Category: Faculty

Here’s a version in Word format (.docx) that you can download to view or print out. It should open in any word processor, but if you need a different format, please let me know.

Welcome to Kemble’s online English 1A course, and to this syllabus, which is meant to let you know what you can expect — from the course, and from me — and what I (and the college) expect from you, as a student in the course.

I’ve broken the syllabus up into sections so that you won’t get overwhelmed by a long, infinitely scrolling page.

To get started, click on “Course Information” in the Table of Contents below. At the bottom of each page, you’ll find a link to the next page, so you can just work your way through the whole syllabus. But if you want to take a break and come back later, or if you want to review a section, you can use the Table of Contents below to jump to the section you need.

I’ll see you around.

Table of Contents

Course Information
Learning Outcomes
How the Class Works
How Grades Work
Helpful Stuff

[Here’s a version in Word format (.docx) that you can download to view or print out. It should open in any word processor, but if you need a different format, please let me know.]

Welcome to Kemble’s online English 1A course, and to this syllabus, which is meant to let you know what you can expect — from the course, and from me — and what I (and the college) expect from you, as a student in the course.

I’ve broken the syllabus up into sections so that you won’t get overwhelmed by a long, infinitely scrolling page.

To get started, click on “Course Information” in the Table of Contents below. At the bottom of each page, you’ll find a link to the next page, so you can just work your way through the whole syllabus. But if you want to take a break and come back later, or if you want to review a section, you can use the Table of Contents below to jump to the section you need.

I’ll see you around.

Table of Contents

Course Information
Learning Outcomes
How the Class Works
How Grades Work
Helpful Stuff

My office is Room 1179 on the Marysville Campus.

It’s located in the rear of Building 1100, which is the Learning Resource Center (the library), but you can’t reach it through the library.

Walk around the right side of the library building (facing the front). About 3/4 of the way along the building, you’ll see a glass door. Enter there, and then continue straight through the inner glass door. My office is in the second alcove on theright.

[Here’s a version in Word format (.docx) that you can download to view or print out. It should open in any word processor, but if you need a different format, please let me know.]

Welcome to Kemble’s online English 1A course, and to this syllabus, which is meant to let you know what you can expect — from the course, and from me — and what I (and the college) expect from you, as a student in the course.

I’ve broken the syllabus up into sections so that you won’t get overwhelmed by a long, infinitely scrolling page.

To get started, click on “Course Information” in the Table of Contents below. At the bottom of each page, you’ll find a link to the next page, so you can just work your way through the whole syllabus. But if you want to take a break and come back later, or if you want to review a section, you can use the Table of Contents below to jump to the section you need.

I’ll see you around.

Table of Contents

Course Information
Learning Outcomes
How the Class Works
How Grades Work
Helpful Stuff

Announcements

• Program Review Annual Update – I sent an email with a revised draft of the annual update and a link to a survey collecting permission to upload it. Please respond by next Friday, Feb. 11).
• WLDC – Awhile ago, Brian Jukes sent an email with a link for a Canvas page that you can important into your course, advertising the WLDC. I also recommend following Cindi Sargent’s advice (she’s the Instructional Designer) of including a link and explanation to the WLDC on your assignments so that you’re offering “Just In Time” support. Remember that we’ve struggled a bit keeping the WLDC at a level of support we’d like, so pushing the WLDC helps both our students and the Center.
• Fall schedule – Walter is meeting with Jeremy today. I will meet with him shortly after that. More on this issue below, under “Low enrolled literature classes.”
• Virtual Happy Hour is back! Join us Fridays at 4:00. I email a link each Friday morning, so keep your eyes open for that.
• Post-meeting survey – As usual, a post-meeting survey should show up in your email. I welcome any feedback. (I should mention that, aside from considering the feedback myself, I pass along kudos and/or suggestions to the relevant people.

Library Announcements

Since Elena was here to talk about GE degrees anyway, she also made some announcements about the library:

• The library is available to schedule workshops for your classes. They can be offered face-to-face or online. They also make videos for specific classes (and faculty who have used them are able to reuse them in later classes).
• We have access to Digital Theater+, which has a video database that includes an extensive collection of films of plays as well as instructional materials for teaching those plays. Brian Jukes wrote about this in an email last semester (Date: Nov. 10, 2021, Subject: “Digital Theater+”). There’s a little complexity about logging in — for some reason, IT won’t get this on our Single-Sign-On thingy — so you may need to reach out for a little help to get your students (and yourself) access, but it’s a great resource and worth the effort.
• The library has Information Literacy modules that you can use for your students. They exist as standalone courses, but they’re also in the Commons, allowing you to import modules into your course.

