scholarly journals Productive Uncertainty and Postpedagogical Practice in First-Year Writing

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Composing Processes ◽  
Writing Assignment

To succeed beyond the writing classroom, students need creative thinking and adaptable, transferable writing and learning strategies, both of which are emphasized by a classroom approach called “postpedagogy.” Postpedagogy emphasizes experimentation and reflection as integral to composing processes, especially digital composing. One feature of postpedagogical classrooms is writing assignments that require students to make a broader range of rhetorical choices and experiment with new approaches, audiences, mediums, and/or technologies. I offer my “definitional text” assignment as an example of one such writing assignment. Though the experimentation encouraged by postpedagogical approaches may lead to initial failures and frustration, such failure can be made productive via intensive, sustained, and specific reflection on composing and learning processes.

Pedagogical Interventions in the First-Year Writing Classroom for First-Generation College Students

2018 ◽  
pp. 153-173
Author(s):  
Jessica Rae Jorgenson Borchert
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
First Generation ◽  
First Generation College Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
Trio Programs ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Pedagogical Interventions ◽  
First Generation College ◽  
Writing Genres

This chapter discusses ways of engaging first-generation college students in the first-year writing classroom. Many interventions exist for helping first-generation college students adjust to and thrive in academic life, such as TRIO programs. This chapter focuses on how instructors in writing classrooms can create pedagogical interventions to encourage and engage these students in academic discourse. To better understand how the pedagogical interventions were received, the author studied contemporary research on multiple ways of engaging first-generation college students in the first-year writing classroom. Along with this research, the author also collected data from students that identified what activities and assignments most engaged them and what they learned from those assignments. From this data and outside research, the author determined three main pedagogical interventions to help first-generation college students succeed, such as peer review groups, creating empathetic spaces, and assigning empathetic writing genres.

Complicating Communication in Computer Mediate Environments

2010 ◽  
pp. 202-219
Author(s):  
Brittany Cottrill
Keyword(s):  
Public University ◽  
Student Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Computers And Writing ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Composition I

Building on the research produced by early and current computers and writing scholars, this chapter will look at the results of an analysis of both virtual- and classroom-based texts produced by nine first-year writers, five from composition I and four from composition II courses at a mid-sized, Midwestern, public university. The research included in this chapter explores the results of how blogging affected student writing in the first-year writing classroom. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the results of this study in relation to the explicit and implicit textual signals and how these textual signals complicate communication in computer mediated environments.

Crowdsourcing the curriculum

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie White-Farnham ◽  
Carolyn Caffrey Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Student Performance ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Program ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Literacy Outcomes ◽  
Writing Program Administrator ◽  
Writing Instructors

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to describe the rationale, process and results of an integrated curricular intervention for information literacy instruction in a first-year writing program. Design/methodology/approach – The information literacy coordinator collaborated with writing instructors and the Writing Program Administrator on the initial design of information literacy outcomes. The librarian and instructors created a modular curriculum with multiple lessons and activities aligned to each outcome. The curriculum was housed in the course management system for easy updating and distribution. Finally, instructors taught the embedded information literacy activities for two semesters and measured student improvement through a pre-/post-survey and a rubric-based assessment of students’ citation and documentation. Findings – Students saw significant gains over the course of the semester in their ability to use Boolean operators, identify the purpose of sources and understand citation styles. As a related and valuable measure, writing program assessment results showed an improvement in students’ performance in citation and documentation in researched writing assignments after a one-year implementation of the intervention. Writing instructors reported an increased awareness of information literacy pedagogy and intentionality in their teaching. Finally, the librarian was able to leverage this collaboration to highlight the teaching roles of librarians beyond the one-shot. Originality/value – Well-known temporal and logistical limits exist in regard to embedded, one-shot and multi-shot approaches to information literacy. The latter two are especially unsustainable when implemented at scale, such as within a first-year writing program that serves hundreds or thousands of students each semester. This study documents a faculty development approach in which writing instructors integrate information literacy (IL) into their own instruction. This offers a model that makes explicit IL processes and skills to writing instructors, results in high student performance and allows especially the small college librarian to manage his/her other strategic information literacy partnerships.

scholarly journals Authenticity and the Rhetoric of “Selling” on Social Media: A Role-writing Assignment Set

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica McCaughey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
Professional Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Writing Assignment

Rooted in a hybrid, themed, first-year writing course titled Please Like Us: Selling with Social Media and drawing on the disciplines of business, marketing, and writing studies, the two sequenced assignments explored here rely upon role-playing and “role-writing” for specific outside professional audiences. A semester-long blog project serves as a jumping off point for a researched, multi-disciplinary social media marketing proposal, providing students with the chance to examine social media in both rhetorical and professional terms. The accompanying article explores these assignments in the context of “authenticity” and with an eye toward not only principles of writing pedagogy, but also the transfer of knowledge and process between academic and professional writing.

scholarly journals Blended learning to enhance English writing assignments without using online tools

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Parichart Charernwiwatthanasri
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Blended Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Online Tools ◽  
Writing Assignment ◽  
Translation Machine

From face-to-face to online teaching an English for Reading and Writing course is challenging to provide learning strategies and assessments that fit the pedagogical style of the online environment since there are many online tools (e.g. translation machine, grammar check software, and websites) for assistance in English writing. This study aims to investigate students’ learning strategies in taking an online writing assignment, with an emphasis on using authentic assessments to encourage students to avoid using online tools and plagiarism in their writing. The findings show that during online learning, students made use of online tools, and they searched for the information on the internet as an assistance in writing an assignment.  However, using Blended Learning and four different types of writing tasks significantly reduces the use of online tools, and it enhances students’ active participation in the assessment process. The guided instructions of each task also help students to improve their writing skills, and most of the students preferred to work in small groups to complete the activities online which enhanced interaction and the sense of an online learning community.Keywords: blended learning; writing assignment; online tools 

scholarly journals Designing Publicly Engaged First-Year Research Projects: Protest Art and Social Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Bridget Draxler
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Local Context ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Protest Art ◽  
White Institution ◽  
Writing Assignment

This research assignment invites students in a first-year writing preparation course to explore topics of social justice through protest art. The course is taught at a small, private liberal arts college in a course for “emerging writers.” I have taught this assignment at a predominantly White institution (PWI), in a course where the majority of students are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Students choose a work of protest art from the campus library special collections, frame the social justice issue it addresses in a local context using local sources, and then write an essay that puts that research in conversation with their own story. Finally, linking public history to civic engagement, students create their own protest art as a community call to action. The multimodal, local, and personal nature of this writing assignment creates opportunities for students to see the connections between their emerging identities as writers and civic actors. This assignment can create space for students to use their multilingual identities to speak back to the structural inequality within our institution, developing confidence in their own voices to call for meaningful change.

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