Memorandum

To:

Dr. Ryan Boettger

From: Cristina Marban

Date: 3 November 2015
Re:

Classroom Observation Report

I interviewed Kaitlyn Stockton, a teaching fellow who teaches TECM 2700, a technical writing
course at the University of North Texas on September 28. Then, I observed her 3:30-4:50pm
TECM 2700 class on October 1st. Ms. Stockton taught her students the principles of design and
how to design reader-focused documents and graphics on October 1st. Finally, the following
report summarizes the interview I did with Ms. Stockton and my classroom observation on how
her students responded to her lecture on the principles of design.

September 28 Teacher Interview

I interviewed Kaitlyn Stockton on Monday September 28 at 11:30am. Ms. Stockton is 23 years
old and she is from Oklahoma. She has been a teaching fellow for two years and has been
teaching TECM 2700 for a year and a few months. Even though, she does not know what her
teaching style is yet, she states that she likes to make her assignments fun and likes to include
pop culture that is related to her lessons. For example, she let her students pick a topic that is
important to them for their proposal assignment; for the design assignment she will let her
students create a design project related to their field of interest, job, sorority, etc. As a teaching
fellow she receives a lot of help from Dr. Simms who helps organize the whole syllabus for all
the teaching fellows and Dr. Jackson helps the teaching fellows by giving them power points and
assignments that she created for the different teaching lessons. Also, Ms. Stockton likes to create
fun activities and assignments for her students a few days before her class meets, so they wont
get bored after a long lecture. On Thursday October 1st I will observe her 3:30- 4:50pm TECM
2700 class. She has 28 students in her class, 17 are men and 11 are women. Most of her students
are freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors who forgot to take the course. They are between
the ages of 19- 27. A small number of her students are international students, but most of them
are American. I asked Ms. Stockton if the different cultures affected the class and she told me
that in the style lesson they teach you to watch out for different cultures and she had to change
her style exam because she had a few international students who might not know any American
idioms so she did not include any idioms in the exam, so it would not affect them.

October 1st Class Observation

Kaitlyn Stocktons 3:30-4:50pm TECM 2700 class is located in the auditorium building in room
308. To gain entrance to the room, you have to enter the technical communication computer lab.
Room 308 is on the left side of the lab room and the entrance of the room is made of glass, so
anyone can see what is going on in the classroom. Also, the room contains 28 computers for
students, a technology podium for the teacher, and a projector is located in the front of the