These were highlights from the “Welcome from the Library” newsletter than we received in email last week. If you’d like more information, check out that email. (You can also contact Elena at eflacks@yccd.edu )

GE Arts and Humanities Degree Adoption

Elena explained (much better than I’ve been able to) what’s going on here. Let me try to capture it:

We have three General Education degrees, all of which have no “ownership.” This means that no one has taken the responsibility to keep them up to date. This means that there have been no revisions since the 1970s, resulting in degrees that include classes we haven’t offered for years, etc. Aside from being popular — 20 students earned the Arts and Humanities GE degree last year, for example — they serve other purposes for students, in particular for students transferring to UCs (they don’t accept Transfer Degrees), students seeking an AA for advancement at their job, athletes maintaining eligibility, and so on.

Elena and Lore (from the Curriculum Committee) were given authority to revise the degrees, at least to the extent of removing inactive courses. But they’re seeking a more long-term solution. And since the majority of classes in this degree are English classes, they’re asking the English Department to “adopt” the Arts and Humanities General Education degree.

This would entail two main functions:

1. Revising the degree (removing inactive courses; removing or adding courses according to relevance)
2. Assessing Program SLOs

Regarding #1: We’d have the authority to make decisions about which classes should or shouldn’t appear here. This should, of course, be done in collaboration with other departments. And it would need to go through the normal curriculum process, which would involve us submitting the degree to the committee as part of the approval process.

Since the degree is being revised this week (removing inactive courses), we would not technically have to deal with thus much for five years, when the next official curriculum review will be done. If we choose to do this, though, I’d advocate considering getting to work on it sooner.

Regarding #2: This is a little murkier because the college is still developing its PSLO processes. So far, PSLOs are linked to Course SLOs (or will be, once eLumen is up and running). But what we do with them — what kind of conversations are encouraged, and what kinds of decisions such conversations might lead to — is uncertain.

I confirmed that we would not be asked to write a Program Review for the degree. We would likely want to mention work we’re doing for the GE Degree in our program review — indeed, one of the “selling points” for us to do this is that we’d be allowed to report the A&H degrees earned as ours.

To wrap up: There are larger discussions going on about whether or not the GE degrees are a good thing or not. There are valid arguments on both sides.

But we’ve been asked to adopt the A&H GE Degree for as long as the GE Degree exists.

I will add, because it’s my blog, that I support this. I would like to see the degree turned into something meaningful, rather than “grab bag.” Carrie also expressed support, noting especially that she’d rather we be doing it than anyone else. (I agree with her on this, too: after all, most of the classes on the degree are ours….)

And Elena noted that we’re one of the few departments with a large enough roster to do the work — and that our example might help encourage other departments to adopt the other degrees.

I’m not sure what the next steps will be. I think I’ll point people to this blog, ask them to read it, and then open things up for a discussion online. If we want to discuss this in real time, I can devote part of the next meeting to it; either way, I’ll wrap up with a survey that lets us “vote,” so to speak, on the issue.

For everyone’s sake, but especially the Curriculum Committee’s sake, I want to avoid a long silence. So watch for an email…

Low enrolled literature classes (and related enrollment issues)

I can’t capture the whole discussion — for one thing, my part of the conversation was largely incoherent. But here are some decisions and/or thoughts that came out of the discussion:

• Brian Jukes is recommending that his two literature classes (Shakespeare, Intro to Brit) be offered online. (I think Shakespeare already was online)
• Kiara is going to talk to Brian Condrey about options for the new LGBTQ+ course. There are important reasons not simply to put it asynchronously online.
• I will contact Brian Condrey about Intro to Am.
• I will continue a push, begun by Brian C and James Gilbreath, to lower the Intro to Film caps, which somehow got up to 70 for each class. (As Carrie points out, this class fits same bill for graduation requirements as our other lit courses, and thus likely contributes to our low enrollment in those other lit courses.)

Walter is meeting with Jeremy tomorrow (Wed.). I’ve encouraged him to ask direct and specific questions about the college’s planning assumptions, as well as about our intentions regarding things like offering a range of times (evening? morning?), limits to online teaching load for full-time faculty, and so on. (It dawns on me that the new eligibility-to-teach-online requirements are supposed to kick in this Fall. That’s crazy….)

I’ll also pursue questions about hybrid teaching — what guidelines or limitations are there? Has the college/district already made decisions about what options are available?

