Writing Prof's Blog

2007-12-20T08:53:00.000-06:00

The semester is over. Some thoughts...

Turnitin.com definitely was the winner over Blackboard's built-in system in terms of being the most helpful plagiarism tool. I turned off the option that checks student papers against other student papers in Turnitin's database, so the program was NOT making a copy of student papers, so the privacy issue was solved. As a tool, Turnitin did a pretty good job of spotting when students used outside source material. It might not have caught all of the direct quotations in a student paper, but it did catch most. Often, it would catch "paraphrases" that were more like direct quotations, and the student could then use this material to re-write the paraphrase before submitting the final draft for grading.
I made two film changes in my Masterpieces of the Cinema class. I removed Jules and Jim and Lost in La Mancha. I was sad to see Lost in La Mancha go because it was our one documentary of the semester, and it did a great job of demonstrating how collaborative film is as an art. However, it really is not on the level of a "Masterpiece" so I decided to remove it. I replaced these films with The Night of the Hunter and Bicycle Thieves. Both films proved very popular with students.
We covered a lot of poems in the first online version of Introduction to Poetry, and for the first time, I made heavy use of podcasts to supplement the learning modules. We might have tried to cover too many poems, however, and I think the discussion posts suffered as a result. I'll be modifying the syllabus significantly and changing the way students do the postings in class. I might also experiment with CommentPress.

2007-09-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

Since I was having such miserable results with SafeAssign, I finally posted a question to one of our college's listserves about the status of Turnitin. Within a day, Turnitin was again offered as a content link within Blackboard - yeah! Now we have a choice -- go with Turnitin, which has a wonderful database collection so that my students can check the status of their quotations and paraphrases, or go with SafeAssign, which has a miserable database and fails to come up with any matches. Now, if students could just elect to have their paper matched against other Internet and electronic database sources instead of also having their paper copied into Turnitin's own database, we'd have the whole intellectual property situation solved and more students and teachers could use the product without feeling that rights are being violated. For me, the benefits of Turnitin -- for both teacher and student -- still outweigh the potential intellectual property rights issue; it will be nice to see what finally happens with the lawsuits so we can move on.

2007-09-24T17:03:00.000-05:00

Our English department is undergoing Program Review right now, and I'm the chair of this "enjoyable" activity. Anyway, our committee has been going over the program review questions and deciding how to present the material to the rest of the faculty. One of the questions has to do with goals for the next three to five years. I wonder what the department would say if one goal would be to have all on-campus composition classes offered only in computer classrooms. If we believe that computers assist students in the writing process, then are we doing about 50% of our students disservice by not giving them the opportunity to take a writing class in a computer classroom? I'd be interested to know how many colleges in the country ONLY offer writing classes in computer classes now. I'm sure there are faculty who have never taught in the computer classroom who might have cow at the thought of teaching all future classes in such an environment.

2007-09-17T11:36:00.000-05:00

Well, after a day or so, the SafeAssign feature of Blackboard suddenly came to life and began providing reports on student papers. The results, however, left something to be desired when compared with Turnitin.com. Here's the main use for me as I see these "plagiarism detection" tools: I simply want students to be able to look at their reports and see any matches that might have been made to the sources that they're using in their papers. If the match is exact, the student needs to make sure that he or she was quoting. If the student was "paraphrasing" that information and it was a match, then some revision is clearly needed with that "paraphrase." Also, if a paper comes up with a ton of matches to different sources, that may also signal to students that they're using way too much info from outside sources in their paper. So, I see SafeAssign as more of a teaching tool like grammar check than something to catch cheaters. But how good is the product when about 75% of the papers in my Comp 1 class came back with 0% matches even though the papers contained quotations and paraphrases from electronic sources? My conclusion: SafeAssign has a very limited database selection in comparison with Turnitin.com.

