WRD 202 Class Visit
Course Observation--Beth Ann Bryant-Richards
WRD 202 (2/17/09)
Submitted by Melinda Turnley
I observed Beth Ann as she taught her 11:50-1:20 section
of WRD 202 in Lewis 1213; this was
the third class meeting of the second session of the term
. Prior to the class meeting, she
provided me with her course syllabus and schedule and
a copy of her career plan assignment. At
the time of my visit, students were working on their résumés
and career plans, which were due
during the next class meeting on February 19th. The activities
for the class period I visited
focused on peer review for this assignment, a quiz, and
a discussion of document design.
The class meeting on the whole was successful. The students
were actively engaged, and Beth
Ann managed time effectively. She maintained a good balance
among individual, group, and full
class work and did a good job of framing activities in
relation to programmatic and course goals.
Beth Ann was already in the room before class began and
comfortably talking with some of the
students about topics such as an upcoming internship fair.
She started class at 11:50 by taking
attendance and asking students if they had questions about
the assigned reading from Strunk and
White’s The Elements of Style before beginning their scheduled
quiz. One student asked about
who/whom usage, a topic which wasn’t in the assigned reading,
and another student asked about
semicolons. Though Strunk and White provide useful information
about grammar and style,
Beth Ann could consider also assigning a textbook that
also explicitly addresses rhetorical issues
related to workplace contexts.
After discussing students’ questions about the readings,
Beth Ann explained the procedures for
the quiz, the first one of the course. She asked students
to spread out with at least one seat
between them. Once students were re-situated, Beth Ann
handed out copies of the quiz, which
consisted of 21 questions plus extra credit. Eight of
the questioned focused on Strunk and
White’s backgrounds and the forward to the book; nine
questions focused on applying rules
about commas and possessives; two questions asked students
to rewrite sentences; and the last
two questions asked the students draw and label the rhetorical
triangle and define rhetoric. At
about 12:15, Beth Ann collected the quizzes and said that
she would return them graded during
the next class.
Beth Ann then transitioned to a discussion of document
design. She projected a PowerPoint
slide show on the screen that was devoted to issues of
typography, graphics, color, and page
layout. She did a nice job of contextualizing her introduction
of these issues in relation to
students work on their own résumés. In her introduction,
she suggested that design has nothing to
do with content, that it functions only as an enhancement
to how information is presented. To
underscore the significance of design, an alternate framing
could be useful. Instead of presenting
form as simply an add on to content, she could consider
how, in good design, form and content
are two sides of the same rhetorical coin, working together
to effectively communicate
information to particular audiences. Beth Ann, in fact,
implied this sort of contextualized
form/content relationship in her discussion by highlighting
issues such as cultural interpretations
of color. So, employing this framework would just be a
matter of emphasizing up front the ways
in which form and content are rhetorically embedded.
To reinforce concepts from her lecture, Beth Ann provided
examples of document design. She
passed around a mailer/flyer, a small poster, and the
DePaulia. For each artifact, she asked
students to discuss how they responded to its design,
considering both strengths and weaknesses.
After discussing these print-based genres, Beth Ann displayed
examples of poorly designed web
sites with distracting backgrounds and overly dense layouts.
To help students solidify their
understanding of design principles, having them participate
in an extended assessment of these
examples could be productive. For example, students could
work in small groups to apply
specific design concepts to one of the examples and then
share their findings with the class.
They could consider principles such as typography, graphics,
color, alignment, white space,
contrast, consistency, etc. Applying these ideas to examples
could help students develop their
design vocabularies and better apply these concepts to
their own compositions. Further,
discussing more explicitly how design choices vary across
media also could bolster students’
understandings of design.
At about 12:40, to finish up the discussion of document
design, Beth Ann referred back to the
previous class’s discussion of scannable résumés. She
directed students to resources on the
course Blackboard site that could assist them if they
needed to create unformatted versions of
their résumés. Additionally, she prompted students to
take out the hard copies of their résumés
which they had brought to class. She then asked students
to fold their résumés in half twice to
create visible quadrants on the page. Beth Ann presented
this as a useful method for assessing
the balance of their page layouts, emphasizing that the
most important information should go in
the top left-hand section.
Beth Ann then transitioned students into the peer review
portion of the class. She distributed a
peer response form from McGraw Hill to guide students
responses to their peers’ career plan
papers and directed students to write feedback directly
on the résumés. While pairs worked on
their peer responses, Beth Ann circulated providing feedback
on each student’s résumé. Through
the activity, students remained focused and worked quietly
on the assigned tasks. When students
asked for a clarification about the assignment instructions,
Beth Ann was attentive and quickly
responded. Beth Ann provided encouragement and constructive
suggestions regarding both form
and content when she spoke to the students sitting near
me.
Around 1:11, Beth Ann brought students’ attention back
to the full group. She quickly provided
students with a few pieces of information to help with
their résumés. She showed them how to
change the default margins in Microsoft Word, referred
them to resources about action verbs on
the Blackboard site, and cautioned about posting personal
information in online résumés. She
then projected ahead to Thursday’s class, reminding students
that the final drafts of their career
plans and résumés would be due. She offered to provide
additional feedback on students’
résumés via email prior to this deadline. She dismissed
the class a little early at 1:15 but
continued to answer questions from individual students
as the group began to pack up and leave.
As I indicated above, overall the class went well. Beth
Ann had a good rapport with students and
remained on task. The topics for the meeting were effectively
focused on résumé development
and reflective of goals for WRD 202. The suggestions discussed
above, therefore, are framed as
enhancements to an already well-focused approach.