Category Archives: meta (about the blog)

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what my online students can expect from me, part 2: appropriate grading feedback

This is the latest post in a series about expectations in online education. You can read the previous post here.

You can expect me to give you grading feedback in an amount and kind appropriate to the assignment. I use the word “appropriate” instead of “substantial,” a term greatly emphasized at one of my institutions in relation to grading feedback, because I don’t think all assignments require substantial feedback. For example, when I am grading students’ participation in a peer review discussion, it’s probably enough for me to say, “Thank you for your participation.” When I’m grading a topic proposal, I might record a three-minute video giving the student guidance on narrowing down the topic and starting to look for sources, but I probably won’t launch into a nitpicky critique of their APA format. However, when I’m grading a final/summative paper, I will give feedback on all areas of the assignment–content, organization, research, mechanics, and documentation–and my comments will likely consist of several sentences each. But still, there will be issues I overlook (intentionally or not), because my goal is to give students useful suggestions for improving their writing, not to discourage them by making the paper illegible with overlapping marginal comments on every sentence (the digital equivalent of a paper bled through with a red pen). I know from personal experience how discouraging this can be!

I hasten to admit that I’m not perfect at this. I often worry about whether I’m giving enough grading feedback, whether my comments make sense, and whether I got the tone right. And there are definitely times, usually when I’m on vacation or just really not feeling like grading, when I give a completion grade on an assignment that I probably should have taken the time to carefully assess using the rubric. But I think I largely succeed at my goal of making the overall message of my grading not “Here’s what you did wrong” (though I realize some students will still read it that way) but “Here are some things you can consider doing differently next time.”

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what my online students can expect from me, part 1: collegial communication

Last week, I wrote about the top three expectations I have for my online students. Now, I’m going to write a few posts focused on things my students can expect from me. I’m choosing to write these posts exclusively in the first person because I think it’s more difficult to make safe generalizations in this area as compared to the area of my last post. But I’d love to hear from other online faculty members–are your expectations similar?

You can expect me to reply to your communication and not be annoyed about it. First, I want to clarify what this does not mean. It does not mean I’ll reply to your emails, text messages, or voicemails (I do sometimes get those!) immediately. I go to bed pretty early, and I put my phone in sleep mode when I do. Another rather countercultural practice I have, which I believe has done wonders for my mental health, is that I do not receive email notifications on my phone. I sit down to check email, usually on my computer, at designated times when I’m ready to focus on email. So this may mean that, especially on weekends, a student may go 24 hours, or slightly more, without receiving a reply from me. But here’s what this expectation does mean: When I respond to your message, I’m going to read it carefully and give you a substantial answer. (And yes, I may occasionally say, “Go look at p. 24 in the APA guide” or something similar, but I won’t be snarky about it.) I’m not going to be annoyed at you because, as I explained in my post last week, email and other personal communication forums are where I do some of my best work. In fact, right now I have a student who’s been sending me some fairly lengthy emails a couple times a week–sometimes to ask questions, other times to say she appreciated something I said in a video, etc.–but I’m not irritated at her, because our email exchange is allowing us to build a collegial relationship. Also, it helps that when she doesn’t expect a reply to one of her messages, she will actually say that in the subject line.

I’m always baffled when students are profusely grateful that I responded to their emails, when to me this seems like a bare minimum expectation. Apparently, some professors aren’t doing this, or they’re giving their students the impression they’d rather not. I’m thankful for this simple practice that allows me to tailor my instruction to individual students, build relationships, and get good course evaluations in the process. 😉

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    revisiting the idea of home as a co-working space

    Since I’m sharing our home today with three dogs (we’re dog-sitting for my in-laws), my husband (who is doing an all-day virtual professional development training in his home office), and our friend who just moved here and is staying with us until her apartment is ready, I thought I’d share a post from nearly four years ago about home as a co-working space. Though things have changed (Jordan is back at his worksite most days; I have a permanent workspace in the corner of our living room; we regularly get a wide variety of birds at our feeder, and I’m learning their names pretty well), I think the ideas explored in this post are still worth considering.

    home: the new co-working space
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    writing goals for 2024

    As I think about my goals for the new year, I’m considering how I want writing to fit into my life in 2024. I have always seen myself as a writer, but after a few highly productive years leading up to the completion of a novel in 2019, I’ve been in a dry spell, at least by comparison. I do a lot of writing for my work–mainly emails and grading feedback–but in this post, I’m thinking about writing that is both more enjoyable and less ephemeral than those, important as they may be. So here are some writing goals I’d like to focus on in the new year.

