What I Am Up To This Semester

I had a rather busy winter break. I tried to squeeze in a bunch of doctor's appointments, visits to family, and other stuff. I also got new glasses.

This semester I am teaching only one section of Composition I, but three of Composition II. I requested this: I wanted to see what it was like to have such a strong variance, which is normally in the opposite direction. I am also teaching American Cinema again.

My office hours for this semester:
Monday 1130-1230 (Laurel Hall Work Rooms)
Tuesday 1000-1100 (Parker 413B)
Wednesday 1130-1230 (Laurel Hall Work Rooms)
Thursday 1000-1100 (Parker 413B)
Friday 1300-1400 (Laurel Hall Work Rooms)

I will, of course, be traveling down to Stockton University in April for the annual Literature Program party. Around the same time, I will be giving another scholarship award to an RCBC student that is transferring to Stockton at our annual academic awards ceremony.

I will have more information about THATCamp Community College 2016 at the semester goes on. Registration should open very soon.

THATCamp Philadelphia: THATCamp Tips (Session Proposers/Moderators=William Patrick Wend/Chris Gazzara)

Chris and I proposed this session to discuss ways to move forward with THATCamp Community College. As you can see, session attendees had plenty of useful ideas.

  • Give some kind of credit to students for attending.

  • Can THATCamp be a part of career reorientation?

  • Budget planning needs to happen early.

  • What about service learning?

  • How about workshops for basics of retraining...Wikipedia, Wordpress, Google Drive, etc

  • “Six tools in an hour” workshop suggested.

  • Could there be connections made to career services in that regard too?

  • What can someone take from a workshop that can be immediately implemented in the classroom?

  • Could there be THATCamp sessions on project management?

  • A suggestion to put up a history of your THATCamp. We can definitely do that.

  • What about sponsorship?

  • Potential for some synchronization with our undergraduate research program here at RCBC and THATCamp.

  • What criteria is required for a workshop to “count” for something?

  • Workshops for students on how to use phones for notes/annotation? Active learning note taking strategies.

  • Possible workshop on whether _____ is useful in the classroom. Let attendees keep a scorecard.

  • A 30 minute summation workshop on previously done topics from our Center For Learning & Instruction.

THATCamp Philadelphia: Regional Digital Humanities (Session Proposer/Moderator=John Theibault)

John Theibault moderated this session on creating more regional digital humanities programs.

  • Connection between regionalism and nationalism.

  • How does unconference model help or hinder regionalism?

  • Are there other regional digital humanities programs like PhillyDH?

  • We discussed the Center For Learning & Instruction here at RCBC.

  • What else besides THATCamp can we do at local institutions to aide their projects?

  • What can be done virtually to facilitate meetups with likeminded people?

  • How do we get more non-academics involved in the digital humanities? (I offered some caution here to avoid corporate influence)

THATCamp Philadelphia: Getting Distance Education Students To Engage With Library Materials (Session Moderator/Proposer=William Patrick Wend)

I proposed a session on trying to get distance education students to work with library materials more. I have had a number of conversations with both faculty and administrators about this issue, so I thought it would be useful to speak to others at THATCamp about it.

  • University of Delaware does virtual tours of their library.

  • What if there were embedded videos of library tours?

  • Do we have romanticized ideas about libraries?

  • How do we get more distance students engaged with the community of the college?

  • Lee Skallerup-Bessette’s work may be helpful for this issue.