TEACHING
Curricular Design
The
creation and development of new courses, in my opinion, belongs in both
Teaching and Scholarship, but I am placing it under Teaching. Over the last
five years, with the exception of SD100, I have created the syllabli for and
designed every course I have taught. I have also created syllabi for additional
courses, one of which will be used in the CMA program. Here is a link to the complete list of courses I have developed.
Though I have created many courses
for Methodist College over the last five years, a few stand out in my
development as a faculty member. The first is the one I discussed in the
introduction to my portfolio, HUM301. The research for that course reignited
the scholar in me and eventually led me to pursuing my Ph.D. in English
Studies. The second is HUM302, which is the travel course I take to New
Orleans. That course has allowed me to not only share my love for the culture
of a city with my students but to provide the students with the opportunity for an immersive, experiential learning course. The third is ENG250
because it was in collaboration with another department.
I developed ENG250 for the RN to BSN program. Lori Wagner, the coordinator of the RN to BSN
program, approached me about developing a composition course designed
specifically for the needs of new RN to BSN students. L. Wagner identified gaps in
her students’ knowledge and skills, one being written communication. In
discussions with L. Wagner, I inquired about specific writing skills her students
lacked and specific types of assignments her students would need to accomplish.
Using this information, I designed not just a syllabus for her course, but a
pedagogical plan for the first term it would be taught. I not only kept in mind
the educational needs of her students but their unique situation of being adult
learners, with full time jobs, going back to school. One way in which I tailored the course to the
unique population of students was finding ways to accomplish the learning
objectives with less formal, academic essays than my ENG201 students write. Why
was this necessary? Because her population all have full-time nursing careers
and because most of them have not written an academic essay in many years.
Those factors make many of them nervous about and fearful of writing academic
essays. In order to have them analyze an argument but not in a full academic
essay, I merely broke it down into parts and had them post about it in a series
of discussions. They accomplished the same task but in smaller, less
frightening pieces. Considering how well they did with it, I may actually do
the same for my ENG201 class. Through the process of designing and developing
the course, I asked L. Wagner to review the syllabus, lessons, and assignments to be
sure they would meet the needs of her students and of her program. She was
quite pleased, and the partnership did not end there.
L. Wagner and I decided to use this unique opportunity of the students being in both my ENG250 class and her N400 class. We
decided to coordinate the lessons and assignments of our courses to line up
with each other. We arranged our units so what I was teaching them in ENG250 could be applied in N400. For example, my course started with
netiquette and how to write discussion posts, so they would be prepared for the
online discussions in Lori’s course. We also created two shared assignments, in
which they worked on the process of creating and revising a paper and a
presentation in my course but used a topic from Lori’s course. We had several
reasons for using these shared assignments:
- New RN to BSN students are overwhelmed by going back to school and taking all of their courses online. By using the same assignment for credit in both courses, it not only lightened their work load but created trust in our college and the RN to BSN program that we truly care about our students and their education.
- General education courses are often “blown off” by nursing students because they do not see the value in them. The students often have the mantra of “just get through them.” This lack of investment in general education courses results in the students not learning at the optimum level. By having the topic of the assignment something from N400, our hope was to create more investment in the assignment and in the ENG250 course.
- L. Wagner often receives poorly written assignments in her RN to BSN courses. She has identified written communication as one of the weaknesses of her students. Due to the lower level of written communication in the assignments she receives, L. Wagner believes that the students’ mastery of the material is hindered because they lack the development of ideas and analysis gained from the written assignments. Therefore, by having the students develop the assignments in ENG250 through the drafting process and feedback from me, the students—theoretically—would have a greater understanding of the concepts and content about which they wrote. Not to mention, L. Wagner would not have to suffer through stacks of poorly written assignments.
Pedagogical Assessment & Improvements
Figuring
out which practices are most effective is a never-ending process of research
and assessment. Preparing for a class,
for me, begins the previous semester.
Throughout a semester I elicit feedback from my students regarding
lessons and assignments. I use this
feedback, along with their performance (specifically grades) on assignments, to
revise my lessons and assignments. In
addition to the feedback from students, I seek out feedback from my colleagues
by discussing assignments and asking for constructive criticism. Additionally, staying current in my field
exposes me to “best practices,” trends, and innovations in my discipline, which
I often use to redesign lessons and assignments.
