Online Learning Will be the Death/Birth of Me!

I had surgery a week ago and all the research and reading I thought I'd get done turned out to be a total bust because I've pretty much spent the week in a haze of pain, painkillers, and anesthesia induced nausea.  During my time off of work, I struggled to do any school work, or to concentrate on anything school related.  Yet, I did manage to complete a small paper, take a test, and offer a few responses to my classmates work.  I didn't feel so bad when I realized that my Creative Writing teacher has not been in since July 20th.  On July 20th my professor promised to respond to numerous assignments that week, and yet, nothing.  I've decided that I'm going to email her and make sure she isn't having anymore"technical difficulties." 

So, the other day I came across an article in The Chronicle about how community college students fail more online learning classes than in person classes, and are less likely to graduate.  This doesn't surprise me, but some of the comments pissed me off.  I'm particularly prone to being pissed off given that I've had such a difficult time with an online course this semester, and I've come to see how difficult it is for students to succeed when a professor decides to go AWOL throughout the entire semester. Some commentators like to point out how many students just aren't as technically savvy as they're alleged to be.

First of all let me say "DUH" and "not so fast!"  My DUH comes from knowing that a lot of students taking online courses are ADULT LEARNERS of all different ages.  Some of them did not grow up with the internet or texting.  And as one commentator pointed out, many people who don't end up in the brick and mortar environment are not people from wealthy or privileged background, and thus they may be less likely to have grown up using the latest technology.  BUT without online courses THEY WOULD NOT AND COULD NOT BE THERE. 

My NOT SO FAST comes from the fact that many of my professors are the ones completely clueless to technology.  My constantly MIA professor has never articulated where she'd be keeping any course materials, and her syllabus is written to be creatively absurd and obtuse, rather than being helpful or providing any understanding of where to find course materials. 

Following a long period of silence and no assignments, I found a message to us explaining our professor's long absence by clicking buttons at random.  Where this message was located was not even a place that she regularly updated and when I copied and pasted the instructions to our message board another student asked me where I had found them, thanked me for posting them, and said that she would not have seen them otherwise.  I've had a course with this student before and I can assure any asshole detractor out there that she is not a technologically inept slacker. 

This course has been a complete nightmare.  The near constant absence of my professor has hindered my learning at every turn.  But what really gets to me is that this is a professor that is so beloved by her face-to-face students, but if it wasn't for teaching awards and ratemyprofessor.com I'd never have guessed it. 

So, the way I see it there are numerous issues.  The first issue is difficulty with technology.  On one hand, this may largely be the fault of the learning institution that fails to adequately train their teachers.  But on the other hand, teachers should take the initiative to learn the technology on their own.  After all, every online student is told they need to be "independent self starters," so it's reasonable to expect online instructors to take the same initiatives expected of students.  

The second issue to me seems to be that *some* professors confuse "flexibility" with never having to attend courses.  An online course allows me the flexibility to "attend" at two in the morning, but it does not mean I don't have to show up, do the work, and engage my fellow classmates in discussions.  A professor telling me that they've been on vacation all week and thus haven't been available (of course mentioning this after the fact is especially priceless) is not going to cut it.  I have no problem when a professor tells me ahead of time that they're going to be on the road for the day and thus can't be reached, but to say that you can't be bothered for a whole week or two is a bit ridiculous.  Get a blackberry or a laptop and take it with you if you must take extended vacations when class is in session.  And if you're a professor that tells students to communicate and also makes it clear that there are "NO EXCEPTIONS" to certain course requirements and due dates, then I am going to find this hypocritical behavior particularly insulting.

Are there students that confuse "flexibility" with not having to attend or participate?  Of course, and the consequence is failure. 

Not having a professor participate or grade assignments in a timely fashion makes it difficult to learn because without grades or comments a student can be on the wrong track and have no idea.  It also puts so much of the learning process on the shoulders of students.  If all of my classmates were intelligent and engaged learners then I wouldn't mind so much, because when I'm in a class with a high number of intelligent students my experience is more valuable, but sadly that is not always the case.  If I'm in a course where I'm supposed to learn by discussing our course topics with a student who refuses to believe that the FCC is a government agency, then how am I supposed to learn from that or ever develop a factually accurate, let alone meaningful, dialogue? 

If a professor isn't there to provide guidance, or credibility, then we're stuck in a situation like that (and yes, that has actually happened). 

