语言教学 | 普渡大学写作教学系列Teacher&Tutor Resource25-Writing Instructor(25)

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征稿：二语写作

13.Teaching Resources

（5）Teleconferencing in the Writing Classroom

Teleconferencing, whether it includes voice, video, or both, can be a useful tool for teaching remotely. It can even be used for in-person classes if, for instance, students cannot come to class, students need to collaborate outside of class, or teachers want to hold a virtual study or workshop session that can be recorded for students who can't attend. This resource discusses a number of ways to use teleconferencing in your classes.

Choosing a Tool

Many teleconferencing platforms are available. While some teachers can't choose the tool they use because their institution subscribes to a particular service, if you are in the position of needing to pick one, there are a few important factors to weigh.

Accessibility

If the teleconferencing platform can't be procured for free, cost will likely be the greatest barrier to accessibility for students. Among free tools, a likelier issue is device compatibility. Classroom teleconferencing platforms should be able to run on many kinds of computers and operating systems, as well as mobile devices, since students learning at home may need to use a range of devices to complete their work. If a tool constantly drops out when there are more than a few people on a call, or if a tool demands a great deal of computing power, it may not be a good choice. Remember that many students may have older or lower-spec computers.

Privacy

Some web conferencing providers have been criticized regarding privacy issues, so the degree to which a platform protects students' data is an important consideration. Also, if your calls may involve discussing FERPA-protected information such as grades, you'll need to be able to ensure your call is private and protected from unexpected intrusions by other users.

Affordances

What will you need to use your teleconferencing software for? Sharing screens? Marking up documents or writing/drawing on a "whiteboard" together? Will you need to control students' mics? Will you need chat, voice, video, or a mix of the three? Most web conferencing platforms have similar features, but it's worth testing a few options prior to their classroom debut to see how well they work for your course. Ultimately, if your priority is simply being able to talk to your students face to face while you are teaching online or remotely, you may not need the most feature-rich platform. On the other hand, if you plan to do collaborative work that mirrors activities you do at the whiteboard or on a shared piece of paper in class, these tools may be your deciding factor.

• It's also worth checking whether any help documentation is available for the platform you're considering. Be sure to make this information available to your students even if you consider the platform easy to use. Remember that some students may struggle with computer skills you consider elementary. 

General Tips

• All participants should wear headphones and/or mute themselves when they are not speaking to avoid echo and excess noise on the call.

• Don't require students to use video unless truly necessary. Video puts greater stress on the platform than audio alone. This effect can be considerable for large groups. Also, students may not feel comfortable showing teachers or other students their home or living situation. Making it clear up front that students can opt out of using video helps ensure calls go as smooth as possible for students and teachers alike.

• Know that some students (especially in large group calls) may want to avoid speaking aloud. This may be because they do not have access to a quiet, private place, because they do not have the necessary equipment, or for some other reason. If possible, use text chat in addition to voice/video to help these students participate. You or a student who is speaking can read out text question/comments for the group.

• Set clear guidelines for participating in teleconferencing meetings beforehand so that students understand how the meeting will run and what they can do to help it run smoothly. For instance, students will be more likely to help raise comments from a text-chat for discussion over audio if they know beforehand that this is something they can and should do.

• Ensure you don't have anything private or embarassing running in your computer's background or in a web browser tab before beginning the call. This includes FERPA-protected information like student grades. If possible, close every program other than what's necessary to complete your lesson. You never know when you might need to share your screen.

One-on-One Teleconferencing

One-on-one teleconferencing is a good replacement for in-person office hour meetings or student conferences. It's a good way to give feedback on a particular student's work between drafts or before a draft is completed. 

Some specific things you can do one-on-one include:

• Have students bring a specific piece of work or questions about an assignment.

• Use screensharing to model strategies students may be struggling with such as finding sources or revising sentence-level issues.

• Use screensharing or collaborative mark-up to discuss a reading or other text together.

• Help students make a plan for beginning an assignment or starting a revision.

Some tips for conducting one-on-one teleconferencing meetings include:

• Set an agenda beforehand. Approximate the time the meeting will take when you're setting it up by including an end time as well as a start time. You can always go over if you need to, but creating a discrete meeting slot will help protect your time.