    1. Get back into the habit of writing in my notebook for 15 minutes a day. I started doing this in September after I read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and wanted to rediscover the joy of writing, especially in longhand (a practice Goldberg speaks highly of). Throughout that month, I wrote for 15 minutes every morning. Most of what I wrote will never be shown to the world (though this post was a result of one particularly productive day), but it was a good practice, and I’d like to get back into it consistently in 2024.
    2. Research and revise two short stories based on incidents in the life of Christ that I drafted in 2023. These stories resulted from my daily writing practice. They are quick sketches that need research give them accuracy and authenticity. I may use my research and revision process to help me develop some resources for my students (I wrote about this idea here), but even if I don’t end up doing that, I would like to get these stories into a state that I’m happy with.
    3. Reread Sam’s Town to help me decide whether I want to work on the sequel. Sam’s Town is the novel I self-published in 2019. Soon after I completed it, while still riding a writing high, I started the sequel, Sam’s Home. But then I got married, moved, and lived through the pandemic, and the few brief attempts I’ve made to pick the manuscript back up haven’t really gone anywhere. So in 2024, I’d like to reread Sam’s Town in hopes of recapturing some of that excitement. Even if I ultimately decide not to make writing the sequel one of my goals for this year, I think I’ll enjoy revisiting those characters who played such an important role in my life for several years.

    Three is a magic number when it comes to goal-setting, so I’ll stop there. What are some of your goals for 2024, writing-related or otherwise?

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    Don’t ask your students to do anything you haven’t done yourself.

    This post is part of a series on bringing a human touch to online education. See the series introduction here.

    I recently wrote a rough draft of a story, provisionally titled “Sunrise at the Sea of Tiberias,” and I know it needs some historical research. So I have an idea: I’m going to do the Writing in Your Field Project, the major multi-step assignment in my graduate writing class, along with my students.

    I have never done the project, and I know that’s a classic teacher mistake: expect my students to do something I haven’t done myself. I know what some of the common challenges of the project are based on student feedback, but as I often tell my students regarding their research, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience.

    I’m thinking of taking notes on my experience as I go through it (maybe using a combo of written and voice notes), then creating some supplemental videos/documents I can share with students and maybe eventually make an official part of the course. I would also like to write about this experience, with a teacher audience in mind, on the blog!

    I hope to start this project soon, when (I’m hopeful) some extra space will be opening up in my grading schedule. Stay tuned for details!

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    Let them hear your voice.

    This post is part of a series on bringing a human touch (cue the Bruce Springsteen song) to online education. See the series introduction here.

    Today I have a simple tip to offer you, yet I’ve received more positive student feedback in response to this practice than almost anything else I’ve ever done as a professor. I would like to invite you to consider making videos for your students. And I don’t mean scripted lectures shot in multiple takes with official-looking title cards provided by your institution (though there can be a place for those). I mean short, personal, off-the-cuff video responses to students’ assignments. Here is a short account of my experiences with this practice.

    I teach two research classes in which students submit a major project in several steps, the first being a proposal. Though the assignment instructions for the proposal are relatively formal and lead students to take it seriously, I treat it as a formative assessment–that is, not a finished product but a stepping stone. So instead of making corrections and deducting points from the rubric, I read each student’s proposal, then use the recording feature embedded in our learning management system (Canvas) to make a short video (2-5 minutes) expressing enthusiasm for their projects and giving them some advice about things like the scope of the project (students often start out a little too ambitious), pitfalls to avoid, and sources that might be helpful. The videos tend to be longer if I know something about the topic and have specific source recommendations to make or if the student seems to have had a little trouble understanding the assignment. But in all cases, I try to project excitement about their ideas and let them know that I’m a helpful resource.

