the glory and the challenges

Lindsay Sabatino
Online Writing Centers:
Purpose: ways that student writing changes in response to OWLs

Focus on how to give feedback (Summers)

Weaver (2006) students value feedback but don’t know what to do with it
Chaudron (1984) “revision process must be learned” (11)

Research in composition and OWL scholarship, the online writing center is another way that students receive feedback…
Synchronous online response, so they receive response at the moment.

How do the students respond to feedback while they are online with OWL?

Helped put together OWL at IUP… using Google Docs and other software

Decided to conduct a pilot study of IUPs OWL
Qualitative grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967)
Collected a screen recording of the session through saving the student’s paper in Google Docs and a copy of the written chat session
Applied conversation analysis to see how the interaction worked
Bottom up and data driven analysis, see the development of writing in action

One student (f., self identifies as Korean multiple times) and a tutor
Did not change the misspellings or make any alterations, except to remove identifying information

Clarity of expression 8
Verb tense 12
Articles (a, an, the) 2
Prepositions 5

K in chat: Because I’m Korean ESL student, Im not sure abuout grammar or akward words please check it ☺

T in chat: I will insert some comments onto the document itself, but we will still talk using this chat.

sentence discussed: That is, they bought a degree by their money, and some poor Korea universities just need money.
Tutor explains that “by” shouldn’t be the right choice.

As the session continues,
K in chat: Umm, I have a question.. I said, buy a degree by their money becasue I think I saw the definition of buy in the dictionary such as, I …

Ohh…
I means, I saw a definition of buy in the dictionary and I thought it meant achieving something

T in chat: yes, that is correct, however it has to fit the sentence grammatically
K in chat: Oh, cristal clear!

K sentences: I’ll show my picture with my friends in front of Congress by this attached file.

K in chat: I really wonder Congress by this attached file?
T in chat: you could say “in attached file”
K in chat: This sentence should be “with attached file” or “by using attatced file” as you taught me?
T: The picture is “in” the file, so…

Kim’s reflection and development of her writing
4 reflections
2 are in conversation with the tutor
2 are outside the conversation, but are about her writing

1st Because I’m Korean ESL student, Im not sure abuout grammar or akward words please check it ☺
2nd Korean students are vulnerable to an article because we have no article in first language. I gurantee there are numerous similar mistake in my diary.
3rd (tutor asks if there is another place in the sentence where it should be past tense)
I also think it should be past tense.
My most frequent mistake is an article, a proposition, and verb tense.
She moves from grammar and awkward phrases and moves to very specific problems she has with her writing.
4th reflection on difference between OWL and f2f, how f2f is faster…

Kim did know she was part of a pilot study before this chat. It may have been that she was responding to that.

Benefits of OWL:
Allows students to develop an understanding of their own writing practices
Allows students to practice their writing through the chat and articulating their processes
Provides students with a hard copy that functions as a guide as they continue to write and it will aid them in the composition course and in other writing.

Questions:
Have you looked at non-ESL students?
Only experience now is my tutoring experience. I am having trouble getting students to agree to being part of a pilot study. Still processing it because you can’t see facial expressions.

Do you have asynchronous?
No. We chose against that. We wanted online to have the same benefits as f2f. The importance of dialogue was a priority.
We looked at 7 different programs. We had criteria.
Students do note that they would like asynchronous, but we tell them they would have to engage.

Who Left the Gate Open? African American Rhetorical Tradition as an Effective Gateway for Written and Oral Communication

Many of the sessions have been predominantly women, but this one appears to have a single male in the audience, with an audience of dozens.

Kedra James, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, “African American English Among First-Year Writing Students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities”
Bachelor’s in 2005
Master’s in 2007
Currently a doctoral candidate
Research interests: African American English, composition

Looking at writing programs in HBCUs.
What led me to this topic?
I entered an HBCU, declared English with a journalism emphasis.
Went on to Kansas State University. Began to teach fyc.
Differences in the way I learned to write and KSU’s use of the Toulmin model.
What are the differences at HBCUs and predominantly white colleges? (6 years later, I found time to look at this. Is part of my dissertation)

Have talked with professors and students, have collected essays, need more essays and interviews

As I began researching, looking through articles and books, could not find as much as I expected to find. Nothing about writing programs at HBCUs. Foundational texts mention there is not much discussion about composition and writing programs at HBCUs.