Another source of information I can use for assessment is student
evaluations of my courses. After I
receive the student evaluations from my courses, I find the weaknesses that my
students note and try to find ways to strengthen those assignments or teaching
strategies. One example of using student evaluations to assess and improve my
teaching was in my LIT102: Screen to Script course. In the evaluation, a student commented, “For
a nursing school, although this is a required course it is sometimes hard for
student to see the importance of taking this course. But it was nice how Alice
was tied into nursing and made it more of an interesting project.” Based on the feedback from a previous
semester, I had already replaced Sense
and Sensibility with Alice in
Wonderland and found a way to relate it to the students’ future careers and
what they are currently studying in their disciplines. Now, I needed to consider replacing V for Vendetta with a different text
with which the students can more easily relate.
After some research, I chose to replace V for Vendetta with Warm
Bodies. Warm Bodies, though often only seen as a zombie version of Romeo and Juliet, is actually a social
commentary about how people become dead inside.
The novel and film teach the audience an important lesson: human contact, understanding, and acceptance
can save people. I thought, as future
healthcare professionals, this lesson and theme would be very relevant to the
students. The students' responses to Warm
Bodies in subsequent semesters has been extremely positive.
Another example happened with my ENG201 online class. A pattern in the
comments was lack of timely feedback to students. I had
always known that providing timely feedback was one of my weakest areas of
teaching, especially in my online classes.
Not having direct, face to face, contact with my students on a weekly
basis makes it easy to forget to respond to them. This leads to another weakness I identified
from the Spring 2014 student evaluations of ENG201 Online—I was not always
“present” in my online classes which hindered effective communication. I strove, in 2015, to improve my presence in
my online classes and my response time in all of my classes. I scheduled time on my calendar for course
work, to be sure to have time to devote it.
I also created weekly videos just to touch base with the students. I hoped my pedagogical research and redesign
made a difference. In Spring of 2015, the student evaluations of my ENG201 Online course were glorious! My efforts to
create more interactive learning and effective communication were successful. I literally did a happy dance in my office
when I read the student evaluations.
Here are some of the students’ comments:
“It was an online class but she took the
time to really communicate with us like she would have in an in person course.”
“The video discussions were VERY VERY
helpful.”
“The use of video to communicate with us
one on one helped in understanding the topic and what we could do to improve
our work.”
“I like Colleen Karn – although she did a
good job last semester, she really stepped up her game this semester for the
online class.”
In addition to the student course evaluations, which sometimes are lacking
in detailed information, at the end of every semester I have a “course review”
with my students during which we discuss what they found effective and
ineffective and their suggestions for improvements to the course. I find these sessions invaluable. It is my chance to learn from my
students. One such learning moment I had
was in the summer of 2014. My ENG201
class had a brilliant suggestion. I was
almost embarrassed that I had not thought of it myself. They said instead of learning all of the
components of an effective and successful argument and then getting a copy of
Friedman’s argument and looking for those components all at once, they should
have gotten a copy of Friedman’s argument at the beginning of the semester and
looked for the components step by step as we were learning them in class. *face-palm* Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that? They could apply the concepts immediately and
lessen the stress of analyzing the argument all at once before writing their
first paper, which is a rhetorical analysis of Friedman’s argument. In the Fall 2014 term, I put this new
strategy into place for my ENG201 classes.
I explained to those classes that they benefitted from the previous
class and told them the whole story (I believe in giving credit where credit is
due). When we finished with the Friedman
unit, I asked those classes what they thought of doing the analysis step by
step in conjunction with the lessons.
They said doing it a little at a time right after each lesson helped
them not only easily find the rhetorical strategies in Friedman’s argument but
also helped them better understand the concepts we discussed in class. Thank you Summer 2014 ENG201 class!
Innovations, Technology, & Online Teaching
I try to keep my instruction diverse in order to more effectively
engage my students. Some of the course
material, even for my face to face (F2F) classes, is online or videos I have
created. For ENG201, I created a new
lesson about descriptive writing. The lesson was
taught in a traditional F2F class, but used a video component in the
lesson. Additionally, students do group
projects, presentations, and create assignments in different modes: written, audio, visual, etc.
