CCCC Certificate of Excellence Application Fall 2014, August 31. Institution: Illinois State University, Normal, IL: http://illinoisstate.edu/ Program: The Illinois State University Writing Program: http://isuwriting.com/ Contact: Joyce R. Walker, Associate Professor of Writing Studies in the Department of English Studies, Writing Program Director. Office Phone: 309-‐438-‐1402; Cell: 727-‐543-‐6649; email: [email protected]. The Illinois State University (ISU) Writing Program is applying for the CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence because we believe we are an effective writing program, and that our work represents all the characteristics outlined in the application materials. In this application document, we will specifically focus on two innovations that have had significant impact on our pedagogy and the structure of our program: (1) the development of a genre studies/cultural-‐historical activity theory (CHAT) pedagogy, and (2) a community learning focus on the activities of “citizen writing research.” We believe these innovations make us unique, and we would especially like to document these aspects of our program to illustrate our commitment to excellence. Therefore, the following documents will provide evidence of our overall work, matching the CCCC criteria, but we will also offer a picture of our program’s long-‐term goals and aspirations to share our growing knowledge with other writing programs, members of our community, P-‐12 teachers, and with the field of Writing Studies. Introduction & Summary The Illinois State University (ISU) Writing Program has a long history (more than 30 years) as an exemplary, innovative program. In 1983, we were among the first in the country to move to computer-‐based classrooms, long before many writing programs recognized the necessity of attending to writing in digital environments. The ISU Writing Program was also a leader in the 1980’s writing portfolio movement, joining writing programs that sought to make writing assessment more attentive to the body of student work, with a focus on peer review, revision, and audiences outside of the single classroom. In the past five years (since 2009), the ISU Writing Program has undergone a further transition, moving radically away from more traditional models for teaching and assessing writing, toward one that focuses on teaching for transfer, assessing learning rather than visible mastery, and creating “writing research” identities for ourselves and our students. The specific mission of the ISU Writing Program is to support the work of English 101 and English 145 courses (each course has several variants, which are described in the next paragraph), designed to serve both different populations of students as well as the needs of different colleges and programs throughout the university. Beyond our adherence to the ISU general education curriculum goals (http://gened.illinoisstate.edu/) and our own program learning outcomes (http://isuwriting.com/2014/01/28/learning-‐outcomes-‐eng-‐101-‐and-‐145-‐spring-‐2014/), our primary mission is to promote “citizen writing research” through a range of activities that include specific classroom pedagogies; a “grassroots” writing research publication, fellowship, and community outreach program; and our own program-‐based research into the intersections and complexities of our personal lived experiences as writers and learners. The ISU Writing Program administers two general education writing courses: the English 101 series courses, part of the university’s core curriculum, include English 101 and English 101.10; and the English 145 series courses include English 145, English 145.13, and English 145.12.1 The English 101 series is part of a two-‐semester sequence with Communications 110 (a speech communication course) designed to foster both specific reading, writing, and speaking skills as well as more complex critical thinking skills related to writing and speaking. The English 101.10 course, equivalent to English 101, offers extra writing resources to students who self-‐select into the course. The English 145 series includes intermediate writing courses that focus specifically on reading and writing within
1 English 101 is capped at 22 students; English 101.10 at 18; English 145 series courses at 18 students. All courses are taught in laptop computer classrooms. See Appendix I-‐III for more specific details about our program’s courses.
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disciplines and workplaces. Students in many (but not all) programs throughout the university take English 145, while English 145.13 is designed with the ISU College of Business for Business majors, and 145.12 is designed for students in the ISU Presidential Scholars Program. ISU Writing Program courses have undergone significant change since 2009, as we have moved from a generalized rhetorical approach to a genre studies/cultural-‐historical activity theory (CHAT) approach, designed to teach a more cognitively robust method for thinking about literate practice, and to encourage the interactive formative assessment of learning-‐in-‐progress. Additionally, our program works to foster a more robust community of writing researchers at ISU, involving first-‐year students, advanced undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and a wide range of community members. Our community approach encourages writers of all kinds to rigorously investigate their writing practices and to share their knowledge with other members of the community. One key change in our program since 2009 involves a focus on writers’ abilities to learn about how writing works in various situations and to then apply that knowledge in both real-‐world and school writing, to assess both their learning-‐in-‐progress and knowledge transfer, and to identify their goals for future learning. This focus shifts away from a “production assessment” model toward “the generation and documentation of learning” in which we design projects and activities (as well as ongoing assessments of them) that we, as a community of writers, believe are efficacious in addressing skills and concepts that can be transferred to a variety of writing situations. This new focus defines our Writing Program as deeply and interactively experimental, as members of the community work to document their learning and to design activities and experiments that encourage new knowledge making about writing practices. One recent metaphor we have used for our program is a “writing research laboratory” where all members perform all the possible roles, including researchers, lab assistants, research subjects, cleaning crews, and so forth. Members of the community, however loosely affiliated, are encouraged to see themselves as writing researchers, but also to see themselves as participating in the larger goal of creating writing research that can help writers better understand how writing works in the world. Our ongoing goal is to help all community members understand their identities as writing researchers well beyond their work as students, instructors, or other contributors to the program. We expect that all members of the community (administrators, instructors, students, interested university faculty and staff, and Bloomington-‐Normal community members) will share information, ideas, strategies and research about the best practices for constructing successful writing identities through the acquisition of both specific skills and knowledge and a research-‐based approach to new writing situations. Our work to transform the program over the past five years has led us to experiment with a range of new teaching practices, new ways to observe and document “uptake,” and new ways to share information among students and instructors. We feel we are only beginning. Research on learning on transfer specific to first-‐year writing is in many ways still in its infancy, although recent publications have begun to shine significant light on the issue (see Bergmann & Zeprnick 2007; Reiff & Bawarshi 2011; Wardle 2012; Yancey et al. 20042). Our program has developed highly innovative approaches to teaching for learning and transfer, and we look forward to sharing what we are learning with other professionals and other writing programs across the country and internationally. List of Materials Submitted Application & Appendices with links to our program website: http://isuwriting.com/. Institutional Description The ISU Writing Program is productively situated within the Department of English Studies3 (http://english.illinoisstate.edu/). Each semester we have several meetings, open to all faculty and graduate
2 Full citations of these scholars’ work can be found in Appendix IV, “Partial Reading List for English 402.” 3 The ISU English Department is the largest department in the College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences offers 54 programs, the largest number of academic programs offered by a college in the university (27 Bachelor, 20 Master’s, 5 Doctoral, and 2 Certificate).
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students, where we update interested colleagues about the ongoing work of our program; but more importantly, we identify projects or ideas that directly connect department concerns and writing program concerns, and encourage department members to get involved in our program’s community. This method of identifying issues for discussion each academic year allows us to remain connected and responsive to the department, while also allowing interested faculty to learn about our program and our innovative pedagogy. For example, in 2013, department faculty participated in the review of our program by the Illinois Articulation Initiative (which oversees the work of identifying courses that will transfer across universities and colleges in the state of Illinois). In 2014/2015, department faculty will collaborate with us in two areas: (1) the re-‐design of our English 101.10 course, which includes a plan to increase the budget for Master’s-‐level graduate students to act as consultants who can provide guidance for student peer-‐study groups as well as one-‐on-‐one meetings with students; and (2) the creation of guidelines for professional development for all faculty who teach in the writing program (tenure, non-‐tenure, and contingent faculty). In addition, our program works closely with the Committee on Critical Inquiry, a group comprised of members from the ISU Provost’s Office (Jonathan Rosenthal, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education), the College of Arts and Sciences (Sally Parry, Associate Dean for Student and Curricular Affairs), the School of Communication (http://communication.illinoisstate.edu/com110/) and Milner Library (http://library.illinoisstate.edu/). In addition, the Director of our Writing Program, Joyce Walker, is a member of the university’s Writing Across the Curriculum Task Force (formed in 2013) and the College of Arts and Sciences Classroom Technology Committee. These institutional affiliations help keep the Writing Program connected to dialogues that shape our theoretical and physical identity within the university. Program Funding The Writing Program is funded through the production of our in-‐house Grassroots Writing Research Journal, produced twice yearly. The journal’s place in our overall program philosophy and pedagogy is discussed elsewhere in this application document, but we wish to note here that the journal provides our program with an ongoing budget for professional development and resources, separate from the English Department’s budget. In addition, we receive funding through the department and ISU’s College of Arts and Sciences4 for all staff positions as well as one-‐time funding for various research and professional development projects and materials. Program Demographics As with most writing programs, our numbers of students, instructors and courses vary from semester to semester. However, we can offer our Fall/Spring breakdown for 2013/2014. Including both semesters is important because we offer more sections in Fall than in Spring. Our program courses are taught almost entirely by non-‐tenure track faculty and graduate teaching assistants. Contingent faculty are a small and important part of our teaching force, but we work to offer these positions primarily to graduates of our program (M.A. graduates who are taking a year before applying to Ph.D. programs or Technical Communication M.A.s or Ph.D. students who are working in areas related to Writing Studies). In addition, we have successfully connected with several in-‐service P-‐12 teachers who are graduates of our program, who will occasionally teach evening courses for us as well. This last arrangement has helped us in our ongoing efforts to establish and maintain dialogues with P-‐12 instructors (see “Other Community Outreach” section/“K-‐12 Outreach” description for more information on these dialogues). ISU Writing Program Demographics, Fall 2013:
• Sections of ENG 101 (59 sections @ 23 students per section), ENG 101.10 (10 sections @ 18 students per section), ENG 145 (13 sections @ 18 students per section), ENG 145.12 (2 sections at 18 students per section), ENG 145.13 (12 sections @ 18 students per section);
• 57 Instructors: 9 Full-‐time Non-‐tenure Track Faculty (NTT’s), 4 Part-‐time Contingent Faculty, 44 Graduate Teaching Instructors (GA’s);
4 Recent funding had included new furniture and technology for our writing program’s space, funding for new technology for writing program classrooms, and funding for a longitudinal study of student writing experiences at ISU (see “Longitudinal Study of Student Writers” section for more information on that project).
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• Total Students: 96 sections, approximately 2023 students.
ISU Writing Program Demographics, Spring 2014: • Sections of ENG 101 (53 sections @ 23 students), ENG 101.10 (1 section @ 18 students), ENG 145 (14
sections @ 18 students), ENG 145.13 (12 sections @ 18 students); • 52 instructors: 9 Full-‐time NTT’s, 1 Part-‐time Contingent Faculty, 42 GA’s; • Total Students: 80 sections, approximately 1705 students.
ISU Student Population Information: As of December 2013 and the last available figures, on-‐campus enrollment was 19, 924 (17,648 undergraduate and 2,276 graduate). Of that enrollment figure, 8,785 (44.1%) were male and 11,139 (55.9%) were female. The largest number of minority students were Hispanic and African American, with Asian, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Hawaiian or Pacific Islander also represented. International students included 131 undergraduate and 268 graduate. The largest number of students was enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences (30%), followed by Applied Science and Technology (21%), Business (17%), and Education (13%). New students in Fall 2013 scored an average ACT Composite score of 24.0, while the average statewide and national scores were 20.6 and 20.9, respectively. Program Philosophies Our Writing Program is based on some specific departures from traditional models for teaching introductory writing. Our efforts to make these departures is indebted to the work of scholars such as David Smit (a review of writing instruction failing as an activity in higher learning institutions), Dave Russell (an investigation of how activity theory can help us understand the failures of general education programs), Elizabeth Wardle (a paradigm-‐changing look at what we can and cannot claim as the work of first-‐year writing), and Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs (a look at how a Writing Studies curriculum might change our approach to first-‐year writing instruction).
