Just Adjusments: A Portfolio of a Semester's Teaching

Dear reader: Thanks for taking the time to look over these materials. What an enjoyable time I've had in the weeks since I posted my mid-term reflection. The best part has been witnessing some of the projects that have evolved from their beginnings earlier in the semester. Look at these two collages that Emily posted:

The first one made me think of some of the challenges that come with collages; the postage stamp feel doesn't take advantage of the visual composing space and the message is hard to pick out. The revision makes me very pleased--it frames space, works with arrangement, pops visually to create emphasis. It says something.

I have to say that it has been instructive for me to stop and reflect on the semester. If I'm honest, I was worried about the beginning of the class. I have two classes right now and in one we have read a good deal and had some wonderful lecture/discussion-based conversations. In this class, things have gone better when we started making projects and moved away from readings. I was worried about finding the right mix for this class, and it's still something I need to think through.

In any case, I know I enjoy looking over the projects students have created. I'm more impressed than ever with their abilities to learn new modes of composing in a short time. If nothing else, I'm erring clearly on the side of asking students to be producers rather than consumers of new media. You can get a good sense of how I've been articulating that philosophy of late from my Computers and Writing Presentation from this year. I'll embed a version of it here:

Transforming the Teaching of Literature from Daniel Anderson on Vimeo.

So, keeping that student-producer philosophy in mind, let me share some specifics about what has been happening this semester. I wish I could capture and link to all of the interesting things that I've looked over, but there is no way to reference them all.

Playlists

The playlist assignment went well, I think. I'm always eager to hear what kinds of music appeals to others and I learned a lot from the selections in the lists. I'd forgotten that I like Snow Patrol and it was great to sample Brendan James, Rufus Wainwright, Muse, Keane, Rue Royale, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (great band name), Nellie Mckay, Malcolm McClaren, and About Her, among others. I've also been impressed with the ways the playlists took off with HTML. I've traced the development of playlists over the last few years in a video, and I see that trend continuing. It's fantastic that learning a few HTML codes puts writers in the control room when it comes to finding and arranging materials online. Images, videos, song samples, pages with lyrics are all at our disposal and I like seeing people stitch it together. I think I need to push on this a bit more--composing as collecting, an expression of the intellectual ragpicker's journey through the Interwebz. A sampling of playlists appears below but I have to highlight the Seymour Glass playlist--it is really well done.

Podcasts

I feel like podcasts need to be part of a composition class. There is just something about using Audacity to put together an essay that seems important. I think it has to do with how different, and yet how similar composing with an audio editor can be. The idea of having layers of information that flow into one another, and being able to visually see the spikes of sound that are coming together is really different than watching word after word pile up on a page. But still the end result is a linear composition--something with a beginning, middle, and end, something that must hold together based on its ideas, something that needs focus, transitions, and clear language.

As far as the success of the projects, I have more mixed feelings. It simply is not easy to compose an audio essay. There is the foreign feel of having to write into and out of snippets of audio. There are the skill hurdles that come from learning the program. And there are technical problems with microphones, file conversions, etc. A big question for me has to do with the production quality. Can you create a podcast that isn't polished and of high quality and still get the conceptual benefits of this kind of composing? Probably, but I don't want that. The real challenge is to rise to these constraints and still put together something fine.

I feel like every podcast needs some more work--some more than others. I also feel like I have witnessed some terrific processes of revision as students have gone about reworking these podcasts. Listen to Caitlin's revision of her podcast--I think it still has a way to go, but shows the need to keep revising these in order to get them into the right kind of shape. (The first draft is rougher technically, but also doesn't tie together the literary argument as well.) Meredith has done at least five different versions of her podcast. (Compare the early drafts with the latest versions.) Scott, too, has worked and reworked the composition--the latest version is almost entirely different than the first effort.

I really feel like this piece of the class can be better taught next time. I feel like more reflection about how the revisions are going will be the key. These projects have evolved since the first time I tried this and I'm determined to give them more time and more intellectual presence the next time around.

Collages

What's weird about doing collage assignments is how little I feel myself helping with the technical dimensions of image editors. Two years ago we spent loads of time in class going over layering, masking, how to crop (when things weren't Scottish), etc. Now, it seems like many members of the class figured out much of that on their own. This makes me wonder about the mix of skill-based instruction that should be present in a classroom. Every class is filled in part with skills--writing exercises, library research tutorials, even discussions of passages are in many ways based on showcasing skills. But what about technical skills like masking? This is not a new question; I've wrestled with it for years, but the different levels of help required cast it in a new light. Some students used Photoshop Elements--which I have less familiarity with. Some even had newer versions of the program. Some students used GIMP. All of this meant that my role in showing how to do the technical moves was diminished from what it has been in the past.