Although I've had many better experiences with other professors, there are still very few instances of professors that try to develop a community of learners in online courses.  I guess I could say the same thing is true in person, too, but I find that it's particularly important online, especially given the fact that online students do tend to be non traditional students with full time jobs and families, and all the reasons in the world to give up on education.  Plus, in person students find more opportunities to connect through campus organizations like the honor society, Men of Merit, Sisters in Strength, athletics, student government, and the Writing Fellowship program.  While I'd love to participate in the latter, the required course is offered only during the weekday afternoons while I'm at work.  If this course was offered at night, in the very early morning hours, on weekends, or online I could swing it, but otherwise forget it.

So, when I read an article about the failure of online students and an alleged professor wants to lay the blame on students assuming online courses are going to be "easy" I get a little pissed off at the simplification.  

The good that has come out of this partially craptastic semester is that I've realized that perhaps my calling in education is in online learning.  I've come to realize that a focus on technology or online learning doesn't mean I need to sacrifice my interest in special education, either.  In fact, my visually impaired uncle and his girlfriend have been able to utilize new technology to surf the web and keep in touch with us and a larger community of visually impaired friends.

A lot of technophobes are afraid that the internet will isolate people, but they fail to recognize how much connection can be created through the internet, and they don't recognize its amazing potential to diversify the classroom.  But it doesn't mean that we don't need professors, and it doesn't mean we don't benefit from community and discussion.  Those are two myths that need to be busted because a successful online course is not a correspondence class, nor is it independent study. 

While I'm stuck at JCC I'm going to try my hardest to make a case to my professors and to the administration as to why strengthening online courses is so important.  And this time, when I nominate a professor for the faculty of the year award, I'm going to nominate a professor for an online course and I'm going to have hard data measuring the success of the course, the professor, and also the importance of legitimizing online courses, professors, and thus online learners. 

Yes, I will spin this semester's steaming pile of shit into gold!  Yes Yes! 

argh

It's Thursday evening and the assignments for Creative Writing that should have been posted Sunday or Monday are still not posted.  So, we have wasted almost another entire week doing nothing.  Also, I have a minor medical procedure coming up, so I'm trying to prepare for it by getting ahead in courses, buying books to read, updating my life insurance information, and of course buying Fruity Pebbles because I haven't had them in a long time, and I think anytime you put yourself in any danger you should be able to indulge in a guilty pleasure beforehand.  Oh, Holy Fred Flinstone, give me the patience to get through this course.   

Eng 132: Metacognitive Reflection on my Rhetorical Analysis.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Diane Ravitch
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

For my next paper, I plan on arguing against high stake testings and the type of school reforms proposed by Michelle Rhee and like minded reformers.  So, when it came time to write a rhetorical analysis of an author, Diane Ravitch came to mind. 

I wasn't particularly familiar with Ravitch, but I remembered seeing her on an episode of The Daily Show.  I remember thinking she was awkward, and that she didn't seem very good at arguing or appealing to her audience, but that she was intriguing, and she had intelligent arguments.  So, I decided I would research her.

I started researching Ravitch by reading her various articles on the internet and in databases.  Her articles were interesting enough, and flawed enough, to be worth a critical review.  One thing that I noticed again and again was that even when she wasn't writing something to be read in an education specific publication, she wrote for a very narrow audience and didn't provide much evidence.  Although she discussed poverty on The Daily Show, she doesn't use her articles to tell stories about these students, and she doesn't work very hard to appeal to an audience using pathos. 

In my opinion, unless people like Ravitch start focusing their arguments on children and use more pathos, they don't stand a chance against people like Rhee who are anti teacher tenure and pro high stake testing.  Rhee's narrative strokes people's reptilian brains, and Ravitch's doesn't. 

When I read "Why We're Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don't," I was really interested in what Ravitch and Cortese had to say about curriculum in the US and abroad.  I thought their arguments seemed logical, but I didn't see much evidence within their article supporting their claims. I decided that I'd review this article, an article I mostly agree with, because I wanted to find the flaws in the argument, and find a way to build a better one that can appeal to a broad audience, and successfully convince readers using logos, ethos, and pathos.

What really informed my initial writing was the student essay we had to read in class.  Although, there were times when I didn't like that essay and I wasn't sure if ours were supposed to look exactly like that one.  I figured that it had probably been the best article in the class, and so that's why it was used, so I didn't know if it was a good idea to do it differently.  Ultimately, I think I did stray from the example essay because I'm a lot more critical of Ravitch and Cortese's article than the student writer was of his or her author's work.   But I really didn't like reading this essay because it makes me apprehensive about going into more depth about the article or Ravitch's claims.  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. 

