COETAIL Final Project--Creative Writing Moves Online
Another post toward my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)
Midway through the fall 2013 university semester, a family emergency took me to the U.S. Of the six courses I was teaching at a Japanese university, five were effectively handed to other university instructors under my supervision; one course, Elements of Fiction/Creative Writing--Fiction, I retained full control of. This 15-week creative writing course, which transitioned from a traditional face-to-face classroom course to an online course with very little time for the shift became by default my COETAIL final course project.
GOALS
My aims in moving the course online were as follows:
Smoothly transition students in my 15-week Advanced English (TOEIC scores 600+) content-based creative writing course from a traditional face-to-face classroom to an online WikiSpaces virtual classroom for the remaining six weeks of the course.Provide opportunities and motivation for students to apply the four main language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in an online community while meeting my obligations to provide to students a challenging, enriching and useful university Advanced English course.Effectively guide students through short fiction writing process steps--from story starts to drafts of short stories to polished, class publishable, complete short stories.
TOOLS
Language Lab
I was able to reserve a language lab for the class for the remainder of the course--this provided computer access for all students during class time; the lab was available to my students during class time even when I was not present.
WikiSpaces
I hastily created a WikiSpaces site for the course and uploaded weekly assignments, adapting them to make use of comment features. Students, guided by the syllabus on the site, were assigned weekly writing exercises to complete and post in the comments section and were required to comment on other student work. Outlines, character and detail tasks were posted via comments; story drafts and final stories were emailed to me then posted to WikiSpaces pages as PDFs. Peer evaluations took place in a hybrid manner with a substitute teacher present in the room.
iMovie and YouTube
Using iMovie I created six videos--one for each class meeting during the course weeks 9-15 when I was away. I uploaded a new video to YouTube each week and linked to these from the WikiSpaces page. Four of the six videos were of me speaking to the students "directly." Two videos featured only my voice and images.
Email
I received completed story drafts by email and uploaded those to the site as PDFs for student commenting.
Word comment features
I used Word comment boxes to make teacher comments directly on student story drafts and sent the story with comments to students via email attachment.
Teacher comments on student story draft using Word Comment features
Google Doc (forms) for a final evaluation
The course evaluation for students was created via Google Doc forms.
Student Course Evaluation created with Google FormsINTRODUCTION AND IMPLEMENTATION
In weeks 7 and 8, my last face-to-face sessions with the students, the class moved to the language lab. There we did a Twine interactive fiction exercise to prime students for being creative and open-minded with their story plots in my absence. I also introduced my students to WikiSpaces and directed students to the syllabus on the site, which indicated which site page to visit for instructions on class tasks and homework assignments. From week 9 the course was online, and students were expected to keep up with the weekly schedule as outlined in the syllabus on the WikiSpaces site. During weeks 12-15 the university determined that students needed to be in the language lab with a substitute teacher present during class hours; that teacher functioned as an attendance taker and monitor but did not teach.
Each week I uploaded a new video to be viewed during the class hours each week. I tried to be online for students who were online during class time, although this was not always possible due to the time difference between Yokohama and Boston. I commented promptly, provided feedback via WikiSpaces comments, and chased down students who had not completed the week's tasks with WikiSpaces messages and email. Most of the students stayed on schedule. When I received story drafts via email, I uploaded those as PDFs to WikiSpaces for student commenting, and provided detailed feedback using Word comment boxes.
Peer Evaluations Video for Week 13
STUDENT REACTIONS
Students expressed mixed feelings about the course going online: most were disappointed over losing face-to-face time with their teacher and classmates.
I really like the atmosphere the class with Thompson, not the online. I hope Thompson coming back and taking your class again!!Spending more time with teacher onsite would be great. Other than that, almost everything was satisfying.The class with Thompson (Week1-9) was very fun. Though I had a dread feeling to read a book written in English and write my own stories first, I finally complete all of class task without any difficulties. Talking about online weeks(week10-11), I got panic because there were no substitute teachers in the class time when I went to the LL2 class for few weeks. Shareing information with other classmates, I tried to do my task. It was very hard time for me.I think the plan was really good. Reading many types of story helped us to how to write story. Then we discussed about the story and could think about them deeply. We write story start and discuss with others and could help each others to make the stories better. And finally we choose one out of the story starts and finished up writing. I think this was good way to motivate students to write story The unexpect thing happened and we got online class but somewhat we made it. Thank you!For the first 1-9 weeks: The course was challenging because my imagination was challenged each week with writing different kinds of short stories. I enjoyed the discussion with Prof.Thompson about the stories that we read because she explained in details the difficult parts of the stories and challenged us with questions about the stories we read. For weeks 10-11: I had difficulty managing my time at home to doing the assignments and I tried my best to be on time with the submission in order to be able to participate with the discussions online. I thought that the examples of the videos that Prof.Thompson showed online were helpful in writing my outline and character details. For weeks 12-15: I was late with my submission and so I was not able to participate well in the discussions but I tried to make up during the class hours. I regret that I was not able to show my final story on time with my classmates.Students watched all the videos I posted, some videos more than once, and found that they were all "helpful" or "somewhat helpful" to their writing.
