ePortfolio from Successful Teaching Online Mentoring Program (STOMP), Harper College

1. STOMP
ePortfolio
Presenter: M. Horton
Fall 2015

2. ePortfolio Contents
This ePortfolio documents the major deliverables I
created for the completion of Successful Teaching Online
Mentoring Program (STOMP) at Harper College. The
contents are as follows:
○ Community-Building Activity
○ Time Management Tip List
○ Final Project: Lesson idea, assessment and rubric
developed using Backwards Design principles
○ Final Reflections/Lessons Learned

3. Community-Building Activity
Instructions:
○ Share an asynchonous community-building idea on the Week 2
discussion board (Discussion board link below.) Through reviewing
the resources above, please come up with one community-building
activity that can be implemented in an asynchronous online learning
environment. This activity can be an icebreaker, but it can also be an
activity that makes sense later in the semester when relationships
have already begun to form. When sharing your idea, please include
the following information:
○ Title
○ Task
○ Objective(s)
○ Instructions
○ How this idea builds community

4. Community-Building Activity
Title: Community-building a Safe Space (Based on "Truth and Lies" from
Engaging the Online Learner)
Task: There are two discussion threads, one titled "Truth (Anonymous)"
and the other titled "Truth (non-anonymous)." Your task is to post one
positive true fact about yourself in each of the forums. Is there
something you're proud of? Do you have a hobby you enjoy? Is there a
career goal worth sharing? Anything positive, and perhaps distinctive, of
you is perfect. The second part of this task is to try to match the
anonymous facts with the non-anonymous facts by replying to the posts
in "Truth (non-anonymous). Have some fun with this! Let's get to know
each other in a fun, constructive, community-building way! [This will not
be graded. Because it is low stakes, more congenial participation can be
expected.]

5. Community-Building Activity
Objective(s): (a) To get to know a little bit about each other. (2) To learn
how posting, replying work in an online discussion environment. (3) To
foster a collegial community with positive self-images and mutual
respect.
How this builds community: Having a low stakes conversation about
something presumably personal and potentially emotionally charged
contributes to a positive self-concept. Negative self-concepts can de-
motivate, so it is best to produce positive self-images early on. It
cultivates the right kind of environment for future discussions, both
student-participatory and student-lead discussions. Because it is
emotional (because it is personal), it can lead students to engage and
participate better, setting the groundwork for future discussions at
higher stakes.

6. Time Management Tip List
Instructions:
○ Read through time management strategies for online instructors
from the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
○ Create your own time management tip list for your professional use,
focusing on the tips that will be most important to you. Feel free to
copy and paste directly from the webpage, and add your own notes
as well. This assignment should be incorporated into your journal
submission for this week.

7. Time Management Tip List
(1) Take notes as you read discussion forums. Look for general
themes, but reference students by name if you reference their
contribution.
(2) Create a forum where students can ask general questions (set
notifications on it so that professor can respond quickly).
(3) Use e-tools for self-graded assignments. [I prefer test yourself
style quizzes that can be taken multiple times (questions drawn
from a sizeable pool of questions). Immediate feedback before
student feels confident going on.
(4) Establish a time during which everyday quick things can be
done: email responding, forum feedback, etc. Establish student
expectations on when this time or times will be.
(5) Establish Email name/subject protocols (or use only in house,
BB, messaging).

8. Time Management Tip List
(6) Use rubrics and keep a file with previous discussion forum
comments, especially the lengthy ones, to be used again in the
future. Organize this file by topic.
(7) Save examples of good work to be shared (anonymously) with
future students. It can help set expectations, i.e., "This is what A-level
work looks like."

9. Final Project Summary
This presentation showcases an assessment, rubric and
lesson idea created for my Critical Thinking course. This
culminating project demonstrates my ability to apply
Backwards Design principles to lesson plan development.
We were asked to choose 1-2 learning objectives that
fulfill the student outcome(s) of an existing course and
then create an assessment, rubric and lesson idea that
align with those objectives.

10. Critical Thinking, PHI 101
Course description:
"Introduces the student to reasoning in a language-centered context.
Students will learn how to identify arguments and distinguish them
from other types of discourse. Some topics covered will be: evaluating
claims, recognizing informal fallacies, problem solving, evaluating
media. Students will also learn how to cast issues in a neutral manner,
to recognize and appreciate a variety of perspectives, and to argue for
and against more than one perspective on an issue. The focus of this
course is on everyday practical reasoning." IAI H4 906

11. Student Outcomes (course level)
Students will…
...identify and create original examples of fallacies.

12. Learning Objectives (lesson level)
(1) Review definitions and examples of standard logical
fallacies, both formal and informal.
(2) Select three errors around which to develop an essay.
(3) Review the structure of moral arguments.
(4) Select a moral statement for which to construct
fallacious arguments. Your moral statement will be
your thesis statement.
(5) Develop your fallacious argument (exhibiting the three
fallacies you chose) into an argumentative essay. The
essay should have a clear thesis statement (the moral
claim you picked) and should use all three fallacies in
supporting that thesis.

13. Explanation of Alignment
○ How your assessment aligns with the outcomes and an explanation
of why you chose it.
○ I liked this assignment because it gives students lots of choice, but
within a rigid structure. They are learning fallacies by making
fallacious arguments--learning by doing. They are working on writing
in a way that incorporates fallacies, which will help them identify
fallacies. They are reviewing structures for moral arguments since the
position they are supporting is a moral position. The assignment
combines many topics of the course and synthesizes it into a short,
tidy assignment all with a single course level student outcome in view.

