About Additional Updates to My Teaching Life

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I have received word about upcoming events relating to my teaching career. At DeVry University, I have been offered a section of ENGL 227: Professional Writing for the September 2016 session. At Schreiner University, I have been offered a section of ENGL 1301: Rhetoric & Composition and a section of ENGL 3333/THRE 3333: Shakespeare: Comedies & Sonnets (the class is cross-listed) for the Fall 2016 term. I have accepted the offers, which are in addition to the courses I had already been assigned.

Information on the courses is in development, but I thought it might be good to keep people abreast of what is going on with me as I move forward with the Instruction part of Elliott RWI.

An Update for DeVry

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In class last night, a quirk in my assessment practices was identified. As such, I have revised my ENGL 135 Discussion assignment sheet; the new version is here: ENGL 135 Discussion Assignment Sheet Revision. It will be fully in force beginning with Week 3.

As a bridge-over, those students who had posted under the earlier stated deadline on Week 2 will receive full credit. Those who posted under the more common deadline on Week 2 will receive partial credit. It is my hope that the solution will read as equitable and allow for a better understanding moving forward.

Class Report: ENGL 135.60174, Advanced Composition–14 July 2016

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After addressing questions from the previous class meeting and announcing ongoing activities, discussion reviewed materials from the end-of-class activity and treated student questions about the readings and written assignments for the week. Instructor remarks about them followed, as did notes about researching and related activities. Emphasized was the idea of research as the generation of new knowledge, rather than the recapitulation of old; research must begin with what is known, but it must move forward past it for any advancement to occur.

Students are reminded of the following assignments’ due dates:

  • Information Literacy Module (due to the appropriate dropbox at or before 0059 CDT on 18 July 2016)
  • Source Summary (due to the appropriate dropbox at or before 0059 CDT on 18 July 2016)
  • Graded Discussions for Week 2 (to be completed at or before before 0059 CDT on 18 July 2016)

A rubric for the Information Literacy Module appears here: ENGL 135 Information Literacy Rubric. The Information Literacy Module is described in the course syllabus, the article it references is that treated in the Source Summary assignment. Note that, due to the restrictive nature of the assignment, no sample will be provided.

Note that a sample of the Source Summary assignment is already provided in the course materials.

The class met as scheduled, at 1800 in Rm. 111 of the DeVry San Antonio campus. The class roster listed 15 students enrolled, a decline of one since the last class meeting. Of them, seven received credit for having attended, verified by both a sign-in sheet and a brief written exercise; an eight was present for part of the class but left before signing in or sending an email. Student participation was adequate and somewhat improved over the previous week. No students attended office hours.

Class Report: ENGL 135.60174, Advanced Composition–7 July 2016

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Class discussion reiterated the instructor’s introduction and welcomed students to the course. Requested statements of University policies regarding late work and missed discussions were read aloud. Pre-existing questions about the readings not answered in online discussions were entertained, as were similar questions about assignments. Some additional remarks about both were offered. Basic concerns of argumentative writing and rhetoric received attention, as well, ensuring that students were given the opportunity to work from a common base of knowledge for the course. Some comments were made about email formatting, too, as were notes about technological difficulties.

Students are reminded of the following assignments’ due dates:

  • Topic Selection (due to the appropriate dropbox at or before 0059 CDT on 11 July 2016)
  • Graded Discussions for Week 1 (to be completed at or before before 0059 CDT on 11 July 2016)
  • Introduction Discussion (to be completed at or before 0059 CDT on 11 July 2016)

More advice about due dates is available here: >>click this link<<.

Please be sure to review discussion policies for the course, available here: ENGL 135 Discussion Assignment Sheet.

Additionally, Dr. Sarvis is offering an APA workshop at the San Antonio campus from 1000 to 1200 on 9 July 2016. Registration information is posted to the course discussions.

The class met as scheduled, at 1800 in Rm. 111 of the DeVry San Antonio campus. The class roster listed 16 students enrolled. Of them, eight attended, verified by both a sign-in sheet and a brief writing assignment. Student participation was adequate, although it is hoped that more students will speak up at greater length in coming weeks. No students attended office hours.

