4C17: Institutionalizing Community

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I’m presenting this week at CCCC 2017 in Portland, Oregon.

My first presentation is part of the panel “Reclaiming Community to Create Change in (and for) Higher Education” with Andrea Efthymiou, Lucas Corcoran, Jenn Fishman, and Laura Sceniak Matravers. You can find us in Thursday, March 16th from 1:45-3:00pm (session C23) in the Portland Ballroom 258. 

My presentation is “Institutionalizing Community in Higher Education and Writing Programs.” I’m examining several discourses of community currently circulating in higher education institutions, the institutional practices informed by these discourses, and potential partnerships with writing programs.

You can access my presentation slides and my presentation script.

Teaching Reflection: Professionalism Memos

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Every semester, I struggle with how I can fairly measure, assess, and reward student classroom engagement. “Participation” is a ubiquitous grading category on course syllabi, but as a student and instructor, participation has always felt like a way for instructors to reward students and penalize others based on often arbitrary, inconsistent standards. Reading critiques of participation from scholars like Margaret Price (have you read Mad at School yet? because you should) made me rethink participation from an accessibility standpoint. As an instructor deeply committed to creating positive classroom social dynamics and student learning, I value students’ various forms of classroom engagement. I want students to be aware of their classroom engagement and how it impacts their learning and their peers’ learning. For me, assigning a grade for participation at the end of the semester was not the best way for students to take control of their learning or for me to assess the various ways students engage in the course.

So this semester in my technical writing course, I am experimenting with professionalism. The concept of “professionalism” makes sense in the context of my class, which prepares students to write in professional contexts. However, I would also use “participation” as a framework in a different course.

Discussing Professionalism

I began the semester with a discussion about professionalism. In the first week of class, I assigned students a free-write for homework about professionalism using these prompts:

  • What does professionalism mean? How can we be professional in classroom environments?
  • What professional behaviors help you learn best?
  • What professional behaviors do you expect from classmates?
  • What professional behaviors do you expect from group members?
  • What professional behaviors do you expect from the instructor?

I also asked students to read “The Do’s and Don’ts of Professionalism in the Workplace” (Levo), “What Does Professionalism Look Like?” (Harvard Business Review), and  “You Call It Professionalism; I Call It Oppression in a Three-Piece Suit” (Everyday Feminism). These articles trouble the concept of professionalism, and in class I facilitate a discussion about how professional standards represent cultural values about identity (gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, ability, age, etc.) that are embodied. We also discuss differences in professionalism across cultures and contexts (for example, professionalism expectation differences in a start-up company vs a Fortune 500 company; differences across cultures if students have experience working in different communities or countries).

Establishing Professionalism Expectations

After we discussed professionalism as a class, we created a set of class standards for professionalism. I asked students to share their responses to the last 4 questions with group members and as a group to decide on at least 1 concrete action for each question. I created an open Google document, and students shared their group responses there. As a class, we reviewed each question response, clarified any vague actions (for example, what does “being prepared for class” entail?), and ultimately agreed on a set of classroom expectations. We also explicitly linked these behaviors to individual and peer learning, so we discussed how a classmate’s lack of preparation, such as not completing the reading or homework assignment, might impact other students in the class.

Reflecting on Professionalism Expectations

As part of the professionalism discussion, I’ve assigned midterm and end-of-semester professionalism reflection memos. The memo genre is part of technical writing, and students may be asked in the future to write performance evaluations, so these assignments align with larger course objectives. The memos ask students to reflect on the class expectations for professionalism and learning. Students use the class expectations to reflect on their own classroom learning behaviors to assess their professionalism. For the mid-term memo, I also asked students to consider how they can improve or sustain their professional behaviors to better facilitate their learning. The memos so far have demonstrated that students are critically thinking about how they can best engage with the course material to support their learning and their peers’ learning. For example, students have shared their different approaches to understand the course readings. They also share other ways they are engaging with the class material, such as by taking pictures on their smartphones of “technical writing in the wild.” These methods would normally not be visible in the daily activities of my class, but they demonstrate how students are using a variety of techniques to prepare for class and to take responsibility over the material.

