Content Development News: More Small Pieces, Loosely Joined

It continues to be a good sign that when the weekend arrives, my first thought is: I get to make Myth-Folklore modules! I honestly had no idea that I was filled with all this pent-up desire to build new content for my class, but it's true. I had let the content sit on the back burner for a very long time, and while it was happily simmering and still perfectly palatable (to extend the metaphor), I was craving something new! So, things are going great, and following up on my previous post calculating out time required, I wanted to say something about MODULARITY and GRANULARITY. One of my favorite things about the Internet is the "small pieces, loosely joined" way in which it works so that contents naturally gravitate towards modular, granular structures. The strategies of modularity and granularity allow me to work very productively, while also feeling confident in the outcome I will achieve. Details below.

From Website to Blog

I've learned a lot in the 10+ years since I built the website that currently houses my course content. Based on problems with my website, I knew that I needed something much more flexible this time around. The big breakthrough was when I realized that a blog engine was the answer: my course content is built of stories, quite short stories that would work perfectly as posts in a blog. Eureka! I am not a web designer and have no desire to become one; I am instead a content developer, and I now see that using a blog engine is what will allow me to get the granular structure I need without having to spend time on actual web design for a traditional website.

When I built my course website all those years ago, I was essentially creating a kind of textbook that I put online. Of course, that "online textbook" was better than a printed book: it was free for students, I could include lots of images, the stories were directly linkable, the site was searchable, etc. But it also had many of the same disadvantages that a printed book has; in particular, it was really hard to change anything once I was done creating the online book. With my current website, there is simply no easy way to "slide in" new modules to expand the available content, and likewise no easy way to "slide out" a module that I want to replace with something else, and so too with the individual stories in the modules.

At the time, of course, I was so exhausted by having created the website that I didn't even see the lack of flexibility as a problem. As the years went by, though, I saw all kinds of changes I would like to make. When I first created the site, I had very few digitized texts I could use - mostly just content from Project Gutenberg. Now, though, I have literally hundreds of digitized texts that I want to use, and I realize that there will be more and more such texts to come. I truly did not anticipate that back in 2002 (although I probably should have!), but now the opportunities to expand the content are really unlimited. What a great time it is for public domain texts online!

Blogging with Blogger

Using Blogger was a natural choice for me as it is the blogging platform I am most familiar with. It's very barebones, but it has what I need for this project as I've discovered in building three complete modules so far. With some tinkering, I came up with a strong but flexible post-based structure, and now that I have the structure in place, creating content is going really quickly! Each reading module has a bibliography post plus an overview post, along with individual story posts, and then a reading diary post and an assignment ideas post. Each of those posts in turn has a structure of its own. For example, a story post has introductory notes, links to related stories, bibliography, story title, story image, image source, and word count (example).

As for navigation, I do have to do some manual linking (I've got a spreadsheet listing the posts so that I can quickly generate lists of HTML links as needed), but most of the navigation comes from the navigation features provided by Blogger itself via labels and the time/date stamps (I manipulate the time/date stamp for each post to suit my navigational needs).

The overall design also comes from Blogger; I have not worked on developing any content for the sidebar yet, but I will be using that to my advantage later on. By keeping content and design separate, I can focus my efforts 100% on content right now, and then make design decisions later on. I'm very pleased that Blogger has mobile-friendly styles so that my students will have no trouble doing their reading on a mobile device if that is their preference.

Of course, I'm backing up my work locally too, although I'm hopeful that Blogger will be around for quite some years to come, and, when it does go away, I'm confident that migration tools will facilitate moving easily to another similar platform.

Granularity in Action

The advantages of highly granular content in modules will be more clear I think if I provide some specific examples:

1. Granular Development Time. With this granular structure, I can work effectively in short bursts of time. As a result, even while school is in session, I can get lots done. The pieces of work I am completing now can be safely completed in isolation from each other, and then the more integrative tasks that require sustained periods of concentration (adding notes to the stories, creating the alternative navigation paths) can wait until summer. I'll have lots of story posts published and ready to work on when summer does arrive!

