Selections from The Allyn & Bacon Sourcebook for Writing ProgramAdministrators

I began reading for my six-week (plus or minus) independent study on Writing Program Administration today with three selections from The Allyn & Bacon Sourcebook for Writing Program Administrators. For each of these pieces (ordered by how I read them), I am providing a brief summary. In addition to this brief summary, I am providing a short discussion about whether I see this selection as being useful to the scope of a future WPA class, which my colleague Mark Blaauw-Hara (also blogging) and I are designing. This class design will introduce students to WPA work with an emphasis on responding to what we have called the “apocalyptic turn” faced by the academy. This class will focus on exploring how WPAs can serve as agents of change in the face of difficult academic climates.

Schwalm, David E. “The Writing Program (Administrator) in Context: Where Am I, and Can I Still Behave Like a Faculty Member?” Eds. Irene Ward and William J. Carpenter. The Allyn & Bacon Sourcebook for Writing Program Administrators. New York: Longman, 2002. Print. 9-22.

This selection poses as a series of questions to help a new administrator come to better understand their role and location within their institution and department. The author helps the reader to consider whether they hold a task or a position within their department and then helps them to probe into the exact nature of what it is they are assigned to direct. Next, the article asks the reader to situate their program within the college by first considering what department it falls under and then where it fits within the institutional context as a whole. Building on this framework, the article then has the reader situation their university and then the state of higher education as a whole. Lastly, the article considers where the money is with respect to all these considerations. Through this guided tour of the academy, the reader comes to see their position as one that is deeply complex as a result of the intricate politics afforded by all of these considerations. The article, by way of this Socratic method, helps the reader to see how their concerns must broaden as an administrator and the drawbacks of not seeing the full picture of their context.

Discussion: This article was eye opening for me even after having served as an administrator. It helped to reveal deficits in my understanding of my own institution and made me question the precise role (task or position?) that my own administrative position entails. I think this is a perfect selection to start any WPA class because it helps contextualize the problems and challenges WPAs face, but also help those who have only served in faculty positions understand and empathize with the complexity of administrative work.

Ward, Irene and Merry Perry. “A Selection of Strategies for Training Teaching Assistants.” Eds. Irene Ward and William J. Carpenter. The Allyn & Bacon Sourcebook for Writing Program Administrators. New York: Longman, 2002. Print. 117-138.

This article provides, as the title suggests, strategies for training TAs. The authors situate the needs and pressures that TAs encounter when beginning their work as new teachers. This treatment brings the challenges of TA training into focus. The authors then provide a series of questions that writing program administrators and graduate program directors can use as a heuristic to begin thinking about reshaping or reconsidering their own institution’s training practices. Finally, the chapter provides several sets of suggestions for approaching TA training. They provide a list of what is seen as typical in programs, then what they perceive as being the minimal acceptable requirements for a training program and finally suggestions for making existing programs more robust.

Discussion: I think this piece may be useful to the unit we have considered on professional development. It does give many good ideas for training practices in relationship to TAs. It may be, however, that other resources out there are more detailed in evaluating the effectiveness of specific approaches to training. In that case, those readings might be preferable to this reading, which is less “results” driven.

Hout, Brian A. and Ellen E. Schendel. “A Working Methodology of Assessment for Writing Program Administrators.” Eds. Irene Ward and William J. Carpenter. The Allyn & Bacon Sourcebook for Writing Program Administrators. New York: Longman, 2002. Print. 207-226.

This piece situates the role of assessment in the work of a writing program administrator and outlines different kinds of assessment and their functions. The piece maintains an optimistic tone about assessment; the authors suggest that assessment is an ethical obligation and can be a productive practice in improving efforts of those within the writing program. Placement, exit and programmatic assessment are all explored in detail, with the authors providing commentary on the uses and limits of various approaches to these mechanisms.

Discussion: This piece will be useful particularly because of the optimistic tone it takes. Rather than adopting the panicked “fight or flight” stance that is echoed so often in relationship to assessment today, these authors reveal why WPAs cannot simply ignore or avoid assessment and how this daunting task can actually be used productively. Thus, it fits nicely into a course design that emphasizes WPAs as change agents.