    The videos don’t take long to create because I shoot them in one take, without doing any editing and without even writing down notes first. I am pretty good at speaking ad lib–others might want to jot some notes first (and I do sometimes miss important things I meant to say or should have said!). Video grading gives me a break from writing, which constitutes the bulk of my work, and it allows students to see my face and hear my voice, letting them know I’m a real person who’s invested in them and their writing. The students love these videos–I get more positive feedback on them in my course evaluations than on anything else. Often the videos initiate a warm and enthusiastic exchange of questions and ideas that continues throughout the course.

    Next week, it will be time for me to make proposal feedback videos for my new set of students, and I am genuinely excited to make them–not something I can normally say about grading. I encourage you, if you are a teacher or any type of communicator (aren’t we all?), to find ways to let the people you work with hear your voice. It will lay the foundation for trusting relationships and make your future written communication less likely to be misunderstood. Try it out and let me know what you learn!

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    online education for humans

    Sometimes I wonder if my students realize I’m a real human being, not a machine who grades their work. When students are surprised that I answer a pretty reasonable request in the affirmative, or that I reply to their messages at all–that’s when I really wonder. But I can’t be too critical of my students’ assumptions, because there have been times when I’ve forgotten that my students are real human beings and not machines composing assignments. When all you see of a person is a) their writing (which may or may not sound like something that came from a real human being–we’ll talk more about that in a later post) and b) a tiny, low-quality profile picture, seeing that person’s humanity can be a struggle.

    This will be the topic of my next few posts. We’ll talk about strategies that online faculty and students can use to remember and respect each other’s humanity. And as always, I hope these posts will have a wider application, offering useful advice for all of us who live in this world where so much of our human interaction is mediated by screens.

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    what’s new and upcoming

    Hello! I hope you’re staying warm and cozy on this winter morning (it’s one degree Fahrenheit outside here in northern Indiana). I’m just dropping in to let you know that I’m planning to be back soon with some new posts on creative writing. For now, check out my latest podcast episodes at https://anchor.fm/tess-r-martinus. There’s a zombie episode, a board game episode, and some opportunities to hear from people who mean a lot to me. Listen and let me know what you think!

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    Work Places: The Carlisle Inns of Ohio

    This is the third post in my series about places to do remote work in some of America’s most beautiful vacation spots. Click here for the first post and here for the second.

    Good morning from the Carlisle Inn in Walnut Creek, Ohio! I just walked into our room after sitting on the balcony, which overlooks rolling farmland and (on the front side of the hotel) the quiet main street of Walnut Creek. (It’s just slightly above freezing outside, but the balcony faces the sun and is warming up quickly–and besides, I had a cup of tea.) My husband and I are here on a weekend trip that’s part family visit and part couple’s getaway. We plan on spending time with my aunt and cousins who live in the area and are avid board gamers like ourselves, but we’re also going to do a few things just the two of us, like taking a walk this morning and, tomorrow, hitting some of my other favorite spots in Walnut Creek: Der Dutchman Amish Kitchen Cooking (for breakfast), Carlisle Gifts, Coblentz Chocolate Company, and Walnut Creek Antique Mall.

    Why would one want to spend a chilly November weekend in middle-of-nowhere Ohio? For one thing, it’s beautiful here, especially at this time of year, with recently-harvested fields resting on hillsides, orange and red trees blazing over the ridges, and mist rising off the pastures as the frost melts in the morning. For another, it’s quiet here. Although this area (primarily in Holmes and Tuscarawas Counties) has become a prosperous tourist destination in recent years, it isn’t overdeveloped, and businesses close down early at night, reflecting the agricultural lifestyle of the Amish, whose culture-challenging lifestyle is one reason why tourists find the area so fascinating. (Jordan and I passed almost as many buggies, tractors, and bikes as cars as we came into town last night.)

