Wednesday, August 20, 2014

San Jose State University and Writer's Help for Lunsford


____

Writer's Help Handouts, Guides, and Instructor Manual

- - -

Handouts and Guides 
This Google Drive Folder for SJSU will evolve and update as needed with materials written especially for SJSU professors and students.  Current contents:
  1. Student Access Handout for WH2LH San Jose State
  2. Annotated for Instructors -- Student Access Handout for WH2LH San Jose State
  3. Slide Show for Classroom - WH2LH and SJSU
  4. Tech Support and WH2LH
  5. Email for SJSU Fall 2014 First Year and Transfer Students



Instructors Manual, the platform Writer's Help is on is called LaunchPad. Key refresher pages:

Sign in URL for Writer's Help 2.0 for Lunsford Handbooks: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/writershelp/lunsford/

 

Guides to Teaching with a Handbook, Articles on Teaching


The table of contents for Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks -- for an overview of teaching ideas the book covers.
Crib ideas too from Teaching with Hacker Handbooks -- some will be similar, some will differ, but the principles are the same as Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks.
Bits Blog Handbook teaching tips -- most from Barclay Barrios -- short, sweet, fun, and eclectic are his contributions. Worth the visit just to read a few


 James Lang on Transfer
"Why Don't They Apply What They Learned,  Part I" and Part II

Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

Daniel Willingham, "Why Transfer is Hard." -- from his collection of online articles on how students learn at http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Handout on turning essay into list of sentences: http://cbwshare.wordpress.com/2014/02/ Scroll down to entry by Nick Carbone

Side bar: plagiarism resources -- http://plagy101.blogspot.com/

Inventing the University, David Barthlomae : http://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v5n1/bartholomae.pdf


Trends in Teaching Writing Online: What Things May Come


Up Goes the Triangle, Slowly



At a Computers and Writing conference held in Ann Arbor some years back, I touched on some data Bedford/St. Martin's, as the company I work for was known by at the time, learned from faculty surveys. That's here: http://teachnet.blogspot.com/2011/05/c-and-w-2011-seeing-field-from-field.html. We saw a distinction among research universities and two year colleges in what technology was reported used, and we saw that overall, across the board, technologies that folks who attend computers and writing have known about and used for years were making just small in roads in most courses. 

And yet, the trend from 2006 to 2010, the two years spanning the surveys, was up, more technology was being used. We are seeing now, though I don't have the data, that trend continue, with multimodal composition being something programs and professors request support on (scroll down from this post to see an example). 

That said, trends come and move slowly. Wassily Kandinsky, describes in his monograph Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a triangle that moves up a slope, and at the tip, a lone innovator, and the base, folks doing what came before. But as the triangle moves up slowly, at some point the base will be where the innovator once was. I picture it something like this:

Nick's bad art. The red line is slope the triangle moves up. When the bottom line gets to where the top point is, that's when most of the field catches up to where innovators are now. Sometimes progress is so slow, you cannot tell it's a trend.


So What are Some Trends and Changes?

Multimodal composition was a featured topic at Computers and Writing in Pullman again this year, but hitting a kind of perfect storm moment in terms of resources available to support it's growth.

CWPA had a lot of discussion on foreign student enrollment growth and the kinds of support those students need and thus faculty need.
Big data has always been part of composition, at least in big programs and around SACS and QEP time, but technology is making the gathering of data easier for those with the tools such as e-portfolios or home-grown writing systems like EMMA at UGA, MyReviewer at USF, Raider Writer at TTU.