About Due Dates at DeVry

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The thought occurs that a more concrete assertion of due dates is needed than has been provided. To rectify that problem, then, the following:

Discussions

Each week’s online discussions extend to 0059 on Monday of the next week. As such, the closing dates for each week’s graded discussions are

  • Week 1, 11 July 2016
  • Week 2, 18 July 2016
  • Week 3, 25 July 2016
  • Week 4, 1 August 2016
  • Week 5, 8 August 2016
  • Week 6, 15 August 2016
  • Week 7, 22 August 2016

Note that there are no graded discussions for Week 8. That does not mean there are no discussions that week, however; they should inform the Course Project Reflective Postscript.

Also, please do keep in mind the discussion requirements for the class, noted here: ENGL 135 Discussion Assignment Sheet.

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Course Project Components

The overall course project, culminating in the production of a conference-length paper, is broken down into a number of components. Such an additive model seeks to make the task of compiling a work that advances human knowledge less intimidating to those (relatively) new to it. Due dates for each part are noted below:

  • Topic Selection, 11 July 2016 at 0059
  • Information Literacy Module, 18 July 2016 at 0059
  • Source Summary, 18 July 2016 at 0059
  • APA Assessment Module, 25 July 2016 at 0059
  • Research Proposal, 25 July 2016 at 0059
  • Annotated Bibliography, 1 August 2016 at 0059
  • Course Project First Draft, 8 August 2016 at 0059
  • Course Project Second Draft, 15 August 2016 at 0059
  • Course Project Final Draft, 22 August 2016 at 0059
  • Course Project Reflective Postscript, end of class time on 25 August 2016 (class time will be given to completion of the assignment and to course evaluations)

Yes, multiple assignments are due at the same time. No, it is not necessary to turn them in at the time noted; earlier submission is encouraged (but be sure the assignment is done, and done well), and early commencement of work on the course project is strongly encouraged. And as far as grading goes…when multiple assignments are due at the same time, the assignments worth more of the grade will be graded first. (Some of my comments about grading, here, will be relevant.)

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I hope the information helps, and I look forward to seeing what my students present.

Comments about “Martian Garden”

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I have subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (website here) since 1999. In the years since, I have remained an avid reader, and I have been rewarded for it by having access–along with many others; the magazine boasts reaching “100,000 high-income, highly educated readers” in its blurb about its marketplace in its July/August 2016 issue–to some of the best short science fiction and fantasy available. I have, in fact, commented on the magazine and its contents before. An October 2014 posting to Travels in Genre and Medievalism, “About ‘Avianca’s Bezel'” (here), is readily available, and it occasioned email from Matt Hughes, who authored the original piece; more recently, but with less engagement from the story’s author, was a piece on Albert E. Cowdrey’s “The Lord of Ragnarök” (here). In both cases, given the orientation of the blog, I look at how the works in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction treat the medieval, and there is certainly no shortage of material to treat in such a fashion. But there is also much else to consider in the pages of the magazine, and for other reasons.

One such thing is John Philip Johnson’s “Martian Garden,” a poem appearing in the pages of the July/August 2016 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The poem is not the first to appear in the publication, to be sure; I recall several earlier poems during the length of my subscription, and I would be surprised to find that there were not some published before I began to read the magazine in earnest. But it is rare that a work of verse is included in the magazine; I recall only a handful since 1999, and the prose fiction on which the magazine focuses would not be expected to admit of works of verse standing alone. Johnson’s poem therefore immediately attracts attention and invites consideration; as an unusual inclusion, it necessarily will do so. And it serves to highlight the quality of the prose surrounding it, as well, juxtaposing itself against the other works in the issue so that each stands out more prominently against the presence of the other–in addition to carrying its own value as a work of quality writing.

Formally, the poem consists of 26 lines of free verse; no rhyme scheme presents itself among the lines, and there is no consistent meter. Nor does the poem take the tack that might be expected of its length, starting or focusing on one letter in the Latin alphabet used by modern English in each line. That it does not follow such a practice is to its credit; such a structure often reads as overly contrived to be authentic in the ways contemporary poetry typically tries to be authentic, and the appearance of excessive contrivance is a detriment to literary quality.

The text of the poem, in addition to distributing itself across 26 lines, functions as four sentences, spanning lines 1-6, 7-10, 11-18, and 19-26. Line and sentence endings correspond; there is no enjambment to blur structural divisions in the poem. As such, it takes on a pseudo-stanzaic form, with the first two pseudo-stanzas setting up the narrative context (working a new farm on Mars and reflecting upon the work in art), the third describing an artistic product, and the fourth noting the effect of the art on the narrator. In effect, the poem ends up reading as a response to a quiet gesture of love, requiring an explication of circumstances and a description of the gesture before its effect can be discussed. In that regard, it serves well, conveying feelings of warmth and appreciation without having to speak them overtly. Such subtlety helps the literary quality of the poem, arguing in favor of its inclusion in the magazine.

