Author: gdkemble

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English 1A (Spring 2021) – Grading

Table of Contents

Grading

Grading Policy

In order to pass this course, students must both:

  • Complete all major writing assignments (Essays 1-3)
  • Receive an average grade of “C” or better on all assignments

The “average grade of ‘C’ or better,” mentioned above, follows this breakdown:

AssignmentPercentage
Essay 110%
Essay 220%
Essay 330%
Informal Writing Assignments (e.g., assignment reflections)5%
Annotated Bibliography10%
Discussion Groups20%
Reflective Essay5%
  • 90%+ = A
  • 80%+ = B
  • 70%+ = C
  • 60%+ = D
  • <60% = F

Late Assignments

General Thoughts on my Late Policy

I have tried many different policies for late work — everything from refusing all late work, to accepting all late work with no penalty. Students have made it clear that they need something in between; they need some flexibility, for when life gets in the way of school; but they also need deadlines, so they don’t put things off for so long that they can’t catch up. So I’ve developed a policy that falls somewhere in the middle.

But here’s the most important thing: I am willing to work with you, as long as you contact me. This is especially true in these uncertain COVID times; many lives have been completely upended, and many that are fine now might run into serious problems sometime during the semester.

So please keep in touch. If you think your situation requires that you’ll be late with an assignment, let me know. As I said, I’m willing to work with you. But I need you to let me know what you need.

Major Essay Assignments

For the three major essay assignments, I lower an essay’s grade one-third of a letter for each day that it is late. 

For example: assume an essay would have received a B+ if it had been turned in on time. It was due Friday, by 11:59 p.m.

  • If it were turned in Saturday (one day late), it would receive a B;
  • If it were turned in Monday (three days late), it would receive a C+
  • If it were turned in the following Friday (seven days late), it would receive a D.

Note that even an “F” is better than nothing, in two senses: first, as I mentioned above, you can’t pass the class if you don’t turn in all three major essay assignments; second, an “F” may count for as many as 55 points, which is significantly more than 0 points.

Other Assignments

Many assignments are only useful if they’re done more or less on time. Discussion Group Assignments will often ask you to respond to your peers’ writing, and they will not benefit from your response if you wait too long. The Annotated Bibliography asks you to process research in preparation for your third essay, and putting that off to the end of the semester negates any value the assignment offers.

In cases like this, I will most often wait a few days after the due date to grade the assignment. But once I grade it, it will be closed, and I will no longer accept late work for that assignment.

However, as I said above, I’m willing to work with you if you have a good reason for being late. But please keep in touch. It is your responsibility to contact me.

End-of-semester Deadline

At some point, I need to wrap everything up and turn in grades. So I have an end-of-semester deadline, which is the last day I will accept any work. Generally, this is early during Finals Week.

Given the past two semesters’ uncertainty around COVID, I’ve had to extend that deadline. I will make sure to announce that specific end-of-semester deadline in several Announcements as we approach the end of the week.

The Main Takeaway

The most important thing I want you to hear: I see due dates as guard rails, rather than opportunities to punish you. So I am willing to be flexible.

This is dangerous, though. Every time a student turns in an assignment late, it usually means she starts the next assignment late as well. It can get overwhelming over the course of the semester. And I don’t know about you, but when I get overwhelmed, I procrastinate even more, which makes things even worse.

So do your best to keep up with the pace of the course. But if you find you need to turn an assignment in late, please contact me (in advance, if possible). I’m happy to work with you — but I can’t work with you if you won’t keep in touch.

Next up: Resources

The next section is about resources that you might find helpful.

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English 1A (Spring 2021) – Policies

Table of Contents

Registration Policies

First Week Rule

I often have a number of students hoping to add the class during the first week or two of the semester. So, to make sure that those students have time to join — and to be sure that registered students don’t delay getting started — I require you to do two things before the end of the first week.

Specifically, I’ll need to drop any registered student who does not complete both the Syllabus Quiz and the Canvas Message Assignment by 11:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 31.

If that is a problem for you, please contact me in advance. We can make another arrangement, if needed. But I do need you to contact me before Sunday.

Drop Dates

This semester, the deadlines for dropping the course are as follows:

  • February 5, to be eligible for a refund and to avoid a “W” on your permanent record;
  • April 30, to receive a “W” on your permanent record.

Dropping after the April 30 deadline will almost certainly earn you an “F,” which can only be overturned in the most extreme circumstances. 

