Project #:  F05PD

Proposal Title: English 091 Online instruction

Stipend Level:  2


In the space below, present a statement of your proposed research project (approximately 500-1000 words), including a general description of the scope and nature of your project, the design or the outline to be followed. Describe your planned activities and timelines.
My Instructional Innovation Classroom Research proposal will run the entire semester, covering all 17 weeks of instruction.  English 091: Introduction to College Reading and Writing is a three-unit course and a requirement for the College of the Canyons AA/AS degree.  The first three to four weeks of the course will introduce students to the primary online tool that will be used in the class, the Blackboard instructional platform.  After students have gained a level of competency using the various tools available on Blackboard, they will then be introduced to an Internet-based peer review website called Comment, offered through Bedford/St. Martins.  This online peer review site will be used throughout the duration of the class.  Students will also be introduced to the College of the Canyons online library tools.  These tools will be particularly helpful to students as they prepare for their midterm.  Finally, students will be introduced to the Webgrade program available through Micrograde. This site allows students to maintain an ongoing awareness of their performance in the course.  While Blackboard has a built-in grading function, it does not provide the same flexibility that the Micrograde system does.  All important links and information for the course will be provided to students on the Blackboard homepages.

Students will be given log-in informational handouts during the first week of class. Because both sections of my English 091 classes are currently scheduled in computerized classrooms, students will be asked to log-into the website each class period.  Students will also be required to log-in to the website at least twice a week outside of class as well.  Students will be asked to complete two discussion board posts and two responses during each week of the course.  These discussion board postings will take the place of the English 091 reading journal currently being used.  Quite often, students placed in English 091 classes lack self-motivation.  These frequent visits and mandatory postings will encourage students to develop the self-motivation necessary to be successful in an online learning environment.  I will monitor postings and students will be graded for thoughtfulness and thoroughness of each posting and response.  There will also be a general question forum available for students.

Students will also be asked to submit papers online.  Their rough drafts will be uploaded to the Comment website for peer-review.  The Comment website allows peers to click on any word of an author’s draft and comment via a pop-up text box.  The Comment site is also hot-linked to the course’s writing handbook, Rules for Writers.  Peers can create hot-links that send the author to the appropriate place in the handbook that explains grammatical, syntactical, and citation errors.  These links offer methods of correction as well.  After peer review, students will submit their final drafts online via the digital drop box feature available on Blackboard.  Papers will also be returned electronically with instructor comments and a grading rubric.  Students will also be required to electronically submit a copy of their paper to turnitin.com for source assessment.

The Blackboard website will also serve as a collection site for the course syllabus, course policies, web links, and important course handouts.  Often, students who test at pre-transfer level lack the organization skills necessary for college success.  By making available all handouts and materials online, students will never be able to use the excuse of “I didn’t do that assignment because I lost my worksheet.”

Finally, many English 091 students feel insecure about their writing.  This insecurity often prevents them from taking advantage of face-to-face office hours.  In my on-ground English 091 courses, I require face-to-face conferences during the semester.  For this project, I will require one face-to-face conference prior to the submission of the English 091 writing portfolio, but I will also require that students participate in at least one “virtual” chat before the submission of their first two essays.  Students may feel more at ease “chatting” with their instructor rather than formally scheduling a meeting during office hours.

What are the objectives of your project? Describe the relevance of your project to student learning.
The primary objective of this project is to determine the potential success of pre-transfer level writing students, particularly English 091 students, in a hybrid and/or completely online composition classroom.  My two Fall 2005 English 091 courses will be meeting face-to-face in a computer classroom, but I will use online tools extensively to simulate expectations and challenges in the online learning environment. My classroom research project will focus on how effectively the Blackboard educational platform can be used to centralize and unify the writing and reading processes and products of students in English 091.  My preliminary research question is “Can pre-transfer level writing students adapt to and thrive in a largely online learning and writing environment?”
 
What evaluation methodology will you use to provide progress measures for your project? Include a description of your benchmarks.
 This project will be assessed in two English 091 classes in Fall 2005 and I will be using skills and information gained during my completion of EDU 090: Strategies for Success in Online Teaching.At the end of the semester, I will issue a student survey that investigates the successes and challenges experienced in this largely-online writing classroom.   Questions will address ease or difficulty of using the required technology, enhancement of the writing process using the required technology, and the quality of peer and instructor feedback via the various response technologies used.   Also, I will ask MIS to run a statistical analysis of the retention rates in these two sections of English 091 and compare these rates to retention rates from my four previous sections of English 091, taught without the use of a central online class management system.   Retention and persistence are issues of concern in both online courses and in pre-transfer level English courses.  A statistical analysis that extrapolates the effectiveness of online tools in English 091 could help project the possible success of, first, a hybrid, and then, potentially, a fully-online English 091 class.

What teaching strategies/learning concepts/pedagogical theories/technology skills did you gain knowledge of through the Institute of Teaching and Learning courses that you will apply to your classroom research?
In Spring 2004, I completed EDU 090: Strategies for Success in Online Teaching.  The one principle from that class that really resonates comes from the California Community College Academic Senate Guidelines for Technology Mediated Instruction: “[G]ood teaching is good teaching, regardless of the method chosen for delivery” (Matthew, Bunn, et. al, 1997).  Currently, the curriculum for English 091 is working effectively to prepare students for college reading and writing.  In moving towards an online teaching environment, pedagogically, I plan on implementing the 10 Good Practices for Technology Mediated Instruction discussed by the Academic Senate.  Most particularly, I believe the online aspect of the course will heighten students’ active learning techniques (via thought-provoking discussion board posts and responses), increase contact between students and instructor (via chats and e-mail), and engage diverse talents and modalities of student learning (via peer review and collaborative learning).  My goal is to follow the recommendations of the Academic Senate when they say, “Good teaching practice seeks the appropriate modality and . . .  recognizes the needs of the learner and the facilitator” (Matthews, Bunn, et. al., 1997).  It will be interesting to see how pre-transfer level students respond to these good practices as they progress through the online course materials.

 How many students (approximately) will participate in the research project? 70
 
 What do you (as an instructor) hope to learn from your research? Describe any instructional development or improvement you hope to glean from this project.
College of the Canyons is inaugurating their online degree in June 2005.  While English 101 is a requirement for this degree, statistics available through MIS reveal that most students do not test directly into English 101.  Most new students are currently testing at the English 081 or English 091 level.  I currently believe that because of this placement gap, the development of English 091 as an online course will eventually become necessary for the success of the online degree program.  However, after working with this particular population of students for the past three years, and having taught an online English 102 class, I am concerned that pre-transfer level writing students lack the initiative, motivation, and most importantly, basic writing skills to be successful in a fully online learning environment.  I hope that this research study, and continued investigation in a similar vein after the completion of this study, will prove that these fears are ungrounded.  I hope to learn through the assessment of students’ responses and retention data that an online English 091 course will be a valuable addition to the online degree and to the English department course offerings in general.  

Similarly, I want to prove that the increasing technological sophistication of our incoming students can significantly contribute to overcoming the writing and reading skills gap that seems to be persisting in our pre-transfer level students.   Many of our incoming students are particularly web-savvy, spending increasing amounts of time online.  I hope to prove that by making a class more dynamic, more digital, we can excite students about learning basic reading and writing skills.  If the credo of most composition teachers is to just get the students writing, then I believe by creating a lively learning environment, students will indeed write, read, and think more (and hopefully, critically).


Anticipated Research Costs (if any)?  $  0