The content also helps to situate the poem as appropriate to the magazine. The explicit subject matter, farming on Mars, is a recurring concept in science fiction, and a prominent one. (Recently, for example, the 2011 Andy Weir novel, The Martian, and its popular 2015 film adaptation both feature Martian farming, although of a different crop than is described in the poem.) A simple surface-level feature such as the mention of a Martian setting, however, would not suffice–and the poem works to integrate its setting into its content more thoroughly. The text repeatedly makes mention of the color yellow, repeating the word six times in 26 lines; it is the most frequently occurring adjective in the piece, suggesting its significance. It is a sensible color to use in representing a Martian garden. Mars is commonly “the red planet,” and gardens–whatever their crops and their colors–are strongly associated with green. In RGB color formation–with which readers of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction can be assumed to be familiar, given the traditional association through nerdiness of audiovisual minutiae and science fiction–yellow results from a combination of red and green in equal measure. That the Martian garden of the poem’s title and content should be predominantly yellow, then, is eminently sensible–primarily to those informed readers likely to follow the magazine. The image, then, is one calculated to address a particular audience–the very audience the poem’s inclusion in the magazine reaches.

The specifically targeted address helps the inner messages of the poem to reach the readership. One such message is suggested by the clearest allusion in the poem, the description by the narrator of the other farmer, the painter, working “as though you [the painter] were in the caves / of Avignon, capturing elk and bison” (ll. 9-10). The second-person address does serve to being the reader into the poem, reinforcing the targeted image of yellowness, but the more important idea encapsulated in the lines is the reference to the old cave-paintings in France. Although the geography is not precise–and why “Avignon” was more desirable than “Pont d’Arc” in the line is unclear–the evocation of one of the oldest iterations of human culture–and one that is as carefully tended as an extraterrestrial garden might expect to be–very much is. In making the reference, in tying an as-yet-hypothetical-future to an imagined-based-on-observed-data past, the poem suggests that the expression of love described within it is a continuous occurrence, that the painting of the narrator as a Martian farmer and as the focal figure of the depicted farm is one more in a series of such depictions that stretches back across ages to the beginnings of recorded human culture. It therefore addresses the continuity of the human condition, hinting that, at root, we remain as we have been. It is a useful reminder to those who may be presumed to look to the future, that we are now what we were and what we are likely to continue to be, as well as to those who look at the present as somehow fallen or the past as somehow deficient. In providing such a reminder, one that speaks to readers across times and orientations in time, John Philip Johnson’s “The Martian Garden” makes itself a piece well worth reading.

About Updates to My Teaching Life

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In some exciting news, I have more teaching work to do. Starting soon, I’ll be taking on a class at DeVry University in San Antonio. Not much later, I’ll be taking on a class at Schreiner University in Kerrville, my hometown. It will be a pleasure to be back at the front of the classroom, and it will be good, too, to try my skills in different settings than I have faced before; I welcome the challenges and the opportunities.

Updates to the website to reflect the changes are in progress. As ever, check back for more information!

Reflective Comments about the First Year

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It has been a year since the first post to this webspace went up, a year that I have been working on Elliott RWI. As I write this, I have made 164 posts to the blogroll (this will be post 165), and I have posted many individual pages, collecting 12594 views from 3083 visitors. I have also gone from having full-time employment at a Big-12 university and other work to searching for regular work while taking care of no few freelance projects. There are developments in that line, so things are proceeding well enough, but I cannot say I would not like to have something a bit more stable than I currently have.

Despite the changes to my professional circumstances, however, I have every intention of continuing my efforts on this website and the projects it represents. The Fedwren Project continues to be of interest to me, as do any number of other endeavors that may well begin to appear in this webspace in the days to come. So do please keep coming back here; the month-long hiatus is done, and I have things to add to this webspace that I think will be worth the attention.

Reflective Comments about Spring 2016

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Following a pattern continued at the end of the Fall 2015 instructional term, comments below offer information about class performance in the sections of ENGL 1213: Composition II I taught at Oklahoma State University and Northern Oklahoma College during the Spring 2016 instructional term. (Demographic data are addressed in the report of results from the term’s exit survey, here.) Overall impressions and implications for future teaching are discussed, as well, and collected best versions of course documents are presented.