After I wrote my outline for the course, I didn't completely stick to it, but I did follow my initial outline more closely than I've followed any of my previous outlines.  I think that is just because I was working with a smaller number of sources and the focus was much more narrow than in our previous papers.  

After I posted my first draft I received a couple of comments on my essay which I took into consideration when revising for my second draft.  It was helpful, but it's always more helpful when they are received earlier, rather than receiving them the day our next draft is due. 

For me, the annotated bibliography was harder to write for sources that weren't books, because I have a lot less to say about a short article than an entire novel. 

After revising the essay I looked over the citations and adjusted the margins according to our guidelines.

I don't think I found any part of the process for this paper particularly helpful.  I knew what I was going write and so I wrote it. 

For me, my favorite part of this process was the research and the writing.  Sometimes, when my vision isn't too blurry, I think I'd like to research for the rest of my life.  But, my least favorite parts of the process was changing the margins.  I just don't like changing margins and never have.  It's just like how I can't stand looking at miniature golf courses, even though I don't have a good reason for feeling that way. 

Casey Anthony: Teachable Moments.

The Casey Antony verdict has really taken me back to that moment in my middle school classroom where my English teacher turned on a television so we could all watch the OJ Simpson verdict.  There was no context, no discussion, just an all white school of pubescent kids modeling their parent's and teacher's opinions.  Of course, his guilt was assumed to be without a doubt. 

So, I've heard a lot about Casey Anthony lately.  I hear about it from friends, family, and coworkers.  Sometimes Caylee's death is twisted into arguments against abortion. 

I am tired of it.  I'm (always) tired of Nancy Grace.  I'm tired of the mob mentality.  I am tired of watching the media cover one child's murder while a child was just savagely murdered in Michigan, and while children are abused and murdered every day.  Caylee can't be brought back to life, so let's not pretend we're talking about justice here.  If we want to talk about justice, we ought to be talking about preventing child abuse, murder, and offering support services to parents who, perhaps, had no positive role model in their own childhood, or who suffer from mental illness, addiction, or feel they're at a breaking point for any reason.  We ought to not be twisting a child's death into a political arguments against abortion, but instead preventing unwanted pregnancies, and that ISN'T going to happen when funding for places like Planned Parenthood gets stripped away by people who ignore that the vast majority of their services have nothing to do with abortion.

Planned Parenthood provided me with my first prescription for low cost birth control, and in doing so it prevented unwanted pregnancies, and that means Planned Parenthood  prevented abortions.

The justice system is horribly flawed, but I find it particularly strange that so many members of the angry mob point this out only in relation to Casey Anthony and OJ Simpson.  When were there so many people outraged over the convictions of innocent people who were later exonerated by DNA evidence?  Where was the massive press coverage when Michal Anthony Green was exonerated by DNA evidence, but only after spending 27 years in prison. 

While I consider Nancy Grace's sociopathic tendencies evidence that she is out to exploit and capitalize on the victims she covers, I believe many people who are outraged are good people in need of catharsis.  I understand that, but let's not confuse it for justice.

If we want to talk about justice we should be talking about supporting (politically and financially) high tech forensic labs that reduce the risk of contamination of evidence, and provide examiners the tools they need to create a case based on more than circumstantial evidence.    We should be talking about setting up scholarships that encourage our brightest scientific minds to go into criminology and forensic pathology. We should spend less time devoting news coverage to Casey Anthony's trial and verdict, and more time focusing on the children that have been victimized every single day, sometimes right next door to someone sitting on the couch, cursing Casey Anthony. 

It's not that I think Casey is innocent, by the way, but it's really hard to tell what I think and what I feel when every image of her I've seen on television and online -- at places like huffingtonpost.com -- shows her smirking.  Guilty or innocent, the media has a definite bias against her, because they have a bias towards sensationalism.  And this was one sensational case. 

Having just recently devoted so much of my time to reading about the life, time, and work of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, I do feel a particularly strong fear and disgust towards mob justice and media bias that favors sensationalism over evidence.  So, I find the attacks on the jurors to be especially disturbing. 

According to the Innocence Project, 272 people have been exonerated post conviction, based on DNA evidence.  Obviously, our justice system is far from perfect, but to abandon it and return to mob rule and gut instincts would be to return to the days of Wells-Barnett where many innocent people were tortured and executed, and where the guilty escaped or would never stand trial, simply because the mob didn't hold them accountable, because the mob follows instinct, rather than evidence.

