Faculty who have participated in the Southern Miss faculty seminar on writing and speaking over the last few years have expressed an interest in continuing our discussions about teaching online. Here's your spot!
Monday, January 23, 2012
Welcome to the Spring 2012 Faculty Seminar!
Tell us a bit about yourself here. What is your discipline? Which classes do you teach that include writing/speaking? What do you see as the biggest challenges to successful teaching?
My name is Scott Palasik. I'm an assistant professor in the department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at USM. I teach undergraduate and graduate level classes where writing is required. For the undergraduate classes we do two major writing assignments/ semester . These assignments essentially require each student to summarize what they've learned and pass it on to someone they know in a semi formal letter. These allow the students to develop their teaching voice and practice their writing skills at the same time. One of the biggest challenges to this practice is time to grade all of the papers. I usually have between 45 and 65 students/ class and each paper ranges from 4-8 pages. If each student does two papers that is 500 - 700 pages of papers to read/ semester (mean). I wish I would do this as a process paper but that would take MORE time. My graduate students do writing projects and essay questions on exams. The challenge with these classes is a lack of time to fit all of the content in and work on professionalism, both in practice, and in writing. Thank you very much! With compassion and kindness, Scott
Hello everyone! My name is Jessica Sharp, and I am a Visiting Instructor in the School of Construction. As a recent USM graduate, I was pleased to return to the Architectural Engineering Technology program. This is my third year to teach, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the constant process of course development and improvement. Currently, I teach the writing-intensive Architectural History course and several other courses that require reports of various lengths. These reports range from formally written observations on a construction site to 5-page research papers on a specific topic. I also assign multiple presentations as students progress through my courses in the Architectural program, especially in their last two years at USM. The most common issues I've noticed as an instructor are a lack of focus and flow in some students' writing and confidence in their speaking. I have not directly tackled this issue in the past, so my hopes from this seminar are to learn new techniques for instilling confidence in my students' writing and speaking skills, especially since these skills are absolutely required when they leave here! Thanks for reading about me, and I'm excited to meet you all soon.
Hi, my name is Makayla Merritt and I am a Visiting Instructor and Clinical Coordinator for the Athletic Training Education Program (ATEP) in the School of Human Performance and Recreation (HPR). I am currently in my second year here at USM. To my surprise, I actually enjoy teaching! (This was certainly not my original career plan.) I primarily teach juniors and seniors in the ATEP. I incorporate writing assignments into every class. A large percentage of our students go on to graduate school, so I feel like this is necessary to ensure that they are ready to take that next step. I have taught/am teaching two writing intensive courses for our program. I usually break the 5000-word requirement into four or five assignments ranging from 1000 to 1200 words each. I have found that placing a word number on assignments rather than a page limit reduces the incidence of unneccessary jargon! I find that my students seem to make the same mistakes on every paper (especially in the area of formatting). I hope to pick up some tools that I can incorporate to mold them into good quality writers. I also require that the students participate in speaking assignments in every course. It is essential for our discipline that students have the ability to communicate effectively. Like Jessica, I have found that my students lack confidence and professionalism when speaking. In addition, I too find it a challange to grade these assignments in a quality and timely fashion. I do not have as many students as Scott, but with my busy life and work load it is quite a task. I hope to learn some new strategies for expediting this process as well. Thanks, and I look forward to meeting everyone! - Makayla
Hello all, my name is Cindy Handley and I'm a visiting assistant professor in the Medical Technology program. You may wonder what medical technology is all about and I'd be glad to tell you. It is about analyzing blood and body fluids in a clinical laboratory setting like a hospital or physician's office. If you have further questions, I'd love to talk more about what we do. I am in this class to learn more about writing better assignments and including new activities in my class instead of pure lecture. I teach a writing intesive course for Med Tech called Professional Communications. We have them write a rough draft and final case study, a rough draft and final research paper (same topic), resume, cover letter and memo. They also do oral presentations on both their case study and research paper. In my last class I had some problems with Eubonics and I'm hoping to get some assistance on handling that cultural situation. I look forward to working with you all and shamelessly stealing all your good ideas!
