Thread by @kawaiilovesarah

[ online community pedagogy thread 🤍🧵]

hi, i ran a fully-online first year writing course this term and managed to get 70-80% of my class to show up ALL TERM for synchronous sessions.

i'll show you how i did that in this thread.

here's my syllabus: docs.google.com/document/d/1Y1…

the theme of the course was "community" and i did a lot of experimenting re: how to engage, evaluate and energize communities to self-care and care for others in a pandemic semester where nobody wants to do that but everybody really needs people who can do that.

i was really inspired by @AimiHamraie 's crip technoscience, @SFdirewolf 's covid oracles, @banville_morgan & @brennacgray 's surveillance work and @TheTattooedProf & @Jessifer 's radical evaluation methods. also @smhumphreys 's textbook was a saving grace for this course. 💜

so i ran this course on Discord, which I have other threads and articles etc about. it's accessible as hell.

so my server has me positioned as facilitator, rather than "lecturer" "prof" "teacher" etc and i think this is really important - it has to feel like THEIR space.

students joined sync via AUDIO and watched me broadcast Live Docs, Powerpoints or Chrome browser material while also having *optional* access to my video feed (so you can "see me"). but the majority of the course happened in "teams" and asynchronously: i used discord as a hub >

> for students to continuously check in with their teams, with plenty of options to check in with wider community. this is with channels like #homework-help (global) OR with channels named after their team names (eg. #polar-bears-private). pic related/alted.

i had to be able to build in opportunities to self-experiment (through the "writespaces" > journal entries), but the REST OF THE EVALUATION COMPONENTS relied on community integration. so i had to make sure this server was pretty robust or everyone fails lol. BUT it also makes >

> an important point about how "good" writing happens: iteratively, and in community. (i learned this from @JayDolmage & @AdamHubrig)

by having 80% of my course dependent on working together, and constantly reiterating the benefits of that, my students were teamwork rockstars.

how do i make sure they're energized?
above screencap is the READ-AROUND activity. they had team workshops to edit journal content, and then R-As were low-stakes presentations that required other students to write ONLY CHEERLEADING. no critique.

we need more positivity in class.

the R-As prompted students to read a workshopped writespace entry and the Live Doc was for the rest of the class to CHEERLEAD them - they saw each other doing it, and they saw what makes "good" or "responsive" writing from their community's perspective. (a la @elizabethboquet )

the Workshop Worksheets were designed to be REALLY HARD to do if they didn't actually try to engage with their teammate's work. so a lot of megacognitive questions, but also questions that genuinely solicited their opinion instead of WrItInG CoNvEnTiOnS and EvAlUaTiOn MeThOdS.

because the classroom design was so THEM-FOCUSED, they felt like *they* were missing out if they were missing the syncs.
this isn't because i'm god's gift to teaching (this is sarcasm), it's because i made them invested in their OWN community, and therefore community writing.

so how do you construct an exam for a class that ostensibly teaches you how to be a contributing member of communities?

that was super hard LOL i admit that, but i'll show you what i did and you can improve it: the Community Portfolio :)

pic related / i'll explain:

the evaluation expectations HEAVILY rewarded community contributions, compassionate and thoughtful feedback, and the ways that students cared for others' work (and bodyminds!).

only TWO components are self-centered (metacognitive reflection, iterative writing visibility).

i did this because i KNOW that i can't "teach you academic writing" in 12 weeks. that's ridiculous. but i can make you a better community member and a thoughtful, critical thinker in 12 weeks. that's what i'm marking them on.

i also went hard on @asia_not_aha 's counterstory as>

>a central course-wide methodology: what is a master narrative? who is being left out? you'll see in workshop worksheet & read-around live doc, counterstorying questions appear. they learned to investigate salience and storying in a time where fake news is more relevant than ever

they created a Portfolio at the end that "balances" their OWN work to celebrate, but also allows them to investigate and reflect on the ways their OWN work could not have happened without their TEAM or the classroom community. their writespaces are about 65% of the final exam.

because it's THEIR course, the final 5% of their mark is awarded by THEM to team members who were strong community builders. not me.

i also explained "how this course worked" in their instructions >
here's the RATIONALE & EVALUATION document they got: docs.google.com/document/d/1DR…

i think they liked the amount of "say" they got in the classroom design, structure and execution. i made a resilient syllabus that changed when things got hard, and most team elements only had me facilitate -- not lead. they were their writing journey, i was just there to help.

i think they came because they felt invested in community. i think they kept coming because we made the space safe & cozy. i think they made it to the finish line because we built a community that could allow them to do that. that's all intentional -- we need to design that.

i made sure we had space to talk about counterstorying, accessibility, anti-racism, pandemic conditions, active warzone conditions - these are not "irrelevant" conditions in a writing course. i built those into writespace prompts so they had somewhere to "talk" about 2022.

and now i'm throwing all this out here, in the most open-access way i can, because i don't think rubrics and self-serve udl are the way forward. i think community udl is the way forward, and you can use any of this if it resonates with you. 🤍💜

#AcademicChatter @AcademicChatter

groups who appreciate these threads: @CASDW_ACR @_Pedagogue_ @HybridPed @DisabledAcadem @DisInHigherEd & @thephdstory @PhD_Genie & #AcademicTwitter #AcademicMentalHealth

also thanking @thellpsx @travisclau @AnnGagne @HannahntheWolf and @daniellelorenz for making me think. 🤍💙