First Year Composition FYC

My new university requires, for first year composition, a visual rhetoric essay.

I will confess that, prior to this assignment, I had no experience with visual rhetoric. I am an English and history undergrad major, who went with English all through graduate school. None of the courses I took, even the rhetoric classes for my PhD, included visual rhetoric as a topic, must less as a focus.

Due to time constraints, I was not able to converse with colleagues or get their ideas for the paper before I had to teach it.

What I did, though, worked very well, I think.

Examining Images Labeled “College Students”
As prewriting exercises, the class and I used Google Images to search for “college students” pictures. Then, I went through and pulled them up, one after the other, and asked my classes if these were actual college students or pictures of college students. I will say that they were better at articulating why the photos were NOT of college students than they were about what made the photo one of college students, but despite that limitation, they did an excellent job.

Some of their answers for why it was not a photo of college students included:
It’s too posed.
They are too old.
Those might be grad students.
That was taken in the 90s (or 80s or 60s). While not all the pictures were, and I’m not sure how that made college students or not, they were accurate about the time period portrayed within the photograph. I think that perhaps the students were answering based on whether these are modern college students, the kind my students would know and hang out with.
They don’t have faces. This one was a shock to me. I thought the students in the graphic were either late high school or early college based on their poses. But my students said they could not be college students because they did not have faces. Later on they added that the poses were wrong for college students: “No college kid would stick his butt out like that!” But there first response–across three classes–was that they don’t have faces.

Examining Book Covers
Then I took the class to Amazon. We looked at covers of books that I have read and know are fairly indicative of the actual text of the book. We deconstructed the covers based on:
target audience
compositional elements
genre, particularly as created by the elements in the picture
color and its meaning(s)
interaction of verbal and visual rhetoric
role of character(s) on cover, including their group’s role in government (not all, but most of the science fiction and fantasy works allowed for this deduction)
whether the book was a fast read or more dense with information
(Sometimes I would ask a leading question, but usually they already knew.)

Most of the time the students were able to identify the genre of the work, even though most of my students don’t read books for entertainment.

We also talked, sometimes, about the relationships of the characters portrayed on the cover.

For one book, I asked them to name not only the season of year that the book was about, but also the holiday being celebrated. (There was snow in the background and the main colors in the composition were red, green, and gold.)

My students did a great job of engaging with the reading of the visual rhetoric of covers of books they never had any experience or intention of reading.

Expertise
The students’ abilities to identify, classify, and correctly deduce various information from both the photographs and the covers allowed me to point out to them that they are already well versed in the practice of visual rhetoric.

Assignment parameters
Then I had my students choose a picture of some sort to write on, using the same kinds of points we had already covered.

I limited their piece to something that was not their own composition, either art or photography.

I also recommended, for those wanting to use photographs, that they examine more panoramic pictures–with multiple subjects or action– rather than close-ups.

Art Work
Our text included two art pieces that we had already discussed in terms of relationships, composition, colors, style of art, cultural implications, socioeconomic levels, and historical setting.

Many students chose works that were pieces of art. Only one chose an older art piece and that student is an artist herself. Modern art pieces were far more popular, even with the artists. One student actually brought to class a print he had purchased and used it as his text for the visual rhetoric essay.

Additional recommendations: Multiple audiences’ reading
For the guys who wanted to use football pictures, particularly (though I did recommend this for other people), I suggested that they discuss the visual rhetoric as it would be read by an expert such as themselves, by someone who knows what football is but not much else–like me, and by someone who is from a totally different culture without American football.

This allowed the students to demonstrate their expertise, but also to identify things that were more generic or evocative within the visual text. It also required them to think outside their own expectations and understandings, while examining a single work.

This suggestion also worked well for a student who brought a photograph of a member of the hacking group Anonymous, in a V For Vendetta mask, in front of a Chinese restaurant. There were significant differences in my own and their understanding of the visual rhetoric of the picture, based on what I knew first glancing at it. It also helped the student to realize that simply because he knew what it was a picture of didn’t mean that everyone in the world would recognize it.

Additional recommendations: Book cover having read the book
I also suggested that, if the student chose a book cover for a book they had read, they could see what the book cover would say to someone who had not read the work and then compare it to possible differences of nuance for someone who had read the book or who had more knowledge of the text, author, or genre.

We had done this already as a class when examining the book covers, since I only showed the covers of books that I had read. Sometimes things in the cover appear to be one thing to a new reader and are obviously something else to those who have read the work.

One book cover that elicited a more circumscribed description than I could have given for it was Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who. The student missed the blatantly environmentalist stance in the cover and the book and did not know Dr. Seuss’ history as a propagandist in World War II.

