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Since 2000 I have dedicated my professional career to education, beginning with my first tutoring position at Los Angeles Harbor College and subsequently at several writing centers. These writing center positions have ranged from tutoring to directing. The friendly, personal environment of the writing center has since informed my work in the classroom, from working closely with K-12 in various subjects from 2004 to college English and Communication Studies starting in 2005. As a student I always preferred to work closely with other students in the classroom and work one on one with teachers, sifting through the obstacles of group work by continuously acting as a facilitator.
An interest in classroom technology and its potential to induce effective collaborative skills amongst students arose while working on my M.A. in Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, Long Beach, during which time I began to acquaint myself with portals such as Blackboard and Adobe Breeze Presenter. The full potential of these tools would not have manifested itself without familiarizing myself with video editing software and blogging, the pedagogical implications of which are essential when considering how today’s students are digitally innovative yet often lack the oral communication skills necessary in the workplace. I was able to continue developing my interest in computer-mediated classroom at Clemson University, where I had my Technical Writing upperclassmen create video manifestos as part of their project deliverables related to social issues. As an English instructor at Greenville Technical College, I have been able to devote classroom time to short workshops in which I have taught such methods as pecha kucha and outlining.
The brunt of my teaching consists of short lecture periods followed by group and individual activities, all of which are framed with a practical approach constructed by modeling, scaffolding, and collaboration. Collaboration does not limit itself to the classroom; teaching Introduction to Human Communication labs at Clemson allowed me to collaborate with other instructors in the department to revise the undergraduate curriculum to expand on digital and oral areas of assignment rubrics. Following the mass communication unit in which students watched and then discussed the implications of gender stereotypes in Mean Girls, I combined oral presentation and critical analysis skills by discussing LGBT identity in The Celluloid Closet during lab. By having students present their comparative findings between lecture and lab, they were able to open up on new topics as well as break out of the shell of speaking in front of other college students for the first time.
Learning outcomes are essential to curriculum planning. I combine foundational, mediating and ultimate outcomes throughout the terms and, on a daily basis, relate them in a step-by-step process in each lesson plan. By starting with my ultimate outcomes for the students at the end of the program, I am able to determine my students’ end goals. Working backwards seems a bit easier than working from the ground up. Based on our ultimate outcomes, we can then decide our mediating outcomes that each assignment will cover, followed by lessons that adhere to foundational outcomes. Knowing these outcomes helps us decide what curriculum and material to discuss at a certain point in their program.
Rubrics are effective teaching tools. Before students turn in their first assignment, I asked them to use the rubric to grade an essay that I provide. Afterwards we have a class discussion comparing their assessment with mine. I have found that students tend to be very harsh with someone else's writing, which sets a high standard throughout the rest of the term.
Rubrics have advantages certain advantages, such as being uniform assessment tools. They are structured into teachable categories. All students work towards the same outcomes in our classrooms; rubrics are a good way of demonstrating that. They are easy to use for the most part (see below), and can be adapted for every assignment. Additionally, lessons can be planned around each category.
Rubrics also have certain disadvantages, such as being easy to generalize. They also include the possibility of overlap. Rubrics are tough to write because they require language that is somewhere between general and specific. Often scores can fall between categories. My own experience with rubrics has been that they should address the learning outcomes of the assignment and the class (summative and formative, respectively), and the range of categories needs to be acceptable (at least 4, but no more than 6). Additionally, I always seek to quantify number and type of grammatical error in, say, a composition course. I have found it helpful to require students to submit a printed version of the rubric with each assignment, thus forcing them to be accountable before each submission.
A central theme of my teaching philosophy embraces accountability through social interaction. Social interaction is key to the learning process, especially in collaborative scenarios. Nilson describes some very important “cooperative learning proponents, including class brainstorms, the inclusion of outcomes in group work, modeling the instructor’s work, and reflection sessions (2010, 161). Nilson’s advice is very helpful, and has helped me to design lesson plans on these principles alone, since they create a logical progression of steps. Additionally, students hold one another accountable for the work they do in class. For instance, I use a method called speed dating in which students interview one another so that they feel they must communicate some form of knowledge regarding an assignment. They switch off between other students and then have a brief reflection period in which they write down their thoughts.
Instructors can hold themselves accountable by writing out their lesson plans each week as a checklist of outcomes needing to be addressed. I try to do this whenever I lesson plan: It's a good reminder, and after some of the assignments from this class, I may even write these out on the student assignment handouts.
While a drawback of these group sessions might include perhaps an excessive amount of social interaction, leading too irrelevant discussion, I monitor groups closely and have “teaching breaks” during which time I introduce a new concept or point of discussion. Group critiques offer an area of discussion based on the premise whether “students intuitively know … what defines a good (and bad) team member” (Nilson, 2010, p. 162). A combination of hard and soft skills should be used when working in collaborative settings.
Researching collaborative pedagogies has helped me to comprehend the importance of group communication in the workplace, as well as recognize my own teaching style. From a research perspective, I am particularly interested in extending cognitive theories of composition discussed by Flower, Graham and Harris, and others. Considering my dissertation research, which focused on interdisciplinary pedagogy and learning disorders, I would like to develop scholarship on writing across the curriculum centered on teaching students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
This has been a small description on the methods and ideas that influence my teaching. The specter of the writing center has thus haunted my classroom, and I hope to continue using everything I have learned from my days there. I am always open for suggestions and improvement, and look forward to inquiry. Thank you for reading.
References:
Nilson, L.B. (2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Schrock, K. (2011). Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators. Discovery Education. 13 November 2011. Retrieved from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/assess.html.
