Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy
In this reading-intensive, online course, we will think about important issues presented to us through works of speculative fiction: definitions of good and evil, self and alien, science and nature, human and machine, human and monster, exploitation and collaboration. We will consider the ways that works of science fiction and fantasy help us define human experience and potential. The works we will study include short stories, novels, and movies, drawn from a variety of time periods and sub-genres. We will read both classic tales and contemporary best-sellers. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through weekly quizzes and share their ideas by contributing to a discussion forum and an ongoing speculative fiction wiki.
In this course,
• Students will learn to identify major periods in the history of speculative fiction
• Students will read significant authors from a variety of types of speculative fiction
• Students will learn to define significant sub-genres of speculative fiction
• Students will become familiar with a wide range of texts and movies defining this genre
• Students will develop their critical reading skills
• Students will become more adept at critical thinking
• Students will become more experienced at collaborative writing.
• Students will become more accustomed to considering a text within a historical context
The course you see is a result of collaborative effort. I (Karen Swenson) have worked with others to develop this course. Susan A. Hagedorn and Cheryl W. Ruggiero teach other sections of this course and created the majority of the lectures and quizzes. Sakai use and the wiki are my major contributions. The wiki, especially, has given the course its new direction in student engagement and authorship.We are working together on the course and on resource development. Aaron Bond, from the Institute of Distance and Distributed Learning at VT, is serving in an advisory capacity.
During Summer of 2009, I took a Faculty Development seminar on online teaching using Scholar, VT's version of Sakai, taught by Aaron Bond and other members of VT's development team. At that point, I became interested in Scholar's wiki because it facilitates collaborative thinking and writing, something I have long been interested in.
Research indicates that if online course design and delivery is grounded in learner centered theory then students can effectively engage with and master course content (Swan, 2005). Online pedagogy requires thinking about how to facilitate interactions between students as well as getting students to engage with the course content through electronic mediums (Ingram, 2005). Learning experiences that are designed to promote purposeful collaboration between students and those that utilize multiple methods to deliver content as well as assess the transfer of knowledge are more likely to see increased gains in student learning (Moore, 2008). However, faculty who lack adequate training in online course development and appropriate pedagogy can negatively impact student learning (Association of Public and Land-grant Universities-Sloan National Commission on Online Learning, 2009).
I used Scholar's wiki tool the following semester (fall 2009) in a Survey of English Literature class. The next spring semester (Spr 2010), I was scheduled to teach a section of a reading-intensive speculative fiction course, a freshman-level course popular with science, engineering, and computer science students filling humanities requirements. Two of my colleagues, Hagedorn and Ruggiero, asked if I would like to join their collaboration. They had already worked together to create lectures and quizzes. I was happy to collaborate with them to further develop this online course. In turn, they were pleased with my plans for using the wiki tool. The course continues to develop, and Aaron Bond has offered us valuable assistance and suggestions. I am interested in the collaborative effort to create meaningful patterns through language and imagery. The wiki allows real definition to take place through collaboration.
References
Association of Public and Land-grant Universities-Sloan National Commission on Online Learning (2009). Online Learning as a Strategic Asset. Retrieved November 4, 2009 http://www.sloan-c.org/APLU_Reports
Swan, K. (2005). A Constructivist model for thinking about learning online. In Elements of Quality Online Education: Engaging Communities, Volume 6 in the Sloan-C Series
(pp. 13-31). Sloan-C Foundation.
Ingram, A.L. (2005). Engagement in Online Learning Communities. In Elements of Quality Online Education: Engaging Communities, Volume 6 in the Sloan-C Series (pp. 55-71). Sloan-C Foundation.
Moore, J.C. (2008). A Synthesis of Sloan-C Effective Practices. The Sloan Consortium.
I am currently teaching this course online using Sakai (Scholar). I have chosen tools that complement the reading-intensive nature of this course.
- Weekly quizzes, open-book but timed, with questions drawn randomly from large pools, help motivate the students to do the required reading.
