Day One HW:
Being an online student can be intimidating, confusing, and just plain difficult!
So for these first few days, you get to vent about it! No kidding. Share your concerns with each other. Maybe give each other some advice or just a good old bit of support. Believe me — online instructors have many of the same worries you do, even if we’ve been teaching online for a while. I also promise not to hijack the conversations, either! 🙂
Here’s what you’ll do:
PLAY with the website. You can’t break it. Honestly. I’ve tried. Click around on all the tabs. See what’s there! This is our classroom for the semester, so make yourself familiar with the room.
READ: these three short “Tips” pieces
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- “Tips for Online Learning Success” https://www.nhcc.edu/student-resources/online-learning-d2l/tips-for-online-learning-success
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- “Online Discussions: Tips for Students” https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/blended-learning/online-discussions-tip-students
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- “Adapting for 2021: A Student’s Guide” https://www.teachingprofessor.com/covid-19/adapting-for-2021-a-students-guide/
WRITE: a new post (note to instructor: depending on the website you use, you’ll need to add instructions for how to do this. Blackboard and OpenLab both provide instructional links)
- Start with one word that describes how you’re feeling about this course as we get started. No need to explain, but you can if you want to.
- Talk about your worries, concerns, reactions to the readings and/or to being an online student… whatever you want to. No censoring… except keep it kind of clean, please ;-). And
- Add a picture that means something to you, and explain why you chose it — why does it mean something to you?
Check back in and see what other people are saying, and reply to a couple of people. It’s nice to know we’re not alone!
Day Two HW:
READ: “How to Read Like a Writer” by Mike Bunn.
In this article, Bunn says that his students suggests that the advice they would give to future students is that they “write yourself notes and summaries both during and after reading.” So I’d like you to do that. Please take out a piece of paper and a pen (or pencil) and have it beside you as you read.
Using our course Perusall site (or the PDF commenting function on Google Docs) make at least 5 annotations– comments in the margins. These can be observations or questions, or simply summaries of the paragraphs. This annotation exercise is all about noticing what you notice!
WRITE: On the website, write a post of at least 300 words discussing the following questions. You can also post the picture of your notes from the reading in this same post:
- In his article, Mike Bunn writes “You are already an author.” He’s talking to you. What do you think he means by this? What are some of the things you write already? (Hint: “Nothing” is not an acceptable answer.) Think of all of the ways you already use words in your everyday life. That’s authorship! How will that existing expertise help you in your college reading and writing career?
- Was there anything you noticed in Bunn’s article that you would like to try to do in your own writing? What, in particular? Please be specific!
TAKE SURVEY: Please take the online technology survey! This will help me know what kind of access everyone in the course has to technology so I can plan accordingly. Thanks!
SIGN UP: In this course, you will need to sign up for the program Perusall. To do so, create an account here: https://app.perusall.com/ and use [perusall will give professors an access code to enter] as your access code. For help getting started with Perusall see the “Getting Started” page HERE.