Blogging for Community Development: A Class Analysis

Blogs can serve as a means for facilitating interaction between students within an online writing class. As Breuch indicates, in “virtual environments, interaction occurs through writing instead of through speaking. Scholars have cited a number of advantages of this move, namely that virtual environments encourage students to practice writing” (148). Through commenting, students can provide feedback to their peers, while practicing the skills they are hoping to refine through the writing class. Although interaction between students is afforded through voluntary or obligatory class blog commenting, blog assignments do not necessarily foster class community.

Community is more than interaction; it has positive effects on the development of the students. Saffer and Anundsen indicate that we all share a “human yearning for a sense of belonging, kinship, and connection to a greater purpose” (qtd in Palloff and Pratt 27). While students in a classroom might sense a shared purpose (i.e. grade acquisition), this greater purpose alone does not generate a benificial community. Instead, the class needs to develop a type of “conscious community,” which Palloff and Pratt describe as “community that emphasizes the members’ needs for personal growth and transformation, as well as the social and survival aspects of community” (28). In other words, the type of community that is most beneficial to students is one wherein the participants use mutual respect and care to help facilitate learning. In instances where this kind of community has formed, students are supportive of their colleagues, avoiding “‘outbursts’ of verbal violence” that were commonplace in early courses that used online tools to facilitate dialogue between students (Amy 113).

By analyzing one online class’ use of blogs to form community, it becomes apparent that specific patterns of response and elements of course design may actually impede community building, but that community may develop organically outside of a systematic course design. These classroom exchanges are from a six-week online graduate class on teaching writing at a distance. The class consists of twelve graduate students.

During the course of the class, students were asked to produce five blog posts. Each of these posts was to be a summary and review of an article related to the course subject matter. The post could be no more than five hundred words and was to begin with the citation for the article being reviewed. No replies on the blogs were required by the professor, but students were told from the beginning of the semester that they would be required to analyze the means though which community was fostered as a result of class blogs (i.e. this assignment).

Patterns in Response
For the purposes of this analysis, the comments from the beginning of the semester until June 10th are considered. June 10 was elected as the cut-off date for this analysis because it was the day before the last blog assignment was due. The last week of blogging was excluded because it was anticipated that any increase in blog commenting during that week would be motivated by an awareness of this assignment (a community formation analysis) rather than a natural draw toward engagement. The students in the class were randomly assigned a number (one through twelve) to serve in place of their names throughout this write up.

Figure 1

Since posting was not a requirement in the class, not all students elected to post comments to the blogs of their peers. Even though not all students posted comments, each student in the class did receive some comments on their blog. There were a total of 57 comments. As Figure 1 shows, 42% of the comments (24 posts) were done by two of the students in the class. Five of the students in the class posted less than three times, with the class average for posting being 4.75 times. Thus, while there was no stated expectation for posting, students tended to post an average of one comment per required blog post.

Figure 2

Figure 3

As Figure 2 and 3 demonstrate, the students who received the most comments on their blogs (Student 3 and Student 10) were also the ones who commented the most on their own blogs. These students replied to responses on their blogs more than other students in the class. Replying to comments seems to have a correlation to overall blog comment traffic in this case. Interestingly, the students who posted comments most often never replied to comments on their own blogs and also received very few posts in reply to their own original blog entries.

Both of these tendencies might be conceived of as problematic for community building. Students that post often are communicating by pushing content into the class blogosphere, but not responding to reactions to their own material. Meanwhile, other students are engaging peers, but only when those peers take the time to come to their own turf (i.e. others start the conversation on their peer’s blog). If blogs are to truly create community amongst students, the channels of communication ought to better represent dialogue. Otherwise, comments on blogs can come across as one-way communication much in the same way that an initial blog post can.

Contributions of Course Design
Obviously since blog comments were not required by the course design, students had less incentive to engage in response. However, this requirement (or lack there of) is not the only characteristic of the design that might be said to contribute to the modest development of community through blogs. The blog assignments themselves had tight parameters and were largely summary of the work of others. Thus these posts might appear to be more like notes than the beginning of a discussion starter. This style of blog might foster community in the same way that more open or reflective blogging assignments might. The opportunity for students to develop ideas and make connections to experiences might provide peers more content with which to engage.