2. Interim Use. I can get use out of the project even in its interim stages. In fact, in a sense, the project is forever in an interim stage, never finished! So, for example, at a minimum I need to get 12 modules up and running in time for Fall 2014. I already have three complete modules so far - Tibetan Folk Tales, English Fairy Tales, and Welsh Fairy Tales - and more in various stages of preparation. Ideally, I will get 24 modules ready so that students can have a choice of 2 modules every week as they do now. Yet if I end up with only 12 instead of 24, there is nothing essential missing; there is nothing that "happens" as I move from 12 modules to 24 modules - there are just more modules, and more modules allow for student choice. At every stage the project is usable!

3. Granular Use. The modules have a granular structure, and that means there are individual artifacts (in this case, the story posts) which can be used both inside the module and outside the module. So, for example, as an example of use outside the module, last week I shared with a student who is working on Arthurian legend a great Arthurian item in the Welsh modules: Arthur in the Cave.  I've made sure to include basic bibliography on each story page so that they can be easily shared like that as independent items. I am hopeful that this granularity can make these materials potentially useful to others as well; I very much like the idea that I can share the stories independently of the module(s) to which they belong. It seems very likely that people might want to be able to find and link to a specific story even if they are not especially interested in the modules that I am building for my actual courses.

4. New Modules from Old Granules. Even better, as I accumulate a large library of stories, I will be able to build new modules that reuse existing stories. Right now, my push is to build modules drawn from a single source, the way these Welsh stories come from a single source. Later, though, after I have accumulated hundreds of these stories from single sources (24 modules will give me around 500 stories or so), I will be able to create new modules by remixing the stories - a module on tricksters, a module on magic, a module of love stories, a module of humorous stories, etc. I have to confess that the lack of granular re-use was the single biggest failure of my not-very-modular website in the previous incarnation of this class; I am really excited about being able to create these new thematic modules by reusing the source-based modules I am starting with.

5. Granular Feedback. Another thing I am very excited about is being able to gather granular feedback from students about the content I am creating: story by story, and module by module. Since I can easily "slide in" a new story to replace one that is not working well, and so too with entire modules, it will be very important for me to gather systematic feedback from students, especially in the first couple of years of using this system. Google Forms will make it easy to gather that kind of feedback from students, in addition to the anecdotal information I will get from their reading diaries and other blog posts. Blogger also offers possibilities for feedback with the ratings feature you can add to each post, the "plus" button, and so on. I am really looking forward to the way student feedback will fuel a continuous process of content improvement for me over time in this new system, unlike my previous website.

So, those are my thoughts today, and now I am going to go gather more stories to turn into modules! Last weekend I worked on Native American topics, and I think this weekend will be Greco-Roman. A student has been making good use of Padraic Colum's book about the adventures of Ulysses in her project this semester, so that's got me thinking about whether Colum's book might be the best choice for my Homer unit (I was using Samuel Butler's translation before). Or maybe I want to do the Iliad instead of the Odyssey. Or both! The possibilities are unlimited, and I am really happy that I will have exciting new content to share with the students already this fall. And it's only 34 days until summer... whoo-hoo!

I hope everybody is having as much fun this weekend as I am. Meanwhile, I'm labeling posts on this topic as Course Content Redesign for anyone who wants to watch how this unfolds!

Lego Bricks: how I learned to love granularity!

My Million-Dollar Content Development Process :-)

This is a report on my content development plan based on having created 3 course units so far; as I keep creating units I will probably make some modifications, backtracking to make sure all the units are consistent, and then in August I'll make a checklist to do a final proofreading of all the units in place then (12 minimum; hopefully 24). To put this in context, see my Course Redesign Plan.

Tools. Simple simple simple. Free free free. I am developing the units using Blogger as my web publishing tool. To manage the workflow, I am using GoogleDocs (both docs and spreadsheets), and I also use a simple text document for other editing. Those are all my tools!

Total time required: Each unit takes appx. 12 hours to develop (see details below). So, total time for the 24 units I hope to develop for my course: appx. 300 hours.