NOTE: The state of California (which funds community colleges) no longer distinguishes between a “W” (Withdraw) and a non-passing grade (in ENGL 1A, a “D” or “F”) in determining the number of times a student may attempt a class; students are now limited to three attempts total within a district. If you decide you need to drop, I recommend that you see a counselor to discuss what effect that might have on your educational plans. (As we approach that “W” date, I’ll send an announcement that discusses this in more detail.)

Student Responsibility to Drop

Every term, a fair number of students disappear from the course for a variety of reasons—often without a word. Though I do try to drop such students before the last drop date (I am not a fan of putting an “F” on students’ transcripts), I am not always able to tell if a student has really left or has decided to prioritize her time differently. Therefore, I cannot be responsible to make sure students meet their drop deadlines.

It is the student’s responsibility to drop by the appropriate deadlines. If you decide you need to drop, please be sure you follow through with the Admissions Office.

More important, though: If you find yourself tempted to quit, I encourage you to contact me first. I might be able to help you get back on track.

Disability Statement

If you need special arrangements for a physical or learning disability, I recommend you work with out Disabled Students Programs and Services. That isn’t a requirement, but they offer helpful support for both you and me.

Please visit the DSPS page to see what kind of help is officially available to you.

Communications Policies

Notifications

Canvas has an incredibly flexible communications system. Indeed, at times, it can even be too flexible, and communications can get lost in the range of possible channels.

If you haven’t yet done so, I recommend that you go to your Canvas Settings and set up Notifications in a way that is comfortable for you. (Here’s a tutorial for setting up Notifications.)

Announcements

Around two or three times a week, I will post announcements for the class. There will basically be two kinds of announcements:

  • Reminders for upcoming assignments, changes to due dates, corrections, and other announcements related to the logistics of the course
  • Instructional material, clarifications, spontaneous “lessons” about issues that come up in student work, and other items related to the content of the course

Both kinds of announcements are important, so I recommend that you log in to the course and look for announcements at least three times each week—or, even better, consider setting up a “Notification” to inform you (via email or message “pushed” to a mobile device) whenever an announcement appears. (Again, here’s a tutorial for setting up Notifications.)  

Canvas Messages (“Conversations”) and Personal Email

Messages to individuals (to your classmates, or to me)—Canvas calls these “Conversations”—should generally be used only for private communications. If you have any comments or questions that might be of interest to the class, please post them in an appropriate Discussion thread so others may benefit from the conversation.

For example, if you want to let me know that your essay will be late (a private issue that the rest of the class doesn’t need to know about), it would be appropriate to send me an individual Canvas message. If you are confused about the instructions on a writing assignment, though, it would be appropriate to ask that question in the Discussions area. You may be a little nervous about that, but try not to be. While you may fear that your question is obvious, it’s likely that others have a similar question — and sometimes students’ answers to such questions are clearer than my response.

For class-related issues, please contact me through Canvas; it’s much easier to keep track of conversations that way. For issues not related to the class, or in case you have trouble with Canvas (if you have trouble logging into Canvas, for example), you may contact me at my personal email address (gkemble@yccd.edu).

I will respond within two business days (though I’m usually much quicker than that).

Discussions

A good portion of our class will involve discussions about your writing and research. Indeed, 20% of your final grade rests on your posts and responses to specific Discussion Group Assignments (DGAs) found throughout the various modules. Ideally, these posts will be thoughtful and thorough.

As mentioned above, please use the Discussions area for general questions, too. Again, if you have a personal issue (you just want to let me know why an assignment is late, for example) then send me an individual Canvas message. But if you have a general question about an assignment, or if something really cool happened while researching, etc., please post it in the Discussions area so that others can benefit as well.

It is important that everyone feel comfortable participating in Discussions. For this reason, be respectful of your peers. You will, at times, disagree, but please do so thoughtfully and politely, not with sarcasm or derogatory remarks directed at any person or group of persons. Please remember that there is a feeling human being on the other end of the computer connection. There is a lot of room for debate, but not for flame wars.

On the other side of the coin: please don’t take criticism or advice personally. Love-fests don’t help anyone improve; honest suggestions do. When they’re right, we learn something new. But even when they’re wrong, we strengthen our own position by articulating why we think they’re wrong.

In short: strive both to give and to receive feedback, criticism, or advice with grace.

Dead Links

Every term, I work to improve the course, which sometimes causes unintended glitches. If you find any “dead” links (or other mistakes—inconsistent due dates, typos, whatever) in this course, please let me know so I can fix them.

I am also open to feedback — suggestions for improvement to the presentation, or even just identifying areas that were confusing or not intuitive — so please feel free to offer those as well.

