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457 articlesJanuary 2022
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Abstract
This makerspace-based assignment is designed to cultivate students' literate agency and their awareness of semiotic resources in two-year college contexts. The maker movement in education has been predominantly studied in business, science, and engineering fields and in four-year colleges. Networking translingual and transmodal scholarship and the maker movement, I devised a makerspace-based writing assignment as a scaffolding project to support students' analysis on their digital practices in the corequisite developmental writing courses and the composition courses in a community college. Although students' responses varied, I argue that this assignment can benefit two-year college students and offer social implications in multiple ways: it can promote students' access to the emerging trend of the maker movement and DIY fabrication culture; it encourages students to employ their multilingual and multimodal resources with an awareness of their changing literate ecologies; it can help them build their literate agency and transfer the maker mindset to other rhetorical environments such as their workplace or discipline-specific writing situations.
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Abstract
Instructors within the writing across the curriculum (WAC) movement leverage student writing for learning and engagement beyond the traditional English or composition classroom. To this end, WAC pedagogy foregrounds the benefits of real-world active learning strategies. Educators often find it logistically difficult to create sustainable versions of these realistic environments, however. The same challenges faced by writing instructors present themselves across disciplinary contexts, including ethics and computer science instruction. In this article, we describe our integrated ethics module linking first-year composition students with computer science capstone design teams to better integrate the study of ethics into the writing classroom while giving students more realistic contexts for practice. The tension between two prominent metaphors for learning – the swamp (the messy situationality of professional practice) and the scaffold (the building of progressively more challenging tasks for students out of smaller, simpler assignments) – guides our discussion of WAC-centered course design.
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Abstract
This essay explores how students' misconceptions about writing might be transformed into accurate threshold concepts of writing through disciplinary writing experiences. Through an activity analysis of a geology major and students' writing in that program, I demonstrate that these students' conceptions of writing changed through their legitimate peripheral participation in geological activity. Students' learning in the major situated writing within the activity of professional geological communities, and they recognized both how writing constructs and circulates knowledge within their discipline and their need for writing to enable participation in those communities. Their example suggests that WID programs attend to conceptual change and legitimate peripheral participation as essential mechanisms for creating transformative writing experiences that enable student learning.
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Abstract
This double issue of Across the Disciplines features seven articles, as well as a book review. I am confident that individuals interested in research on WAC faculty development, writing in STEM, threshold concepts of writing, and writing transfer will find much of value. Two articles take up the central WAC matter of faculty development: Elisabeth Miller et al. ( Three contributions engage
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Abstract
Heather Brook Adams is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Greensboro. Her research investigates discourses of gender, reproduction, and shame as well as decolonial/intersectional methodologies. Adams's work has appeared in journals such as Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Review, and Women's Studies in Communication. Her monograph, Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction, is forthcoming from University of South Carolina Press. Adams has been granted funds for implementing undergraduate research while teaching at the University of Alaska, Anchorage as well as at UNC Greensboro. Currently she teaches courses on contemporary rhetoric, rhetorics of health and medicine, and advocacy and argumentation.Brian Cooper Ballentine is senior vice president for strategy and senior adviser to the president at Rutgers University. His research focuses on humanistic notions of value within the context of the modern universities, student debt, and the pressures of economic valuation and market forces. He has served as chief of staff to the president at Rutgers, as the director of the university's office for undergraduate research, and as research director at a global consulting firm. He holds a PhD in comparative literature, with a focus on classical reception in the English Renaissance, from Brown University.Laura L. Behling is provost at University of Puget Sound. She edited the Resource Handbook for Academic Deans (2014) and Reading, Writing, and Research: Undergraduate Students as Scholars in Literary Studies (2010). Publications in literary studies include Gross Anatomies: Fictions of the Physical in American Literature (2008); Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862 (2005); and The Masculine Woman in America, 1890–1935 (2001). She taught at Palacky University, Czech Republic, as a Fulbright scholar and served as a Fulbright specialist at the American University of Bulgaria.Hassan Belhiah is associate professor of English and linguistics at Mohammed V University in Rabat. Previously, he held the positions of chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at Mohammed V University, associate professor of English and education studies at Alhosn University in Abu Dhabi, assistant professor at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, and lecturer/teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His publications have appeared in Classroom Discourse, Journal of Pragmatics, Modern Language Journal, Language Policy, and Applied Linguistics. He has coedited a book entitled English Language Teaching in Moroccan Higher Education (2020).Andrea Bresee is a recent graduate of Utah State University with a degree in English teaching and a composite in writing. While at Utah State University, Andrea served as an undergraduate teaching fellow for three upper-level English classes, as well as an undergraduate researcher for three separate studies. She was named the English Department Undergraduate Researcher of the Year in 2019 and has presented at three undergraduate research symposiums and conferences. Andrea now teaches seventh-grade English at Space Center Intermediate School in League City, Texas.Kendra Calhoun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research examines the intersections of language, race, and power in face-to-face and social-media contexts. Her dissertation analyzes diversity discourse in US higher education and its effects on graduate students of color. She served as a research mentor and instructor to undergraduate students in the UCSB-HBCU Scholars in Linguistics Program, and she recently published on Black-centered introductory linguistics curriculum in Language.Anne Charity Hudley's research and publications address the relationship between English language variation and K–16 educational practices and policies. She is the coauthor of three books: The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research: Success in and beyond College (2017), Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools (2011), and We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom (2013). She is the author or coauthor of over thirty additional articles and book chapters. She has worked with K–12 educators at both public and independent schools throughout the country. Charity Hudley is a member of the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA).Dominic