This document summarizes an online science fiction and fantasy course taught collaboratively using Sakai tools. It describes how the course was developed over time through collaboration between instructors. It highlights the use of forums, quizzes, lectures, and a wiki to promote student interaction and collaboration around speculative fiction concepts. The success of the course wiki led to the creation of an ongoing community wiki for speculative fiction.

1. Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Interaction and Collaboration
Karen Swenson
Associate Professor of English
Virginia Tech
June 2010

2. English 1654: Introduction to
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Online
80 Students
15 Weeks

3. English 1654: Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy
In this reading-intensive, online course, students will:
• think about important issues presented to us through works
of speculative fiction -
• definitions of good and evil,
• self and alien,
• science and nature,
• human and machine,
• human and monster,
• exploitation and collaboration -
• consider definitions of human experience and potential,
• demonstrate knowledge through weekly quizzes.
• share ideas in a discussion forum & a speculative fiction wiki.
11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010 3

4. Collaborative Development
• Summer 2009
• Karen Swenson takes Faculty
Development workshop on Sakai
tools
• Fall 2009
• Swenson uses wiki and other Sakai tools in her courses
• Susan Hagedorn and Cheryl Ruggiero collaboratively teach an online speculative fiction course
• November 2009
• Hagedorn, Ruggiero, and Swenson form collaboration to share skills and resources in order to
develop this course
• Spring 2010
• This course is offered through Scholar, enhanced by the wiki and other Sakai tools
• Continuing
• This work continues as educators and students work together, collaborating with IDDL
(Institute of Distance and Distributed Learning) and OCS (Online Course Systems) and others
from different parts of campus. Interest grows. Randy Patton is adapting this for a six-week
summer session. Aaron Bond, Amber D. Evans, and Marc Zaldivar are exploring possibilities.
11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010 4

5. Learning Objectives and Course Goals
• Aristotelian (Specific): Students will
• learn to identify major periods in the history of speculative fiction
• read significant authors from a variety of types of speculative fiction
• learn to define significant sub-genres of speculative fiction
• become familiar with a wide range of texts and movies defining this genre
• develop their critical reading skills
• become more adept at critical thinking
• become more experienced at collaborative writing.
• become more accustomed to considering a text within a cultural context
• Platonic (General): Through collaborative work, we will
• reconsider traditional concepts of "author" and of "self"
• suggest collaborative means of living with others
• learn to work together to create a better world
• encourage a sense of community
• encourage an awareness of the contributions of others
• become more accustomed to considering ourselves within a context
11th Sakai Conference - June 15-17, 2010 5

6. Multiple Tools
• I use multiple tools for interaction and
collaboration. Different tools support
different course goals. Tools allow specific
types of thinking and interacting.
• At the heart of this course is the writing of
students in the forums, chat room, and wiki.
They interact with one another, with
me, and with the tools that shape their
online environment.
• Student writing has meaning, power, and
significance in this course. Students are
shaping both their own words and the
words of others in order to create a web of
interconnected writings.

7. Home Page as Interaction:
Changing Central Panel & Regular Announcements
Maintain Focus on Time and Topic

8. Syllabus & Calendar
• Readily available in menu
• Attached to first announcement
• Organized in two-week units
• Explained & located in welcome
video
• Includes reading list, assignments,
contact information, and other
essential elements

9. Introductions
- Welcome Video - Principles of Community
- Meet-the-Class Forum - Polls
- Wiki Writers

10. Quizzes
• Open-book Some pools:
• Timed – 50 minutes
• 25 questions
• Quizzes encourage
students to do the
assigned reading and
directly address the more
Aristotelian goals.
• Randomly drawing
questions from multiple
pools to create each quiz
decreases the chances
that any two students will
get the same set of
questions.

11. Weekly Lectures
Available through main menu
Use both images and words to present key concepts

12. • Meet-the-Class Forum
Forums •
•
Unit Discussion Forums
Poster Forum

13. Invitation to Wiki: Excerpts
We are doing this because a Wiki will allow us to
• interact with each other in a useful and
interesting way,
• share our knowledge and expertise with others,
• experience a new form of writing and a new
definition of “authorship” made possible by
technology,
• participate in a collaborative enterprise.
• learn from each other, and
• have fun together!

14. Wiki –
The Beginning

15. Wiki –
3 Months Later
• New list items
• Index
• Wiki Writers
• Rich Content

16. Chat Room -
Students Share Summaries of their Wiki Work with Everyone

17. Wiki Pages – Creating Infrastructure

18. Wiki Pages – Hypertext Essays

19. Wiki Pages – Image and Words

20. Wiki Pages – Web Resources & Bibliography

21. Wiki Pages – History of Collaboration

22. “Wiki Aliveness”
7 Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice
1. Design for evolution.
2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside
perspectives.
3. Invite different levels of participation.
4. Develop both public and private community spaces.
5. Focus on value.
6. Combine familiarity and excitement.
7. Create a rhythm for the community.
Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M.
Snyder http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2855.html

23. Wiki Development
The success of this course
wiki led to the creation of a
community wiki – the
Virginia Tech Speculative
Fiction wiki, around which is
growing a community of
practice.
The community wiki allows
student work and its value to
continue beyond the
boundaries of the semester
or the course.
“Play Well and Prosper”

24. Teaching this Class
while
Applying for the Sakai Award
• An immersion that leads me to define my research as online community,
• Developing a network of partners and associates with overlapping interests
• Exploring outreach to both on-campus and off-campus groups, the larger
community, including students from K-12
• Development and growth of our fledgling community site
• Development and growth of our individual course sites
• Development and growth of our instructors’ shared resources
• Beginning the grant-writing process
• Ask questions about structuring online collaborative teaching,
• Consider how software options influence not only how but also what we
learn, and
• Practice as a community member.
• The focus of my academic work has changed.
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25. Thank You
Collaborative work allows us to:
• reconsider traditional concepts of "author" and of "self”
• suggest collaborative means of living with others
• learn to work together to create a better world
• encourage a sense of community
• encourage an awareness of the contributions of others
• become more accustomed to considering ourselves
within a context
Karen Swenson <karens@vt.edu>
Associate Professor of English
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24060