But eportfolio systesm are abloom, and increasingly merging presentation eportfolios designed for good looking portfolios but also tool on the back end for using rubrics, counting page views, and other metrics.
Pathbrite
Digication
Chalk and Wire
Pebble Pad


The shift in data, however, is not just harvesting rubric scores, but looking for ways to gather engagement and learning analytics, records of student learning actions and choices. Programs exploring this include:

Eli, from MSU's Drawbridge and WIDE team
Writer Key
SWoRD from Panther Learning
MyCompLab Mastering from Pearson, which uses Knewton's adaptive learning engine
Acrobatiq from CMU
LearningCurve from Macmillan
Competency Based Learning Programs
Automated Writing Evaluation, though controversial, is a trend

What's interesting is how these things might converge in different ways. And what they mean going










Tuesday, August 19, 2014

University of Miami - MARE: Multimodal Assignments, Responses, and Evaluations

MARE Workshop Overview

Google Image Search results for "assigning multimodal compositions" on August 19, 2014 9:00 AM

In this workshop, you'll learn more from colleagues than you will from me, but that's as it should be. Many of you are already doing multimodal assignments -- digital assignments where students do more than compose in a word processor a document that could just as well have been composed on a typewriter. Some of you, no doubt, have students write in blog; others perhaps have assignments where students create videos that post to YouTube, or audio assignments that post to SoundCloud, or presentations in Prezi or Wix or Google Sites or Creativist or Medium or . . . well, you get the idea.

So the idea isn't to introduce multimodal composing, to but to see first what folks are doing, and then to see if we can do a bit more.

Central Goal

To create a new, or amend an existing, multimodal assignment which does the following:

  • Enriches, if possible, the multimodal assignment. Enrichment may come from adding more multimodal elements (audio to something that only uses images, for example), the scope and purpose of the assignment in the course, or some other change that makes the assignment more central.
  • Draft the assignment to meet these three criteria:
    1. Makes clear to students how the assignment fits in with and meets course goals.
    2. Makes clear to students how the assignment is to be done -- its requirements, resources, procedures, and process.
    3. Makes clear to students, if you grade individual assignments, how the assignment will be graded. What criteria, rubric, premise for summative evaluation will be used. Or, if you contract grade or portfolio assess and do not grade individual assignments, makes clear to students how you and they will consider the assignment when coming to the final grade for the course.
Google Image Search results for "assigning multimodal writing" on August 19, 2014, 9:10 AM

Discussion Questions -- We'll Use the Blog Comments to Record Thoughts/Sketch Assignments

What's your next step? What will it take to layer in more to an assignment? How will your students respond to it, to each other in peer review? How will you respond to their work?  And a different question, how will you evaluate it -- both in the economy of the course grade and as an assignment that needs to fit into the ecology of the course goals and outcomes?

These are fun questions, open ended, and premised on the idea that what is doable is possible, given a first step and the joy of experimenting with teaching and learning.

Multimodal Teaching and Writing Resources

Resources for Teaching Multimodal Writing, 
Followed by Some Good Teaching Advice Links


Some Free Multimodal Composing Tools 

Wix  -- Easy to use site/service for creating visually rich Web sites.

Creativist  -- Multimedia projects for apps, ebooks, and the Web.

Jing  -- Easy to Use Screen Capture Software -- record up to five minutes of video by TechSmith

Audacity -- Sourceforge's fee recording and audio editing software

SoundCloud -- online audio recording and audion annotation of those recordings.

Multimodal Theory and Practice

"Multimodal Instruction: Pedagogy and Practice for Enhancing Multimodal Composition
" by Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Tiffany Bourelle, Andrew Bourelle, and David Fisher at  http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.1/praxis/robertson-et-al/index.html

TheJUMP: The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects, edited by Justin Hodgson

Kairos, A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, edited by Cheryl E. Ball

Arola, Kristin; Sheppard, Jennifer, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2014, Jan. 10). Multimodality as a frame for individual and institutional change. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/multimodality-frame-individual-institutional-change/

A Pedagogy of Multi-Literacies: Concepts of Design, from The New London Group

Speaking with Students: Profiles in Digital Pedagogy interviews by Virginia Kuhn

Because Digital Writing Matters by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives -- OSU English and DMAC

Special Issue: Making the Implicit Explicit in Assessing Multimodal CompositionTechnical Communication Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 1, 2012, edited by Susan M. Katz and Lee Odell