Both in the face-to-face sessions and online, most students were positive about teacher and peer feedback on their writing, some even a bit surprised by how helpful the peer feedback was:
Not only your feedback, but also other students comment helps me to get new perspectives and ideas in the story. In fact, my friend feedback really helped me to write a story. Through peer workshop, I can compared my and my friends' writings. Also, my friends have great imaginations which I never think of, so that I was very stimulated.I liked peer workshops and discussing in the class because that made me realize what is needed to my story or we could give advises to others to make their story better. Also sometimes there were big hints came from the little chat or workshops sometimes.What I had been said from my friend for the final story was same as Thompson, so that was very helpful. I might be able to improve my story by peer evaluations.
OUTCOME
Although students and I were saddened to have lost class time together, in many ways I met and exceeded my goals. I was able to continue guiding these students in creating original short stories despite my location outside Japan. Students had signed up for a creative writing course with me, and as promised, the course continued for the full 15 weeks under my guidance. The resulting student stories revealed significant writing skills advancement from the beginning to the end of the course including a solid grasp of the elements of fiction, as well as the mechanics of English-language fiction writing.
EVIDENCE
The evidence of student learning is readily apparent when comparing the initial story starts submitted toward the beginning of the course to the final short stories posted on the WikiSpaces site in week 15. All eleven students completed the course, most with strong grade outcomes.
REFLECTION
I would have preferred to have more time to plan out and design an online or hybrid course. Changes I would definitely make in a comparable situation in the future:
At the time of transition, I selected WikiSpaces for its ease of use and because I had previous WikiSpaces experience. In the future, I would evaluate various options to determine the best system and develop my site with more links, resources and images.A student learning network that allows submission of documents and eliminates email submission of student work would help ease the teacher work load.Student-to-student commenting could be even further utilized to enhance the classroom interaction and a sense of community.Introducing students to Gmail would enable the class to make full use of Google Docs. Google Hangouts or other form of real time meetings could be used for further opportunities for EFL student speaking and class interaction. Setting online "office hours" would enable students to consult with the teacher about their writing projects in real time.An online publishing opportunity via a class blog would enable students to share their work beyond the classroom. SHARING WITH COLLEAGUES
Several university colleagues, including my superior and the teacher monitor in weeks 12-15, were given access to the WikiSpaces site and were able to see my online teaching methods and approach. Videos were made public via YouTube. Several of my COETAIL blog posts have focused on this project.
WHAT I LEARNED
A successful EFL course requires face time and consultation time with a teacher. Creating online face time is critical even for an EFL course in which the main focus is writing. Online office hours are essential for an online course in writing. Many of the methods I employed for the online portion of the course I would incorporate into future traditional classroom courses. I would certainly use a WikiSpaces site or some other student learning network even for a traditional course taught in a Japanese university classroom without computers; there are so many benefits regardless of whether the course is traditional or online.
WAS THIS REDEFINITION?
Ruben R. Puentedura, http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/
It is difficult to say where this online teaching experiment fell on the SAMR model. Some components were augmentation, some modification and some were possibly redefinition. The WikiSpaces page introduced student control and pacing, lively commenting, and a place for the story drafts and final stories to "live" for students to revisit. Creating teacher videos for each week's course content meant I was distilling a message into a short format that could be played and replayed by students--a helpful tool in an EFL classroom where repetition can lead to mastery. Student comments on the WikiSpaces site were insightful, sometimes more so than feedback offered in face-to-face group situations; commenting online seemed to augment and in some cases improve on face-to-face feedback. Putting the class evaluation on Google Forms means the responses are saved online and easy to reference for future planning.
Certainly the course changed as a result of being offered online. Perhaps ideally this course would live on as a hybrid course--with some content and meetings online and other meetings face-to-face, since there are clear merits to both approaches. For the course to be taught most successfully whether traditional, hybrid or online in the future, careful consideration would need to be given to which student learning network is most appropriate, how to provide meaningful speaking opportunities during any online sessions, and how best to share the final short stories publicly to showcase the students' impressive fiction writing accomplishments.
I shall end with a final student comment:
First of all, this was my first try to write a fictional story. I have never tried it before, and I was somewhat worried. Nevertheless, I came to this far, and today is the last day of the course. It was a great time to study this course.