I'll be curious to learn what students thought about this. Would more guidance have been helpful. In some cases, I feel as if the collages would benefit from their creators employing one additional move. I really think that masking or cutting out pieces of the images is crucial. You can make a collage without it, but it's really tough. Less hands-on time might mean that some students missed out on that crucial skill. I need to make sure that isn't the case. Still, most of the collages turned out to be quite successful. Some of the highlights from my looking over the drafts include

Star Girl

Benjy Compson

I Carry Your Heart With Me

Madame Bovary

Janie Crawford

Wagon Wheel

One nice insight that came out of the class was the success that Ashton had working with collages initially and the way this translated into a challenge through which she commented on the collages of others and took the lead in helping others rework their images. I think this is important because for each assignment there are usually sixty or more percent of people for which it clicks. But for some it just takes a bit more of a push to get the concepts and link them to the skills that might help take things to the next level. Ashton helped Sarah, for instance, and you can get a sense of the development going on by looking at the way Sarah changed characters and reworked her collage.

Live Podcasts

These are fun. One thing I wonder about when teaching is the way we break things up. We do one unit, one assignment, and then move on to another. I'm wondering what it might be like to build a whole course around something like conducting live podcasts. The thing is, at first, no one is quite sure what these things are like, but by the end of it, with a better idea, I think people could conduct another with more success. It's like anything--the more you do it, the better you will get. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to keep working on these. I think I may not do them next time. I've uploaded the live podcasts, though the audio turned out a bit rough.

This also leads me to another question about teaching this class: how much group work should be conducted. I'm a big fan of group work, but lately have focused on trying to get individuals connected to creativity through technology projects. I'm wondering if more day-to-day group activities would be good for this class. Of course, there are pluses and minuses, but the interpersonal dimensions of getting to know one another and building a community should tip the scale.

Videos

The video assignment has gone well so far. The big change I've implemented this semester is moving away from using still images in videos toward working with excerpts from films. This comes in part from working so closely with the Coen brothers films this semester. We covered them extensively so I wanted to translate that into some hands-on activities. This has resulted in a pretty dramatic compositional transformation--writing about film with film. This is made possible by remix approaches to content--the film used to compose already exists; we take the samples and use them as raw materials/quotations for the essays.

Since I had not assigned this version of a video task before, I decided to go ahead and work on an essay myself. A lot of this had to do with asking students to use the Premiere Elements application bundled on most of their computers--I didn't really know how to work the thing, so I needed a project to help me learn the program. I also learned a lot by composing the essay. The biggest insight has to do with the amount of text required for the video essay. I had first thought I would extemporaneously speak over the movie clips, which is what I did for the draft. In listening to my draft and re-recording my voiceover I found it was necessary to write down what I had previously recorded to get new clips of similar durations. As I transcribed the draft speech, I made subtle changes to the language and argument.

Essentially I was revising my text into a final draft of the vocal elements of the essay. When finished I was at around three single-spaced pages. This surprised me because I had been pitching the essays as light on text, as something in which authors would have to heavily distill points to mesh them with the video. In retrospect I see the video essay as more similar than different than a print essay about a film--it contains lots of analysis but pitches it vocally using film clips as both the backdrop and the excerpts under discussion. I called my video "Is He Bona Fide: Everett McGill's Sincerity"; I guess I'll embed it here:

Is He Bona Fide? from Daniel Anderson on Vimeo.

I'm still waiting for most of the essays to come in, but so far I've enjoyed looking over the drafts. One thing I've noticed is that with this project the tools really do shape the way that the projects turn out. Kevin's draft, for instance, does a nice job of working within the constraints of Windows MovieMaker, which really calls for more focus on text and limits what you can do with sound. Emily's video, which was composed with Premiere Elements is able to make more manipulations with sound.

