Humanities and Media Studies - Tips/Information for Taking Your HMS Course Online (Fall 2020)

In planning your online courses, there is a wealth of invaluable training, information, and advice available to you on the Pratt Center for Teaching and Learning website: (https://commons.pratt.edu/ctl/?_ga=2.55604715.1191852293.1596212536-1602482703.1596212536).

A. Writing Your Syllabus

1. Mindset/Mental Health/Get Psyched:

Getting ready for a Fall semester online is not easy and can feel overwhelming. Take some time to just breathe. Take a walk. Do whatever it takes to calm down and not give into panic. Try not to make this task more complicated than it has to be.

2. Review the Components of a Pratt Syllabus

Review the official Pratt syllabus template, which will let you know what the required sections of a Pratt syllabus should be, whether the class be taught online or on campus, “in the best of times and the worst of times.” The template is attached to this email and on the Provost’s section of the Pratt website here: https://www.pratt.edu/the-institute/administration-resources/office-of-the-provost/policies-processes-and-forms/

Even though your class will be online, the required sections of the syllabus are the same as they are for regular, in-person classes (instructor contact information, office hours, bulletin description, course description, course goals, student learning objectives, required resources/readings, assessment and grading, list of major assignments, week-to-week schedule for 15 weeks of instruction, Pratt policies, course-specific policies). In other words, just because we are going online does not mean that you have to reinvent the wheel or that you have to forget all of your previous in-person teaching experience, which for some of you amounts to decades of experience. Don’t forget who you are and what you know just because you are teaching online.

3. Consider Starting by Thinking about Course Goals and Student Learning Outcomes

I tend to believe that the most important sections of your syllabus to consider first are the course goals and the student learning outcomes. I think of these two sections of the syllabus as conveying the same information from two different perspectives, that of the professor and that of the student. The course goals are what you the professor intend for the course to achieve, and the student learning objectives are how the student will be transformed by your course, i.e. what they will be able to do or think, as a result of your class, that they did not know or were not able to do before your class.

If you are teaching a multi-section HMS course in which goals, objectives, and requirements are shared across sections, make sure you are familiar with them. If you are not, contact the coordinator of your program and make sure you participate in any meetings your coordinator organizes (hopefully you have already been in conversation with your coordinator). Here are the current multi-section courses in HMS and their corresponding coordinators:

HMS 101A: Literary and Critical Studies I (coordinator: Evan Rehill, erehill@pratt.edu).

HMS 201A: Literary and Critical Studies II (coordinator: Evan Rehill, erehill@pratt.edu).

HMS 101B: Literary and Critical Studies, Architecture I (coordinator: Sacha Frey, sfrey@pratt.edu).

HMS 291B: Transdisciplinary Writing Architecture I (coordinator: Sacha Frey, sfrey@pratt.edu).

HMS 497B: Research Writing for Architecture Students (coordinator: Saul Anton, santon@pratt.edu).

WAC 495 A,B,C: Studio Writing 1-3 (coordinator: Tim Simonds, tsimonds@pratt.edu).

WAC 497A: Thesis Writing (coordinator: Michael Sharick, msharick@pratt.edu).

WAC 697A: Graduate Thesis Writing (coordinator: Michael Sharick, msharick@pratt.edu).

4. Use “Action” Verbs in Student Learning Outcomes

Write your student learning outcomes using “action” or “operational” verbs, which in turn makes it easier to design assignments that demonstrate that the outcomes have been accomplished. An operational verb references student actions that can be directly observed. Just describe what a student does. Write it in such a way that the student understands what they are expected to do.

I am attaching a “Syllabus Rubric Guide” that I picked up at an assessment event to this email that contains, in the appendix (pp. 13-14), an array of “action” verbs that are useful in writing student learning outcomes. What is at stake is that if you are precise in writing your outcomes, you and the students will more precisely understand what you are teaching and what the student is expected to learn. The key is to write these without eroding the intellectual level of your course. It is the difference between writing, 1) “Students will gain an overview of world literature” to 2) “Students do close readings of a number of key texts in the world literature canon.” It’s easier to design an assignment that demonstrates number 2 than number 1. It’s also helpful to keep student learning objectives simple, and not to overload too many objectives into one sentence.

