Thriving in a Hybrid Course

When I began this year with plans to teach a course on "Thriving in the Digital Age" (for details, see my earlier post), I wasn't sure how well it would work. Would I be able to create a hybrid course, a combination of digital and face-to-face learning?

(A little background: For the past five years, I've been co-teaching courses designed for a small group of homeschooled students. The actual composition of the group has changed slightly over the years as families have come and gone, but the format has stayed pretty much the same: with two parents as co-teachers, we've organized weekly discussions, student presentations, and team debates. In between classes, students have worked mostly on their own or in pairs. The only online portions were the websites, which I created for posting assignments and other course information. The students checked the websites perhaps once a week.)

The Final Stage: Copyediting for Usability and Consistency

My process for creating an ePortfolio has involved three stages:

http://docs.google.com

Stage One: Content. Inventory and digitally archive all relevant files. Use Google Docs, DropBox, or a similar tool. Save Microsoft Word files in both DOC and PDF formats. Also include: PowerPoint (PPT) files and other types of writing projects; descriptions of the assignments provided by the professor; discussion board posts; any significant email correspondence with professors or classmates; and anything else that might be needed to create a capstone portfolio with reflective summaries. Ideally, the archive will contain most of these items already because it will have been created gradually, over the course of the entire program, rather than all at once at the very end. Files converted to the Google Docs format may require editing to repair formatting problems (extra pages, duplicated text) created during the conversion process. Note that unusual fonts, which for example may have been used to create a special effect for a flyer or brochure, may become unreadable when the files are converted. Be sure to check every file in Google Docs after the conversion. In some cases, it may be preferable to skip the conversion altogether.

Google Docs and Etherpads: "Realtime Collaborative Text Editing"

For about a year now, I've been using Google Docs for collaborative text editing. The tool allows me to share documents with other people, either for viewing only or for editing collaboratively. Up to ten people can view or edit a document simultaneously. A revision history, color-coded by author, is created automatically so changes can be tracked and restored to earlier versions if necessary. There's an integrated chat, which shows up as an IM window, so that collaborators can discuss what they're doing while they're doing it. The tool also makes it easy to email and post documents online. (For a more detailed description of Google Docs, see the Google Docs Getting Started Guide.)

This past week, I played around with iEtherPad. Although Google shut down the EtherPad.com servers, after acquiring AppleJet Inc. and the EtherPad collaboration product and technology, it released the code as open source. So, etherpad services are still available through the following links:

iEtherpad
PiratePad
Sinc.in
The Etherpad Foundation
TypeWith.me

When I tried out iEtherpad with my Portfolio in Professional Writing class, I discovered that it had the following features:

Content Ownership and Privacy Concerns

I am in the process of creating a digital archive of the written work I created while in the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program. I have decided to use Google Docs to store my collection of work, which primarily includes files in Word (.doc or .docx) and PDF. Based on my experience with Google Docs thus far, the application seems easy to use and well-suited to a Web 2.0 portfolio environment. Best of all, the price is right: free for my current low-volume needs. I also feel encouraged by the Data Liberation Front, which appears to offer an escape hatch from Google if I decide to move my digital archive elsewhere.


However, in spite of all the advantages, I still have some reservations about using Google apps, because the Google Terms of Service include the following statements about "Content license from you" (Section 11):