2007-09-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

More Blackboard problems... All the debate and worry about Turnitin.com last year, seems to be moot now that Blackboard has added its own plagiarism detection tool - SafeAssign. Like Turnitin.com SafeAssign compares student papers against a multitude of databases, but unlike Turnitin, SafeAssign doesn't keep student papers for its own database. That means it's not exactly sufficient in terms of catching students copying other student papers at JCCC from semester to semester, but that's a sacrifice people arguing for intellectual property rights seem able to make. I really don't care which one we use, but it would be nice to have at least one working. Turnitin.com is no longer available as an add-on yet in our new version of Blackboard (even though I think we have a 1-year contract), so I moved on to SafeAssign. However, though SafeAssign is happy to take student papers, the program is not yet providing reports for students or faculty.

I really like to use these plagiarism software tools as teaching tools, so I encourage students to check their "originality reports" to see how accurately they're quoting and paraphrasing. Last semester, students in my classes using Turnitin.com found the matches to be of help and many revised their papers based on the number of matches - e.g. students didn't know how much they were "overquoting" until they say all the matches. So, I look forward to doing the same thing with SafeAssign, but rather than providing students and me with a report that looks like this, I instead am just getting another copy of the student paper. Thanks AGAIN Blackboard for promising something without delivery! Way to go Blackboard!

2007-08-09T09:25:00.000-05:00

JCCC has once again uploaded a new version of Blackboard (ver,. 6.2) that's supposed to solve the numerous bugs with the current system, but as always seems to be the case, old problems are replaced with new ones. Here's the most irritating one for me. The calendar no longer works when you enter new entries. When you click on a day, and enter your stuff, the date changes to the current day. So as a workaround, you manually have to change the date before posting the new entry. What a time waster! I could go on, but this page from the Ed Tech Ctr at JCCC does a great job of listing all the new bugs: http://ce-annotations.blogspot.com/

You know, I really used to like WebCT, but since Blackboard took it over, the software has created numerous problems, which is kind of a big deal since I've become reliant on CMS for all of my classes. Another example of how mergers that are great for the companies and the CEOs are awful for the consumers...

On a bright note, JCCC purchased a site license for SoftChalk, so I'm converting all my boring web pages into colorful templates with that software. It's really easy to copy and paste pages created using FrontPage into SoftChalk. Uploading to Blackboard is swift and easy. My one complaint: It doesn't let me look at the HTML code to change some problems (font size, formatting, etc.) quickly as does FrontPage.

2006-04-25T16:58:00.000-05:00

The League for Innovation has a series of online modules for the community college teacher. Much of the stuff is pretty basic (e.g. tips for learning your students' names), but it is well outlined so you can easily access specific modules of most interest to you. They have some information on teaching online classes, but it makes up only a very sm:all section of a larger module on using technology with your classes. I do want to list some of the technology resources here though because they do contain more information than what's present in the module:

2006-03-24T10:10:00.000-06:00

I'll be teaching Masterpieces of Cinema in the fall. Here's a list of some film studies web sites that I've found. I'll probably be adding more leading up to the course.

Film Studies Resources on the Internet: This one page guide was created by students at the University of Alberta, and it hasn't been updated since 1995. However, it does contain links on film journals, directors, academic aspects, and links to other film studies sites on the Internet. I think this is basically a "dead" page, though, and many of the links don't work.
Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to film discussion. Recent articles appear on the Bob Dylan documentary, music in The Royal Tenenbaums, and Robert Towne.
Film-Philosophy classifies itself as a "salon-journal" where members post messages on directors, philosophers, and specific films. Some good stuff is here, but the web site is designed poorly (kind of like Arts and Letters Daily), making it difficult to find specific subjects that you might be researching. It seems more like a site you just browse weekly.

2006-01-23T11:13:00.000-06:00

It's now the second week of the semester, and right now I'm quite happy to be on sabbatical. Over the break, JCCC decided to upgrade to WebCT 6.0. This plan seemed like a good idea until I uploaded my old courses into the new software and saw what WebCT did to them -- mainly it re-sets the entire course without giving you the option to only re-set certain items as the old software did. It also gets rid of icons, re-does the layout on the home page, etc. As I left for break, I was thankful that I would have an entire semester to play around with the new software before my summer classes begin. Our WebCT listserve on campus has been flooded with messages of complaint from instructors on what now appears to have been possibly not the best time for an upgrade. WebCT does have a 6.0 orientation page at least. The Ed Tech Center at JCCC has put together it's own helpful FAQ page.