    If you visit, I recommend staying in one of the Carlisle Inns, whose slogan is “Peace & Comfort.” (I feel like that should be every hotel’s slogan, right?) They are part of the Dutchman Hospitality Group, who run several fine establishments in the area, including the Der Dutchman restaurant (hearty, homestyle fare) and two of the most gorgeous fine gift shops I’ve ever visited, Carlisle Gifts in Walnut Creek and Dutch Valley Gifts in Sugar Creek. There are two Carlisle Inns. The one in Walnut Creek, where we’re staying, is the older of the two, so the rooms maybe aren’t quite as up-to-date, but they’re still comfortable and clean, and you can’t beat the charm of this location, which stands as a friendly beacon at the foot of Walnut Creek’s main street (especially when it’s lit up for Christmas, like it is now). I love being able to walk next door or across the street to the retail establishments I mentioned earlier, or stroll a little further into the residential part of Walnut Creek.

    The other Carlisle Inn is in Sugarcreek, a somewhat more built-up town, though still not at all overdeveloped. It’s newer, so the rooms are a little nicer, and it sits on a whole compound of Dutchman Hospitality properties, including the Ohio Star Theater (a popular local spot for concerts and live theater) and Dutch Valley Market, a food shop. I prefer the location of the Walnut Creek inn a bit more, but you really can’t go wrong with either. You might choose the Sugarcreek Carlisle Inn if either a) you want an ultra-comfy room to stay in on a quick overnight stop on a road trip (I’ve done this) or b) you’re coming to see a show at the Ohio Star Theater (I’ve done this too, when a friend and I came to see Fernando Ortega a few years ago). You might choose the Walnut Creek Carlisle Inn if you want a quiet weekend getaway where you can do a little shopping but still feel like there’s no one else around for miles.

    Since this is part of my Work Places series (and Jordan is wrapping up work across the table from me right now), I should mention that the rooms in both Carlisle Inns, from my experience, all have decent-sized tables and ample plugs. I don’t remember the Wi-Fi situation in Sugar Creek, but here in Walnut Creek the network, while adequately fast and reliable, isn’t password-protected, so if you’re concerned about security, you might want to forego the hotel network and create a hotspot on your phone. Also of note, the rooms have Starbucks coffee in them.

    But don’t stay in your room working too long if you can help it. Take a cue from your Amish neighbors and distance yourself from technology for the weekend. Isn’t that what you came here for?

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    What if I started a podcast?

    I do a lot of writing in my work life (emails, course announcements, more emails, course revisions, more emails) and my regular human being life (planner, Bible study notes, text messages, social media posts, and the occasional non-work email). When I am writing, I constantly, reflexively revise, which both slows down the process and makes it more mentally taxing than it would be if I could manage to do the kind of one-shot, pristinely untouched writing that proponents of “silencing your inner editor” seem to be envisioning. I enjoy writing, I think writing is important, and I will never stop writing. But I’ve noticed lately that writing can burn me out in a way that talking usually doesn’t (the exception is teaching in front of a classroom, which, though I love it, can be draining for me).

    So lately, I’ve been finding ways to substitute talking for writing–sending a Marco Polo to a friend when a text would be too long and complicated, video-recording grading feedback for online students so they can hear and see me and know that I’m not mad at them, etc. This has got me wondering what it would be like if I started a podcast.

    So I’m thinking about it. I have a topic (it would be essentially the same as that of this blog, maybe a little wider-ranging) and a name (keeping it secret to increase the hype–actually, the truth is that I’m not sure if I like it yet) and am working on a logo. Beyond that, I got nothin’, except a mug I prematurely bought that says, “Proud to be a one-woman show,” with a little microphone on it. (I figure it can apply in a broad, metaphorical sense even if I don’t start the podcast.)

    I should make clear that the podcast would not replace this blog. I’ve maintained this blog for 10 years as of this past December (most of those years it was called Penelope Clearwater), and I see no reason to fold it now. I would probably alternate blog posts and podcast episodes, or do what the influencers do and create coordinating sets of posts and episodes (and Instagram stories–I need to learn how to make those).

    I’d like to ask for your help. Would you answer the few questions below to help me figure out how a podcast could best serve you, my readers? (And if the answer is by not existing, that’s okay!) I appreciate your help. You can also feel free to make non-anonymous suggestions in the comments down below.