Final Reflection

This was an interesting class that I didn’t think I would need prior to this semester. I wasn’t
planning on completing the University’s Graduate Online Writing Instruction Certificate. I had
already taught for one semester and I have a great support system at the university. I graduate
with my Masters in Professional and Technical Writing in December. I didn’t think the graduate
certificate was necessary until I started looking for other teaching positions. I realized that many
positions require a PhD or similar degree in the topic. My thought was that if I wanted to
continue teaching, then it would benefit me to have the graduate certificate in addition to my
masters degree. At the last minute, I decided to start working towards the graduate certificate.

Learning Outcomes
At the start of this course, I considered the three main learning outcomes for teaching online
writing: Accessibility, Presence & Interaction, and Course Design.

Accessibility: I didn’t think there was a lot to learn about accessibility because I have first
hand experience with colorblindness, IEPs/504s, and hard-of-hearing in my family. I expected
the accessible content to be similar to what I learned a few semesters ago in Document Design
or what I’ve learned as a parent of IEP/504 kids. I now know there is far more to it than what I
had expected. I was already familiar with how to appropriately use links in a text, but I didn’t
know why that was important. The appropriate linked text helps blind students effectively utilize
tools such as screen readers. I know to only use meaningful content and images (I don’t know
anything about alt text for images, but I am still learning).

Presence & Interaction: I think I am pretty well present in my classroom. I regularly

communicate with my students and I pop in and out of discussion boards. I don’t always
comment and interact with the discussion, but I do provide feedback to individual students while
grading. This semester, I learned how I can enhance my presence & interactions with students.
I appreciate the knowledge Warnock provided with his online writing classes. I plan to use the
student moderator method next time I teach. If each week I have a new student moderator (or
two depending on the number of students per term), I will have more individual interaction with
that student and they will help me to keep the other students engaged in their learning. My
expectation with this would be for each student moderator to choose a week based on their
personal experiences with the pre-planned syllabus (they could be knowledgeable or want to
learn more) and have them each receive a grade for helping keep the conversation going each
week.

Course Design: Because I have taught once before, I already had a basic understanding of
how to operate Blackboard on the instructor side. This semester, I have learned how to better
organize the content to make it easier for students to locate, how to place information in multiple
locations, and why this is important. As a student myself, I have learned how to navigate
several LMS and it has helped me to better understand the importance of clear direction and
organization. Of course, I also have learned a lot of what not to do. Clear organization and
menu options help students know where to find the information. Having the information clearly
documented in multiple locations ensures they find what they need to know for each
assignment. I regularly reorganized my Blackboard shells for better organization and clarity for
my students. Anytime I updated the layout, I would either email or make the announcement in
my weekly lesson to explain my reasoning and rationale for the changes I had made.

Each of these learning outcomes not only matter for the digital classroom as a whole, but the
coursework we assign. We should ensure that our students can find the answers to their
questions easily and in plain sight before they ask for clarification. If we cannot clearly teach off
the written and verbal directions we provide, we are doing a disservice to our students.

Online Writing Unit

First Draft: Because I have never taught Comp II before, I was provided a copy of another
instructor’s materials to adapt for my course. I chose to create my Online Writing Unit on the
final major project of the semester: Visual Argument. I changed a few details and added some
additional information for my first draft on an assignment I had never taught before. I was really
just hoping to not have to “wing it” when I got to this unit in my class.

Final Draft: I think my final draft is more clear and explains to my students exactly what I want
them to learn from this assignment. I have also listed the department's learning outcomes that
this project is aimed towards. At the end of each project, I require a self-evaluation and I ask
them to tell me which of the departmental learning outcomes they have met. By adding this
information, my students automatically know the goal of the assignment. By including several
links to videos, websites, and folders within our shared drive, I believe I have helped eliminate
the need for a bunch of questions throughout the working process. Students should have all the
information up front, rather than be left confused about how to complete an assignment. While
we all expect to be readily available for questions, I do sometimes find myself annoyed with the
simplest questions when I believe I have effectively explained myself in the lesson. I hope that
my improvements to this project instruction sheet will be more clear for my students moving
forward this semester.

Final Thoughts
Overall, I learned so much about being a teacher from this class. I appreciated the insight from
Warnock and Dirksen about the types of students I may encounter and how to facilitate the best
learning experience for each of them. With the fresh, new knowledge, I’m glad I decided to
pursue the graduate certificate. I know how to better teach my students and I know this has
already made me a better teacher. I can already see the improvements I’ve made. And I look
forward to incorporating many of the new features in the coming semesters.