• Tell students how they should prepare so they have the appropriate documents on hand when it's time to meet.

• When you wrap up the meeting, take a minute to go over what you did with the student and what their next steps are.

Small Group Teleconferencing

Small group teleconferencing can work like small group conferences, in writing classes with a conference portion, or like group activities in a classroom setting where teachers might assign an activity to a whole class and then work with each group in turn.

Some specific things you can do in small groups include:

• Discuss a reading or another text with discussion questions.

• Discuss progress on a longer project.

• Conduct peer review or workshopping on a specific exercise or piece of a longer project.

• Complete a collaborative activity.

Some tips for conducting small group teleconferencing meetings include:

• Use text chat in addition to voice/video so that students can ask questions while someone is speaking (like raising their hand in class). For instance, if you are giving directions for a collaborative activity and all students have their mics muted, a student can type a question that you can then read out and answer without interrupting the call by unmuting themselves.

• Use gallery mode (which displays all participants at the same time in equal-size boxes) if possible, and encourage students to do this too. Many teleconferencing platforms display footage from the loudest participants by default, making it hard to see quiet students and therefore easy to ignore or miss them.

• Directly address students by name when possible and invite them to participate.  Students rely on tacit social cues to determine when to jump into a conversation in a classroom where they can all see each other. This is obviously much more difficult on a web call, so do what you can to make things easier.

Large Group Teleconferencing

Large group teleconferences are not always the best or most useful choice for writing classes, but they can be necessary and productive if managed properly. While they're more logistically complicated than smaller conferences, they're good for delivering information to all students at once and for mimicking whole-class meetings.

Some specific things you can do in large groups include:

• Use the platform's group function to break students into small groups for an activity and come back together to discuss (as in think-pair-share, etc).

• Introduce a unit/text/etc.

• Give short lectures.

Some tips for conducting large group teleconferencing meetings include:

• Make sure to be extra clear about the meeting's procedures. The larger the group, the greater the chance for misunderstandings or technical problems, and the more important these clear procedures become.

• Record the meeting (and tell students you are doing this beforehand) so that those who cannot attend can watch afterwards.

• Use text to maximize participation, as noted in the small group tips above.

• Avoid highly collaborative work in the whole-group setting, as this can become chaotic and very difficult to manage.

• If possible, use break-out groups and visit the various smaller groups to minimize whole-group time but maximize your own time. It takes less time to visit small break-out groups in one large meeting than it does to hold several small meetings with each group individually, which is important especially for teachers with heavy teaching loads.

（6）Cloud-Based Platforms in the Writing Classroom

The coronavirus pandemic has made remote teaching the norm—and not the exception—for many instructors and students. Naturally, this has necessitated a closer look into the available technologies for interacting and writing online. Cloud-based platforms like Google Drive or Microsoft Office Online, which are widely available and which many students are already somewhat familiar with, are a natural choice for replicating writing classroom experiences in remote teaching contexts. This article provides general guidance for instructors new to using cloud technology in the writing classroom.

Choosing a Platform

Familiarity, ease of use, and accessibility are key considerations when deciding which cloud service is best for your course. All other things being equal, platforms that your students are already familiar with, that are easy to use, and that do not require payment or a powerful internet connection will tend to be best for classroom applications. It's also generally wise to take advantage of cloud services that your institution already has a contract with, since these options are likely to be free, available, and familiar for students. 

Deciding on one effective platform and sticking with it is likely to be the safest approach, as managing multiple interfaces and accounts can be overwhelming for students (and you). Google Docs is one cloud-based platform that is free and widely known, making it a natural choice. However, though there are also a handful of alternatives to experiment with, including Office Online and Dropbox Paper (among others). No matter which platform you choose, however try to provide detailed tutorial content to students and solicit feedback about the platform early on. Technical difficulties, which pose challenges to student engagement and progress in any online course, can be inevitable. However, regularly checking in with students about their experiences using the technology will help you identify issues that need to be addressed and will remind the studentsthat they have support.