I’ll wrap up with something that was important to me to realize I was concerned that moving lit classes online might be irreversible, but Brian J pointed out that they shouldn’t be. I’ll be framing discussions with Walter to emphasize the temporary nature of these decisions. And Carrie pointed out that we rush decisions that have long-term consequences while still under these enrollment/pandemic pressures.

If you were there and see that I missed something, or if you have any questions, please let me know.

Announcements

• Virtual Happy Hour has been reinstated — Fridays at 4 pm. Happy hours are (IMHO) a good mix of talk about work and life (books, movies, pets). At the last meeting, as it was winding down, Zack and Tina and I had a pretty deep discussion about contradictions or paradoxes (complications?) at the heart of Inoue’s “labor-based grading contracts” and related issues about teaching (or refusing to teach) “standard English.”
• The Program Review Update is sort of on hold as the process for migrating from TracDat to eLumen is finalized. Jeremy said that I can expect the instructions for Program Review toward the end of October. I will get a survey out as soon as I know what we’re asked to do for our update. (Like last year, the survey will include everything that is relevant to the update, but all questions will be optional so that respondents can focus on the things they have insight about.)
• The Rotation Schedule has been given the thumbs up by Carla, so (last I heard) it’s in Sara’s and Kristi’s hands for update the rotation spreadsheet and Self Service. I meet with Walter tomorrow and will ask if there’s any further update — until the changes have been made, he is refusing to take credit for getting further than any of our previous deans.
• Spring 2022 schedule update – I didn’t mention this during the meeting, but I though people might want to know: this semester, only 8 of our part time faculty received courses (and one of those was offered only one course, rather than the two that she has return rights for). Seven (or eight, depending on how you count) didn’t receive a course. This is partly due to low enrollment, which is a state-wide issue; we also have a little less release time among us. However, we also have one full-timer on sabbatical. Until enrollment bounces back, assuming it does, I fear that this will be an ongoing problem.

Decision-ish items

These are items where I said, “If there’s no objection…” If you did not attend but think you do have an objection, or if you’d like to be sure we consider something before finalizing the decision, please let me know right away.

Faculty Staffing Request request

Walter sent out a call for faculty staffing requests for 2022-23. Included in that request was a strong encouragement for Art (who lost three faculty to retirement) to apply, as well as gentler encouragement for other departments with only one faculty member (Speech, Music, Foreign Language, ESL).

I would argue that English needs more faculty less than Art, for sure, and possibly for the others. I also can’t imagine that we’d appear high in the ranking process. For both reasons, I recommended that we not bother to request a position for the upcoming year. Everyone seemed to agree.

C-ID Changes for 1A, 1E, and 1C

The course descriptors for the C-ID versions of our 1A, 1E, and 1C have all changed to reduce the word count from 6000 words to 5000 words. Since C-ID descriptors are meant to include the minimum requirements that our courses should meet, there’s no problem with us keeping our 6000-word requirement.

I recommended (affirmed in a discussion with Carrie) that we not worry about revising these courses at this time. When the courses come up for their periodic update (as required by our curriculum processes), we can include the discussion about a word-count change in that more general discussion.

GE Humanities Degree “ownership”

At the end of last semester, the Curriculum Committee approached me to find out if the English Department would be willing to “take ownership” of the GE Humanities degree. We discussed this lightly at our final meeting, but didn’t have enough information to make a meaningful decision.

I emailed Elena and Lore asking for further information, and here’s my best understanding of what would be expected. (Two notes: 1) their actual answers are in a document I attached to the email that announced this dept. meeting; 2) the stuff below includes discussion from our meeting.)

• They do not anticipate that this “ownership” would require that we write Program Review for the GE degree (in part because the college has never before done Program Review for such degrees). (My own view is that such a requirement would make me vote a hard “no.”)
• Our primary responsibility would be assessing Program SLOs. I’ve sent an email requesting confirmation that we’d be assessing PSLOs (as opposed to developing them) — a question that is important because we couldn’t find PSLOs listed in eLumen yet.
• Currently, at least, “assessing PSLOs” involves mapping Course SLOs to Program SLOs. The other main question we had, then, involves what we’d be expected or authorized to do if we believed that a course’s SLOs don’t in fact map to the Program SLOs. If taking ownership is to be more than just doing grunt work to ease the Curriculum Committee’s load, then bleh — we’d expect ownership to involve a level of responsibility and stewardship.

Those present at the meeting lean toward accepting this responsibility, though much will depend on the answers to our questions. I’ve already sent an email to Elena and Lore. When I get a response, I’ll send out an email with their answers and a request for input on the question of whether or not we should accept this responsibility.

