Some overall observations that we can use in class on Tuesday:
Why is it so hard to live up to our pedagogies?
The concept of “engagement” — a couple of you used that term, and it’s a very timely concept. A good way to think about engagement: the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that instructors can inspire and that students can reveal.
Audiences for student writing: if you want to encourage students to think about writing for someone other than the teacher — other students, say, or legislators, or local government officials, or business associates — you can encourage that in longer projects where the audience can be flexible. This wouldn’t work with many of your shorter scaffolding projects but can for longer ones.
The extent to which you want to distinguish between F2F and online courses and assignments. On the one hand, a good assignment is a good assignment, no matter the mode — i.e., Warnock’s “migration.” On the other hand, depending on the audience for your work, readers might have in the backs of their minds, “what makes this an online course component?”
Assignment Design: how much or how little do you want to situate and contextualize the assignment for students via headnotes?