Week 9 (October 13) |
4:00-4:20p |
Gather Yourself Up
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4:20-4:30p |
Connect
Zoom room opens so that we can say hello and enter as fully as possible in such a space. |
Presentations
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BREAK: 5:35-6:00pm
During this break, complete the google form below in the purple box. Or go to this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHEmvvVI2yUqRW_UDqXpjMwrAK6KeJGcaVoKYQdCKya-8fJw/viewform
Open Sessions
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1. Announcements, Reminders & Check-Ins . . .
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Carmen's October Check-In: Tonight, take some time to do an anonymous google survey that will ask you the same questions (if you didn't do this last week). Click here for the link or type right into the survey below.
2. Overview of Next Week's Syllabus Project w/ Q&A
Click here or go to Week 9 under "Syllabus and Themes" for this course at this website.
There are no presentations next week. Instead, we will break the class in half. Half the class discusses their syllabus draft in the first half of class. The next half discusses in the second half of class. Plan to walk us through and screen-share what you have for 5-7 minutes (maximum). Do this syllabus on whatever app you like (wordprocessing, wordpress, google doc, flipbook, etc). Just make sure that Carmen gets a copy and/or link.
Click here or go to Week 9 under "Syllabus and Themes" for this course at this website.
There are no presentations next week. Instead, we will break the class in half. Half the class discusses their syllabus draft in the first half of class. The next half discusses in the second half of class. Plan to walk us through and screen-share what you have for 5-7 minutes (maximum). Do this syllabus on whatever app you like (wordprocessing, wordpress, google doc, flipbook, etc). Just make sure that Carmen gets a copy and/or link.
3. Discussion: OA
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"My experience as a writing program administrator (WPA) and an assessment consultant for several English departments and writing programs suggests that OA harbors each of the tendencies Dewey mentions. In many programs, outcomes become isolated, over time, from the ongoing activities of teachers and students. Whether administrators and faculty begin with great enthusiasm or great skepticism (or, most likely, a mix), outcomes, once expressed, often stay in place for years, even as programs change. Teachers may dutifully reproduce those outcomes on a syllabus or assignment, and students may dutifully provide evidence that they've achieved them in their work products, but rarely do the outcomes become a meaningful and intimate part of teachers' and students' experiences. In these programs, outcomes—whether the hard-won result of intense consensus building or an administrative hand-down—tend to become enshrined in the bureaucratic machinery. Though some proponents of OA are careful to suggest that outcomes be revisited and perhaps revised regularly, many institutions and programs—whether out of ennui, conflict aversion, or a less than fully developed assessment process—ignore this recommendation. Rather, outcomes statements take on an aura of finality, of achieved and unimpeachable institutional authority. Thus, the outcomes on the books remain the central focus of assessment and documentation efforts, with little attention paid either to the always-evolving context in which those aims are pursued (shifts in student demographics, staffing policies, institutional resources, and the like: what OA enthusiasts sometimes derogatorily identify as "inputs") or to unforeseen and unexpected results of unfolding educational experiences. Under these conditions, teachers and students merely receive the outcomes; they experience them as imposed, whether they were formulated by a distant regulatory body, a professional group, or some earlier incarnation of the local faculty.... Measuring, documenting, and reporting outcomes—pegged to bureaucratically defined units (courses, programs, courses of study)—serves prevailing academic management priorities such as accreditation reporting and other forms of public accountability, strategic planning, and the identification of "programs of excellence." As Shari Stenberg and Darby Arant Whealy suggest, outcomes function within an "efficiency model" that privileges measurement for institutional purposes, often at the expense of inquiry for pedagogical purposes (684). Moreover, the insistence among proponents of OA that we shift our attention from "inputs" to "outputs" clearly serves the interests of academic management."
~Chris Gallagher, "The Trouble with Outcomes: Pragmatic Inquiry and Educational Aims" (2012) [click here for excerpt] |
4. WRITING ACTIVITY for CHAT (if time): What did you read this week? How will it shape your assessment practice and syllabus policy?
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