certain sections being done over the course of the semester. Or having students have bi-weekly blog posts where they work on drafts, track progress, etc. My one concern is that I don’t know the kind of blogging websites that would be less clunky than Blackboard or Canvas (our current management software).

So these are some of my thoughts – I would really appreciate your feedback and other suggestions for class activities revolving around the themes and questions I have set up. Please leave a comment or E-mail me at regina.mills@utexas.edu.

Teaching to a Hostile Audience, Or, When Your Revolution Class is Full of Counterrevolutionaries

Regina Mills — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Author:

Regina Marie Mills

Image Credit:

publicspeakingsuperpowers.com

This semester has been interesting, particularly because I am always comparing my Fall course on revolution to my summer course on the same topic. My perception of my summer class can be boiled down to one line: “if Communists were fighting for equal rights for women, the end of child labor, and against exploitation of the poor, then why is it so bad to call yourself a Communist?” This line (remembered to the best of my ability) came from a summer semester student and showed the open-mindedness and general willingness to see the inequality, poverty, and contradictions in the US and the world. Of course, we discussed after this sentiment how the history of practiced/attempted communism must make one question the theory, but the ability for my summer students to read sympathetically, first trying to understand the argument then offering criticism, has generally set apart my summer students from the fall.

However, the composition of students in my courses between summer and fall have also been staggering. The majority of my summer class was composed of first-generation college students from low-income or rural areas, and only a few students were white. In my fall class, only a few students are not white. Only 3 claim to have come from impoverished families. I am unsure how many are first-generation college students. In addition, the number of students in my class who are libertarian or staunchly conservative is staggering. I often wonder if they misread my class as “Rhetoric of the Ron Paul Revolution.”

It has taken a while for my students to learn to read generously, since, despite my best efforts, finding conservative/counterrevolutionary texts has been difficult. They are either too long to excerpt, too difficult (particularly since many have older language), or merely newspaper editorials, without the same history or rigor as many revolutionary texts. I have stuck to Locke, the Declaration of Independence, the Confederacy secession documents, and the Second Vermont Republic’s manifestos. However, the list of radical or leftist manifestos seems never-ending, and the class definitely skews to that side.

Teaching to a hostile audience has thus been even harder because I know what teaching to a sympathetic one is. However, it has also been helpful. It has helped me realize that many colleges are full of conservative people (just like my undergrad alma mater was), those who fight for the status quo (or “tradition” as it is affectionately called) either actively or through attitudes of apathy, and those who fight for change I don't agree with. But this mirrors the current world we live in. It is more realistic that those of us who want change will be faced with hostility, and it requires me to up my teaching game, which I think I have, as I have gotten more comfortable with my students and experimented with different teaching methods. For example, I just facilitated a student-led discussion of Tavis Smiley and Cornel West’s “The Poverty Manifesto.” Students brought in the questions, and I merely picked some to help them guide their conversations. I was not allowed to respond, and the students had to talk to each other, not me. I will admit, it was incredibly difficult to stay silent, but I heard from students who I had only heard from a few times (if any) this semester.

Another thing I have learned from teaching a class of counterrevolutionaries is that I don’t need to hide my beliefs, bite my tongue, and allow the sanctification of “neutrality” and “objectivity” to be an excuse I hide behind to not speak up to opinions that hurt the classroom dynamic and go against my ethics. After all, my students don’t. I am a person, too, not a teaching robot. This issue is particularly hard for me, having so recently taught in a public high school where you are constantly required to pretend to be neutral and act like you feel passionately about nothing, giving the idea that all ideas are equally valid (when this is clearly not the case). However, as one of my good friends discussed with me when writing this post, public school and university are not the same. Students pay for the privilege of college and the opportunity to hear the thoughts marinated upon by motivated students and scholars, so I don’t need to succumb to “neutrality.”

Of course, I also have to be careful about the power that comes with the title “instructor” and work to show my students that though I have opinions, those opinions will not lead to lower grades for those who don’t hold the same opinions. I think my move to the Learning Record next semester will help this. I would talk more about the scourge of “neutrality” but I think my colleague Meredith’s recent post will suffice.

The last thing I have learned from teaching to a hostile audience is that the strategies we teach in rhetoric matter. It is true what I tell my students: we grow from having our ideas challenged, by defending our ideas, and by having the humility to realize when some of our arguments fall short. As my students begin to compile their manifestos on topics as varied as when/if a country has a responsibility to respond to genocide, fighting rape culture in India, gun rights, and reforming the tax system, I hope that I see their arguments targeted towards convincing a hostile audience. Then they’ll finally know what it’s felt like for me since August 28th.