• Smit, David (2004). The end of composition studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. • Wardle, Elizabeth (June 2009). “Mutt genres” and the goal of FYC: Can we help students write the genres
of the university? CCC 60:4. Pp. 765-‐89. • Russell, David (1995). Activity theory and its implications for writing instruction. In Joseph Petraglia, Ed.
Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pp. 51–78. • Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle (2007). Teaching about writing, righting misconceptions:
(Re)Envisioning ‘First Year Composition’ as introduction to writing studies. CCC 58:4. Pp. 522-‐84. We have gained great insight from these (and other) scholars who have both helped us to think about what is not working in our approach to first-‐year writing, and directed our work toward finding new approaches. However, our program has also diverged in significant ways from these scholars’ contributions, and our goal in this section is to explain the foundational theories and concepts of our work. Genre Studies: One of the terms our program uses widely is “genre studies.” We often explicitly say that we take a “rhetorical genre studies and cultural-‐historical activity theory (CHAT) approach to the teaching of writing.” The term “genre studies” is becoming more central to the field of Composition/Literacy Studies, and many writing programs at the university level are using the term to describe changes in their approaches to teaching writing. In the ISU Writing Program, the concept of “genre” guides our understanding of how the texts we produce are part of the range of discourse communities to which we belong (or want to belong). We use “genre” to define what we study as writers and researchers; we study specific kinds of texts produced in specific locations, in response to specific conditions. “Genre” indicates a complicated, always-‐in-‐motion relationship of a specific text to ways that text can be identified, defined and used. Thus, we try to understand why an “email” produced in a specific situation establishes a different relationship between writers and readers than a letter, a text message or a short story, as well as how different settings may require the production of widely different kinds of texts all called “email.”
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For us, learning to identify and recognize the complexity of genre relationships (which are cultural, social and political as well as material) is an important step in learning how to research and evaluate one’s own textual productions as specific responses to a set of evolving genre conventions. We understand that our ability to produce texts in specific situations is governed by our knowledge and understanding of genre conventions; but also that our knowledge and understanding are never complete because varying contextual circumstances can change how a genre will be understood and used by authors and readers. With this in mind, we avoid pedagogies that explicitly teach (or imply) that genres are uncomplicated. Even genres that (at first glance) seem fairly stable and clear can spawn hybrid or brand new genres, and they can morph over time in ways that change our expectations of what a genre will look like or do. We strive to include this complexity in our activities as a program and in the writing projects we assign to students. Cultural-‐Historical Activity Theory (CHAT): Activity theory, actor-‐network theory and cultural-‐historical activity theory are related theoretical frameworks that help us unpack and research writing activities and to enrich our understanding of how writing happens in the world. These theories move us away from the products people produce when they write as the most important (or even the only important) thing when analyzing writing situations. Instead, these theories help us to focus on a more complex system of activities, where different kinds of actors (human and non-‐human) interact in different kinds of situations. Activity theory frameworks allow us to envision situations and systems in which texts are produced, rather than “black-‐boxing”5 these activities as we do when we consider only the “artifact of production.” A key benefit of including activity theory frameworks in our approach to writing instruction design is that we can begin to think about all writing (all textual production) as occurring within a web of relationships between people, other texts, cultural practices, modes of communication and non-‐human actors. Because activity theory (combined with attention to genre) can help us to “unpack” or make explicit the dynamic processes through which we gain knowledge about writing situations, it may also help us to develop practical strategies for encountering new writing situations and relating these new situations to our existing, antecedent knowledge. Not every author needs to do this kind of deep analysis for every writing situation; however, knowing how to take an “activity-‐based research” approach to new writing situations can help us to see nuances and complications we could not previously see, even in situations where we thought we already “knew how to do it.” “CHAT,” which refers to Cultural-‐Historical-‐Activity-‐Theory, is a vital acronym for our program because it refers to a set of theories about rhetorical activity (how people act and communicate in the world—specifically through the production of all kinds of texts), that help us look at the how/why/what of writing practices. CHAT essentially takes the basics of activity theory (which tend to focus on people interacting in pairs and groups in particular situations) and adds both a “social” and “historical” dimension. It is perhaps the most robust system developed to date for thinking about writing in complex ways, in that it includes the widest possible range of interactions between humans, non-‐humans, tools, materials, situations and whole ecologies of environment. In this excerpt from “Re-‐situating and Re-‐mediating the Canons: A Cultural-‐historical Remapping of Rhetorical Activity” (2007), Paul Prior explains the concept and components of CHAT-‐based investigation:
CHAT argues that activity is situated in concrete interactions that are simultaneously improvised locally and mediated by historically-‐provided tools and practices, which range from machines, made-‐objects, semiotic means (e.g., languages, genres, iconographies) and institutions to structured environments, domesticated animals and plants, and indeed, people themselves. Mediated activity means that action and cognition are distributed over time and space and among people, artifacts and environments and thus also laminated, as multiple frames of field co-‐exist in any situated act. In activity, people are socialized (brought into alignment with others) as they appropriate cultural resources, but also individuated as their particular appropriations historically accumulate to form a particular individual. Through appropriation and individuation, socialization also opens up a space for cultural change, for a personalization of the social.
5 We are using this term based on our reading of Bruno Latour’s work, especially in Pandora’s Hope.
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Cultural-‐historical activity theory points to a concrete, historical rhetoric… a cultural-‐historical approach asks how people, institutions and artifacts are made in history.” (Prior et al. 18.6)
This kind of complexity (and investigating it) is at the core of our program’s goals. So while writers (students or instructors) in our program need not become scholars in activity theory or CHAT research, it is important for us to develop strategies as writers for incorporating a complex understanding of “knowledge” and “activity” that shape even the most (deceptively) simple kinds of writing. In the past several years, we have developed a range of texts to help us talk about CHAT in our program. Examples include the following:
• A handout for teachers to use when talking about CHAT in the classroom: http://isuwriting.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/chat_overview.pdf
• Walker, Joyce. (Fall 2010). Just CHATing. Grassroots Writing Research Journal (V.1), 71-‐80. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzH2e3MWzXALNGVhNTNmMTgtMjg2Ni00ZWU0LTgwODMtY2U1OGJiMTlkY2Ji/edit?hl=en_US
• Kostecki, Tyler (Fall 2012). “Understanding Language and Culture with Cultural Historic Activity Theory.” Grassroots Writing Research Journal (Vol. 3.1), 79-‐88. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzH2e3MWzXALa1E1ZklGOEVSUUk/edit.
In our program, we use CHAT to do the following:
(1) Create complex, dynamic mapping processes (through the research we do as instructors, students and writers) that help us to see more clearly how a text is acting and acted upon in various situations and systems;
(2) See how a text is interacting with its variously related genre-‐categories; (3) Look at the complex temporal-‐material trajectory of a text (how it interacts with people, objects, genres
and other texts) as it is produced and used; (4) Better understand how our relationship to a text is never as simple as “knowing how to do it,” but is
instead a complicated social/cognitive process in which we learn to recognize and produce a certain kind of writing.
Cognition and Transfer: The concept of “transfer” is related to the knowledge that, as literate individuals, we approach writing situations with prior knowledge of other writing situations, and this knowledge impacts the choices (conscious and unconscious) that we make. A central concept in Writing Studies theory currently, transfer research has serious implications for all aspects of developing and teaching in an introductory writing course. Thinking about transfer asks us to question whether the work we do to “teach students about writing” actually results in knowledge that students can use when engaged in writing activities outside of our courses. David Russell’s “Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction” (1995) is one of the first texts in Writing Studies that makes this point clearly. As Russell states, “to try to teach students to improve their writing by taking a generalized writing instruction course is something like trying to teach people to improve their ping-‐pong, jacks, volleyball, basketball, field hockey and so on by attending a course in general ball using” (58). Our program uses research in literacy and knowledge transfer to discuss practices that may make analysis and investigation of genres-‐in-‐action (a key program goal) work as a kind of “meta” tool in an author’s writing toolkit – so that while specific writing knowledge might not transfer, perhaps an attitude toward investigating new writing situations can. Community and Identity: Concepts of community and identity that focus on creating an effective bond between a writer and his/her writing, or among writers working together in a writing course, have been repeatedly introduced to Composition Studies in different guises throughout the 20th century. However, our program approaches “community” and “identity” by investigating, with students, the ways that different writing settings and approaches to writing can impact a writer’s disposition toward the writing task, and either assist or impede the writing process. We are particularly interested in exploring three areas related to issues of community, cognition and identity: disposition, identity, and social environments. The first is how “disposition” (a writer’s attitude and stance toward
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a particular writing situation) can impact the ability to transfer knowledge from other genres he ↔ she has worked with in the past (antecedent genres). These antecedent genres always operate in the writer’s mind, but they cannot always be accessed in conscious ways, and they are not always productive. Because of the complexity of the relationship between a writer’s current and past knowledge, we are interested in making the process of acknowledging and using past writing knowledge more explicit, so that writers can make more effective use of their existing knowledges as they move into new writing situations. The second area involves building a better understanding how a writer’s “identity” as a writer (the sum of all his ↔ her writing experiences) does and does not play into how a writer approaches and accomplishes writing tasks. This area of exploration is deeply tied to the first concept (disposition), as a writer’s specific experiences with different writing situations are the substance of his ↔ her writing identity. However, while the first area of exploration focuses on examining how different past experiences impact current knowledge and thus the writer’s approach to writing in new situations, this second concept (identity) focuses on how the sum of a writer’s experiences create a general attitude toward writing that may move across different situations. Our teacher-‐research in the ISU Writing Program continues to explore ways to help writers approach new situations with flexibility and creativity, and yet our assignments and activities must also maintain relevance for the kinds of writing students expect to do in the academy, the workplace and their lives as citizens. A third somewhat more difficult and complex concept we are also interested in is the development of “social environments” that facilitate the development of cognitive flexibility in new writing situations. We do that by helping instructors think through the writing environments and assignments they create in their classrooms, but we also believe that in order to help these skills persist beyond the boundaries of a single writing class, our entire program needs to reinforce and reward these skills as relevant, and provide writers the opportunity to learn about “writing in the wild” – seeing and experiencing literate activities in a wide range of situations. At its core, our efforts to create resources that help our writers (collectively) learn to approach writing tasks with a “writing research” perspective are based on the principle that in order to develop the ability to abstract knowledge and skills from one environment to another, an individual must have a clear sense of identity – one that authorizes him ↔ her to make such distinctions and abstractions. In other words, for writers to think about writing/research in robust ways, they must have identities as individuals who already know something about writing/research, and they must practice those identities as part of a larger structure of activities where multiple writers are engaged in similar kinds of work. All actors within our particular community – and whatever communities they build or interact with that move beyond the borders of the Writing Program as community – should feel responsible for the project of creating and sharing knowledge about writing practices, and using these practices to shape their own productions. Our pedagogical goals and our goals for assessment, then, take shape within this framework as activities that are designed to increase the potential for agency and to decrease opportunities for interventionist stances towards literacy acquisition. At the classroom level, this model of community connects to student-‐driven genre investigations and student-‐driven assessment of learning (for both individual and collective members of a class). At the program level, results include community member research as the focus of programmatic change, as well as using that research as a tool for instructor professional development. Writing About Writing: Our program owes a significant debt to the work of Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs (2007), and their development of a “Writing About Writing Curriculum.” However, our writing program varies from their work in significant ways. The following chart outlines some important differences we see between a “Writing About Writing” (WAW) curriculum and ours, which we define as the practice of “Creating Writing Researchers.” Writing About Writing (Wardle & Downs)
Creating Writing Researchers (ISU Writing Program)
Key Difference
Students read writing
Students may read some research in
Our goal is not only to create students
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research from scholars in the field, with the goal of raising awareness about writing as a complicated activity that involves disciplinary knowledge and research.
the field of Writing Studies, but they primarily read (and produce) “local” examples of writing research, which are published in our Grassroots Writing Research Journal.
who can recognize that writing can be researched, but that students are able to create flexible, repeatable strategies for investigating writing AS THEY DO IT 6 in the world.
