MOOCs, Mentor Texts, and "Motivation Makes"

This blog showcases  students' work they did at the beginning of the semester. I wanted students to immediately create ("make") something textual. 

As it was our first lab session, I wanted to find a safe way for them to express themselves. I also wanted students, when they likely felt hyped about school, to find ways to keep themselves motivated when the going got tough. 

So I decided to hack the "make cycles" from The Writing Thief MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), a digital learning community devoted to investigating Ruth's Culham's The Writing Thief. Culham's text supports writing teachers who use mentor texts to model writing craft for their students. What better way to promote effective writing than to have developing writers observe, identify, and emulate the moves they encounter in the texts they read. 

The "make cycles"  are activities which . . . "encourage participants to interact with the text and with each other as we discuss and implement ideas for  'using mentor texts to teach the craft of writing'" (source). The digital sharing and feedback that comes from "MOOC-ing" also helps us experiment with "connected learning." 

Experiments in Making: The "Identity Is" Project

Readers might be curious about the "Bayan Professor" part of this blog's URL. Bayan is Tagalog, a Filipino dialect, for town or municipality. Bayan also connotes family, home - the beloved community. It's the name me and my teaching partner chose for our linked classes, the Bayan Learning Community.

My partner teaches the Personal Development component of our paired classes, the first-year college colloquium, the "how to be a college student" class. I'm the English professor. While Bayan does special outreach to Filipino and Filipino American students, Bayan Scholars don't have to be Filipino. They must, however, be willing to engage Filipino American themes to master Personal Development and English skills.

My co-teacher and I layout our learning objectives and, considering the shared themes, look for intersections, moments where we can leverage the overlaps. We want students to experience how different disciplines actually complement each other, how classes feed into the other. We're also committed to "making,", i.e., having students create as much as they consume. We want our students to see themselves as producers of knowledge, not merely passively taking in information. The "Identity Is" Project was our most ambitious unit this semester.

Reflecting on Problem-Solving: Six Word Memoirs

A couple days into a challenging project this semester, students  felt confused, unclear. They didn't want guidance or coaching.  They wanted me to tell them exactly what to do. Students wanted, no demanded,  an absolute, singular correct solution to the challenge. 

This push back didn't surprise me. The majority were first-year college students. And returning students also argued for a more mechanistic, formulaic prompt of the worksheet or five-paragraph format variety. More comfortable filling in the blanks or following a rote formula, students froze when given a task calling for higher order thinking.  

Making, MOOCs, and The Writing Thief

Meet Henry Aronson by Slidely Slideshow

I've joined a MOOC, a "Massive Open Online Course, specifically the Connected Learning MOOC sponsored by the San Diego Writing Project. We're studying Ruth Culham's The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing, hence the name of our Google+ Community: The Writing Thief MOOC. 

As if I'm not busy enough. It's finals week. Grades are due next week Friday. And it's the holiday season. Maybe I'm avoiding work or perhaps (and?) personal issues. Whatever. This is how I have fun.