Episode 4 finds us in conversation with Thomas Sciarrino, Director of Instructional Technology and Media Services. He and his team work hard to maintain the classroom spaces across campus and the technology needs of every member of the community. In this episode we talked about the ways in which the traditional classroom meets online and digital technologies.
One of my favorite moments from our conversation was when Tom reflected upon how his team brings the digital to the physical lecture halls: “So it’s not an afterthought. It’s not, if a faculty member is annotating slides on the boards in the front of the room. They can go ahead and share that. As we look forward here at Muhlenberg, everything has a digital component to it, the physical in class.”
Welcome back for our third episode of Making Meaning! In this episode we talk about Muhlenberg’s Graduate and Continuing Education with Instructional Designer Lynn D’Angelo-Bello. What I love most about this episode is hearing Lynn look to the future and the possibilities of hybrid programs as gateways to adult education at Muhlenberg. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
The next episode will be released on November 1st.
Making Meaning is a bi-weekly podcast created by Jordan Noyes and engineered by Tim Clarke. Recorded in an interview format, the podcast invites members of the Muhlenberg community to speak about the ways digital and online learning are growing and supported across campus. In our inaugural season we focus on the partnerships that make this work happen. You can expect to hear from the Dean for Digital Learning, students involved in supporting digital initiatives, GCE partners and more.
Over a year ago the instructional design team at Muhlenberg created a program called Camp Design Online. The goal was to provide a crash course in online pedagogy to every faculty, and many staff, as we prepared for a semester online. After an intense summer, more sessions in the fall and spring, we finally stopped to take stock of everything we had created and shared. This podcast is a reflection of that pause. As we move forward with new semesters and return to in person teaching we wanted to take a moment and honor the work that was done as Muhlenberg reacted to the COVID19 pandemic.
Without further ado, we present the first two episodes of Making Meaning, season 1. Podcast episodes will be released bi-weekly on Mondays at 9am.
This past June, I attended the Reclaim Roadshow, a two day staff development opportunity for folks who manage Domain of One’s Own at a college or university. Reclaim Hosting always puts on great conferences and workshops. Over two days I attended many remote presentations and breakouts full of useful how-to information and some great discussion of digital learning and digital pedagogy.
We did much of our engaging in the Discord application, which allowed me to work backward through breakouts I wasn’t able to attend. One of the more lively conversations concerned how Domains institutions like Muhlenberg might handle short- medium- and long-term preservation and archiving of student and faculty work on Domains. WordPress is far and away the most used application on Berg Builds at Muhlenberg, and we’re not unusual. But WordPress presents a particularly thorny question — how do you archive and preserve websites built with WordPress that depend upon a database and have a lot of moving parts, so to speak, regarding software and software dependencies?
WordPress, among other things, is a dynamically-generated web content management application that employs a relational database. So, to archive it and make it available in the future, one may need to archive the entire operating environment: the operating system, that relational database management system, WordPress software itself, and of course the content and configurations of a particular site, itself. This is a pretty complicated thing to do with assurance it will all work as desired in, say, five or more years into the future. This scenario also demands a pretty sizable amount of storage space and the archival object is really complex and dependent.
Let’s assume a future reader or visitor to an archived Domain site is primarily interested in the content of the site, and may be willing to sacrifice the digital or technological gestalt of engaging with a dynamic CMS like WordPress. A better approach might be to generate a static version of the WordPress site and store that for future access. What do I mean exactly? Well, essentially every access of a WordPress page or post is a call to a database that, in that moment, generates a version of that page for your browser. Visiting a single WordPress link might culminate after several queries of multiple data tables to pull words and images from associated records in those tables. What looks like a standard web page to visitors is actually a bunch of chunks of content stored within tables and served up when requested. In fact, you may have seen some WordPress posts depicted as record IDs in the URLs, themselves.
So, if I were to generate a static equivalent (a few interlinked .html, javascript, and css files) of that dynamic WordPress post, this archived thing would be (to a future reader):
nearly human-readable as markup files
much smaller with respect to storage of bytes, and compressible
organized hierarchically in nested folders
rendered more simply (maybe via a single index.html file in a future browser that works on old web pages)
These were the merits and demerits flying back and forth in that Discord channel during the Reclaim Roadshow. Folks also mentioned the power of reflective assessment for faculty who teach with domains and the benefit to future scholars of access to the volumes and volumes of student and faculty work that otherwise are likely lost forever.