DelliCarpini is the Naylor Endowed professor of writing studies and dean of the Center for Community Engagement at York College of Pennsylvania, where he also served thirteen years as writing program administrator and five years as chief academic officer. He founded and administers the annual Naylor Workshop on Undergraduate Research and is coeditor of the Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies (2020) as well as other articles on this topic. DelliCarpini served as president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, secretary of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), and as a member of the CCCC's Committee on Undergraduate Research.Mariah Dozé is a 2020 graduate of Emory University, where she received a BA in African American studies and sociology. While at Emory, she served as a research assistant studying racial disparities in capital punishment and a writing tutor, among many other positions. Dozé’s research exploring the intersection between rhetorical studies and social justice was awarded publication in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Young Scholars in Writing. For this accomplishment, she was recognized as an Emory Undergraduate Research Program featured researcher. She is now a Georgetown Law 1L and intends to specialize in human rights law.Cecily A. Duffie is a PhD student in English literature at Howard University. She graduated cum laude from the University of Florida with a BA in African American studies with a concentration in journalism. Her master's thesis was on cycles of postmodernism in the work of contemporary Black women writers, particularly Terry McMillan and Toni Morrison. She has been selected as an UC/HBCU Initiative scholar, NeMLA panelist, and Howard University Research Week panelist and presenter. She has also been published by the Miami Herald. She writes Tudor-era historical fiction and southern Black gothic fiction.Jeremy Edwards is a PhD candidate in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines higher-education practices and policies that impact college access and student development. His dissertation explores the relationships between Black students and the UC system in thinking about levels of support and advocacy for Black students on recruitment, retention, and postgraduation career plans. He was a co-instructor for the UCSB Engaging Humanities Initiative, was a 2019 graduate fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and served as a coordinator and mentor of the UCSB-HBCU Scholars in Linguistics Program.Jenn Fishman, associate professor of English and codirector of the Ott Memorial Writing Center at Marquette University, is a widely published, award-winning scholar and teacher whose current work addresses community writing and listening, longitudinal writing research, and undergraduate research in writing studies. She has edited special issues of CCC Online, Peitho, and Community Literacy Journal, as well as The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies (2020), and contributed national professional leadership through various roles, including inaugural cochair of the CCCC Committee on Undergraduate Research and president of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition.Lauren Fitzgerald is professor of English and director of the Wilf Campus Writing Center at Yeshiva University where she recently chaired the Yeshiva College English Department. With Melissa Ianetta, she edited Writing Center Journal (2008–13) and its first undergraduate research issue (2012) and wrote The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research (2015). She has also published on writing center undergraduate research in Writing Center Journal (2014) and the edited collection How to Get Started in Arts and Humanities Research with Undergraduates (2014).Hannah Franz is the Program Associate for Graduate Advisement at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Her scholarship focuses on equity and inclusion in high-impact practices, such as undergraduate research and writing-intensive courses. She is coauthor of The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research: Success in and beyond College (2017) and has published in Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research.Collie Fulford is professor of English at North Carolina Central University. Her recent work on writing program development, writing across the curriculum, and the scholarship of teaching and learning has appeared in Pedagogy, Composition Studies, Across the Disciplines, and Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education.John S. Garrison is professor of English at Grinnell College, where he teaches courses on early modern literature and culture. He is coeditor of three essay collections: Sexuality and Memory in Early Modern England: Literature and the Erotics of Recollection (2015), Ovid and Masculinity in English Renaissance Literature (2020), and Making Milton (forthcoming). His books include Shakespeare at Peace (2018), Shakespeare and the Afterlife (2019), and Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare (2020).Ian Golding is an assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash. He is the editor of Queen City Review, an international journal of undergraduate research. His research addresses student agency, archival practices, and visual media.Kay Halasek is professor of English and director of the Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. Halasek's research spans a range of topics within rhetoric and writing studies: feminist historiography, teaching writing at scale, collaborative learning, writing program administration, portfolio assessment, and basic writing. She is the author of A Pedagogy of Possibility: Bakhtinian Perspectives on Composition Studies (1999), which received the CCCC Outstanding Book award. As director of the Drake Institute, she leads enterprise initiatives in instructional support for faculty and graduate students and research on and policy development related to teaching and learning.Abigail Harrison graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 2020. Her area of focus is English with minors in rhetoric and public advocacy and communication studies. While at UNCG, she participated in hands-on undergraduate research highlighting rhetoric in both historical and contemporary media. Her scholarship on rhetorical theory within university media centers can be found in the Communication Center Journal.Rachel Herzl-Betz (she/her) is the Writing Center Director and assistant professor of English at Nevada State College. She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and began her writing center career at Carleton College. Her research focuses on intersections between disability, writing center studies, and educational access. Most recently, she has pursued projects centered on equity in Writing Center recruitment and the impact of “access negotiation moments” for disabled writing instructors. In 2017, her first novel, Hold (2016), received the Tofte/Wright Children's Literature Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.Katherine Hovland is an undergraduate student at Marquette University, double-majoring in writing-intensive English and data science. She was a member of a research team in the Ott Memorial Writing Center that studied the accessibility of writing on Marquette's campus.Kristine Johnson is associate professor of English at Calvin University, where she directs the university rhetoric program and teaches courses in linguistics, composition pedagogy, and first-year writing. Her work has been published in College Composition and Communication, Composition Studies, Rhetoric Review, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education. An associate editor of Pedagogy since 2019, her research interests include writing program administration, teacher preparation, and undergraduate research.Rachael Scarborough King is associate professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She is the author of Writing to the World: Letters and the Origins of Modern Print Genres (2018) and editor of After Print: Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Cultures (2020). She is also principal investigator for the Ballitore Project, a project combining archival research