However, the addition of an assignment wherein students had to assess the level of community in the class most certainly increased awareness of community building as being a relevant classroom issue. It is likely that many students engaged more actively in the blog commenting because they would have to complete this assignment. As a means to save face, students might have participated more to ensure that they did not appear to be less engaged than their peers, or because they wanted to appear to be good classroom citizens before both their peers and their professor.

Community Beyond the Course
While the blog interaction might be characterized chiefly by one-way communication, other tools within and beyond the classroom context aided in the development of classroom community overall. This particular course was held synchronously through two-way video communication. This use of video conferencing allowed students and the professor to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice. In addition the video conferencing software, WebEx, allowed for continuous chat throughout the class period, both class-wide and private between two users. Some students also elected to use Google Chat to further class-time discussions and interaction also took place between some students (and the professor too) via Facebook throughout the class time-frame.

What each of these tools provided the class, which blogs alone did not, was the opportunity to feel immediate connection to one’s peers as well as the chance to move engagement beyond the class material. Rather than commenting and awaiting to see whether a peer would agree with one’s response, in-class discussion with video gave students the opportunity to experience the warmth of a classroom full of head nodding as well as encouragement one would not ordinarily find in face-to-face classroom. The chat feature allowed students to shout out “good point” and “I agree” as students contributed. This continual positive support throughout the learning experience aided greatly in developing a sense of solidarity and camaraderie amongst the students. These qualities both aid in the construction of community.

Conclusions
There is likely no single formula to follow to guarantee community forms in any classroom environment. Multiple factors will determine class culture each term. However, from this analysis, it appears that there are things faculty can do to encourage community development through blog interaction.

Faculty can, as Guglielmo does, be careful to foreground community as a value in the classroom context. By drawing student attention to its value, they are more likely to see the authentic motive to participating. Additionally, building in activities that give students responsibility for fostering community or even analysis of such environments can serve as a means to give agency in community development.

Perhaps such constructivist approaches might have a more positive effect than a system of penalties for lack of engagement. Community should be a support structure to students, not simply an additional hoop they must jump through. Therefore, faculty might best serve students by giving them access to a series of options for facilitating community engagement in their classroom and then orchestrating some type of analysis to help students understand why such community can benefit them during their educational experience.

Works Cited
Amy, Lori E. “Rhetorical Violence and the Problematics of Power: A Notion of Community for The Digital Age Classroom.” Distance Learning and the Teaching of Writing. Eds. Michele Gibson, Marcia Dickson, and Jonathan Alexander. Hampton: Cresskill, NJ. 2005. Print.

Breuch, Lee-Ann Kastman. “Enhancing Online Collaboration: Virtual Peer Review in the Writing Classroom.” Online Education: Global Questions, Local Answers. Eds. Kelli Cargile Cook and Keith Grant-Davie. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., 2005. Print.

Guglielmo, Letizia. “Feminist online writing courses: Civic rhetoric, community action, and student success.” Computers and Writing Online (Spring 2009). Web. 10 June 2012. Palloff, Rena M. and Keith Pratt. Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007. Print.

Decentralized Forum Spaces

Guglielmo, Letizia. “Feminist online writing courses: Civic rhetoric, community action, and student success.” Computers and Writing Online (Spring 2009). Web. 10 June 2012.

Gulielmo's article provides an examination of how four specific interventions in her online writing class impacted student success. Her goal in these specific interventions was to create a site for civic participation in her online class so that "instead of preparing students for the work they will do outside of the classroom, [she would] reinforce for students the need for civic participation within this virtual learning space" (Gulielmo).

More specifically, Gulielmo believed that fostering a feminist teaching and learning space would help students take initiative in forming this civic community because such pedagogy emphasizes "personal and group discovery through open discussion, collaboration, and process-based writing and reading activities [and is] broadly inclusive and embracing, nonhierarchical, student-centered communities" (Selfe qtd in Gulielmo). Desiring the ability to build such a community, Gulielmo relies on the discussion board of her CMS.

Gulielmo uses four strategies to help create this atmosphere: she provides an audio course site overview that emphasizes decentered teaching; she encourages students to post introductions to themselves that go beyond the academic (and posts one of her own); she invites the students to work collaboratively with her to establish the netiquette and posting expectations for the discussion board; and she makes use of a “Questions” forum on the boards to provide an outlet for students to voice concerns and questions.