Another permutation
One of my students chose to do the book covers of one of his favorite books. That particular book had four different covers, by country of publication or by date of publication. Even the fonts chosen for the title and author’s name differed.

I think that could easily have been a much longer paper for an advanced composition course and, if I were teaching an advanced composition course, I might use a visual rhetoric assignment like this.

How does someone who is not particularly tech-savvy go about learning about technology for a first-year composition course?

Good question! I am glad someone asked.

I was told to “just play around” with the tech and see what I could come up with.

That was not particularly helpful for me.

What I did was:
1. go to tech presentations at conferences
2. experiment after that with ideas I learned about and build on them
3. ask my tech-savvy husband for input
4. attend professional development courses on tech topics
5. search the net for ideas

Though I didn’t do those things in that order, I think that about covers how I decided to bring tech to my classroom.

Useful site
A tweet introduced me to a new site recently that not only was useful for people who don’t know anything about tech, but also added tech I’ve never heard of.

Why don’t you play around on that site yourself?

Go to Montclair SU’s Center for Writing Excellence.

What do you know already? What have you never heard of?

I would LOVE to play with bubbl.us in the classroom. I may have to see what I can do about that.

The comment that brought on this post:
I was in a meeting recently and was told that “I don’t think we should spend time having the students do digital presentations in FYC.”

Where did this comment come from?
This was a direct challenge to my previous comment, that my students were doing this as an assignment.

The professor speaking to me is a lit prof, so it could be old media v. new media issues. However, I really think it is that he thinks I am not teaching my FYC course as it should be taught. (Or he’s a curmudgeon!) He said we should focus on grammar. (I do.) He said we need to have the students understand sentence structure. (I work on that.) He said they need to write long essays. (My students do.)

Why did he tell me that an assignment I have given, that I am actually thrilled to have given, is a waste of my classroom time?

I think it is a recognition of the limits of what we can do in 16 weeks and a comment on the tech-focus of many. I think it was out of concern that I, as a professor at a new uni, did not understand the parameters expected in the course (though these were made quite clear by the director of FYC). I also think it was out of a desire to NOT have to add digital presentations to his own FYC course.

When I first taught FYC, I had my students do prewriting for two days, a draft and peer review, and a final paper EVERY SINGLE WEEK. I think that was a great model, but I don’t have enough time or energy to do that for 100 students. (I only had one course as a TA.)

I’ve taught FYC for 20 years now. The 6 papers required by this course at this university are almost all new for me. So I’m already struggling with how to teach the course.

So why did I add the digital presentation?
(He didn’t ask, but I think it is relevant.)

1. My uni is focused on being innovative, particularly with technology.

2. My students are somewhat used to computers in all their classrooms, using internet apps for school, and texting/emailing all day long.

3. My students are required to evaluate/analyze visual rhetoric as one of their six 1200-word essays.

4. My students are required (by the department) to analyze a ten-minute video as a class exercise.

5. My students are required (by a uni-wide core course) to analyze a commercial.

6. My class is supposed to connect to the core course, but to build on it and not simply repeat what it does/has done.

So, looking at all those points, I decided that a group assignment of a digital presentation would be a useful exercise for class.

This is an experiment (like most of what I am doing in FYC this semester), but I am hoping that the students will rise to the challenge and produce work that is totally amazing.

New thought:
Because they are working in groups, I could have all three of my classes get together for an hour and a half one day and watch all of them. They could see that they are not alone and that other people also worked on these.

I think that might be fun (if they turn out half-way decent).

So how will they turn out?
I have no idea.

I have never done this before.

It may be that, in a month, I too will agree with the lit prof who told me that students should not be doing digital presentations in the FYC classroom.

Identity and Status in First-Year Writing; Edited Collection; Abstracts due 10/15/2011
full name / name of organization:
Karen Schiler
contact email:
identityandstatus@gmail.com
Proposed Collection: Identity and Status in First-Year Writing

Editors: Elizabeth Kimball, Melissa Nicolas, and Karen Schiler

In the introduction to (E)Merging Identities, Melissa Nicolas suggests that graduate students working in writing centers often have an indeterminate identity, “betwixt and between” that of faculty, student, administrator, and client (1). This shifting between and among identities, sometimes even in the same day (3-4), creates a dynamic and complicated space within which graduate students negotiate their relationships with others in the institution. Likewise, the first-year writing program represents a similar space where first-year writing teachers and program administrators hold many different institutional positions. Both in the classroom and in the administration of the program, faculty and WPAs are constantly negotiating their identities and institutional roles. Further complicating these negotiations on the disciplinary level is the passage of time.