Assessing Multimodal Compositions. Kent State Writing Program

Ed Tech's Assessment Page, includes rubrics and other ideas for assessing all kinds of digital projects

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/dwae/

Journet, Debra, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, Eds. The New Work of Composing. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/nwc

Borton, Sonya C., Brian Huot. "Responding and Assessing." Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe. Cresskill: Hampton Press, Inc., 2007. 99-111. (Word Doc)

"Ideological Foundations of Formative and Summative Assessment Processes in English 303: Visual Rhetoric and Document Design," by Kristen Dayle Welch, Longwood University -- a well-done conference paper account of one teacher's assessment choices for multimodal assignments used in her course.

Liz Losh's YouTube Description of her Digital Rhetoric Course




From Bedford/St. Martin's, now an Imprint of Macmillan Education:


Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects by Kristin L. Arola, Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. (see citation below from authors in Hybrid Pedagogy for theoretical framework that informs this book.)

Integrating Multimodality into Your Teaching by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State

Sample Chapter from Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Write by Elizabeth Losh, Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. (Chapter 4: Argument, Beyond Pro and Con -- not about multimodal composition, but useful as a prelude to the video below, which explores how multimodal projects can radically alter the writing/creative process.)

The Making of Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing  by Bedford/St. Martin's





Not multimodal specifically, but important thoughts on teaching:

Andrea Lunsford on the Myths of Digital Literacy:



Paul Krebs's "Next Time, Fail Better."

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from
Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Peter Elbow. "Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment." College English 55.2 (1994): 187-206. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/42  

Peg Syverson, "The Five (or Six) Dimensions of Learning," Learning Record Online at http://www.learningrecord.org/dimensions.html


Tuesday, August 12, 2014

WOVEN Overview and Other Fun Stuff at GA Tech

A note on getting in touch. You can reach me by posting a comment on this post, and I'll get an email notification. The comment won't post automatically, I review them first. If you don't want your query to be posted, just write "please don't post" and include your email. I'll answer you privately. If you have a question or thought that you think others will benefit from seeing addressed, then I'll approve your comment and will post a reply.
. . . .

WOVENText 2.2

GA Tech Bee juggles letters W O V E N


Resources for WOVEN Teaching

From Bedford/St. Martin's:


Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects by Kristin L. Arola, Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. (see citation below from authors in Hybrid Pedagogy for theoretical framework that informs this book.)

Integrating Multimodality into Your Teaching by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State

Sample Chapter from Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Write by Elizabeth Losh, Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. (Chapter 4: Argument, Beyond Pro and Con -- not about multimodal composition, but useful as a prelude to the video below, which explores how multimodal projects can radically alter the writing/creative process.)

The Making of Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing  by Bedford/St. Martin's



From Other Good Places:

TheJUMP: The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects, edited by Justin Hodgson

Kairos, A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, edited by Cheryl E. Ball

Arola, Kristin; Sheppard, Jennifer, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2014, Jan. 10). Multimodality as a frame for individual and institutional change. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/multimodality-frame-individual-institutional-change/

A Pedagogy of Multi-Literacies: Concepts of Design, from The New London Group

Speaking with Students: Profiles in Digital Pedagogy interviews by Virginia Kuhn

Because Digital Writing Matters by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives -- OSU English and DMAC

Special Issue: Making the Implicit Explicit in Assessing Multimodal Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 1, 2012, edited by Susan M. Katz and Lee Odell

Assessing Multimodal Compositions. Kent State Writing Program

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/dwae/

Journet, Debra, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, Eds. The New Work of Composing. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/nwc

Borton, Sonya C., Brian Huot. "Responding and Assessing." Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe. Cresskill: Hampton Press, Inc., 2007. 99-111. (Word Doc)

"Ideological Foundations of Formative and Summative Assessment Processes in English 303: Visual Rhetoric and Document Design," by Kristen Dayle Welch, Longwood University -- a well-done conference paper account of one teacher's assessment choices for multimodal assignments used in her course.