Class Performance

Assessment differed among the sections. Those taught at Oklahoma State University necessarily reflected Program dictates in force there; those taught at Northern Oklahoma College followed a pattern based more upon previous experiences teaching first-year composition and the courses to which it is commonly antecedent. Explanations of each appear below.

Oklahoma State University

For those sections of ENGL 1213 I taught at Oklahoma State University (015, 023, and 040), class performance was assessed by evaluating a series of major (Strategic Reading, Developing a Topic and Locating Sources, Infographic Portfolio, Student’s Own Question, and Final Exam) and minor assignments, as well as such factors as professionalism and attendance, over the course of the instructional term and assigning grades in accordance with that evaluation. Other than attendance, handling of which was determined at the programmatic level, each was scored using a scale of A+ through zero, either directly or as a means of assigning categorical scores to be averaged for a final score. Factors contributing to grading were weighted unevenly, as indicated below:

  • Strategic Reading, 20% of total course grade
  • Developing a Topic and Locating Sources, 10% of total course grade
  • Infographic Portfolio, 20% of total course grade
  • Student’s Own Question, 30% of total course grade
  • Final Exam, 5% of total course grade
  • Minor Assignments, cumulatively 10% of total course grade
  • Student Professionalism, 5% of total course grade

While discussion of individual assignments and individual student performance exceeds what is appropriate for such a report as this, general tendencies within and among the individual sections can be reported.

Section 015

Section 015 was scheduled to meet at 1030 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Classroom Building Room 217. Its overall data includes

  • End-of-term enrollment: 16
  • Average class score: 78.812 (C)
    • Standard deviation: 7.808
  • Students earning a grade of A (90%+): 2
  • Students earning a grade of F (below 60%): 0
  • Total student absences: 66
  • Average student absences: 4.125
    • Standard deviation: 2.058

Section 015 was the least affected by attrition, losing only three of the peak 19 students enrolled across the term. Of the students who did remain in the class, many were quite active in class discussion, although the activities did tend to move away from the narrow focus of the course–as class reports throughout the term attest. Still, only two students lost points due to absence penalties, although in both cases, the loss affected the overall course grade (i.e., the letter grade reported to the institution).

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Section 023

Section 023 was scheduled to meet at 1130 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Classroom Building Room 121. Its overall data includes

  • End-of-term enrollment: 14
  • Average class score: 76.672 (C)
    • Standard deviation: 8.737
  • Students earning a grade of A (90%+): 1
  • Students earning a grade of F (below 60%): 0
  • Total student absences: 69
  • Average student absences: 4.929
    • Standard deviation: 2.738

The section lost four of the peak 18 students enrolled across the term. It also suffered substantially from absences, with the largest (but not most common) occurrence of absence penalties to grades. Three students suffered double-digit grade penalties due to non-attendance.

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Section 040

Section 040 was scheduled to meet at 0830 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Morrill Hall Room 206. Its overall data includes

  • End-of-term enrollment: 12
  • Average class score: 68.091 (D)
    • Standard deviation: 16.825
  • Students earning a grade of A (90%+): 1
  • Students earning a grade of F (below 60%): 3 (two incurred absence penalties)
  • Total student absences: 61
  • Average student absences: 5.083
    • Standard deviation: 2.985

Section 040 was the Oklahoma State University section most affected by attrition, losing six of the peak 18 enrolled students across the term. It also suffered the most problems with late submission or non-submission of assignments, which negatively impacts scores. The section further suffered the largest number of absence penalties, with four students incurring them (although not to the extent of those in Section 023).

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Aggregate Data

Taken together, the Oklahoma State University sections yield the following information:

  • End-of-term enrollment: 42
  • Average score: 75.036 (C)
    • Standard deviation: 12.233
  • Students earning a grade of A (90%+): 4
  • Students earning a grade of F (below 60%): 3
  • Total student absences: 196
  • Average student absences: 4.667
    • Standard deviation: 2.616
  • Office hours meetings: 37

Two students each accounted for six office-hour meetings. Another four each accounted for three. Those students who were frequent guests in my office hours found reward in their Student Professionalism scores, as well as often on their graded assignments.

