Presentation for English 820

Here is my presentation for my English class (in PowerPoint):

http://www.slideshare.net/markblaauwhara/bloggingincomposition

I find it easiest (after clicking the link) to click on the black forward arrow to the immediate right of the green forward arrow in Slideshare. That will let you click through the slides at your own pace.

What's Comic about a Course Syllabus?

            For my pedagogy project, I explored whether some aspects of a course might be better addressed through comics rather than straight text. Graphic novels and comics have been steadily gaining recognition in academic and popular circles as valid forms of expression and communication—note MAUS winning the Pulitzer, for instance—and the process of taking meaning made in one form (text) and re-interpreting it in another form (comics) can lead to a consideration of “what [to] move forward, what [to] leave out, what [to] add,” as Kathleen Blake Yancey describes writing students doing as they move between media.

            I selected three free online comic generators—Stripcreator.com, Chogger.com, and Stripgenerator.com—and reinterpreted sections of my syllabus in ways I hoped would be more memorable to students and perhaps cast me in a different light. My goals with my syllabus are to lay out the structure and policies of the course and to give students a sense of me as their professor. It can be difficult to walk the line between respectably firm and a complete jerk. What is ideal for me would be a blend of strictness and approachability—after all, I view my purpose as being to help students reach their potential, and my policies are in place to ensure a fair environment in which they can work. Intimidating them on the first day of class is not my goal.

            For the purposes of this project, I examined my syllabus for English 111, the first course in my college’s first-year composition sequence and a required course for nearly all degrees and certificates. I chose this course because it includes students from a wide swath of our college, many of whom do not have an interest in English (and may be resistant to the course). I thought that the use of a blended comic/text syllabus might diffuse some student resistance while still effectively presenting course policies and structure. I began by visiting Stripcreator and “translating” my attendance policy, which currently reads like this:

If you need to miss class, I always appreciate a call or e-mail AS SOON AS YOU KNOW YOU WILL HAVE TO MISS.  If you do this, I’m happy to sit down with you in office hours and talk about what we covered (although it won’t substitute for coming to class—it’ll be brief).  I do not like it when students don’t show up for class and then tell me what happened in an off-handed way the next time they show up.  Would you do that with your job?  If so, you’d soon be out of a job.  I don’t need intimate details; I just appreciate the respect of having you let me know, in a timely manner, that you won’t be able to make it.

            The gist of this policy is that students should come to class, and if something comes up, they should contact me to let me know they will miss. I decided to represent this in comic form as follows:

I think the comic version of my attendance policy is more effective than the text version, especially when coupled with some oral explanation. The heart of the policy is intact, but it is presented in the context of a (hopefully) humorous story. Through some brief contextualization, I could let them know that they need to come to class focused and ready to learn, and that if they choose to miss, they need to contact me and make an effort to make up the material. This would stand to be more memorable than straight text, which would probably lead to better student attendance, and it is certainly more lighthearted than the current text.

Stripcreator is the easiest to use of all the comic generators I tried. It allows the user to shift between one, two, or three panels, and it contains a number of pre-drawn characters to take pressure off of those who are less than artistic. Dialogue and captions are entered through a series of text boxes and pull-down menus, making it possible to generate a simple comic within a couple minutes.

I next visited Chogger to re-present my office location, contact information, and office hours. Here is how it looks on my current syllabus:

Professor:                   Mark Blaauw-Hara

Office:                        138

Office Phone:             (231) 348-6631

Office Hours:             M-Th 1-3

E-Mail:                       mhara@ncmich.edu

Web Site:                    http://angel.ncmich.edu

And here is how it looks in comics:

      

            This time, results were mixed. The text-only version is easier to skim, allowing students to locate quickly whatever contact information they need. Also, Chogger is less easy to use than Stripcreator: instead of offering pre-drawn characters and drop-down menus, Chogger requires drawing and user placement of text, which is simultaneously more powerful and more maddening. If one is fluent with on-screen drawing and graphics, Chogger might be a gift in that it removes some of the limitations of Stripcreator; however, although I am not a novice computer user, I still found it difficult to move beyond a stick figure. While the comic version of my contact information does present the information in a light-hearted way, I do not think I added value to the information.

            My final experiment was to visit Stripgenerator and re-work my plagiarism section. Here is how it appears in my current syllabus:

Plagiarism is defined as the undocumented inclusion of another person’s work within your essay.  Students who choose to plagiarize will be in violation of North Central Michigan College’s Academic Dishonesty policy.  Plagiarism is grounds for failing the paper and/or the course.  In some instances it may result in expulsion from the institution.

Although my current policy represents an accurate description of my college’s stance on plagiarism, it comes off as overly pejorative and scary. For the comic adaptation, I decided to highlight the idea that many students plagiarize because they are under pressure and don’t know where to turn, and that I can help. Orally, I could still make students aware of the actual handbook policy, but it would be framed in the context of my willingness to help them solve problems they’re having with their papers. Here is the comic version:

This seems effective to me. Stripgenerator.com is something of a middle ground between Stripcreator and Chogger in that it offers more characters and flexibility than Stripcreator, but does not require the drawing skills of Chogger. The character representing me in the strip is one of a host of different pre-drawn characters that can be positioned in different spots within the panels, and the speech bubbles can be repositioned, too, and automatically adapt to what you type within them.

            As someone who is relatively unskilled in the creation of comics (or any type of computer-generated art), I found Stripcreator to be the easiest generator to use, and I would recommend it to other instructors who might be interested in integrating self-created comics into their courses. They seem to have the potential both to bring some of the more inherently boring aspects of a course to life and to recast the instructor in a lighter, more helpful way. Although both goals are possible with straight text, I think it is positive to bring different modes of writing into the classroom, and the process of taking a message from one medium (text) to another (comics) encourages instructors to examine what, exactly, they are trying to say, and whether they might say it better.

Works Cited

Spiegelman, Art. The Complete MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon, 1996. Print.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake.  "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." College Composition and Communication  56.2 (2004): 297-328. Print.