Students read about research methods for conducting research. And sometimes use these methods to create their own research projects.
Students use the work of other student researchers, and create research projects using these methods, but they also spend time developing methods for conducting on-‐the-‐fly research into literate practice as part of a lived-‐experience with writing research that they use in their writing lives.
We love the exposure to research methods that is included in texts like Downs and Wardle’s Writing About Writing. However, we want students to see research not as something they do as a student, but as an activity that they accomplish daily, or whenever a new context for writing occurs. To achieve this, knowledge about scholarly research methods (perspectives and activities for investigating both genres and literate activity in general) is used in our program in order to create on-‐the-‐fly research practices.
Students conduct limited original research, modeled after disciplinary methods and methodologies
Students conduct original research where they define not only the subject matter, but also the generic conventions and the potential value of the research for projected audiences.
At first glance, there isn’t too much difference here. Ultimately, however, our program goal is not a student production that imitates and adapts to scholarly conventions (which might only be truly useful to students who move into the discipline), but the production of a "citizen-‐researcher" who can share knowledge about how writing works in the world while also working to build and maintain flexible knowledge structures he ↔ she can use in real world writing situations.
Overall, the key difference between our program and a Writing About Writing approach is that in WAW, students are introduced to a scholarly field and taught that they should have an interest in and awareness of the complexity of writing. As Downs and Wardle note, “Taking the research community of writing studies as our example not only allows writing instructors to bring their own expertise to the course, but also heightens students’ awareness that writing itself is a subject of scholarly inquiry. Students leave the course with increased awareness of writing studies as a discipline, as well as a new outlook on writing as a researchable activity rather than a mysterious talent” (559). Essentially, the WAW course is seen as a way of applying “writing studies” content to a class that is about academic reading and writing.
6 This difference is primarily due to our interest in an Activity Theory approach to transfer, a critical aspect of our program. For a useful discussion of the intersection of activity theory research and perspectives on knowledge transfer, please see: Terttu, Tuomi-‐Gröhn and Engeström, Y. (2003). Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary-‐Crossing. Pergamon.
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In our program, students are immersed in “writing research” as daily, lived experience, and are taught to identify situations in which their thinking and research skills can be used productively. Our goal is to equip writers with specific kinds of research skills and ways of thinking about literate activity that will allow them to create personalized research plans for investigating their own writing practices and productions. One potential outcome (we hope) of this focus is that these skills and ways of thinking, applied appropriately, have the potential to both aid knowledge transfer (moving knowledge about writing more adaptively between different situations), and to create a more positive disposition towards adaptation as a key writing strategy. Thus, our program’s focus on “Creating Writing Researchers” is a critical difference that separates us both ideologically and pedagogically from the “Writing About Writing” approach. Not only does “Creating Writing Researchers” lead to these fundamental differences in curriculum, we have found that it also impacts our attitudes about and practices of assessment in fundamental ways. The next section of this application document outlines two specific sets of activities related to the differences in approach between “Writing About Writing” and “Creating Writing Researchers.” Program Pedagogies In many ways, the assignments in our program (see Appendix 3 for example Unit Descriptions) are in keeping with a Writing About Writing or a Genre Studies model. While they differ from assignments typical of a traditional writing program pedagogy, they are in sync with these newer models for creating more diverse writing situations.7 However, we think our approach to two specific areas, “Uptake Genres” and “Alternative Classroom Assessment Practices,” are the best illustration of the new directions we are exploring on making learning visible (and thus potentially more transferable to diverse writing situations). Open Syllabus Policy: Because of our open syllabus policy, each instructor in the program is relatively free to develop different kinds of assignments and projects, and different kinds of uptake genres and models for assessment. The examples we offer here are diverse, but they all work to fulfill both our Learning Outcomes and our Core Elements of Learning for English 101 and English 145 (See Appendix 1). Uptake Genres In a discussion with Anis Bawarshi, during his 2013 campus visit for our Visiting Speaker Series, we worked to connect his notion of “uptake genres” to our own understanding of “documentation-‐of-‐learning.8” The idea behind both concepts is connected to “formative assessment” – an understanding that writing classrooms need to include practices in which writers can gauge and evaluate their learning-‐in-‐progress, rather than waiting until an assignment or project is due and using only that product to gauge learning. In the space of our genre studies/CHAT program, the benefit of formative assessment is also tied directly to an understanding that any given writing product is always necessarily a poor measure of the way an author is “taking up” information about the genre and writing situation. Following the work of Melanie Kill (2006), we also want to be conscious that uptakes are naturally, inescapably divergent. Each individual’s uptake is based on a myriad list of different situation criteria, including his ↔ her antecedent knowledge. Further, research in genre theory, CHAT and transfer tells us is that this antecedent knowledge can dramatically impact uptake for each individual in a given learning situation. Uptake genres, then, allow participants to slow down for a moment – to make visible how different members of the class are “taking up” a concept, idea, or skill. Uptake genres are often formative, which means that they happen during the learning in a particular unit. However, our goal has also been to incorporate different kinds of uptake genres into our summative assessments as well, which we will discuss more fully in the next section.
7 Models explored in the First-‐Year Composition Program at University of Central Florida (2012-‐13 Winner, CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence) and the Writing Program at Washington State University (2008-‐9 Winner, CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence). 8 We have since adopted “uptake genres” to talk about formative assessment, but some of our materials still use the term “proof-‐of-‐learning” or “documentation-‐of-‐learning” to describe this practice.
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For us, an “uptake genre” is any moment where a production (textual, oral, aural, visual) allows participants to see HOW they are learning rather than WHAT they are learning. This focus differs from much work on formative assessment, which tends to focus more on whether students are learning in steps – a way to check small components of learning as a scaffold to a larger or more complex task. In our view, uptake genres are designed to give the writing researcher (student or teacher) a clear (if ephemeral) view of what learning looks like in all of its complexity in any given moment in the classroom. Uptake Genres Examples: While the “Course Units” we present in Appendix 3 offer an example of how “uptake” works in our classrooms, the following examples illustrate how we use uptake genres as part of an ongoing discussion throughout the activities of a single unit, and across the units in a course. Example #1: “The Genre Recipe: A Genre Uptake Activity” This example is a genre used by Jeff Reints, (Ph.D. Student, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Writing Program English 101 Coordinator) as an ongoing activity that helps students to not only see their own learning-‐in-‐progress, but also to see how uptake can differ between individuals working on the same types of genre activities.
This activity opens with an analysis of the genre of the typical cookery recipe. Students bring in favorite recipes or research them on the Internet. Small groups compare their recipes to develop a list of requirements of the genre. The two key items in this activity, for uptake purposes, are 1) a list of required components, and 2) the instructions detailing what to do with the components. The final portion of the activity highlights the cultural and economic assumptions that lead to omissions in recipes. The activity’s steps are as follows:
1. The unit in which the “Genre Recipe” is first deployed focuses primarily on genre investigation. Each
student selects a genre of writing they will research, document, and reproduce. 2. Midway through the unit, students are asked to produce a Genre Recipe in which they detail the required
materials and processes for composition in the selected genre. They are cautioned that, unlike a traditional cookery recipe, they must attempt to include EVERY component and procedure. Nothing is to be omitted. Some students will include things like “a brain for thinking” or “a hand for writing” in their Genre Recipe’s ingredient list. This is a good thing, as it indicates a creative attempt at thoroughness, and students are encouraged to be similarly detailed in the procedures section of the Recipe.
3. Along with the Genre Recipe, students are asked to hand in a draft attempt to reproduce the genre they are investigating. They are explicitly instructed to attempt to follow their own Recipe.
4. The submitted Genre Recipes are redistributed so that each student receives the Recipe of another student for anonymous review. This review consists of a good faith attempt to replicate the genre strictly by following the Genre Recipe, along with a brief review of what did or did not work in attempting to do so. What was unclear? What was omitted? How can the recipe be improved to better reveal the complexity of the materials and procedures required for a successful production of the genre?
5. In the final step, the original composers of the Genre Recipe receive back the anonymous review and the attempted composition. They then use this material to write an improved draft of the Genre Recipe and the target genre, possibly after further research. The student documents all changes made to the Recipe. The final deliverables for the unit are both drafts of the Genre Recipe, both drafts of the genre under investigation, and students’ notes documenting the research and composition process.
Example #2: “Skills and Knowledge Checklist” This example is a genre used by Julie Bates (Ph.D. Student, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Grassroots Writing Research Journal Associate Editor) as an ongoing text that not only works throughout a given unit, but moves throughout the entire semester as a way for people to document and observe their learning-‐in-‐process. She asks students to post these checklists in a shared wiki space, and the checklists are referred to throughout the semester in classroom discussions and activities.
Skills and Knowledge Checklist • Briefly explain what you think this Genre Investigation is asking you to do;
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• Create a list of all of the skills and/or knowledge you already have that you think will be useful to you as you complete the Investigation;
• Create a list of any skills and/or knowledge you think will be necessary to complete this Investigation but that you do not already have (or perhaps that you may need to brush up on);
• Post-‐Investigation Checklist o Briefly explain what you think this Investigation asked you to do; o Create a list of all of the skills and/or knowledge you already had at the start of the Investigation
that you ended up using to complete this Investigation; o Create a list of all of the skills and/or knowledge that you acquired during the Investigation that
aided you in completing the Investigation; o Create a list of any skills and/or knowledge that, in hindsight, you wish you would have acquired
to assist you in completing the Investigation; o Spend some time thinking and writing about how the skills and/or knowledge you already had or
that you acquired during this Investigation might be useful to you in the future in different kinds of writing situations. Be as specific as possible.