Lots of folks in conversation came to this conclusion — generate flat files from a dynamic WordPress sites and store them. But what’s the best way? Several hd tried building crawlers, but that means writing scripts using some of the more arcane Unix/Linux tools like wget or cURL and then parsing streams with any of a dozen different libraries out there. Or perhaps automating the process using software like Site Sweeper, but when I tried this, I was mistaken for a crawler on our campus network and blocked by security software partway through extracting a WordPress site. Scraping the web is, as it sounds, painful.
In this fast and amazing conversation, Ed Beck from SUNY-Oneonta asked, “Why isn’t everyone just using the Simply Static plugin?” The what? OK, please tell us more…!
Simply Static is a really easy WordPress plugin that converts your WordPress site to a nested set of folders and files containing everything. Posts, pages, images, categories, tags, dates, links. All that stuff. And built to work as the public sees your site. The administrative backend of WordPress is gone. The site is frozen at the point of conversion. But it’s all there.
And with that, everything I had been struggling to do for years became easy and fast to accomplish. That crucial piece of information that one colleague had, and that others like me needed, was provided.
Below I walk through installing and using the Simply Static WordPress plugin to generate a snapshot static version of a WordPress site. Something suitable for storing into the future with a fair degree of certainty it will be accessible at that time, presuming we can parse the various file formats that comprise our web (HTML, CSS, JS, JPEG, PNG, and so on). Hopefully you’ll see how easy it is to use, and maybe try it out, too.
Installing Simply Static
Within your WordPress administration dashboard, click on Plugin, and then click Add New.
from the WordPress dashboard, select the Plugins option, and then select “Add New”
Search for the Plugin named, “Simply Static” and install it.
Search for Simply Static, then click “Install Now” and then “Activate”
You should notice a new menu option over on the left of your WordPress dashboard entitled, “Simply Static”. Here, you can configure the settings of the Simply Static plugin and generate a static version of your site.
There are a couple things to consider. First, if you merely want to create a usable archive of your site, you’ll likely want to select the option “save for offline use” when you generate a static version. This will give you a .ZIP archive that can be unzipped and navigated on your local drive as if it was your online wordpress site. Some features, like the search box widget, will not operate. But navigating the content of your site via menu links, hyperlinks, and category or tag links, will work perfectly.
On the other hand, if you wish to host on the web a fully functioning version of your WordPress site as a static site, you’ll need to decide if you want this static version to be accessible from its current web URL, or a different URL. Do you have a lot of visitors to your existing site? Is your site used mainly by your students, or are there others who may have bookmarked your site and continue to visit it? Is your site essentially complete in terms of its contents, or will it continue to grow and evolve in future iterations, perhaps when you teach the class again?
There is an option when generating a static version of a site to create either absolute or relative links. An absolute link incorporates the current fully formed domain name (for example, https://archive.diglearn.bergbuilds.domains/blog/ ). The internal links within your static site, any pages or posts or images hyperlinked within your static site, will prepend this fully formed URL to the link (for example, https://archive.diglearn.bergbuilds.domains/blog/resources/simply-static). This will only work properly if you place your static site generated by Simply Static, within the directory or folder currently housing your WordPress site. In other words, after generating your static site, you’ll need to remove AND replace your existing WordPress site.
Relative links work a bit differently. These are links that point to files relative to the site’s main directory. Put another way, Absolute links resolve by going out onto the web, looking up domain names and URLs via DNS, and resolving down to the area of a web server where these files reside. Relative links resolve by navigating the local file and folder hierarchy, relative to the top-most folder (or directory) of your website.
Think of it like this…there are two ways to get to your kitchen (at the rear of your house) from your couch in the living room (at the front of your house). The absolute path is to stand up, leave through the front door, walk around to the back door, and enter the kitchen. The relative path is to stand up, walk down the hallway connecting these rooms, and enter the kitchen. Absolute links are resolved, absolutely, using a specific, unique to the world web address. But relative links navigate a local file structure to, essentially, arrive at the same file or image.
To summarize, if you’re making a static copy of your WordPress site that will overwrite and answer to the same knock on the front door (the known URL to your site’s homepage), then you’ll want the option to use absolute URLs. However, if your static surrogate for your WordPress site will reside elsewhere on your server, you’ll likely want to choose the option to use relative URLs, and furthermore, you’ll want to reference in advance what these URLs are relative to. Put another way, you’ll need to know the folder or directory where your index.html file will reside, and put it into the Simply Static form field for the use relative URLs option.
The Destination URLs options within Simply Static’s settings. You’ll need to give some thought to where your static site’s files and folders will reside to choose the appropriate option.
In nearly every case, I’ve worked with ZIP file archives when generating static versions of my WordPress sites. Once you generate a ZIP archive, Simply Static will give you a link to click to download the ZIP file.
