The last week has been a tech nightmare.

My university switched its email/calendar provider in the middle of the semester and in the middle of the week. On Tuesday night, IT moved students, administrators, and faculty from Google Apps for Education to Microsoft Office 365. But the move to MS has been limited to email/calendar – for now. The rest of the band-aid comes off at some unspecified future date. After spending nearly a year communicating to the community that we’re moving to Google Apps for Education (from a woefully outdated and undersupported local solution that many still used), the leadership changed course almost instantly.

Impact on me: At least 10 hours of lost productivity as I worked to re-cobble together a unified solution to bring my mail and calendaring together into my mail and calendar clients in a way that enables me to share my availability with my wife. Did I mention this happened in the middle of the week and in the middle of the term!

More important than the email/calendar insanity is the impact of the switch on my department’s student learning and assessment plans. After embracing Google Apps (because we’re a Google Apps university) and planning to launch a major ePortfolio initiative in Google Sites, the whiplash-quick pivot from Google left me holding a bag of, well, nothing. With a colleague requiring ePortfolio in our pilot course, I could NOT in good conscience move forward with a platform I knew would be deprecated once the MS migration was complete. (Goodbye Google Sites template for student ePortfolios!) Result: Two crazy days trying to decide on another solution.

Enter WordPress! After pricing a non-university hosting solution, I was able to work out an arrangement with the university to host student ePortfolios in a WordPress Network installation on site.  This is, frankly, the best solution for us because it keeps the project in a .edu domain, it is a platform with which I’m familiar, and it has real portability for students after they graduate. And WordPress is much more than a blog tool these days. We’re implementing a full-on CMS.  The whole thing would be ideal, but our rollout timeline is, unfortunately, quite compressed since we have ePortfolio running in a class right now!

As if this weren’t enough for a week, today I received a “vulnerable script” warning from my own web host. After some digging, it turns out that my archived WordPress-based course websites now need to be upgraded to close some security loopholes in 2.x versions of WordPress.  This looming upgrade headache and CSS update has me pondering the value of maintaining live, visible course archives in the first place. Nice.

Hopefully, this set of three significant headaches will mean the pox has moved on to someone else.

Last year I embraced Google Docs for student peer review and document submission in composition courses. I’ve been pleased with the way the sharing of documents helps me better track and support the peer review process in my writing classes. Peer review reading/marking becomes homework, class time is spent on discussing revision options, and everyone involved can see the comments as they emerge. And the addition of offline commenting and access through Google Drive really enables me to do my own commenting even when I lack internet access. All good!

But I remain flummoxed by the print limitations embedded within the app. I cannot understand why Google has not implemented a “print with comments” feature for its tool.  I worked around that problem in Spring 2012, but I really expected Google to add the feature by now. Amazing that Google Docs drives users through MS to make full use of a central feature of its tool.

How to print a Google Doc with comments?

It’s easy, if you have MS Word: Simply download the document as a .doc file, open in Word, and print. That’s great for a one-off print job.  Now, multiply that by 50-75 papers, the number of papers one might print if one teaches 2-3 sections of writing.

Here’s the workflow:

1. Receive shared document from each student in the class.
2. Move each document into a Google Drive folder to organize the class papers.
3. Open each paper in Google Apps, make comments.
4. Download paper to hard drive as .doc file.
5. Open in MS. Word.
6. Print.

Insane. I recently printed marked papers for two sections of composition and spent about an hour just getting the shared docs (wtih comments) to print. And if one uses Google Drive’s offline access, this workflow effectively means doubling the copies of the student paper on one’s harddrive.

Why Not Just Use MS Word?

Great question! I have several key reasons for avoiding MS Word:

• Not every student has MS Word. (Yes, there are workarounds – Open Office, for example.)
• I don’t like the idea of moving progressively more “marked up” papers around a peer group via email attachments. The Cloud is key because of the simultaneous editing features and all comments appear on one document.
• Ease of “accepting changes” in Word bothers me.
• I really like the versioning history in Google Docs.

The real question here is whether the cloud-based Office 365 tool would radically simplify my workflow here.  I don’t know, really, but reviews of that tool suggest that autosave may be problematic in Office 365.

Why Print Docs in the Cloud?

This is the $64,000 question.  Can’t we simply avoid the whole doc print thing here? After all, papers are submitted electronically, students comment electronically, and I comment electronically. Writers have ready access to the original, marked document. Why bother to print?

Read just about any study of screen vs. print reading and you’ll quickly find that we read more carefully when a document is printed. We skim web texts.  Make no mistake about it: A Google Doc may be akin to a printed paper in terms of content, but keep it on the screen and most of us fail to read as carefully.  In a writing class, where evaluation of claims, evidence, organization, and proofreading are central elements of the revision process, there’s real value in retaining the “print” output.

