Adventures in outcomes-based assessment

In spring term I’ll be doing several things I’ve never done before. I’ll be teaching online. I’ll be one of the Syracuse instructors who are piloting new learning outcomes for our Comp 2 (sophomore-level researched writing) course. I’ll be using McGraw’s Connect as host for the work on the writing assignments in this course. Blackboard is Syracuse’s portal, so that’s where artifacts like the syllabus and the assignment calendar will be, but all the... [Read more]

This just in from Twitter, via Facebook: Privacy Unleashed

Over on my Twitter page and on my personal Facebook account, I’ve been soliciting recommendations for a film to be watched in my Comp 2 course this spring. The course is themed on privacy–perhaps privacy and identity. (The most vote-getting film right now is The Truman Show. I’m going to watch several of these films over winter break and then make a choice–thank you, Netflix, for allowing me to make a last-minute decision–but right now I’m leaning toward We Live... [Read more]

What students hear

This is just a brief note written in a brief break from reading a not-brief stack of papers. I need to express my astonishment about how much students are taking in when it doesn’t appear they’re listening at all. One day in class a month ago we were talking about the internet and current technological fears. I paused and gave an impromptu overview of literacy revolutions that preceded the internet: writing, printing. I talked about what was at stake in each of these revolutions, both... [Read more]