Standards

Using Modules

As modules are released, the assignments associated with the modules will also become available, in the course’s Assignments section. However, you should go directly to an assignment only as a convenience, after you have worked through the module leading up to the assignment.

Occasionally students try to skip straight to the assignment without working through the modules. This is a recipe for disaster, for a number of reasons. Please work through the modules thoroughly and in order, so that you will benefit from the explanations and preparatory writing assignments.

Formatting

Your three main essays should be formatted using MLA style format. We’ll talk about this during the course, but here’s a short version: 

Essays should:

  • be typed, using a standard 12-point font (e.g., Times or Times New Roman);
  • be double-spaced (never single-spaced; never triple-spaced);
  • have one-inch margins;
  • have a correctly formatted header, title,  and pagination
  • document sources correctly, using both in-text citation and a Works Cited page.

Essays that do not follow MLA format may have their grades lowered from one-third to one-full letter grade, with the penalty increasing as the class proceeds.

Final drafts of essays, especially, should be edited, proofread, and spell-checked.

And please give each essay a clever and informative title (“Essay 1” is neither clever nor informative….)

Submitting Essays

Unless specified otherwise in the instructions, please submit assignments as a file upload through the Assignments section in Canvas. (The most notable exception: Discussion Group Assignments.)

Please don’t submit work to my personal email unless it is absolutely necessary. It’s hard to keep track of work that is not submitted as instructed—especially work submitted outside Canvas.

If possible, please upload essays in Microsoft Word format (.doc, or .docx), as this format allows me to respond to your work most effectively. (Note that Google Docs can save a in Word format, under “File | Download.”)

If you do not have access to Word (or Google Docs), then please save and upload your essay as a PDF file. Though this is harder for me to work with, it’s much better than other formats (e.g., .pages or .wks files), which I often cannot even open.

Retrieving Graded Essays

I get feedback on working drafts back as soon as possible–usually within two or three days–and on final drafts within two weeks or so.

When I’ve graded an assignment, you will be able to find your letter grade in the Canvas Gradebook.

However, for most assignments, I will also upload a PDF of your graded essay with my comments, which is where I offer the specific, personalized response to your work. (Note: If you would prefer a Word document, please let me know. However, unless you need it in Word—for example, screen readers handle Word documents better than PDFs—I recommend staying with the PDF, as that format more consistently displays comments.)

You’ll find this document in the same place you submitted the original work—usually, in the Assignments section—and should be able to download it and then either read it on screen or print it out.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as using another person’s words or ideas without proper acknowledgment. This may take many forms: cutting and pasting from the Internet, using others’ ideas without proper citation, buying a paper, having a friend or family member do an assignment, and so on.

Please don’t.

Plagiarism is serious, and it carries serious consequences. At the very least, a plagiarized paper will receive a “0” on the assignment. But plagiarism may also result in disciplinary probation or suspension, or even expulsion. (See the Student Code of Conduct).

Most cases of plagiarism that I have encountered—and I have encountered many—have arisen from desperation. If you find yourself growing desperate, please contact me as early as possible so that we can discuss strategies for success on the assignment.

Next up: Grading

The next section is about my Grading policies.

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English 1A (Spring 2021) – Learning Outcomes


Table of Contents

Learning Outcomes

Objectives and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)

The English Department at Yuba College has four Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that guide much of our instruction in composition courses.

Upon completion of the course, students will:

  • use reading strategies to understand argumentative texts that contain both literal and implied meanings;
  • compose a clearly-written, well-organized, purpose-driven essay;
  • synthesize evidence from outside sources to support claims effectively;
  • attribute and document sources correctly.

I have a number of other objectives, as well; I would like you to:

  • develop your skills as a critical thinker, reader, and writer;
  • affect people in your sphere of influence; 
  • engage deeply with an important public policy issue related to a profession of your choice.

Ideally, you also have your own objectives. If you don’t, I recommend you spend some time thinking about what those objectives might be. Why (beyond earning a grade) are you taking English 1A? Why are you in school more generally?

The clearer your sense of purpose, the more likely you are to stick with the course when it becomes challenging.

Next up: Policies

The next section is about the course’s policies.

Posted on

English 1A (Spring 2021) – General Information

Table of Contents

General Information

Course Title

English 1A: College Composition and Reading

Sections

This syllabus applies to three sections of English 1A: D9024, D9091, and D9575.

Instructor

Greg Kemble

Contact information

Whenever possible, please contact me through Canvas, using the “Inbox” in Canvas’s main menu. It’s much easier for me to keep track of our conversations that way.