I use a great deal of technology in my classes to communicate with my
students, provide more effective feedback and instructions, and provide more
dynamic lessons. Some of the technology
I use is: audio feedback, video announcements, video feedback, video instructions, video lessons, screen recording feedback on papers, and blogs.
Online classes pose some of the greatest challenges when teaching. In order to help students orient themselves
to the course, I send an announcement at the very beginning of the semester
that contains an introductory video. The video is a screen recording of me
narrating as I navigate them through different aspects of the course on the
LMS. The video:
- Introduces the course and the instructor
- Explains how to navigate the class on the LMS
- Shows where to find course resources
- Communicates the expectations for assignments, communication, forums, etc.
- Explains the first assignments
For my online classes, I have been striving to provide the same dynamic
learning experience they would receive if they were in a F2F
classroom. To this end, I have been
creating narrated PowerPoints and videos to enhance the learning in my online
classes. I have found that these
materials, though created for online classes, actually benefit my F2F classes as well. The materials allow me
to flip my classroom and have the students view the lessons as homework. Then, when in the classroom together, we work
on the small group practice assignments, have discussions, and have student
led presentations.
I am the video queen. Due to the high volume of positive feedback from
students regarding my use of videos in online classes, I continue to make more
videos for my online and blended classes. Not only do I have videos for
lessons, instructions, and feedback, I have been adding videos for the online
discussions. There were a few topics in my online classes that, from the
postings in previous semesters, I knew were difficult for many students to
understand from just the discussion questions. They needed the discussion to be
put in context. I created a video to introduce one of these problematic
discussion topics, in an attempt to increase student comprehension. The
analysis in the students’ responses, overall, demonstrated a higher level of
comprehension. Beyond that, I emailed the students to ask if they found the
video helpful and would like to have similar videos for other discussion
topics. The responses I received stated that they very much found the video
helpful and would like to have more of them.
In fact, at least one student even mentioned that on the course
evaluation.
Another way I “accommodate the learning needs of my students” is by
providing video feedback on drafts for my online composition courses. In a F2F class I have a conference
with each student to review the student’s first draft of each paper. Because I cannot require my online students
to come in to my office for a conference, I used to simply write comments on
their drafts in lieu of a conference.
This feedback was never as thorough and helpful, in my opinion. In order to remedy this, I began doing screen
recordings of me discussing the student’s draft and even showing how to correct
formatting issues. This allowed the
students to hear my voice, in order to not misinterpret my tone, and to view
and review the video as often as needed.
I teach several classes online. One area in which students tend to struggle
in an online class is responding to peers’ posts in a class discussion. Most
students have a hard time finding a way to further the conversation that a
discussion is supposed to be. They merely state that they agree or disagree
with their peers’ posts and why. I wanted more from their responses. I wanted
them to truly carry on a conversational discussion. The questions was, how was
I going to facilitate that? About 1/3 of
the way through the fall term of 2016, I had an idea. In my HUM301 class, I told
my students that, in their initial posts, after they were done responding to
the discussion questions, to ask a question they would like their peers and
possibly even me to answer regarding the material and concepts in the
discussion. They were to write “My
Question:” followed by their question to the rest of the class. The first
discussion in which “My Question” was used, the difference was evident. The
responses to their peers’ questions were interesting, unique, and took the
discussion in new directions. They were actually talking to each other, not
just completing an assignment. It seemed as if some of the students were even
having fun with them. I found that I was having fun in the discussion as well.
I usually don’t participate much in the class discussion until after the
students have finished posting. The reason for this is because I do not want to
influence their ideas or hijack the direction of the discussion. Additionally,
I respond to individual posts when grading. Of course, I will step in with
comments early on if a student is misunderstanding a concept, in order to keep
that posting or response from confusing or misleading the other students.
Otherwise, I usually respond to the class as a whole with a video at the end of
the discussion process. However, with the addition of “My Question,” I am able
to participate in the discussion earlier without heavily influencing the
direction of the discussion. After the first time we used “My Question,” I sent
out an email to the students asking if they found it helpful. The students who
responded said they did. I then added “My Question” to the rest of the
discussions for the class. I have been using it ever since.