I have already ceded so much to the cloud by putting the drafting, peer review, and revision processes online. For some strange reason, I want to retain the easy ability to hand my students printed, marked comments on their final drafts.  We spend class time reading the comments, considering areas of strength and weakness, and focusing on the writing without the distractions of social media, the email inbox, etc.

Plea to Google: Activate the “print with comments” feature in Google Docs.  If I’m not mistaken, you used to have that feature in an earlier version of the tool. It’s essential in the Google Apps for Education suite!

My handwriting is poor. For years I have joked that I can get away with this because I’m a doctor.  And I have absolutely no trouble reading my own brand of shorthand. What’s the problem? As a writing teacher, I am always commenting on my students’ texts, mostly in marginal notes on papers and in an end comment letter. I work very hard to write legibly on my students’ texts. But the fact remains that my poor handwriting always makes its way into those comments. I offer a translation “service” to my students when I hand back papers and dedicate class time to a reading of my comments before we work to put common writing challenges on the board. And over the term my students do become better interpreters of my shorthand.

Commenting on student texts has always seemed more personalized when I’m hunched over a desk with a pencil in hand, making decisions about where and when to mark the text. And space limitations of the margins help reduce the likelihood that I’ll overwhelm the student with feedback, though that’s always a real possibility.

Back around 2001, when I taught freshman writing as an asynchronous online course, I experimented with digital markup using Acrobat. I found it time consuming and clunky, and while I could write more text quite quickly – and legibly – I disliked the distance the process put between the printed page and myself.

MS Word’s comment tools and track changes have always bugged me for some reason. Perhaps it’s the ease with which one can simply “accept all changes,” effectively allowing a student to let me revise the paper. (I feel this way even though I almost never actually rephrase or rewrite a student’s sentence.) This is already a challenge in teaching revision: students often revise only those moments we mark in a text, thinking that will “fix” the paper.

Strange. For all I’ve done to embrace emergent digital writing technologies over the last dozen years, I have resisted what is perhaps the most basic tool the writing teacher might adopt in working with student texts. Until now.

Enter Google Docs

I feel like a luddite for not getting serious with Google Docs. My institution uses Google Apps for Education, effectively putting all of my students on the Google network. This is quite exciting for a number of reasons that go way beyond Docs. But that’s another story.

Students write their papers directly into a Doc they create on their account, copy-paste a text document from their computer into a Doc, or upload a text doc to Docs. Once they have the paper appropriately formatted (double-spaced, block quotes, page numbers, etc.), they “share” the document with me. I comment on the document and they get immediate feedback.

It’s a bit like MS Office, making it less than beautiful, only I don’t need to have the files on my machine or worry about file compatibility. (Until this term, I regularly received attachments in .pages, .doc, .docx, .txt, .odt, and even – yes – .wpd formats.) I have four different word processing programs on my computer so that I can handle this variety!

I do have an issue with “shared” documents and marking texts. The real-time nature of Docs means that my comments show up immediately. I prefer to distribute final, marked papers at the same time, particularly since it can take several days to work through a (virtual) stack of papers. The workaround I’m using involves copying the shared document, pasting it into a new document I own, and making my comments. I can then share the comments to each student at roughly the same time.

Peer Review

More important than the way this tool enables me to comment on texts is its potential in the peer review process.  My approach to peer review has always involved in-class reading and discussion of student texts. Everyone brings multiple copies, small groups do read-arounds and discuss each text in the group, and I sit in on groups to offer guidance and encouragement.

New this term, I’m putting the reading of drafts onto homework, with the class period reserved for discussion of the ideas and suggestions for revision. Students share their draft Doc with designated peers; commenting happens on the Doc.

I can quickly and easily see the character of the students’ comments, flag and echo some of the best comments by peers, and add my own to the mix. Gone are the days when I would have to collect 3 copies of a draft to see the “layers” of peer feedback on a student’s text, or rely on some other elaborate, paper-heavy mechanism to evaluate the peer review in my classes.

I do worry that the marked document may overwhelm novice writers who can easily become overwhelmed by the quantity of feedback on a single document. (It would be very, very cool if the author could choose to view one set of comments or another.)

Problem – MS Office is Inescapable

In terms of workflow, I have found that the current version of Docs is very limiting when one wants to print comments. Print your Doc and the comments get stripped out before printing. Docs has a full portfolio of export/download options (.doc, .pdf, .html, and more). But only .doc preserves the comments though the export. Frankly, this stinks to high heaven!

