BMCC-UB-N COIL Project

This COIL Project will run for the Fall 2019 semester for AY 2019-2020, between students in Dr. Gokcora's ESL 95 Intensive Writing for ESL course at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and Dr. Everson's ENGL 1119 Rhetoric & Writing I course at the University of The Bahamas-North campus. The UB-North Global Exchange was developed to support this and other cross-institutional and campus collaborations.

The goals of this COIL project are to help students:

  • Improve cross-cultural communication skills and global awareness
  • Use digital communication technology and tools critically and productively
  • Produce and share knowledge collaboratively and at a distance

Technology to use:

  • Email -- for student partnering and setting up a time to interview each other using a selected real time (synchronous) communication technology of their choice.
  • Synchronous Communication Technology -- students will determine an appropriate communication technology to meet in real time to conduct 2 sets of interviews. The first will be an introductory / getting to know you interview, the second will be more formal and structured to gather information for an essay writing assignment about education based on the class readings. The possible synchronous comm tech to be used includes: Whats App, Facetime, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, etc. Students typically already know how to use these.
  • Collaborative Writing -- course essay assignments will be done using Word, then uploaded to the UB-N GX platform, where students will complete structured peer reviews.
  • Web Publishing-- students will independently develop an essay based on the interviews and publish the polished drafts to the UB-N GX course website built for this collaboration. This will allow sharing of the essays, and allow participants for commenting on the essays. The COIL website and published works will only be visible to registered members of the course. Students will be asked to sign a Permission to Use Student Work (and retain copyright) if any of their materials are used for public facing or publication purposes.
  • Screencasting / video-audio recording -- the final project will be to present a report on a social justice issue that COIL partners identify is important to address in their home country or heritage culture that others from outside might not be aware of. Students will select an authentic image from their home country or heritage culture, and then provide an analysis of the rhetorical appeals (ethos, logos, pathos, oikos) to show how it works to convey a message in that culture regarding that social justice issue. Screen-cast-o-matic will be used for these projects and will be demonstrated in class prior to the assignment. Students will also be asked to watch and comment on at least two presentations.

Collaborative Platform

  • Commons in a Box-Open Lab - is an open source platform for building collaborative sites. It is based on WordPress (a multi-site theme) that was developed by CUNY Graduate School for their CUNY Academic Commons. Reclaim hosting -- which specializes in educational hosting and supports CBOX installation-- will be the 3rd party hosting service. See link below to site created for this project.

Assessment and Evaluation of Global Competencies

For this COIL project the BMCC Global Competencies Survey will be adapted and administered pre/post intervention to measure changes in self-reported skills and attitudes that foster abilities to successfully work in intercultural environments. It is based on the Global Perspectives Inventory, and will be administered through SurveyMonkey. >>May need to add some permission here -- because it seems that original project using this survey is now closed???

These are some other resources that also aim to assess these skills and attitudes related to global competencies:

Collaborative Site (being piloted with this project)

Commons in a Box-Open Lab site; linked temporarily to Junkanoo in GB domain (hosted by Reclaim Hosting); visitors can "Join", and once approved, set their membership type, and then create a Course, Project, Group or Portfolio. This platform was chosen because each partner institution (BMCC and UB) in this COIL project has different LMSs that are exclusive to their campuses.