and digital analysis at UCSB Library's Special Research Collections.Joyce Kinkead is Distinguished Professor of English at Utah State University. In 2012, she was named a Fellow of the Council on Undergraduate Research. As associate vice president for research, overseeing undergraduate research, she instituted University Undergraduate Research Fellows, the Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research, and Research on Capitol Hill. Dr. Kinkead is a scholar of writing studies and undergraduate research; her titles on undergraduate research include the following: Researching Writing: An Introduction to Research Methods Undergraduate Research Offices and Programs (2016), Advancing Undergraduate Research: Marketing, Communications, and Fundraising (2010), Undergraduate Research in English Studies (2010), and Valuing and Supporting Undergraduate Research (2003).Danielle Knox is a Black creative writer who graduated from Howard University with a bachelor's degree in English. A prospective graduate student, her research interests include gender and sexuality across the African diaspora while noting the ways Black queer communities define and express themselves outside of a white Western context. She also desires to help challenge systemic inequalities, promote funding for public libraries, and support all forms of Black literature and art.Addison Koneval (she/her) is a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University. Her work in rhetoric, literacy, and composition primarily focuses on culturally sustaining pedagogies. Most recently, she has been working with grammar education in first-year writing settings.Susan Lang (she/her) is director of the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing and professor of English at The Ohio State University. Lang has extensive experience in teaching online and hybrid courses in technical communication at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She and colleagues at Texas Tech also developed Raider Writer, program-management software for large writing programs. Her research examines aspects of writing program administration, writing analytics, and technical communication. Her work has been published in College English, College Composition and Communication, Writing Program Administration, and Technical Communication, among others. She is the recipient of the 2016 Kenneth Bruffee Award for Best Article in Writing Program Administration and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Writing Analytics.Bishop Lawton is a PhD student in history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include Pan-African Intellectual History, the history of precolonial African civilizations, and twentiethth-century Black movements. In further pursuit of his interests, in June 2020, Bishop became a writer for blackpast.org, the largest online encyclopedia of African American history.Ali Leonhard is an undergraduate at Marquette University, double-majoring in forensic science and philosophy. She was a part of the Ott Memorial Writing Center's research team that looked at the accessibility of writing on Marquette's campus.Hayden McConnell is an Elon University alumna. She graduated with a major in professional writing and rhetoric as part of the English Honor Society. Her research addresses the lack of video content that addresses the topic of rhetoric in an engaging manner while also using successful rhetorical strategies. Her work has many intentions, but the overarching goal is to begin providing more visually stimulating content that discusses rhetoric and its many branches for both new and current members of the field.John Henry Merritt is a senior English major and Mellon Mays fellow at Howard University. His research interests include African American fiction, postmodernism, literary theory, and the digital humanities. Currently, he is interested in using Twitter data to develop reader-response based analyses of blockbuster movies. His senior thesis examines the function of the underground as a setting throughout African American fiction. In his free time he likes to write code and study languages. After graduation, he hopes to pursue a PhD in English literature and get a puppy.deandre miles-hercules (they/them), MA, is a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They are originally from Prince George's County, Maryland, and obtained a BA in linguistics with minors in anthropology and African American studies from Emory University. Their research focuses on language as a nexus for the performance of race, gender, and sexuality in the domains of sociality and power, specifically as it pertains to Black, femme, queer, and trans communities. deandre currently holds a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.Jessie L. Moore is director of the Center for Engaged Learning and professor of professional writing and rhetoric in the Department of English at Elon University. She is the coeditor of three books, including Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research (2018). Her recent research examines transfer of writing knowledge and practices, multi-institutional research and collaborative inquiry, the writing lives of university students, and high-impact pedagogies. She served as Secretary of the CCCC, founded the CCCC Undergraduate Researcher Poster Session, and currently cochairs the CCCC's Committee on Undergraduate Research.Jamaal Muwwakkil (he/him), MA, is a PhD candidate in the department of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jamaal is originally from Compton, California, and transferred from Los Angeles City College to University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned a BA in linguistics. Jamaal's research focuses on political discourse, African American language and culture, and linguistic practices in educational and university contexts.Angela Myers is a professional writing and rhetoric alumna of Elon University. She was an honors fellow and a Lumen scholar, a two-year, competitive grant award earned by only fifteen Elon students each year. Her research addresses the rhetorical strategies of sexual violence prevention courses for undergraduate students.Sunaina Randhawa is a Marquette University alumna. She graduated in 2020 with a BA in English literature and minors in writing-intensive English, anthropology, and digital media. Along with a team of researchers from Marquette's Ott Memorial Writing Center, she worked in conjunction with the Office of Disability Services at Marquette. With their help, she and her team determined both the ways in which they could make writing more and the ways in which the writing center could help that Michael associate professor of English at the University of North as codirector of first-year composition and senior faculty fellow with Center for and He The Writing of (2018) and coedited Perspectives on and Writing He is currently and with undergraduate students that are on curriculum and is a of 2020 graduate of Grinnell College, with a major in English. He is a Undergraduate a research project on of by contemporary of the of the of the he has presented at and participated in a research at the University of in He to pursue a PhD in has a PhD in literary and studies from Mellon University, where she teaches courses on literature, and gender studies. Her current research explores can writing in the humanities. Her work on literature examines the ways in which and discourse the of gender as a modern of has a PhD in rhetoric and composition from Texas University. She Emory University as director of the Writing She has also been associate professor at College, associate professor and chair of English and language at University, and associate professor and chair of communication studies at King University. Her research in the intersections between literature and rhetoric as well as in teaching and She is a book on the in the She also coedited the Journal of the on Perspectives on Learning for is an undergraduate student in and in English and at Nevada State College. As an undergraduate writing and his work and code is professor of English and dean of the College of Arts at University. He taught undergraduate writing and graduate in the Rhetoric and Composition His scholarship focuses on writing program and the teaching of writing.