So far the professionalism expectations and memos seem to be serving their intended purpose in my class; there are always unavoidable personal issues that complicate established standards, but for the most part, students are productively engaged in class. In the future, I would want to devote more time to discussing professionalism and learning in class; because of a packed course schedule, the “discussing” and “establishing” portions were limited to 30 minutes. I think this framework would be particularly appropriate in early undergraduate courses. Most of my students are juniors and seniors, and they already have a strong sense of how they learn best and what they need from their peers. I believe the professionalism/participation expectations and memos could be particularly useful for students early in their undergraduate careers who may still be learning how to learn especially when it comes to collaborative projects.

CWPA Presentation: Writing Program Administrators as Diversity Practitioners

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I’m presenting at the 2016 Council of Writing Program Administrators conference in Raleigh, NC. My co-presenter, Kay Halasek, and I are discussing “Writing Program Administrators as Diversity Practitioners: Assessing for Institutional Transformation.”

Our slides are available here, and our script is available here.

Computers & Writing Presentation: Reclaim the Comments

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I’m attending the 2016 Computers & Writing Conference in Rochester, NY. I’m presenting with Katherine DeLuca on Friday, May 20th, session A6 in Salerno 105. Our presentation is a workshop titled, “Producing Civic Action and Public Discourse from Online Communities.”

Our presentation website is accessible here.

The script for my presentation, “Reclaim the Comments: A Call for Technorhetoricians to Conserve Spaces of Online Public Discourse,” is downloadable here.

As a preview, here is one of the many troll drawings I created to illustrate the presentation:

An angry troll standing on a bridge

An angry troll standing on a bridge

Reading Reflection: Small Teaching

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Finished reading: Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning by James M. Lang (2016)

This year, I’ve been working as a graduate writing program administrator for the second-year writing program. It’s been a great opportunity for several reasons including supporting the teaching of graduate students and lecturers, participating in various administrative discussions about the role of the program in the larger department and university setting, designing and conducting an assessment of student learning in the course, and as a bonus, providing a structured time schedule so I can focus on writing my dissertation. However, the administrative appointment means I haven’t taught in the traditional sense since Spring 2015, and I’m anxiously awaiting the next time I get to work with a group of students. I miss teaching.

So when I saw social media posts about a new book, James M. Lang’s Small Teaching, I was interested in reading it both as a writing instructor and an administrator. As an instructor, I’m always trying to think of new ways to engage students in classroom content and to enhance their learning. As an administrator, I want to provide instructors with concrete strategies to help them become more effective and confident teachers.

The book develops Lang’s idea of small teaching: “an approach that seeks to spark positive changes in higher education through small but powerful modifications to our course design and teaching practices” (5). A relatively small change, whether it’s a 10 minute class activity or rephrasing a discussion question, can result in big learning. Lang presents a wide range of studies from teaching and learning scholarship that offers insight into how students learn best.

Small Teaching is organized into three major units: Knowledge, Understanding, and Inspiration. These broad units focus on how students learn course material (Knowledge), how students use course material in their thinking (Understanding), and how students think and feel about their learning (Inspiration).  The chapters in each unit focus on specific actions that have been shown to improve student learning. “Part I: Knowledge” contains chapters on “Retrieving”, “Predicting”, and “Interleaving”; “Part II: Understanding” focuses on the practices of “Connecting”, “Practicing,” and “Self-Explaining”; and “Part III: Inspiration” includes “Motivating”, “Growing”, and “Expanding”. Each chapter breaks down into the following sections:

  • In Theory: summaries of relevant studies and key findings
  • Models: descriptions of how the learning/teaching strategy can be implemented in a range of courses
  • Principles: the essential idea about why the learning/teaching strategy works
  • Quick Small Teaching: brief reminders and tips on how to incorporate the teaching strategy in class

The chapter structure is very effective for returning to the key points. I read the book straight through, thanks to the luxury of spring break, and I enjoyed reading Lang’s relatable personal introductions and examples, which he then connected back to studies on teaching and learning. There’s an extensive amount of information in the theory sections, including recommendations for further reading, which makes it easy to find more sources on a particular practice. But I know in the future I won’t have this same luxury of time, and the principles and quick small teaching sections provide quick refresh that would be useful when lesson planning or grading. Although it is possible to just skim the chapters and focus on the principles and quick small teaching sections, I would encourage readers to spend time on the theory sections. Incorporating the principles and suggestions from the quick small teaching sections into a class can facilitate immediate learning, but understanding why these relatively small strategies work by reading the theoretical section will probably improve teaching and learning in the long-term. Luckily, Lang’s writing is engaging and readable, so the book is entertaining and a relatively quick read. That’s not to say it’s a forgettable read; I know I will be reflecting on the strategies even though I’m not currently teaching, and I will be returning to this book when I do teach again.

