The Very Model of Modern Media: Experimenting with Models of Media During COVID-19 to Maximize Student Engagement and Success Online

Dr. Christopher Krejci, Heather Chandler,

Kim George, and Dr. Beverly Van Note

The Chair

Photo by Netflix, printed in “The Chair is Netflix’s Best Drama in Years,” Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 21, 2021

Cut to Professor McKay.

Photo by Eliza Morse, printed in “The Chair Recap: Maybe Ji-Yoon Should Quit,” Vulture, Aug. 20, 2021

Virtual 'Textshop’: A Model-based Approach to Teaching Online

Dr. Christopher Krejci

British Literature I

Late-Renaissance Poetry

+ Cupcake Display

Marriage A-La Mode

+ Wedding Cake

Composition I

Inductive Learning

Simple

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More Complex

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Post-Pandemic Pedagogy

Writing the Selfie:

The Selfie as a Model for Composition

Heather Chandler

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between the people that is mediated by images (Debord 4).

Being

Having

Appearing

1967

Mac vs. PC

• We no longer need to see the product, per se, but are persuaded by the appearance that product can offer.

Sung et al. (2016) explains that there are over �93 million selfies posted a day on social media.

Sample Selfie Challenge

• Constructed selfie (designed to “go viral,” curated, or otherwise staged)
• Nature selfie
• Selfie with a snack machine
• Selfie at the library (you are studying for finals)
• Selfie with campus police
• Teamwork selfie with classmates
• Funny/Silly selfie
• Selfie showing you as a member of the Temple College Community

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Selfies are rhetoric.

Other Benefits!

Learning Outcomes Met

• Students must identify audience and purpose.
• Multiple drafts are created.
• Editing process begins.
• Presentation of the spectacle (selfie)

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• Community is built.
• Students become familiar with the campus and amenities.
• I have a cheat sheet for memorizing names and faces, as do the students.
• The first scaffold of composition and visual rhetoric is placed.

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In Protest: A Model-Based Approach to Teaching Comp II

Kim George

Re-envision Summer 2020 (without including COVID shutdowns)

• George Floyd protests
• Protests over women’s rights, trans rights, race injustice, Ahmaud Arbery, climate, COVID shutdowns, and immigration
• Protests around the world and in front of the White House
• Calls for discussions about these issues
• New series of readings and movies and documentaries highlighted

• And on a personal note, reading Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls

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Result of Summer 2020 Events

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• Desire to have difficult discussions about topics I had long brushed by
• Desire to learn more myself and discover what I didn’t know
• Desire to make a difference in ways I could
• Desire to re-envision my classes based on what I was learning
• Impact of this quote:

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“And now it’s time to hand the baton on to you.

Stories don’t end with the writers . . So go. Run with it.”

Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls, Author’s Note

Result of Summer 2020 Events

• Impact of this quote:

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• Point #1: Authors/creative artists are creating for themselves but for us as well.
• Point #2: Authors/creative artists are creating, asking us to “run with it”
• Point #3: What is the purpose of these works? What are the artists

trying to accomplish?

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“And now it’s time to hand the baton on to you.

Stories don’t end with the writers . . So go. Run with it.”

Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls, Author’s Note

Steps in Reframing ENGL 1302

• Step 1: Study protest works in art, music, movies, and other media forms.
• Step 2: Study purposes in protest work.
• Step 3: Determine what I was already teaching that could be connected.
• Step 4: See if the difficult topics might relate to the literature.
• Step 5: Learn as much as possible.
• Step 6: Realize how much I did not know.

Outlining the Desired Outcomes

Student Learning Outcomes

• Thinking Skills: Students will engage in creative thinking activities that include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, analysis, evaluation and synthesis of information.
• Communication Skills: Students will demonstrate effective development, interpretation and expression of ideas through written and visual communication.
• Teamwork: Students will demonstrate the ability to consider different points of view and to work . . . to support a shared purpose or goal.
• Personal Responsibility: Students will demonstrate the ability to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision-making.