Liz Losh's YouTube Description of her Digital Rhetoric Course



Not multimodal specifically, but important:

Andrea Lunsford on the Myths of Digital Literacy:



Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from

Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Peter Elbow. "Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment." College English 55.2 (1994): 187-206. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/42  

Peg Syverson, "The Five (or Six) Dimensions of Learning," Learning Record Online at http://www.learningrecord.org/dimensions.html

Some Free Multimodal Composing Tools 

Wix  -- Easy to use site/service for creating visually rich Web sites.

Creativist  -- Multimedia projects for apps, ebooks, and the Web.

Jing  -- Easy to Use Screen Capture Software -- record up to five minutes of video by TechSmith

Audacity -- Sourceforge's fee recording and audio editing software


Saturday, August 09, 2014

WritingClass and Moodle @ IWCC

Dear IWCC faculty, a note on getting in touch. You can reach me by posting a comment on this post, and I'll get an email notification. The comment won't post automatically, I review them first. If you don't want your query to be posted, just write "please don't post" and include your email. I'll answer you privately. If you have a question or thought that you think others will benefit from seeing addressed, then I'll approve your comment and will post a reply.

Today's Agenda

  • Overview of WritingClass and the custom modules designed for IWCC by Melissa Graham Meeks
  • Integrate WritingClass into Moodle 
  • Assign WritingClass work using Moodle 
  • Review and closing discussions

Resources and Links


Fun tools that give writers data
The Writer's Diet Test by Helen Sword
750 Words 
Draft 
Good instruction
Council on Basic Writing Resource Share
February 2014 CBWRS -- Scroll down to Nick Carbone's Entry
BYU's Style Academy
The Original 20 Most Common Errors from Connors and Lunsford's "Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research" essay.

Kaplan University Podcasts on Writing
Grammar Essentials from Excelsior College

Monday, March 31, 2014

WVU -- Easy Teaching with Easy Writer

Teaching Students to Use EasyWriter on Their Own 


Overview

Easy Writer 5e cover image
This workshop will focus on the question of why to require and assign a writing handbook. We'll look at EasyWriter -- please bring your copy -- with two questions in mind: One, why use a handbook in your writing course? And two, what are good strategies for teaching students to learn how to use the book for those times when they need to write and you cannot be there because the night is late or the course is over? 

Premise
A writing course cannot teach all of writing; it seeks to give students a set of skills they can continue to grow and apply going forward.  One key skill for writers is to know when they need advice and help, and how to find reliable help, help they trust and know how to use. A handbook is meant to be part of that help structure, by a writer's side to consult as needed, often in the wee small hours of the morning, when roommates sleep, writing centers slumber, and teachers dream of well-wrought essays arriving in the morning's drop box. But for that to work, for writers to use the handbook on their own as their growth continues (and it's life-long, no one is ever done learning how to write), they need to be taught when to turn to handbook and how to consider and then apply its advice. But you know what? Teaching writers that is not only fun, it can really help your course to do better what you want it to do. 

. . .

Resources

Andrea A. Lunsford and Easy Writer


The table of contents for Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks -- for an overview of teaching ideas the book covers.
Crib ideas too from Teaching with Hacker Handbooks -- some will be similar, some will differ, but the principles are the same as Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks.
Bits Blog Handbook teaching tips -- most from Barclay Barrios -- short, sweet, fun, and eclectic are his contributions. Worth the visit just to read a few.