Alternative Classrooms Assessment Practices Examples The use of these kinds of genre uptake documents is carried through to the assessment practices in our classrooms. Thus, “documentation-‐of-‐learning” becomes not just an added measure of learning (which is generally the case when using portfolio reflections or writing journals), but also the primary measure of learning and thus, a critical component of the course grade. Because the genre uptake documents are usually shared and often collectively examined and assessed by participants in the class, this method of summative assessment also tends to focus much more on peer-‐to-‐peer assessment and self-‐assessment than traditional writing classrooms. The following examples illustrate our focus on teaching the skills of “learning how to learn how to write” rather than on producing writing that demonstrates mastery. Example #1: “Assessing Learning through Multiple Measures” While we cannot fully demonstrate our diverse range of classroom assessment practices, the following excerpt from a course plan by Julie Bates (Ph.D. Student, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Grassroots Writing Research Journal Associate Editor) illustrates how uptake genres are integrated fully into the formal assessment and grading for the course:
ENG 101 Assessment Plan This course emphasizes learning over mastery. In other words, it focuses on getting students to think about and articulate their learning related to specific assignments in the course. Although students must produce the kind of text the assignment requires, a key emphasis of each Investigation Portfolio is how well students are able to articulate a clear understanding and knowledge of why the text needs to be produced in certain ways and what exactly they did to create the appropriate text. In some cases, students may get credit for knowing and articulating what should be done, even if they cannot yet do it as well as they would like. For each investigation, students must turn in an Investigation Portfolio that clearly shows the trajectory of their project and what key skills and knowledge they have developed during the course of the experiment. Each Investigation Portfolio must include the following four deliverables:
1. Skills & Knowledge Checklist—a document students work on throughout the semester (on their personal wiki pages) in which new skills and knowledge learned within each investigation must be clearly identified.
2. Field Notes—project notes (posted on their personal wiki pages), including all class notes, research notes, assignments, and self-‐assessment materials related to the project; in particular, students must make certain their field notes demonstrate the items listed on their Skills & Knowledge Checklist (if they do not, their portfolios won’t be graded).
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3. Genre Experiment—the actual writing/textual production (posted on their personal wiki pages, unless the genre format does not allow this).
4. Genre Report—a researched document that explores students’ learning during the course of the experiment, including their research process and the results of their genre experiment as well as what they have learned about the genre they explored, written in the genre of a Grassroots Writing Research Journal article (posted in Reggie Net9 for grading).
Because students will better understand what they help to build, students are actively engaged in the decision-‐making process regarding creation of assignment requirements and scoring rubrics. For each Genre Experiment and Genre Report, the class will brainstorm in larger or small groups (depending on assignment) a list of characteristics and conventions for that genre and will be tasked with collectively coming up with the specific assignment sheet to accompany each Experiment and Report, with guidance from the instructor as needed. In addition, the class will work together to identify specific requirements and point totals for the scoring rubric for each Investigation (following point totals and guidelines set by the instructor). Students will be encouraged to create assignment guidelines and scoring rubrics that are based primarily on students’ ability to learn and to showcase their learning processes related to producing textual artifacts and understanding how such artifacts are produced.
Example #2: “Genre Understanding Sheet for ENG 145.13” This second example illustrates the type of work that our teachers expect from students as part of the grading for various projects both our English 101 and our English 145 courses. The Genre Understanding Sheet, developed by Rob Rowan (Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Teaching Assistant), asks students to not simply “reflect” on what they learned, but to document the “how” of their learning. Since this documentation is part of a summative assessment, there is an expectation that students will be able to answer questions about their work and the complex activities related to its production. For many teachers, similar types of questions are infused throughout each unit of the course, working as both formative and summative measures to assess the learning that is happening in the working lives of the writers, rather than focusing on the production as the only (or even the primary) measure of learning.
Genre Understanding Sheet (GUS) The purpose of the GUS is to help you actively think about what you’re learning. You should be thinking about these questions while you work on the assignment, not just at the end. Please fill out each of the following sections in as much detail as possible. You must justify your answers (except the genre name) with an explanation of how you arrived at that answer. Assume that “How do you know this?” is a part of each question below.
1. Genre Name: What is the genre called? (Name or brief description) 2. Writing Purpose: What is the business task you are trying to accomplish with this document? 3. Audiences: Who are your audiences for this business task and document? What do these audiences want
or need from this document? 4. Content: What is your content (the facts, figures, images, and details)? Discuss how (or if) this genre is
suitable for the task you are working on, the content you are trying to deliver, and the audience you are trying to reach. If you deliberately break a genre’s conventions or expectations, explain why and describe the results you wanted to achieve.
5. Research: Describe and document (i.e., list sources for) the genre and content research and other knowledge-‐work you performed for the assignment in each of the areas below. You should also include other attributes you may have researched. “I Googled it” is not sufficient – be more thorough.
6. Trajectories: Examine the main trajectories of communication in this genre, including where it originates, how it is produced, and how it will most likely be used.
9 Reggie Net is ISU’s web-‐based learning and collaboration system.
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7. Ethics: What ethical, legal, or cultural considerations did you take into account when working on this assignment? “None” is the wrong answer. Ethical issues are often subtle and easy to overlook (our assumptions can blind us here), but that does not make the issues less important.
8. Web Text: If you used text copied from the web for part of your assignment, where did you find the text/item, what did you change, and what does your copied text mean?
9. Defining Characteristics: List and describe at least four defining characteristics of this genre—attributes that, if they were changed too much, would turn the document into a different genre.
10. Self-‐Analysis: What made this genre easy or challenging for you to work with? What would you do differently next time? Describe the other interesting traits, features, benefits, weaknesses, or shortcomings (yours or the genre’s) that you observed while working in this genre.
11. Group contributions: Describe the content and research provided by each group member.
Example #3: “Grading Breakdowns” One aspect of our program pedagogy, critical to our overall approach, is that a significant portion of a student’s course grade reflects “proof-‐of-‐learning.” Although this strategy is enacted in different ways in each classroom, its overall impact in our program is that our course grades are based on activities and learning that extend beyond what can be seen through the student’s “Writing Experiment” (or “Production Artifact”). In this example document, written as a letter to her students, Michelle Wright Dottore (Ph.D. Student, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Writing Program Professional Development Coordinator) outlines how the grades for her course can be understood as a range of learning products, rather than as a single “assignment” that students produce for a grade.
Dear Students, So what does this list of learning objectives10 mean to you? Imagine yourself as a secret agent, part of an alliance of rhetorical researchers and literary scientists whose mission is to see more fully all aspects of a writing situation that influence how people use the tools of language and genre. This will encourage us to look not only at many specific forms of writing (its features, characteristics, and conventions) in a “real-‐life” context (its situation), but also the functions of writing (goals, outcomes) by considering how and why it is produced and the span of production within and by certain cultures. This study will require us to put on a scientific lens, our scientist lab goggles in some instances, as we experiment with writing various genres and, too, documenting and reflecting on those experiments. For example, if we were to experiment with writing poetry, specifically the genre of Shakespearean sonnets, you would turn in:
1. Your experiment proposal (10% of your experiment grade) 2. Your experiment (and the actual sonnet) (10% of your experiment grade) 3. Your research lists, notes, journals (30% of your experiment grade) 4. A Proof-‐of-‐Learning document that outlines the “how” of learning for the entire experiment, using
citations and examples from the experiment and all of your other notes, journals, research lists, in class activities, etc. (50% of your experiment grade)
As you can see, the actual writing experiment (as with the example above, the Shakespearean sonnet) counts for only 10% of your overall grade while the pre-‐writing, documenting, sharing of the experiment counts for 90%. Now I realize, this may be different from your past writing/English classes where you were asked to write a particular thing, like an essay, and were given a topic of research and a rubric and/or model on how to do it, which you followed, completed, and turned it in to be graded by your mastery of the isolated assignment. Over. Done.
Here, however, you are free to go further, taking those valuable skills you have learned in prior classes and using them to get inside the process (inside activities systems, inside genres), asking how and why writing functions in various rhetorical and social contexts. You will begin to see writing as a dynamic,
10 Please see Appendix I for our program’s Learning Outcomes.
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social action and to analyze and talk about what you saw, experienced, and learned in doing so. Your success/grade here is not about your mastery to reproduce (who are masters anyway?) but rather about the thoroughness of your research and reflections as you experiment with various writing situations.
Grassroots Writing Research Programs The overall goals of the ISU Writing Program are best understood through our “Grassroots Writing Research” activities. These activities make up the core our efforts (outside of individual classrooms) to enact the activities of writing research. The primary aim of all activities listed below is to encourage robust investigations of literate activity through a range of projects. Our Grassroots Writing Research approach is a central part of our program pedagogy. Writing and Reading about Writing Research Writing and reading about writing research is a key activity in our program. Our primary venue for grassroots writing research (both reading and producing it) is our Grassroots Writing Research Journal, produced twice each year by the ISU Writing Program. The journal includes articles by citizen writing researchers, including high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and writing research scholars. The journal solicits authors within and outside of our institution, and publication is open to writing researchers everywhere. The print issue of each journal is used as the primary text in two of ISU’s undergraduate general education writing courses: English 101/101.10 and English 145. Digital versions of previous issues are available online (http://isuwriting.com/grassroots/journal/). The title of the journal reflects our aspirations to present writing research on different topics and by a variety of authors, and to feature articles in a wide range of forms and media. We encourage authors to share not only what they have learned about writing, but also how they have learned it. Authors can learn more about publishing on our website, which offers back issues of the journal and a range of guides for researching and writing for the journal. Talking about Writing Research Talking about writing research happens in our classes, and in all kinds of activities that our teachers engage in as part of their professional development. However, we specifically talk about writing research as part of our ISU Writing Program Visiting Speakers Series. The Series brings nationally recognized scholars in Writing Studies to campus for 2–3 day visits, during which they present their current research, run workshops and discussion sessions, and talk with graduate and undergraduate students about writing. Now a well-‐established part of our Writing Program, the Series reflects our ongoing endeavors to promote discussions about writing research in and beyond the classroom and in and beyond ISU. Although the scholars’ presentations are not available to the public, our instructors can access archived presentations to share with their students in Writing Program courses. Past Visiting Scholars include the following:
• Paul Prior, Professor of English, University of Illinois Urbana-‐Champaign (2011) • Kevin Roozen, Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Composition, Auburn University (2012) • Ann Johns, Faculty Emerita, Department of Rhetoric & Writing Studies, San Diego State University (2013) • Anis Bawarshi, Professor & Director of Expository Writing, University of Washington (2013) • Jodi Shipka, Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland Baltimore County (Upcoming, 2014)
Our annual Writing Research Colloquium Series promotes student research in the study of writing practices and features presentations from and discussions with our Undergraduate Writing Research Fellows and published Grassroots Writing Research Journal authors for an audience of students and instructors, as well as other members of our ISU community. Speakers discuss their approaches to writing research, sharing their experiences of creating and reflecting on the lives of their Grassroots articles – processes that continue long after the articles are published. A list of Colloquium speakers and links to videos of presentations can be found at (http://isuwriting.com/grassroots/writing-‐research-‐colloquium/).