If you’re not able to contact me through Canvas, though, here are some alternatives:

  • Email: gkemble@yccd.edu (As I said, it’s easier for me to keep track of things in Canvas, so please only use this when you need a response more quickly than usual.)
  • Office Phone: (530) 749-3821 (please leave a message)
    • Note: Thanks to COVID, I will not be on campus this semester, so I’m likely to get a message though Canvas or email more quickly than through voicemail.

Student Hours / Office Hours

I’ve also scheduled three student hours (or, if you prefer, “office hours”) each week. Feel free to log in to Zoom during the following times:

  • Tuesdays 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
  • Wednesdays 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
  • Thursdays 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

I am also available by appointment. I will do my best to be logged in to Zoom during the above hours (and I will try to use the Announcements when I can’t make it). But if you or I can’t make any of those times, I’m happy to set up a meeting during weekdays, weekends, mornings, afternoons, evenings. I will work hard to find something that works for you.

I prefer to meet on Zoom, when possible, because it gives us the opportunity to share a screen — we can look at a paper or website together, for example. Note that I don’t mind if you leave your camera off during a Zoom call. But if you’d prefer to talk on the phone, we can arrange that by appointment.

Here’s the link for Zoom Student Hours [no longer valid]

Passcode (if needed): 784679

Conferences

A few times throughout the semester — usually to discuss a draft of your essay — I will schedule a Zoom conference with you. I’ll send you the login information for those meetings when we schedule them.

Textbooks

Required

Cover of Graff and Birkenstein's They Say / I Say.

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say / I Say. 4th edition. Norton, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-393-63167-8.

WebAdvisor lists the 4th edition, without readings, and it would be best if we all used the same text. However, the 3rd edition, or the 3rd or 4th edition with readings, should be fine, if you already have one of those. The differences aren’t earth shattering, and as long as you’re a bit flexible, you should be able to get by.

Optional

Cover of Aaron's LB Brief

Aaron, Jane E. Little Brown Handbook: Brief. 2nd edition. Pearson, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-323-04096-6.

I’m not sure if this is the Yuba College edition; I know we used to have a college edition, but the publisher discontinued it.

However, all handbooks are pretty much the same. Older editions, or non-Yuba College editions, or even completely different handbooks are all fine (though information about MLA citation may be out of date). Indeed, you may even be able to get by with just the Internet, as long as you have good access. You’ll just need to use the index (or search engine) to find explanations about issues I point out in your papers.

Course Description

Here’s the description of English 1A that you’ll find in the Yuba College catalog:

An introductory course offering instruction in expository and argumentative writing, appropriate and effective use of language, close reading, cogent thinking, research strategies, information literacy, and documentation. Focus on the recursivity of writing processes and integrating reading, writing, and speaking skills. Students will write a minimum of 6000 words.

If you don’t already have a lot of experience with college or with college-level writing, some of that might not make a lot of sense yet. That’s okay — that’s why you’re here! Don’t let the fancy words intimidate you.

That said, English 1A is a pretty demanding course. That’s especially true of the online version. So while I don’t want you to be scared of it, I don’t want you to be complacent, either.

Time Commitment

As I just said, English 1A is pretty demanding. That’s not just because we English professors are ogres (though we may be); we’re also required to follow some policies that the state of California has set for us. (They even require us to include the following breakdown in the course’s syllabus!)

English 1A is a 4-unit course, which translates to:

  • Total hours for the course: 216
    • In-class (“lecture”) hours: 72 
    • Out-of-class (“homework”) hours: 144 

These numbers are for face-to-face courses, and that obviously doesn’t apply in quite the same way for an online class. But you should expect something similar — an average of around 4 hours per week working through the online content, and another average of around 8 hours a week doing outside work (reading, writing, and research).

Does that sound like a lot? It is! I am often surprised at how students try to take this class along with three others — and a full-time job.

Again, I’m not trying to scare you here. Lots of people succeed in the course! But please don’t expect a couple hours each weekend — or, worse, a few hours at the end of the semester — to lead to success in this class.

Are you ready?

Requirements for placing into English 1A have changed, due to changes in California state law; placement is now mostly based on high school Grade Point Average (GPA) — though passing ENGL 51 or 56 still qualifies you for the course.

This means that our class will include students with a wide range of reading and writing skills and expectations:

  • some of you are just out of high school and have not yet encountered college-level writing;
  • some of you have been away from school for a number of years and fear that you have forgotten much of what you used to know;
  • some of you are masters of a language other than English, but struggle with English;
  • some of you are just sure that, for whatever reason, you’re not good writers.