Andrea A. Lunsford on Digital Literacy Myths

Transfer and Teaching

James Lang on Transfer
"Why Don't They Apply What They Learned,  Part I" and Part II

Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

Daniel Willingham, "Why Transfer is Hard." -- from his collection of online articles on how students learn at http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

For Natalie -- notes on teaching an online writing course

Handout on turning essay into list of sentences: http://cbwshare.wordpress.com/2014/02/ Scroll down to entry by Nick Carbone


MultiModal Composition

from Bedford/St. Martin's

ix visualizing composition 2.0, 2e  by Cheryl Ball and Kristin Arola
Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects by Kristin L. Arola, Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. (see citation below from authors in Hybrid Pedagogy for theoretical framework that informs this book.)
Integrating Multimodality into Your Teaching by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State

From Other Good Places:

TheJUMP: The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects, edited by Justin Hodgson

Kairos, A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, edited by Cheryl E. Ball

Arola, Kristin; Sheppard, Jennifer, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2014, Jan. 10). Multimodality as a frame for individual and institutional change. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/multimodality-frame-individual-institutional-change/

A Pedagogy of Multi-Literacies: Concepts of Design, from The New London Group

Speaking with Students: Profiles in Digital Pedagogy interviews by Virginia Kuhn
Because Digital Writing Matters by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives -- OSU English and DMAC

Special Issue: Making the Implicit Explicit in Assessing Multimodal Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 1, 2012, edited by Susan M. Katz and Lee Odell

Assessing Multimodal Compositions. Kent State Writing Program

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/dwae/

Journet, Debra, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, Eds. The New Work of Composing. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/nwc

Borton, Sonya C., Brian Huot. "Responding and Assessing." Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe. Cresskill: Hampton Press, Inc., 2007. 99-111. (Word Doc)

"Ideological Foundations of Formative and Summative Assessment Processes in English 303: Visual Rhetoric and Document Design," by Kristen Dayle Welch, Longwood University -- a well-done conference paper account of one teacher's assessment choices for multimodal assignments used in her course.

Monday, March 24, 2014

MARE: Multimodal Assignments, Responses, and Evaluations



Workshop Overview


google images from assigning multimodal composition search
Google image search for "assigning multimodal composition"


This will be a discussion where you'll discover, I wager, that you'll learn more from  colleagues than you will from me, but that's as it should be. Many of you are already  doing multimodal assignments -- digital assignments where students do more than compose in a word processor a document that could just as well have been composed on a typewriter. Some of you, no doubt, have students write in blog; others perhaps have assignments where students create videos that post to YouTube, or audio assignments that post to SoundCloud, or presentations in Prezi or Wix or Google Sites or Creativist or Medium or . . . well, you get the idea. So what we'll focus on in this discussion is each person imagining and beginning to plan for adding another layer to wherever they are, whatever they do, with a multimodal assignment to add either more multi or more modal to it.

Central Goal

To create a new, or amend an existing, multimodal assignment which does the following:

  • Enriches, if possible, the multimodal assignment. Enrichment may come from adding more multimodal elements (audio to something that only uses images, for example), the scope and purpose of the assignment in the course, or some other change that makes the assignment more central.
  • Draft the assignment to meet these three criteria:
    1. Makes clear to students how the assignment fits in with and meets course goals.
    2. Makes clear to students how the assignment is to be done -- its requirements, resources, procedures, and process.
    3. Makes clear to students, if you grade individual assignments, how the assignment will be graded. What criteria, rubric, premise for summative evaluation will be used. Or, if you contract grade or portfolio assess and do not grade individual assignments, makes clear to students how you and they will consider the assignment when coming to the final grade for the course.
Google image from search of "assigning multimodal writing"

Discussion Questions -- We'll Use the Blog Comments to Record Thoughts/Sketch Assignments

What's your next step? What will it take to layer in more to an assignment? How will your students respond to it, to each other in peer review? How will you respond to their work?  And a different question, how will you evaluate it -- both in the economy of the course grade and as an assignment that needs to fit into the ecology of the course goals and outcomes?

These are fun questions, open ended, and premised on the idea that what is doable is possible, given a first step and the joy of experimenting with teaching and learning. So, to circle back to the pun -- because we're in Louisville -- let's gather and ride the ideas for our MAREs.