As an instructor: From an instructor perspective, Lang’s suggested strategies are easy to incorporate into any course (humanities, STEM, performance, etc.) and can take as much time as you can spare in a class period, a unit, or a semester. I appreciated how the book made me reflect on what I’m asking students to do in my class. As a writing instructor, I tend to focus more on the “Understanding” actions (such as drawing connections, applying readings and experience to discussions or their own writing) and less on the “Knowledge” practices, like information retrieval, that are needed to apply concepts. For example, Lang makes the case for incorporating small, frequent opportunities to practice information retrieval through methods like reading quizzes or short written responses at the beginning or end of class. I almost never give reading quizzes to my students because I’ve previously thought about quizzes as punitive. After reading Lang’s explanation of how quizzes can be beneficial for learning, I see how I could build in short, low-stakes opportunities for students to practice information retrieval and help them learn more effectively and efficiently. Overall, I felt that Lang’s suggestions weren’t anything revolutionary, and that’s why this book is incredibly useful; as someone who has taken an active interest in developing active pedagogies, I’ve encountered most of his classroom strategies before. None of his suggestions are too difficult or too time or energy-consuming for instructors or students in any course. Instead, the most valuable part of Small Teaching was the focus on how these teaching strategies actually impact student learning. I know from teaching experience that asking students to free-write at the beginning of class is a way to facilitate more productive class discussions, but now I can articulate to myself and to my students why this practice is an effective way to help them learn.

As an administrator:  Small Teaching has made me consider how my program prepares graduate instructors and lecturers to teach. Although Small Teaching is focused on undergraduate learning, I’d be interested in applying some of the principles to our certification workshop that graduate students must take before teaching in the program. For example, many of the graduate students in the certification workshop do not have extensive exposure to rhetoric and composition scholarship, and some may have only taught for 1 semester before teaching in our program. In the short four-hour session, it’s difficult to achieve Knowledge, Understanding, and Inspiration, so what is the most effective use of our time to help instructors learn about pedagogy, writing studies content, and the course curriculum? I also believe that Small Teaching would be useful beyond the professional development workshop as a way to follow-up on teaching observations. Providing instructors with specific strategies from Small Teaching may help them in the short-term incorporate practices to better enhance student learning and their own confidence as instructors while also considering how they would want to foster student learning in future units or courses.

If you are interested in hearing more about Small Teaching or small teaching, check out James Lang’s articles on the first five minutes of class and the last five minutes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He was also a recent guest on the podcast Teaching in Higher Ed (episode here).

Conference on Community Writing Presentation

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I’m fortunate enough to be presenting a panel called “The Terms & Conditions for Community: The Role of Rhetoricians in Defining, Making, and Practicing Community” with Jonathan Bradshaw and Lori Beth De Hertogh at the Conference on Community Writing. My presentation, “Defining Our Terms, Defining Our Commitments: Cataloging the Uses of ‘Community’ in CCC” is based on my dissertation research. In this presentation, I offer a historical overview of the different uses of “community” in College Composition and Communication and suggest that writing studies practitioners need to be aware of these diverse uses in disciplinary and institutional settings.

The script of my presentation is available here or embedded below.

The PowerPoint presentation is available here or embedded below.

 

Women in Technical Communication Teaching Talk: Digital Rhetoric

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I’m facilitating a teaching talk today on digital rhetorics for Women in Technical Communication. Join our Google Hangout at 11am EST/10am CDT for a conversation on the what, the whys, and the hows of integrating digital rhetorics into classrooms.

Here are some of the questions and topics we’ll cover:

Session Goal Setting

  • As individuals and as a collective, what are our goals in discussing digital rhetorics? What do we want to happen from this session, and how will we make that happen?
  • As individuals and as a collective, what are our goals for digital rhetorics in our classes? What do we want to happen in our classes, and how will we make that happen?

