In March, when it became clear our teaching world was about to be turned upside down, my colleagues and I scrambled (along with the rest of academia) to figure out how best to proceed. While many universities around the country would be finishing off their academic years within a month or so—coming to closure with classroom communities that had already been well established—we at Western Washington University needed to look ahead to a spring quarter, starting an entire term anew online.

Lucky for me, I had already planned to use the Third Edition of Tell it Slant, pretty much following the chapters in order, using the writing exercises and the readings in the anthology, supplemented with a few pdfs. I decided on asynchronous learning (the class was scheduled for 8 a.m., and I thought we’d all appreciate not having to see each other online at that time of day), and I was confident that the instructional chapters in Tell it Slant could fill in nicely for the information and practice they would receive in the classroom.

We use Canvas, and after consulting with a few people experienced in online teaching, I decided to create weekly Modules, which act as a kind of “drawer” to hold all the assignments and tasks for the week. I quickly realized it would be too much to try to create every module right away for the whole quarter, so I created the first two, and I’ve added a new one every week so there are always two active modules available. By posting the Modules as I went along, I was able to be flexible and have some weeks that were lighter than others.

In each Module, the students usually have a Reading Assignment (sometimes also a video to watch or a podcast to listen to), a Reading Response, a Discussion Board or two (sometimes whole-class, sometimes small-group), “In-Class Writing,” and a more finished Creative Writing Assignment. They have two deadlines each week: Wednesday at noon (usually for a creative writing assignment and reading response) and Friday at 5 p.m. (usually for new writing, or a new chapter, if we’re trying to do two in one week).

I started slow, with a lot of tasks designed to ease them into the writing process and the genre (half the students are not English majors), then got going full throttle with Tell it Slant. I found myself creating a video announcement each week to wrap up the week prior and look ahead to the coming week. I scheduled a few “in-class writing” sessions, where we could do timed writing together; since we are asynchronous, it’s hard to find a time that a lot of people can attend, but there have been three or four at each one. They also need to sign up for individual video conferences with me throughout the quarter.

I am happy to report that it’s working! My student participation level is close to 100%, and the students tell me they appreciate the organization of the course and the activities. They are reading closely and posting substantive comments. They have good insights into their writing process and seem eager to build on the exercises they’ve done so far. Tell it Slant has provided the strong backbone of the course for all of us.

If you would like to see how I organized the course using Tell it Slant, I’ve posted my syllabus along with a file that holds all the weekly Module descriptions in the “Sample Syllabi/Classroom Ideas” tab. You’ll see I wasn’t able to get through the whole book in the time we had, and I never did figure out how to do an effective workshop in this asynchronous mode, but if you had a semester course, I think you could easily get in all that you needed.

I hope you are well and hanging in there,

Brenda