Thoughts about time. That sounds like a lot of time, and it is a lot of time admittedly, but much of this is the same work I would be doing to prepare the stories for a lecture, for example, if I were the kind of faculty member who lectured. Of those 12 hours per unit, 8 hours involve the planning and research and writing that I would have to do anyway to prepare the lectures and/or a study guide for the stories if they were in a textbook. So, of the 12 hours per weekly unit of prep time, call it 8 hours of regular prep time, plus 4 hours dedicated to making the materials available on the Internet for my students (so they don't have to buy a textbook), as well as to anyone else with an interest in the material.

A million dollars per year, ha ha. I do not feel bad spending that extra 4 hours per unit to do the web publishing given the benefit to the students; the last time I went through this process, I got a website with 28 reading units that has been used for 24 semesters by appx. 50 students per semester - so that's around 1200 students. I would say that spending an extra 100 hours of my time to make a "textbook" freely available to 1200 students is a good use of my time indeed. If it saved each student $60 (just a guess as to what I might spend on a textbook), that is a total savings of $72,000, in exchange for just 100 extra hours of my time to put the readings and notes online. And let's do some more math just for fun, ha ha - if I were indeed making $720 per hour, then that would mean I would be making (drumroll please...) over one million dollars per year.

Pardon me while I ROFLOL. :-)

Meanwhile, here are the nitty-gritty details of the workflow and time required:

1. SOURCE. First, I select a public domain source with a good plain text transcription that I can copy-and-paste. Ideally, there will also be illustrations for some/all of the stories. I prefer to find my sources at Sacred Texts and/or Project Gutenberg. I have literally HUNDREDS of books I could consider using at this point. Narrowing down the choices was hard, but I have plans in place for the first 36 units (12 minimum before Fall 2014).
Time required: none.

2. CREATE BOOK POST. I create a book page post at the blog which contains basic bibliography, along with links to available online editions: Sacred Texts, Sur La Lune, Gutenberg, Internet Archive, LibriVox, Amazon Kindle (if free or cheap). I include the complete table of contents, plus some kind of book cover or other image. This post will be updated in step #5 below.
Sample Book Post: Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs.
Time required: 15 minutes.

3. UPDATE SPREADSHEET. I read through the source and do word counts for each story, putting story titles and word counts into a Google Docs spreadsheet. Then, I target the stories to include based on quality of story and length (ideally stories 1000 words or shorter; no longer than 2000 words), for a total of appx. 15,000 words per unit.
Time required: 1 hour.

4. CREATE UNIT PAGE. I create a Unit Page blog post for the book. On the first run, this unit page is just be a copy of the Book Post, but I update the post in steps #5, #6, and #12 below.
Sample Unit Page: English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs.
Time required: 15 minutes.

5. CREATE STORY PAGES. I create separate blog posts for the targeted stories. The first run contains just the book title (linking back to the book post) and basic bibliography, story title, image, text of the story, and the word count. More materials get added in step #10 and step #11 below. I read through the stories, making sure these are the ones to include; it is harder to replace stories beyond this point. As I create the posts, I add links from the Book Page's table of contents. This goes faster if every story already has an illustration; if takes longer if I have to find a publicdomain/CC image to use.
Sample Story Page: Mr. Miacca.
Time required: appx. 2 hours.

6. UPDATE UNIT PAGE. Next I update the Unit page to contain a brief introduction to the book, along with any other general information (just a few paragraphs at most, nothing elaborate). Then, I copy over the table of contents (with links) from the Book Page, deleting any stories not being used.
Sample Unit Page: Tibetan Folk Tales.
Time required: 30 minutes.

7. CREATE READING DIARY. Now I create a Reading Diary template using the spreadsheet to generate the HTML and uploading the template to GoogleDocs as a shared HTML document (since the students will also use this template). Then I create a blog post in my own reading diary using the template. This blog post will be used in #10 below, and the template will be needed again for #12 below.
Sample Template: Welsh Fairy Tales diary template.
Time required: 15 minutes.