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Our “Let’s CHAT” Podcast Series brings together students and instructors to talk about issues of writing research that are important to our community. Topics are related to specific theories or ideas we are exploring, different teaching strategies we employ, and conversations about the ways we understand and take up “writing” and “literacy.” The Podcast Series was named after one of our key program concepts, Cultural-‐Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Our program differs from many writing programs in our active use of current research and theory in Writing Studies (and related fields that research learning and literacy), as well as our own citizen writing research. We use research in genre studies and CHAT, research on learning transfer and cognition, as well as other kinds of research and theory. However, we are trying to move beyond just learning about theory. We want to enact it: to observe its traces in our daily literate practices and to incorporate what we are learning into our personal knowledge as literate citizens. Our Podcast Series is thus both a “talking about” and an “enacting of” our writing research perspective. It helps bring together interested members of our community to talk about praxis — how the theories and research we read can make their way into our daily practices as writers, and as people who need to share our knowledge with others. Podcast tapings are open to the public, and Q&A and discussion sessions follow each podcast. Enacting Writing Research Enacting writing research means engaging actively and thoughtfully in everyday lived experience where writing matters. Our teachers and students enact practical writing research, which involves observing and thinking through how writing works in daily life. The ISU Writing Program sponsors the Undergraduate Writing Research Fellowship Program to promote student research in the study of writing practices. The Fellowship Program provides an opportunity for undergraduate scholars to engage in a yearlong writing research project. There are up to two fellowships available each academic year, which provide a $500.00 stipend to an undergraduate student at any level attending any higher education institution. Fellowship participants have the opportunity to create a research study investigating writing practices, present their research at our annual Writing Research Colloquium Series, and compose an article for the Grassroots Writing Research Journal. Our Half-‐Mile Project brings together students and residents of our Bloomington-‐Normal community to talk about how writing is produced and used in the daily lives of local residents, representing our efforts to connect students with “real world” writers living, working, and writing in close-‐proximity to campus. We began these efforts in 2011, when we worked with the Bloomington-‐Normal branch of the NAACP to help them create materials for their organization, a collaboration that followed up with an interview that will be published in our Grassroots Writing Research Journal. Another project involved working with an ISU faculty member to collaborate on a forthcoming Grassroots article about how her move from one field to another helped shape her understanding of writing research. However, in 2014 we began work on a new community collaboration model, which has now formally become the Half-‐Mile Project. We are now working to bring community members into our writing program as part of an event that an instructor and students can win (through a drawing) at the beginning of each semester. The event (and writing produced and discussed during the event) is then documented (including video clips) that can be used by other instructors in the program as part of an ongoing discussion about how writing research works in the real world. In the Project’s inaugural semester, Lindsay Bachman of “That’s So Sweet” bakery in Uptown Normal brought her mini-‐cheesecake samples and talked with an English 145.13 class. In Fall 2014, the project will involve a class visit and discussion with Camille Easton, a local Yoga instructor. Collecting Writing Research Collecting writing research is an activity that happens as part of the publication of our journal, but this activity is supported by our Grassroots Literate Activity Database (GLAD) through which we plan to collect details about particular writing activities among groups and individuals. The GLAD is a new project (started in Fall 2014) being designed as a resource to help individuals examine their writing experiences, better understand how the acquisition of knowledge and skills in one writing experience may apply to another writing experience, and document their learning of these important skills. When completed, The GLAD will be an open database that researchers (of all kinds) can use to better understand what people actually do when they engage in different kinds of writing and composing in their daily lives. Participants will share details about different kinds of writing
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situations, either by filling out an online survey or through face-‐to-‐face meetings with one of our program’s researchers. In the current semester (Fall 2014), graduate instructors in the writing program are conducting pilot interviews, which we will use to help us design the online interface. In Spring 2015, we hope to train research interviewers (approved by our institutions Internal Review Board) to collect our first “public” interviews for the database. Other Community Outreach The ISU Writing Program participates in a range of other community outreach projects that we feel will help us to gain new community members and to share our ideas with other writers and instructors. In particular, we try to participate in projects that help to enhance the diversity of our community. ACT-‐SO Yearly Event: ACT-‐SO is the Afro-‐Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics sponsored locally by the NAACP and the Urban League. The ISU Writing Program works with the Department of English each year to provide different enrichment events for participating students, including (1) “A Day of Writing” consisting of various writing activities led by graduate students or campus professionals with particular expertise, and (2) a one-‐on-‐one help day where graduate teaching assistants offer help to students writing and editing applications to various programs and scholarships. NAACP: In response to a request for writing support from the Bloomington-‐Normal branch of the NAACP, the ISU Writing Program helped produce an informational brochure about the branch. Following the successful production of the brochure, our program also helped the branch establish a Newsletter Committee for designing and producing a quarterly newsletter. Our program provides ongoing consulting support for producing this newsletter. An interview about collaborative writing with the President and Membership Chair of the Bloomington-‐Normal NAACP branch, conducted by members of the Writing Program Leadership Team, will be featured in a future volume of the Grassroots Writing Research Journal. Upcoming Diversity Recruitment Weekend: In Spring 2015, the Writing Program will join the ISU English Department to participate in a daylong “English Studies” day that specifically targets students from Illinois high schools with diverse populations. We will simultaneously launch a Writing Mentor Program, the only “new” (not yet instituted) project we have included in our application. Planned in collaboration with our department’s Undergraduate Committee, this Program will be part of an ongoing effort to create a more diverse student population in the department. The Writing Program’s contribution to this goal, the Writing Mentor Program, will encourage a diverse range of students who select Illinois State University as their university and English as their major to work as Writing Mentors. These students will take English 101 (a special section of the course) in the fall semester of their first year. In the second semester, they will work in the Writing Program’s satellite Writing Center to provide mentoring to students taking English 101 in the spring semester. This project will be part of our ongoing plan to increase peer-‐mentoring opportunities related to English 101/101.10. K-‐12 Outreach: In response to the nationwide push to institute Common Core Standards (CCS), our program has collaborated with K-‐12 teachers and librarians across Illinois to discuss how our genre/CHAT pedagogy can support instructors and students in meeting CCS requirements. For two years in a row (2013/2014), we have been invited to present at Wheaton North High School’s Professional Development Day to talk with Illinois English teachers about helping students bridge from high school to college writing. We have also hosted several informal professional development days with local K-‐12 teachers to design “bridge assignments” that introduce genre/CHAT to K-‐12 students to prepare them for writing they will do in college. Critical Inquiry Ambassador Program: This program is ongoing, in collaboration with the Critical Inquiry Committee, particularly Instructional Librarians at Milner Library and representatives from Speech Communications (instructors and administrators for the Communications 110 course that is a partner course to English 101 in the first year experience for students). Since most students take both English 101 and Communications 110 in their first two semesters at ISU (one each semester), the Ambassador Program has been developing ways to help students see connections between the two courses, and to more actively transfer the
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knowledge they have gained between these courses. In 2013/14, we began a program that invited English 101 and Communications 110 instructors to visit each other’s classes and share information about what they learned regarding similarities and differences between the two courses. In Fall 2014, we are working to produce materials for teachers in both groups that offer ideas for helping students bridge knowledge and gain more active awareness of their knowledge transfer between these courses. Additional Resources for Undergraduate Students In this section, we want to note some projects and resources we offer (in addition to coursework) for undergraduate students at Illinois State University. We also want to highlight projects that directly involve undergraduate students as writing researchers within our writing program. The Julia N. Visor Center provides a range of services to students, which include writing tutoring. However, the structure of the Visor Center (a focus on course-‐specific and content tutoring) has made it somewhat difficult to connect our “writing research” pedagogy with writing tutoring the Center offers. In the last year, we have been working to establish additional training for Visor Center Tutors that will allow them to work with students from English 101 and English 145 more effectively. English 101.10 is our program’s course designed to provide students (who self-‐select into it) with additional resources to help them work on their writing. We have put great effort into the development of this course, which links M.A.-‐level Writing Consultants with specific sections of the course. These Consultants facilitate student-‐led “Peer Study Groups,” and they also offer one-‐on-‐one sessions for students in that section. More information about this course, the peer groups and one-‐on-‐one sessions is available on our program website (see “English 101.10” link above), but we have also begun work to connect our program and the Visor Center (as a satellite writing center space) by increasing the hours available for one-‐on-‐one sessions offered in our Writing Program Space. Undergraduate Writing Research Fellowship: This project is mentioned in the above “Grassroots Writing Research Programs” section, but we want to include it briefly here because we see this project as a way to not only serve the few students who win fellowships and complete research, but to also serve the greater community by producing ethnographies of fellows’ experiences (to be posted on our website) that focus in-‐depth on the activities involved in becoming a writing researcher. Additionally, we will include videos from fellows’ live Colloquium presentations that can be viewed by students and teachers. Student Podcasts: The “Let’s CHAT Podcast Series” project is mentioned in the above “Grassroots Writing Research Programs” section, but we want to include it briefly here because in Fall 2014, we will expand the Series to include podcasts by undergraduate students in our English 101 and English 145 courses (or former students from these courses). Our first podcasts in this expanded series will be recorded by a group of former students returning to talk about how writing research skills can be used practically in writing situations beyond our writing program courses. Participation in Scholarly Conversations in Writing Studies Our program engages in ongoing outreach efforts to connect our practices with larger conversations in the field of Writing Studies. The Writing Program offers support (funding) for Writing Program instructors who attend conferences and present on topics related to our unique program goals and pedagogies. In the past several years, members of our program community have received funding to present at such diverse conferences as the Conference on College Composition & Communication (2011, 2012, 2013), the NCTE Conference (2012), Genre Studies Conference in Ottawa, Canada (2012), and the Allerton English Articulation Conference (2013, 2014). Presenters have included the Writing Program Director, Assistant Director, and members of the Writing Program Leadership Team. However, we have also provided funding for more than ten instructors in the past three years to attend conferences and present work that reflects our program’s best practices. Placement and Program Assessment As mentioned in the above section on course assessment (see “Program Pedagogies,” p.9-‐11), our program continually works to find ways to document and assess what students are learning about the practices of writing
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(learning how to learn how to write), rather than assessing the products they produce, which are inadequate as measures of learning-‐in-‐progress. Our attention to this shift has also impacted ongoing program-‐wide assessments. The ISU program-‐wide assessments of both English 101 and English 145 (Fall 2013 and Spring 2014, respectively) were designed to allow all members of the Writing Program (including students) to assess how primary concepts are being taken up and used in our classrooms. These assessments were also designed to allow our program to review and assess (1) students’ ability to think critically about writing and how it works, (2) their ability to engage in rigorous exploration of different kinds of literate situations, and (3) their ability to assess their own productions for correctness and appropriateness for the genre/situations in which they are writing. Finally, the assessments allowed us to highlight concepts and skills that we may want to focus on more specifically in future semesters of Writing Program courses. The data collected from these assessments was exceptionally rich, and we expect to use it for our research, and as a tool to better understand our teaching and our students, for the next several years. Links to the reports generated from both assessments are available on our program website: http://isuwriting.com/about/research-‐and-‐reports/. The general goal of our program-‐wide assessments is to observe and assess both the research and critical thinking skills that students use as they confront new writing situations, and the choices these students make vis-‐à-‐vis the genres they are working to investigate. While we do not expect to do another program-‐wide assessment until Fall/Spring 2016/2017, we will continue to engage in program assessment during the interim period. These smaller projects will focus on particular skills, concepts, and content we want to help students acquire, or measurements of uptake (understanding how students are taking up new learning and using it) both in our courses and beyond. Small-‐Scale Assessment Projects In Fall 2014, we will work on a self-‐assessment project that experiments with ways to help students better understand how a genre/CHAT approach to practical writing research can be a useful way to both understand one’s own writing knowledge and to gain knowledge about different genre situations. Our program-‐wide assessment (as well as other, current research in the field11) indicates that the antecedent understanding of “school genres” students bring to the English 101 classroom has a significant impact on the success of their uptake and transfer efforts. In addition, a pilot study that we completed here at ISU (with Master’s students Kayla Bruce and Laurenn Jarema) indicated that an early exposure to students’ own lack of knowledge about diverse genres created a fairly clear impetus for them to attend to the intricacies of practical writing research as a way to become more adept at writing in multiple genres. Our self-‐assessment works to shape students’ attitudes toward the work of English 101. Students in both English 101 and 101.10 will be completing the self-‐assessment, as will a “control” group (who will complete short pre/post surveys but not participate in the full assessment). Our goal is to work towards a program-‐wide self-‐assessment activity, but we expect that work to take several semesters. Writing-‐Across-‐the-‐Curriculum (WAC) Research Project In Fall 2014, we will conduct WAC research that surveys instructors across ISU about the types of writing they assign in their courses. We will begin with College of Business instructors, but in Spring 2015 will move to a survey of instructors across campus. All participating instructors will also be encouraged to send us samples of assignments and exemplary student work. Longitudinal Study of Student Writers In Fall 2014, we will conduct interviews with students who took English 101 in Spring 2014. Two Writing Program instructors, Katy Stein (Ph.D. Student) and Laura Skokan (M.A. Student), will work with us to interview up to 20
11 For a very recent discussion of this issue, see: Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Robertson, L., and Taczak, K. (2014). Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing. Utah State UP.