I will do my best to meet you at whatever level you find yourself. Of course, online instruction and assignments are relatively set, and it’s impossible for personal interactions to be 100% customized for each member of the class; there just aren’t that many hours in a day. But when I respond to your assignments, and especially your major essays, I will do my best to address your particular needs.

But you will need to do your part, too. Please read my comments carefully, and ask questions when something is not clear.

Above all: understand that one aspect of college is learning how to learn. Don’t rely only on me and my instruction; make sure you also seek answers on your own. There are a lot of good writing resources out there (I’ll point to several of them throughout the course—including later in this syllabus). The more you pursue questions on your own, the more useful my help — and the help of teachers in future courses — will be.

Next up: Learning Outcomes

I’ve broken this syllabus up into several parts so that it’s not just one long, overwhelming document. The next section is about Learning Outcomes.

Posted on

Notes from the English Dept. meeting of May 4, 2021 (and then some…)

The department held it’s first-Tuesday meeting, and I took notes! Here’s the important stuff — plus a couple things I learned after the meeting. If you were at the meeting, let me know if I forgot anything important. If not, I hope this is reasonably informative.

WLDC Surveys for students and for faculty

Shawn and Kiara announced that they’ve created two relatively short surveys, one targeted at faculty (that’s us!) and one at students. These are meant to help the center improve, in particular how to improve how we get word out to the students.

So please, if you are willing, please import the WLDC student survey into your course (it’s formatted as a quiz). Here’s a basic “how-to,” as I understand the process.

  • Log in to your Canvas
  • Click on this link (right here, in this blog post): WLDC student survey. If you click that link while logged in, it should take you directly to the quiz.
  • Click “Import/Download” and choose the courses you’d like to import the survey into.
  • Announce it to students. Extra credit might encourage more students to respond, but that’s up to you.

Also, please fill out the WLDC Feedback (Instructors) survey. It’s a Microsoft Form, with only a few questions. It shouldn’t take long.

The information from both of these surveys, as I said, will help the center improve. This is especially important now, as Brian Jukes is taking over the coordinator position (or most of it). This will help him prioritize the work as he gets his bearings.

End-of-semester SLO meeting PLUS the eLumen pilot

It’s been a long time since we last discussed this, but I hope you remember: The English Dept. agreed to pilot the process for entering SLO results into eLumen. This means that SLO reporting will be different this semester: instead of reporting totals to me through a Google Form (which I then aggregated and uploaded to TracDat), each instructor will enter SLO results for each student into eLumen.

Don’t panic! It’s not difficult at all, and not much more time consuming than the old way. And it will give the Outcomes committee a lot of help as they learn eLumen, and as they further develop promising practices for better use of SLO data. Just one example: entering SLOs in for each student will allow us to disaggregate the results to see if we have any disproportionate impacts that should be interrogated. (I’ll add that eLumen has privacy protections for faculty, so –at least as I understand it — these results couldn’t be used to single out individual faculty, even if we wanted to (which we don’t).)

We can discuss all this further at the end-of-semester SLO meeting that we hold at the end of… well, at the end of each semester. We are planning to devote a portion of that meeting to an eLumen workshop, where Shawn (our Outcomes coordinator) will walk everyone through the process of entering the SLO results. You can, at the meeting, enter your results (if you have them) during the meeting. And if you don’t have the results yet — I know that some people use their final essay as the assessment tool, and may not have them graded in time for the meeting — you’ll still be able to walk through much of the process so it won’t be brand new when you get to it.

We’ll also have a walk-through handout with screenshots for those who can’t make the meeting. There’s also a walk-through video that we can link to (though it includes more than is needed for just entering in results). And Shawn (and I) will always be available to help, if that’s needed.

We’re scheduling that meeting during finals week, the week of May 24. I’ve created a Google Form Poll that will help me set the time for this meeting. Please choose all the times that you are available. I will choose the one that (a) works for Shawn and myself (since we’re running it), (b) has the most people available, and (c) is latest in the week.

Note that Friday, May 28, is Commencement. The main commencement is set, as last year, for 7:30 pm. However, they are also running a drive-thru ceremony. I’m not sure about all the details yet; they said at the last all-college Zoom meeting (I refuse to say “YuZoom”) that they’d send out an announcement in email soon, so keep your eyes open for that. But I believe that they’ve set the English department version on Friday afternoon, which is why I did not include Friday afternoon on the list of options for our meeting.

PS: Remember that part-time faculty get paid for this meeting (as opposed to being eligible for Flex, which no one needs at this time).