Advanced Options and Alternate Uses
There are more advanced options that can be configured when using Simply Static to exclude specific file types (for instance CSS) or specific directories (for instance, a bunch of stashed PDF files in /wp-content/uploads/documents/) as you generate your static site. I’m happy to work through these and why they might be useful, just let me know.
There are also other potential uses for static versions of sites generated with WordPress. If you would like to discuss this, explore, goof around, share ideas then please just reach out.
And you may have security concerns not addressed directly here but that a static version of a WordPress site could ameliorate. If you do, please let me know and we can work through them together.
Summary
Archiving student and faculty work within WordPress has presented challenges in the past. The Simply Static plugin makes it easy and fast to generate an off site archive of student work that takes up little space and that should operate far into the future. This presents, really for the first time, a feasible path to reflecting on or assessing past work (our own, our students, across programs and time) created with WordPress as part of Domain of One’s Own initiatives.
Simply Static is quick to learn and generates a compressed archive of files and directories from a dynamic WordPress site. This ZIP file, when expanded, works as a static website and can be a substitute for or snapshot of a site originally built in WordPress. Some possible advantages of a static site versus a database-dependent (e.g., dynamic) WordPress site include faster load time, decreased future maintenance of software updates and upgrades, a diminished attack surface, and use of fewer system resources like storage space and processing cycles.
Muhlenberg is heading towards the first ever Winter Term. Running for just 4 weeks, there will be 60+ courses running through the month of January. While some of our summer courses are condensed into 6 weeks, this term will see traditional 15 week courses converted into 4 weeks. Below is a video from our “Winter (Term) Wonder” conversation. Kelly Cannon, Melissa Dowd, and Lora Taub led our discussion about great design practices, pacing, and engagement in condensed courses. A special thanks to everyone who participated!
If you’d like to see a TL;DR of our session, check out the Winter (Term) Wonder one page document filled with the highlights of our conversation.
As always, please know that the Digital Learning team is available to collaborate throughout the Winter term. Our Digital Learning Assistants will also be available to work with students on any digital projects or technology you may be using in your course. Check out the student resource page to learn more!
Keri Colabroy is a Professor of Chemistry and Co-Director of the Biochemistry Program. She was an early pioneer of online learning at Muhlenberg and is well known for her work in Kitchen Chemistry. To hear more from Keri on humanizing “chemistry for all” check out her Golf Cart Pedagogy episode from Fall 2019.
This is our second postcard featuring Keri’s work. As a Digital Fellow, Keri has taught online summer courses for Muhlenberg helping to shape what online education looks like in the liberal arts. Her second postcard is a reflection on how the pandemic has shaped the online experience. You can read the first on teaching chemistry online here.
I’ve taught online before, in the summertime, in a non pandemic world. And while collaborative engagement around assignments is certainly an element of my summertime online course, I certainly do not use synchronous time in the same way. In a non-pandemic world, summertime students are maxed out with many obligations, for example many work jobs, and many are taking more than one class. But in this pandemic semester of online teaching and learning, I’ve observed my students craving togetherness. One of them remarked, ” it’s like all the fun has gone out of taking classes, and all we have is homework.” I wanted to use my synchronous time to put back the fun.
If I ever find myself in the situation again, before launching my course, I would take the time to reflect on how important it is to pursue goals and outcomes rather than content and assignments. I still want my classes to enjoy their learning, and not just endure it.
I still want my classes to enjoy their learning, and not just endure it.
– Keri colabroy
Postcards from Camp will be taking a break until the Spring semester. If you would like to contribute to the next series of postcards, please reach out to Jordan Noyes or another member of the Instructional Design team. A big thanks to everyone who has contributed so far!
Troy Dwyer is an acting-styles trainer whose areas of expertise include classical lyric performance (such as Shakespeare), the Absurd (such as Beckett) and contemporary realism (such as the methodologies of Sanford Meisner). Troy is a critical teaching focuses on queer theories and histories of performance as well as on specifically queer performance practices, such as drag performance.
When we transitioned to remote learning this past spring, my students were about to present graded Shakespeare monologues. Instead of performing their pieces live in real-time, I asked them to video-record and upload their performances to discussion threads on Canvas. Though I was seeking an organized way for students to provide one another performance feedback, there ended up being a major unexpected benefit to this approach.
For an in-person class, a student would normally have a single shot to execute their performance. However, because my remote students were submitting videos, they had the luxury of recording multiple “takes” in order to submit the recording they liked best. As a result, the final performances the students uploaded were STELLAR.