Beyond these suggestions, you should feel free experiment with your chosen cloud platform in order to utilize its full potential. Here a few ways that the cloud can be integrated into an online writing course. 

Online Writing Groups

One approach to help students realize the collaborative potential of online learning is to use them for writing groups. These groups (typically 3-5 students each) can easily collaborate on a single document via the cloud. In this way, activities like free writing, journaling, and prompt-driven discussion activities can easily become small-group assignments.

Online writing groups can also be useful for longer projects, collaborative workshops specific to a particular lesson or practice, and more. In any case, however, it is important to sort out logistical issues as early as possible. For example, students may be working in different time zones, which can pose difficulties for any synchronous activity. Thus, students may benefit from having predetermined times to join a shared document. While you may need to reserve time to sort out these sorts of problems, in general, cloud-based writing spaces like Google Docs make it possible for students to continuously add to, respond to, and return to auto-saved work.

Cloud-linked Feedback

Many instructors pride themselves on being a resource for their students. However, being a resource can look different online than in person. For example, students in online courses may feel less comfortable asking instructors about their project drafts in remote classrooms, where technical constraints can make conversation stilted and awkward. As a result, they may not seek help as often as they would like to. Thus, the feedback instructors do provide becomes more vital to students’ progress.

When making comments on a cloud-based platform, you might try including linked references to lectures, notes, and other materials relevant to the feedback being given. Ensuring that these files are available in student-accessible folders on the same cloud platform provides a connection between what you’re referencing and important locations in your online workspace. When possible, comments should be resource-generous and should function as toolkits that students can return to during the revision process. Whether the linked materials are documents, webpages, videos, or otherwise, making these references clear and accessible strengthens the cohesion of your overall units and course when teaching with the cloud.

Peer Review

Not all institutions have access to dedicated online peer review software. Thankfully, the collaborative capabilities of cloud technology makes peer review possible from a distance. Because it can be tricky for students to coordinate on their own, however, it is vital to make expectations for peer review clear.

Designing a peer review guide for students can help with this. As a handout available in the cloud, this guide should describe what is expected from individual respondents, should list important dates and times, and should give best practices for using platform features for feedback. These handouts can even change with each new assignment, highlighting the kind of feedback students should prioritize given the new objectives and rubrics. Working in a cloud document lets students in a peer review group consistently see the comments being made on one draft, adding to, building on, and learning from them along the way. This keeps things organized for everyone, helping you keep track of the progress students are making and allowing you to add comments that help guide peer review discussions as needed.

Office Hours and Student Conferencing

As an alternative or complement to video conferencing, the chat functionality afforded by most cloud-based platforms is a useful tool for quick dialogue so that questions can be asked and answered as needed. Ensuring that students understand the platform as a tool for time-sensitive meetings may require you to design a document describing best practices for cloud conferencing and house it online from the start of the semester.

Being prepared for these meetings is a practice in time management for instructors and students alike. A few simple measures can improve workflow . For example, having students upload the appropriate document with conferencing questions ahead of time is a preparatory step that can help make the most of the time available. Depending on the purpose for a given meeting, a cloud conference may work in a manner similar to the method of providing feedback on a draft. Responding to the questions that students have, providing necessary resources, and guiding the conversation according to a priority list of concerns are reasonable goals for meetings that are limited to a brief time frame.

Final Thoughts

In sum, cloud-based technologies have a lot to offer remote writing teachers, but they are not without their own potential complications. Being upfront about your intent to ensure your students' success is crucial in any remote learning environment. When you teach from afar, you can best fulfill your commitments to students by being flexible, understanding, and honest. When necessary, be willing to change your plans or offer workarounds you hadn't originally envisioned.

Instructors hoping to match the creative and collaborative workflows they may be accustomed to in brick-and-mortar teaching should remember that the cloud is not a perfect replica of face-to-face interactions. However, using the cloud in the ways described above can help you gesture toward the importance of collaboration that many students may feel is absent in online learning. Collaboration is also important for teachers—don't hesitate to work with other instructors to find out if and how they use the cloud for their courses. Combining your own experiences with your students’ and other instructors’ experiences will continue to help you design meaningful, engaging activities for your online classes regardless of the technological tools you use.

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