14. Explanation of Alignment
○ How your rubric effectively measures competency in the assessment,
and any design choices that may need explanation.
This assignment is an assignment that works on synthesizing two
previously done components to a critical thinking course: study of
fallacies and study of moral arguments. It is looking for competence at
deploying the terminology of those two topics as well as comfort with
writing in support of that thesis, albeit, in a deliberately fallacious way.
Measuring that amounts to ensuring that students are competent: were
terms used correctly? Were they used in a way that demonstrates
mastery of the course material? Also, the assignment has very specific
instructions. Because it involves several moving parts, the rubric had
effectively to measure how well students structured and put together
their assignment. I think it gets at the two aspects of what this
assignment is going for.

15. Explanation of Alignment
○ The outcome is specifically about identifying and creating original
arguments and examples of fallacies. Aligning the sub-tasks with the
course level outcome was straightforward. The task is broken down
into its pieces, each of which leads directly to the course level
outcome. Assessing that students have successfully completed the
assignment amounts to looking for evidence that each sub-task was
successfully completed. The rubric look for those two primary things:
mastery of course material and instruction following (including essay
structure, etc.).

16. Lesson Plan
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is two-fold: first, you will practice writing
structured essays that support a central claim. Of course, your essay will consist of bad
arguments. Deliberately making bad arguments, with the knowledge that they are bad,
can help you learn to recognize them in the future.
General Assignment
Your assignment should be typed and submitted via Blackboard Learn. Find the
assignment in Learn and open it, and either copy and paste your essay into the
submission box or attach a saved copy of your file and then submit it before the due date.
The only acceptable file formats are .doc, .docx, and .pdf (Microsoft Word and Adobe).
The page limit is one (about 300 words).

17. Lesson Plan (continued)
You are to construct an argumentative essay that contains three and only three errors for
a moral claim you endorse. One error should be a formal fallacy and another error should
be an informal fallacy. The third error can be of your choosing. Bear in mind that if your
argument is going to commit three mistakes, it will be at least a paragraph long. I’d think
about it as if the argument were being said on a news program by a pundit. In a
paragraph or two, present the argument as prose. Don’t present the argument with
numbered premises or in outline form. Write a paragraph like you might find in an op-ed
page and write it as if someone were really making that argument. Your paragraph will
have an introductory sentence serving as a thesis statement. The remaining material will
be written in support of your thesis statement. The thesis statement will express a moral
claim. Your claim should be controversial (not obviously true and not obviously false).

18. Alternate Part 2 to
Assignment
Create a discussion forum entitled "Finding
Bad Arguments."
Have students post their essays to it, using
dedicated threads for each (could be
anonymous or non-anonymous). Then, have
students work together to identify the fallacies
used in each argument. Did they get them
right? Might the original author share her
insight to help people spot the flaws?
This would be graded as normal discussion.

19. Assessment Rubric
Grade Earned:
F - D C - B A
Comprehension
and
Argumentation
Reflection demonstrates
little to no
understanding of or
attention to the moral
principles/positions used
or to the assigned topic.
Reflection
demonstrates
adequate
understanding of
assigned topic and
key issues raised as
part of the assigned
topic.
Reflection
demonstrates
complete
understanding of the
assigned topic and
the key issues raised
and displays
engagement with the
key issues.
Style/Grammar/
Instructions
Does not address
assigned topic. Late, or
shows no attempt to use
correct spelling and
grammar, formatting or
reference citations.
Address assigned
topic in part. Typed
in incorrect format
and/or font, and had
errors in reference
citations. Paper
contains few spelling
or grammatical
errors.
Fully addresses
assigned topic. Typed
in correct format
with no spelling or
grammatical errors.
Citations all
correctly formatted.

20. Lessons Learned
In constructing an assignment based on the principles of backwards
design, I became more conscientious about something I already knew
was important, namely, course outcomes. We all care about outcomes.
We all want our students to leave our classes with the skills and
knowledge indicative of successful mastery of a course. How do we tie
lessons to outcomes? How might we do this in an online environment?
Thinking about this is interesting. Who similar to f2f is online instruction?
What assignments will work for both environments? Often what
happens in class is that course content is synthesized and
contextualized without deliberate effort. It happens in the course of
discussing things. It happens when students ask questions aloud. It
happens during lectures. In an online environment, what happens
organically might need to be structured more deliberately. (continued)

21. Lessons Learned
Structuring assignments and tasks more
deliberately is helped by paying explicit
attention to the course outcomes and aligning
those to lesson outcomes and assignment
assessment. It is just the kind of structure that
an online environment calls for. We must be
careful to synthesize our material and to help
students learn in a variety of modalities.
(continued)

22. Lessons Learned
I learned that variety is the spice of online life.
Have students test themselves on
automatically graded quizzes. Have students
engage in small working groups in addition to
larger groups and discussions. Have students
take content from earlier in the course and
synthesize it with more recent content. Have
collaborative sessions. Have flipped
classrooms. Variety. Variety. Variety.

23. Lessons Learned (final)
Variety takes work. I learned that my
colleagues are all willing to work to ensure
that their classes are well-oiled machines and
that their students give and get the most out
of it. It was inspiring. Thanks for inspiring me!