ENGLISH DEPARTMENT D2L SITE
Completed by Catherine Hooper
Fall 2011
Submitted March 19, 2012Objectives of the Sabbatical Leave
The main objective of my sabbatical leave was to populate the English departmentD2L site (known as the CRC English Faculty Roundtable) with materials that would assist current and future composition faculty. This effort would update (and replace) the former English department websiteand create a repository for great teaching ideas, including materials supporting the SLOassessment process.
Objectives from original sabbatical proposal:
- To update materials for each of the six composition courses (41, 51, 101, 300, 301, 302) offered by the English department in order to better inform faculty (particularly adjuncts) of the kinds of assignments required and standards expected in each course—and to offer guidance through sample syllabi, assignments, grading criteria, and student papers.
- To collect materials generated thus far in the course of the SLO assessment process.
- To make this information more easily accessible by posting materials to the English department D2L site.
- To create a forum (in real time and/or through D2L) for faculty to share course materials.
Abstract
I. Accessing the English Department D2L Site
The newly expanded CRC English Faculty Roundtable site is accessible to members (English and Reading department faculty and IAs are automatically members) through D2L.
II. Personal Evaluation of the Project
The Roundtable has all kinds of useful materials to offer faculty members, from the basics of SLOs and course information to syllabi, rubrics, assignments and activities, useful links, research and citation materials, SLO assessment materials, and more. The process of putting the site together turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, requiring a re-structuring of the project as the Fall Semester unfolded.
III. Overview of the CRC English Faculty Roundtable
This section provides details of the layout and content of the Roundtable D2L site.
IV. Methods of Sharing the Project
The site has been accessible to all English faculty members throughout the expansion process. Faculty support is verbally strong (although such verbal support has not always been followed by action in terms of submitting materials to the site).
V. Summary
The site has much to offer the department, but it still has room to grow.
VI. ADDENDUM: sample layout of course section from Roundtable D2L site (Engwr 51).
I. Accessing the English Department D2L Site
One disadvantage (for advantages, see below) of moving the department site to D2L from its former website location has been the narrowing of its accessibility. Anyone (students included) could access the faculty resources web page via the CRC Englishwebsite, but with D2L, only registered members have access. Becoming a member requires communication with an organization leader (currently Heather Hutcheson or me)—and the sharing of the potential member’s employee ID number. Once a member is added to the organization, access is as with any D2L site—the site is listed under ‘Member’ as ‘CRC English Faculty Roundtable.’ (We also manually add new adjuncts as we hire them.)
While this means of access might seem cumbersome and perhaps also restrictive, it does help protect the materials posted on the site, some of which are not designed for student eyes (for example, details of department final exams).
Access for Professional Standards Committee Members
For permanent access to the site, please email me your request, including your employee ID number, at , and I will add you to the Roundtable. For temporary access, you may enter D2L using a ‘dummy member’ account with the following ID and password: w0004358a / changeme (but please do not change the password!).
II. Personal Evaluation of the Project
First Steps
- To update materials for each of the six composition courses (41, 51, 101, 300, 301, 302) offered by the English department in order to better inform faculty (particularly adjuncts) of the kinds of assignments required and standards expected in each course—and to offer guidance through sample syllabi, assignments, grading criteria, and student papers.
- To make this information more easily accessible by posting materials to the English department D2L site.
The easiest (if somewhat time-consuming) part of the project was updating the informational materials concerning each course. I have always thought the transferring of what we used to call ‘Form 4s’ to online form in Socrates made the information easier to access but harder to absorb. The information from Socrates for each composition course can now be found on the Roundtable as more easily readable Word documents. The transfer involved some reformatting of the information and the exclusion of some details not pertinent to most instructors (such as digital signatures, etc.). SLOs appear in their own subsections; the remaining materials are covered in subsections titled ‘If you haven’t taught the course before: info from Socrates.’
The hardest part of the project was getting enough of my colleagues involved in the submission of materials to the site. This challenge was not something I had anticipated at the outset(but it had a huge impact on the planned process of the project).
I started the fall semester by sharing at the department flex meetings the rationale for the project and my plans for getting faculty input: At bi-weekly intervals throughout the semester, I would contact faculty teaching (or with a history of teaching) the different courses and ask them to send me syllabi, assignments, grading criteria, or anything else they felt pertinent. Faculty would submit documents to the relevant section in the dropbox (which already had a basic structure set up by Heather Hutcheson) and add explanatory notes as necessary. I would then access the dropbox submissions, make decisions about how to title and organize the materials, and then post them to the site, sharing explanations as necessary.
I started at the lowest level, Engwr 41, since I am the department ‘course expert,’ with ready access to materials for that course. In the initial email contact with course-level faculty, I reviewed the purpose of the project and requested materials. While I awaited responses, I busied myself with parts of the project that I could carry out on my own, mainly posting SLOs and Socrates information but also planning and creating some new sections for the D2L site (RWC, useful links, SLO assessment materials, etc.). Responses, alas, were few and far between at each course level despite repeated entreaties, so much so in fact that I ended up abandoning the sequential requests and instead resorted to department-wide appeals for materials in any and all courses/areas.
When I took on this project, I had feared being inundated with materials and had planned to seek assistance from course experts in sorting through them. As a result, I was taken aback when theanticipated inundation looked more like a trickle. But perhaps I should have known better.
