This page is background notes for the instructor of COMM3330: Social Movements offering insight into why it's set up a it is and what still needs to be done with this course shell to be ready for the semester.   

There are significant course background, planning, and resource materials available for class. Please review them in the INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES (do not publish) module. (Which I'm hoping you've already found if you're reading this page.)

*See below for a list of what still needs to be completed by you before the course is ready for students* 

BACKGROUND

• This course has been designed as an investigation of communication’s role in seeking social change, focusing on how rhetoric functions in contemporary social movements. This class is not a “history of social movements,” or “history of social movement rhetoric,” although both are sure to figure in; the assignments strive to help students see how to take theoretical ideas outside of the classroom to application in the "real world." 
• This course strives to incorporate perspectives and materials from members of marginalized communities, examples of more are strongly encouraged.
• You are integral to crafting this course, and it's important to add your voice to it. 
• This course is in "beta" - I've added a page (to not be published) to collect feedback about changes to make or what to keep for next semester
  • specifically consider, is the rigor appropriate for a 3000-level course?

Meeting Course Learning Objectives Through Activities and Assessments: 

1. Describe and compare in detail the goals, history, membership, and strategies of several contemporary social issues/movements across the political spectrum, with a focus on issues related to social justice.
   • Discussions
2. Examine and explain how theories and concepts of communication apply to contemporary social movements, including, for example, how persuasive/rhetorical forces affect public ideas and discourse and how social movements function through a persuasive/rhetorical lens.
   • Reading Responses
   • Discussions
   • Unit Assignments (this LO is listed for all unit assignment options)
   • Final Consultant Project
3. Explore, express, debate, and evaluate ideas and issues which matter to you personally, professionally, publicly, and ethically, for a variety of audiences.
   • Discussions, especially intro discussion
   • Final Consultant Report  - Topic is based on student interests. 
   • Unit Assignments (this LO is listed for all unit assignment options)
4. Demonstrate ethical awareness, empathy, and being an informed consumer of messages,  such as through the ability to draw conclusions that reflect an understanding of multiple (and possibly conflicting) perceptions of a situation or sources of information
   • Discussions
   • Unit Assignments (this LO is listed for all unit assignment options)
5. Evaluate a social movement organization’s rhetorical strategy, articulate your critique for a non-academic audience, and propose recommendations to their strategies, including creating examples to demonstrate your suggestions.
   • Final Consultant Project

Still to complete: 

Look for orange text  throughout the course pages and assignments - this indicates things you as instructor need to edit. 

*Any pages or assignments that are not published need your attention before being opened up for students* 

Also look for prompts and notes within the assignments tab as assignment group titles and the modules as text headers. These are cues for you, to be deleted when addressed. 

• On the COMM homepage
  • write your bio + brief course description, and create a welcome video for the "start here" page
  • do not change any links or page names associated with the Home Page Template
  • DO run the link validator check (can be done when going through the checklist mentioned below)
• determine the schedule on which you want assignments completed. 
  • add assignment due dates to ALL assignments + discussions. This also adds them to the calendar. 
    • Consider a realistic schedule for offering feedback on the various stages of the project 
  • For information pages or examples you want students to read, you an select "add to student to-do" in the edit function for the page, which will ask for a date. This also adds them to the student calendar. 
  • Make due dates regular throughout the semester, it helps everyone plan ahead
  • I recommend a week for discussions: first initiative post due in Tuesday or Wednesday, a response or second initiative due Friday, all responses due Sunday night works well. Students are expected to post over 3 or more days of the week, spacing them out to actually have a discussion with one another, with time to reply to comments. 
    • You can only assign one "due date" for discussions, I suggest it be the first day posts are due

Create Course Announcements! 

This is big. WEEKLY ANNOUNCMENTS ARE REQUIRED. MORE OFTEN IS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED.  

At minimum, these should help students what's coming during the week. To achieve our collective goal of regular and substantive interaction for students, announcements  early in the week could list questions for students to have in mind when reading the textbook chapters, or previewing difficult content. Those later in the week could or reviewing difficult content, draw out themes from the week's discussion or reading responses, and/or previewing concepts introduced in the next unit.  

• Create a welcome announcement, letting folks know when the course starts. I usually also have a message ready for when students gain access to the course, a few days before it actually starts.   
  • Plan on making several announcements a week; particularly in the beginning, remind students when due date are imminent
  • it's good practice to set up an announcement for late Sunday or early Monday about what the week holds for them, helping students stay on track
  • You can also issue announcements with "how to's (such as embedding videos in discussion posts, if applicable to any assignments), current events, interesting finds related to class, etc. 
• Read over all assignment descriptions - does it all make sense? Adjust as needed; some of your voice should still appear in this course. 
• Read over all rubrics, confirm points.
• Are there any readings you'd like to substitute or add? What supporting material will they need? 

FYI

• In the navigation menu to the left, I have disabled student access to assignments, discussions, files, and quizzes - this helps ensure that students use the Modules page to access assignments, where there are embedded with resources and contextualized. 
• You can choose to reinstate these links. 

Planning for Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI)

As you plan, be aware that distance education courses, such as this one, have Department of Education requirements that we are required to meet. If you want to "go down the rabbit hole" of what this means, here you go; otherwise, in general this means that students must have regular and substantive interaction with peers, the course material, and the instructor, in an ongoing manner. What is RSI? This link explains it well and has a handy dandy chart about what "counts" for distance learning courses. In short, as of July 1, 2021, for interactions to be considered Regular and Substantive Interactions (RSI), they need to meet the following characteristics:

• They should be mostly instructor-initiated
• They need to be regular, scheduled and predictable, and
• They must be substantive, i.e. focused on the course subject.
  
  • To be "substantive," at last two of these five activities must be included in course modules: 
    1. providing direct instruction; (such as a lecture video or notes covering content that's also addressed in a unit activity or discussion)
    2. assessing or providing feedback on a student’s course work; (FYI: auto-graded quizzes don't count, but are still useful tools)
    3. providing information or responding to questions about the content course or competency; (FYI, non-course-content, such as talking about grad school options in office hours wouldn't count, but is still an important interaction for students) 
    4. facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course or competency; 
    5. or other instructional activities approved by the institution’s or program’s accrediting agency.