5. Brainstorm Texts, Activities, Assignments

Brainstorm a list of texts, activities, and assignments that you think you might want to include in the class. Refer to old syllabi. Consult colleagues. Use Google. Steal from other syllabi. Rely on your education, experience, and expertise in your fields. It is precisely this expertise and experience that makes you the faculty member who is teaching the courses that you are teaching.

6. Rough out 15 Weeks of Instruction

Next, get out a calendar and create a 15-week schedule. This will help you visualize the temporal arc of the semester. As a sane rule of thumb, and according to the State of New York (https://www.hesc.ny.gov/partner-access/financial-aid-professionals/tap-and-scholarship-resources/tap-coach/96-semester-hour.html),

for each credit hour of in-class instruction, the student can be expected to do 2 hours of homework. Thus, if the typical HMS class grants 3 credits, the student in such a class should be expected in normal times to be present in class for 3 hours/week, and to do 6 hours/week of homework. In exceptional times, like the present, in which you will be figuring out the ideal balance of synchronous and asynchronous instruction in terms of how to best achieve your goals and objectives, the 1:2 in-person instruction to homework ratio may need to be modified. But it is useful to keep in mind that a 3-credit course should involve about 9 hours/week of in-person instruction and homework combined.

So, no, it is not reasonable to ask the students to read Anna Karenina or Infinite Jest (insert your favorite massive work of art here) for homework and write a 10-page paper on it in one week. Also keep in mind the time students will spend navigating technical tools and platforms, another reason to keep the technological requirements of your course as streamlined as possible.

*Credit vs. Contact Hours: This is a good place to point out another key distinction that is often confused at Pratt, that between “credits” and “contact hours.” Students gain credits for passing classes, whereas faculty are paid according to contact hours, which equals the number of hours faculty have contact with students per week. Usually, credits and contact hours match, which is why they are often confused. But HMS offers a number of classes in which they don’t match, in which for instance the student receives 3 credits while the faculty are paid 4 contact hours. Faculty are paid more contact hours than the credits awarded for a given class when the Administration has recognized that the outside labor required to conduct the class exceeds the usual amount of prep and grading time.

*Office hours: This is also a good place to reiterate the policy on office hours. As stated in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (http://www.pratt-union.org/documents/), for every three contact hours for which you are paid, you are expected to hold one office hour per week. Last Spring, post-shutdown, I found that scheduling meetings with students on Zoom around the time when major assignments were due was a fairly good way to organize my office hours. You can be flexible and inventive in figuring out how to best conduct the equivalent of office hours this semester. This can be a great way to establish better one-on-one contact with students.

7. Include links to Institute-wide policies that should be on your syllabus (these may already be set up for you on Canvas):

(Note: I have alerted the Dean that it would be hugely helpful if all of the Pratt policies were in one place on the Pratt website, so maybe this will happen at some point. Canvas may already have the policies on the course template.)

Pratt Institute Attendance Policy:

https://www.pratt.edu/uploads/attendance_policy_clean_13_feb_17.pdf

Pratt Academic Integrity Policy:

https://www.pratt.edu/tiny_mce/plugins/imagemanager/files/Academic_Integrity_Policy_Revised_April_2020.pdf

Pratt Community Standards:

https://www.pratt.edu/student-life/student-affairs/office-of-the-vice-president-for-student-affairs/student-policies/

Accessibility Policy

(Cut and paste from the Pratt syllabus template)

Human Rights Policy

(Cut and paste from the Pratt syllabus template)

Title IX Statement:

https://commons.pratt.edu/ctl/title-ix-pratt-syllabus-statement/

Links to the “Back to Pratt” page for COVID 19 specific information; again to Pratt Community Guidelines; the Title IX required statement; Pratt DEI Anti-Racism Resources; and LGBTQ Resources Page.

https://commons.pratt.edu/ctl/links-to-useful-resources/

8. Include policies/instructions that are specific to your course, including your own specific attendance policy:

These include the specific attendance policy for your course, any weekly actions the students need to do to participate successfully in your course, and any moral/ethical imperatives you wish to point out to create an inclusive and harmonious atmosphere in your virtual classroom.

