Dr. Ciara Kidder’s “Using Perusall to Engage Students in Reading” (Recording Linked)
This term, Oregon State Ecampus instructor Dr. Ciara Kidder led a workshop on using Perusall–a free, online social annotation tool integrated into Canvas–to get students reading, thinking, and writing critically about course texts and materials. She opened the worship by describing the many different kinds of texts Perusall can be paired with, including PDF documents, YouTube videos, podcast recordings, and more.
In the next section of this workshop, Dr. Kidder describes the different forms of low-stakes (or ungraded) writing that Perusall can be used for, including summarization, critical question asking, and more. Dr. Kidder also discusses Perusall’s integrated grading system and describes how it functions, as well as how faculty can customize it to the needs of their course.
Dr. Kidder also shares examples of how she has integrated Perusall into lower-, mid-, and high-level courses to target different skill and knowledge levels at various stages of the degree program. To close, she engages attendees in a question and answer session about this tool.
You can access a recording of Dr. Kidder’s workshop here.
Angelique Pearson’s “Perusall Set-up and Technical Support Workshop” (Recording Linked)
Ecampus Course Development and Training Specialist Angelique Pearson guides attendees through a technical walkthrough of Perusall, a free social annotation tool available through Canvas. She provides information for setting up the Perusall tool and assignments in Canvas, answers questions regarding grade syncing from Perusall to Canvas, and provides real-time support for Oregon State faculty troubleshooting Perusall for their own courses. (Note: This workshop exists independently of Dr. Kidder’s Perusall workshop.)
You can view Angelique Pearson’s workshop here.
Casey Dawson and Georgia Grace Wright’s “Reducing Writing Anxiety in the Classroom” (Recording Linked)
In this co-led workshop, WIC Graduate Intern Georgia Grace Wright and WIC Graduate Assistant Casey Dawson discuss student writing anxieties and share strategies for making your classroom an inviting, judgment-free space for writing. They open the workshop by reviewing the many factors that may contribute to student writing anxiety, including previously harmful experiences related to writing or writing education, perfectionism, personal and financial stresses directly related to their education, and more. They then review data that showcases how writing anxiety disproportionately impacts marginalized students, such as English language learners and non-male students. Next, they review multiple ways that student writing anxiety may manifest in students, and work to connect student writing anxiety to a perceived lack of control over the writing process and academic writing success.
In the second half of the workshop, Dawson and Wright share a variety of tips for making writing in the classroom a comfortable, accessible, and lower stress experience for all students, including considerations for classroom layout, integrating multimodal or tactile elements into writing exercises, and offering students more choice in how they approach writing exercises and assignments like peer review. To close, they walk attendees through a miniature version of the Writer’s Personal Profile (WPP), a self-assessment and goal setting tool for writing students to use at the start of the term. (Note: the original WPP was developed by Tracy Ann Robinson and Vicki Tolar Burton, former WIC Program Directors at Oregon State University.)
You can access the workshop here.
