Stuart Selber, Director of Composition and Associate Professor of English and STS, approached ETS about "bringing English courses into the 21st Century." Currently assignments are strictly paper-based and don't necessarily build upon each other. I suggested using the Blogs@PSU platform to create online portfolios/databases of student work so that they could improve their Internet skills and have their work in electronic form to share with others (such as prospective employers).
Stuart assigned Matt Weiss, composition assistant in the English department, to work with me for the redesign project. Matt spent two hours each Friday this semester (FA08) at ETS where we met to go over progress in design and development. Matt created two sample blogs on his personal space to explain the project to the pilot instructors:
Sample Instructor Blog
Sample Student Blog
These pages are obviously a work in progress but they show just how far we've come with ideas and development. We are looking to move these two sites off of Matt's personal space and onto a departmental server where the address does not need to be tied to a particular person. One of the biggest tasks was taking existing assignments and moving them to the online environment and learning how these assignments would change because of the new submission method.
Next Semester:
We are piloting the new layout of English 202C in eight sections (six different instructors). The instructors have varying levels of technical ability that will help us to determine the range of assistance required when rolling out this redesign to other sections and/or courses.
The instructors are using five of the assignments from FA08 semester without any major changes. The big difference will be using the ePortfolio system to post. We will explore changing the assignments (adding podcasting, video, etc.) over the course of the SP09 semester. These additions/changes to assignments will roll out for the FA09 semester.
Should all go well with implementation, this project has the potential to move toward a redesign of English 202A, B, and D, as well as English 30 and English 15.
Wiki Page with Weekly Updates
Stuart assigned Matt Weiss, composition assistant in the English department, to work with me for the redesign project. Matt spent two hours each Friday this semester (FA08) at ETS where we met to go over progress in design and development. Matt created two sample blogs on his personal space to explain the project to the pilot instructors:
Sample Instructor Blog
Sample Student Blog
These pages are obviously a work in progress but they show just how far we've come with ideas and development. We are looking to move these two sites off of Matt's personal space and onto a departmental server where the address does not need to be tied to a particular person. One of the biggest tasks was taking existing assignments and moving them to the online environment and learning how these assignments would change because of the new submission method.
Next Semester:
We are piloting the new layout of English 202C in eight sections (six different instructors). The instructors have varying levels of technical ability that will help us to determine the range of assistance required when rolling out this redesign to other sections and/or courses.
The instructors are using five of the assignments from FA08 semester without any major changes. The big difference will be using the ePortfolio system to post. We will explore changing the assignments (adding podcasting, video, etc.) over the course of the SP09 semester. These additions/changes to assignments will roll out for the FA09 semester.
Should all go well with implementation, this project has the potential to move toward a redesign of English 202A, B, and D, as well as English 30 and English 15.
Wiki Page with Weekly Updates
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