Understanding Digital Rhetorics

  • As individuals and as a collective, what is our understanding of digital rhetorics? How are we defining it, what does it entail?

Teaching Digital Rhetorics: Setting Goals, Outcomes, and Means

  • What learning outcomes do we have for digital rhetorics?
  • What do we want students to know or do with digital rhetorics (both generally or within the learning objectives of a specific class)?
  • What are some digital rhetorics-related outcomes that you have incorporated into your class, and what would you share with others about that experience?
  • What are some ways that we can meet these learning objectives for digital rhetorics (again, within a specific class or generally)?
  • What do we as instructors need to know to successfully meet digital rhetorics learning outcomes?
  • What concerns do we have about incorporating digital rhetorics learning outcomes into our classes? What are we most looking forward to about incorporating digital rhetorics learning outcomes into our classes?
  • What resources are available to support instructors and/or students with these learning outcomes?
  • What resources do we still need in to meet these learning outcomes?
  • What are some means of incorporating digital rhetorics into your class have you employed before? What would you share with others about that experience?

 

I’ll be posting notes and resources from our discussion here after the chat.

Points of Interest from Discussion

  • How can we integrate digital rhetorics (including multimodal and visual rhetorics) into standard curriculum that we have no control over?
    • Consider how the digital rhetorics literacies/learning outcomes overlap with the learning outcomes for the curriculum to see if there are ways to meet the curriculum learning outcomes with a digital rhetoric approach
    • Consider integrating digital rhetorics into small-scale assignments or activities that scaffold the required curriculum/assignment sequence (for example: a rhetorical analysis or redesign of the university website can take 1 class session and develop skills students may need to complete the required assignments)
    • Don’t try to do too much at first; take a semester or two to figure out what students need and where digital rhetorics can included most effectively
  • How can we integrate digital rhetorics into low- to no-tech classroom spaces?
    • Drawing on Jody Shipka’s work, think about how multimodal composition can be brought into the classroom in no-tech ways
    • Have students doodle, draw, use Play-doh, etc. in class; these are no-tech ways to engage students in visual and multimodal rhetorics
  • How can we holistically assess digital rhetorics learning outcomes at multiple levels (individual, class, program)?
  • What digital rhetorics learning outcomes should we prioritize in semester-long classes when there are multiple sets of learning outcomes (such as professional writing, community partners, etc.)?

Resources

Assignments, Activities, and Syllabi:

  • “Starting an Epidemic: Producing Virality from a Rhetorical Framework” activity from Kaitlin Clinnin (includes activity prompt, instructor’s guide, and sample student work)
  • Arts of Persuasion: Rhetorics in Digital Culture syllabus from Kaitlin Clinnin (syllabus for an survey rhetoric course that included Aristotelian rhetoric and cultural rhetorics through a digital rhetorics framework)
  • Artist Statement prompt and video from Kaitlin Clinnin (based on Jody Shipka’s work)

Content

 

Do you have resources, suggestions, or thoughts about how to incorporate digital rhetorics into communication and composing classrooms? Please share and I’ll update this list.

Crowdsourced Resources for (Academic) Writing

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On the first day of all my classes, I tell my students that I hate to write. They stare at me, anxiously check their schedules to make sure they are in the correct classroom, and maybe a few pull up the online registration site to see if there are any open spaces in another class section with a “real” writing instructor. I tell my students this because so many of them arrive in my class damaged from years of being told that they are poor writers, or writing for them is a torturous experience which they take as a personal, moral failing that contributes to their identity as a “bad writer.” Breaking down conceptions about what writing is, how it is done, what it feels like, and who students are as writers is an ongoing process, one that we can only begin to work through in a relatively short fifteen weeks. I share my story because I want my students to know that we’re in this together; we’re all constantly learning about how to write, and maybe, hopefully, how to write well.

As someone who hates to write yet who teaches and researches writing and is generally considered a “good” writer, I’ve thought about why I dislike writing so. Generally it boils down to the inefficiency of my writing process and my own difficulty articulating my thoughts and voice in academic text. I have no problem writing a blog post, but writing an academic article or my dissertation is an exercise in inventing the university. I’ve noticed this especially as I work on my dissertation. I’ve been feeling bored as I’ve been writing up my findings from coding College Composition and Communication for the term “community”. The topic itself doesn’t bore me; when talking to my writing group, advisor, or really anyone who will listen, I get fired up about the issue and my findings, and (I think) I convey this passion about why this matters to my audience. I’m not finding that same passion as I write the text version.