Resources for Teaching Multimodal Writing

From Bedford/St. Martin's:


Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects by Kristin L. Arola, Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. (see citation below from authors in Hybrid Pedagogy for theoretical framework that informs this book.)

Integrating Multimodality into Your Teaching by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State

Sample Chapter from Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Write by Elizabeth Losh, Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. (Chapter 4: Argument, Beyond Pro and Con -- not about multimodal composition, but useful as a prelude to the video below, which explores how multimodal projects can radically alter the writing/creative process.)

The Making of Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing  by Bedford/St. Martin's



From Other Good Places:

TheJUMP: The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects, edited by Justin Hodgson

Kairos, A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, edited by Cheryl E. Ball

Arola, Kristin; Sheppard, Jennifer, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2014, Jan. 10). Multimodality as a frame for individual and institutional change. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/multimodality-frame-individual-institutional-change/

A Pedagogy of Multi-Literacies: Concepts of Design, from The New London Group

Speaking with Students: Profiles in Digital Pedagogy interviews by Virginia Kuhn

Because Digital Writing Matters by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks

Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives -- OSU English and DMAC

Special Issue: Making the Implicit Explicit in Assessing Multimodal Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 1, 2012, edited by Susan M. Katz and Lee Odell

Assessing Multimodal Compositions. Kent State Writing Program

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/dwae/

Journet, Debra, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, Eds. The New Work of Composing. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/nwc

Borton, Sonya C., Brian Huot. "Responding and Assessing." Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe. Cresskill: Hampton Press, Inc., 2007. 99-111. (Word Doc)

"Ideological Foundations of Formative and Summative Assessment Processes in English 303: Visual Rhetoric and Document Design," by Kristen Dayle Welch, Longwood University -- a well-done conference paper account of one teacher's assessment choices for multimodal assignments used in her course.

Liz Losh's YouTube Description of her Digital Rhetoric Course



Not multimodal specifically, but important:

Andrea Lunsford on the Myths of Digital Literacy:



Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from

Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Peter Elbow. "Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment." College English 55.2 (1994): 187-206. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/42  

Peg Syverson, "The Five (or Six) Dimensions of Learning," Learning Record Online at http://www.learningrecord.org/dimensions.html

Some Free Multimodal Composing Tools 

Wix  -- Easy to use site/service for creating visually rich Web sites.

Creativist  -- Multimedia projects for apps, ebooks, and the Web.

Jing  -- Easy to Use Screen Capture Software -- record up to five minutes of video by TechSmith

Audacity -- Sourceforge's fee recording and audio editing software


Thursday, February 13, 2014

Differentiated Teaching in First Year Writing

Resources for Today's Workshop

Annotated Bibliography on Differentiated Teaching in the College Classroom:
http://itecideas.pbworks.com/w/page/60999586/Differentiated%20Instruction%20at%20the%20College%20Level


Learning Curve for Readers and Writers
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/learningcurve/readwrite/109459/ECommerce/Unauthenticated


James Lang on Transfer
"Why Don't They Apply What They Learned,  Part I" and Part II

Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

Daniel Willingham, "Why Transfer is Hard." -- from his collection of online articles on how students learn at http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Handout on turning essay into list of sentences: http://cbwshare.wordpress.com/2014/02/ Scroll down to entry by Nick Carbone

Side bar: plagiarism resources -- http://plagy101.blogspot.com/

Inventing the University, David Barthlomae : http://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v5n1/bartholomae.pdf

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Differentiated Teaching w/ Bedford Handbook Integrated Media

Resources for Today's Workshop

Bedford Handbook Integrated Media:
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/media/bedhandbook9e/

Teaching with Hacker Handbooks -- some will be similar, some will differ, but the principles are the same as Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks.
Bits Blog Handbook teaching tips -- most from Barclay Barrios -- short, sweet, fun, and eclectic are his contributions. Worth the visit just to read a few.