8. CREATE TEXT FILE. I create a plain text document in which to collect story annotations as I read through the stories - basic glosses of unusual words, links to useful reference materials, etc. (just a few sentences for each story at most; nothing elaborate). I also use this text document to collect the connections among the stories: connect each story to two other stories in the collection based on themes, motifs, etc. I use the story titles and prompts so that I will make sure to accomplish all the tasks required as I work. This text document will be used in #10 and #11 below.
Time required: 15 minutes.

9. CREATE STORYTELLING POST. I create a Storytelling Ideas post using the HTML links from the spreadsheet so that there is a link to each story title and a bulleted list with two blank items for each story. This post will be used in #10 below, and it will also be part of a student assignment link from the course website later on.
Time required: 15 minutes.

10. UPDATE STORY PAGES. Now, I read through the story, adding annotations to the story pages, while also creating a story entry in the Reading Diary post, and update the Storytelling Ideas post for each story also.
Sample Story Page with Annotations: St. Collen.
Sample Diary: Welsh Fairy Tales Reading Diary.
Sample Storytelling Ideas Posts: Storytelling Ideas - Tibetan Folk Tales.
Time required: Varies based on how much research I do for each story. I'll call it 6 hours, but it might take more, depending on the topic.

11. UPDATE STORY PAGES. Then text document should now contain only the explore links. I use the spreadsheet to replace the titles of the stories with HTML link codes, and then I go through the story posts, pasting in the Explore links for each story.
Sample Page with Explore links: The Red Dragon of Wales.
Time required: 30 minutes.

12. UPDATE UNIT PAGE. For the final update to the Unit page, I add the Reading Assignment section with links to the Reading Diary I wrote and the Reading Diary template. Using the ?max-results=N variable, I divide the reading up so that it appears on two separate blog pages, linked to as Session One and Session Two.
Sample Unit Page: English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs.
Time required: 15 minutes.

As I've mentioned before, I'm labeling posts on this topic as Course Content Redesign for anyone who wants to watch how this unfolds!

And here is a proverb poster that expresses my philosophy of content building: from one small seed (blog post) there can grow a great tree.

(Details at the Proverb Laboratory.)

GoogleDocs Spreadsheet for Student Data (and Desire2Learn #fail)

Yesterday, I wrote about spreadsheets as a tool I use for developing content. Today, I want to write about using spreadsheets for student data. I was prompted to do this because I received an email from Coursera that made me laugh: although that company claims to be gathering all kinds of "big data" about their students, I don't see them making very good use of it (see G+ post below with discussion comments).

Meanwhile, the course management system we use at my school, Desire2Learn, does not really give me a way to manage student data either. The Gradebook is sort of like a spreadsheet, yes, but it has none of the functionality of a real spreadsheet. I cannot perform any truly complex/useful filters and searches. Worst of all: I cannot add my own columns to keep track of student data that really is important and useful to me.

So, I create a GoogleDocs spreadsheet every semester where on one page I keep track of my enrolled students and the data I need to be able to access and use. On another page, I keep the waiting list of students seeking to get into the class. What kind of data do I need to keep track of for my students? Here are just what a few of the columns contain:

Real Name. A surprising number of students go by a nickname or use their middle name. There is NO WAY in Desire2Learn to keep track of the name that a student uses; instead, we can only see the "official" name on file. Until I started keeping track of this systematically, I had not realized what a large number of students use a nickname or do not even use that first name at all, choosing to use their middle name instead. I think it's dreadful that D2L does not let them choose a screen name that matches their real name. I cannot even keep track of their real name anywhere in D2L.

Email Address. I keep an email address list here so that I can easily send emails related to data I keep track of in the spreadsheet.

Blog URL. Each student has a blog address. I use and re-use this address for creating a variety of assignments (putting students in blog groups, randomly viewing student blogs, etc.)

Introduction Post URL. It's important for me and for other students to be able to access the introduction posts students include in their blog at the beginning of the semester. I use this for my own quick reference and also to create assignments where students are looking at each other's introductions and commenting on them.