2005-10-14T14:12:00.000-05:00

Depressing Course Management Software Merger

Yesterday, it was announced that Blackboard had bought out WebCT for $180 million. I guess this was inevitable since I don't think either company was getting enough business by itself to turn a real profit. Still, I'm not a fan of this merger. First, I worry that WebCT, which has been the more comprehensive (yet not as user-friendly) course management program will be simplified as Blackboard is. Second, less competition can't be a good thing for education institutions who will now have to pay whatever this new bigger company wants. Yes, there's some smaller course management software programs out there, but how realistic is it for large colleges to actually go with one of these companies? Third, to what extent will current WebCT users have to now learn a new program? Right now, Blackboard's site says that the WebCT product line will remain "intact and supported," but I'm sure eventually in some future version WebCT will be dropped entirely as a name. More information on the mergers can be found here:

The Chronicle of Higher Education (password required)
The corporate spin
An analysis from Inside Higher Education

2005-09-23T11:23:00.000-05:00

Innovate, an journal devoted to online education, has an entire issue devoted to video games and education. Some of the essays in the issue:

What Would a State of Art Instructional Video Game Look Like?
Epistemic Games
What can K-12 School Leaders Learn from Video Games and Gaming?
Simschool: The Game of Teaching
Changing the game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom?
Game-Informed Learning: Applying Computer Game Processes to Higher Education

2005-09-06T16:53:00.000-05:00

Comp 1 Class: Take a look at this report on a "green" school in Chicago. How does it help to explain a "concept" as you want to do for essay 1? Mark areas where you find information about the characteristics of this school. Mark areas that discuss the implications of this school.

2005-08-31T13:49:00.000-05:00

Attention Comp 1 Students: Ideas for new entertainment or media phenomena concepts. (Some of these -- video games -- are too broad, so they would need to be narrowed a bit. Video games would probably be better as role playing games, for example.)

Emo Music -
Transportable Entertainment
Reality TV hero
Tabloid journalism
Blogging
Video games
Music downloading
Internet gaming
Fantasy children's literature
The Michael Bay action film
Nerd films and TV
Blue Collar Comedy

Community topics:

Progressive cities
Green living
Volunteerism
Community development
Evangelism (for church community)
Employee-Centered Workplace (skim down and look at the table titled "The New Workplace")

2005-04-26T15:36:00.000-05:00

This topic doesn't really have to do with writing directly, but since I use the Internet all day long to access my online courses, it does relate. After several months of using and enjoying Firefox as a browser, I've decided to go back to using IE Explorer. I really liked the tabbed browsing, the RSS feeds and the search box at the bottom of the screen, but as time went on, I just found that the browser got slower and slower. It took longer to open and would lock up frequently. The big thing, though, was that one day it just stopped working in WebCT, the course management software that I use to access student work. When I logged into WebCT, I would just get a white screen. I'm now using Explorer again. It's not as exciting, but it's not crashing and the pages load more quickly.

2005-03-23T15:14:00.000-06:00

Research work begins this week in Composition 2. Over the next coming entries, I'll link to good research web sites. Here's a start:

For hundreds of research ideas, check out CQ Researcher's index

For a great search engine try A9

For a quick reference page on evaluating web sites see this page from Cornell University.

2005-02-19T17:17:00.000-06:00

Now that the college has changed servers, my old web pages no longer work. At first I just considered moving all the material to the new server and keeping things as is, but I decided to use this as an opportunity to completely re-do the entire site. That will keep me busy for awhile if I can ever get the opportunity to devote some time to it that is. The college is in the midst improving itself by tackling the Baldrige award. I've been working on part of the Process Management section for three years now. It's like math was for me in high school - it makes sense when I read over the stuff and then when I actually start writing it, the questions just seem to get very cloudy.

