This is the third of a three-part series

• Writing as a Social Practice
• Small Group Workshops
• Productive Discomfort 

Productive Discomfort 

There were certain poems that I did not understand… but going on the discussion forums really helped me understand [those texts]. I liked the element of responding to two different responses from students each week because it was the closest thing we can do to make it seem (almost) like we were back in class again

(Advanced Poetry Workshop)

Boler (1999) introduced the idea of a pedagogy of discomfort in her book Feeling Power: Education and Emotions. This principle is one around which I design my classes; I believe learning happens best in a zone of productive discomfort, and aim to enlist my students in embracing and engaging such discomforts as challenged assumptions, self-doubt, perfectionism, confronting a “shitty first draft” (Lamott 1994), fear of receiving feedback, interrogating one’s relationship to language, etc. Yet I had not prepared for teaching amid the profound discomfort of a global pandemic. When in spring 2020 the details of what we were facing crystallized, magnifying existing precarities and generating new ones to worry about, the baseline teaching condition changed. Discomfort, yes. But productive? How? How to recalibrate the writing workshop? I have tried to describe some possible approaches, and because the pandemic conditions continue, I continue to tinker.

As a poet myself, I was eager to engage my students about what changes they noticed to their writing practices under the conditions of pandemic, quarantine, social movements, etc. Many of them lamented the absence of unexpected sensory stimuli on campus. They missed being able to write a poem inspired by intriguing snippets of conversations in the dining hall, or a few bars of a song from the window of a car passing down our red brick hill. They missed writing quietly in the same room as other writers. They were tired of the view out their window. I shared their longings and laments. So I held some optional synchronous sessions just for writing alone/together (and plan to do even more of that this fall). We discussed how to find the muse on YouTube, and we read Pablo Neruda’s poem “Horses,” a poem full of figurative language, based on observations looking out a window. “I was in Berlin, in winter. The light/ had no light, the sky had no heaven.// The air was white like wet bread.” Reading that poem and writing our own “window poems,” students found solace and connection with a writer from across time and space. Who doesn’t love the feeling of “being together” with characters on a page when reading details so vividly rendered? In a writing workshop, connection and learning are intertwined; there is hardly continuity of one without the other. In the profound discomfort and dis-ease we continue to face, I hope to offer my students co-presence in this long winter.

There, in silence, at mid-day,
in that dirty, disordered winter,
those intense horses were the blood
the rhythm, the inciting treasure of life.

I looked. I looked and was reborn:
for there, unknowing, was the fountain,
the dance of gold, heaven
and the fire that lives in beauty.

(Pablo Neruda, “Horses”)

Resources for Further Reading

“A pedagogy of belonging” by Mitchell Beck and James Malley (CYC-Online)

“How to teach online so all students feel like they belong” (Berkeley) by Becki Cohn-Vargas and Kathe Gogolewski (Berkeley)

“Cultivating belonging online during Covid-19” by Carey Borkoski and Brianne Roos (American Consortium for Equity in Education)

“A place of remote belonging” by Emily Boudreau (Harvard)

“Designing for care: Building inclusive learning communities online.” by Jesse Stommel (Hybrid Pedagogy)

“Unsilencing the Writing Workshop”  by Beth Nguyen (Lithub)

“Camera on/Camera off?” by @FirstGenLatinxEducator

“Critical Response Process Resources” by Liz Lerman

This is the second of a three-part series

• Writing as a Social Practice
• Small Group Workshops
• Productive Discomfort 

Small Group Workshops

The exchange of feedback is at the core of a writing workshop, yet there is never any guarantee that conventional frameworks for group critique will transform into conversation. The typical MFA workshop method (which has also trickled down into undergraduate settings) mandates that the writer stays silent while the full class offers oral critique. Yet simply being in physical proximity to one another does not alone create the conditions for connection, belonging, or learning. In her essay “Unsilencing the Writing Workshop,” Nguyen (2019) discusses some ways the above method has failed writers, particularly writers of color and other marginalized experience, and offers an alternate model for the creative writing workshop as a conversation, one which includes the writer. Lerman (2003) outlines a multi-step group process for constructive dialogues about works-in-progress, in her book Critical Response Process.