2022
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Abstract
This program profile describes the development and implementation of the Faculty Writing Fellows program at Curry College. The Writing Fellows program is designed to introduce faculty outside of Writing Studies to Writing Across the Curriculum theory and practice, which leads to their development (or reworking) of a Reading and Writing Enriched course at the College. It was designed to orient faculty to best practices in the assessment of reading and writing, while minimizing the labor associated with writing-intensive courses.
December 2021
October 2021
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The Relationship Between Students’ Writing Process, Text Quality, and Thought Process Quality in 11th-Grade History and Philosophy Assignments ↗
Abstract
Source-based writing is a common but difficult task in history and philosophy. Students are usually taught how to write a good text in language classes. However, it is also important to address discipline-specificity in writing, a topic likely to be taught by content teachers. In order to design discipline-specific writing instruction, research needs to identify which reading and writing activities during the source-based writing process affect students’ thought process quality and text quality, as assessed by content teachers. We conducted a think-aloud study with 15 (11th grade) students who performed two source-based writing assignments, each representative of its discipline. From the data, we derived 11 activities, which we analyzed for duration, frequency, and time of occurrence. Results showed that the disciplines required different approaches to writing. For philosophy, the writing process was dominant and influenced quality, leading us to conclude that philosophical thinking and writing are intertwined. For history, the planning process appeared to be paramount, but it influenced text quality only and not the quality of the thought process. In other words, historical thinking and writing appear to be separate processes. Our findings can be used to develop strategy instruction that reinforces better writing, adapted to discipline-specific writing processes.
July 2021
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Using author-devised cover letters instead of instructor-devised rubrics to generate useful written peer feedback comments ↗
Abstract
This study uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods in a mixed-methods approach to investigate whether the principled use of author-devised cover letters (CLs) within doctorate writing groups can result in more useful reviewer feedback comments than would be attained through the use of instructor-devised writing assessment rubrics. In this context, CLs are self-devised written documents that help the reviewers give the author useful and critical written feedback comments. Twenty participants in different discipline-specific writing groups were given explicit instruction about the importance and content of CLs during the peer feedback process. Their perceptions of a useful CL were obtained from post-course questionnaires and analysed qualitatively. In addition, their CLs at various stages of the feedback process were analysed quantitatively for genre, social presence, and evidence of teaching instruction, and compared to the CLs produced by 20 PhD students in similar writing groups who received minimal CL instruction. The study found that author-devised CLs, as opposed to instructor-devised rubrics, can allow the authors the flexibility of providing text-specific background details, requesting reviewer help on specific textual aspects, using social presence to develop a sense of writing community, and provide reflection upon their own writing.
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Abstract
Technical and professional communication master’s students work with a faculty advisor to complete a three-credit independent research (IR) project, featuring original research. Stakeholders recommended the IR thesis be revised to better communicate IR to industry. Using a writing, activity theory, and genre theory lens, I analyzed what contradictions emerged between academic and workplace activity systems as stakeholders recommended genre revisions. I analyzed faculty and professional advisory board meeting transcripts, alumni and student surveys, and a Graduate School director and thesis examiner interview. Results indicated the thesis’ spectrum of functions, from its strengths encouraging students’ research proficiency to the limiting way it showcases IR as a product, not a process. Stakeholders suggested no thesis changes but recommended IR genre system modifications. As agents of change, students are uniquely positioned to use the IR genre system to address workplace communication problems and help mend our discipline’s academia-industry divide.
May 2021
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Abstract
Informed by Bakhtin's theorization of voice as well as cross-disciplinary studies of scaling, the authors explore how a group of young filmmakers rendered one focal immigrant student's familial history by centering speakers addressing the topic of immigration from multiple levels, thereby connecting multiple social and spatiotemporal contexts in their multimodal storytelling to illustrate the costs of dehumanizing policies. In this case study, drawing from classroom observations, student work, and interviews with both students and teachers, the authors also highlight the importance of teacher agency in creating opportunities for refugee-background students to interactively engage in the language arts classroom. Drawing from interviews, observations, and analysis of student writing, the authors construct a detailed case study of how one student writer negotiated her stance toward the discourse of literary analysis based on her own writerly identity as a creative writer, illuminating the importance of critically attending to the ideological implications of teaching discipline-specific writing.
March 2021
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Hybrid Model for Multidisciplinary Collaborations for Technical Communication Education in Engineering ↗
Abstract
Introduction: Engineering programs must take creative approaches to ensure that their students receive needed communication instruction in curricula constantly experiencing pressures of accreditation, state, and industry requirements: expectations for students' knowledge and skills increase although curricula are compressed. Situating the case: Technical communication and engineering education scholarship describe multiple models for integrating writing instruction into engineering curricula: 1. writing across the curriculum, 2. partnership models, 3. embedded models, and 4. support models. About the case: Technical and professional writing and engineering faculty collaborated to develop a hybrid model, which borrows from multiple existing models for integrating technical writing education throughout the engineering curriculum, both in and outside of courses, including collaborative workshops, specialized writing center support, and other interventions. Methods/approach: Survey research was conducted with students on the effectiveness of multiple writing interventions. Results/discussion: The hybrid model enables students to experience a variety of writing interventions; students perceived them as beneficial. Students found most effective writing interventions occurred in the context of their engineering coursework. Faculty and administrators found the approach beneficial because of its collaborative nature and because it balanced instructional time with external support methods. Conclusions: Local solutions to universal problems must take many variables into consideration: people and programmatic cultures, disciplinary and institutional contexts, and curricular, regulatory, and funding constraints. The authors' hybrid model for integrating technical writing into the engineering curriculum represents a flexible, sustainable approach adaptable to meet specific needs in specific environments at different institutions.
