In my teaching circle this week (which is made up mostly of online teachers), we got onto the topic of personality in an online course. We didn’t just mean our own personality as instructors, but the personality of the class itself.

Every face-to-face class has a personality by the end of the semester. In almost every class I’ve taught, there has been at least one thing that has made that group of students memorable. I might not remember names, majors, or even what kinds of essays students wrote, but I can remember the small details that gave that class “personality.” Maybe it was the inside joke the class had, maybe it was some event in the outside world that was memorable, and maybe it was the time that we had to evacuate because of a chemical leak. I guess another way to think about this is as the “soul” of the class.

So how do you recreate that in an online class? How do you inject express your own personality, allow students to do the same, and still create an online learning experience that works for everyone in your class? In our teaching group, we talked about a few different ways to compensate for the lack of “contact.” Someone suggested embedding humorous content or memes in your course itself, to give it a little more life. One of my teaching group members embeds “Easter eggs” in his videos for students to fine. Someone else suggested taking a slightly more informal tone in email communication in order to make the interaction seem more human.

That last one makes sense to me. If I’m teaching a face-to-face class, and a student sends me an email that begins with “hey,” ends with “lol,” or includes a “:-)” I get a little annoyed. But in my online classes, I feel just the opposite. I am glad that they are comfortable enough with me, as an instructor, to show that personality. If we were having a conference face-to-face, there would be a certain level of personality exchange, right? That’s how a writing center consultation works. If I have to accept emoticons in emails in order to replicate that experience in an online class, I guess that’s not too bad.

But that really doesn’t solve anything. I can’t remember one online course from another that I’ve taught. They all blend together. I remember a few distinct students, but only because they came and met with me often (despite being online students). My online courses are just clones of one another. Maybe that’s just the way it has to be, but I’d like to think there is some way to bring the personality, or the soul, into the online classroom in the same way it has always been present in our face-to-face classes.

What do you think? What strategies do you use to bring life into your online classes?

By Andrew Davis, University of Mississippi, TCW Planning Committee

I wonder what it would be like to be a student in my own class.  Back when I first started teaching, I imagined I knew what it was like because I was only a few years removed from my own freshman year in college. I thought I knew how students would respond to different activities or assignments because I knew what I would have thought of them when I was 18.  It wasn’t long before I realized that my experience of a college class and of everything else that goes on outside of that classroom simply wasn’t the same as theirs.  So much has changed in ten years; the context surrounding their writing and the ways they use writing are very different from what they were when I was 18.  Am I showing my age already?!

The reality is that students don’t experience a course in the same way even if they are classmates.   I’ve dreamed of being the professor whose courses everyone wants to take because they’ve heard such good things about her – because she’s challenging and will push you to learn and to do your best work, because she cares about her students and wants them to succeed.  I had this idea that the professors I admired in college were universally respected and appreciated for those same qualities.  And maybe some of them were.  (I’m reminded of Laura Hammons’ blog post from the 2013 symposium; see the archive, “Great Teacher Dream”).  I know that I’m not universally liked or admired by my students, but I can also say with confidence that I try to challenge my students, to push them to do their best work, to give them a sense that I care about them and want them to succeed.  I make changes every semester – every week – every day – to try to improve the quality of writing instruction my students are getting.  But still, I wonder, what would it be like to sit in my own class as a first-year writer?  Being asked to work on my writing, to be engaged in my growth as a writer, to buy into this whole writing process, while my 18-year-old self thinks about what I’m learning in other classes, making new friends, scheduling study time around swim team practices, meeting new potential dates, considering rushing a sorority, adjusting to being away from my family… Would I be engaged in improving my writing?  Am I now the kind of teacher I would have responded to back then?

– Dr. Briana O’Riordan McCoy, Instructor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi

Since 2011, I’ve been privileged to work with, meet, and learn from dedicated and forward-thinking writing teachers from throughout Mississippi. Regardless of their particular designation or teaching location, they want to engage their students in learning how to become better writers and effective communicators. They are excited by opportunities to expand their awareness of how they can best support students who will transition from writing in one setting to another, usually unfamiliar, setting, knowing that many of their students will experience such transitions several times as they progress in their academic and/or professional work. Such teachers respond to the challenge of educating students to be able competitors in today’s global marketplace, and they enrich the sessions, workshops, and roundtables offered each year at our annual Transitioning to College Writing symposia. Thus, our theme for this year’s symposium is an apt one: “Global Connections, Local Partnerships: Writing across Borders in a Digital Age.” The theme speaks to global connections we enjoy as well as local partnerships that have enriched our teaching across public and private secondary and post-secondary settings, and it responds to our long-standing interest in how writing and composing work in digital environments around the world.

This year, our symposium responds to suggestions from past attendees and our current planning committee. We continue with our tradition of bringing visiting scholars to the symposium, and we have expanded our inclusion of Mississippi-based scholars who speak to our particular locales of writing instruction. Join us on Friday, October 10 and Saturday, October 11, as we learn from and respond to Mr. Vinnie Segalini, Director of English Language Arts with the Mississippi Department of Education, Dr. Lawrence T. Potter, Professor of English at Jackson State University, and Dr. Frances di Lauro of the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. Topics range from supporting secondary-school teachers as they implement the Common Core State Standards, to understanding how writing becomes an effective tool for student transitions by means of reflective practice; to integrate writing into other content areas by means of writing across the curriculum strategies; to using digital writing tools and helping students become more literate digital citizens.

We continue to focus on the value of integrating writing centers in secondary and post-secondary Mississippi schools. In 2011, when the first Transitioning to College Writing planning committee convened, we wanted to include someone who could represent a high school writing center. We did not find any, but we had (fortuitously) tapped into a deep interest in incorporating writing centers in secondary school settings. That first year, then, we brought Amber Jensen, a high school English teacher from Edison High School in Virginia, to share with us her experiences in setting up a writing center at her high school, especially since she’d done that with very limited resources. 2011 attendees also heard from Anna Britt Begnaud, who was (and still is) the writing center director at Itawamba Community College here in Mississippi. Both Amber and Anna are returning as visiting speakers at this year’s symposium, and as I write this post, I’m thrilled to know that there are now several secondary writing centers here in Mississippi that, guided by tested scholarship on writing center studies, are supporting student writers in various ways. Students who have access to such writing centers are experiencing – before they enter college or begin their careers – the value of talking about their writing projects with others, of understanding the role of authentic audiences as they write, and they are aided to write with purpose and careful attention to supporting their writing with evidence-based claims and persuasion.

Over the next three weeks, visit this Blog page often to read posts from our program planners. We’ll also continue to post about specific workshops and events that will take place during the symposium. Learn more about our visiting speakers and the topics they will be speaking on by selecting the Speakers tab on this website. Many secondary and post-secondary teachers will be leading workshops, guiding roundtable conversations, and sharing resources that we can use when we return back to our local writing landscapes. Review the program schedule, register for the Symposium, and we hope to see you here in Oxford soon!

– Alice Johnston Myatt, Department of Writing and Rhetoric, University of Mississippi