Administering What All Students Dread: Reading Quizzes

Regina Mills — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Regina Marie Mills

Image Credit:

Melanie Fejeran

I have spent a lot of time this semester thinking about how to best encourage my students to do the reading, in addition to how to prep them for class discussion of the material. I have decided upon reading quizzes/prep assignments during the first 10 minutes of class. I came to this conclusion after a few student evaluations and some colleagues told me about how successful this technique is for ensuring more students are ready to add to the conversation. Since my discussions have been fruitful and have consistently included a variety of student voices, I don’t intend to stop doing them. However, the best format of this strange genre of formative assessment has eluded me.

Since I teach in a computer classroom, in which all students have access to their own Mac computer, I have been trying to balance using these tools, not because I feel I always have to, but in order to challenge myself and my students to use unfamiliar tools (like Storify) or to learn new things about old tools (like how to add page numbers in the header using Microsoft Word). Thus, I have also experimented with how I might use the computer to administer my reading quizzes. I have tried 3 different ways so far and will elaborate on these methods, with their pros and cons, in addition to throwing out a few other ideas that I may try (or that you could try and give me feedback on!).

1. Blackboard Test Function

What is it? Blackboard is like Canvas or Sakai or any other on-line class management system. The test function allows you to create on-line quizzes and tests (from test banks or with a create-your-own-question function) which allows all aspects of the quiz (the administration and grading) to happen on-line.

Pros: No paper (go green!), no need to move grades from the paper or another system to the grade book. Easy to read the answers, since it avoids the student handwriting issue. Allows you to leave feedback or to give automatic feedback depending on whether or not the answer is right or wrong (ex. you can write in where the student could have found the answer as an automatic feedback response to an incorrect answer). Great for multiple-choice, True/False, and fill-in-the-blank. You can stop students from backtracking and cut them off after a certain amount of time. Answer choices and the questions can be randomized to prevent students from copying each other’s answers.

Cons: Creating the test is time-consuming and has way too many steps. Much faster to make it on Word. You can’t reuse questions or quizzes for different courses (or if you can, it is not clear how). Doesn’t really save you time on grading short-answer questions. Possibility that you will lose connection or have an error that makes the student lose all of their answers and/or the submission. Takes awhile to log-in to computers, so students who come in right when class starts (or worse, late) have much less time to write.

2. Blackboard Discussion Board

What is it? A forum for the class within the Blackboard course management system. The threads and replies are viewable by the entire class and instructors.

Pros: No paper. Submission and grades all happen in one place. Students can copy and paste quotes easier (so they don’t need to waste time re-writing quotes from a text). Allows students to browse each other’s answers later. Great for freewriting. Can still set a time for the forum to close. Professor can respond publicly to each post. Creating the forum is quick and painless and you have some good options to make sure that students can’t edit their posts after submission (to reduce cheating based on skimming others’ answers). Allows more writing space.

Cons: Possibility that you will lose connection or have an error that makes the student lose their submission. Replying to the students’ post is clunky. Grading the posts is not quite as simple as grading through the test/quiz function. Only suitable for short-essay responses, not multiple-choice or other more specific test questions. Takes awhile to log-in to computers, so students who come in right when class starts or late have much less time to write.

3. Quiz on paper

What is it? The class paper-and-pen/cil assessment. You have the choice of allowing students access to only printed materials and notes or letting them use the computer to access texts from the course management system.

Pros: No issue with submissions. Students don’t need to juggle windows so much. Not dependent on typing speed. Students are used to it this way. No time wasted on logging in to computers and getting to the right screen. Tardy students can get started right away (unless they need the computer for the readings). Nice to hand them something physical back.

Cons: Instructor can lose it easier. Need to transfer grades from sheet to gradebook. Requires you to use paper and ink. Student handwriting can be hard to read, as can teacher feedback (disclaimer: I have bad handwriting). Need to be a bit pushy on the time-limit. Harder to prevent cheating in smaller classrooms. Annoying to have to re-write quotes from the text.

My ideas for the future:

1. Partner with someone and co-write an answer to a complex question related to the reading (gets discussion started right away and no excuse to not share, but allows students who didn’t read to lean on the well-prepared student)

2. Use a class wiki and have students respond/comment on questions

3. Have students add comments to a class Google Doc, or create their own Google Doc, which must be shared with intructor or a link posted to the class discussion board/forum

4. Have them turn in homework questions/activities (the danger here is that students might have cheated or copied answers)

These are my reflections on administering the Reading Quiz/Prep Assignment in class. Feel free to use them and definitely leave any comments or suggestions that could help me be a better teacher to my students.