February 2021
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Self-Contradiction in Faculty's Talk about Writing: Making and Unmaking Autonomous Models of Literacy ↗
Abstract
In Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines and Academic Literacies, researchers have produced compelling evidence of the disjunction between faculty members’ assertions that good writing is universal—i.e., the autonomous model of literacy—and faculty’s own tacit practice of discipline-specific conventions. In studies of race and language in education, scholars have identified disconnections between what teachers profess to value—e.g., students’ right to their own language—and how they actually grade. Contradictions are a natural part of any ideology, and these are commonly understood to demonstrate the resilience of the autonomous model. In this article, however, I introduce a set of theoretical tools from the sociology of scientific knowledge—namely, the concept of interpretative repertoires and of variability in participants’ interpretations as an analytic resource—that can reveal cracks in the autonomous model. Although these tools are over thirty years old, they have not circulated widely in literacy and composition studies. I apply the tools to text-based interviews with two faculty writers who had espoused universal “rules” for writing. After identifying apparent disconnections between the rules and their own practices or those of other writers with whom they worked, I present this evidence to them and analyze their explanations: They maintain that the rules still apply, but their accounts are complex, shifting, and self-contradictory. These case studies reveal, rather than its strength, the inherent instability of the autonomous model. Ultimately, I hope that these research tools can, in conjunction with systemic efforts, aid in dismantling the construct of “good writing” and its inherent privileging of white language practices.
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Abstract
Partnerships between writing across the curriculum (WAC) and civic engagement (CE) programs are not given much attention but these partnerships improve each program significantly. CE programs can borrow models from WAC for professional development and obtain support for specific kinds of writing assignments; WAC programs can find among CE instructors a willing audience for critiquing the structural oppression inherent in literacy and for valuing dialectical, linguistic, and genre diversity. This snapshot focuses on a faculty writing retreat that emerged out of a WAC/ CE partnership and demonstrates how such partnerships can open the door for critical WAC pedagogy.
January 2021
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Abstract
During the past decade, much reform has taken place within reading and writing developmental education at community colleges. One area of reform has focused on reducing the number of developmental education credits taken while accelerating the students’ literacy growth. This article describes a pilot project where, instead of taking a developmental education reading and writing course, the students co-enrolled in a zero-credit social sciences skills lab and at least one college-level gateway course. The lab focuses on reading and writing in the disciplines. Using classroom examples, the article also outlines the pedagogical approaches used in the lab. This 2018–19 pilot was characterized as promising, using prescribed institutional success metrics; as a result, version 2.0 will be implemented for 2021–22.
2021
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Abstract
As WPAs at a research institution without a WAC program, we embarked on this project to learn about the types of writing prompts faculty across the disciplines assign and their expectations for student writing. Although our first-year composition program is genre-based and focuses on teaching for transfer, we did not know what genres other faculty assigned nor which writing skills they hoped students could apply to their assignments. We also wanted to understand how they crafted writing assignment prompts and how they perceived students’ abilities to meet their expectations. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 faculty members from a range of disciplines about their writing assignments in courses in the major. We found that faculty (1) want or even expect students to take on certain disciplinary roles as writers in their assignments; (2) but they are not routinely making these expectations clear to students in their writing assignment prompts. To address these impediments to transfer, we present a three-part rhetorical framework for faculty that relies on genre to clarify expectations and allows for cuing to promote transfer for students in disciplinary writing contexts.
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Abstract
This program profile describes the development and implementation of The Black Ink Project at Morehouse College. The Black Ink Project is a curricular initiative intended to support the development of writing abilities among the Men of Morehouse and immerse them in the writing process in the tradition of articulating servant leadership for which the institution is known. Their study informs them of the Black Experience in Africa, America, and the Diaspora. Key to the success of The Black Ink Project is the preparation of faculty, equipping them with the knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy and strategies for teaching and assessing writing across the curriculum and within the disciplines.
December 2020
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Abstract
This essay offers and develops some useful parameters toward the ongoing conversations on multilingual and multi-dialectic writing students in Europe and the United States, two settings with oft-competing views of writers’ varied language backgrounds. I present a synchronic snapshot of writing pedagogy as it relates to translingualism at this temporal moment. Specifically, I seek to link three different university roles—classroom teachers, writing center directors, and WAC directors—to certain translingual postures and their consequential applications. By introducing and elaborating upon the labels “Traditionalist,” “Allied Enthusiast,” and “Active Advocate” as they attend each role, I wish to offer helpful ways to understand the consequences of embracing these postures. This charting of stakeholders and their characteristics can more readily facilitate concrete scholarly discussion concerning translingual writing instruction as it moves forward. I conclude with recommendations and cautions, bringing into question some of the settled assumptions remaining in our field.