4th SLO for ENGL 1B

There are some issues with eLumen right now, so I’m not 100% sure that we haven’t already developed a fourth SLO for ENGL 1B. (Remember that the Outcome Committee’s recommendation was for us to have one SLO for each unit, and ENGL 1B just converted from 3 to 4 units.) I am, however, about 90% sure, which means I think it’s likely we’ll need to have this discussion at some point.

Shawn told us that she’s shepherding the development of an “SLO Only” workflow in eLumen so that we don’t have to go through a full Curriculum Committee process just to change SLOs. We decided that it would be fine to wait until next semester until we see how that pans out. So I’ve got this on my list of backburner items to return to next semester.

Points of Discussion

We had two things we discussed — one of which had been on the agenda, the other of which had not.

Data sent by Carla regarding completion rates

On the email that announced this department meeting, I attached a copy of the email that Carla sent, which include a screenshot from a dashboard that the state has made available to us. Aside from my bitching about data being dropped in our emails without context, three things from the meeting seemed noteworthy from our discussion (if someone was there and you found something else noteworthy, let me know and I’ll update this — I may just have forgotten it):

• On the attachment, there is a live link to the state Chancellor’s Office’s dashboard. It is a good resource, and fairly flexible. If this screenshot raises questions for you, they might be answerable elsewhere in the dashboard. It’s worth checking out.
• Though we may come in a bit under average with the completion rates overall, we are in surprisingly good shape when it comes to Disproportionate Impact. Of course, there are groups that aren’t listed (e.g., Asian Americans), and in some cases the information is challenging to understand (e.g., our “-32%” DI regarding Native Americans is hard to understand since we have so few Native American students. Is this one person? A handful? A dozen?)
• Zack noted that he had taught at both Sac City (well below average) and Sierra (above average) at the same time, and that it was notable the difference in affluence between the two schools. This insight might focus our attention less on what we’re doing (or not) and more on discovering what kinds of economic support students who are not in affluent areas might need.

Support for AB 705 changes, esp. embedded tutoring

In a recent District meeting about AB 705, I complained about my sense that we weren’t adequately supporting the shifts needed to support students, and used the issue of embedded tutors as an example. Jeremy expressed some frustration at that characterization and asked that I meet with him to discuss it.

I would like to enter that meeting truly as a representative of the department, so if you have areas in which you’d like to see more support — especially if you feel the support has been less than expected — please send me an email with that information. That way I know more than just my narrow experience.

Carrie pointed me to the requests we’ve made in Program Review for some time — computers in the classrooms, smaller class sizes, classes with tables, and so on. I will certainly draw on them. I will also be contacting a few of you — Kiara, Brian J, and Shawn at the very least — about embedded tutoring and the challenges we’ve encountered. If you have additional ideas, especially about embedded tutoring, please let me know.

[As I was writing this, and email came from Walter noting that there is some money available for classroom renovations. Feel free to deluge Walter with ideas. To his credit, he began his search for ideas in Program Review — though apparently Dr. Dotson wants us to “think broadly.”]

Announcements

• Census date is today (Tuesday, September 7).
• WLDC: Fridays will be online only. We also talked about the benefits of bringing your class into the Center; it guarantees that they know where it is, and many students feel more comfortable when they’ve met the tutors or IAs.
• DE: If you missed the email from Laura Shrettner (sent Fri., Sept. 3, Subject: “Submission of DE Courses,” be sure you read it. If you want to teach online after June 30, 2022, you’ll need to submit your course (or courses?) to the DE Committee for validation by Dec. 31, 2021. We’re not fully clear about whether having one course fully validated will cover other courses (and the policies have recently changed), so if you have any questions, contact Laura at lschrett@yccd.edu. (In my experience, she responds quickly.)

Schedules and staffing

Spring 2022

Once I get the finalized Spring 2022 schedule, I will able to begin the process of assigning classes to faculty for the Spring semester.

If you’re a full-time faculty member, expect the usual spreadsheet to circulate starting late this week or early next week.

If you’re a part-time faculty member, expect the usual survey to gather information about your availability, possibly by the end of this week. I’ll use that information to assign classes to you, based on the usual criteria (which I will list in the email I send out with our proposed schedule).

The schedule goes live to students early in October, so the sooner I can get this to Walter, the better.

Summer and Fall 2022

At about the same time, I’ll be working with Walter on the Summer and Fall schedules. These are due mid-October.

Basically, we look at the previous summer’s and current fall’s schedule and decide what we need to adapt, mostly in response to our best guesses at enrollment trends. Walter said he has access to a new enrollment database that goes back six years or so, which might help. I’m considering cartomancy, though.