Using responses to periodic class surveys and close analysis of the discussion board posting patterns for two of her online classes, she discusses how these strategies helped foster civic engagement in her classroom (which she believed would lead to success). Gulielmo demonstrates how by the end of the term her students were “aware of a shift in what might be termed a traditional instructor role”; it is likely this awareness began as a result of the direct way that she articulated her expectations from the beginning of the term using the audio comment she provided that emphasized her approach to decentered learning.

She provides another audio file to introduce each additional intervention—the self-introduction posts, the forum posting expectation discussion thread and the questions board. Each of these audio files shows the warm tone that Gulielmo has with her students as well as how she continuously emphasizes the student-centered nature of the classroom. In each of these posts the listener can hear the way she’s given students agency in making choices about how they participate in the community of learners.

This article provides a strong rationale for why these four exercises might be useful components to an online writing class with a discussion board feature. The article reminds the reader of the importance of articulating their teaching philosophy with students so that they become active participants in the philosophy rather than casual observers. Considering Gulielmo’s successes and challenges in this particular study, the online writing teacher walks away with practical suggestions for creating forum spaces that are student-centered.

E-zines as Composition Class Text and Genre

Alexander, Jonathan.  “Digital Spins:  The Pedagogy and Politics of Student-Centered E-zines.”  Computers and Composition 19 (2002):  387-410.  Print.

In this article, Jonathan Alexander shares his first experiences working with e-zines in his composition classroom.  He provides the rationale for examining e-zines as a classroom assignment and then, by way of a detailed narrative, presents the assignment sequence he uses with his students. 

Alexander elects to use e-zines in the classroom as a result of his desire to move beyond the artificial audiences so often created by first-year composition assignments.  He hopes that focusing upon publication in public e-zines will foster a greater sense of audience than class booklets or assignments merely shared with fellow students via a class listserv or shared folder. 

Thus, in his ten week composition class he leads students through an assignment sequence that first asks them to analyze and consider the genre of actual e-zines, then he asks them to write an article for an e-zine (along with a narrative about their writing choices), then he has the class work toward developing an e-zine of their own, negotiation choices of title, audience, purpose and submission guidelines. 

The detail of Alexander’s narrative is enriched by the way he justifies his pedagogical choices by situating them in literature of the field.   His successes and challenges are documented not only through his own reflection, but key examples from student writing from the class listserv that demonstrates how students responded to his activities.  These examples show student engagement, but also student resistance.  Alexander seems most encouraged by the moments of resistance these assignments afford because out of these moments of dissent an authentic writerly voice is often observed.  The course design itself, after all, originally arose out of Alexander’s desire to create “if possible, a classroom space that would explore alternative thinking and invite students to consider more radical critiques of culture” (406). 

While Alexander’s writing certainly sparks his reader’s interest in his assignment sequence and its affordances for the writing classroom, the article provides only a limited amount of detail about the actual classroom context in which it was delivered.  The author mentions several times that the class took place during a ten week semester and it is clear that a class listserv and email was used extensively during the negotiation of the assignments for the course.  

Still: was this an online class?  Were these the only interactions the students had?  Or was there a face-to-face component that only isn’t mentioned because of its inability to be recorded?  These questions are important, but unanswered, ones for understanding how the community he describes in the article was formed.  The example student texts demonstrate a level of comfort with both fellow classmates and the professor to be authentic and to sometimes push the envelope.  I have to wonder how Alexander fostered this community, if the class was in fact entirely online.  If it wasn’t, I wonder how an online class might develop such community.

Is it "a way with words" or "away with words"?

Wysocki, Anne Frances. "Awaywithwords: On the Possibilities in Unavailable Designs." Computers and Composition 22.1 (2005): 55-62. Print.

Wysocki’s article serves as a detailed discussion of how assumptions about the natural properties of things constrain how we use them.  As the author explains through a metaphor about water being used as a weapon, we are limited if we think natural properties specify the limitation of things. Instead, particular uses of things (water or communication methods) cannot be separated from the time and space in which they are used.