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Abstract
Evaluating Academic Literacies Course Types This poster represents a mixed methods study conducted at the University of the West Indies (UWI), which seeks to determine the merits of two types of Academic Literacies (AL) courses in promoting successful academic outcomes. Its focus is the first quantitative research phase in which the grade point averages after the first year of study of Social Sciences students successful either in the general purposes Foun1019 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Disciplines’ course or in the faculty-specific purposes Foun1013 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Social Sciences’ course are compared. The second, qualitative phase will be presented in future publications. This study is a response to an unimplemented recommendation of an external 2018 Quality Assurance Review (QAR) of the UWI, Mona campus, English Language Section, that students successful in the first semester of Foun1019 switch in the second semester to their faculty-specific AL courses. The QAR rationale for the recommended course switch is that the non-faculty-specific nature of the second semester of Foun1019 is academically disadvantageous to students who have shown promise in its first semester. This study is relevant to the debate over the use of general versus disciplinary AL approaches, one publicized by Jordan (1997) and revived by de Chazal (2012) who makes a pedagogical and practical case favouring a general purposes approach. Underlying the study is the premise at the heart of AL courses: that by preparing incoming students, supposed novice writers and readers at the tertiary level of study, these courses serve to maximise their academic performance. Indeed, this is the premise upon which the required pursuit by university students of AL courses is based. This Foun1019 general purposes course, introduced for students from all faculties who fail an English language proficiency entrance test (ELPT), places emphasis in the first semester on developmental reading and writing in English as well as on overcoming writer apprehension. Furthermore, a dual language identity – Standard Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole – is conferred on students. This is because whereas English is Jamaica’s sole official language, Jamaican Creole – which has an English lexicon but distinctly un-English grammar, syntax and phonology – is the first language of most of the students. The work undertaken in the first semester functions as a bridge for students, building their linguistic self-esteem and improving their English language proficiency in order to ease them into what is considered the bona fide AL focus of the second semester: ‘Writing from Sources’. This latter focus is shared with one-semester, faculty-specific purposes AL courses, populated by students who pass or are exempt from the ELPT. These courses seek to respond to the AL development needs of individual faculties’ constituent departments. To do this, they employ as much of a specific purposes AL approach as is possible given the wide range of parent disciplines involved. The Foun1013 course featured in this study, which is pursued by Faculty of Social Sciences students exclusively, falls into this faculty-specific category of UWI AL courses. The Foun1019 and Foun1013 Year 1 student groups being compared have both been certified at the end of their first year of study to possess a satisfactory level of English language proficiency on the basis of attaining passing grades at the end of Semester two in their final and major AL assignment: a 1200-word documented expository essay scored via a common holistic rubric. To ensure further comparability of the two groups, control of the potentially influential independent variables of Socioeconomic Status (SES), Gender, Intellectual Aptitude (as estimated via matriculation qualifications) and other selected variables is accounted for by the multiple regression analysis component of the overall study design. To address the unevenness of the size of the two study populations, that is, the relatively small number (51) of Year 1 Foun1019 Social Sciences students versus the high number (630) of their Foun1013 counterparts, the Tukey test of statistical significance for unequal group sizes will be applied. To assess the groups’ relative academic performance, the official UWI measurement standard, Grade Point Average (GPA), is used. This measurement shows the typical course result of a student for a semester or year, and ultimately determines the quality of degree awarded (for example, First Class Honours, Lower Second Class Honours, Pass). This measurement encompasses nine bands ranging from 0.00-1.29 to 4.00-4.30 points. The points in question represent the numerical value given to letter grades, e.g. C+ (55-59%) = 2.30 points, F2 (40-44%) = 1.30 points. Grade points are determined by multiplying the points earned by the credit weighting of the course, which is based on the duration of the course (whether one or two semesters). Students earn three credits for one-semester courses, and six credits for two-semester ones. 2.00 is the minimum grade point deemed acceptable (University of the West Indies, 2014). The investigation reveals that the overall Year 1 student pass rates for Foun1013 and Foun1019 at the end of the second semester of the 2017/18 academic year were 60.2% (630/1047) and 62.2% (51/82) respectively. Preliminary findings on the GPAs of the passing groups are as follows: 1) Foun1013 students’ GPAs are more widely spread across the band ranges than those of Foun1019 students; 2) The modal band range of the two groups is 2.30-2.99: 42.6% (269/630) of Foun1013 students versus 54.9% (28/51) of Foun1019 students; 3) The GPAs of 41.9% (264/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the four highest band ranges (3.00-4.29) versus 25.5% (13/51) for Foun1019 students; 4) The GPAs of 10.6% (66/630) of the Foun1013 students fall into the 2:00-2:29 (just acceptable) band range versus 15.7% (8/51) for 1019 students; 5) The GPAs of 4.9% (31/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the three lowest band ranges (0.00 -1.99) versus 3.9% (2/51) for Foun1019 students. Thus, overall, the Year 1 Foun1013 specific purposes students outperformed their Foun1019 general counterparts with respect to their higher band ranges, but the modal range of scores for both groups (a low but acceptable one) was the same; in addition, the Foun1019 group had slightly better outcomes in terms of its lower proportion of students with poor GPAs (under 2.0). Therefore, this cross-tabulation of the two groups’ GPAs reveals that student success in the general purposes course is not more highly correlated with Year 1 academic failure than student success in the faculty-specific purposes course, but it may hold implications for the passing grades received. Corresponding results for Year 2, 3 and 4 students, along with these Year 1 results, will be subjected to the finer-grained statistical analysis needed to reach definitive conclusions, while the qualitative phase of the study will use course content analysis and questionnaire and interview data from students and academic staff to seek explanations for the conclusions drawn. References de Chazal, E. (2012). The general-specific debate in EAP: Which case is the most convincing for most contexts? Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2(1), 135–148. http://pops.uclan.ac.uk/index.php/jsltr/article/view/90/37 Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge University Press. University of the West Indies. (2014). Grade point average regulations (Internal document). UWI. https://www.uwi.edu/gradingpolicy/docs/regulations.pdf
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Collaborating between Writing and STEM: Teaching Disciplinary Genres, Researching Disciplinary Interventions, and Engaging Science Audiences ↗
Abstract