Quick Reports

Fall semester

As I mentioned in the meeting, I have no additional information about fall. I’ve turned in the schedule, which Don has been working to get updated. Apparently, a few people have Canvas shells that don’t match their schedule; if that is the case for you, please contact Don (dmsith2@yccd.edu), as this is above my pay grade.

In general terms, we’re planning to be back in the classroom. Of course, the details of what that means (or even if that will happen) depends on the state of the pandemic at that time. I’ve not been encouraged by reports of how the vaccine-hesitant might make it so that we don’t end up with the herd immunity via vaccination that we’d expected. But we’ll see. That’s outside of our control.

Course Cap Discussions

Aree Metz and Kevin Ferns from Woodland, and Brian Jukes and I from Yuba, met with the deans to have the discussion about course caps for our composition classes.

Unfortunately, I think the discussion is, or risks, being swallowed up in a larger discussion that the district has decided it wants to have: there are a number of courses where the caps don’t match across the district, which isn’t supposed to be allowed by the full-time faculty contract.

So they’ve put together a process that doesn’t even follow the letter of the contract, in my view, let alone the spirit of it. The cynical part of me — which I try to keep under control, but is really itching right now — thinks that this is basically a way to set course caps according to what the district would like to see, given its interest in “efficiency” and enrollment management. I hope I’m wrong, but… <shrugs>

Anyway, the four of us remain in contact with Don (our dean) and Shannon (WCC’s dean), though much of that time has been spent waiting to hear what the next step is going to be.

Rotation Schedule

In the meeting, I mentioned that I had heard some vague rumblings about course rotations and Self Service (that’s the WebAdvisor replacement, unrelated to gas stations). Since then, Carla (Yuba’s academic VP) did a presentation at the all-campus Zoom meeting (did I mention my allergy to “YuZoom”?)(stop using so many parentheses, Greg! It’s confusing!) and explained the issue in a bit more detail.

The problem is that Self Service has the rotations embedded in it, and students rely on it in planning — for example, knowing that a course is only offered in the Spring helps them develop an educational plan that includes things they’re interested in.

And, of course, the problem with that: changes happen! We added a class to the rotation, and we needed to get out of step with Woodland so we aren’t poaching each other’s students. So I’m pushing ahead. Carla said to contact the dean, which I just did. I’m not sure that there’s clarity about what they plan to do/allow/encourage yet. But I think the issue just came to light, so we shouldn’t expect perfect clarity yet.

General Education Degrees

At a previous meeting, we discussed the possibility of adopting the Arts and Humanities GE degree. At the time, it was just a twinkle in the eye of the Curriculum Committee. In particular, we were waiting for some data about the degrees. I mentioned at this meeting that I was waiting for that data, and would raise the issue when I better knew what the Curriculum Committee is discussing. (I will add that this discussion is also happening in one of the Guided Pathways Task Forces, though I’m not sure if they’re working together or in parallel.)

The day after the meeting, I received a bit of data (specifically, the number of degrees awarded) and a request to join the discussion on Friday at the Curriculum Committee meeting. I’m not available at that time… but I also let them know that we need more information before we can make a decision. I will try to get some of that information in time for the end-of-semester meeting, but I wouldn’t expect that, even with answers to the questions I’ve asked, we’d be able to give an answer this school year.

That’s all, folks

I think that’s everything. Let me know ( gkemble@yccd.edu ) if you have any questions, thoughts, insights, concerns, jokes, recommended songs, favorite books, or stock tips.

Peace.

Posted on

Notes from the English Dept. meeting of March 2, 2021

Announcements

  • The new curriculum workflow in eLumen has two important changes that are relevant to us:
    • The workflow no longer notifies every member of a department that a course is new or updated course have been launched. Anyone working to create or update a course needs to request department feedback. (I recommend that the Composition Coordinator — me, as of this writing — help coordinate this communication.)
    • There is a workflow that is streamlined for DE changes only. If you’re updating the DE addendum on one or more of our courses, be sure you look for that. (That said, I sat through a curriculum committee meeting where courses with SLO and DE updates only nonetheless had to be sure that other information was correct, including rationales for textbooks over five years old.
  • As I understand it, the Academic Senate has okayed Yuba joining the Online Education Consortium. There’s a lot of work involved, especially given the number of courses that the DE Committee is trying to validate (under pressure of the District demanding validation as a condition for stipends… grrr). But as things move along, we may find that some of our hard-to-fill classes will find students from outside our service area.
  • Kiara sent an email to the department with a flyer announcing open submissions (deadline: March 15) for our online, student-edited literary journal, Flumes. I think Don Smith sent it out more widely, as well, so you may already have seen the flyer. If not, here’s a PDF of the email, and a copy of the flyer.