So what does an academic do when she recognizes a problem? Research it! So I put out a call to Twitter and asked folks for their recommendations for readings about writing, specifically long projects. And as always, the amazing professional learning network on Twitter responded.Thanks to everyone for their suggestions! Here are the resources (both the people and the texts!):

I’m going to check out these resources and blog about my findings and progress. Just from the cursory glance at Amazon descriptions, it seems that most of these books address either how to write or how to write well. It will be interesting to see what advice is repeated, what sticks, and what just seems out there. As with all writing, the strategies may work for certain circumstances or individuals better than others, and a successful writing strategy will require practice and adaptation.

Defining Digital Pedagogy

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As a person who does research at the intersection of composition studies and digital media, digital technologies are often a focal point in my class. Almost all of the writing courses I’ve taught have featured technology as a theme, a subject of inquiry, or a methodology. My interest in writing and composing is inextricably linked to my interest in technology, how we as users write because of, with, or in spite of technology, how technology similarly writes narratives and pathways for users, how technology and users do not occupy not discrete, permanent positions of object and subject.

This is all to say that I think about digital pedagogy. I think about it a lot. In my appointment as the graduate coordinator for the second-year writing program, I am jointly responsible for training new instructors. I also oversee the hybrid version of the course. I think about why and how we (“we” at many levels including individual instructors, the writing program, the department, the profession) include technology and digital issues in composition classrooms, how we are training these instructors to use technology in their classroom, what resources we are providing instructors, what resources these instructors provide their students, what students are learning and retaining in their classes, etc.

As I’ve reflected on these critical questions as an instructor, an administrator, a hopeful future faculty member, I’ve decided (for the moment) that digital pedagogy isn’t really anything different from good pedagogy When we use the term digital pedagogy, what does the digital signify that is different from what we know about pedagogy? At its best, I think that digital pedagogy is just good pedagogy plus.

I understand pedagogy to be a practice of facilitating and enhancing student learning. My pedagogical practices for any class include setting course learning objectives and designing assignments and a course sequence that create opportunities for students to practice these learning objectives. But beyond that, I strive to practice a pedagogy that is critical, current, compassionate, and courageous:

Critical: Being critical is often perceived as negative; however, I think of it as self-reflexive. It’s a process of constantly checking in with myself and my students, to make changes when something isn’t working, to recognize the what is working and why.What am I trying to teach students? How is it relevant to their lives? Is the way I’m approaching the topic the best way?

Current: The learning and personal needs of students change on a daily basis. The skills and literacies that students need to succeed change, although at a slower pace, and often the learning objectives handed down from administration change at a glacial pace. If my job is to prepare students, I want to be able to offer them a relevant education or a way to make my course relevant to their own personal or professional objectives.

Compassionate: A compassionate pedagogy recognizes the positionality of individuals within a larger institutional, social, and political context. Every semester, I have students who go through hell. Often, I can’t do anything about this. But there are smaller microaggressions that occur, that I myself may be guilty of, that I can work on rectifying.

Courageous: It can be difficult to practice this sort of pedagogy in a university system that relies on adjunct labor, that is increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible to a variety of students, that is subject to scrutiny and critique. It takes courage for individual instructors and at the programatic level. It takes courage for students to participate in a course that looks and feels different from anything that they have probably experienced in a classroom before.

I think about being critical, current, compassionate, and courageous when I design my syllabus, when I order books, when I go to class every day, when I grade stacks of (digital) papers. The digital aspect of pedagogy helps me try to be these things and adds an additional dimension to these aspirations. Students should be critical of how technology positions them as users, consumers, and producers. I am also critical of how technology meets learning objectives and whether or not using technology adds anything to the student learning experience. Technology helps me with the desire to be current, so I can bring new technologies that students are using into the classroom so that together we can examine or use the technology to develop composition-related literacies. With technology, I am able to be a more compassionate instructor. I can use open source and Creative Commons materials so that my students don’t have to worry about buying expensive, out-dated textbooks that they will get pennies back on. I like to think that I’m courageous because of digital pedagogy. With my students, we are able to expand our inquiry beyond the four walls of our (very ugly) brick classroom, to make the class relevant, to critique our position in that brick room, to work towards change.