Midway through the fall 2013 university semester, a family emergency took me to the U.S. Of the six courses I was teaching at a Japanese university, five were effectively handed to other university instructors under my supervision; one course, Elements of Fiction/Creative Writing--Fiction, I retained full control of. This 15-week creative writing course, which transitioned from a traditional face-to-face classroom course to an online course with very little time for the shift became by default my COETAIL final course project.
GOALS
My aims in moving the course online were as follows:
Smoothly transition students in my 15-week Advanced English (TOEIC scores 600+) content-based creative writing course from a traditional face-to-face classroom to an online WikiSpaces virtual classroom for the remaining six weeks of the course.Provide opportunities and motivation for students to apply the four main language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in an online community while meeting my obligations to provide to students a challenging, enriching and useful university Advanced English course.Effectively guide students through short fiction writing process steps--from story starts to drafts of short stories to polished, class publishable, complete short stories.
TOOLS
Language Lab
I was able to reserve a language lab for the class for the remainder of the course--this provided computer access for all students during class time; the lab was available to my students during class time even when I was not present.
WikiSpaces
I hastily created a WikiSpaces site for the course and uploaded weekly assignments, adapting them to make use of comment features. Students, guided by the syllabus on the site, were assigned weekly writing exercises to complete and post in the comments section and were required to comment on other student work. Outlines, character and detail tasks were posted via comments; story drafts and final stories were emailed to me then posted to WikiSpaces pages as PDFs. Peer evaluations took place in a hybrid manner with a substitute teacher present in the room.
iMovie and YouTube
Using iMovie I created six videos--one for each class meeting during the course weeks 9-15 when I was away. I uploaded a new video to YouTube each week and linked to these from the WikiSpaces page. Four of the six videos were of me speaking to the students "directly." Two videos featured only my voice and images.
I received completed story drafts by email and uploaded those to the site as PDFs for student commenting.
Word comment features
I used Word comment boxes to make teacher comments directly on student story drafts and sent the story with comments to students via email attachment.
Teacher comments on student story draft using Word Comment featuresGoogle Doc (forms) for a final evaluation
The course evaluation for students was created via Google Doc forms.
Student Course Evaluation created with Google FormsINTRODUCTION AND IMPLEMENTATION In weeks 7 and 8, my last face-to-face sessions with the students, the class moved to the language lab. There we did a Twine interactive fiction exercise to prime students for being creative and open-minded with their story plots in my absence. I also introduced my students to WikiSpaces and directed students to the syllabus on the site, which indicated which site page to visit for instructions on class tasks and homework assignments. From week 9 the course was online, and students were expected to keep up with the weekly schedule as outlined in the syllabus on the WikiSpaces site. During weeks 12-15 the university determined that students needed to be in the language lab with a substitute teacher present during class hours; that teacher functioned as an attendance taker and monitor but did not teach.
Each week I uploaded a new video to be viewed during the class hours each week. I tried to be online for students who were online during class time, although this was not always possible due to the time difference between Yokohama and Boston. I commented promptly, provided feedback via WikiSpaces comments, and chased down students who had not completed the week's tasks with WikiSpaces messages and email. Most of the students stayed on schedule. When I received story drafts via email, I uploaded those as PDFs to WikiSpaces for student commenting, and provided detailed feedback using Word comment boxes.
Peer Evaluations Video for Week 13
STUDENT REACTIONS
Students expressed mixed feelings about the course going online: most were disappointed over losing face-to-face time with their teacher and classmates.
I really like the atmosphere the class with Thompson, not the online. I hope Thompson coming back and taking your class again!!Spending more time with teacher onsite would be great. Other than that, almost everything was satisfying.The class with Thompson (Week1-9) was very fun. Though I had a dread feeling to read a book written in English and write my own stories first, I finally complete all of class task without any difficulties. Talking about online weeks(week10-11), I got panic because there were no substitute teachers in the class time when I went to the LL2 class for few weeks. Shareing information with other classmates, I tried to do my task. It was very hard time for me.I think the plan was really good. Reading many types of story helped us to how to write story. Then we discussed about the story and could think about them deeply. We write story start and discuss with others and could help each others to make the stories better. And finally we choose one out of the story starts and finished up writing. I think this was good way to motivate students to write story The unexpect thing happened and we got online class but somewhat we made it. Thank you!For the first 1-9 weeks: The course was challenging because my imagination was challenged each week with writing different kinds of short stories. I enjoyed the discussion with Prof.Thompson about the stories that we read because she explained in details the difficult parts of the stories and challenged us with questions about the stories we read. For weeks 10-11: I had difficulty managing my time at home to doing the assignments and I tried my best to be on time with the submission in order to be able to participate with the discussions online. I thought that the examples of the videos that Prof.Thompson showed online were helpful in writing my outline and character details. For weeks 12-15: I was late with my submission and so I was not able to participate well in the discussions but I tried to make up during the class hours. I regret that I was not able to show my final story on time with my classmates.Students watched all the videos I posted, some videos more than once, and found that they were all "helpful" or "somewhat helpful" to their writing.