Research
Experiential learning and community engagement are both part of our
strategic plan. In my ENG201 and ENG250 courses, my students have an assignment
titled, “Community Health Proposal.” The students must identify a health
problem in their community and formulate a viable solution to the problem. Then
the students need to conduct primary research in their community. They have to
interview experts and/or stakeholders associated with the problem and/or
solution. This means the students must go out into their community and
establish associations with people in their field of study. Additionally, the
solution they propose could actually benefit their community, so students are
encouraged to pursue the solution beyond their course work. By focusing on a
local community problem, the assignment helps the students become aware that
there are problems in their community that they can be instrumental in solving.
Travel Courses
Methodist College is always trying to find ways to provide ours
students with true college experiences, and I fully support this effort. The college
identified several ways of doing this, one of which was through offering
travel courses. In response to this, I created two upper division travel
courses: HUM302: A City Speaks and ENG301: Navigating Wonderland.
In December 2015, I took 20 students on the inaugural trip to New
Orleans for HUM302: A City Speaks. The
travel course actually began months before we left, as I had a great deal of
preparation to complete. I arranged all
of the tours, hotel reservations, train reservations, and rental vehicle
reservations, for the travel component of the course. I created a course site on
our LMS that had a plethora of resources on New Orleans, traveling by train,
our hotel, and other course content. I also
created a class blog on Blogger that was our “virtual classroom” while traveling, as it was the central location for the
students blogs, class itinerary, blog topic assignments, etc. The entire travel component of the course was
experiential learning. The students,
walking through historic streets, learned about the architecture and history of
the buildings they were seeing. They
tasted traditional and cultural cuisine on the cuisine tour. They listened to jazz, blues, and big band
music that originated in the city. The
experiences are documented in the students’ travel blogs and in the class photo album.
I believe the travel course was a success because the majority of the
student evaluations were positive, with comments such as:
“I am so thankful that Methodist College allowed us to take this trip and
for Colleen Karn organizing everything to make the most of the trip. I learned
so much and hope that the college continues to allow students the opportunity
to take this trip.”
“Showing us the city made a huge difference in my learning. Anyone can
sit in a classroom and read about a place, but getting to experience everything
was really an amazing experience.”
My second class trip to New Orleans for HUM302, in January of 2017, proved
to be even more successful than the first one. After my first trip, in December
of 2015, I assessed and redesigned the itinerary based on student, chaperone,
and personal feedback. I omitted two destinations because they took up an
entire day and instead gave the students more time in between class sessions.
This allowed the students some breathing room to not feel so rushed and have
more time to work on their travel blogs during the day. Though we had one of
the coldest January weeks New Orleans had experienced in decades, according to
the local television meteorologists, and even though
that cold was coupled with rain, I achieved a professional victory and ended up
being ‘super instructor.’ After assessing the weather that was coming up the
next day—30’s and rainy in the morning warming to 40’s and rainy in the
afternoon—a day we were supposed to be outside all day on walking tours, I went
into action. With a bevy of phone calls and my most professional demeanor, I
was able to reschedule our walking tours to a day it was not supposed to be
cold and rainy (it was cold) and
rearrange our museum tours for the cold and rainy day. I handled it all while
walking the uneven sidewalks of the French Quarter and in between bites on our cuisine
tour. In a few hours, I had calmly and efficiently ‘saved the day.’ My
planning, patience, and professionalism have come a long way in the last five
years.
Currently, HUM302 is scheduled for Winterim 2018 with every seat having been filled. ENG301 is
scheduled for Summer of 2018 with the destinations of London and Paris. It is
our first international trip using our new international travel guidelines and
partnering with EF Study Tours.
Experiential Learning
Primary research and travel courses are both types of experiential
learning that I facilitate for my students. In addition to these, I also
encourage my students to participate in our co-curricular events, and service projects. Another form of experiential learning
is through guest speakers. I have been fortunate to have Kevin Stein, who is
the Poet Laureate of Illinois, speak to my LIT101 classes on two occasions. The
students reacted extremely positively to his guest appearance in class. Both
semester he came, he talked about his writing process as a poet, read some of
his poems that the students had been assigned for class, and answered questions
from the students. My students, who had previously groaned about poetry, were
now excited about it—well, most of them. I think talking to Kevin helped to
demystify poetry and make it more accessible to them.
