The Language of Digital Learning Objects: A Cross-disciplinary Study

This article addresses how different disciplines use the language of teaching and learning, JOLT - Merlot Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 5, No. 2, June 2009

Abstract

In order to determine the similarities and differences between disciplines in how each uses the language of teaching and learning, this study undertook linguistic analysis of 1,691 peer reviews in the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) digital learning objects collection. Language concordancing software was used to identify trends particular to the sciences, the humanities and education. Findings specify the variation in word choice, sentence length, sentence structure and descriptive/ analytic uses of language that emerged between the disciplines. Analyses suggest both points of convergence and divergence that can guide principles and standards for instructional design and cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaborations around teaching and learning.

Software teaches writing online for credit

Would pairing this up with applying mass mailing strategies to "personalize" large online classes = classroom of the future? Surely software is in the works to further automate personalization.

General education courses as students know them now are undergoing change. A team of UA instructors and software programmers is currently developing an online writing course that will soon be paired with general education classes across campus. The course will be introduced as a one-credit supplement to the typical three-credit general education class. It is intended to provide an interactive and self-paced online environment in which students' writing skills are diagnosed and improved.

UA adds online writing credit to gen-ed system - News

Administration and accounting no doubt view the potential for cost effectiveness of reducing overhead, eliminating labor problems (teach those pesky adjuncts expecting equity or at least a living wage a lesson) and automating class/ course administration as 100% win-win.

personalizing the impersonal

How do you "personalize" a 150 student online course - and make it real?

According to marketing prof Roger Barry in his article, "Meeting the Challenges of Teaching Large Online Classes" in the March issue of JOLT (Journal of Online Teaching), personalizing a course is key to teaching large online classes. Reading on, I realize that to Barry, a marketing prof, "personal" does not mean the same as it does to me. What he really means is marketing personalization as a simulacrum of the real and personal. What a jolt...

In an effort to personalize a large online class, the author applies a marketing approach called direct mass marketing to communicate with students. Direct mass marketing is an approach used by marketers to send a message that is perceived as being personalized to a large market segment. So, how and why is this approach effective in an online course? Certainly the best approach to personalizing an e-mail is to send it directly to an individual. But, how can you accomplish this in a large class section with 150 students? To accomplish this, the author uses an approach he refers to as direct mass e-mailing.

Teaching meets marketing. The personal is no longer real but all about perception.

It's also about language and writing - just not about students learning how to write. Both "Study Buddy Notes" (class notes rewritten for cozy casual "I'm right here with you" effect) and direct mass mailing depend on the knowledge-marketer/teacher's wording and tone in both study notes and mass emailings.

The future of college writing

What is the future of writing and the teaching of writing? Not good. It's labor intensive, time consuming and undervalued in the marketplace. Already sweatshopped to the max composition adjuncts are at their limits. No one is going to give them more money and smaller classes in these trying economic times. More likely, class sizes and administrative paper work will increase. Where will the cuts come?

Requiring Revision http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/06/25/deans

I keep finding and reading articles like these – and then comparing them to writing and attitudes toward it outside the academy. Is it research or masochism, obsession or idle curiosity? Blog fodder?

My reading: revision is on the way out, less for pedagogical than administrative reasons - too labor intensive unless admin can get it done on the cheap. Raised class caps in composition will put numbers too high to afford time for revision – even by academic sweatshop labor. The revision process no longer takes place in a meaningful way, shortened and corner cut to meaningless. Writing standards in the courses 1^st year composition is supposed to prepare students for are already next to non-existent in most institutions.

Even graduate students, especially in more "commercial", less academic disciplines, write badly and are revision resistant for all that. Convinced they have already learned everything they need to know about writing in English 101, with perhaps a “business writing” (oxymoron alert) course thrown in for good measure. These students are neither stupid nor inarticulate – just never truly expected to write well or exposed to intellectual rigor. Perhaps gullible as well - first buying into self-esteem and then higher education seat-filling sales pitches.

Business and the relevance of Liberal Arts http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/05/07/ho

In no way does this give a free pass to atrociously unreadable academic writing - jargon on steroids. That's another case for another time.

Update of sorts

Over a month and no post - shame on me. EVO is over. My online presentation was on writing feedback and strategies for managing paper overload without shortchanging students on meaningful feedback for their writing. Am I describing the impossible or what?

The week came down to a shout out between canned boilerplate & automated writing assessment (AWE) versus peer review, the blind leading the blind. At first it seemed as though group's interest was leaning toward computer assessment. Tempting to hand an onerous, labor intensive task over to software. But by the time we came to the end of the week, closing with real time discussion using web conferencing tools, the tide had turned - against AWE and in favor of group work and peer review. I reminded the instructors in the session that establishing review groups takes time - does not just happen with the flip a handout and asked them to let me know how groups worked for them

The turn pleased me no end. I came prepared to make the best of bad choices and work with them on using computer text analysis in the least destructive way possible. AWE is not awesome: it is creepy. But is it any creepier than non-computer assisted boring writing, boring for being formulaic suck up, boring for so strenuously striving to please and never offend whoever might read it? No, it is not. There is something somehow cleaner, in some warped way, about being able to say the computer made me do it. Not having to admit that another human asked you to surrender mind and will - and you did it.

I forgot to remind the non-native speaker teachers in my workshop not to control peer review group opinions or tell them what they should think.

What happens to writing (and thinking) when composition instructors know their rhetoric and mechanics but are short on original thinking - doing, recognizing, appreciating, cultivating? Or worse, short on tolerance, expecting students' opinions to mirror their own, perhaps rationalizing the expectation as something less craven.

If you are wondering what this has to do with computers, I'll think on it and get back to you.