And as they re-shot and re-shot, they developed increasing fluency with the principles of the assignment – they got increasingly BETTER, all without my direct oversight.
troy dwyer
After the assignment, I learned that almost all of them videoed dozens of takes, and more than a few recorded 40 or 50 takes, or more. The level of engagement with the assignment was extremely high. They were able to analyze and critique their own work immediately by viewing each video take as soon as it was shot, and then re-shoot if they felt they hadn’t nailed particular feats on which they knew they’d be graded. And as they re-shot and re-shot, they developed increasing fluency with the principles of the assignment – they got increasingly BETTER, all without my direct oversight. Several even reached out to one another with the request to review takes, and tell them which they thought was the best, and why. That is, they were having detailed discussions about the course content, splitting hairs, sharing insights, and deepening their understanding – and I didn’t even know any of this was going on until after the assignment had concluded.
The level of self-challenge was much higher than anything I could’ve shepherded on my own, and it sparked wonderfully deep learning.
Bridgett Jackson is a Lecturer in the Theatre & Dance department focusing on voice and speech. She is a speech language pathologist, an accent couch, and a dialect coach. This is her first semester teaching at Muhlenberg College. Her postcard is a reflection on what she wishes she knew, what is going well, and what could be better.
The advice I would give myself at the beginning of the semester is, “take it week by week”! I felt so much pressure to put all of my content in Canvas before classes started, and that was unrealistic. It is wonderful to add content to Canvas as the discussions evolve during synchronous classes! During synchronous classes, I take time to check in with my students and find out how they are doing and what is going on with them. In addition, we discuss the readings and assignments they did on their own during the week. Each student has unique ideas and perspectives that are always valuable to everyone. The thing that makes me excited about online learning is the fact that most students participate in class in a comfortable space that allows them to be themselves while they learn and grow. The frustrating thing about online learning is the fact that we don’t have “in person” interactions in a classroom setting, which typically creates a more intimate learning environment.
I felt so much pressure to put all of my content in Canvas before classes started, and that was unrealistic
Bridgett jackson
One of my favorite moments with my students was when they announced the “Fish Project Play Festival” which was showcased on the Zoom platform. Almost every person in my class was in it, and they were so excited to do something creative despite the fact that they could not perform in person for a live audience! When they each shared about their particular projects and characters they were portraying, their faces were so bright and happy! I watched the festival and I was so proud to see them doing something they truly loved. I absolutely love teaching online and I am grateful for this unique experience.
Keri Colabroy is a Professor of Chemistry and Co-Director of the Biochemistry Program. She was an early pioneer of online learning at Muhlenberg and is well known for her work in Kitchen Chemistry. To hear more from Keri on humanizing “chemistry for all” check out her Golf Cart Pedagogy episode from Fall 2019.
I’m still surprised everyday, how much longer teaching and learning seems to take when we are separated like this. During the semester, I’ve really tried to rethink how I use my synchronous time. I didn’t want to use it as a digital version of what I would do in a face-to-face environment. Rather, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to co-create with my class. When we sign on together on Zoom, I want there to be dialogue between myself and students, and between students. I want us to build something that we can reflect on after our synchronous time is over, in a way that deepens our understanding and furthers our learning and our relationships. In practice, this has manifested itself as breakout room problem solving with synchronous Google docs that record our process, or as collaborative drafting of an outline, and then a paper.
I want us to build something that we can reflect on after our synchronous time is over, in a way that deepens our understanding and furthers our learning and our relationships
keri colabroy
Finally, in my wildest and craziest incarnation of collaborative co-creation, I staged a “reality show” version of my lab in which remote students tuned in weekly, in teams, to document what was happening, while collaboratively generating a record of the lab and interpreting the data. This “reality show” lab was an unprecedented merger of my individual research with my teaching, and it turned out to be incredibly fun and surprisingly satisfying. I only did it for 7 weeks, but the students were so sad when it was over.
Holly Cate, Associate Professor in Theater & Dance writes about her experience using Zoom Webinars to host student performances. In person, Holly had done these presentations on a stage that was covered with set pieces under construction for a show. The assignment was a low stakes experiment turned great success.
The performances went amazingly smoothly, and all told, between the two sections, almost 100 people were in attendance, which is actually pretty mind-blowing. There were prospective students there, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, alumni and of course current Muhlenberg students. The quote I put in the subject line here came from a parent at the conclusion of the presentations. Her full statement was:
“If it weren’t for Zoom, we’d wouldn’t be able to share this special moment with all of you! Boo COVID — YAY Zoom!”
-Muhlenberg parent
Friday was definitely a moment in which all of us – the actors, their friends and families, and me – felt one of the really strong pluses of being connected via Zoom. As Lora likes to say, “community is the curriculum”, and the community that came together via those webinars was pretty magical.