Because I have been there myself every semester for almost twenty years, I understand that, once classes start, an English teacher becomes quickly overwhelmed with preparation and grading. I know only too well how hard it is to keep track of demands beyond those of the normal everyday realities of teaching English composition. However, I could not have imagined some other possible causes for the paucity of submissions that I have heard from a couple of adjunct faculty. One related to a sense of proprietary ownership, to the fear that, once a faculty member has materials posted on D2L, he or she relinquishes that ownership. (Apparently this is common practice at the four-year colleges.) While this is not true in any formal sense here at CRC, it is likely that materials posted tothe Roundtable on D2L do become common property, and the originator may not necessarily be acknowledged as such. The second related to a fear of charges of plagiarism. Many of us recycle or rework materials that we first came across in text books we have used. While it is generally considered an acceptable practice in the normal day-to-day conducting of classroom teaching (at least in English writing), it is one that becomes more questionable once that material is ‘published’ on D2L. Indeed, recent (anecdotal) history tells of a Sierra College faculty member who was apparently fired for failure to give credit to source material in an online 300 course that required students to give credit to all source material. (I’m sure there is more to the story of this job termination, but this is how the faculty member argued that her fear was well-founded.)
In spite of such reticence on the part of some faculty, a handful of others came through with materials for the site. As a result of these contributions, we now have a more operable and useful site than we did previously, one that provides faculty with resources and a platform for sharing that will be beneficial to the department and to our composition students.
Later steps
- To create a forum (in real time and/or through D2L) for faculty to share course materials.
Faced with the obstacles mentioned above, I abandoned my original plan of holding an end-of-semester, face-to-face, materials-sharing event because I knew faculty would be feeling even more swamped at that time. Instead, I set up a Spring 2012 Flex activity, for which I invited all English adjunct faculty to bring (or pre-submit) an activity or assignment that they could share with colleagues at the flex department meeting and that I would then post to D2L. Faculty received an email in the closing weeks of the Fall Semester and a reminder in early January, preceding the Flex meeting. Three attending faculty members brought materials to share—others subsequently promised to submit independently and, of these, maybe two did. In spite of the apparent reluctance of many to share at this particular pre-arranged event, I am hoping that future similar events might have a higher rate of participation. Those in attendance certainly seemed to appreciate the materials that were shared and posted to the site.
- To collect materials generated thus far in the course of the SLO assessment process.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of SLO assessment materials was also not as straightforward as I had hoped. Previous materials had been submitted in hard copy, and the related folders had been mislaid in the process of switchingamong department chairs. A few replacement materials were submitted for past semester SLO assessments, but not as many as had originally been shared. Submissions for the current SLO assessment, requested this semester, have been much more forthcoming, however. I believe this may be a case of faculty getting used to the new system.
III. Overview of the structure of the CRC English Faculty Roundtable D2L site
The site consists of a series of sections (folders), each with its own subsections (folders, files, or links). Sections 1-6 address our six composition courses: Engwr 41, 51, 101, 300, 301, 302. Each course level has a similar arrangement of folders (for sample layout, see Addendum):
SLOs
Course information from Socrates
Sample course syllabi
Essay assignments (sometimes with rubrics and/or related peer-review activities)
Research-related assignments
Timed writing assignments (+ department exam details/samples where relevant)
Other (journals, in-class activities, etc.)
Other sections provide materials as follows:
7. Rubrics: grading criteria from CSUS and UCD.
8. Literature materials: final exam and specific British Literature assignments (Literature courses are taught only by full-time faculty, who tend to share materials as the switch from one faculty member to the next occurs. I anticipate more entries appearing here as these switches take place.)
9. Creative Writing materials: autobiography, peer response, rubrics, journals, workshops, short writing assignments, helpful tips, readings.
10. Cross-course materials (materials that can be applied across the different levels of composition): an eclectic assortment from research to proofreading.
11. Readings (for faculty orstudents).
12. Research materials: links to library and other handouts.
13. Avoiding Plagiarism:links to library and other handouts.
14. Reading and Writing Center: link to RWC web pages.
15. Reading-course related materials: text-book review project and some readings.
16. SLO-related materials: critical reading; critical thinking; citing; communication.
17. Useful links: mostly research/citation oriented.
IV. Methods of Sharing the Project
The site has been available to site members since the start of the project, and faculty have been reminded of its existence at regular intervals—most recently this last week atthe midterm point. In theory, the department has a lot of support for the site. Most think it a great way to share and to network. However, while several members of the English department have been extremely generous about sharing their materials, most admit that they do not think of it as often as they should. Following up through D2L’s tracking system, I learned that about half of the Roundtable’s members had visited the site and opened up something on the site, most spending between a few and ten minutes doing so. (Some may have visited and browsed without actually accessing anything, but I have no way of knowing this.) A couple of members, however, had spent between 30 and 45 minutes on the site, which leads me to believe they found valuable materials there. One member (an instructional assistant in the Reading and Writing Center [RWC] as it turns out) had spent almost three hours. Though the site was not designed with the RWC in mind, it makes complete sense that it should provide materials of great help to our RWC IAs as they work with our composition students. Gratifying as it is to learn this, it’s clear that the site is not reaching as many faculty members as its originators would like it to. In time, though,I believeit can still become so, but this will require continued reminders and encouragement.
V. Summary
The expansion of the CRC English Faculty Roundtable D2L sitewas a vital project for the department, and its current status shows it to be a robust and useful site for the English department and for composition instructors (including those new to CRC) in particular. It is, however, a work in continual progress. I (and several other invested colleagues) have high hopes that it can still become a key component in establishing and maintaining strong standards within the department and for encouraging engagement and the production of fresh ideas amongst department members—ultimately, and most importantly, for the benefit of our students.
ADDENDUM: sample layout of course section from Roundtable D2L site (Engwr 51)