I've been trying to figure out how to work grammar into my summer course. The way I do it during the semester is to include a mini-lesson every week--when I know I'm going to come up a bit short on my lesson plan for the day, I take 5-10 minutes to teach a simple grammar/revision rule or trick. I'm not quite sure how to do this online. I love the idea of having 6 modules for 6 weeks; it makes a part of me incredibly happy--the same part of me that loves to pack a car, I think. But with such singular modules, how do you fit in the extra stuff--if I wanted to stretch the car packing metaphor precariously thin, I could ask: Where does the oddly shaped _____ fit?
(The only think I could think of for that blank was "Bag of Hangers", which is not something I usually pack into cars, but something that I once had to pack into an already full car that caused great distress for the compartmentalizing section of my brain.)
So could I use 5 modules that build on one another, with a sixth module running concurrently throughout the entire course? Like a free radical module? I'm thinking about a module stacked with grammar and revision advice that I encourage the students to work through on their own time, bit by bit, that will be assessed in its entirety at the end of the course as part of the final. I'm imagining a quick lesson followed by a quiz that they can take multiple times if they'd like. And maybe 10-12 lessons. So if they want, they can do 2 a week. Or they can do 6 one week and then take a couple weeks off.
This would work, right?
I like the concept of a "plus one" module, Luke. It seems to provide the same "feel" as the place of grammar in the face-to-face course. The biggest difference I see is that in the f2f course, you are taking care to spread it over the whole course but in the "plus one" you are allowing students to complete it whenever they want. Speaking from experience, I would probably cram it all in at the end. If that is a productive learning method for this material, go with it. But making it self-paced seems to give this content a much different role than it had in the f2f class. Have you considered putting a few of these lessons in each module, similar to the way Dave did our "Tech Tool" part of BOLT?
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