- Forum posts, required each two weeks, require that the students think about the implications of what they have read, post their thoughts about these implications, and respond at least briefly to the thoughts of others.
- Forum as a place to put a Poster they make. This assignemt makes everyone consider the ways that text and image can work together.
- Wiki writing, required every two weeks, requires that the students locate their thoughts and writing within a context defined by the thoughts and writing of other class members. This requires thinking about categories and hierarchy.
- Announcements, Resources, Gradebook, and Chat Room all help me organize this course. I have used the quiz tool to release a mid-term course evaluation.
- I recently discovered the Poll tool, and I have decided to use it weekly just for fun, to help build a sense of community.
Student writing has meaning, power, and significance in this course. Students are writing, reading, revising, and shaping both their own words and the words of others in order to create a web of interconnected writings. This type of writing comes close, I think, to mirroring the ways people relate to one another in the professional world, or even in the world in general. The wiki compels them to think of their writing in the context of others' writing.
I appreciate the flexibility of Sakai and its many tools. It gives me a sense of freedom and possibility that makes teaching much more interesting. It is rewarding to be able to choose the tool to achieve a desired end rather than force one's goals to fit the tool.
Communication and collaboration are central to this course, and these skills are enhanced by the use of several different tools, although the wiki is the central collaborative tool.
Students write an opening "Meet the Class" forum introduction as well as an author's biography on the wiki.
My email address is available in several places, and my Announcements are also emailed to all users. I use Announcements to keep us all moving forward through the semester's requirements and to address topics I think will be of interest to many or all. I think it helps people feel like they are in a "class" -- a social situation rather than just an internet site.
The wiki, as a tool for collaboration, is central. The students are managing this wiki themselves, with minimal tinkering or structuring from me. They are learning and writing in interesting ways. I will not say more about that here, because I address it elsewhere in this application, but the students are working together to create something meaningful. Since so much student writing usually has no place in "the real world" it is rather exciting to see the growth of this wiki "place" in which student writing shapes and controls everything.
Discussion forums allow students opportunity to read the ideas of others, comment on them, and explain their own thinking. The forums are important; for one thing, they provide a place for defining reactions, ideas, emotions, and ideals. Except for the very first forum this semester, I have replied to each major post. They post more thoughtfully when they know I will be reading. One forum, concerning home-page images, demonstrates collaboration between teacher and students.
See the Chat room for evidence of students collaborating with one another. This is where each student reports on wiki work. I am impressed with what they have done.
Students are also going to have an opportunity to collaborate a bit with one of the authors we are reading. (See Week 15 Lecture, attached.)
I have sent out a mid-term evaluation of the course, and student responses will influence the shape of the course. Responding to evaluations is a form of collaboration.
I do think that key components are easy to locate. Students watch a brief "Welcome to the Class" video explaining navigation, components, structure, and expectations.
Using the "web content" tool in Scholar, I was able to make obvious links to all the major components of the course: wiki, forum, syllabus, lectures, quizzes, expectations, etc. While all documents are available through these links, I also attach key documents to Announcement (and email) at the beginning of each Unit, just to make sure the students can find things quickly. Resources address different learning styles and abilities.
Course goals and outcomes are clearly defined at the top of the syllabus, on the course site, and in the introductory video. All activities and assessment are in direct alignment with course objectives. The activities of this class are in line with the "seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education." Interactions between students and between student and teacher are frequent; they are built into the very fabric of this course. I have given students the rubric I use to assess their work, so they can also use this to become reflective learners. Similarly, the Instructions for the Poster Assignment include grading rubric. I also tell them, on this poster assignment, not to report data without interpretationg, giving examples to try to push them to a higher level of thesis. My replies to their forum posts are designed to make them think again about their post. Their work on the wiki, constantly interacting with other class members, demands that they reflect about what they are doing, how it fits into a larger plan, and other matters of significance. In my Announcements, I frequently pose them a question to think about such as , "Do we need a graphic on our Wiki home page?" Students do generate course content, since the wiki is central. Their forum posts, too, generate content, since other students must respond to their posts. Students get frequent feedback: weekly quiz scores, bi-weekly replies to their forum posts, and bi-weekly scores for their wiki work. When a student does something extra amazing on the wiki, I actually send her/him a short email as well. All activities of this course demand critical thinking and problem solving.