An email that Carla (our VP of Instruction) sent out seemed to suggest that I’m supposed to staff these classes (full- and part-time!) at the same time. That’s just silly. No one knows what summer and/or fall look like at this point. And, anyway, the schedule itself should be approved before we assign names to the classes. Walter has told me not to worry about that at this point. I would probably not worry about it regardless.

General Thoughts and a Request

Before I set up a schedule, I work with the dean (Walter, in this case) to discuss the direction we want to go. That discussion includes assumptions about enrollment, instructions from above, our own sense of the State of Things (esp. problematic in uncertain Covidiot times), and so on.

From there, I adapt the schedule and give it to the dean to get approved by what used to be the scheduling committee, but which is now, as I understand it, Carla.

While developing the Fall semester, I want expand what we consider a little bit. That leads to my request: If you have any thoughts or observations about how the schedules have or have not been working up to this point, please let me know (gkemble@yccd.edu).

For example, Brian J noted that he had an early morning 1B at Sutter canceled; Michael has taught numerous 1B courses at Sutter in the afternoon that all made. Observations like this could help us as we balance offering a range of times for our students with filling our classes (or, at least, avoiding having them canceled for low enrollement).

Course Rotation Status

I presented Walter with the course rotation proposal that the English department developed last year, including the rationale. When I spoke with Jeremy about my frustration with a lack of a clear process for making these changes, he seemed to suggest that Walter and Rita have access to the rotation and could make the changes directly.

Walter, understandably, is a bit reticent about just jumping in and doing that without verifying that this is the correct process, so he’s working to find out the best way to handle this.

I’ll continue to hound him on this. I’d like this solved before the Fall schedule is taken to Carla so that we stop getting the “This class isn’t in the rotation” comment on the schedule.

SLO Inquiry Group

Shawn, Carrie, and Cassandra are heading up a serious inquiry project into the question of the best way to norm our SLO assessment.

They’ve submitted the proposal to the LEAD (Equity) committee so that part-time faculty can receive a stipend for participating. They’ve not heard back yet, so it’s unclear if that proposal was accepted. I would expect it will be, but I’m not yet fully adept with Tarot.

Shawn sent out a Doodle poll to see who would like to participate; if you missed the invitation, or if you think you might be interested, please read the proposal (PDF).

The group will meet every other Tuesday starting next week (Sept. 14).

Program Review

I was pleased to learn that we are not up for a full Program Review this year, as I’d feared; we only have to provide an update.

However, we are moving the process to eLumen. I am waiting for instructions, which will mostly likely arrive later than is useful, with the update due at the same time as the abovementioned schedules.

As I did last year, I plan to send a survey out to gather information we want to include in the update. The survey will be cumbersome, but you won’t have to respond to every damn question — you can just jot notes in whichever questions you have information or insight or recommendations about.

I’ll do my best to compile this into a document that everyone can look at before discussing it. I’m not sure this is doable by the next meeting, so I may ask to schedule an extra meeting at some point. But I’ll play this a bit by ear.

COVID Exposure

We had a brief discussion about when we should report that students have let us know they’re staying home for COVID. Generally, according to Walter, the names of such students are forwarded to Dalexh (Dr. Hunt, our VP of Students Services), who will contact the student and work out when the student would be safe to return.

Walter mentioned, as he has in some emails, that the admin would appreciate seating charts so that students who were in closer contact with such students can also be contacted. (I need to start making them, though it’s challenging when we do so much group work.)

Also, if a student mentions that she is staying home because someone at work or in the household has COVID, we should report that to Dalexh, too, so that he can determine if other students were exposed. (It’s a little fuzzier if students report that a close contact has been tested, but they don’t have the results yet. I think we agreed that the student would be wise to stay home, but that we wouldn’t report it until we had word of a positive test.)

Post-meeting Survey

I was impressed with a survey that Kiara started to give to LEAD committee members after each meeting, and decided I would start following that example. So you should have received an email with a link to this short survey.

As the email explains, it’s meant in part to capture ideas that, for any number of reasons, might not have come out in the meeting. So please, if you have something you’d like to say about anything that we talked about (or in these notes), put it in the survey (though, of course, you can always contact me directly).

It’s optional — it’s not meant to add to our workload. But it’s short and, if you have something you’d like heard, or emphasized, or whatever, please fill it out.

The Usual

If you have any questions, or if you attended the meeting and notice that I missed something or got something wrong, please let me know.