Even with the flaws of our system, holding our justice system to a high standard isn't only about protecting defendants, it's also about the victims.  For every person wrongfully convicted the real threat to society walks, and can live without fear of being caught.  The Innocence Project has helped gather data and  propose reforms that can help both innocent defendants, and victims.

There are many times when I wish America did things a little more like many other countries.  I wish we didn't have factory farms.  I wish we didn't go to war in Iraq.  I wish we had universal health care.  I wish college tuition didn't cost so much money.  I wish American sitcoms could be a little more British.  But, I've always considered our justice system, our promise of a fair trial, to be the crown jewel of our system. So if we're talking about justice, we ought to be talking about protecting it.

When good teaching doesn't work.

Normally, my Writing Experience II class is set up so that when we begin to post our papers we're in our own small writer groups and are unable to view the papers posted in other groups.  This time, however, I can view all the groups, but I can't comment on them.  I'm not sure if it's a mistake or not, but I've been reading everything everyone posts.  There are times when I want so badly to comment, but I can't.  For instance, right now a person posted a paper on the subject of arranged marriages within the "Punjabi religion."  There are many things I'd like to say about this paper, the first being that there is NO "punjabi religion."  It's a region, it's a people, and they all practice different religions.  But that's besides the point.

The point is that English 132 with Kristine Pursell is a course I've considered probably the most effective at laying out material, utilizing technology, and creating a dialogue that is sustained throughout our units.  So it was very surprising to me when I noticed that a few of the papers aren't what we were assigned.  We were assigned to create a rhetorical analysis of an article, with the article informing our research for our next paper: the argument essay.

Instead of providing analysis of an article, these few papers are informative or argumentative, and they don't even begin to analyze another author's work.

In this unit we were provided instructions, power point presentations, information in our coursebook, and we read an example of a rhetorical analysis which we discussed and analyzed in assignments.  These students participated in that, and it would have been impossible for them to come up with their assignments without having read the sample essay.

So . . . how does this happen?  Okay, so I've read The Chronicle articles about the students that bullshit their assignments, turning in papers on Madonna rather than Napoleon, and I've seen similar things happen in my Creative Writing class.  But I don't think these are papers of students who decided they were going to bullshit or do whatever unique project came to mind.  I'm pretty sure these are serious papers, and so I can't figure out where the confusion could be coming from.

I would like to know how this happens.  How can students who are capable of putting together a paper at all, completely misunderstand the assignment?  Now, I have been confused by professor's poor instructions before, but that isn't the case here.

I'm not someone who believes in the myth of the perfect teacher being able to reach every one of their students.  When I was in high school, I had a pretty good science teacher who couldn't get me to perform in his class or turn in my assignments, and it wasn't his fault.  But, I always understood the directions of the assignments, I just slacked off and didn't do it.  So, it's still disconcerting when I can't come up with an explanation for how and why someone's understanding of an assignment could be so completely off.  In a lot of my classes I can think up ways in which a professor could have done things differently, or explained something more effectively, but in this case I can't come up with any solutions. 

It's not just a matter of misunderstanding one assignment, but how can a student be taught to comprehend their assigned tasks so that they don't make the same mistake in future courses?  Is such a thing possible? 

I started doing a little Google research on the topic, but I for now I can't find anything that answers my questions.

For now I remain. . .

baffled. 

Admissions: The Scarlet A of a Bad Student.

A smarter student would probably just kiss ass and keep his or her expectations of the community college classroom low.  Unfortunately, I have a hard time remembering that rule, and really only remember it when I begin to think of the Four Year admissions process. 

In high school I was somewhat of a polarizing student.  I received glowing letters of recommendations from three teachers, but I was also getting suspended and taken to task by the world's most boring Civics teacher.  So far, every piece of advice I find on applying to Four Year recommend "being honest"  and explaining indiscretions.  What they really mean of course, is apologizing, learning, growing, etc.  And in some cases I can honestly do that, but in other cases I can't because there are plenty of "indiscretions" that I don't feel any remorse over.  I guess I should focus on the things I HAVE learned and grown from, and should skip anything resembling "Hey, I missed more than forty days of school in the eighth grade so really you should look at my high school career as an improvement!"

