My students practice critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity across in-person and asynchronous courses. My Spring 2023 section of Introduction to Fiction was organized around the theme of exploration, a word that conjures notions of adventure, discovery, introspection, and analysis. I selected this theme not only because journey narratives play important roles in many forms, styles, and genres of fiction but also because it reflects the exploratory nature of reading fiction. In this course, my students read literary and genre fiction spanning a variety of subjects, perspectives, and themes that urged students outside of their comfort zones. One student reported, “Alex is not afraid to challenge students by asking them critical questions. The texts that Alex chose were interesting and brought social issues such as racial inequality, feminism and classism to light and challenged potential biases we may have.” To encourage their intellectual curiosity further, students were required to prepare discussion questions and lead fifteen minutes of large-group discussion once a semester. In these presentations (called “Exploration Presentations”), discussion leaders prompted their peers to examine literary devices in the day’s assigned reading. Students enjoyed tailoring a portion of class discussion to their interests while satisfying the course outcomes of practicing literary analysis and developing persuasive arguments. This activity encouraged students to think critically about fiction and engage in meaningful dialogue with their peers. One student shared, “Alex makes sure class is a collaborative space where discussion and sharing ideas are heavily encouraged,” a notion reflected in the course’s average course evaluation score of 4.92 out of 5.
I built on these interests in collaborative and creative learning to design a Summer 2023 asynchronous section of ENGL 10600 using the theme of digital rhetorics. This class taught students to recognize digital spaces as rhetorical situations and to participate in digital discourse communities. Asynchronous courses have a reputation for being tedious, but I tempered this expectation by researching and implementing effective asynchronous teaching strategies. I found a December 2022 article from the Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching and Learning particularly helpful, incorporating several of the article’s suggested practices (such as visual signaling, spatial contiguity, temporal contiguity, segmenting information, and consistent use of multimodal materials) into my course design. For example, I created a YouTube channel made up of short, engaging instructional videos featuring lessons students then utilized in weekly interactive discussion boards. One student described these scaffolding assignments as “effective in preparing me for each project.” I also allowed students to select their own topics for two of their major projects: a researched argument essay and a TED Talk script. These assignments required students to assess general and scholarly sources while crafting an informed claim about their chosen topic. The TED Talk script prompted students to think critically and creatively about how visual and performative elements might contribute to a public presentation, a skill that they can transfer to other courses and professional opportunities. This course’s average evaluation score was 4.88, and one student described my pedagogical approach as “attentive and present, which can be hard online.”
Alex M. Anderson, PhD 