I needed to figure out how to facilitate this conversational workshop model not only over the internet, but also basically asynchronous. In one approach, I decided to invite students to add a note/message to their drafts when they uploaded them to their small group workshops; they could pose a specific question to their readers, or otherwise communicate what kinds of feedback they were most after. (My one caveat is they can never use this note to apologize for their work.) Students almost always chose to add such a note, and often the note was about their draft, but just as often it included other pleasantries, updates, or greetings to each other. In this simple act of writers uploading a file to their small groups, and being encouraged to add a note to the file, the interaction between reader and writer became a tangible and social one that helped them relate to and reference one another, even in our virtual environment.

Menon and Phillips (2011) found that small groups of even-numbered size (for example, 6 or 8) experience lower group cohesion than groups of odd-numbered size. Of course, group sizes are determined by overall enrollment combined with attendance on any given day. “Workshop math,” or trying to determine a workshop rotation schedule, is notorious among creative writing instructors for being a fraught task full of unknowns, broken printers, and, well, math. Yet it can be an opportunity to design for connection and belonging. Typically, I have found the ideal small group workshop size to be five. As we pivoted to suddenly-virtual instruction, I pondered even more factors. I wanted groups that could carry on even if several members faced simultaneous challenges to participation, yet small enough to make in-depth conversation possible.

In the end, I split my intermediate poetry workshop into two groups of 7 for workshop, and advanced poetry workshop into two groups of 9. If that sounds big for any given week, read on. I also wanted to figure out how to design some flexibility so that the inevitable unknowns wouldn’t torpedo an entire workshop rotation. So I asked students to turn in a poem draft in at least 6 weeks of the term in order to receive credit for that portion of the course. That gave them the flexibility to step back back some weeks for any reason. In addition, I asked them to provide feedback to 2 group members’ poems for at least each week that they themselves posted a draft, draft, and to help me ensure that each draft received feedback from at least 2 group members. I had no idea in advance how this “workshop math” was going to work out, but for the most part, it really did. They were attentive to each other’s drafts, and each group stayed in motion. One intriguing result of this structure was that the small group workshops on any given week took on a “fishbowl conversation” quality, where members in each group took turns participating or observing the conversation. I learned even more about this accidental fishbowl from Teaching Tolerance, a project from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Fishbowl can be used to explore the ideas of membership, identity, belonging and shared experiences. The structure lends itself well to discussions of complex texts and to challenging topics of cross-cultural significance. By providing all students both a speaking and listening role and a stake in the discussion, fishbowl can help build an inclusive and supportive learning environment. The observation aspect of the activity allows students to identify appropriate ways to participate in discussions. If used on a consistent basis, fishbowl discussions can establish boundaries and norms critical to anti-bias communication.

While the fishbowl effect was unintentional in my Spring 2020 poetry workshops, I will now approach it on purpose, as part of designing for connection and belonging.

Continue to part 3: Productive Discomfort

As someone with a fair amount of experience with teaching in online environments, I’ve been asking myself lately what kind of advice I would like to give to you, my fellow colleagues, that would be both useful, general, and different from what you’ve probably already heard. I have taught over 40 online classes in my career, and I feel like I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work in an online classroom, but I have had a hard time figuring out exactly what to say to distill that experience into something directly pertinent to professors who have been hurled headlong—against their will—into the world of online teaching. What can I say to you that might be of some help? Well, as a philosopher, I tend to think about these things in a theoretical way. So, I humbly submit my answer in the form of a theory.

The Problem of Online College: A Theory

The problem of online college is simply that when students take online classes, there is no college. If you think about the traditional college experience from the viewpoint of a student, it has a certain “feel.” The student wakes up in a dorm (or at least in housing near the campus); the student eats in the dining hall with other college students; and the student goes to classes at a regularly scheduled time. In other words, there is a college routine—a college culture—a sense of being a part of a college. All of that tends to get lost in the online environment; there is no college, there are only classes. In the world of online education, the typical student wakes up in their house with their parents, siblings, etc.; the student eats in their dining room or on their couch with those same parents, siblings, etc.; and the student doesn’t really go to classes at all. In short, the experience is domestic rather than collegiate.

With this problem in mind, I want to suggest that the best online classes are the ones that have been developed—from the beginning—to feel like college. In my experience, the professors that are the most successful in the online environment are those that put thought and effort into designing their classes to feel like college classes rather than merely classes.

I think that this problem manifests itself in a number of different ways, and I would like to share some ideas about three different manifestations of the problem that I think should be addressed while designing an online course.