Accessibility issues are addressed in several places, and the very issue of a community working together is central to the wiki. The top link on the left is "Community," leading students to useful resources including disability access and technical support. The syllabus also contains links to and information about these resources. Help links are available directly from the home page as well.
Significant pages, such as those explaining the wiki, are attractive as well as functional.
Making the site, and each part of it, easy to understand but pleasant to look at has been important to me. The pages are usually quite simple, without elaborate colors or graphics, with important terms high-lighted, boxed, bolded, or colored in a way that draws the eye.
The Welcome video adds another type of presentation, perhaps doing something to "humanize" the course as well as giving orientation information.
I have included information about support, with links so that students will be more likely to visit the recommended sites. Support information is available in three prominent places: the Syllabus, the "Community" page, and the help/support buttons at the bottom of the links on the left.
On-the-fly support has been developed through the semester as needed. For example, when it looked as though my students were having a lot of trouble getting their images into the wiki properly, I created a page of directions for doing that. Similarly, when I saw that some students were having difficulty pasting from Word, I posted information about how to do that.
When students write with technical difficulties, I do write back very kindly, and I answer the questions that I can, but I also direct them to the support services on campus.
The wiki itself has the power to transform many of our cultural attitudes toward teaching and learning. My students are writing and thinking together, attempting to define a huge body of texts, movies, and attitudes. In the wiki, no single person's ideas stand alone, the way they do in an essay or even, to some extent, a forum post. Instead, every idea or post must exist in relationship to a multitude of other posts. The students decide what topics deserve a major link on the home page, what topics can be subordinate to others, what posts should be linked to others. By doing this work, the students take on responsibility for the course material. This in itself is transformative. I think that our students need to learn to work together to create a better world. Collaborative writing, such as the wiki permits, is a good way to encourage a sense of community and an awareness of the contributions of others.
The concept of "the self" that has dominated western culture has emphasized individuality. The "hero on quest" has provided a basic model of self actualization that has dominated our culture since the medieval period. Even the Enlightenment's relatively liberal sense of personhood emphasizes the individual quest, as evidenced through the novels of the 18th century. It is perhaps a good thing to question this traditional concept of selfhood.
The wiki does challenge traditional concepts of "author" and of "self," suggesting that we need to look to more collaborative means of living with others. This challenge is what is most exciting about the wiki to me. It is as though we can choose to consciously help culture evolve.
The students are excited about the wiki, as evidenced by their eagerness to develop it. Their writing here matters because others read it, react to it, link to it, and so on. Contrast that with the usual essay read by one teacher and returned to the student to sit in a file folder somewhere or be thrown away. The wiki gives new significance to students' writing, makes them aware that writing can do significant things in the world. Other people have heard of this wiki and asked to join it, further enhancing the perceived value of the students' writing. Some students have asked if they can continue working on the wiki after the semester is over, and I plan to will allow this. Students in future semesters can join them. These students are creating something that matters to them. It makes me happy to be able to give them the opportunity to think and write together.
To assess the effectiveness of this class and its components, I released a mid-term evaluation to the students today when they returned from Spring break. I look forward to reading the responses.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 01 WikiWork.pdf | 228.19 KB |
| 02 community.htm | 27.82 KB |
| 03 SFFCalendarSyllabus.pdf | 631.4 KB |
| 04 WikiSamplePages.pdf | 512.65 KB |
| 05 forumchat.pdf | 392.21 KB |
| 06 Week15LectureCrescentLottery.pdf | 1.05 MB |
| 07 collaborators.pdf | 51.48 KB |
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