Collaborating between Writing and STEM: Teaching Disciplinary Genres, Researching Disciplinary Interventions, and Engaging Science Audiences This poster describes a multi-pronged effort to build a writing curriculum in Physics and other STEM fields at the George Washington University, USA. These efforts include curricular collaboration, a research study conducted by the Physicists and Writing Scholars, and external funding initiatives. This project first began as a curricular collaboration through our Writing in the Disciplines (WID) curriculum, initiated by observations among Physics faculty that undergraduate students lack Physics specific writing skills. Writing faculty responded to this observation by introducing Physics faculty to the idea that writing can and must be taught, that the genres of Physics can be taught by Physics faculty, and that a focus on the writing process can improve student writing. Our curricular goal was to demonstrate to faculty who are unfamiliar with writing studies that writing is a means to learn in Physics (Anderson et al., 2017). The first phase of our effort was to persuade Physics faculty that writing contributes to learning in Physics; we describe a collaboration between Physics and Writing faculty that developed assignments and made curricular interventions. This collaboration built upon scholarship in writing studies that argues genre instruction develops capacities and skills for student writing (Swales, 1990; Winsor, 1996). While genre is not a new concept in Writing Studies, for many Physics faculty the idea that they can teach – and have students learn – how to write in disciplinary genres is novel. Collaboration around curricular revisions enabled Writing and Physics faculty to teach students that learning how to write in a new genre is a skill that can be practiced (Ericsson, 2006; Kellogg & Whiteford, 2009). We developed a process for students to follow when faced with types of writing common to Physics, but potentially new to them, such as the abstract (written), lab research notebook (written), article summary (oral), letter to colleague (written), cover letter and resumé (written), elevator pitch (oral), proposal (written and oral), presentation on issues of ethics and equity in STEM (oral), research presentation (oral), poster (written), poster presentation (oral), final research report (written), and Symposium presentation (oral). The collaboration thus created pedagogical exchange between faculty as well as scholarly synergy between the disciplines of Physics and Writing Studies. Physics faculty have observed that the curricular collaboration has had measurable results for students. Physics student participation in the campus research day has increased dramatically. We attribute this rise partly to the increased, explicit attention in classroom settings to how to engage with Physics genres of writing, especially abstracts and research posters. While the collaboration successfully brought together a small but solid group of Writing and Physics faculty, it also raised questions about how to persuade a broader range of Physics faculty, and other science faculty, that teaching disciplinary genres can improve student writing, and that writing is a means of learning. Given that faculty in STEM disciplines find empirical research persuasive, our next step was to undertake a collaborative research project to measure the impact of the teaching of writing in Physics. The new curricular focus on genre asked students to conceptualize themselves as scientific writers in relation to specific Physics or STEM audiences. The collaborative research therefore investigates if teaching Physics genres improves writing and enables students to conceptualize themselves as emerging scientists engaged in professional communication (Poe et al., 2010; Winsor, 1996). Our longitudinal analysis of student writing in Physics evaluates writing from three sequenced courses, the first before faculty-developed genre assignments, and then after genre assignments. We developed a rubric that evaluates general outcomes – audience, genre, structure, style – and a rubric that evaluates specialized learning outcomes – acknowledgement of past scholarship, working with models, incorporating scholarship, articulation of research questions, working with graphs, and articulation of methods. Preliminary research analysis shows that explicitly teaching Physics genres increases student’s abilities to write successfully in Physics, enabling students to understand how knowledge is communicated persuasively to audiences. Our goal with this research is to show STEM faculty through research by Physicists and Writing Studies scholars that teaching writing socializes students into the discipline of Physics, leading them to identify as professional scientists (Allie et al, 2010; Gere et al., 2019). This increase is exemplified by the large number of students volunteering to present a poster during the University wide research day, giving them experience presenting to an educated audience outside of Physics. Thus, a combination of strategies – curricular collaboration and intervention, collaborative research from within the discipline of Physics, and successful external funding – are what demonstrate to scientists that teaching genre and teaching writing are central to science education. Based on this experience, our contribution is that shared pedagogical and research collaborations, and funding, are what make the knowledge of Writing Studies persuasive to scientists. We have seen success with these efforts. At George Washington, other STEM faculty have observed successes in the Physics curriculum, and have joined efforts to bring writing more explicitly into their curriculum. This year, we began a Writing in STEM symposium that has grown to include faculty in Chemistry, Systems Engineering, Mathematics, Geography, Mechanical Engineering, and other fields. We have also seen an uptick in STEM courses in the WID curriculum. The Physics and Writing research collaboration has led to a National Science Foundation (NSF) submission on genre, and an NSF award for a study of writing and engineering judgement, being conducted by Writing faculty and Systems Engineering faculty. References Allie, S., Armien, M.N., Burgoyne, N, Case, J.M., Collier-Reed, B.I, Craig, T.S., Deacon, A, Fraser, D.M.,Geyer, Z, Jacobs, C., Jawitz, J., Kloot, B., Kotta, L., Langdon, G., le Roux, K., Marshall, D, Mogashana,D., Shaw,C., Sheridan, G., & Wolmarans, N. (2009). Learning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education. European Journal of Engineering Education, 34(4), 359-367. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043790902989457 Anderson, P., Anson, C. M., Fish, T., Gonyea, R. M., Marshall, M., Menefee-Libey, W Charles Paine, C., Palucki Blake, L. & Weaver, S. (2017). How writing contributes to learning: new findings from a national study and their local application. Peer Review, 19(1), 4. Ericsson, K. A. (2009). The Influence of experience and deliberate practice on the development of superior expert performance. In K. A. Ericsson, R. R. Hoffman, A. Kozbelt & A. M Williams (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp 685–705). Cambridge University Press. Gere, A. R., Limlamai, N., Wilson, E., Saylor, K., & Pugh, R. (2019). Writing and conceptual learning in science: an analysis of assignments. Written communication, 36(1), 99–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088318804820 Kellogg, R., & Whiteford, A. (2009). Training advanced writing skills: the case for deliberate practice. Educational psychologist, 44(4), 250–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520903213600 Poe, M., Lerner, N., & Craig, J. (2010). Learning to communicate in science and engineering: Case studies from MIT. MIT Press. Swales, J. (1990). Discourse analysis in professional contexts. Annual review of applied linguistics, 11, 103–114. Winsor, D. A.(1996) Writing like an engineer: A rhetorical education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Embracing the “Always-Already”: Toward Queer Assemblages for Writing Across the Curriculum Administration ↗
Abstract
Framed in three guiding claims about relationships between Writing Across the Curriculum and queer theories, this article offers Jasbir Puar’s theory of “queer assemblage” as a model for rearticulating WAC administration.
