Teaching the Teachers: Integrating LMS Training into Graduate Writing Pedagogy

The Program

Apr 25

Written By

David Blackmore, Ph.D.
English & Writing Coordinator

Project Overview

ENG515, Teaching Writing, prepares teaching fellows and other MFA-Creative Writing students how to teach different types of writing courses, including academic and creative writing, in various higher education contexts.

The course explores pedagogical theory in diverse forms but also prepares students in a very practical manner to teach real courses. In particular, the course prepares teaching fellows and other MFA students to teach ENG 105, First-Year Writing, at Chatham. Many alumni of the MFA program also end up teaching academic and/or creative writing courses at other colleges and universities.

Students enrolled in the class develop a teaching portfolio over the course of the semester, either for ENG105 or for another writing course that they choose. In its previous configuration, this portfolio included a course syllabus with course thematic focus chosen by the student, guidelines and rubrics for major assignments, lesson plans and teaching demos for individual lessons, and a teaching philosophy statement.

The biggest hole in the practical training that we provided to students in ENG515 was that we did not train them in the use of Brightspace or any other LMS. Since LMS are used in almost every higher ed. teaching context, the goal was to incorporate LMS training into the ENG515 course.

Planning Process

My plan was to pilot basic LMS training in the Fall 2024 semester with the goal of more complex and more fully integrated LMS training in the Fall 2025 semester. I would use sandbox Brightspace shells provided by IT for each student and help them develop the core elements of a Brightspace course for a writing course, including Simple Syllabus, module structure, assignments, grading, etc.

This training would work toward achieving the following course learning outcomes:

Successfully create the materials needed to teach ENG105 or another writing class at Chatham or elsewhere, including a theme-specific syllabus, reading/materials list, lesson plans, and evaluation rubrics.
Demonstrate knowledge of the theory and practice of teaching writing.
Create a professional portfolio suitable for use in an academic job search.

Discussions of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and equity inform everything we do in this class, since I want to make sure that we are training teachers who will empower all of their students. This includes neurodivergent students and students from various disenfranchised groups, especially BIPOC and queer students. So the goal was to make sure that students’ Brightspace sandboxes would equitably serve a diverse range of students.

I used a mix of SAMR and Bloom’s models of integration in planning the these activities, with an emphasis on the more advanced learning categories in each model, since this is a graduate course and because it is teaching the art and science of teaching. One example of more advanced SAMR learning would be the students in the class learning LMS skills beyond those I am familiar with and teaching those new skills to me and the rest of the class.

Implementation

I took some first steps on this project in the Fall 2024 section of ENG515. I worked with IT to get each student a generic Brightspace sandbox and invited Lauren to the class to provide a workshop on the basics of Brightspace development. From there, I guided students through the creation of a Simple Syllabus, weekly modules, assignment guidelines, and Turnitin assignment portals for their proposed courses. I did not add any new assignments for the course, but I did change the modality of some assignments, asking students to submit them within their own Brightspace sandboxes.

My plan for the Fall 2025 section is to integrate LMS training right from the start of the semester, having students build every element of their proposed course into their Brightspace sandbox shells. This time, I will work with IT to ensure that the Simple Syllabus template within these sandboxes is the ENG105 template. I will teach the same basics as last time but also devote more attention to additional LMS skills, especially those related to assessment. For example, students will provide feedback on and grade sample undergraduate work and will set up the grade book to reflect the assignments they have designed.

Another goal for the Fall 2025 semester is to develop robust strategies for assessing student work within the Brightspace sandboxes. At Lauren and Becky’s suggestion, I hope to explore some form of video-based assessment, perhaps using YuJa to provide video feedback on students’ sandboxes.

Assessment

So far most of my assessment has been informal. Because the ENG515 section was so small in Fall 2024 (3 students total), it was easy to engage the class in regular discussions about how the LMS training was going and where students felt they needed more guidance or practice. This was formative assessment over the course of the semester.

In terms of summative assessment, I was able at the end of the semester to review each student’s Brightspace sandbox and evaluate what skills students had learned and what they still needed to learn.

I was able to follow up on this assessment during the Spring 2025 semester at the weekly meetings of the ENG105 teaching circle, made up of ENG105 instructors and tutors. Graduate instructors, all of whom have taken ENG515 in the past, are required to attend and participate actively, and I regularly checked in with them about holes in the LMS training I had provided them in the 515 course and solicited suggestions about what I should teach in the Fall 2025 section of Teaching Writing.

In next fal’sl section, I plan to incorporate some more formal assessment, including adding questions about LMS training to the mid-semester and end-of-semester course reflection surveys that I ask students to complete. I also plan to develop a rubric of some sort to evaluate students’ work within their Brightspace sandboxes.

Reflections and Next Steps

Students who took ENG515 in Fall 2024 agreed that the basic LMS training I provided was helpful, but now as practicing ENG105 instructors they have some important suggestions about how I can deepen that training. The most significant changes will be developing an ENG105-specific sandbox template and teaching all aspects of grading and assessment.

In 2024, I struggled with how to provide feedback to students on the work they did within their sandboxes and tried several methods, none of which was especially effective. For the Fall 2025 section, I will develop rubrics for work students do within their sandboxes and experiment with video-based assessment and grading of that work.

I also want to think more deeply about the LMS as a tool for larger instructional design and hope to work closely with Lauren and Becky on this, since they both have great interest and expertise in instructional design.