Working with Students
I have become more aware of students with special needs in my classes
and worked toward helping them achieve their highest potential in my courses.
This is a journey of development as a teacher that I began in Spring 2015. I
was teaching a section of ENG201 in which there was a student who struggled
with her writing conventions. She struggled with using Standard American
English (SAE). This same student often would disengage from class discussion
and spend a great deal of time staring at her computer screen. When we had our
first one on one conference for a paper in that class, I was trying to
explain to her that she was going to need to put in extra effort with her
writing conventions in order to be successful in the course and with her
written assignments for her other courses. I told her that going to the CSS for
additional assistance would be beneficial to her and that she could also make
additional appointments with me. Then I began going through her paper, as I do
with all of my students, and tried to discuss with her areas that needed
clarification, elaboration, and support. About two paragraphs into the paper
she began reading emails on her laptop. I was frustrated and infuriated on the
inside but remained calm and professional on the outside. After the conference,
I was sure that the student did not care about the course or about her writing
skills. I also thought she was a disengaged and disrespectful student. A few
days later, I stopped by the CSS to find out if she had made an appointment to
work on her paper. T. Fox told me that she had been in three times already with
her paper. I was in shock. T. Fox also told me that the student gave her a list
of things that I had told her she needed to focus on in her writing. Again,
shocked. She was listening and obviously cared, or she would not have been to
the CSS three times with her work. T. Fox also said that the student thought I
was being extremely hard on her and even mean. "Me, mean? What? I was the one
taking my time to help her when she was blowing me off reading her emails!" That
was my initial response. Then I thought about all of her dedication to her work
by going to the CSS and realized that we had both misread each other. It was
then I was reminded that what we see from our students in the short time they
are in our class or an office visit is only a brief fragment of that student
and the student’s life. I asked the student to meet with me, and in that
meeting we discussed our misconceptions of each other. I told her the reasons
why I thought she was disengaged. She explained that was her coping mechanism
when she was stressed or felt inadequate. We learned a lot about each other,
and I learned a lot about what it meant to be teacher. We formed an alliance
dedicated to helping her through the course and with her written communication
skills. We worked through her papers page by page. We created an alternate
schedule for her work to allow her to work closely and often with me and the
CSS. Her work improved, her attitude in class improved, and our relationship
improved.
Since that time, I have been more conscious of students who seem to be
disengaged or struggling in class in ways beyond the understanding and
application of the concepts and skills. My focus, when in front of the
classroom, now goes beyond myself and my pedagogical choices and skills and
instead looks toward my students’ learning obstacles. I have become more aware
that I have students who are extremely introverted, have PTSD, are from a
culture that looks at asking for help as a weakness, and the list goes on. I
have put in extra time and effort not just helping these students feel
comfortable in my classes but to learn and perform at their highest possible
level.
One of my students, who I had in ENG101 in Spring 2016, is extremely
introverted. I did not realize this until several weeks into the semester. At
first I thought she was just bored and disinterested. However, after my first
one on one conference with her about her first paper, I figured it out. She was
so vibrant and passionate about her writing, when we were talking one on one,
that I was surprised it was the same student who sat so passively in class and
never joined class discussion. I wanted
that vibrant and passionate side of her to come out in class discussions
because both the student and the class would benefit. I then consciously made
an effort to ease her into class discussions by making her more comfortable. I
did this by building her confidence before asking her to speak. For example, we
went around the classroom, and each student talked about his or her chosen topic
for the assignment and why it was chosen. Then the class discussed possible
ways to develop the topics. I wanted to engage Student X, because I knew she
could be extremely helpful to her peers. I knew that Student X had background
in a topic one of her peers chose, so I engaged her in the following manner. I
said, “Student X, you helped coach youth sports, so you know more about this
topic than I do. What issues with parents being aggressive should Student Y
consider and research?” I made her the expert and gave her some direction for a
response. I really hoped that would help, and it did. She was still a bit shy
in her manner of speaking, but the more she talked about her experiences with
aggressive parents and how she handled them, the more confident her voice and
demeanor became. Now, I could not always do something like that for her with
every discussion, but any time I could find a way to encourage her to engage
her peers, I did.
