Reflective Introduction

My course design focuses on building digital composition skills in an online course. I'm particularly interested in developing effective online learning environments as well as improving students skills as digital writers. In order to combine these interests, I decided to take this as an opportunity to develop a set of learning and interactive goals for a digital writing course and find ways to use technology to meet those goals in an online setting.

It's often said that we teach the way we were taught, which can be an excellent place to start if you've had the opportunity to learn from great teachers. I’ve been lucky enough to have this opportunity. As a result, a number of the projects designed for this online course are either inspired by or remixes of projects that I was assigned during undergrad that 1.) I found particularly helpful in transforming my views about writing and in my development as a digital writer and 2.) meet learning goals set for my own course.

Course Goals
My main goals for this course are to:

1. create a strong community of practice in a non-collocated classroom.
2. develop students’ awareness of audience and improve students’ skills as analytical writers.
3. help students view digital mediums as legitimate writing forums.
4. guide students in exploring the potential requirements for creating digital compositions in their future careers.
5. help students structure their own learning goals.
6. help students develop a sense of purpose in digital writing as well as a sense of their participation in a conversation that extends beyond the classroom.
7. help students start the process of building Selber's functional, critical, and rhetorical literacies by teaching them to use various technologies, analyze those technologies for their affordances and usefulness in various rhetorical situations, and eventually become producers of digital works beyond the scope of this class.
   

Influential Theories
A number of theories from our class readings and discussions have influenced the development of this course. The most prominent of these include:

• LPP/Communities of Practice: One of my main goals for the course was creating a strong community of practice in a non-collocated classroom with a group of students who would likely never meet. This influenced my decision to schedule regular class meetings through Convore and GoToMeeting in order to create opportunities for synchronous discussion. This theory also influenced my decision to put a great deal of emphasis on creating various peer groups for artifact analyses, general blog posts, ELI review, and a final group project. The purpose of these groups is to involve students in reading each others' writing in order to provide comments, offer suggestions, and learn more from working in collaboration with their peers than they ever could working in isolation.
  
  
• Affordances: In choosing technologies for the course, the theory of affordances directly influenced my choices in technology in terms of what type of learning interactions each technology afforded. Also, the technologies were selected for their affordances in meeting specific learning goals, rather than picking a neat technology and matching the learning goal to the technology.
  
  
• Politics of Technological Artifacts: With this theory in mind, I attempted to create a fair playing field for students from different backgrounds and skill levels. The technologies required for the course are either free or inexpensive so that students are not priced out of full participation in the class. All of the required technologies are also accessible to students with a minimal level of technical skill. For example, instead of requiring students to edit full video productions of their interviews for project 3, I require them to create an edited version in Xtranormal. While Xtranormal charges a small fee (the project requires a $10.00 Xtranormal points purchase), its use allows students to focus on the requirements of the interview edit rather than requiring them to have access to video recording and editing software, not to mention significant video editing skills.
  
  
• Scaffolding: As previously mentioned, each of the required technologies is accessible to students with a minimal skill level while still allowing more advanced students to challenge themselves. To create even more support for varying skill levels, I've given struggling students every opportunity to both learn from their peers and seek additional help from me. I've also provided more advanced students the option to redesign an assigned project to create one that is more meaningful or challenging to them. This will allow advanced students to extend themselves to a greater degree and take on more responsibility without overwhelming less advanced students. With the strict boundaries of ensuring that the "new" project is of equal or greater learning value as the original project, this practice allows students to work from their current level and view themselves as active participants in achieving their own learning goals.
  

As we've learned, the assessment practices and grading procedures for assignments need to reflect important learning goals in order for students to value those learning goals. With that in mind, I've carefully balanced my assignments to ensure that achievement in core learning goals is substantially rewarded in the assessment and grading process. Students will be able to earn excellent grades only through meeting the course goals of displaying audience awareness, successful exploration of various digital composing mediums, adeptness in critical and analytical writing, and active participation in a community of practice.