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Northern Oklahoma College

For the section of ENGL 1213 I taught at Northern Oklahoma College, class performance was assessed by evaluating a series of major (Topic Proposal, Exploratory Essay, Annotated Bibliography, Researched Paper, and Final Exam) and minor assignments, as well as such factors as professionalism and attendance, over the course of the instructional term and assigning grades in accordance with that evaluation. Other than attendance, handling of which was determined at the collegiate level, each was scored using a scale of A+ through zero, either directly or as a means of assigning categorical scores to be averaged for a final score. Factors contributing to grading were weighted unevenly, as indicated below:

  • Topic Proposal, 5% of total course grade
  • Exploratory Essay, 10% of total course grade
  • Annotated Bibliography, 15% of total course grade
  • Researched Paper, 20% of total course grade
  • Final Portfolio, 25% of total course grade
  • Final Exam, 5% of total course grade
  • Student Professionalism, 10% of total course grade
  • Minor Assignments, cumulatively 10% of total course grade

While discussion of individual assignments and individual student performance exceeds what is appropriate for such a report as this, general tendencies within the section can be reported.

The section was scheduled to meet Mondays and Wednesdays at 1300 in North Classroom Building Room 311. Its overall data includes

  • End-of-term enrollment: 6
  • Average class score: 73.665 (C)
    • Standard deviation: 10.666
  • Students earning a grade of A (90%+): 1
  • Students earning a grade of F (below 60%): 0
  • Office hours meetings: 9
  • Total student absences: 15
  • Average student absences: 2.5
    • Standard deviation: 0.764

The section suffered an initial wave of attrition due to shifts in instructor; I was brought in specifically to cover for an instructor who could not discharge the necessary responsibilities, and many students, having expected someone else at the front of the classroom, dropped the course. One other dropped due to taking a job that prevented attendance. One other dropped late in the course due to dissatisfaction with assessed performance. Yet another dropped for a reason that was not made clear. Of the students who remained, however, all submitted all major assignments and most minor ones, which was a pleasant surprise. Two students accounted for all of the recorded office-hour meetings, with one student sitting for two-thirds of them. Performance largely accorded with standard expectations.

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Impressions and Implications

It had been some time since I taught Composition II; the last time I did so was at a previous institution, where I taught but one section of the course, and that during my last term working there. (Information is available here.) Between my lack of practice with the course and the changes to its standards pushed through at Oklahoma State University, I had quite a learning curve for the course. I fell back onto practices developed while a graduate student, knowing that they worked reasonably well then; I want to think that they served at least adequately during the term (in part because of comments received in student surveys).

Throughout the term, I worked to consolidate the work I would need to do to teach two similar but distinct courses. Part of the way I did so was to align both courses to the same theme: curricular issues. Doing so allowed me to draft samples for the students along a single theme, as well: the comprehensive exams from my doctoral program. More importantly, I feel and I have been told that students came away from the experience with better understandings of their fields of study (such that some shifted majors as a result), so the idea of my courses helping students gain such knowledge and the accompanying agency was borne out. In that regard, the semester was a success.

Many of the other impressions I have about the course are discussed in “Report of Results from the Spring 2016 Exit Surveys”; I need not repeat them here (although I would point out to those who complain that my grading is overly harsh that more students earned As in my classes than earned Fs this term, and more of the Fs resulted from the imposition of Program policies than my personal policies). Not all are, however, and among those not voiced previously is one about the timing of classes. In “Reflective Comments about Fall 2015,” here, I note that the 1030 and 1230 classes I taught were somewhat subdued, attributing their restraint to timing. This term, my 1030 class was perhaps the most active of all, which contradicts my earlier supposition. Similarly, the 0830 class I taught in the fall was active, while its spring counterpart was not. I have to conclude that it is some factor other than timing that accounts for the varying levels of participation in classroom activities. What it is is not clear to me, however.

The semester was particularly helpful for future teaching. The final exam in all sections specifically asked for recommended additions to the course sequence, and while it may well not be the case that I teach Composition II in my next position, many of the suggestions made seem like they would be applicable to other teaching venues, as well. How they will be incorporated will depend on the future courses, obviously, but I am in the position of having been able to retain copies of student work. Many students signaled their willingness to have their work used for future development (I retain copies of the forms though which they did so, as well), so I will have resources ready to hand as I make adjustments moving forward.

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Reference Documents

Collected best versions of course documents given to students throughout the term can be found below:

I make them available in the hopes that others will find them of use–as I do with the rest of my instructional materials.

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