Here’s the workflow:

1. Open Doc with comments that you want to print to bring to class, perhaps to reduce laptop multi-tasking during peer review.
2. Download .doc file to computer. Open in Word, Pages, Open Office, or another editor. Print.
3. Bring to class.

This approach isn’t too cumbersome if you’re only printing one Doc. Now multiply the process by 20, 40, 60 to hand back papers with comments.

The writing teacher has already spent 15-30 minutes marking each text. Putting two steps between “desire to print” and “actual print” seems ridiculous. And I’m not sure what technical hurdle would prevent comments from printing. I’m sure Google will address this in some upcoming update.

In an online or hybrid/blended writing course, I can see Docs as a wonderful tool. Printed text becomes irrelevant in an online environment.

Christensen, Clayton, M., and Henry J. Eyring. The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

I should have read The Innovative University  last year. It is a book that seems to have penetrated fairly deeply into higher education management circles after the authors’ central concepts of “disruptive innovation” and institutional “DNA” found an audience in the larger business world.

I should have read The Innovative University just so that I could better understand some of the ideas behind administrators’ thinking these days. The incentive to read the book came this past month in the form of an invitation by the provost to join a discussion of the text and the possible implications for the future of my own university.

I find little to argue with in the authors’ complaints about the hazards of attempting to transplant the “Harvard DNA” into colleges and universities that lack the resources, selectivity, and star power of a Harvard. And who but a member of a dying breed of nostalgic professors could claim that the tremors that currently rock higher education are just noise that will have little impact on his or her institution. Online education, careful consideration of the teaching-service-scholarship mix, and redefinitions of scholarship itself are clearly on the table for almost any college or university. And The Innovative University offers some food for thought in these areas. As always, I remain ready to engage with colleagues on just these issues.

But I found The Innovative University lacking a certain scholarly treatment of the issues. Early on, the authors claim that they will use “DNA” as a metaphor, and such a move is innocent enough.  One can employ metaphor to great effect.  But, of course, one can also push a metaphor so far that that it is no longer suitable. This, it seems to me, is where The Innovative University runs with its metaphor of DNA.

I’m no biologist, but my sense is that DNA changes through random mutation and combination in reproduction. Its expression in phenotype or perceived traits has something to do with dominant and recessive traits. Many elements of DNA have little or no impact on the functioning of an organism (or a species). Some weaken the organism’s ability to survive and reproduce, to be sure, while others may offer the organism a competitive advantage in the quest for survival, a mate, and offspring. This kind of change is generally understood to be very slow, particularly for more complex organisms. (And, of course, an organization is not an organism.)

And this is a problem. If it’s DNA that explains the “evolution” of Harvard University and efforts to replicate or transplant that DNA that are getting so many schools in trouble, why is the book chock full of decisions made by specific individuals responding to particular challenges/circumstances?  One doesn’t will a change in DNA, unless one is a sort of deity who can go into an organism and perform miracles. Hmm. University presidents as nearly omnipotent beings capable of shaping DNA.

In a sense, perhaps the authors’ use of DNA to describe what sociologists and students of organizational behavior might call an organization’s culture or its institutions is actually a vehicle for signaling to leaders that they stand in this God-like position: “Yes, your university does have DNA.  It’s important to ‘know’ that DNA so that you can mold and shape it to respond to perceived market forces. Institutional make-up is hard wired (DNA), and yet transformational leaders of the sort who move Harvard and other universities are powerful enough to change it.”

That kind of power is generally seen as the province of Mother Nature, God, or natural selection. While this isn’t the central message of The Innovative University, it may help explain why the ideas of disruptive innovation and organizational DNA are so appealing to CEOs, presidents, and others in positions of power and influence.

Changing an organization is so hard because it’s encoded in the DNA of an institution. But the true leader is able to see the DNA and manipulate it to enable the organization to adapt in ways that make it better suited to its environment. Heady stuff, indeed!

It’s official. Xtranormal is a great little online tool for composition courses, particularly if your course emphasizes the conversational nature of academic writing.

After contemplating the use of Xtranormal in my composition course for about a year, I offered students the option of creating an Xtranormal script and video in lieu of two low stakes assignments. Working in groups, students who opted for the video project produced two-minute videos that put Malcolm Gladwell, Sherry Turkle, and Nathan Rott into conversation on the issue of social media and social action.