James Lang on Transfer
"Why Don't They Apply What They Learned,  Part I" and Part II

Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

Daniel Willingham, "Why Transfer is Hard." -- from his collection of online articles on how students learn at http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html
"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Handout on turning essay into list of sentences: http://cbwshare.wordpress.com/2014/02/ Scroll down to entry by Nick Carbone

Side bar: plagiarism resources -- http://plagy101.blogspot.com/

Monday, February 10, 2014

Teaching Students to Use a Handbook, aka Helping Writers to Write after Your Course Ends

Overview

This workshop will focus on the question of why to require and assign a writng handbook. We'll look at the print custom Everyday Writer -- please bring your copy -- as well as a new web-based version of the book, the XBook with two questions in mind: One, why use a handbook in your writing course? And two, what are good strategies for teaching students to learn how to use the book for those times when they need to write and you cannot be there because the night is late or the course is over?  That is, a writing course cannot teach all of writing, it seeks to give students a set of skills they can continue to grow and apply in future courses and beyond.  A key skill for writers is to know when they need advice and help, and how to find reliable help, help they can trust and know how to use. A handbook is meant to be part of that help structure. But for that to work, for that skill to transfer, for writers to grow as writers after the course, they need to learn how to use the handbook. But you know what? Using them in your course and teaching students to use them on their own for when your course is over is not only fun, it can really help your course to better what you want it to do. 

Resources

The table of contents for Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks -- for an overview of teaching ideas the book covers.

Crib ideas too from Teaching with Hacker Handbooks -- some will be similar, some will differ, but the principles are the same as Teaching with Lunsford Handbooks.

Bits Blog Handbook teaching tips -- most from Barclay Barrios -- short, sweet, fun, and eclectic are his contributions. Worth the visit just to read a few

LC for Everyday Writer: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/learningcurve/everydaywriter5e/22222/ECommerce/Unauthenticated.

The Everyday Writer 5e XBook


Login  page if are a class tester

Stuff on Transfer and Teaching

James Lang on Transfer
"Why Don't They Apply What They Learned,  Part I" and Part II

Paul Krebs "Next Time, Fail Better."

Daniel Willingham, "Why Transfer is Hard." -- from his collection of online articles on how students learn at http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html

"Start Where Your Students Are." and "Know Where Your Students are Going," chapters 1 and 2 from Never Work Harder than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

Handout on turning essay into list of sentences: http://cbwshare.wordpress.com/2014/02/ Scroll down to entry by Nick Carbone

Side bar: plagiarism resources -- http://plagy101.blogspot.com/




Friday, January 24, 2014

Writing Across the Curriculum and Teaching with Technology: Making Learning Hard Fun

A session for the

2014 Northern California Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) ConferenceFriday, January 24, 2014 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM (PST)
San Francisco State University

This session will focus on using technology to teach writing across the curriculum by looking at how instructors can use simple tools – discussion boards, online books – in easy to start ways to promote both writing to learn and writing in the disciplines.  Our students come to us already using digital technologies to write a lot in online social networks and other settings. We’ll look at how we can begin with literacies and practices students know, and then use those to move them into the kinds of academic habits of mind we teach in our courses.

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As Andrea A. Lunsford said in an article by Clive Thompson on new literacies, "we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization."  Because of networked computers, social networks, internet connected phones and tablets, people, including our students, write now more than ever before. And that writing, contrary to many of our personal impressions and anecdotal evidence, while often informal, isn't a cause of weaker academic writing. Lunsford's research -- The Stanford Study of Writing -- has been bolstered by other studies of students use of social networks and texting and the effects those writing practices have on learning and writing in college.