If we understand the contemporary beginning of composition/rhetoric as a field to be the late 1970s early 1980s when writing teachers like Mina Shaugnessy, Linda Flower, John Hays, Peter Elbow, Lisa Ede, and Andrea Lunsford started researching and theorizing their teaching and Stephen North published the foundational _The Making of Knowledge in Composition_ then, as a field, we have moved into a second (and perhaps third) generation of teachers and scholars. As a
consequence, not only are teachers and WPAs reading their identities with and through their local institutional contexts but they are also responding and reacting to some of the foundational stories in the field (see Nicolas “Why” 3-4).

This collection, _Identity and Status in the First-Year Writing Program_, explores the complex ways identity and status are negotiated, challenged and enacted in first-year writing programs. We are especially interested in how these complexities may reflect an awareness of one’s
generation, or wave, within the history of the field. By asking
teachers and administrators to reflect on their positionality, this volume situates the first-year writing classroom and program as a meaningful site of inquiry into the ways in which personal and professional identity issues are in constant negotiation both locally and disciplinarily.

We seek essays that expand on any of the following:
• What is it like to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in May and 3 months later be in charge of a college classroom? What role does age play in the writing classroom? How are authority and identity negotiated? What role(s) does sex/gender/race/ability play in shaping your identity?
• In what ways is a postdoctoral position different from a
teaching assistant position or an adjunct position? In what ways does the post doctoral status—as “in between” graduate student and faculty—affect identity in the writing classroom? In what ways does being a post-doc affect your identity as an administrator?
• What is it like to move from graduate student to adjunct
faculty? Does this move affect your authority in the classroom? Your identity?
• If you are adjunct faculty at several different schools with
different student populations, different missions, and different
first-year curriculums, how do you adjust your classroom teaching style to reflect the changes? How does the constant switching affect your professional identity?
• As you moved from graduate student to assistant professor, what were some of the identity issues that you faced in the classroom? What role(s) does sex/gender/race/ability play in shaping your identity?
• If you are a non-tenured or non-tenure track WPA, how does not having tenure shape your identity as an administrator? In what ways does your institutional status affect your professional personae?
• As you moved from non-tenured assistant professor to tenured
associate professor, what were some of the identity issues you faced in the classroom? What role(s) does sex/gender/race/ability play in shaping your identity? Once your received tenure, did your classroom identity change? Did your identity as an administrator change? Why or why not?
• As you moved from associate professor to full professor, what
were some of the identity issues that you faced in the classroom? As an administrator? What role(s) does sex/gender/race/ability play in shaping your identity?
• Since the first-year writing classroom is one of the only
spaces on campus filled with first-year students who are also
negotiating new identities, in what ways do their negotiations of self impact your negotiations of self?
• If you are a graduate student whose explicit goal is not to
become a writing teacher or a WPA, yet you find yourself in either (or both) of those roles, how do you reconcile these competing interests?
• How might the ways in which we cultivate our identities as WPAs and writing teachers influence/impact/affect those not inside composition and rhetoric?
• In what ways has the evolution of composition/rhetoric as a
field affected your understanding of yourself as a teacher and/or
administrator?
• Are there ways in which new ideas or realities about teaching in or administering composition programs place you in conflict/debate with some of the foundational knowledge of the field?

Projected timeline:
Requests for full manuscripts sent out by Jan. 2012
Full manuscripts needed by July 2012

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words by October 15, 2011 to identityandstatus@gmail.com . Questions can also be sent to the same address.

What does your exterior say about you? Grabbing interest with some street art is a Ubiquitous Librarian post on the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

Walking around campus, the librarian realized the library was boring. It said “old” and “outdated” to anyone coming on campus.

So, he went to an artist for some design suggestions and got two suggestions, one of which wonderfully mixes design and play.

Read the article. See the art. Good stuff.

I am teaching visual rhetoric in the freshman composition classroom for the first official time this semester. I know I have attended several conference presentations on the topic and I want to review what might help me with this particular paper in the classroom.

Understanding Visual Rhetoric
Tech Comm and Visual Rhetoric
Visual Rhetoric, reading graphic novels

Visual Thinking for Reading and Writing

The Kansas State Collegian has an article entitled Technology Complicates Classes, Frustrates Students, written by Mary Renee Shirk.

