Tag: Oklahoma State University

Class Report: Summer Bridge Technical Writing, Section C- 23 July 2015

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Class began as scheduled at 0900 in PS 141. The class roster listed 27 students enrolled, unchanged since the last report. All attended, verified by sign-in sheet.

Discussion asked after concerns from previous classes before moving to treat interviews and concerns of academic integrity. Of note are changes to the D2L dropboxes, put in place to ease student confusion and staff work; they may be reviewed on D2L itself. Student participation was good.

Students are reminded that they have a homework assignment due on Sunday, as noted previously; other assignments are forthcoming. The Hinton reading may be discussed on Monday; review of it is advisable. That it may be discussed on Monday does *not* mean the schedule-assigned readings–the excerpt from the Norton Field Guide to Writing–are not to be read; keeping up with the assigned reading is recommended.

Enjoy the weekend. Return refreshed and ready to press on.

Class Report: Summer Bridge Technical Writing, Section C- 22 July 2015

geoffreybelliott1 Comment

Class began as scheduled at 0900 in PS 141. The class roster listed 27 students enrolled, unchanged since the last report. Twenty-four attended, verified by a sign-in sheet.

Class discussion reviewed questions from the previous class before treating concerns of upcoming assignments, the assigned reading, and serial or Oxford commas. Student participation was reasonably good.

Students are reminded that they have homework due by 2359 today, as well as an assignment due over the weekend. Assignment sheets and materials are available on D2L; a rubric for the weekend assignment is attached here as CEAT Interview Response Rubric.

Class Report: Summer Bridge Technical Writing, Section C- 21 July 2015

geoffreybelliott1 Comment

Class began as scheduled at 0900 in PS 141. The class roster listed 27 students enrolled in the section, three having dropped and one having added since the last report. All attended, verified by a brief written exercise.

Class discussion reviewed questions from the previous class before treating the homework assignments due tonight and Wednesday night. It moved on to address forensic, epideictic, and deliberative rhetorics, as well as concerns of register. Student participation was reasonably good.

Students are reminded that the first homework assignment is due before 2359 today, with another due tomorrow before 2359. Materials and directions for the assignment are posted on D2L. The rubric that will be used to assess both assignments, as well as the third such assignment (appearing later in the term), is attached as the CEAT Reading Response Rubric.

Class Report: Summer Bridge Technical Writing, Section C- 20 July 2015

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Class began as scheduled at 0900 in PS 141. The class roster listed 29 students enrolled in the section as of 19 July 2015. Twenty-six attended, verified by sign-in sheet. Some note was made that class rosters have changed since initial notice; later reports will update enrollment to suit.

Class discussion introduced course documents, D2L, other online resources, the instructor, usage standards, and the first homework assignment, as well as treating Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle to begin features of writing. Student participation was adequate.

Students are reminded that the first homework assignment is due before 2359 on Tuesday, 21 July 2015. Materials and directions for the assignment are posted on D2L; rubrics are forthcoming and are likely to be discussed in class.

More Comments about the CEAT Summer Bridge Program

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The Oklahoma State University College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology Summer Bridge Program that I discussed earlier will begin Monday, 20 July 2015. I will be teaching the section of the writing class meeting at 0900, Monday through Thursday, and I met with the person who will be helping with grading for all three sections of the class to discuss how we will go about handling the work turned in for the program. We determined to apply rubrics to the students’ submissions, publishing them for each assignment and assessing against them, returning comments to the students. It seems a workable solution to the issue of a short-term course with a rapid assignment sequence and, for the grader, a markedly heavy grading load.

Because I am working from a prescribed program, I will not be posting much to this webspace in terms of materials, although I may well see about completing at least some of the assignments given to the students, and I have every intention of following the practice I had in my previous online offerings of posting reports of classroom activities and reflections on them. It has been a useful habit for me, and it will be good to resume it. It may also help me track the amounts of time and effort I expend in teaching, something the reading I am doing and have done suggests is useful.

Initial Comments about the CEAT Summer Bridge Program

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In a meeting yesterday, I was offered and accepted a position teaching English for the Oklahoma State University College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology’s Summer Bridge Program. It seems a good program for the school to have, and I look forward to working with the incoming students in it. Perhaps some of them will show up in the classes I have been assigned for the Fall 2015 term. (I do not have my full rosters at this point, but given my teaching load and what I have seen so far, I can reasonably expect to have a number of freshmen in the classes, and I have no doubt that some will be from the College with which I accepted the new position.)

I have not taught students at the college-preparatory level since 2013, so I admit that I am perhaps a bit out of practice with it. As such, the opportunity to refresh the skill-set such teaching requires will be welcome. So will the opportunity to help students get a head start on their work; perhaps it will help them and those with whom they interact in the future.

Initial Comments for the Fall 2015 Term at Oklahoma State University

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I am scheduled to teach four classes in the Fall 2015 term at Oklahoma State University. Three of them are sections of ENGL 1113: Composition I. The fourth is a section of ENGL 2413: Introduction to Literature. I have taught both before, so I have some experience on which to draw as I develop course materials and assignment sequences, although I will be making some alterations from how I taught the classes last time I was assigned them.

In the composition classes, I have a prescribed assignment sequence, one that is being maintained from the previous composition director (so far as I know; I have asked the incoming director about the matter and received word that no major changes are planned at this point). Students in my sections will write a literacy narrative, a profile, a textual analysis, and an evaluative essay. I had previously linked the latter two assignments together, having students select a single editorial from the New York Times as the subject for both. I mean to expand the linking through the whole term; students will narrate their experience reading the editorial and will conduct the textual analysis and evaluation on it. I am not entirely certain yet, though, how to negotiate the profile. Thoughts that occur include profiling the paper, the author of the editorial, or the theoretical reader of the New York Times, but I am not sure how well any of those will work. Thoughts about it will be welcome.

The literature class is not so programmatic. I am obliged to use a standard text, and there are institutional requirements of addressing diversity and administering a “substantial” exam during the assigned exam period, but other than that, I have great latitude. Since the required text treats the ur-genres of prose, poetry, and drama, a tripartite discussion seems warranted; since my past experience teaching the class suggests that a single, extended project will not work well, the tripartite structure would seem to map neatly into three short papers, each some 1200 to 1500 words in length, and each focusing one a work in one of the ur-genres. I mean to address the diversity requirement through consideration of works’ treatments of either socioeconomic status or postcolonial identity, as those are the areas with which I am most conversant and comfortable teaching such a class. In addition, I will continue my practices of having students post to discussion boards (facilitated by learning management systems in place as the institution) and of administering the occasional quiz as a means to study for the mandated final exam (which will consist of questions about literary-critical terminology and short-answer questions asking after interpretive work–although I have yet to write the thing).

For all four sections, I mean to continue my earlier practice of offering reports of classroom activities, and I hope to resume my yet earlier practice of providing examples of the kind of work I want to see my students do. The past few terms have not been as good about the latter as they ought to have been, and I need to correct that unfortunate tendency. Materials are still in development, of course, and likely will be until near the beginning of the upcoming term; I will post them as they become available.