WLDC Announcement

The WLDC will be open, both in-person and online, at the following times:

• M-Th 8-7
• F 8-5.

After the meeting, Brian Jukes (who is the new WLDC coordinator) sent out a couple emails with further information:

• one email [Subject: WLDC Flyer] includes a flyer that can be posted in your Canvas site;
• the other [Subject: Writing Help for Students] is addressed to faculty, encouraging them to send students to the center.

If you didn’t receive one or both of these emails, let me know and I can forward it/them to you.

SLO Information

There are two important points about SLOs this semester. One is a repeat from last semester, and the other is new:

• In the past, we’ve assessed one SLO per course. This semester, we’re going to assess ALL course SLOs for each course. We had some discussions last semester about different ways to handle this assessment — using Outcomes in Canvas or on your own — but we don’t (yet) have clear recommendations on how to do this. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to talk through options. (I said that we don’t have those recommendations “yet” — this will likely be one of the recommendations that come out of the SLO Norming Teaching Community [see below].)
• As we did last semester, each instructor will enter the SLO results for each student directly into eLumen. As we get closer, I’ll re-send instructions for how to do this. (The consensus seems to be that the process is surprisingly simple.)

Masks and all that jazz

• We talked about the mask policy, which changed yet again later that day. As I write this (11 am on Thursday), all employees, students, and visitors are required to wear masks indoors. I am not sure how medical exceptions work — contact Walter if you have a concern of question about that (I know at least two faculty who have mentioned situations that might warrant such an exception, but I don’t have authority to say anything about this). We also talked about how effectively to teach in masks — how to be heard and understood, how to manage group work when — despite the official advice — social distancing is a good idea. I think the discussion was probably fairly unsatisfactory, as we had many more questions than answers. I hope we can continue this discussion across the semester, both as we come up with strategies and as the requirements/recommendations change.
• We discussed what to do with unruly students who refuse to wear a mask. This was probably a bit more likely to occur when the policy allowed vaccinated people not to wear them. Nonetheless, this is still a possibility. Walter should follow up on official recommendations, but the two ideas we discussed were:
  • Canceling class and reporting the unruly student to the dean.
  • Calling the campus police (I think this is the official recommendation). For both the Marysville campus and the Sutter Center, that main number is (530) 741-6771 or (530) 741-6772. (Brian Jukes also has a direct cell number you might try if the other two don’t work: (530) 870-1158.

SLO Norming Teaching Community

Shawn, Carrie, and Cassie have agreed to co-facilitate a teaching community to develop a norming process for our discussions about SLOs. I will be working with the LEAD committee to make stipends available for part-time faculty who want to participate in this process. Once that’s sorted out, we’ll put out a more official announcement. But, as in the past, we’ll be following the LEAD committee’s requirements for stipends (e.g., two levels of stipends, depending on attendance).

If you still just drop in for occasional meetings (e.g., if you don’t want to commit to full participation), you are still welcome. You’d be eligible for Flex.

More information to follow, as soon as we’re sure that the LEAD committee will fund the community.

Closing Thoughts

We talked about a few other things (rubrics, increased illness for grandmothers when assignments are due, etc.) but these were unstructured discussions. I wouldn’t know how to report on them.
If you were at the meeting and noticed something I missed, please let me know. And if you have any questions about anything I’ve reported, please contact me.

PS: For your possible amusement

“The Dead Grandmother / Exam Syndrome,” by Mike Adams (Biology, Eastern Connecticut State University – published in the Annals of Improbable Research):

The basic problem can be stated very simply:

A student’s grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of the year.

Complete with diagrams and solutions!

The department held it’s first-Tuesday meeting, and I took notes! Here’s the important stuff — plus a couple things I learned after the meeting. If you were at the meeting, let me know if I forgot anything important. If not, I hope this is reasonably informative.

WLDC Surveys for students and for faculty

Shawn and Kiara announced that they’ve created two relatively short surveys, one targeted at faculty (that’s us!) and one at students. These are meant to help the center improve, in particular how to improve how we get word out to the students.

So please, if you are willing, please import the WLDC student survey into your course (it’s formatted as a quiz). Here’s a basic “how-to,” as I understand the process.

• Log in to your Canvas
• Click on this link (right here, in this blog post): WLDC student survey. If you click that link while logged in, it should take you directly to the quiz.
• Click “Import/Download” and choose the courses you’d like to import the survey into.
• Announce it to students. Extra credit might encourage more students to respond, but that’s up to you.

Also, please fill out the WLDC Feedback (Instructors) survey. It’s a Microsoft Form, with only a few questions. It shouldn’t take long.