Work Log

  • 7/3 - I have registered with my ub.edu.bs email - as a Faculty, and created the BMCC_UBN COIL course. It is a WordPress site with Twenty Sixteen default theme-- but it can be changed - to the limited ones in the Admin of CBOX (I deleted them all - so I have to bring back the preinstalled themes for CBOX)
  • 7/4 - sent Deniz the link to CBOX - so she can join and look at the tools and course website. We need to decide how students will join this site -- self register or by invitation only) and when. I will also need to continue reading the documentation, explore the existing CBOX sites to see what tools can be used for all the collaboration -- for a class blog, and their papers, plus commenting on them, and then a space to share the social justice presentations.
  • 7/5-updated landing page images "sliders", changed my admin profile (using personal gmail) to distinguish from professor profile (using UB email); updated about, terms of use, and contact us pages; changed colors of site to match logo; designed a site logo and set up the logo and favicon; changed main menu from "clubs" to "groups", and the main part of home page to include "groups" instead of "clubs"; updated all the template text for "Groups"; changed all external links to open a new tab; added a practice student with the junkanooingb gmail account; added testdummy student with chroniclesubn gmail account. But multiple attempts at signing in - using different browsers - to try to test out the site - has got me all knocked out and locked out for a certain time (even the admin account). Created another mock course site, and played with the new templates added; developed a course logo for the COIL, and revamped some other aspects.
  • NEED: a separate account for the Admin of the site - as the emails sent to users - shows my gmail account?? . Set up a separate admin email through the web host BUT THIS has not been activated yet>>.
  • 7/5-sent an email to Deniz asking her to try to Register on the site to see how that works; and to try to add her as a professor to the COIL course.
  • 7/6--sent out link and request to UB-N colleagues Juliet Glenn-Callender and Rose McTier to register - so we can see how it works with more people on the site.
  • 7/7-got email from Deniz that registering was not working; had Jose test out and problem was with Department required; reset to optional, but still a problem, deleted Department field, registration worked for Jose; still could not add him as a professor to a course - had him invite me as a faculty to a course but no option to make me the professor. Sally put this in on the CBOX OL forum to see if there is a way to do it. The fac member can be made an administrator on the associated site. Tested out messaging, friending people, building a portfolio, and other features.>>Answer back from CBOX OL support Forum--no way to have co-faculty for a course site right now - (only 1 can be the admin for a course) that is a limitation of the theme and not easily changed but a ticket is in (or issue opened) to the developers. UPdated: developers will change text on Course Home to eliminate the plural Professor(s) to avoid confusion >>Has not been done yet - prob next update.
  • 7/8--emailed Deniz to try again to register- issue should be resolved. SO far no one else has registered. Juliet said she would check it out -- and indicated she is looking into Coursesite.com - to move her library courses over to - a free online course building site from Bb.
  • 7/8-Deniz registered. Sally did some more testing of features, and settings on the site. Sally made a mock up video using Screencastomatic - on signing up for the site and posted it on the Course site, and was able to easily embed the video.
  • 7/12-Juliet has signed up, but inadvertently may have interfered with her activation process. Sally happened to see her in the user queue and activated the account, which may prevent her from receiving the email to login. Sally asked her to notify if she gets the email and if so if she can log in to check it out.
  • 7/13-7/14-- I continued reviewing site documentation and reading more about security and back up of the site and how to prevent or avoid hacking. There are a lot of built in safeguards, but systematic security measures will need to be addressed in consultation with my OIT on return to UB in August.
  • 7/16-Deniz sent the instrument to measure Global Competencies used in a research project of which she was part; the study has not been published yet - they are still analyzing the data. Deniz is not sure if we can use that instrument as a pre/post for our COIL, but she will find out - or if we can adapt it. If not, perhaps develop our own using the materials Sally gathered on assessing global competencies.
  • Next meeting: 7/18 (11:00 pm-Sally) /7/19 (6:00 am -Deniz). We reviewed the Global X site; walked through different features to determine where and how student activities will be done -- using Global X [Course Home] page, and the Course website which is still under construction; Sally made a table to list all student activities and where it will be made, and a corresponding Task List for things that still need to be prepared; next meeting will be August 16th at 11:00-pm-Sally (AUg 17th at 6:00 am for Deniz) where we will conduct mock interviews of each other using the Rodriguez essay, and then composing a sample essay, and walk through the student exercises.
  • 7/27- at the ACH - met Matt Gold (head of CBOX, Grad Center at CUNY, and Manifold PI) he introduced me to one of the admins of CBOX OL at Tech College (see conference notes file)- Charlie (British woman ??) - she said she could get me some sample materials they are developing to see how to do things and to feel free to ask for help through forum -- also can ask Matt for her contact email if I can't find.
  • 8/12-Deniz had trouble accessing the Login page for the site -- Sally also was also getting an error on the landing page though could login through the upper right link, this was reported to the webhosting service and was resolved quickly; Sally continued to research the admin of the site to be able to address issues quickly once it was running for a course with 40 students all trying to access it.
  • 8/13-14 - Sally continued testing site features and did more troubleshooting; Also got fatal error and unable to access site and had to clear browser cookies to be able to get back in - so this will likely be a common problem for students. Also researched possible quick and easy learning platforms that can be used as a back up in case there is a catastrophic failure with this site due to traffic problems on the webserver. Edmodo has been identified as best option given their terms of use. Sally will mock up a course site and test it out -- as a back up plan before the COIL project starts (by Sept. 2nd)
  • 8/16-Sally added all the required pages and categories to the Project website, and identified where and how each assignment could be completed on the UBN GX. A new Tutorial was created, saved to YouTube and embedded in the Site landing page. The timeline was added to the site and some items on the course home calendar. An inquiry was submitted to the Theme development forum to find out how to fix the link error on the Course Home page for the Discussion and Files >> wrong link is in there -- needs to be updated. These can be accessed properly on right hand menu.
  • 8/15--Deniz created an assignment sheet for the Education Essay, sample interview questions, and a sample essay. She will continue to refine this and this can be added to the Assignments Education Essay page when ready.
  • 8/16-17--COIL project Skype meeting: finalized the assignments, timeline, and location or how they will be done on the GX course and site. Structured responses (from prompts) will be posted on the Discussion forum for students to self-introduce and report on their 1st and 2nd interviews so that we have a record that it was complete and can easily grade it. The COIL partner peer reviews are the activity that has us unsure - but for now we are going to have students upload the draft to the Course Home files - partners will find and download their partner's papers, and then complete a peer review worksheet and upload that to the files when done. This seems rather too inpersonal for this and not so collaborative - but we will stay with this for now unless we can come up with a better process. >>perhaps they can also do another F2F peer review meeting just to talk about the papers- unstructured ? but then will also have to complete the worksheet??
  • 8/18--Deniz has added an introduction on the GX course home Discussion forum, and has requested some corrections be made to course name, school and college name.