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Revising a Scientific Writing Curriculum: Wayfinding Successful Collaborations with Interdisciplinary Expertise ↗
Abstract
Interdisciplinary collaborations to help students compose for discipline-specific contexts draw on multiple expertise. Science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) programs particularly rely on their writing colleagues because 1) their academic expertise is often not writing and 2) teaching writing often necessitates a redesigning of existing instructional materials. While many writing studies scholars have the expertise to assist their STEM colleagues with such tasks, how to do so—and, more fundamentally, how to begin such efforts—is not commonly focused on in the literature stemming from these collaborations. Our article addresses this gap by detailing an interdisciplinary Writing in the Disciplines (WID) collaboration at a large, public R1 university between STEM and writing experts to redesign the university’s introductory biology writing curriculum. The collaborative curriculum design process detailed here is presented through the lens of wayfinding, which concerns orientation, trailblazing, and moving through uncertain landscapes according to cues. Within this account, a critical focus on language—what we talk about when we talk about writing—emerges, driving both the collaboration itself and resultant curricular revisions. Our work reveals how collaborators can wayfind through interdisciplinary partnerships and writing curriculum development by transforming differences in discipline-specific expertise into a new path forward.
June 2020
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Understanding Graduate Writers’ Interaction with and Impact of the Research Writing Tutor during Revision ↗
Abstract
Teaching the craft of written science communication is an arduous task that requires familiarity with disciplinary writing conventions. With the burgeoning of technological advancements, practitioners preparing novice research writers can begin to augment teaching and learning with activities in digital writing environments attuned to the conventions of scientific writing in the disciplines. The Research Writing Tutor (RWT) is one such technology. Grounded in an integrative theoretical framework, it was designed to help students acquire knowledge about the research article genre and develop research writing competence. One of its modules was designed to facilitate revision by providing different forms of automated feedback and scaffolding that are genre-based and discipline-specific. This study explores whether and how the features of the RWT may impact revision while using this module of the tool. Drawing from cognitive writing modeling, this study investigates the behaviors of a multidisciplinary group of 11 graduate-student writers by exploring how they interacted with the RWT's features and how this interaction may create conditions for enhanced revision processes and text modifications. Findings demonstrate promising potential for the use of this automated feedback tool in fostering writers' metacognitive processing during revision. This research adds to theory on cognitive writing models by acknowledging the evolving role of digital environments in writing practices and offering insights into future development of automated tools for genre-based writing instruction.
April 2020
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Abstract
To investigate the contribution of formal communications (FCs) to problem-solving knowledge work, this study examines survey, interview, and observational data from 212 teams who produced contracting documents, reports, and PowerPoint presentations while working on projects for diverse organizations worldwide. The study found that these FCs engaged teams in a contextual–conceptual dynamic involving interactive pairs of integral work activities. The findings validate, integrate, and extend prior scholarship on organizational genres, writing to learn, and the role of material texts in the work process, leading to a comprehensive framework that pinpoints opportunities for managing FCs to achieve their fullest potential.
January 2020
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Abstract
Scientists and writing studies scholars agree that students need to be able to repurpose scientific knowledge across audiences, goals, and genres. This article offers a much-needed, practical example of an assignment that allows students to work towards these goals. Working collaboratively, a faculty member from biology, a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) administrator, and an Encyclopedia of Alabama (EOA) editor redesigned a conservation biology course assignment around communication with multiple audiences. The assignment required students to produce a webpage about a rare species in Alabama that fulfills the technical, scientific writing component of the course and then repurpose that webpage into an entry for EOA aimed at a non-expert audience. We elaborate on the context in which the repackaging assignment developed, explain how it fits with student learning outcomes in biology, and share themes we noticed in students' reflections on the practice of repurposing their writing.
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Abstract
Studies examining writing as a High-Impact Education Practice (HIP) have focused primarily on writing in terms of major project assignments, thus directing attention away from the promising high impacts that low-stakes writing (LSW) assignments have on student learning. This study piloted assigning LSW in two MBA classes to test the extent to which LSW assignments align with Anderson et al.'s (2016) study on high-impact writing assignments, and further, how accessible and beneficial LSW assignments are for non-WAC faculty and their curricula. Interview data from this study shows encouraging potential for WAC expansion and recruitment, and student survey data shows a promising relationship between LSW and the HIPs. This study ultimately shows low-stakes writing to function as a HIP, recruitment tool, and resource for correcting misconceptions about assigning writing.