Now professors post a syllabus and change it, sometimes daily, sometimes more than once a day. They expect you to check it every single day and adapt your understanding of the world around you and your work schedule, and your finances, and fit this new set of commandments into your life.
…
Now, professors are requiring a thumb drive or hard drive or DVDs or CDs or camera or flash card or batteries or six reams of paper, not to mention access to a high-volume color printer 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
…
Some professors now require you to get a Google account or YouTube account or WordPress account or new Facebook account or join some other random website used specifically for and only for that class. All these accounts, of course, require different usernames and passwords that you’ll most likely forget.

Now added to the regular class load and all of the above is watching the latest YouTube video or following the class on Twitter and networking with your classmates on LinkedIn.

Just to make things even more interesting, every professor has a different requirement for the number of times you’re supposed to check your email, the syllabus, K-State Online, the WordPress blog and any/all of the other online resources for that class.

I can totally understand these issues, even the ones I haven’t personally experienced. And I confess to having cringed a bit over changing the syllabus every day, since I know that I do more of that right now (with new classes at a new uni) than I should for the good of the students.

The idea of requiring students to print of hundreds of PDFs (for us oldies, those are the copied books we’d get full of different essays from different sources) is both ludicrous and expensive. However, it may be that the professors expect the students to read the PDFs and this particular student knows that reading online is of poorer quality than reading paper. So the PDF printing might be a feature of the student’s desire to do well in class rather than an actual requirement. However, I can also see the possibility of a professor requiring that they be printed out so that he/she can see that you have at least looked at them. That’s a problem if there are more than one or two.

Then there is the problem of multiple accounts for various things. Since I’ve required students to register for my classroom blog and for Twitter, I know that those can be an issue. However, the blog is available for a semester and a student can change the password without my help, so I don’t see that as a problem. Twitter didn’t have to be only for the class, though they did have to post and follow me (not my @DrDavisTCE account) for credit. But I also know my students have to get on Blackboard and blogging is available there, so my classroom blog might unnecessarily complicate their lives.

So, if technology can unnecessarily complicate students’ lives and definitely frustrates them at times, why am I such a proponent?

Two reasons. (Remember. I have at least two reasons for everything.)

One is that students often have a very limited view of technology. They do not understand how what they do for fun and play and personal things can transfer to academics and the business world. I try to bridge that knowledge gap by giving them experience doing tech for school and/or work projects (in business writing). The students need to know that businesses and schools can access some of their accounts and see what they are doing and that the students should be careful what they post. Discussing this in terms of the classroom situation helps to make that clear.

Another reason is that students often have very limited experience with technology. Ten percent of my students last year had never touched a computer prior to my class. Only ten percent of my students this year had done any blogging and none were on Twitter. Many people, especially older people who might hire my students, assume a much greater experience and facility with tech than my students (both at CCs and at the SLAC) have had. This is a problem for them when they get out into the working world.

A third reason (see, I said I often have more than two) is that all of the colleges at which I have taught in the last five years have felt like it was part of their mission to expose students to technology. One required use of technology in the classroom. All of them offered the option of having tech in the classroom, which I availed myself of eagerly. And my present university focuses on technological innovation being used within the classroom, so I need to be engaged with that.

If social media is such a big deal, and it can be, then why aren’t all the students active participants in it? Why don’t they know tech as well as the older generation assumes?

I think some of this is the fluency with texting, which most older folks don’t have. Also, no one knows how to do something they haven’t been exposed to. Some of the students just haven’t ever heard of programs and opportunities on the net. Some have heard but have never tried them out. I give students a safe place to move beyond their own technology boundaries and learn more. And I don’t just give them the opportunity, I require it.

While technology can frustrate students, and teachers, I think that I would be failing in my mission of teaching my students to write what they need to know how to write in order to graduate from college if I weren’t having them work in technology. Even when that “writing” is a digital presentation.

AcademHack from OutsidetheText.com has a post entitled “A Model for Teaching College Writing” which focuses on the concepts of emerging media and higher education.

For a standard FYC course, Barbara, a grad student, was told her students needed more structure.

Essentially, Barbara turned the class into a documentary production class where the students spent the semester producing a film, working collaboratively on one project. Where is the writing you ask? Well read on, but Barbara had them write about their experiences the whole time, giving them a reason and context to write. The results are pretty amazing. The post is a bit on the long side, but worth the read as Barbara covers not only the “what” but the “why.” Also check out the two embedded video the one below is the video from the students, and at the end is an interview with Barbara. This is a bold, risky approach, especially given Barbara’s status as a graduate student, not tenured faculty, but I think if college rhetoric and indeed college education is to remain relevant over the coming years this is the type of experimentation and adaptation that will be necessary.

Barbara is the author of the post which follows this introduction.

There are some ideas I really want to incorporate or at least ponder incorporating in my next class.

Compendium2: Writing, Teaching, and Learning in the University