Hello all, my name is Cindy Handley and I'm a visiting assistant professor in the Medical Technology program. You may wonder what medical technology is all about and I'd be glad to tell you. It is about analyzing blood and body fluids in a clinical laboratory setting like a hospital or physician's office. If you have further questions, I'd love to talk more about what we do. I am in this class to learn more about writing better assignments and including new activities in my class instead of pure lecture. I teach a writing intesive course for Med Tech called Professional Communications. We have them write a rough draft and final case study, a rough draft and final research paper (same topic), resume, cover letter and memo. They also do oral presentations on both their case study and research paper. In my last class I had some problems with Eubonics and I'm hoping to get some assistance on handling that cultural situation. I look forward to working with you all and shamelessly stealing all your good ideas!
My name is Catharine Bomhold and I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science, which is part of EdPsych. I have been at USM since 2003 and teach a variety of topics including reference, children’s literature, young adult literature, ethics, and service to multicultural populations. Because the majority of my students are graduate students, all my classes require a major paper or project. Like Scott, my biggest concern is time management. I feel that at this level I can expect that students can write coherently, although I don’t always get what I expect. The overarching theme in Library Science is metacognition, that is, we teach our students how to think about how other people think. This is extremely difficult to teach (especially in a online environment), and what I would like to learn/do in this class is to develop assignments that articulate this better so that our students get more out of the work we have them do.
Hello everyone, I'm Steve Mark, currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Accountancy. I say currently, because in Fall 2010 my entire department was eliminated, then I was picked up by the College of Business in the finance Department, and then as of January 1 I am in the School of Accountancy. I'm really not sure if I am as important as my faculty line, but at least a moving target. I have a BA in Accounting and an MA in Secondary Business and Vocational Education from the university of South Florida, and the PhD from Bowling Green State University. Since I began teaching in 1990, i have always believed writing and speaking is critical for students in any major, largely, I suppose, because of my 10 years in corporate accounting and management. Unfortunately, the incoming skill set of our students has been deteriorating, and the workload of faculty increasing, which means that there is little time to provide the consistent help our writers and speakers need. For most of my teaching career my primary focus was Business/Organizational Communications, which involves heavy emphasis on writing and speaking. My problem has always been finding the class time to work in 5000 words (usually a long report) and two oral presentations while having 30-35 students! I am hoping to learn new tricks and tips to help. In addition I always use technology to improve teaching, so I am hoping to share some of that with my peers. Thanks, and here's to a great QEP.
7 comments:
My name is Scott Palasik. I'm an assistant professor in the department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at USM. I teach undergraduate and graduate level classes where writing is required. For the undergraduate classes we do two major writing assignments/ semester . These assignments essentially require each student to summarize what they've learned and pass it on to someone they know in a semi formal letter. These allow the students to develop their teaching voice and practice their writing skills at the same time. One of the biggest challenges to this practice is time to grade all of the papers. I usually have between 45 and 65 students/ class and each paper ranges from 4-8 pages. If each student does two papers that is 500 - 700 pages of papers to read/ semester (mean). I wish I would do this as a process paper but that would take MORE time. My graduate students do writing projects and essay questions on exams. The challenge with these classes is a lack of time to fit all of the content in and work on professionalism, both in practice, and in writing. Thank you very much! With compassion and kindness, Scott
Hello everyone! My name is Jessica Sharp, and I am a Visiting Instructor in the School of Construction. As a recent USM graduate, I was pleased to return to the Architectural Engineering Technology program. This is my third year to teach, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the constant process of course development and improvement. Currently, I teach the writing-intensive Architectural History course and several other courses that require reports of various lengths. These reports range from formally written observations on a construction site to 5-page research papers on a specific topic. I also assign multiple presentations as students progress through my courses in the Architectural program, especially in their last two years at USM. The most common issues I've noticed as an instructor are a lack of focus and flow in some students' writing and confidence in their speaking. I have not directly tackled this issue in the past, so my hopes from this seminar are to learn new techniques for instilling confidence in my students' writing and speaking skills, especially since these skills are absolutely required when they leave here! Thanks for reading about me, and I'm excited to meet you all soon.