The information from both of these surveys, as I said, will help the center improve. This is especially important now, as Brian Jukes is taking over the coordinator position (or most of it). This will help him prioritize the work as he gets his bearings.

End-of-semester SLO meeting PLUS the eLumen pilot

It’s been a long time since we last discussed this, but I hope you remember: The English Dept. agreed to pilot the process for entering SLO results into eLumen. This means that SLO reporting will be different this semester: instead of reporting totals to me through a Google Form (which I then aggregated and uploaded to TracDat), each instructor will enter SLO results for each student into eLumen.

Don’t panic! It’s not difficult at all, and not much more time consuming than the old way. And it will give the Outcomes committee a lot of help as they learn eLumen, and as they further develop promising practices for better use of SLO data. Just one example: entering SLOs in for each student will allow us to disaggregate the results to see if we have any disproportionate impacts that should be interrogated. (I’ll add that eLumen has privacy protections for faculty, so –at least as I understand it — these results couldn’t be used to single out individual faculty, even if we wanted to (which we don’t).)

We can discuss all this further at the end-of-semester SLO meeting that we hold at the end of… well, at the end of each semester. We are planning to devote a portion of that meeting to an eLumen workshop, where Shawn (our Outcomes coordinator) will walk everyone through the process of entering the SLO results. You can, at the meeting, enter your results (if you have them) during the meeting. And if you don’t have the results yet — I know that some people use their final essay as the assessment tool, and may not have them graded in time for the meeting — you’ll still be able to walk through much of the process so it won’t be brand new when you get to it.

We’ll also have a walk-through handout with screenshots for those who can’t make the meeting. There’s also a walk-through video that we can link to (though it includes more than is needed for just entering in results). And Shawn (and I) will always be available to help, if that’s needed.

We’re scheduling that meeting during finals week, the week of May 24. I’ve created a Google Form Poll that will help me set the time for this meeting. Please choose all the times that you are available. I will choose the one that (a) works for Shawn and myself (since we’re running it), (b) has the most people available, and (c) is latest in the week.

Note that Friday, May 28, is Commencement. The main commencement is set, as last year, for 7:30 pm. However, they are also running a drive-thru ceremony. I’m not sure about all the details yet; they said at the last all-college Zoom meeting (I refuse to say “YuZoom”) that they’d send out an announcement in email soon, so keep your eyes open for that. But I believe that they’ve set the English department version on Friday afternoon, which is why I did not include Friday afternoon on the list of options for our meeting.

PS: Remember that part-time faculty get paid for this meeting (as opposed to being eligible for Flex, which no one needs at this time).

Quick Reports

Fall semester

As I mentioned in the meeting, I have no additional information about fall. I’ve turned in the schedule, which Don has been working to get updated. Apparently, a few people have Canvas shells that don’t match their schedule; if that is the case for you, please contact Don (dmsith2@yccd.edu), as this is above my pay grade.

In general terms, we’re planning to be back in the classroom. Of course, the details of what that means (or even if that will happen) depends on the state of the pandemic at that time. I’ve not been encouraged by reports of how the vaccine-hesitant might make it so that we don’t end up with the herd immunity via vaccination that we’d expected. But we’ll see. That’s outside of our control.

Course Cap Discussions

Aree Metz and Kevin Ferns from Woodland, and Brian Jukes and I from Yuba, met with the deans to have the discussion about course caps for our composition classes.

Unfortunately, I think the discussion is, or risks, being swallowed up in a larger discussion that the district has decided it wants to have: there are a number of courses where the caps don’t match across the district, which isn’t supposed to be allowed by the full-time faculty contract.

So they’ve put together a process that doesn’t even follow the letter of the contract, in my view, let alone the spirit of it. The cynical part of me — which I try to keep under control, but is really itching right now — thinks that this is basically a way to set course caps according to what the district would like to see, given its interest in “efficiency” and enrollment management. I hope I’m wrong, but… <shrugs>

Anyway, the four of us remain in contact with Don (our dean) and Shannon (WCC’s dean), though much of that time has been spent waiting to hear what the next step is going to be.

Rotation Schedule

In the meeting, I mentioned that I had heard some vague rumblings about course rotations and Self Service (that’s the WebAdvisor replacement, unrelated to gas stations). Since then, Carla (Yuba’s academic VP) did a presentation at the all-campus Zoom meeting (did I mention my allergy to “YuZoom”?)(stop using so many parentheses, Greg! It’s confusing!) and explained the issue in a bit more detail.

