banner

syllabus
calendar
blackboard
student.email resources

last.updated 6.2.14

 

Designing the Infrastructure of OWI

bar
Purpose

As instructors and administrators build their OWI courses, they will need to make decisions about the type of technologies they will and which ones specific applications of that type will best facilitate their pedagogical goals. In today's class, we will examine the issues instructors and administrators should consider when choosing their classes' technological infrastructure.

bar
Discussion I–OWI, Reprise

We will discuss the following questions about last Tbursday's reading:

  • We will start with a debriefing of your experience conducting a totally asynchronous class? What were the advantages for you? What were the disadvantages? In what ways did the activity match the delivery method? In what ways did it not? How might you have redesigned the class?
  • What questions, comments, or concerns do you have about the readings?
  • What questions, if any, do you have about the process of developing the CCCC position statement. Do you think the CCCC's OWI Principles are practical? How might you revise them if you had a chance?
  • The first two principles have been admittingly controversial. What are your opinions on issues of accessibility and stating that OWI instructors are writing instructors, not technology instructors?
  • What are the challenges you see to applying any of these principles in the context you work within?

Discussion II–Designing an Infrastructure

We will discuss the following questions about the readings for tonight:

  • What questions, comments, or concerns do you have about the readings?
  • What are the trials and tribulations of open-source and open-content software?
  • What are some strategies for choosing software programs that are learner-centered and do not privilege the instructors' expertise?
  • We will develop a list of heuristics to help guide how you would choose the technologies that you would use to design your OWI course, assuming you were in a position to make these choices?

Freewrite I–??? 3.0

Take ten minutes to write about the following scenario. If you could create the ideal program to mediate your distance education writing class (from FYW to any disciplinary course), what would it do? As you think about this, consider the readings, your experiences with various types of media and software programs, but most importantly what you need to accomplish in your courses. Therefore, you should think about what is currently available and then think two or three iterations down the line (no home teleportation units–a la Star Trek–that efficiently get all of the students to the same f2f location).

Class Discussion–Bring the Future to Us

Each individual will have two minutes to pitch their ideas to the class. Then we will discuss...

  • which ideas are the best and why (reality TV style)
  • how might we go about creating each chosen idea?
  • the current technologies that we could use to achieve the same goals

bar