Hi, my name is Makayla Merritt and I am a Visiting Instructor and Clinical Coordinator for the Athletic Training Education Program (ATEP) in the School of Human Performance and Recreation (HPR). I am currently in my second year here at USM. To my surprise, I actually enjoy teaching! (This was certainly not my original career plan.) I primarily teach juniors and seniors in the ATEP. I incorporate writing assignments into every class. A large percentage of our students go on to graduate school, so I feel like this is necessary to ensure that they are ready to take that next step. I have taught/am teaching two writing intensive courses for our program. I usually break the 5000-word requirement into four or five assignments ranging from 1000 to 1200 words each. I have found that placing a word number on assignments rather than a page limit reduces the incidence of unneccessary jargon! I find that my students seem to make the same mistakes on every paper (especially in the area of formatting). I hope to pick up some tools that I can incorporate to mold them into good quality writers. I also require that the students participate in speaking assignments in every course. It is essential for our discipline that students have the ability to communicate effectively. Like Jessica, I have found that my students lack confidence and professionalism when speaking. In addition, I too find it a challange to grade these assignments in a quality and timely fashion. I do not have as many students as Scott, but with my busy life and work load it is quite a task. I hope to learn some new strategies for expediting this process as well. Thanks, and I look forward to meeting everyone! - Makayla
Hello all, my name is Cindy Handley and I'm a visiting assistant professor in the Medical Technology program. You may wonder what medical technology is all about and I'd be glad to tell you. It is about analyzing blood and body fluids in a clinical laboratory setting like a hospital or physician's office. If you have further questions, I'd love to talk more about what we do. I am in this class to learn more about writing better assignments and including new activities in my class instead of pure lecture. I teach a writing intesive course for Med Tech called Professional Communications. We have them write a rough draft and final case study, a rough draft and final research paper (same topic), resume, cover letter and memo. They also do oral presentations on both their case study and research paper. In my last class I had some problems with Eubonics and I'm hoping to get some assistance on handling that cultural situation. I look forward to working with you all and shamelessly stealing all your good ideas!
Hello all, my name is Cindy Handley and I'm a visiting assistant professor in the Medical Technology program. You may wonder what medical technology is all about and I'd be glad to tell you. It is about analyzing blood and body fluids in a clinical laboratory setting like a hospital or physician's office. If you have further questions, I'd love to talk more about what we do. I am in this class to learn more about writing better assignments and including new activities in my class instead of pure lecture. I teach a writing intesive course for Med Tech called Professional Communications. We have them write a rough draft and final case study, a rough draft and final research paper (same topic), resume, cover letter and memo. They also do oral presentations on both their case study and research paper. In my last class I had some problems with Eubonics and I'm hoping to get some assistance on handling that cultural situation. I look forward to working with you all and shamelessly stealing all your good ideas!
My name is Catharine Bomhold and I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science, which is part of EdPsych. I have been at USM since 2003 and teach a variety of topics including reference, children’s literature, young adult literature, ethics, and service to multicultural populations.
Because the majority of my students are graduate students, all my classes require a major paper or project. Like Scott, my biggest concern is time management. I feel that at this level I can expect that students can write coherently, although I don’t always get what I expect.
The overarching theme in Library Science is metacognition, that is, we teach our students how to think about how other people think. This is extremely difficult to teach (especially in a online environment), and what I would like to learn/do in this class is to develop assignments that articulate this better so that our students get more out of the work we have them do.
Hello everyone, I'm Steve Mark, currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Accountancy. I say currently, because in Fall 2010 my entire department was eliminated, then I was picked up by the College of Business in the finance Department, and then as of January 1 I am in the School of Accountancy. I'm really not sure if I am as important as my faculty line, but at least a moving target. I have a BA in Accounting and an MA in Secondary Business and Vocational Education from the university of South Florida, and the PhD from Bowling Green State University. Since I began teaching in 1990, i have always believed writing and speaking is critical for students in any major, largely, I suppose, because of my 10 years in corporate accounting and management. Unfortunately, the incoming skill set of our students has been deteriorating, and the workload of faculty increasing, which means that there is little time to provide the consistent help our writers and speakers need. For most of my teaching career my primary focus was Business/Organizational Communications, which involves heavy emphasis on writing and speaking. My problem has always been finding the class time to work in 5000 words (usually a long report) and two oral presentations while having 30-35 students! I am hoping to learn new tricks and tips to help. In addition I always use technology to improve teaching, so I am hoping to share some of that with my peers. Thanks, and here's to a great QEP.
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