Comment Wall URL. The Comment Wall is one of the most important features of the Ning that I use as my virtual classroom (there is nothing comparable in Desire2Learn, sadly - the profile pages are completely static, with no possibilities for interaction). I use the Comment Wall address for the different assignments where students are interacting with each other via the Comment Wall.

Writing Assessment. In the first week of the semester, students complete a writing assessment. It is very helpful for me to view the results of that writing assessment as I give feedback to students about their writing throughout the semester, especially at the beginning of the semester when I am just getting to know the students individually.

There are lots of other columns also, but they are kind of hard to explain outside of the context of my class and the specific information I do keep track of. And that, I think, is the single biggest problem with all the discussions I hear about "big data," including the self-congratulatory claims that Desire2Learn also makes about offering data-driven teaching tools. As a teacher, I really do rely on data that I collect about my students, but that data is closely tied to my teaching practices. It's not something someone can impose on me from the outside.

In terms of a data tool inside Desire2Learn, I would need something a lot more like the customizable spreadsheet that I currently create manually using GoogleDocs. It's not a huge amount of trouble to create it manually, of course - but some of the data I am manually entering into the spreadsheet is indeed available in Desire2Learn, and there is much more data in Desire2Learn that I would love to use if it were easy to extract... but it's not.

So, as often, I have to say THANK YOU to Google for making my job as an online teacher so much easier to manage. And nope, no thanks to Desire2Learn when it comes to student data. Maybe... maybe... they will someday figure out just how powerful a spreadsheet can be and will let us use the Gradebook like a real spreadsheet. Someday. Maybe.

Post about Coursera and student data below:

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Spreadsheets for Daily Content Development

I was struck by an item in Inside Higher Ed today about the value of daily quizzes (see below). I'm not a big fan of quizzes, and certainly not of daily quizzes (ugh, the thought makes my head hurt...) - but I am a big fan of DAILY in general. I think that's why I like blogging so much; it is a form of writing that thrives on a little bit of daily discipline. I don't have a lot of discipline as a writer, but I can muster a bit of daily discipline.

So, in terms of a digital tool, what I wanted to write about here today is how I use spreadsheets (Google Docs spreadsheets, to be specific) to support my various content development projects, most of which are daily content strategies, such as building content to use in my Class Announcements blog, my Bestiaria Latina blog, and my just-now-taking shape #foreignwordsinenglish project.

Spreadsheets are a great way to keep track of stuff because they are, in effect, a kind of mini-database. Not a relational database, admittedly - but they are a database which you can sort and filter in all kinds of ways.

So, for example, to support my class announcements blog, I have a spreadsheet with separate pages for each of the content items that I included each day in the blog: featured resource, featured Storybook, free Kindle book of the day, proverb of the day, Mahabharata image, and the calendar event of the day (details about the content here). For each category I need 105 items in order to be ready for the semester. First and foremost, spreadsheets are great for counting things!

So, here is a screenshot of the "proverbs" page of that spreadsheet which gives me what I need to include the proverb in the announcements: the date, the proverb, and the link to the blog post with all the other details. I color-code the rows as I move through the semester (yellow is past), and I also have color-coded the proverbs from India so that I can make sure to have at least one proverb from India every week.

That is just one example of how I use the different features of a spreadsheet to help me develop, use, and re-use my content. And in the spirit of growing things a little bit at a time, here's one of my proverb posters: Big oaks from little acorns grow.

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GoogleDocs for Collaborative Writing

One of the tools I use most often in my work is GoogleDocs. My main reason for using GoogleDocs is that it gives me access to all my documents on each of my computers (desktop, laptop, Chromebook), but today I wanted to write about a different use of GoogleDocs: collaborative writing! This weekend, I have been participating in a "flash mob" novel-writing experiment where people are collaborating on a novel together using a GoogleDoc. You can see the evolving GoogleDoc at readmake.com, and you can follow the discussion at Twitter with the hashtag #readmake.

Here is a screenshot of the top of the document; as you can see there are all kinds of anonymous users working on the document right now, along with people logged in with their Google accounts. If you are reading this on November 16 or November 17, jump right in and join the fun!