I admit that taking attendance in online classes is a challenge, and this is worth discussing as a department. In various meetings I have attended this summer, the Provost has been quite understanding and philosophical about attendance, saying that as faculty we will need to be accommodating and take the exceptional circumstances we are in into consideration. I do believe he said he would be issuing more information about this, and I will follow up. This is a very basic but crucial issue.

9. Harmonizing your “Paper” Syllabus with the LMS (Moodle or Canvas):

A key difference between in-person and online teaching is that in addition to providing a link on the LMS (Moodle or Canvas) to the “paper” syllabus, it will be helpful for you to copy and paste the content for each week into the appropriate week of the LMS, including links to required readings or assignments. The CTL wisely calls these weekly plans “chunks” or “modules.” The point is that you should very clearly communicate via the LMS exactly what is happening in your class from week to week. Your description of class that week might include what the CTL calls “module objectives,” i.e. the key learning objectives for that week, which should obviously reflect the course’s overall learning objectives.

If you make a change to your week-to-week syllabus during the semester, it is your responsibility to communicate that to the students in advance, not right before class. If you make a change to the schedule, it is usually a wise practice to email them and let them know, and to not do this too close to the class meeting or due date affected by the change. Help the students stay organized and help them learn to manage their time by planning in advance for them as transparently as possible and giving them a reasonable amount of time to complete assignments. It will be especially helpful to remind them of major exams or assignments a few weeks in advance. They will appreciate it, especially during this exceptional semester.

10. Include a List of Major Assignments/Grading

There should be a section of your syllabus that explains your major assignments, roughly how much each assignment is worth when you are calculating the student’s final grade, and what your expectations are for each assignment (the criteria you will use to grade the assignment, i.e. your expectations). These assignments and due dates should also be included in the 15-week schedule and on the LMS. Redundancy, phrasing expectations in different ways and putting them in different places, and reinforcing your expectations orally, helps you to convey information and expectations clearly and gives students a chance to ask questions.

While Pratt allowed Pass/Fail grading in Spring 2020 to alleviate the stress of the shutdown, in Fall 2020 we will be using the usual letter grading system. Many faculty had a good experience with Pass/Fail grading and are advocating for this to be a part of Pratt grading moving forward, enough so that the upper administration is considering this as a possibility for the future, but only if it is integrated into the overall grading system in a thoughtful way that takes all of its implications into consideration.

11. Include shorter, “low stakes” assignments to foster connection/community:

Consider including shorter writing assignments from week to week if you don’t already do this in your in-person classes. Responding to short writing assignments or emails every week will help you to maintain a vital, discursive, individualized link with each of your students every week. This way, even if all other conditions are making the students and professor feel alienated from one another, at the very least you are having some substantial intellectual interaction with each student each week.

12. Make readings and other materials easily accessible:

It would be excellent to make all readings available as PDFs or links on the LMS as well as one other platform, such as a class Google drive (with the caveat that this is not available to Pratt students who will be based in China). If you need a PDF of a certain reading that you cannot find online, the Pratt Library may be able to help, though I am still awaiting details on the extent to which they will be able to provide this service. You can of course also ask students to buy actual books via an online seller like Amazon or bookfinder.com (https://www.bookfinder.com/) or the Pratt Online Bookstore (https://pratt.ecampus.com/). I received a promotion from Norton that they are selling critical editions of E Books for $5.99 until the end of the year, which is a great deal (https://wwnorton.com/norton-critical-edition-ebooks). Give the students advance notice so they have time to purchase the books and have them sent to their homes before they need to do the assignment.

If you are asking the students to watch a film, it would be ideal to make that film accessible if possible on one of the online streaming services managed by the Pratt Library: https://libguides.pratt.edu/filmcollection/home. You may need to explain to your students exactly how to find the film on the Library site. Of course, you may need to go outside of these streaming services for certain films. It is acceptable to ask your students to purchase a monthly subscription to a streaming service like Criterion if you will be assigning a lot of films/videos (Criterion also offers a 14-day free trial!).