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classroom. Finally, what Ms. Stockton scheduled to teach on October 1st did follow the schedule
of the syllabus she emailed me a day before the classroom observation.
Only 24 students came to class, 17 young men and seven young women. Furthermore, Ms.
Stockton began her class orientation in a friendly manner by explaining what she was going to
teach them. First, she told them that the lesson would be almost a one hour lecture because she
had to introduce them to the principles of design and their design case study assignment.
Moreover, she also explained to her students what they were going to do on next Tuesday and
Thursday. For example, Ms. Stockton told her students that they have to have to email her the
document they picked for the design case by Tuesday October 6, or come by to her office during
her office hours to give her their flyer and that she will be give them a tutorial on how to print
their design case assignment in color when they receive their color copy card. Most of all, Ms.
Stockton told her students to come to class on Thursday October 8 because it would be workshop
day and they will be able to work on their design case study. At the end, she asked the class if
they had any questions about the class schedule, but no one had any questions. During the
orientation some of the students, especially in the back of the room were looking at their cell
phones and one of the students phones rang twice, but this did not seem to distract the students
from paying attention to what Ms. Stockton was saying.
After the five minute orientation, Ms. Stockton started the one hour lecture on the principals of
design by showing them the design study case assignment and the evaluation on the projector.
Primarily, the control of the patterns of classroom communication that Ms. Stockton applied to
her classroom was the IRE structure. The IRE structure is the most basic structure of classroom
talk that includes a sequence of acts called the initiation act, a response act, and an evaluation act
in which the teacher asks a question to the students about the lesson, then a student responds an
answer to the teacher, and the teacher evaluates that response whether its correct or wrong. For
example, during the lecture Ms. Stockton explained to the students that they would have to
improve and redesign a bad flyer, or information document. Also, she told them that she will
upload three different samples of badly designed flyers on Blackboard, so they can pick one for
their design case study project. Furthermore, Ms. Stockton told her students that they can pick a
flyer, brochure, etc related to their field, job, sorority, and their other life interests if they do not
want to use the samples she uploads to Blackboard, but she will have to approve the document
they pick to observe if it is a badly design document and if its school appropriate. In addition,
Ms. Stockton told the students that they will have to write a one page memo about what design
changes they made on their flyer, brochure, etc. Subsequently, she told the students not to design
yet because she has not taught them how to do it yet. After, Ms. Stockton finished explaining the
design study case; only one person responded by asking a question about the assignment. Next,
Ms. Stockton showed bad examples of poorly designed brochures, etc from last semesters
TECM 2700 class and she told her students the grades the documents got, so they can see how
not to design a document. She also showed her students the design case study document she
redesigned when she took TECM 2700 so the students can get a better visualization of what she
is looking for in the design study case. Even though, the students had fun responding to Ms.
Stocktons questions about the bad samples of badly designed leaflets she showed them, some
students were looking at their phones instead of paying attention to the lecture, one of the
students phone rang twice, and one student came to class late at 3:50pm. Finally, Ms. Stockton
asked the student if they had any questions about, but nobody asked any questions so she moved
on to the next topic of the lecture.
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The next part of the lecture was about the principles of design and Ms. Stockton used the IRE
structure again to control the communication of her classroom. For instance, she asked her
students what are the principles of design? None of the students responded to the question, but
Ms.Stockton said that she asked them this question because they should have read chapter 10
before class which is about the principles of design in Brenda Simms textbook Technical
Communication. After that a few student answered her question. Therefore, Ms. Stockton used
the drafting (cold calling) initiation scaffolding elicitation to call out students if they knew the
principles of design because they were not responding to her questions. Although she seemed to
ask the students that were participating beforehand, or were attentive during that part of the
lecture. Then, Ms. Stockton explained the CRAP (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity)
model to her students along with examples that she demonstrated on the projector. Some of the
examples Ms. Stockton showed her students were related to todays pop culture, like a black,
white, and red ad from the TV show Mad Men and the font and color of the TV show The Big
Bang Theory. Next, Ms. Stockton asked her students questions related to the CRAP model like
What is contrast?, What is repetition?, What is repetition?, What is alignment?, and
What is proximity? as she showed them examples of good and bad flyers about the principles
of design and many students answered her questions because the examples of the bad flyers
were funny. Most of all, Ms. Stockton discussed style sheets with her class for the design study
case. During this part of the lecture most of the students were listening to her lecture, but a few
students were taking notes on the computer and their journals. Above all, Ms.Stockton told her
students what fonts to use and not use on flyers, manuals, and brochures while showing
examples of them. In addition, she told her students not to use underlining, shadowing, clipart,
and to not put all letters in uppercase on their design study case. Ms. Stockton clarified what is a
good and bad example of whitespace. Moreover, Ms. Stockton showed the students a tool called
Adobe Color that they can use for their design study case and she reminded them to always
consider the different cultures of people and audience when they are designing and writing
diverse information documents. Finally, the lecture ended at 4:10pm.
The group activity began at 4:15pm and lasted ten minutes. Ms. Stockton told her students to get
into groups of four and she told them that she would walk around to each group to assign them
the flyer they will evaluate and talk about what improvements the flyer needs. All of the flyers
were located on the scratch drive of each computer. Most of the students teamed up with their
friends, or with whoever was closest to their seat. The students did seem to enjoy working with
each other; they liked making fun of the real badly designed flyers while Ms. Stockton walked
around the room to guide and observe them. However, some of the groups just listened to 1 or 2
students comments about the flyer and agreed with them. After, the group activity ended, the
class quieted down and the students returned to their seats. Moreover, Ms. Stockton returned to
her podium and asked each group what design principles did their document follow and did not
follow. Finally, the class ended at 4:38pm instead of 4:50pm and Ms. Stockton told me she
ended her class early because she did not have anything else to teach her students.

Reflection on Class Observation

Kaitlyn Stockton lectured most of her lesson plan sitting in the front of the podium while
explaining to her students what was on the projector. However, I think she should have walked
around the classroom while lecturing so she could observe better what her students were doing
because some of her students were just looking at their phones or were not paying attention. For
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example, Ms. Stockton could have walked around the middle of the classroom while she was
lecturing because there was enough space and the computers were located along the walls of the
classroom and in the back of the classroom. Foremost, Ms. Stockton would have been able to see
if her students were following her cell-phone-free zone classroom policy and paying attention to
her lecture, or not. I believe that Ms. Stockton did not move around the classroom when she was
presenting the lecture to her students because she had to present different documents and
PowerPoint presentations on the different topics of the principles of design on the projector from
her computer so her students could visualize more thoroughly what she was trying to teach them.
Also, maybe Ms. Stockton does not know how movement is an important control pattern for a
teacher to include in his/her classroom because she still does not have a lot of experience in
teaching which answers why she could not tell me what her teaching style was when I
interviewed her. Furthermore, I did like how she brought pop culture into her lecture because it
made the students excited about the lesson and they participated more on the discussion of the
principles of design. During the lecture, the majority of Ms. Stocktons teaching control of the
patterns of classroom communication was the IRE structure (initiation, response, and evaluation)
because her teaching lesson that day was about an hour lecture on the principles on design. For
example, she asked her students questions about what they were learning during the lecture to
see if her students understood what they read in the textbook before class and what they were
learning in class. Most of the students answered her questions and she evaluated their answers by
saying good if the response was correct, or she would rephrase a question if the response was
incorrect instead of telling the student his/her answer was wrong. Above all, I liked how Ms.
Stockton repeated to her students to remember what not to do and what to do when they start
redesigning their design study case assignments because the information will stay with them, or I
guess maybe some of her students will ignore her advice because she keeps telling them what to
do since they are young students. After the lecture, I liked how Ms. Stockton included a group
activity for her students after the lecture because they would be able to apply what they learned
in the lecture in the group activity, they will learn the different point of views their partners have
on the principles of design, and they would improve their problem solving skills.
/cm

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