Christopher Simpson

Hanging with MLA: A Webinar Experiment

Slides

Christopher Simpson
Library Specialist, UT Arlington

My PLC project “Hanging with MLA: a webinar experiment” sought to address the question of whether there was a need for webinars devoted to helping students identify and correctly cite sources in MLA citation. I utilized Google’s Hangouts streaming video service as the hosting platform for a series of three webinars where I presented on MLA citation methods using Google Slides and Sheets. In the course of these webinars students would correctly identify different types of sources, correctly cite them in MLA format, and then participate in a Q & A session. In the conclusion to my project presentation I outline the three most important things I learned from this webinar experiment and what direction I hope to take my future efforts in synchronous learning.

Christopher Simpson is a Library Specialist with the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. He graduated with his Master’s Degree in English from UT Arlington in 2015 with a research focus on racial representation and national narratives in video games. His other research interests include 19th century British and American literature, science fiction and fantasy literature, and postcolonial theory. As a Library Specialist with the User Engagement and Services, Christopher assists students in utilizing library resources and services. He is currently working on projects to improve library services through synchronous technology and teaching methods.

 

  • Peggy Semingson

    Chris

    Great job! Congrats on finishing up your Master’s degree in English in 2015! That’s great. Your reasons for using Google Hangouts for familiarity was a good one. I should use Google Docs/Sheets for resources from the webinar.

    You provided a lot of resources to the students who attended the webinar. It’s nice you could offer outreach to the distance ed students. I think outreach to our online students in needed, in general. How long was your webinar? I would like to know more about the length and the format/content of the webinar.

    Thanks for sharing. Good job!

    -Peggy

    • Christopher Simpson

      Peggy,

      I planned for an hour for each webinar, but sometimes, depending on technical issues, the webinars would need an hour and 15 minutes or an hour and a half. The format of the webinars would begin with an introduction of myself and a bit about MLA. I would often ask a bit about their familiarity with MLA. This helped give me a bit of an idea of which areas of MLA citation I needed to focus on. Since my presentation was based on the seminars we do in the library there is a bit of presupposition that students will have some experience with the citation style. I wanted to correct a bit if that assumption was wrong.

      I mostly had the progression of the webinar closely tied in with my Slides presentation. I tried to ask a lot of questions in the course of the webinar and since it is based on an an-person seminar, it is designed to get student feedback. The format I did was based on exploring the sources together and after allowing them to attempt correctly citing them, going over the correct citation and how they may have differed from similar sources.

      I would have the Q & A session after I showed them additional resources, particularly after I took them to the Purdue OWL page. I held it there because while my webinar focused on the MLA citation one would do for a Works Cited Page, most of my students had questions about in-text citation. The OWL is a gold mine for helping to answer those kinds of questions.

      • Peggy Semingson

        I really love the OWL site for writing and for citation!

  • Kiva Harper

    I love this Chris. Our online students don’t always have the benefits of the resources offered f2f on campus. This could be helpful for our social work students as well.

    • Peggy Semingson

      I love anything that can help our online students. Great thought! 🙂

  • Karabi

    Chris - Wonderful resource for students. If you could have a shorter version say about 5-6 mins, that would work great for our online students - I could then paste the link to this video tutorial on Blackboard. Also, are you planning to have a tutorial for APA style as well? I would prefer UTA folks providing such resources over other folks 🙂 Thank you.

    • Christopher Simpson

      I could make a shorter version. I will keep in contact with you on that. An APA tutorial is something I’m hoping to get working on. When that becomes closer to being a reality I will let the Nursing department know.

      • Peggy Semingson

        APA tutorial would be great! We use APA in College of Education, too! 🙂

    • Jiyoon Yoon

      Please share the short versions of video tutorial with me~
      I love to participate in your webinars!! Great job in helping students to use the resources with the webinars~

  • Karabi

    Oh..forgot to mention - it would be a great resource for instructors and researchers at UTA too. Thanks!

  • Denise Cauble

    Thanks Chris! I am just learning more about Google features and think that these can be integrated into course assignments. I have just been a little reticent about using technology outside of Blackboard. I need to “let it go”!