Wysocki shows that communication is most effective when it is approached through “entwining context, purpose, audience, and communication strategies (including material choices)” (56) but we must also ask “how our materials have acquired the constraints they have and hence why, often, certain materials and designs are not considered available for certain uses” (56). 

She considers the role that spacing between words evolved as a result of the move from oral delivery to silent reading.  The usage of space on the page ought to be considered carefully because it affects how we read pages and understand them.  Students should “consider how they use the spaces and not just one time that can be shaped on pages.  They also need to question how they have come to understand the spaces of pages so that they can, if need be, use different spaces, potentially powerful spaces that—as Howe, for example, has described—have been rendered unavailable by naturalized, unquestioned practice” (57). 

She moves then to another naturalized practice—that of seeing image and word as a dichotomy.  Kress sees words as “governed by a ‘temporal and sequential logic’” while images as “governed by a “spatial and simultaneous logic” (57).  She presents these categories as problematic, but shaped by human practice.  For example, while we might suggest that images are unique in the way that they can be taken in at a glance, images like Brueghel’s “Children’s Games” (below) defy this characterization.

Our notion of image is the result of human practices, much in the way that our use of space is the result of shifts in human experiences.  Thus, Wysocki suggests that we should consider how we have shaped material practices and how those practices have consequences for how others behave. 

Wysocki’s treatment of materiality and humanity is important for the writing teacher, and particularly for the online writing teacher.  First, she demonstrates how we ought to be suspicious of traditional notions of the role of text and help our students to think critically about the norms they accept as well.  More importantly though, she opens an opportunity for us to analyze the course materials as a medium that might appear to have natural characteristics as a result of the way they has been habitually presented, particularly through course management systems.  The online writing teacher might think carefully about the notions Wysocki presents about the consequences of “how we use paper, ink, and pixels to shape—for better or worse—the actions of others” (59).

Video Presentation of Review of Pinterest as Pedagogical Tool

Pinterest as Pedagogy: Considering the Uses for the Online Writing Classroom

Scott Warnock posits that online writing courses “force an environment that is not just writing intensive but also often writing exclusive” (xi). He marks this immersive characteristic as a strength of online writing pedagogy saying “we couldn’t ask for a better lab or workshop to help our first-year students develop their ability to communicate using the written world” (xi). As such, Warnock suggests that faculty who are new to online writing instruction begin with the CMS (Course Management System) their institution provides them because “[y]our goal is to get past the technology and start thinking about teaching (22).

Warnock’s suggestions for working with technology in an online writing classroom are intuitive for practitioners who subscribe to an approach to writing pedagogy that privileges text as the primary mode of expression. However, not all new online writing instructors will feel at home in this pedagogical framework. There are those, for example, who have responded to Diana George’s call to have students become producers and not merely consumers of visual communication and to stop allowing the visual to “figur[e] into the teaching of writing as problematic, something added, an anomaly, a ‘new’ way of composing, or, somewhat cynically, as a strategy for adding relevance or interest to a required course” (13). Will the CMS figure as an appropriate venue for these such writing classes?

In my case, no. Most CMS platforms treat the visual as an anomaly rather than a central component of any material produced within the platform. There are discussion boards where you can *even* add a picture, rather than there being tools expressly designed for visual communication. Thus, individuals hoping to bring the visual into a more central role in their online composition classrooms might be better suited to look elsewhere for a tool to bring this value into their classroom spaces. But where? As I began to consider this question, I thought of the online pinboard site, Pinterst.

While the site was not designed with pedagogical endeavors in mind, that fact does not preclude it from being re-purposed for pedagogical pursuits. After all, many technologies used in higher education today were not first designed for the classroom (I’m looking at you blogs and Twitter). Pinterest is not a one-stop-shopping answer to all your technological needs as a teacher, but the interface does provide some unique opportunities for the classroom that faculty might consider, especially if they are looking for a means to bring visual communication into their online pedagogy. I would recommend that teachers of online and hybrid first-year writing classes, in particular, begin to consider the affordances of this technology more closely.

Overview
Pinterest (http://www.pinterest.com) is an online pinboard site. Think of that trusty corkboard you’ve had in your office with the same four things pinned to it for the last six years. It’s just like that, but on steroids only the Internet can provide. It allows users to upload images or capture them from the web to “pin” to an online pinboard of their choosing. Since each user can have multiple pinboards, it allows folks to organize the visuals they elect to collect. Basically, it’s a visual bookmarking tool. It’s used by crafters, parents, fashionistas and the like to keep track of visual inspiration.