In short, digital pedagogy is just a small piece of my overall pedagogical approach. It’s how technologies can be used as a tool, a subject of inquiry, or a method to develop students’ multiliteracies. Digital pedagogy is pedagogy: critical, contemporary, compassionate, and courageous, plus technology.

Building Class Community on Day One

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After a long and simultaneously not long enough winter break, spring semester begins on Monday. This semester I’ll be teaching ENGL 2276: The Arts of Persuasion, which is a rhetoric survey course taken by mostly non-English majors. I have a lot of freedom with the course, so I’ve themed it around “Rhetoric(s) in Digital Culture.” We’ll be examining some of the foundational concepts in rhetoric for the first half of the semester and then move into cultural rhetorics to broaden our understanding of rhetoric. Throughout the entire course we’ll examine digital culture in order to apply the rhetorical theories/principles to see how these ideas work or need to shift to accommodate the 21st century context. I’m looking forward to the class; it’s a course that is a little outside of my comfort zone, and the sheer amount of great rhetorical material that I want to cover has made planning a 15 week lower-level course a bit difficult. I’ve focused more on learning objectives to thwart my initial desire to throw everything into the course just because I think it’s cool.

One of the aspects of course design and class facilitation that I spend a lot of time thinking about is building classroom community. Classroom community is so important, and it really begins the moment students step into the class. The first day sets up how the semester will go: how the students interact with each other, how they interact with the instructor, how the instructor interacts with them, and the type of content and how it is presented are all somewhat set after that first hour. The first day of class is often known as “syllabus day.” The teacher stands at the front of the room, takes roll (knowing there will be shifts in enrollments), reads straight from the syllabus, focuses on the rules of the class, and then dismisses the students early. From the student perspective, they’ve just been lectured at about the “do not’s” of the class, and they probably don’t have a sense about what the class is about or why they should care about it. Why would they be excited to come to the next class session? As an instructor, I can’t imagine being excited myself to show up at class the next day.

To combat the syllabus-day blues, on my first day of class, I like to start off with an ice breaker. My favorite ice breaker is what I call “The Self-Doodle.” Basically, I provide students with a large sheet of paper and a variety of markers, crayons, pens, stickers, and magazines, and I ask them to doodle a portrait of themselves (a doodleature) that contains information that they want their classmates to know about them. I generally ask students to doodle at least 5 objects. I tell students this isn’t a self-portrait because they don’t have to demonstrate any artistic skill, and they aren’t necessarily representing themselves physically. Many students end up doodling some sort of version of themselves surrounded by meaningful objects like a football or a slice of pizza. One memorable student doodled a combination of the sun and the moon. I then ask students to present their doodleature to the rest of the class. I always start off the presentations myself as a way to break down any apprehension students may feel about showing off their doodles; I purposefully doodle terribly so that the class can share a laugh and no one feels exposed by their lack of artistic skill.

From a pedagogical and academic perspective, I love this ice breaker for several reasons. First of all, it encourages multimodal thinking, which is a major component in all of my classes. It fosters community. Students learn more about each other from the visual and oral sharing of personal information, and students are also able to select the most important aspects of their identity rather than respond to a single ice-breaker question that they may have a difficult time connecting to. I’ve found that students learn each other’s names faster after this activity, and I also have been able to learn everyone’s name in one class session because the students present distinctive representations of themselves. “The Self-Doodle” also sets the expectation for what we will be doing in class from day-to-day: we will almost always work together in groups to engage in some sort of active learning opportunity. Most of the time it will be something that is hopefully fun (Rhetorical Jeopardy, Zombie Argumentation, Starting an Epidemic: Viral Productions! are some of the activities we’ll engage in this semester). The activity also has rhetorical components. I use “The Self-Doodle” as a way to show students how they are always making rhetorical decisions, even in small ways like deciding what 5 aspects of their personality they want to share with their classmate. This can lead into a discussion about audience, purpose, the rhetorical situation, the rhetorical appeals, really any rhetorical concept applies here! I like to bring “The Self-Doodle” exercise up in ensuing class sessions to provide students a concrete application of rhetorical concepts.