Another example is when I try to help my students who are combat
veterans. Due to my husband and one of my closest friends being combat
veterans, I have experience with recognizing and understanding the issues
combat veterans face and have learned some techniques for dealing with those
issues. In 2016 I had two students with
special needs due to them being combat veterans. One student, Student A, had
difficulty dealing with lessons and assignments that he felt were not
immediately applicable to him. He also had difficulty dealing with his anger and
frustration in class. I understand both of those issues and worked to help him
with them in class. I would relate the assignments to real world applications
when discussing the assignments, to help him see the immediate value of them.
When Student A became agitated discussing his topic of how to improve the VA’s
medical services, I relayed to him that my husband was a combat veteran who had
similar issues with medical coverage and poor treatment from both the
military and the VA. Letting him know that I understood where he was coming
from and what he was facing changed our relationship. It seemed to help him
trust me and see me as an ally. This allowed me to step in and redirect him
when he would become agitated during other class discussions.
The other student with special needs due to being a combat veteran,
Student B, suffers from PTSD. Knowing that I am an advocate for veterans,
Student B often comes to my office when he needs a safe space to decompress. He
has very little patience for students who do not conduct themselves
professionally by being disrespectful to instructors or being disruptive in
class. He also has a difficult time handling stress—he even displays physical
signs of being stressed, of which I am keenly aware. For Student B, I have tried
to be a calming presence. I help him prioritize his work and find ways to come
up with manageable schedules and due dates. I have given him extra time on
projects and alternate due dates arranged around his major exams in other
classes, in order for him to decrease his stress and increase his success. I
have been a sounding board for his ideas to improve how the school deals with
veterans and given him advice on how to achieve some of his goals.
Writing Across the Curriculum
In the spring of 2014, I chaired the Writing Program ad hoc committee
to help create the objectives for the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)
program and the job description for the Writing Program Coordinator. Over the summer, I piloted a WAC assignment,
with the help of June West, in N211.
This entailed creating an appropriate assignment and assessment tools
for the assignment, presenting the assignment and APA information to the N211
class, assisting in student conferences of drafts, and gathering formative
assessment data in the form of student surveys regarding the WAC assignment and
process. In fall of 2015, I continued
the pilot in four sections of N211 with June West, Rich Ellis, Sue Smith, and
Val Ragon. I spoke to all of the classes
about the assignment and APA. I assisted
with all of Sue Smith’s student conferences and some of June West’s. Additionally, normative sessions, for assessing and grading the papers, were held with the faculty.
N211 was the pilot course for the WAC program, so I worked closely with
June West on the WAC assignment for N211.
J. West and I created the writing assignment, a template for the paper, and a comment sheet. I learned a lot working with J. West. I learned about ethical concepts of nursing,
but, more importantly, I learned about how writing is viewed and used in some
nursing courses.
Working as the Writing Program Coordinator, I assisted J. West in
redesigning some assignments. In N211 there were numerous essay assignments,
but J. West and I wanted to have the WAC paper be the only essay assignment in the
course, so the students could focus their writing efforts on a single
paper. We needed to transform other
essays into non-essay assignments. I
asked J. West what types of writing nurses do in their careers, because this would
help us create assignments for her course and for my ENG201 course as
well. J. West discussed occurrence reports
and action plans. From there, J. West and I
came up with the idea of creating a video of an incident at the hospital. The students would need to observe this incident,
by watching the video, and fill out a medical occurrence report which I created
for the assignment. Then, from the
occurrence report, the students would need to develop an action plan to prevent
the incident from occurring again, for which J. West and I created an action plan template. J. West scripted the incident, and, with the
help of volunteers, we produced the video.
Delving into this practical side of writing for N211 helped me to create
a descriptive writing lesson and assignment for ENG201. I vetted the descriptive writing lesson with several of
the Nursing Faculty. Their feedback
helped me to revise the lesson to make it accurate and relevant for students in
the Health Sciences.
Every semester the instructors who teach in the WAC courses provide me
feedback on how the WAC project went in their courses. They identify
issues students have with comprehension and execution of the assignments. This
leads to a group effort of the instructors, Dr. Stark, and me redesigned the
assignments to make them more effective and beneficial.
In addition to redesigning the assignments, I support the faculty and
tutors by providing development activities and being available as resource for
them. I also create materials for the faculty and tutors, such as tutorial
videos and assessment aids.