Some important links in this evaluation process:

2004-10-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

Some new links to consider:

A really good blog from a reporter covering Iraq
Firefox -- a terrific browser
Arts and Letters Daily
A wonderful new search engine

2004-08-17T19:38:00.000-05:00

It's the start of a new semester at JCCC. I'll be doing five online classes. Goals for this semester: 1) Have a smooth online group project in British Writers. 2) Create three unique paper assignments for Introduction to Literature. 3) Add a new topic on my readings page for my online comp 2 class. I'd really like to move back to having students do more writing that is available for viewing on the WWW - I've become too reliant on having everything contained within the course management software we're using. Personal development goals -- research online education more - begin writing about it from a theoretical perspective rather than focusing mainly on the "how to's" aspect. One final goal - keep up with this damn blog this semester.

2004-04-20T14:56:00.000-05:00

Some good sites to show the unreliability of the Internet:
The Mankato, Minnesota Home Page at http://www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/mankato/mankato.html
Women and AIDS at http://www.ithaca.edu/library/research/AIDSFACTS.htm The Welcome to the White House Home Page at http://www.whitehouse.org/

2003-11-06T11:07:00.000-06:00

My web site is slowly being moved to a new server. I'll now be housed on http://staff.jccc.net/jmcward.

2003-09-05T20:54:00.000-05:00

The first two weeks of school have now passed and things are moving along smoothly. Must get my late-start comp 1 ready to go. British Writers class is going well with the hybrid model. The goal with this class is to cut back on the papers and replace them with different writing projects. We'll still have one formal essay that only I will see as instructor. Each week we have bulletin board postings that everyone in class reads. At the end of the semester we'll have group web pages so the focus will be on collaborative writing with classmates. Finally, I'm having each student maintain a blog for some public writing. The blog will also allow students to really study the history of one period of literature throughout the semester. Often, the historical part of the course is overlooked somewhat because of time pressure, and I'm hoping that the blog will help solve this problem. The library now has an excellent literary resource - look for Literature Resource Center on the Library database homepage. Sorry it's only for JCCC students and faculty. Later.

2003-08-18T14:26:00.000-05:00

It's been a REALLY long time since I've written anything. I want to use blogs in my British Writers class in the fall. Here's my idea: Each student will take a particular author or period of literature and keep a weekly blog on that subject for the entire semester. Each week, students should post something on their person or period of literature. Present some facts about the subject matter and offer a link for where to find more information on the person. For example, I might write about Daniel Defoe and mention that he wrote one of the first novels Robinson Crusoe. I could then link to an online version of the text. My hope would be that students would also evaluate sites that the visit as well.

2003-06-10T21:31:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've written anything. Summer school has started, and I'm busy keeping up with the grading. Don't know if I'll have anymore time to keep this bog updated regularly or not. I do want to post my favorite grammar and writing site. Don't have time to write more now. Will try to come back later this week and discuss the online class more.

2003-04-28T12:23:00.000-05:00

It's getting toward the end of the semester. The research papers in my on-campus class are now complete. We begin literary analysis now. We will focus on literary essays over poems, short stories, and plays, however. The first two authors that we're tackling are Annie Dillard and George Orwell.

2003-04-04T17:17:00.000-06:00

Next week begins the research project for my on-campus compostion 2 course. My central goal this semester is to make sure that students really understand how to use good sources. I'm thinking of developing an entire course module or something like that in WebCT devoted to the research process. I want to be sure to tell them about the advanced search features of Google and AlltheWeb.com. Another great resource source is Refdesk. However, mainly I'll want them to use the electonic databases at the JCCC Library.

2003-03-26T13:47:00.000-06:00

Well, let's see if this will work. My goal is to keep a regular record of my teaching and research. By next fall I hope to have my students doing the same thing. I want to see how easy it is to keep this up. I went to CCCC in New York this year and was inspired by Steven Johnson's talk and Joe Moxley's session. I'm interested in the community writing aspect of blogs and wikis. Here goes! Let's see if this thing will load.