Report: ENGL 40B

Brian Jukes reported that he and I met with Jeremy and Carla (twice — and Don attended the first meeting) to discuss their unwillingness to schedule ENGL 40B, which is our second-semester tutor training course. It became clear that we were not going to get them to schedule the course, but we came to a compromise that will allow us to incorporate the training into their working hours. It’s not ideal, but it’s worth testing out.

Course Rotations

Now that we’ve added the Youth Lit and LGBTQ+ Lit courses to our roster, we need to update the course rotation schedule, which is used to ensure that students can expect courses they need for degrees will be offered regularly. We also discovered that we were offering some of our courses the same semester that Woodland offered the same courses.

The last bit of information I needed to build that schedule involved which two lit courses we would offer once every two years (rather than annually). We agreed that to put Youth Lit and Shakespeare in that category.

I will put a finalized version of that together soon and send it out for final approval.

Single-Point Rubrics

As I was investigating Dweck-influenced rubric headings, I came across something called a Single-Point Rubric. This was brand new to me, yet I also felt that someone in the department had introduced me to the concept already. Shades of Schrödinger.

Cat in a box: "In UR Quantum Box... ... Maybe"
Schrödinger‘s lolcat

Anyway, I talked about it incoherently for a few minutes, but promised I’d send out a couple links that introduce the idea. Et voilà:

Let me know what you think!

Posted on

Notes from the pre-semester SLO meeting of January 19, 2021

The Short Version

Here’s a list of the most important stuff that we discussed. If you want more information about any of the discussions, scroll down below and read the section on that issue.

  • Please encourage students to use the Writing and Language Development Center (WLDC). Kiara sent an email (which I forwarded on Tuesday) with ideas for ways to do this.
  • The English Department voted to pilot SLO reporting in eLumen. This will be very different from past semesters: instead of reporting collecting information to me through a Google Form, we’ll report SLOs for each individual student through eLumen.
  • Adjustments to the Spring schedule have been completed, for the most part, though of course there is always that chance that courses may be cancelled for continued low enrollment.
  • My recommendations for the Fall schedule were accepted, with a couple exceptions.
  • Early in the semester, I’ll request feedback re: adding “Broadcast” to the DE addenda for ENGL 1E and 56.
  • Woodland’s and our request to meet with the deans to discuss lowering composition course caps is on hold while the deans wait for the District to discuss policies around course caps more generally.
  • As comp coordinator, I’ll be working on two main projects over this semester. If you have any insights or thoughts on any of these, please let me know:
    • Rotation for our literature classes
    • English Department Employee Handbook

I also have three issues I’ll be tracking. (I do not have a “longer version” for any of these because there isn’t anything to say yet.)

  • Only 4 units of our 5-unit ENGL 1E are transferrable. I’m not sure what that means for our students at this point, so I need to follow up on that.
  • We’re waiting to hear if our Academic Senate will vote to support Yuba College becoming part of the state’s Online Consortium.
  • CSU has added a multicultural requirement (Area F). I don’t yet know how, if at all, that affects our Program Maps or our degrees.

If you have any questions about anything listed above, please read the longer version below. And if you still have questions, or if you have questions about anything not on the list, then please let me know.

The Longer Versions

WLDC

It would be helpful to really push our students to use the Writing and Language Development Center. Kiara sent an email (December 18, Subject: WLDC Reminders!), which I forwarded on Tuesday. Kiara also updated links and attached a flyer in a response to that message on Tuesday as well. (If you can’t find the email thread, let me know, and I’ll forward it to you.)

Aside from how students benefit from the WLDC, there are two important reasons to encourage students to use it:

First: Students are using NetTutor (or however it’s spelled) rather than the WLDC. (50% of our students’ NetTutor visits involved English tutoring.) This is true even though most of us have disabled NetTutor in our Canvas shells (if you haven’t, please do!) because students are going in through other courses and then submitting their English requests from there.

NetTutor provides far inferior tutoring services for English — much more grammar focused, less interactive, more “fixing” the paper rather than training students how to think about revision, and so on.

And second: the WLDC has been sort of under attack by some administrators, and if our students don’t use the center, it’s easier for administration to argue that it’s not as important as we know it is. This frustrates me, of course; looking at any numbers under pandemic conditions is a big problem, as I see it. But that’s where we are.