B. Considerations Specific to Online Pedagogy

1. Before the First Day of Class:

Classes start the week of August 24. Make sure that students know how to start your course. It will probably make sense to send your students an email a few days before the first day of class to:

· Let them know how you are going to get started and how to access information for your course.

· Find out their time zones so that you can be aware of timing issues when planning synchronous activities and discussions. Any synchronous activities you plan must take place during the official time of your class.

· Provide a list of the software and platforms that you are going to use for your course. It will no doubt be best to keep this as simple as possible. The full-time course load for a Pratt undergraduate is 12-18 credits, or 4-6 classes. It will be a huge burden for students in the simplest scenario to juggle complex technical demands for this many classes. Keep the student’s perspective in mind when planning your class, both in terms of workload and technological demands/complexity.

2. The First Day of Class

Perhaps devise an activity for the first class that will allow all of your students to introduce themselves and get to know each other in order to start to build a comfortable, inclusive, and exciting virtual atmosphere for your class. I am not saying that this is easy for faculty who are mainly experienced teaching in person, myself included, and this is a big change from last Spring when we had half the semester to get to know our students in person.

3. Dealing with the Decline of Aura: Being “Present” in Your Class

We all know that “being present” as a professor in an online class is not the same as “being present” in an in-person class. I think this is actually a pedagogical and philosophical problem of some magnitude, and that if you have problems figuring this out or accepting it for moral reasons, that that is a reasonable position.The question is, if we are not showing up physically in a classroom every week, how do we show up in an online class?

Walter Benjamin makes an interesting remark about the difference being an actor in a theater versus being an actor in a film that seems relevant: “The film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust his performance to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person. This permits the audience to take the position of a critic, without experiencing any personal contact with the actor. The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera.” This is from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” section VIII, and I think this is a worthwhile topic to discuss as a department. I know many of you know this essay quite well. It would be nice to philosophize our way through the year rather than un-reflectively deploying technical tools as if they are not transforming the whole experience of teaching. It would be great if we could find a way to dialectically introduce our current conditions of production, foisted upon us by SARS COV 2, into our classroom discourse and content in order to help students situate this potentially traumatic disruption of their lives in some kind of larger field of meaning. In simpler terms, consider discussing the pandemic in your classes.

One of my other French idols (sorry—if you know me you know I am a Francophile stuck in the heyday of French theory), Jacques Derrida, would definitely advocate incorporating the frame into the analysis of the painting. Il n’y a pas de hors texte, or, there is no outside of the text, or outside-text. The frame, the pandemic and the shift to online learning (so bizarre for a studio-based school!), is part of your class whether we acknowledge it or not, so we might as well acknowledge it. This is precisely where a Liberal Arts education proves its worth: in navigating a crisis, in responding to new historical conditions.

4. Foster 3 types of interaction in your class:

The CTL advocates inventing ways in your class to foster three types of substantial interaction: between students and the content of the course, between the professor and students, and between students so that they can form a sense of community among themselves. This makes perfect sense and will take some ingenuity to achieve all three, especially the last one. This is also a good topic for a department discussion and sharing of tips and techniques among faculty.

5. Tech Rooms for Online Teaching:

Pratt IT will be setting up tech-equipped rooms on the Pratt campus where faculty can teach their online classes in case you aren’t able to do so from home. The current rooms designated for this purpose are DeKalb 208 and 308, and ARC E09, E11, and E13. A reservation system will eventually still being set up, and other rooms may become available. I will keep you posted. If working on the Pratt campus, be sure to follow the COVID 19 related guidelines on the Back to Pratt website: https://www.pratt.edu/coronavirus/.

C. Useful Links

Academic Integrity Policy:

https://www.pratt.edu/tiny_mce/plugins/imagemanager/files/Academic_Integrity_Policy_Revised_April_2020.pdf

Attendance Policy:

https://www.pratt.edu/uploads/attendance_policy_clean_13_feb_17.pdf

Back to Pratt/Safety Guidelines for Working on Campus:

https://www.pratt.edu/coronavirus/

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf

Center for Teaching and Learning:

https://commons.pratt.edu/ctl/?_ga=2.55604715.1191852293.1596212536-1602482703.1596212536

Collective Bargaining Agreement: