Waiting List Procedures

Since I just now sent around the email for the Fall enrollment special permissions, I thought I should write something up here about the waiting list system I use for my classes. It's something I have to run manually since the waiting list at our enrollment system (Ozone.ou.edu) is really terrible; instead of supporting my own waiting list procedure, it actually gets in the way (more about that below). So, here is the scoop on my waiting list:

WHY. Why do I need a waiting list? Because there are not enough online courses at my school, that's why! My courses fill up really fast, as do the other online courses, especially the General Education courses. Every semester I enroll 90-100 students in my classes, I usually have at least 40 students (or more) that I had to turn away. So, I keep a list and then offer enrollment permissions to those students the next semester. I also keep a list of sophomores who want to enroll; because of the demand for upper-division Gen. Ed. online, I am not allowed to enroll any sophomores, but I keep track of the sophomores who contact me so that I can offer them a chance to enroll when they do become juniors. As students contact me during the actual enrollment period, I also want to be able to save space for students with special needs who really do need the flexibility online class: expectant mothers, people who unexpectedly have to move out of state, anyone managing a complicated medical situation, etc. In addition, I try to accommodate anyone who is seeking to graduate that semester (although I can only do that when students contact me early; if they wait until their enrollment window opens, it's usually too late).

HOW. The way I run the waiting list so that I can accommodate the students on the list is that there is open enrollment for 50 students total across both my classes, and then I spend enroll an additional 40-50 students with permissions to enroll in the course even after it is closed. I think that is a really good solution: it allows for half the students to enroll via the regular system (in which athletes and National Merit Scholars get to go first in the enrollment pre-week, then seniors in the first week of enrollment, and then juniors the week after that), while allowing me to manage the enrollment for the other half of the class, accommodating students who make the extra effort to get in touch with me because of their interest/need for the class.

"OFFICIAL" WAITING LIST. Unfortunately, my school also has a waiting list system built into the regular enrollment system but it does not fit with my system at all. It is designed for instructors who do not get involved in enrollment at all and instead prefer to let everything happen automatically. In the official system, after a class is full, students can put their name on a list and then, if anyone drops, the slot is filled by someone from the waiting list, I guess based on how long they have been on the list. For my classes, this won't work: once my classes fill, no slot ever opens up because of all the special permissions I've issued. That means anyone who signs up for the official waiting list is doomed! So, I check the waiting list manually once a week to make sure I contact the students myself to explain how my waiting list system works. At that time, I ask them about whether they are graduating that semester or not, have any special needs I should know about, etc. This is a really awful process because I cannot remove people from the waiting list after I have merged them into my process and there is no way to see how is new to the list: ugh. Of all the tasks listed here, this is the one that is totally and utterly frustrating. I asked the Registration office if the automated waiting list option could just be disabled for my classes, but apparently that is not possible.

THE SPREADSHEET. To manage this system, I use a spreadsheet. As people contact me, I write them back and explain how things stand, and I label their email "Waiting List." Then, periodically (once a week during enrollment season), I transfer the email address and other details from the email to the spreadsheet and remove the "Waiting List" label. I send out one mass email at the beginning of the enrollment season to everybody remaining on the list from last semester to see who wants to enroll this semester or stay on the list for a future semester; I delete anyone who doesn't write me back. I then use this spreadsheet to manage the enrollment process, collecting their OU ID numbers and issuing the full-class permissions. There is no easy way to keep track of which permissions are used in our enrollment system, so I also use the spreadsheet to keep track of the permissions that I have issued, checking to see who has enrolled and who hasn't enrolled (I guess that is just too complicated for our multimillion-dollar student enrollment system to manage...). As people enroll in the class, I delete them from the spreadsheet completely.

General Observations. It's not a perfect system, but it's what I have developed after teaching these classes (and, sadly, turning away students) for 10+ years. It actually used to be so much better when we had the old enrollment system. In the old system, each class was automatically linked to a webpage of your choice, so I was able to share lots and lots of information about the classes, including information about the waiting list, with prospective students. Admittedly, most faculty did not use that feature, but I sure did, linking to the course homepage and prominently featuring information about the waiting list on that page. Well, that feature disappeared when we bought the Sungard/Banner student information system that we now use, branded Ozone.ou.edu. In Ozone, there is no way for students to know anything about the courses beyond the instructor's name and the generic catalog description; no links allowed. As a result, it takes real personal initiative on their part to look up my email address and write me. Of course, that just makes me more committed to my waiting list system: if a student shows the initiative to get in touch with me that way, I definitely want to try to help them if I can!

I guess if you add it up, I spend about 10 hours per semester on enrollment-related issues. That's not too bad really, and it's worth it when I am able to help a student who is really eager to take the class, for whatever reason. I don't want their hopes to be frustrated! :-)

Latin proverb:

Spe expecto. I wait with hope.

Indian Epics UnTextbook: BIG Reorganization of the Class

I've been working hard on building the book list of possibilities for the Indian Epics UnTextbook, hoping for student feedback: Indian Epics UnTextbook Book List. I've also got a Pinterest Board going too, of course!

There are 50 books there now, although some books can be used for multiple units, so the number of possible units is quite large, and I already have 16 units available from the Indian section of the Myth-Folklore class. So, an abundance of material: no worries there!

And here is the big revelation that I had just today about how to REORGANIZE the weekly readings in a way that will help students better manage the "flow" of readings in the class so that the overall purpose and design of the reading will make more sense to them. I am really excited about that because, to be honest, I was kind of worried about how that was going to work. Unlike the Myth-Folklore class, this course does have an overarching structure, instead of completely free-standing weekly units. So that makes the flow from week to week really important.

In the current model, the first half of the semester is focused on the Ramayana (Weeks 2-7) and the second half is focused on the Mahabharata (Weeks 9-14). That made sense when I first designed this class ten years ago, relying on mass paperback translations of the epics. It worked okay, but it was not great. Pretty much all the students love the Ramayana, so starting out with the Ramayana first made sense, but some students did get tired of the Ramayana after that first half of the semester. Worse, many students just did not get into the Mahabharata at all, coming in the second half of the semester when burn-out and senioritis can be intense (most of the students I teach are graduating seniors).

So, here is the revelation: I will still divide the class into halves, but the first half of the semester will cover both epics, and then the second half of the semester will be all free choice, based on what the students decided was of interest to them as a result of the readings in the first half of the semester. This way the students will get a fair chance at both epics, and they will also have a much better basis on which to make their reading choices in the second half of the semester. Having total freedom in the second half of the semester should also be a big help in combating senioritis and burn-out!

This is how it will work:

Weeks 2-3-4. Ramayana. We will start off reading a two-week version of the Ramayana, either the prose version by Narayan (for students who prefer traditional paperback book) OR a two-week prose version by Sister Nivedita OR a two-week version in English verse by Romesh Dutt. Update: I'm writing the two-week version myself as an anthology! Then, for Week 4, students will choose a one-week version of the Ramayana to follow up and reinforce what they learned from the first version: there is the animated film by Nina Paley, along with versions of the Ramayana that can be read in one week by Gould, Oman, Wilson, Monro, Mackenzie, or Kincaid.

Weeks 5-6-7. Mahabharata. We will start off reading a two-week version of the Mahabharata: once again, that can be the prose version by Narayan (for students who prefer a printed book) OR the two-week anthology that I prepare. Then, for Week 7, students will choose a one-week version of the Mahabharata to follow up and reinforce what they learned from the first version: that would either be the Wilson version or the Monro version, or spending one week on the Bhagavad-Gita, or one week on Nala and Damayanti (Mackenzie version) or one week on the story of Savitri (I would probably pull the Savitri unit together from a couple of different sources).

Then, in the second half of the semester, it would be all free choice from a huge variety of sources.

EPICS. For students who really are enjoying the epics, there would be lots of Ramayana and Mahabharata reading that they can do (with reading units that are one, two, three or four weeks in length). They would at that point be able to CHOOSE which epic they want to focus on, based on what they learned in the first half of the semester. I have lots of good reading options online for both epics, along with the two paperback books by Buck which I have ordered in the past and will continue to order so that students who do prefer a printed book can have one.

HINDUISM. I have some great reading units lined up for students who are interested in the gods and goddesses along with the heroes and heroines of the Indian tradition, some of whom they will have encountered (if only briefly) in the epics. I am especially excited about the materials related to the life of Krishna!

BUDDHISM. I have some good reading units on the life of the Buddha, along with the amazing Jataka storytelling tradition.

FOLKTALES. Finally, I have an enormous collection of Indian folktales and fairy tales which are also available for students to read. My guess is that the students who just are not into the epics at all might spend the second half of the semester reading these types of stories, and that would be fine with me! Many students are in my class because they need a Gen. Ed. Non-Western credit, not because of any interest in the epics. So, if they decide they want to spend the semester reading Indian folklore, that would be great — plus, they will have a much better understanding of the cultural context of those stories after reading the epics, as the gods and goddesses often make appearances in the stories, along with allusions to the characters and events of the epics, etc.

So, overall, I am REALLY pleased with this reorganization: it's much more flexible, and it will also "show" students in the design itself just how the class is laid out, helping them to learn more and more about the Indian storytelling tradition each week. Best of all, as they learn more, they will be able to make better and better choices about just what they want to read as they continue broadening/deepening their knowledge all semester long.

Next Step: I need to go through this model and come up with a minimum set of materials that I need to have prepared in advance to launch this new model in the Fall. That will be fun: I am so excited about all of this!

Bring on the stories!!!!!!!

Follow Laura's board Indian Epics UnTextbook on Pinterest.

Spring 2015: Grace Period Reminder Tracking

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about the Grace Period (which is part of the Safety Net design of my classes). As I've known for a while, there are some students who do not use the grace period for unexpected disruptions to their regular schedule. Instead, they treat the grace period deadline as the "real" deadline (understandably, since that is the deadline in D2L), and the result is that I end up sending them lots of grace period reminders. That has been my anecdotal impression anyway, and this semester I chose this grace period reminder pattern as my data analysis project (each semester, I try to choose one thing to track and analyze to see what I can learn).

So here are the results so far! Even just after two weeks of tracking, the experiment has been illuminating.

Tracking Reminders: Week 3

I waited to start until Week 3 so that people would hopefully have settled into a schedule of their own. So, at the end of Week 3, I checked to see how many students had received four or more grace period reminders from me during the week (which is to say, either every day or practically every day, Monday through Friday). It turned out that there were 17 students (out of 90 total) who had received four or more grace period reminders, which was more than I expected. Far more than I expected in fact.

So, on the Friday afternoon of Week 3, I sent an email to those students that explained the value of making their own schedule. That's something I also mention often in the daily announcements, but my guess is that the same students who are doing their work at the last minute are also probably the same students who do not read the daily announcements.

I tried to write the email as simple, straightforward, totally upbeat and proactive, nothing punitive, no sense of a penalty — just a sincere hope that they would create a schedule for the class that would help them get the work done on time. In the email I mentioned the simple strategy of finishing up the current week on Saturday and starting the next week on Sunday so that there are no deadlines at all during Monday through Friday. I also included a link to a more detailed page about other possible schedule strategies: Designing Your Own Schedule.

Tracking Reminders: Week 4

Then, in Week 4, I did not send grace period reminders to those students who were "listed" from the week before. Instead, I just checked off on the list how many reminders they WOULD have received if I had been sending out the reminders.

At the end of the week, I learned that of those 17 students, 8 of them would have received four or more reminders again in Week 4, but 9 of the students would have received three reminders or fewer. Now, there is no way of knowing whether or not my email intervention really contributed to that improvement; it could just be the up-and-down chaos of people's lives. In any case, 9 of the 17 students did better.

So, of the 17, I removed those 9 from the list (so they will get reminders next week per usual), leaving me with 8 students who continue to be "listed" and will not get reminders next week. I sent around a follow-up email to those students, urging them again to make their own schedule. Since a number of these students had other problems in class during the week, some of them had already gotten that message from me in other emails we had exchanged. I kept this follow-up email very simple; I'm not quite sure what intervention I will try next week for any students who remain listed once again. By the time, we will be filling out midterm grade reports, so maybe I can coordinate it with that; I'll have to wait and see next week!

In addition, five new students cycled on to the list, receiving four or more grace period reminders from me during Week 4. So, I sent them the same email I had sent to the 17 at the end of Week 3. This time, I received an email response back from an unhappy student who thought I was scolding him. I really do not want students to feel scolded, but at the same time some of the comments in his email made it clear that he still did not understand the value of creating his own schedule, so I wrote him back about that again, responding to the specific concerns in his email. You can see my response here.

Update: I realized another useful piece of data to track in this experiment would be the number of people who DO complete the week's work before Sunday. So, in Week 4, there were 19 people (out of 90) who had completed all of Week 4 before Sunday.

UPDATE. Tracking Reminders: Week 4

Midterms were taking place in many classes this week, so I thought I would take a worse hit than I did. But it turned out better than expected! A lot more people were added to the list than last week (11 new listings), but I'm guessing quite a few of those were people who got clobbered by midterms. But that's still a good argument for working ahead: if you work ahead, you can take a week off in this class for midterms! 

Anyway, I had 7 people cycle OFF the list, which I thought was great to see for midterm week, and with 11 people getting added, that brought me back up to 17 people listed as we end Week 5, just like at the end of Week 3. In terms of repeat listings, yes, there are some folks who have been listed for all three weeks: Weeks 3 and 4 and 5. There are also quite a few people who have been listed twice. So, that's something I am keeping track of now also! I'll be able to update the "ahead of schedule" on Sunday morning (I'm writing this update on Saturday)... since for most people the Project assignment is a revision assignment, I'm hoping that maybe there will be an uptick there, or at least not too big of a hit as a result of midterm season!

So, here's the Google spreadsheet summary updated for the third week of the experiment:

What's Next? 

I'll update this post as I learn more from week to week about how these interventions are working. This is something I feel is extremely important; in fact, if the one and only thing people take away from my class is a better awareness of how to manage their time, I would consider that a real victory!

Most students use the grace period once or twice a week, and that's exactly the idea... but I am glad that I am now trying to do something for the students who are instead using the grace period as a way to put all the burden on me for setting their schedule. Since I don't know anything about their other time commitments, I am the WORST possible person to be making their schedule for them... but it is what they apparently expect me to do. That is definitely not good, and I really hope that by intervening directly with students who are using (i.e. abusing) the grace period that way, I can turn it into a learning opportunity. I think it's worth the risk of some disgruntlement and pushback if more students can indeed make their own schedule for the class.

Technical Issues

D2L does nothing to help me with this process. I cannot search the Gradebook on multiple fields, and I cannot easily monitor who really is doing the work at literally the last minute; there are all kinds of D2L data that would indeed be useful for me to have in a simple spreadsheet form but those data are simply not available to me.

So, I'm managing this process with a couple of ingenious Gmail searches and some text manipulation to help me summarize the grace period reminder email activity at the end of each week. It's not really a lot of work (maybe a half hour of my time max over the course of the whole week), but it's also no thanks to D2L... despite all its claims to big data, ha ha. But that's a subject for a separate post.

Meanwhile, fingers crossed for the coming weeks: I am really hoping these interventions will be successful, at least for some students! I'll try to add a few new graphic here each week when I do the update; I keep a file of procrastination humor. We can all use some procrastination humor. :-)

LatinLOLCat:

Aliud agendi tempus, aliud quiescendi.

There's a time for working and a time for resting.

New "Comment Training" Strategy

Well, I have been terrible at documentation for the new semester. I get all caught up in the fun and excitement of the classes themselves, and that means I run out of time for documentation. It's not that documentation is totally un-fun and unexciting... but it's never as exciting as getting to meet all the new students and trying to make sure the class is going well for them!

Anyway, it is now the end of Week 3, and one of the new experiments for this semester is going even better than I expected, so I wanted to write it up here: My New "Comment Training" Strategy.

(post-it notes)

First, some background: 

In the past students have struggled with giving comments to other students. There was no lack of enthusiasm, and the comments were always encouraging, but they were often vague and, as a result, not very useful to the authors. When I asked the students last semester about what kinds of comments were most useful to them, the universal response was that they wanted more critical feedback, comments they could actually use. You can see some of those student responses here: Thoughts about Comments.

Ironically, the students who were frustrated by the vagueness of the comments they received were also probably guilty of leaving vague comments themselves because, overall, the comments did tend to be vague. Enthusiastic, friendly, encouraging... but vague, very generic, without a lot of detail.

The new experiment:

So, I decided to try something different this semester. In the past, there were several weeks devoted to helping students get used to using Google Sites. I decided that I could actually fold the Google Site practice into another assignment (I'll explain about that in a separate post), and thus find room for a kind of "Comment Training" series of assignments. It's a four-week sequence that works like this:

Week 2: Holistic and Analytical. In this assignment, I try to get students used to the idea that when they read a story for the purpose of leaving a detailed comment, they should read the story twice: once holistically for an overall impression and THEN analytically, focusing on specific features of the story. To practice these skills, I ask the students to leave 150-word long comments on three students' Storytelling blog posts (their choice). I was amazed at how well this went! It was a night-and-day difference compared to the kinds of comments I typically saw in past semesters.

Week 3: Format and Function. In this assignment, I provided a list of more technical features that students might want to comment on. I used the word "format" to refer to web presentation (fonts, colors, layout, etc.), and "function" to refer to web links, navigation, etc. I then asked students to leave 150-word long comments on three other students' Storytelling blog posts in which they read holistically and analytically while also checking on format and function as appropriate. So far, the results of this assignment also look excellent. (Most students will be doing this assignment tomorrow, on the Sunday of Week 3.)

Week 4: Author's Note. In addition to having trouble with comments, students also had trouble writing their Author's Notes. It's a similar problem: in the same way that they were not used to providing critical commentary on other students' writing, they were not very skilled at providing critical commentary on their own writing. I am really optimistic, based on the success of this experiment so far, that with a little training and practice I can help all the students to write better Author's Notes (and, of course, they will benefit from that as readers because they will get to enjoy better notes at other students' stories). For this assignment, I'm asking students to go back to the Author's Notes they wrote on their stories so far this semester and expand/improve them.

Week 5: Final Practice. This is the last week before students start writing comments on each other's Projects. So, this assignment actually has three parts: (1) students set up the Comment Wall at their blog for incoming comments (their Storybook Projects are separate websites, but the peer comments on those websites come in via the blogs), (2) they review the methods for keeping track of incoming comments at their blog, and (3) they write one last practice comment on another student's Storytelling blog post, practicing the skills they learned in Weeks 2, 3, and 4.

Preliminary results:

Although it is still not even half-way through this experiment, I am so excited by what I have seen. I'll update this post when I can report more confidently on the overall success of the experiment, but I am really pleased about this! I always thought it would be too difficult for me to take on the task of really "teaching" students how to do comments, and instead I relied on my comments as a kind of model for students to follow. For some students, that modeling was enough, but the majority of students needed something more. So far, it looks like this simple four-week "course" in commenting will make a big difference.

Even better: if students can learn to do a better job of commenting critically on other people's writing, it might also help them become more critical readers of their own writing.

So, there is a lot of great potential here, with lots of good indications so far. I will report back in a few weeks about the overall experiment, along with some ideas about what I will need to do differently next semester.

In order to see what's going on in the class right now, I've embedded the live comment stream below: you can see how it is going for yourself! If you browse through the stream (also available as a webpage of its own), you will see some of the detailed comments that people have left, along with the more informal weekly blog comments that are much shorter and more casual. Both kinds of comments are useful and important: the short, casual comments are the chit-chat that makes the class fun and friendly, while the longer, more detailed comments are important in helping people to revise and improve their writing. And yes, this is a class where students revise... and revise... and revise some more — hopefully based on comments from many readers, not just me! :-)

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