Writing effective source-based papers with a strong dose of argument is a tough task for college freshmen. Producing animated videos that put texts into conversation can actually reduce the level of complexity involved in getting the argument rolling. On top of figuring out the texts, locating moments of connection, and putting the texts together in the service of a position or view, students need to wrestle with effective integration of texts, a balance of quotation, paraphrase, and summary, documentation style, organization, and sentence construction. It takes a full term (or two) for students to become even somewhat proficient at juggling all these elements, and it can be frustrating for them. Their ideas and readings can quickly outpace their ability to represent their views in the structure of the academic paper. Here’s where Xtranormal is a great tool.

Xtranormal uses Flash and text-to-speech technology to enable novice movie makers to produce animated videos online.

Students prepare a script that puts a couple characters in a scene and sets them in a conversation. When students have to use some of the language of the texts they’re reading as they develop the script, they really begin to do some of the hard work of academic thinking. Xtranormal is fun because the author chooses characters, a voice, a background, camera angles, sound effects, and more.

The major drawback, really, is Xtranormal’s revenue model. Rather than offer a free, ad-supported version for those unwilling to purchase the characters and sets, Xtranormal teases creators by providing seed money to make the first video. There is an education discount that puts the tool within some teachers’ budgets, but it’s likely that most students would have to work with a limited set and character selection to work in the budget of the teaser film. (Home economics for digital production?)

Xtranormal was optional this term. I think I’ll require a project of this sort next term.

I just completed the “rough” migration of my website into WordPress 3.0. I’m wrapping the weblog and the pages all in one blog. I’ll post the procedures once I finish tying up all the (very) loose ends on the project. For example, I just realized that I deleted the files that were controlling my CSS-switching experiment, a 4-5 year effort that I’d hate to lose just because I’m moving to WordPress for the site. Repairing the damage will take a little time. (Major ouch!)

What’s good about this move?

• I get Web 2.0 functionality and the database web moving forward.
• My weblog is integrated with the rest of my site.
• With WordPress 3.0 I can roll multiple sites/blogs into a single install, and manage them from one admin panel.
• This enables me to move all my course sites into WordPress (going forward). I experimented with WP-driven course sites in Spring 2010 and I mostly liked it.

What’s not good?

• My focus on content migration took my eye off design. I have a “designed” site, to be sure. But it has a very bloggy (or blocky?) look/feel to it.  In time I’ll push this issue, starting with experiments in course website.
• Lots of up front work to move things.
• Errors will be huge. (Let’s hope I don’t err.)

WordPress v.3 has now been released and I’m intrigued. This spring I ran two course websites in WordPress.  Previously, I had always built sites in Dreamweaver. The WP approach makes it much easier to build in RSS, and to add Web 2.0 functionality right in my single course site.  I no longer had to build the course site, and the blog as a separate site.

My success this past term got me thinking to the next 5 years, and to installing WordPress Multi-user (WPMU) on my server space.  This would enable me to build multiple course sites in a single WP installation.

With WordPress 3, it seems, I can simply upgrade to 3.0 and get multi-site functionality. The WPMU community that has grown up over the years may not be so happy about WP pulling multi-user functionality right into the core, and I can understand the sentiment given all the work in WPMU Dev, and elsewhere.

For me, this might be just the ticket. I wasn’t looking forward to getting WPMU running on my server, though I don’t expect it can be that difficult. WordPress’s “5-minute installation” just reduces all that worry – or so that’s the hope.

I was blown away at our last department meeting when it concluded with a farewell cake and much well-wishing as I prepare to leave York College for a new position at the University of New England in the fall. The cake was beautiful and delicious, and the card everyone signed left me sad to leave my colleagues. They’re just wonderful.

Deep took some pictures and sent them to me, and I’m posting them here so I’m reminded of my soon-to-be-former colleagues with each posting.

On March 3, I presented an assessment-based picture of writing at York College/CUNY. This talk was something I had been looking forward to for more than four months, and is a much more elaborated version of a talk I gave at the Provost’s 2010 Academic Leadership Retreat in late January. Following the talk, it was suggested that I make the talk available. So here it is.

I just learned that The Jump (Journal of Undergraduate Multimedia Projects out of UT-Austin) has accepted one of Anna Charles’ projects for publication in its upcoming issue.  Anna is one of the Communications Technology majors at York College, and I couldn’t be more excited for her.  I’m also excited for the CT program, and for Daniel Phelps, the Television Studio Director at York and Anna’s teacher for the project that will be published.

Her project is a great, short public service announcement-type film. I blogged about it a couple months back, as soon as I saw the film.Anna works as a studio consultant in the E-Writing Studio on campus, and assists students with their ePortfolio projects.

The work Anna has done in this film is actually work that is well within the range of our CT majors. I see this acceptance as a good sign that more CT majors can find publication venues for their work, perhaps even in The Jump.