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students about the writing they encounter in their coursework and how the work of English 101 does (or does not) provide useful information as they negotiate these new writing spaces. We expect to follow at least some of these students through their entire undergraduate careers at ISU. The Writing Program Staff Writing Program Staff includes eleven ongoing positions. Three of the positions are full-‐time:
Writing Program Director: Joyce R. Walker, Associate Professor of Writing Studies, Department of English Studies. The Director teaches a 1/1course load, which includes teaching English 402 each fall. This course, titled “Teaching College Writing” focuses specifically on current theories and concepts related to Genre Studies, Cultural-‐Historical Activity Theory, Threshold Concepts, Multimodal and Multimedia Writing, Linguistic Diversity, and Access and Accessibility (see Appendix IV for a Reading List for this course). The Director actively oversees all training, assessment and ongoing professional development for the program, as well as acting as a liaison with a variety of institutions and groups across campus. Assistant Director: Nancy McKinney, Academic Professional, Department of English Studies. The Assistant Director works with ISU advisors to schedule courses and assist with student enrollment. She also works to negotiate situations related to plagiarism and citation misuse (often working to handle these situations “in-‐house” as teaching situations). In addition, the Assistant Director is the first-‐contact for student and instructor problems and complaints, and is an ongoing resource for instructors regarding program policies and behavioral issues in particular. Office Manager: Maegan Gaddis. The Office Manager is an extremely important position in the Writing Program. She manages both the facilities and the materials we regularly use as a program. In addition, she handles our budgeting and record keeping, and works with the Data Coordinator (see “Graduate Positions” section below) to archive materials from our various assessment and research projects.
Graduate Positions: In addition to the three full-‐time positions described above, there are eight funded graduate assistants (all at Ph.D. level) with half-‐time appointments in the Writing Program. We have listed brief descriptions of these positions below, but more complete descriptions are on our website (http://isuwriting.com/about/meet-‐the-‐team/). All members of the Writing Program Leadership Team are also graduate students in the Department of English, but their areas of interest include the full range of sub-‐disciplines represented in our English Studies department.
Position 1: The English 101 Coordinator acts as a mentor for new and continuing 101 instructors, which means that he ↔ she interacts with experienced instructors and non-‐tenure track faculty, as well as new instructors (M.A. and Ph.D. students). This position requires significant mentoring skills, as well as skills for designing course plans and assignments, and the ability to work with lots of different teaching styles in a way that remains attentive to the knowledge and expertise that teachers bring to our program. The current English 101 Coordinator is Jeff Reints, Ph.D., Literature and Culture. Position 2: The English 101.10 Coordinator works closely with the 101 Coordinator. In general, this position is focused specifically on providing training, mentoring, and teaching resources for the 101.10 instructors and consultants. The 101.10 Coordinator should be an excellent teacher, preferably with experience teaching or consulting in ENG 101.10 (although this is not required). The current English 101.10 Coordinator is Evan Nave, Ph.D., Creative Writing. Position 3: The English 145 Coordinator works to mentor instructors who are new to teaching the course, and to develop resources for instructors. He ↔ she also oversees the ongoing Writing Across the Curriculum Project and other projects involving the ISU College of Business. The current English 145 Coordinator is Deb Riggert Keiffer, Ph.D., English Education and Rhetoric and Composition.
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Position 4: The Technology Coordinator has several important responsibilities. He ↔ she acts as a liaison with instructors, helping them with our website or other tech issues; provides resources (on our website and in one-‐on-‐one sessions) for innovative uses of technology in teaching writing; maintains the program website and calendar; and attends to the recording/publishing of our various professional development events. The current Technology Coordinator is Kate Brown, Ph.D., Literature and Culture and Disability Studies. Position 5: The Program Outreach Coordinator specifically deals with events that “reach out” to audiences beyond our program and bring new voices and ideas into our program. Some particular events this coordinator oversees each semester include the Writing Program Speaker Series, the Writing Research Fellowship Program and Colloquium, and the Half-‐Mile Project. In addition, the Coordinator focuses on outreach to K-‐12 instructors and programs. The current Program Outreach Coordinator is Emily Johnston, Ph.D., Literature and Culture and Rhetoric and Composition. Position 6: The Data and Research Coordinator is responsible for managing/organizing multiple research projects currently in-‐progress in our writing program. Ongoing program assessment projects are a critical aspect of this position. Other projects include Writing Across the Curriculum research, general Writing Curriculum research, information fluency research (in collaboration with Milner library), and projects in collaboration with the Critical Inquiry Committee. Finally, the Data and Research Coordinator is responsible for producing resources (reports, course materials, etc.) based on our ongoing research projects. The current Data and Research Coordinator is Summer Qabazard, Ph.D., Creative Writing. Position 7: The Professional Development Coordinator is responsible for professional development events designed specifically for Writing Program Instructors. The PD Coordinator plans events, writes reports, creates resources, and maintains the program calendar of events, including our program podcasts, other small group events, and large events such as our pre-‐semester summits. The current Professional Development Coordinator is Michelle Wright Dottore, Ph.D., Creative Writing. Position 8: The Grassroots Writing Research Journal Editor is a critically important position because the timely publication of our journal is the primary source of funding for all Writing Program events and resources. The current Grassroots Writing Research Journal Editor is Julie Bates, Ph.D., Rhetoric and Composition and Technical Communication.
Professional Development Much of the information above describes our ongoing efforts at professional development. Through activities such as writing articles for the Grassroots Writing Research Journal (authors are paid a $50.00 honorarium upon publication), participating in and listening to program podcasts, attending our Visiting Speaker events and Colloquium, and using our other resources (such as handouts, information from our program blog, or videos from our events posted online), instructors can both engage in ongoing professional development and also help students to experience writing research activities in a range of ways. However, we have several additional types of professional development that we offer to both new and returning instructors, which we will briefly outline below. New Instructor Orientation: This orientation is a seven-‐day workshop for graduate assistants (also open to new adjunct instructors and NTT faculty). A basic schedule for our 2014 Orientation is available on our program website (http://isuwriting.com/resources-‐for-‐teaching-‐in-‐the-‐writing-‐program/new-‐instructor-‐orientation/). Orientations have been extremely well received by our new instructors. While it is not possible here to list the full range of learning and support that the Writing Program offers during these sessions, we would like to list here the evaluations of our Fall 2014 orientation by new instructors (anonymous, web-‐based survey):
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Writing Program Summits: The ISU Writing Program Summit is our main professional development for returning and new instructors. The Summit takes place on the two days prior to the start of both Fall and Spring semesters, offering a range of activities designed to help both new and experienced instructors learn about new Writing Program events and research projects, as well as a space for instructors to discuss best practices for teaching in the Writing Program. A program from our Fall 2014 Summit, and a “What’s new in the Writing Program” flyer distributed at the Fall 2014 Summit are both available on our program website (see “Writing Program Summits” link above). Some Summit planning takes place in the summer and winter break, respectively. Summer/winter break work usually includes contacting presenters, finalizing the Summit program, ordering food and organizing the spaces. However, summer/winter break work also includes a final review of new resources, and work to make sure that resources are available and in place before the event begins. Tech Time Training and Outreach: Our Technology Coordinator provides ongoing professional development in both one-‐on-‐one sessions and small group meetings. These events provide time and space for instructors to discuss and explore new ideas for making effective use of the technologies available to us and our students, in particular, making effective use of our computer classrooms. However, because we know instructors are often busy, we also post information from these sessions on our program website. A search of our Program Blog for “technology” brings up a wide range of different kinds of resources, and we also have a Technology Resources page that provides a range of links. Brown Bag Lunches: Throughout each semester, we offer a series of 2-‐3 brown bag lunches that deal with a range of general teaching topics. We often place materials from these discussions on our program website. In Fall 2014, we have a plan for several brown bag lunches (the Writing Program provides drinks and desserts), in collaboration with the ISU chapter of the Rhetoric Society, that focus specifically on disability and accessibility in the classroom. We will have a guest speaker from ISU Disability Services, but will also feature discussions led by graduate students in our program who focus on disability studies and issues of technology and accessibility. English 402: This course, titled “Teaching College Writing,” focuses specifically on current theories and concepts related to Genre Studies, Cultural-‐Historical Activity Theory, Threshold Concepts, Multimodal and Multimedia Writing, Linguistic Diversity, and Access and Accessibility (see Appendix IV for a Reading List for this course). The course is taught as a professional development course that helps new instructors to form a cohort. However, we also open this course to interested NTTs and Adjuncts. We send out a reading list with discussion dates and invite instructors to attend sessions that they are interested in. In addition, we invite non-‐teaching graduate students to attend the course, helping them to feel more integrated with their cohort. This is certainly beneficial when these individuals later become interested in teaching in the program.
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Instructor Cohort Groups: These are groups that operate during the first semester for new graduate students, NTT’s and Contingent faculty. Since the numbers of NTT’s and Contingent faculty are low, there are not often new faculty members who need to participate, but we make sure to invite (although not require) them to attend. The cohort groups are required for new M.A. and Ph.D. students during their first semester. Each spring semester, we also encourage the formation of cohort groups, which can include any instructors in the program. Most often these are attended by first-‐year instructors, but we often have 5-‐10 experienced instructors who attend these meetings as well. Experimental Teaching Groups: Each year we try to form at least one experimental teaching group that focuses on an issue of interest to our program. We have two goals for these groups: (1) to create ideas about best practices, and (2) produce materials and resources for teachers and students to use. In addition, these groups are encouraged (and supported in their efforts to) publish or present this work at a range of conferences. In the past few years of the Experimental Teaching Groups, participants have gone onto present at two national conferences, among others: the NCTE Conference in 2011 (“Knowing What I/You/We Know: Alternative Assessment in Writing Instruction”), and the CCCC in 2014 (“Teach, Transform, and Talk for High Road Transfer: Uptake Genres Helping Students Articulate How They Mediate Writing Development”). Support for Outside Professional Development: We provide financial support for teachers who participate in professional development (attending conferences, presenting at conferences, conducting research into literate practice, publishing work, and so forth). Each year, we spend up to $1500.00 of our total budget to assist instructors with these types of projects. A list of recent conferences where our instructors have presented is maintained on our program website. APPENDIX I: Writing Program Learning Outcomes Learning Outcomes for English 101
1. Identifying Genres: Students should be able to articulate features of multiple academic and non-‐academic genres, including how those features shape content and reader expectations, as well as how their writing does/doesn’t conform to generic features.
