This site is a beta for an collaborative reading/LMS that I would like to use for my English 120 (Expository Writing) classes in Fall 2014. My goal is to set it up on the Academic Commons and play with it, and if it works out, export it to a WordPress site that my undergraduate students can access.

On the live site, this page would be the welcome page and would contain (perhaps) the general description and course goals from my syllabus. Perhaps. But maybe not: I might choose to welcome people to the site with my goals for how I want them to use it.

What I want is for my students to collectively annotate and respond to readings I assign, upload their own follow-up readings, and collectively annotate those as well. Different students will be assigned different annotation roles and responsibilities, following the model of Literature Circles. Over the course of the semester, roles will rotate. I envision one student briefly summing up paragraphs, another identifying and defining key words, one marking how a reading uses its sources (ideally following Joe Bizup’s BEAM schema), and another doing a little background research to make the text more intelligible. When different students have different responsibilities, they not only can pool their knowledge, they are more likely to feel a sense of responsibility to each other and, therefore, do the work. (Or so the Literature Circle theory goes.)

Again following the model of Literature Circles, groups will coalesce around a shared interest, dissolve, and reform around a new interest as we move from unit to unit. In my ideal world, students will add new reading (and visual) material that branches off the readings I assign in ways that interest them.

The goal is to leverage the asynchronous, collaborative nature of a blog to promote participatory and collaborative reading, researching, and even course development. I want my students to feel invested in the course material since they will be providing some of it, and to feel invested in each other since they will be working and making decisions together.