The Writing Program Administrator as Interstitial Radical

Drawing upon personal experience as a writing program administrator at a research university, and marshaling a body of critical scholarship that examines how neoliberal ideology in the academy might be opposed, the author discusses interstitial resistance in the form of a curricular alternative--namely, the outsider genre of zines. Because zines typically embody a "worldview dramatically at odds with the [one] cultivated and reinforced by institutions of higher education," zines offer students an alternative point of view not usually found in standard writing curricula.While the author uses zines as a central illustration, the purpose here is to encourage readers to find the "cracks and fissures" in their own institutions so that the insinuations of neoliberal policies might be resisted through teaching and administrative initiatives.

The Online Writing Program Administrator (OWPA)

This chapter explores issues specific writing program administration considering the huge influx of online writing courses across the country. The author argues that a pedagogical shift has occurred that requires a change in administering writing programs: teaching online is different that teaching face-to-face. Considering this influx and pedagogical shift, the author argues that in the age of MOOCs, focusing on faculty support and the development and maintenance of online writing courses (OWCs) becomes imperative. The central idea of the chapter is that in order for online writing instructors to focus on what they do best (teaching), they need to be led by someone with online writing instruction (OWI) experience, who is trained and qualified to lead a writing program that includes OWCs. The author argues for the development of a new WPA role, an Online Writing Program Administrator (OWPA), in order to distinguish a brand (a concept from Keith Rhodes, 2010) of OWI, which is distinctly different than the instruction and content offered by MOOCs.

Crowdsourcing the curriculum

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.