2. Creating Content: Students should be able to create content in multiple genres, analyze their use of rhetorical strategies in producing genre productions, and articulate how those strategies shape texts and their production.
3. Organizing Information in Multiple Genres: Students should be able to identify and articulate the organizational structures that govern different kinds of genres.
4. Technology/Media: Students should be able to identify the technologies/tools necessary to produce different genres, articulate how texts are affected by the technologies they employ, and select appropriate technologies to produce their own texts.
5. The Trajectories of Literate Activity: Students should be able to trace the trajectories of texts in relation to the social, historical contexts that shape them.
6. Flexible Research Skills: Students should be able to find and utilize a variety of source materials and data-‐collection methods for research purposes.
7. Using Citation Formats and Citing Source Material in Multiple Genres: Students should investigate one or more academic citation styles, integrate source material into their written projects to support rhetorical goals, and cite source material correctly according to those styles.
8. Grammatical Usage and Sentence Structure: Students should be able to articulate how sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary define particular genres, then use those conventions appropriately in their own productions and identify/revise any areas for improvement.
9. Cultural and Social Contexts: Students should be able to identify cultural, political and social interactions that shape writing in particular genres as well as how texts respond to sociocultural influences.
Learning Outcomes for English 145
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The primary goal of English 145 is to prepare students for the continuation of writing and researching in their academic disciplines as well as within their professional fields.
1. Identifying Genres: Students should be able to identify and articulate the features of genres in their academic disciplines and/or in their potential career fields. They should also be able to articulate how discipline and field-‐specific information is shaped by a range of genres common to discourses in those disciplines and fields.
2. Creating Content for Multiple Settings and Modalities: Students should be able to create content in multiple genres, particularly genres related to working and learning in various types of business-‐related settings in the workplace and in academia; they should be able to identify different types of rhetorical strategies and employ them in their writing; they should be able to employ a range of other skills (a knowledge of mechanics, style, different production modalities, etc.) and defend their choices as a thoughtful response to specific writing and genre situations. Students should be able to demonstrate (through written or verbal communication) how a given text is affected by the use of different technologies or media (in terms of its conception, production, and distribution, as well as the potential ways the text may be taken up by users).
3. Flexible Research Skills: Students should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of what constitutes research (and valid, reliable source material) within their professional fields; they should be familiar with a variety of data collection methods specific to their fields; and they should be able to identify and use library databases, scholarly journals, and trade journals used most frequently within their major area of study and within their professional fields.
4. Using Citation Formats and Citing Source Materials: Students should have a general understanding of the different types of citation styles used in academic disciplines (MLA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.), but should also be able to use alternative means of citing (or giving credit to sources) in non-‐academic genres. Students should be able to integrate source material into written, visual, and multi-‐modal genres.
5. Discourse Communities: Students should demonstrate an understanding of how written, oral and visual communication is shaped by discourse communities within their academic disciplines and/or professional fields as well as an understanding that different discourse communities (especially within different fields and different workplace settings) differently shape the manner in which genres are produced.
6. Trajectory: Students should be able to employ practical knowledge about the trajectories of texts in order to solve writing problems that include the following elements: (1) the trajectory of any text or genre is not simple, unidirectional, or isolated but instead, the trajectory of a given text is complex, multi-‐directional, and non-‐linear; (2) the trajectory of a text does not end once it has reached its desired/designated receiver; and (3) Individuals and groups that receive a text (and use it) may do so in ways that are unexpected or unintended by the author/producers.
7. Globalization, Cultural Contexts and Diversity: Students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of how to produce genres in ways that take international, multicultural, and culturally diverse settings, practices, and ideologies into consideration.
8. Ethics: Students should be familiar with (and adhere to) the codes of conduct, ethical behaviors and practices, and guidelines for responsible research within their professional fields. Students should be able to solve writing problems in which that definition of ethical behavior may be interpreted differently within different cultural, social, and global contexts.
APPENDIX 2: Requirements & Topical Outline for Writing Program Courses Because English 101 and English 145 are General Education courses at ISU and thus need to meet the requirements of the Illinois Articulation Initiative, there are certain aspects of the course that need to be the same across all sections. However, the ISU Writing Program and instructors have agreed that this uniformity need not be achieved through a “common syllabus.” Instead, we work with a set of requirements that meet or exceed the requirements of the university and state of Illinois. Instructors have the freedom to design innovative courses that include a wide range of genres and assessment/grading methods, and work with a wide range of topics and ideas. However, each instructor must meet overall course requirements, and be confident that the course he ↔ she has designed meets (or exceeds) the requirements. We have included here a copy of the requirements and course
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outline for English 101, but we provide a similar document for instructors who teach English 145. Full Information about our courses is available on our program website: http://isuwriting.com/about/quick-‐course-‐descriptions/. Course Design Requirements for English 101 Series Courses Learning Outcomes There are Program Learning Outcomes appropriate to each Writing Program course. Instructors should make sure that they are addressing each of the learning outcomes in a significant way, and also that their assessments and grading practices are clearly connected with the learning outcomes. Required Research Elements These items are different from the Program Learning Outcomes, because they are elements we expect instructors to ensure that each section of English 101 contains. How these elements are organized and what projects/genres they are a part of is up to the instructors.
1. Content Research and Genre Research: Since “researching literate activity” is a core component of our program, instructors need to ensure that all projects include some kind of research into the actual activity system (we call that “genre research”) in which a piece of writing occurs. However, instructors should also provide opportunities for students to do “content research” on various topics as well.
2. Formal, documented research component to all projects: Our goal here is to make sure that multiple projects throughout the semester include not only content and genre research, but that this research be documented and included as part of the grade for the project. This means that if you have a project where the actual “genre-‐of-‐production” is one where formal, cited research would be inappropriate (for example, a news article, brochure, or Public Service Announcement), you should make sure that students document their content/genre research in the form of some kind of formal writing (a report or other kind of cited document) that can be assessed as part of the grade for the project.
3. Researched writing that includes citations: At least one (but preferably more) of the projects in English 101 should include discussion and practice of various citation methods. Remember there are two important aspects related to citations you should continually address: (1) that citation practices vary in different kinds of writing settings; and (2) that in many settings it is critical to be able to accurately document where information comes from (discussions of practices in citing digital information are critical).
4. Researched writing that is for a “real world” audience: At least one project in the course should include researched writing that is specifically designed for a public audience.
5. Project length: At least one project in the course should include content research that is 3000 words (approximately 6 pages or the equivalent if multimodal) in length. This excludes the additional “genre research” that students might be doing for the project.
6. Writing research and genre investigation: Because “the investigation of literate activity” is a core principle of our program, instructors need to make this is a focus for the course. The concepts of “writing research” should inform all projects in the course, but we prefer that the longer, researched writing project also be a project that asks students to investigate literate activity (and perhaps produce writing appropriate for the Grassroots Writing Research Journal). However, this is not a required element because instructors can achieve a “writing research” focus by focusing on this work as part of the “Formal, documented research component” for each project, even if they do not include writing research as the focus of their researched writing project.
7. Sentence-‐level and linguistic research: It is important that instructors include assignments where the accuracy of the choices a student makes regarding grammar, style, organization, and so forth have an impact on the final grade. Although we are striving to assess “learning not mastery,” it is still important for students to be able to document their learning about these critical choices – which often occur at the sentence or even word-‐level. This means that instructors should regularly include discussions of these issues as part of the work of each project.
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8. Finding and using source materials effectively: It is critical that instructors include not only multiple opportunities for students to engage in research, but that they actively teach and include discussions on how to effectively find and use information. Since we are focusing on documented research for both genre and content research, these discussions can be a regular part of the class work for each project. Your ISU librarians can also help you with ideas for this kind of instruction.
9. Research methods: We would like all instructors to think carefully about the kinds of research methods that are included in both the content and genre research you ask students to produce. Rather than simply focusing on finding source materials through traditional print-‐or-‐digital library sources, we would like instructors to actively engage with one or more specific types of research methods that are used in a range of disciplines.
General Example of a Topical Outline for English 101 This example includes 15 weeks. ISU generally has 15 weeks of class and one week of break during a semester. Week One: During week one, instructors generally take time to have students do introductions and/or activities that get them to begin engaging in discussions about the kinds of writing they have engaged in in other settings (both school and non-‐school). Instructors also introduce the course plan and explain/discuss the program learning outcomes during this week. Instructors usually begin the first project at the end of week one, or the beginning of week two. Weeks Two – Four: Instructors usually begin the first project (we often call them “Units” or “Writing Experiments”) during the first two weeks of the course. In general, first units involve “shorter” genres (i.e., writing for situations where the word count produced for the actual writing experiment might range anywhere from 250-‐1000 words). Our goals for these first assignments is to ask students (many of them, for the first time in their educational lives) to engage in a more active, thorough, research-‐oriented approach to understanding their own literate activities, or the entire body of activities and productions that are involved in writing in a particular way for a particular setting. Thus, the writing experiment “target genre” in this first project is often intentionally short because the skills students are focusing on involve seeing that genre in a very different way than they might have done before. These first few weeks are also the time when instructors introduce students to the work of creating writing “field notes” and “research reports,” genres specific to this course and important assessment vehicles for demonstrating learning and mastery of both specific writing skills for specific situations, and skills for “learning” about writing in new situations more generally. Weeks Four – Eight: In general, the second Unit or Writing Experiment begins to engage students more actively in content research (in addition to genre research), and in the processes of documenting that research through different kinds of bibliographic representations. In addition, instructors usually introduce the concept of making appropriate genre choices (i.e., asking students to decide on the specific genres they want to produce in response to a writing problem, and the need to present researched information and/or arguments to a specific type of audience). Instructors often use this second unit to introduce students to the idea of “research methods.” They explicitly discuss with students the idea that reading books and other sources is only one way to generate information, while creating original research may involve other kinds of looking/thinking/asking questions. The specific genres students produce during this second unit often vary in length (even among students in the same classroom), but the rigor of the field notes and genre reports is often increased for all students during this unit. Weeks Eight – Fifteen: This section of the course is usually reserved for what we call the “longer-‐researched writing” production where students are asked to produce a research-‐based genre of significant length (minimum 2500-‐3000 words). Our “default” production for this unit is for students to produce original writing research of the kind that can be published in our Grassroots Writing Research Journal. However, many instructors opt to give students the choice to produce research appropriate to any one of a myriad of undergraduate research publications (see http://www.cur.org/resources/students/undergraduate_journals/ for information on different publications we ask students to consider). In addition to doing content research, students are also asked to do extensive “genre research” to identify the features of the text they wish to produce.