What's ironic a bit is that after giving all of this thought to the shape of an essay about film that uses film as a medium, many of the students are choosing to do mashups. This is fine. I love mashups, and they are turning out well. I like them all, but I'll embed the initial YouTube-posted clips here for you to check out:

Portfolios

I always love looking over portfolios. I worry that students are writing to tell me what I want to hear--inevitable in some ways, and, to be honest, I do want to hear about their experiences. But I'm really interested in motivation and growth. That may be presumptuous--perhaps there has been little of that and asking students to demonstrate it is unfair. All of this is the main impetus behind asking that the portfolios be written for someone outside of the class. At this point, many students have shared the reviews of outsiders about their work. So far, I'm not sure what to make of them. I think there may be some issues with the idea of formality. The reviews feel like they are offering formal evaluations, a bit. I guess this is fine, but I'm thinking in the future I need to make some adjustments. I think that might be my new mantra--adjustments, adjustments, adjustments.

Anyway, I love portfolios. Most people don't know it, but there is a log function on the class Web site that allows me to see what has been opened, updated, when, etc. I really appreciate it when I can see that someone has been reworking something--the playlists, for instance, have been opened and updated dozens of times this week; since they were the first assignment we did some three months ago, this pleases me no end. I'm also impressed with the way that Emily, Grant, Meredith, Anthony, and others have been revising their portfolios. One thing I noticed was that Emily was using the comment function to add remarks on her portfolio. I had never thought of this before; my sense was that the portfolios were a kind of final document, to be polished and submitted. I need to think about how to integrate Emily's insight into future portfolios. How can they be more of a living document about which authors and others comment? Hopefully I can figure out a way to couple this impulse with a more focused involvement of outside readers.

In looking over the collections of work so far in the class, I'm convinced that portfolios give instructors a much better sense of the strengths of students. A single project might be hit or miss, but a collection allows one to see whether someone has technical acumen, strong skills in analysis, an adeptness with language, all kinds of strengths.

The reflections also tell a good deal about what has taken place behind the scenes. Not every portfolio goes into enough detail about revisions or about learning, effort, personal challenges, and so forth. But these are a good start. Ultimately, I want students to feel like the portfolio is the meta-composition for the class, a collection and argument that ties all of their work together. A sampling of portfolios appears below but let me point specifically to Anthony's portfolio--it is quite impressive.

Challenges

The last component of the assessment process for this class is the issuing of challenges. I take this lesson from my old auto shop teacher who once told me, everyone is different; the key is to find the right challenge for the right person. I base challenges on creativity theory that specifies that complacency or too much comfort inhibits motivation and imagination. I'm not sure that the challenges I devise are the right ones--everyone is welcome to modify them. Some of them include not just taking projects to the next level, but making them top-notch; working with others to strengthen literary or technical expertise and help others do the same; taking a leadership role; making the portfolio more than a simple collection of materials; increasing self-promotion; and so on.

As I wrap things up, I need to think about my own strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and come up with a challenge for the class in the future, and for my teaching in general. As I mentioned, I need to work on the role of content in my classes. I feel like working with tangible texts like No Country for Old Men and O Brother, Where Art Thou? was beneficial. Some of the short stories we covered early in the term felt less successful to me. I'm not sure why. Additionally, I realize that I need to focus more in this class on bringing my strengths in new media composition into the intellectual mix more clearly. Big theoretical questions like What is a text?, How do media shape composition?, or How do networks relate to the social dimensions of writing and learning? should be more present in this class.

I think, implicitly, concerns about media and composition play out in the class, but I need to make them more of the daily content. For instance, in listening to Travis's revised podcast, I was struck by the idea of using voice as a heuristic for teaching these projects. I stress the need for an informal/conversational voice in the genre of the podcast. But I was thinking that once that vocal text has been laid down and recorded, it makes sense to transcribe it and then re-record it for production quality or to clear up glitches. This got me thinking about my own process for my video where I discovered that in the transcription stage I also found myself editing for the clarity of the ideas. I just think there is much to learn by switching back and forth between recording the voice live, transcribing it into print, recording it again, perhaps switching the order of these processes, listening, reading. Just thinking of words flowing through these projects in different ways is helpful to me, but the key would be to make that a conscious part of the composing process.

So, I'll close with my new mantra as my challenge--make adjustments. Figure out how to get the right kinds and amounts of content in the course. Remind yourself about the insights you have into questions of media composition and be sure to make these concerns more present in the class. Continue to learn from the projects, from the students. Keep making projects you assign. Write about it. Share that writing. And hear to what others have to say about the teaching.

Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think. I'm listening,

Dan