The problem is that Self Service has the rotations embedded in it, and students rely on it in planning — for example, knowing that a course is only offered in the Spring helps them develop an educational plan that includes things they’re interested in.

And, of course, the problem with that: changes happen! We added a class to the rotation, and we needed to get out of step with Woodland so we aren’t poaching each other’s students. So I’m pushing ahead. Carla said to contact the dean, which I just did. I’m not sure that there’s clarity about what they plan to do/allow/encourage yet. But I think the issue just came to light, so we shouldn’t expect perfect clarity yet.

General Education Degrees

At a previous meeting, we discussed the possibility of adopting the Arts and Humanities GE degree. At the time, it was just a twinkle in the eye of the Curriculum Committee. In particular, we were waiting for some data about the degrees. I mentioned at this meeting that I was waiting for that data, and would raise the issue when I better knew what the Curriculum Committee is discussing. (I will add that this discussion is also happening in one of the Guided Pathways Task Forces, though I’m not sure if they’re working together or in parallel.)

The day after the meeting, I received a bit of data (specifically, the number of degrees awarded) and a request to join the discussion on Friday at the Curriculum Committee meeting. I’m not available at that time… but I also let them know that we need more information before we can make a decision. I will try to get some of that information in time for the end-of-semester meeting, but I wouldn’t expect that, even with answers to the questions I’ve asked, we’d be able to give an answer this school year.

That’s all, folks

I think that’s everything. Let me know ( gkemble@yccd.edu ) if you have any questions, thoughts, insights, concerns, jokes, recommended songs, favorite books, or stock tips.

Peace.

Announcements

• The new curriculum workflow in eLumen has two important changes that are relevant to us:
  • The workflow no longer notifies every member of a department that a course is new or updated course have been launched. Anyone working to create or update a course needs to request department feedback. (I recommend that the Composition Coordinator — me, as of this writing — help coordinate this communication.)
  • There is a workflow that is streamlined for DE changes only. If you’re updating the DE addendum on one or more of our courses, be sure you look for that. (That said, I sat through a curriculum committee meeting where courses with SLO and DE updates only nonetheless had to be sure that other information was correct, including rationales for textbooks over five years old.
• As I understand it, the Academic Senate has okayed Yuba joining the Online Education Consortium. There’s a lot of work involved, especially given the number of courses that the DE Committee is trying to validate (under pressure of the District demanding validation as a condition for stipends… grrr). But as things move along, we may find that some of our hard-to-fill classes will find students from outside our service area.
• Kiara sent an email to the department with a flyer announcing open submissions (deadline: March 15) for our online, student-edited literary journal, Flumes. I think Don Smith sent it out more widely, as well, so you may already have seen the flyer. If not, here’s a PDF of the email, and a copy of the flyer.

Report: ENGL 40B

Brian Jukes reported that he and I met with Jeremy and Carla (twice — and Don attended the first meeting) to discuss their unwillingness to schedule ENGL 40B, which is our second-semester tutor training course. It became clear that we were not going to get them to schedule the course, but we came to a compromise that will allow us to incorporate the training into their working hours. It’s not ideal, but it’s worth testing out.

Course Rotations

Now that we’ve added the Youth Lit and LGBTQ+ Lit courses to our roster, we need to update the course rotation schedule, which is used to ensure that students can expect courses they need for degrees will be offered regularly. We also discovered that we were offering some of our courses the same semester that Woodland offered the same courses.

The last bit of information I needed to build that schedule involved which two lit courses we would offer once every two years (rather than annually). We agreed that to put Youth Lit and Shakespeare in that category.

I will put a finalized version of that together soon and send it out for final approval.

Single-Point Rubrics

As I was investigating Dweck-influenced rubric headings, I came across something called a Single-Point Rubric. This was brand new to me, yet I also felt that someone in the department had introduced me to the concept already. Shades of Schrödinger.

Anyway, I talked about it incoherently for a few minutes, but promised I’d send out a couple links that introduce the idea. Et voilà:

• Cult of Pedagogy (one of Kyra’s favorite teacherly sites, it turns out) has a brief explanation of the single-point rubric.
• There’s a slightly more detailed look — 6 Reasons to Try a Single-Point Rubric — on the edutopia blog.
• A teacher from Estrella Mountain Community College piloted the single-point rubric in an online class, and ran into some challenges making it work for Canvas. She does have a handout, though, that shows how she adapted the Canvas rubric to do something similar (Word doc.). It’s not as good, in my view, but still better than the types of rubrics I’ve build in Canvas. [PS: If the link breaks, let me know. I’ve downloaded a copy.]

Let me know what you think!