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Other Outcomes

• Introduce students to issues rarely taught in schools
• Introduce students to new art forms like murals and manifestos
• Introduce students to media they would never hear or see otherwise
• Introduce realities of other races, genders, sexual identities, and ethnicities
• Provide students a voice
• Empower students
• Help students do more introspection

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Connecting the Pieces

Previously-Taught Short Stories

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• “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (Oates)
• “The Yellow Wallpaper” (Gilman)
• “The Things They Carried” (O’Brien)

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• “The Lesson” (Bambara)
• “My Name” (Cisneros)

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The Issues

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• Morality—including rape, verbal/emotional/ mental abuse, abuse cycle, nature vs. nurture, evil vs. good

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• Gender/Sexual Identity and Mental Illness

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• War—including morality of war, PTSD, trauma, treatment of veterans and homelessness

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• Race/ethnicity and Class Issues

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• Race/ethnicity and identity including immigration

New Choices

Creation of Class�Website

• Morality
• Gender/sexual identity
• War
• Race/ethnicity
• Class

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• Murals
• Manifestos
• Graffiti
• Memes

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Creating Change Website:

https://1302protest.weebly.com

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Issues

Media Forms for Each Issue

Additional Media Forms to be Taught in Class

• Poetry
• Nonfiction
• Music
• Art
• Movies

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• Cartoons
• Advertisements
• Photography

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Activities

• Individual annotations and analysis of various modes of media
• Small issue-based group discussion of annotations and analysis
• Whole class discussion of assigned media forms and issues
• Announcements on the LMS that focused on awareness of the issues, including:

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• Student-generated protest piece(s) based on the media forms studied
• Class discussions of the protest pieces

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• Abuse cycle
• Statistics of rape
• Infographics of trauma responses
• Lists of restrictions for women prior to 1971
• Cartoon video of systemic racism and redlining

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• Infographics of immigration
• Statistics of poverty/99% vs. 1%
• Introduction to Tuskegee and J. Marion Sims
• PTSD
• Implicit bias test at Harvard
• TikTok video of white privilege

The Results

Student Contributors:

• Abiba Boumba
• Jill Frierson
• Bess Hagan
• Elizabeth Perez
• Lisa Pruitt
• Karina Silva

Overcoming Illness, Isolation, and Death: A Journal of a Plague Year as a Model for a Virtual Open Mic

Dr. Beverly Van Note

Event’s Significance

• Second attempt at transforming an existing face-to-face event to a virtual format
• First themed open mic, based on Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of a Plague Year (1722)

Results

• Wide range of topics shared
• Pets
• Pandemic
• Racism
• Specific examples
• Loss of family members
• “What Does It Matter?”
• “I am just Mexican.”

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Advantages of Online Format

• Increased participation
• Wider attendance area
• Supportive outlet for participants
• Positive impact on student attendees

Contact Information

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Christopher Krejci

christopher.krejci@templejc.edu

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Heather Chandler heather.chandler@templejc.edu

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Bev Van Note

beverly.vannote@templejc.edu

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Kim George kimberly.george@templejc.edu

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Works Cited

• Bowman, Michael. “Killing Dillinger: A Mystory. Text and Performance Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4, 2000, pp. 342-374.
• Bowman, Michael and Ruth Laurion Bowman. “Performing the Mystory: A Textshop in Autoperformance.” Teaching Performance Studies edited by Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer, Southern Illinois UP, 2002, pp. 161-74.
• Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 1970.
• Defoe, Daniel. A Journal of the Plague Year. Dover, 2001. 1722.
• “Don’t Kill Bill.” The Chair, season 1, episode 4, 2021, Netflix.
• Jarrett, Michael. "Mystory: Recipe for Mystory." Michael Jarrett. Penn State York, 1995, http://www2.yk.psu.edu/~jmj3/myrecipe.htm.
• Joyce, Bruce, et al. Models of Teaching. Allyn and Bacon, 1996.

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• Ness, Patrick. A Monster Calls. Candlewick, 2011.
• Netflix. “The Chair is Netflix’s Best Drama in Years,” written by Sophie Gilbert, Atlantic Monthly, 21 Aug. 2021.
• Morse, Elizabeth. “The Chair Recap: Maybe Ji-Yoon Should Quit,” written by Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 20 Aug. 2021.
• Prince, Michael and Richard Felder. “The Many Faces of Inductive Teaching and Learning.” Journal of College Science Teaching, vol. 36, no. 5, 2007, pp. 14-20.
• Sung, Yongjun, et al. "Why We Post Selfies: Understanding Motivations for Posting Pictures of Oneself." Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 97, 216, pp.260-265.
• Ulmer, Gregory. “Textshop for an Experimental Humanities.” Reorientations: Critical Theories and Pedagogies, edited by Bruce. Henricksen and Thaïs E. Morgan, U of Illinois P, 1990, pp. 113-32.