Both in the face-to-face sessions and online, most students were positive about teacher and peer feedback on their writing, some even a bit surprised by how helpful the peer feedback was:
Not only your feedback, but also other students comment helps me to get new perspectives and ideas in the story. In fact, my friend feedback really helped me to write a story. Through peer workshop, I can compared my and my friends' writings. Also, my friends have great imaginations which I never think of, so that I was very stimulated.I liked peer workshops and discussing in the class because that made me realize what is needed to my story or we could give advises to others to make their story better. Also sometimes there were big hints came from the little chat or workshops sometimes.What I had been said from my friend for the final story was same as Thompson, so that was very helpful. I might be able to improve my story by peer evaluations.
OUTCOME
Although students and I were saddened to have lost class time together, in many ways I met and exceeded my goals. I was able to continue guiding these students in creating original short stories despite my location outside Japan. Students had signed up for a creative writing course with me, and as promised, the course continued for the full 15 weeks under my guidance. The resulting student stories revealed significant writing skills advancement from the beginning to the end of the course including a solid grasp of the elements of fiction, as well as the mechanics of English-language fiction writing.
EVIDENCE
The evidence of student learning is readily apparent when comparing the initial story starts submitted toward the beginning of the course to the final short stories posted on the WikiSpaces site in week 15. All eleven students completed the course, most with strong grade outcomes.
REFLECTION
I would have preferred to have more time to plan out and design an online or hybrid course. Changes I would definitely make in a comparable situation in the future:
At the time of transition, I selected WikiSpaces for its ease of use and because I had previous WikiSpaces experience. In the future, I would evaluate various options to determine the best system and develop my site with more links, resources and images.A student learning network that allows submission of documents and eliminates email submission of student work would help ease the teacher work load.Student-to-student commenting could be even further utilized to enhance the classroom interaction and a sense of community.Introducing students to Gmail would enable the class to make full use of Google Docs. Google Hangouts or other form of real time meetings could be used for further opportunities for EFL student speaking and class interaction. Setting online "office hours" would enable students to consult with the teacher about their writing projects in real time.An online publishing opportunity via a class blog would enable students to share their work beyond the classroom. SHARING WITH COLLEAGUES
Several university colleagues, including my superior and the teacher monitor in weeks 12-15, were given access to the WikiSpaces site and were able to see my online teaching methods and approach. Videos were made public via YouTube. Several of my COETAIL blog posts have focused on this project.
WHAT I LEARNED
A successful EFL course requires face time and consultation time with a teacher. Creating online face time is critical even for an EFL course in which the main focus is writing. Online office hours are essential for an online course in writing. Many of the methods I employed for the online portion of the course I would incorporate into future traditional classroom courses. I would certainly use a WikiSpaces site or some other student learning network even for a traditional course taught in a Japanese university classroom without computers; there are so many benefits regardless of whether the course is traditional or online.
WAS THIS REDEFINITION?
Ruben R. Puentedura, http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/It is difficult to say where this online teaching experiment fell on the SAMR model. Some components were augmentation, some modification and some were possibly redefinition. The WikiSpaces page introduced student control and pacing, lively commenting, and a place for the story drafts and final stories to "live" for students to revisit. Creating teacher videos for each week's course content meant I was distilling a message into a short format that could be played and replayed by students--a helpful tool in an EFL classroom where repetition can lead to mastery. Student comments on the WikiSpaces site were insightful, sometimes more so than feedback offered in face-to-face group situations; commenting online seemed to augment and in some cases improve on face-to-face feedback. Putting the class evaluation on Google Forms means the responses are saved online and easy to reference for future planning.
Certainly the course changed as a result of being offered online. Perhaps ideally this course would live on as a hybrid course--with some content and meetings online and other meetings face-to-face, since there are clear merits to both approaches. For the course to be taught most successfully whether traditional, hybrid or online in the future, careful consideration would need to be given to which student learning network is most appropriate, how to provide meaningful speaking opportunities during any online sessions, and how best to share the final short stories publicly to showcase the students' impressive fiction writing accomplishments.
I shall end with a final student comment:
First of all, this was my first try to write a fictional story. I have never tried it before, and I was somewhat worried. Nevertheless, I came to this far, and today is the last day of the course. It was a great time to study this course.
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