All of which is to say, that as always, our students come to use ready to learn, able to write with coaching and guidance, and wanting to do well. The trick, as always, is to help them develop academic habits of mind. My favorite articulation of those habits of mind comes from a joint report published by the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Writing Project. In summary, and quoting directly, here's what the NCTE/NWP describes:
Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in a variety of fields and disciplines. The Framework identifies eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing:
  • Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
  • Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
  • Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
  • Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
  • Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
  • Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
  • Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
  • Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.
The Framework then explains how teachers can foster these habits of mind through writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences.  These experiences aim to develop students’
  • Rhetorical knowledge – the ability to analyze and act on understandings of audiences, purposes, and contexts in creating and comprehending texts;
  • Critical thinking – the ability to analyze a situation or text and make thoughtful decisions based on that analysis, through writing, reading, and research;
  • Writing processes – multiple strategies to approach and undertake writing and research;
  • Knowledge of conventions – the formal and informal guidelines that define what is considered to be correct and appropriate, or incorrect and inappropriate, in a piece of writing; and
  • Abilities to compose in multiple environments – from using traditional pen and paper to electronic technologies.
So. Students come to us as digital natives, but not as academic natives. They know how to Google something, but not necessarily how to research. They can text with fluency, but can come up mute in a class discussion. They post to Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and more, but launching an online discussion in our courses can be challenge. They read a lot, but quickly, and so getting them to slow down, to read more critically and closely, still must be taught. Let's look at some ways e-book technologies are changing to support this quest: meeting students where they are and then bringing them to academic habits of mind, the ways of thinking and writing that mark our disciplines.

Bringing the Social Into the Academic



Click the image to enlarge. What you'll see is an ebook page. However, unlike a print book or a PDF ebook that keeps print-book page fidelity, this book -- The Everyday Writer 5e Xbook by Andrea Lunsford -- uses course management and social networking tools to change how the book is referenced, read, written in, written with, and written about.

You can see that there are tools for assigning readings, that the content, if you dive in, is more than text -- it includes self-scoring exercises, manually scored writing prompts, images, video, and audio. But what it also does is bring writing into the book. For example, in the Table of Contents, added to a chapter on understanding rhetorical situations is a link to a discussion board a teacher created called "Discuss Your Rhetorical Situation."

It was created by the course instructor using this tool that lets an instructor add activities and content to the book, making those part of the book itself. Here's the Add tools menu from a variation of the XBook called LaunchPad:


You'll notice that in addition to a discussion board, an instructor can add a writing assignment, create an html page -- with full html features, including the ability to upload images, embed video, and so on -- the ability to upload a collection of documents, and a dropbox for students to turn in work.

So with an XBook or Launchpad, the book becomes a place for the class to meet, a space to work in. For writing to learn, the discussion of the text is embedded in the text being studied. Students can be prompted to copy and paste from the text into their discussion responses, drawing on the text for evidence, as writing to be analyzed, writing to summarized or synthesized with materials added by the instructor or discussion posts written by classmates. 

But there is another tool key to these kinds of books -- annotations that can be shared among students, giving them the power of social reading. Here's an example of note from a history LaunchPad title, positioned at the top of a page from the book -- in the page. 


The ability for instructors to have students write and share in text annotations, so see those annotations, opens up new ways to use writing to learn and writing to read. It builds on the kind of social networking technologies students know -- the short post (because annotations are shorter than discussion comments usually) -- in a way students know: socially shared.

What this allows us as instructors is ways to see students use writing to develop the kinds of habits of mind we want to encourage. We can then, if we choose, direct them on the kinds of annotations to write, the kinds or reading heuristics to use. We can shape reading, slow reading down, foster close reading with these kinds of writing tools. 

That's cool. It's fun. And the work we ask students to do when we do this kind of assigning is hard, but it's purposeful and in the context of seeing other students notes, of other students thoughts in discussions, each student will have models of good thinking, new ideas, different interpretations to consider, all of which will help that student become a better reader and writer.

As students annotate and discuss, they begin to do the hard work, the necessary work, of moving into the conversations of our fields, of learning to think like a historian, or psychologist, or chemist, or rhetorician, or in other ways our courses seek to have students apply to their reading and writing. 

That's the power, really, of books like these -- the way they can not only capture learning via writing, but provide insights into that learning teachers can use to help meet students where they are and get them to where we'd like them to be.