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Weeks Fourteen – Fifteen: This section of the course varies from one instructor to another as many instructors divide their units up differently – even adding an additional unit or two (which usually break down skills or learning outcomes more discretely, but still follow a similar trajectory). However, during our “assessment semesters,” which take place once every three years, the last several weeks of the course are devoted to having students across all sections of the course to engage in a “problem-‐solving” assessment that asks them to produce writing in response to specific writing scenarios. In general, our assessments ask students to explicitly practice (and articulate their use of) skills they have learned in the course to investigate an unfamiliar writing situation, to engage in appropriate kinds of genre and content research in response to the scenarios, and to create productions that actively work to solve the writing problem. This assessment asks students to engage in the production of “genre research” and “content research” reports (similar to those they produce during the semester). Appendix 3: Sample Units for ENG 101 and ENG 145 Courses Because of our program’s open syllabus policy, we felt it might not be productive to offer a sample of a single, full course plan. Instead, we offer this sample of descriptions of major projects from three different Writing Program courses. These samples, when combined with the application sections on Uptake Genres and Classroom Assessment and the other course-‐related appendices, offer a robust snapshot of our courses’ foci and productions. English 101 (General Course) Course Experiments:
1. Creative Tongues. Immersion. In our first experiment, we use our writing research lab goggles to explore the concepts and conventions of a creative folk tradition genre. After exploring the concept and conventions of the creative folk tradition genre, students will research and experiment with another creative narrative genre of their choosing, specifically making a freely-‐written personal narrative about an intense emotional moment in their life into a creative form (such as a script, screenplay, story board, graphic novel, picture book, fairy tale, flash fiction, or prose poem; or a digital creative form, such as a blog, or any other approved creative narrative genre).
2. Lights, Camera, (Pathos), Action. Collaboration. In our second experiment, we will take our writing scientist goggles into multimedia productions to investigate the genre of modern day television commercials. Becoming a member of an advertisement agency in charge of your own department, students will collaborate on the task of producing an original television commercial, one that persuades a specific audience to buy a product as well as a not-‐so-‐obvious idea (such as nostalgia, hope, a better way, etc.) by using pathos effectively.
3. What-‐cha Wearin’? Reinvention. For our third experiment, we will discuss rhetorical strategies of citation and quotation and use this to discover (or rather uncover) the genres of concise writing forms, specifically what is seen in tattoo and tee-‐shirts/sweatshirts designs. Students will experiment with recontextualization, and then using multimodalities, reinvent this quote on a tee shirt.
4. Words Can Express: ISU Deep Interaction. For our last experiment, we will be working with the genre that is the Grassroots Writing Research Journal (GWRJ) article. Whatever your particular topic, you will be writing in the genre of a GWRJ article. You are encouraged to submit “publishable” drafts to the journal editors for possible publication in a future iteration of the journal.
English 101 (Specific Section for Education majors, with a focus on preparing for teaching in urban settings) Unit Summaries
1. Investigation 1 – Formulating an Understanding of Everyday Genres: As an introduction to genre studies, this investigation begins with an exploration of the course syllabus. Once our examination of the syllabus is complete, we will jump into exploring some of the genres most commonly used in daily life. We will develop a list of the most common genres we encounter on a daily basis and select three of those genres to delve into more deeply. Some questions students will consider as they study these genres: How do people/groups/etc. establish their identity through these genres? How do you establish your identity
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through them? How do you (and others) communicate your place in life (figuratively and literally) through your use of these genres? How are the messages created in these genres examples of literate activity? Once we have studied these genres more closely, students will be tasked with creating a message with a specific goal in each of the three genres we are studying, and will assess the similarities and differences between producing a “text” in these genres based on their research and production experience. They will also explore how their newfound knowledge of each genre changes (or doesn’t change) as they closely study and practice writing within each genre. The final analysis of their Project 1 investigation will be discussed in essay format, following the characteristics and conventions of a Grassroots Writing Research Journal article.
2. Investigation 2 – Testing Narrative Genres: For this investigation, students will begin by writing about the moment they knew they wanted to become a teacher or about a person who influenced their interest in becoming a teacher. Then, after we brainstorm a list of all of the possible genres we can think of in which students could present this type of personal narrative (beyond simply writing a personal narrative essay), they will be tasked with selecting a specific genre to study, analyze, and experiment with.
3. Investigation 3 – Analyzing Topics in Urban Education: For this investigation, students will begin by selecting a specific topic related to urban education to study in depth. Students will be expected to conduct intensive online and library research on the topic and will present their research in the form of an annotated bibliography (a school/research genre we will study together in class). Then, after we brainstorm a list of all of the possible genres we can think of, students will be tasked with selecting a new genre to study and experiment with. After careful research (and some small-‐group work), students will develop a thorough list of their selected genre’s characteristics and conventions, and will conduct the research necessary to create a detailed CHAT map for that genre. Then comes the fun part—“writing” about the specific topic related to urban education the students selected within the genre they are studying. The final analysis will again be produced in a form appropriate to the Grassroots Writing Research Journal.
4. Final Report: After completing their 101 Assessment Project, students will tackle the final assignment of the course – a report, written in the genre of their choice, in which they will track their literate activity throughout their lives in general and throughout this semester in particular. The goal of this report is helping students to reflect on and think about what they have learned about writing in general and teaching in urban spaces in particular, how their feelings toward writing and teaching have changed over the course of the semester, and how they see themselves transferring what they have learned about writing and teaching to future situations.
ENG 145 (General) Assignments The following is a brief synopsis of the major assignments for the semester. More detailed instructions will be provided as we progress through the semester.
1. Reading Response Blog: Students will complete weekly reading responses that analyze assigned readings. I expect you to cite your sources. Reading responses are due by 12:00 P.M. on Fridays and should be a minimum of 400 words. Your responses should be posted to Reggie Net.
2. Unit 1 – Genre/Scene Research: In this unit, students will consider a particular discipline by analyzing and researching the ways individuals in that field communicate with one another in a variety of ways. Students will complete interviews, observations and research into a particular field in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the rules that govern both its written and verbal communication. The focus here is on identifying the genres of writing and speech that exist in a particular workplace, then considering carefully how these types of communication affect culture in that community in ways similar and different from other careers/fields/disciplines. Students will also collect and create texts in genres directly relevant to their individual discipline. The “Scene & Genres Report” that is produced through this work will include research about all the types of written and spoken communication that can occur in a particular workplace setting. It will also include examples of the genres related to the scene, along with a brief analysis of how different genres accomplish different types of communicative work. The Scene & Genres Reports for this project will generally be approximately 2000-‐2500 words (5-‐6 pages).
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3. Unit 2 Portfolio – Critical Reading and Analysis: Students will select an academic article of their choice from a peer-‐reviewed journal in their field and analyze how that article works within the larger body of work represented by that journal, including the history and the trajectory of the journal and its standing within the discipline. Analyses may vary in length, but will generally be more than 1500 words (4-‐6 pages). In this project, learning how to conduct robust and thorough “genre research” will also be part of the work, in addition to practice in analyzing the content of different types of research in a particular field.
4. Unit 3 Portfolio – Research(ed) Article: Each student will complete an academic article for a “real world” publishing venue that reflects an important or controversial topic in his/her field of study. Choices for publication venues can come from http://www.cur.org/resources/students/undergraduate_journals/. This unit will consist of several productions. Students will complete a genre report on their selected venue, a detailed annotated bibliography of all sources for the article, an abstract, and the article itself. Students will also create a proposal and rationale for this project. Articles will vary in length, depending on the target publication venue selected. However, a minimum length of 3000 words (or the equivalent if the project is multimodal) is required.
5. Unit 4 Portfolio – Alternative Research(ed) Project: Students will select a genre from their anticipated profession in which they choose to write. Students may select the modality that best fits the trajectory of the project. The topic of the project will also be the student’s choice. Students will write a proposal for their project, provide evidence of research and drafting, produce a final product, and write a rationale describing the activities and practices for meeting the goals set forth in the rationale. This final project will vary in length, according the genre each student selects. However, the proposal and rationale must defend the choices of genre and genre length as appropriate to the field/profession selected.
APPENDIX IV: Partial Reading List for ENG 402 The full reading list for this course is too extensive to reproduce here. However, we want to emphasize that the readings for this course are not based on general teaching skills or an overview of the history or research in the field of Composition Studies. Instead, more than half of the course is specifically focused on genre and activity theory, as well as specific research in the field on genre awareness and uptake, the important of threshold concepts, disposition and identity, and (particularly) current research on writing transfer. The following short list indicates the range of our readings. 1. Artemeva, Natasha and Ox, J. (2011). Tracing Discursive Resources: How Students Use Prior Genre Knowledge
to Negotiate New Writing Contexts in First-‐Year Composition. In Written Communication (Vol. 28), 312-‐337.
2. Beach, King. (1999). Consequential transitions: A sociocultural expedition beyond transfer in education. In Review of research in education (Vol. 24), 101-‐139.
3. Bergmann, Linda S. and Zeprnick, J. (Fall/Winter 2007). Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write. In Writing Program Administration, 31 (1-‐2), 124-‐149.
4. Canagarajah, A. Suresh. (2013). Negotiating Trans lingual Literacy: An Enactment. In Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1), 40-‐67.
5. Downs, Doug, and Wardle, E. (2007). Teaching about writing, righting misconceptions: (Re) envisioning ‘first-‐year composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.’ In College Composition and Communication, 552-‐584. http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/.
6. Fuhrer, Urs. (1993). Behavior setting analysis of situated learning: The case of newcomers. In Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Seth Chaiklin and Jean Lave, Eds. Cambridge UP, 179-‐211.
7. Kill, Melanie. (2006). Acknowledging the Rough Edges of Resistance: Negotiation of Identities of First-‐Year Composition. In College Composition and Communication 58.2, 213-‐235.
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8. Land, Ray and Meyer, J. H.F. (2010). Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (5): Dynamics of Assessment. In Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 61-‐80.
9. Latour, Bruno. (1999). Circulating Reference: Sampling Soil in the Amazon Forest. In Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Harvard University Press. 24-‐79.
10. Prior, Paul, Solberg, J., Berry, P., Bellwoar, H., Chewning, B., Lunsford, K. J., ... and Walker, J. (2007). Re-‐situating and re-‐mediating the canons: A cultural-‐historical remapping of rhetorical activity. In Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, 11(3). http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/11.3/binder.html?topoi/prior-‐et-‐al/index.html.
11. Reiff, Mary Jo and Bawarshi, A. (2011). Tracing Discursive Resources: How Students Use Prior Genre Knowledge to Negotiate New Writing Contexts in First-‐Year Composition. In Written Communication, 28 (3), 312-‐337.
12. Roozen, Kevin. (2010). Tracing trajectories of practice: Repurposing in one student’s developing disciplinary writing processes. In Written Communication, 27(3), 318-‐354.
13. Rounsaville, Angela. (2012). Selecting Genres for Transfer: The Role of Uptake in Students’ Antecedent Genre Knowledge. In Composition Forum (Vol. 26). Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition. http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/selecting-‐genres-‐uptake.php.
14. Russell, R. David and Yañez, A. (2003). ‘Big picture people rarely become historians:’ Genre systems and the contradictions of general education. In In C. 331-‐362. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/.
15. Shipka, Jody. (2011). Toward a Composition Made Whole. University of Pittsburgh Press.
16. Terttu, Tuomi-‐Gröhn and Engeström, Y. (2003). Conceptualizing Transfer: From Standard Notion to Developmental Perspectives. In Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary-‐Crossing. Pergamon, 29-‐38.
17. Wardle, Elizabeth. (September 2012). Creative Repurposing for Expansive Learning: Considering “Problem-‐Exploring” and “Answer-‐Getting” Dispositions in Individuals and Fields. In Composition Forum (Vol. 26). http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/creative-‐repurposing.php.
18. Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Robertson, L., and Taczak, K. (2014). Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing. Utah State UP.
19. Yancey, Kathleen Blake. (2004). Made not only in words: Composition in a new key. In College Composition and Communication, 297-‐328.