It also has a social component. Users can search the site by topic or keyword for images pinned by other users. They can also follow friends and other users. Pinners can opt to follow all of a friend’s pins, or just a specific board. In addition, when they find a image of interest, users can elect to re-pin it, comment on it, or “like” it. In addition to engaging the pins of others, users can also invited others to boards they own so they can pin to it collaboratively.

Getting Started
Currently the site is accessible by invitation only. Those interested in the site can request an invite from the page directly or someone who is already a part of Pinterest can invite them (want an invite? Comment and let me know). Once invited, registration is easy, particularly if you use Facebook or Twitter to connect to the site. Just complete the simple for or connect to your other social media and you’re ready to start pinning.

Navigating the site is fairly straightforward, once you learn the basics of the interface. Justin W. Marquis, a blogger for Online Universities, details how to get started with Pinterest in the short video below.

Potential Uses
Teachers could start a pinboard and add each of their students to the board. Students could create accounts and boards of their own for class usage and share the links with their professor, just as they would with a class blog. Professors could then provide the class a list of student boards and the students could then follow one another if they wished. With this housekeeping established, the faculty could then begin exploring the activities for which they might wish to use the boards with their class.

Here are five examples of how Pinterest might be used within a writing classroom:

1. Visual Research Organizer - As Marquis suggests in the video above, students could use Pinterest as a place to gather the sources they are using for a research project. They could pin articles and websites to a board marked “Research” and then have an easy way to get back to those resources as they are writing. In addition, students could share their research boards with their professors so that professors could track their progress. Additionally, students could comment on their pins to provide annotations and the MLA citation for an item, much in the way they might in an annotated bibliography assignment. Faculty could provide comments on the board regarding additional sources they might recommend or perhaps even corrections on the MLA format.

2. Presentations - Marquis also suggests that students could use a Pinboard to give presentations on material, rather than using Prezi or PowerPoint. Faculty might ask students to present by moving through a pinboard and using the images as talking points. Alternatively, the pinboard and comments below each image could serve as a stand alone presentation, which would be particularly useful in an online class that does not require audio/visual capability on the behalf of the student.

3. Discussion Thread - Faculty might use an image as a conversation starter by posting it to the class pinboard, perhaps with a prompt in the comments section, and ask students to reply to pin with a comment. Alternatively, the student could be asked to repin the image and provide his or her reply to the prompt in the comment on his or her own board. At the end of the semester he or she might have then a set of responses all tied to images. Students also might be asked to start discussion threads by selecting images and prompts themselves.

4. Visual Essay projects - in a similar vein to the presentations, students might be asked to create visual essays and use Pinterest as the medium of delivery. They could even compose such projects in groups as a result of the collaborative nature of the pinning site.

5. Ancillaries to Writing Projects - One Writing for the Web teacher, Deneen Gilmour, is having students produce multimedia texts and requiring Pinterest be a part of the story the students produce in some productive way. She shares in a Mashable article that “[o]ne student, Meghan Feir, turned in a story that fulfilled the requirement beautifully. She created a pinboard on Pinterest that gathered tips, recipes, blogs, shops, restaurant menus and more for people who need lactose-free or gluten-free diets” (qtd in Holt).

* * *

Pinterest has potential for becoming a useful tool in the online writing teacher’s tool belt. It is easy to use and learn. The platform allows collaboration and engagement between users and defies the text-based bias that results from so many tools used in the online writing classroom.

The current draw back to this tool is also its strength: there has been little written on its uses in the classroom. A majority of the education and writing related pins currently on the site are related to secondary education. Much that’s been written about it focuses on this student audience as well. As a result, it would require more imagination for a college teacher to use it in the classroom for the first time. However, he or she would have the advantage of bringing a tool into the classroom in a refreshing new way.

Works Cited
Diana George. “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing,” College Composition and Communication 54.1 (2002): 11-39.

Holt, Kris. "Teachers Pin with Their Students." Mashable. 22 Mar. 2012. Web. 01 June 2012.

Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2009. Print.