So please: encourage your students to use the WLDC. And (as I said) refer to Kiara’s email, which includes several specific ways that we can do this.

eLumen pilot for SLOs

eLumen is the program that is replacing TracDat (where we recorded Program Review and SLO assessment data) and CurricuNET (our curriculum software). Shawn asked that the English department pilot SLO reporting in eLumen, and the department agreed to do so (10 yes, 5 no-opinion, 2 no).

This means that all English faculty (full- and part-time) will report SLOs on each student, rather than (as we’ve done in the past) simply reporting the numbers of students who fell into each category. We’ll have more information as we move forward — Shawn and I have some work to do to develop an assessment rubric, and we’ll need to provide training. (It’s not hard, but it will be different, and will likely take a little more time.)

Related, but not identical: at an eLumen workshop, I learned that the integration between Canvas and eLumen is pretty limited. There is a way to set things up so that the assessment on a single assignment will automatically transfer SLO assessment scores into eLumen. But we, as a department, have some decisions to make, some of which might make that automation unhelpful.

More as we go.

Spring and Fall schedules

Don said that most, if not all, of the adjustments to the Spring schedule (specifically, cancelling classes and bumping to make sure full-timers have their contractually required load, or close to it) had been completed. This doesn’t mean that there will be no more changes — things might not go as predicted. But he is not expecting a “second round” of changes, just unexpected adjustments.

For the Fall, I was originally asked to created a normal schedule, but then the school decided it would put together a schedule that is roughly 50% live and 50% online. I adjusted by requesting a handful of hybrid courses (more on that in a moment) and shifting a handful of others online. The changes weren’t huge.

For hybrid courses, I created enough for the people who expressed explicit interest in exploring the mode. However, since some of those people are part-time faculty, and my ability to assign classes to them is contingent on seniority and return rights, there’s a possibility that a course or two may end up on the plate of someone who said they’d do it if they have to. I will know more later.

In most cases, the requests re: literature courses were accepted as recommended. The two exceptions: ENGL 40B (our follow-up tutor course) isn’t going to be allowed to run (though Brian J and I have requested a meeting to argue that this decision be reconsidered), and ENGL 34 was moved online (inexplicably, as far as I’m concerned, since it’s a late start class and thus gives maximum time for the vaccines to have an effect, etc.)

ENGL 1E and 56 DE Addenda

We decided that ENGL 1E and 56 should not be offered online except in emergencies, and we made sure our DE addenda reflected that. However, “except in emergencies” relies on the state declaring an emergency, which means we have no flexibility to move 1E or 56 online if the campus closes. And that’s a problem for students who need (or want) those courses.

So I am going to recommend that we revise the DE Addenda for these two classes to allow “Broadcast” as a modality. This would mean we would be allowed to offer the course online, but only synchronously — that is, the instructor would teach it over Zoom, but at the same times that it was scheduled for face-to-face.

The idea is always to schedule the course face-to-face, but to have the option to shift it to broadcast if that becomes necessary. The alternative, unless the state announces that we’re in what they consider an emergency, is to cancel the course. (Or, as is the case this semester, not to offer it at all.)

I’ll run a poll/survey sometime once the semester has settled in a bit.

Class Size Discussion

Last semester, Brian Jukes and I met with Aree Metz and Kevin Ferns from Woodland to develop a request and rationale for lowering class sizes in composition courses. We sent the two relevant deans a request to schedule a meeting, but were told that the VPs and the District are working to develop a process for reviewing course sizes, and the deans would like clarity from that discussion before they meet with us.

I (and I’m sure I’m not alone on this) am not content to just sit around waiting, but that was at the very end of the last semester, and we haven’t yet discussed what our next steps will be. I’ll let everyone know when we’ve decided on our next steps.

My projects for the semester

In addition to things mentioned above, I plan to work on a couple projects this semester.

First, early in the semester, I would like us to finalize a course rotation plan for our lit courses. We now have more lit courses than we have slots for a two-year rotation, and we’ve run into a couple semesters where our rotation conflicted with Woodland’s. I’ll develop a draft and get feedback within the first few weeks of school.

Second, I hope to begin putting together a sort-of “Employee Handbook” for English, as a resource for all of us, but especially for new faculty. I’ll likely build it in an English Dept. Canvas shell, which could also serve as a place to discuss issues asynchronously and/or share resources. (We’ve wanted that for a long time, and even started dumping things in a shell, but it’s kind of disorganized.)

If you have anything that you wish you knew or had known — policies, answers to questions, etc., either now or back when you were still new at the college — let me know so I can include it in the handbook.