The first manifestation of the problem of online college that I want to address is the issue of student motivation. Even students who are ordinarily engaged and excited about their classes can often feel unmotivated when taking online classes. One of the main reasons for this, I suggest, is the lack of a campus, which tends to diminish the feeling of being in college. The gravitas of the campus classroom is replaced by the mundanity of a laptop or a smartphone. From my experience, the best way to combat this problem is to maintain a routine that keeps students on task. I have found that frequent small assignments are great for helping to develop and maintain a routine that mimics the college experience of going to classes regularly. I suggest having something due at least every other day. Make it something educational, small, and, most importantly, required. This not only helps to establish a routine, but it also helps the professor get an early feel for students who are disengaged or struggling. I also suggest being rigid with due dates. I understand the impulse to be flexible with due dates in an online class, but my experience suggests that such a policy just tends to further diminish the feeling of being in college among the students. When professors are firm with due dates, it feels more like college to the students, and they are more likely to take it seriously. For example, the Logic and Reasoning class that I taught in the Spring included homework assignments for every class meeting day (3 times per week). So, students had to keep constantly on top of this work, and I only allowed them to get lower than 70% on two of the assignments and still be able to pass the class. That might sound like a harsh grading criterion, but they all knew that there were consequences for slacking off, which helped to keep them on track and engaged. Of course, students sometimes have issues getting their work done on time for various reasons: I am not suggesting that we should just say “tough luck” to them, but I think that professors who are officially flexible with due dates in the online environment tend to send the message to their students that their classes are just classes rather than that they are college classes.

The second manifestation of the problem of online college that I want to address is the issue of the feedback loop. By feedback, I don’t just mean the comments  that we give on individual student work; that clearly still exists in the online environment. The feedback loop that is missing is the one that exists in the classroom. Students are used to constant feedback in the college campus environment. In a traditional classroom, there is continuous student-teacher and student-student interaction. The feedback loop is almost instantaneous in this environment, and the amount of information exchanged is massive. Even the look on a single student’s face can tell you a lot about their level of understanding, and, on the flip side, the teacher’s tone of voice or body language can convey a lot of information about a topic to the students. In an online class, the feedback loop is much, much, much, slower, especially in classes where the feedback loop is done almost entirely in writing. From my experience, a good way to combat this issue is to get as much face-to-face time with the students as possible. Engaging in a live feedback loop is best, but even recorded videos (from both student and teacher) can go a long way toward developing a sense of engagement that is often missing in online classrooms. Obviously, it is not always practical to hold live meetings, but if you can, I strongly encourage you to try it. This past Spring, I held my sophomore seminar on the Philosophy of Religion as a live, synchronous class, and the students could not stop thanking me for it! However, this was a relatively small class of about 13 students, and none of those students had time-zone issues or major connectivity issues. So, it was a blessing to be able to hold the class in this manner for the entire term. As a counterpoint, my other class in the Spring (Logic and Reasoning) had about 32 registered students. For that class, required live meetings were impractical, but I still wanted a good amount of face-to-face interaction. So, I decided to hold live lectures, but I also recorded them so that those who could not or did not want to attend could view them later. The in-person feedback loop was still there, but in a more limited way. Even if live meetings are out, I still strongly encourage all online professors to put in some live face-to-face time with students on a regular basis. If this not possible, however, then I suggest that you look for other ways to increase the speed of the feedback loop. Whatever you do, though, the feedback should be frequent, and it should be as personal as possible.

The third, and last, manifestation of the problem of online college that I want to address is the issue of workload. Interestingly, I have found that many professors new to online teaching tend to think either that the workload needs to be eased up or that it needs to be piled on. The approach of easing up seems to be based on the (correct) theory that it is harder to learn in the online environment, and the approach of piling on seems to be based on the (also correct) theory that students have more free time when they don’t have to attend regular class meetings. My view, however, is that both of these approaches diminish the feeling of the college experience. On the one hand, the “easing up” approach sends a message like “this is not really college, so let’s just take it easy,” and, on the other hand, the “piling on” approach sends a message like “this is not really college, so you’re all on your own.” My view is that the workload should be more or less the same as it is in a campus classroom. Whatever the workload looks like in your campus classroom, I would suggest that you keep it at about that same place: don’t ease up, but don’t pile on either. Set the bar at a college level.

I hope that these remarks are at least somewhat useful. If any of you need any support, advice, or just a shoulder to cry on, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m happy to help any way that I can. Good luck to all of us!