The reality is that high school is a bag of contradictions and I'd rather just skip discussing it all together.  When it comes to writing a personal essay I again run up against the problems of trying to sound like me while simultaneously branding myself like a product, while trying to reconcile the contradictions.  It seems like a nearly impossible task to undertake in a short essay. 

How do you try and show that despite academic pitfalls you're intelligent enough, equipped enough, to be a successful student at a Four Year university, running up against 18 year old valedictorians?   You can't prove things that you've taught yourself.  You can't prove the hours you spend using Rosetta Stone learning a foreign language, or teaching yourself programming language, or learning about credit, or the financial aide process, or just about anything you were never taught in a class or by a parent.   

One reason why I hate writing personal narrative essays is because there is the desire to reconcile all the contradictions to conform to some singular thesis or narrative.  How do you explain that while your parents emphasized reading and being smart, you were expected not to become too smart, or that you'd be encouraged while simultaneously undermined?  In this reality tv obsessed culture, how do you explain the nuances of a family?  How do you explain that no, your mom's not a hoarder so much as she just becomes overwhelmed.  How do you brand yourself as a student from a working class background of parents who didn't go to college, while also marking your step mother as an graduate student alumni from your college of choice?  How do you explain the dual sensations of success? Or the self mutilation that comes with being a successful student? 

The problem with researching the admissions process is that all the advice is geared towards baby chicks fresh from high school.   At 28 years old, recommendations about excelling in a sport aren't really helpful or realistic.  The disappointing news is that community service hours are, supposedly, given more weight than being able to hold down a full time job.  I've done community service, and continue to, but probably not as much as a student with more time and less financial obligations.  Despite the possibility that my job may not be appreciated by an admissions board, I'm still going to play that up.  I have a history of excellent performance reviews and, in this increasingly career oriented climate colleges are finding themselves in, a person who can hold down a job and work well with others should be of interest to a school.  I mean, my Step Aunt has a husband who graduated from Harvard but he's been out of work for years because he looks like an Elf on his way to Mordor, and he has the worst personality I've ever had the displeasure of coming across.  Most people learn to survive by getting a haircut, smiling, and not complaining about every little thing -- but he's still waiting for Gandalf the Grey to make his dreams come true. 

Now, historically, I've always heard that college's want "well rounded" students, and that seems to be what many of their transfer admissions web pages are implying, if not stating outright, yet according to some of my recent research well rounded students can be at a disadvantage.  Time magazine reported that Rachel Toor, a former admissions officer at Duke University, says that admission officers favor "angular kids, those with a much more focused interest or talent" over well rounded students.  According to Time, the same thing goes on at Cornell University.  I'm not planning on applying to any place so ritzy and selective, but if this is true for the public universities I'll be applying to, then it could actually work in my favor. 

But, like everything else in life, so much of the information I find is contradictory.  Even reading the comments to an article just makes it that much more confusing! Some argue that you should absolutely know what's going in to your letter of recommendation, others say that you must sign the waiver of confidentiality (which I was going to do anyway) to be taken seriously.  But, others have argued that not knowing what's in a letter means you could get a crap letter, which is worse than no letter at all!  Some posters tackle the more interesting and controversial subject of the role letters of recommendation play in admissions when so much of building a relationship with a teacher is based on things like social class, race, and classroom size.  That's worth reflection, but for now, I'm just concerned that I make sure to only ask professors who will correctly spell my name. 

In the New York Times blog article a commentator, and alleged teacher, wrote " I can’t stress this enough, WRITE A FORMAL THANK YOU NOTE FOR THE RECOMMENDATION. If I can take an hour to personalize a letter for your future, you can take five minutes to personalize a thank you card. After eleven years and over 100 recommendations I have received nine thank you cards. I know this because I keep them. It baffles me that seniors in high school are so entitled that they can’t even formally thank someone for their time and effort. This is a big one for me."

So that makes me feel really happy that I overcame my fear of my horrible handwriting to send my Econ teacher a Thank You card.   I wrote as slowly and as legibly as I possibly could. 

Ultimately, applying to schools is going to be an exercise in trust and faith, both of which I have in very little supply.  But I still need to do as much as I can to brand myself.  If/When I finally receive some sort of comments on my Creative Writing assignments, maybe I can fix them up and do something with them for my portfolio.  I actually tried at poetry this semester, and I've gotten better.  I figure that poetry is good because it's short, and hopefully it's short enough so that an admissions officer doesn't lose interest and chuck it in the trash bin. 

So, I'll continue to research the admissions process.  Looks like I have some books to buy.