Are predominantly white institutions and HBCUs teaching comp the same way?

What is an HBCU?
HBCU provide access to higher ed during 1800s and early 1900s. Goal was to educate African American students.
Many begun by church groups. African Missionary Church and the Methodist group…
Land-grant colleges were given equal access.
Most originally focused on industrial education.
Now they are mostly liberal arts.

AAE (African American English) poses a problem for AA students. 8 students. Case study. Ballister found these students shift from Black English vernacular in speaking to standard English in writing.
Instructors need to re-think what is standard English.
AA adult female students… Fluent speakers of AAE. Students said they knew they spoke incorrectly and could not write regular English.
How can we be change this negative response?
Author/researcher began to show students the grammatical rules for AAE. Showing how they can use AAE in Academic writing. (Can they?)
AA graduate students “has stripped away much of her much-valued blackness” and felt like she had “become a generic scholar.”
Instructors making students feel neutralized. Identity issues.
How does the voice (and my identity) change in scholastic English?

Stigma is still attached to AAE.

Want to reflect on mission statements of HBCUs and the pedagogy in composition.
Are the mission statements being implemented?

I believe that HBCUs should support students in understanding the significance of AAE. HBCUs are more likely to focus on standard English. Teachers want to help students compensate for the lack of preparedness by teaching standard English.

“asking students to give up… identity… for employment”
What are we asking students to give up? What are we asking students to hide?

Primary research questions:
What should the role of HBCUs in writing be?
What does the writing curriculum look like?
Is the mission statement reflected in fyc?

Students are male and female, enrolled in three HBCUs.
Stillman, 1876, private, 1000 UG
1869 940 students, Mississippi
Tuskegee University, 2194 students

Mission statements should be connected to the pedagogies.
“most effective … are those tied to the mission statements”
Writing instruction should mirror the goals of the institution.
“culturally relevant pedagogy”

Mission statements, syllabi, essays… but will talk more about mission statements.

Key words: leadership; idea of service; ethics-integrity, moral, values; social commitment; problem solving; life-long learning

Tuskegee “to deepen students knowledge of history and their cultural heritage”

What did the instructors have to say about AAE?
We live by the syllabus. Check the syllabus. I am checking the syllabus.
Stillman:
Choose words, grammatical constructions, and writing conventions according to appropriate standard English.
Tougaloo:
Use standard English, both written and spoken.
Demonstrate proficiency in class, written and spoken.
102- better command of standard English.

Final exam: Will cover grammar, punctuation, and diction problems that have occurred frequently in the student papers.

Assignments, essays:
Common trend is the students are writing about literature.
Have essays from Tuskegee and Stillman. Both first covered fiction, writing about literature.
Does that effect whether AAE is appropriate?
Can they connect with literature?

Trends: family, race, color

Did not find as much AAE in the essays, which takes me back to the syllabi’s statements about standard English. Omission of comma, misuse of semi-colon, lack of apostrophes for possessives… (Those are things that I also find my students missing.)

We should think about these statements on our syllabi.
What should our syllabi say about AAE? Standard English?
As we think about using literature, are our students able to be comfortable with the literature? Can they relate to it?
Looking for ties between mission statements, pedagogies, and assignments.

Bonnie Williams, Michigan State University, East Lansing, “Cross Cultural Composition: Can the African American Verbal Traditional Enhance Academic Writing?” changed to “From Comparative to Contrastive: African American Verbal Tradition Enhances Academic Writing”
Facilitates workshops for TAs and faculty
MLK Endowed Scholarship
Chapter in Listening to Our Elders

Handout (but not enough for everyone)
-perhaps multiple pages

examined 5 features
AVT Comparative Tool:
Sounding—speaker addresses extreme displeasure at an outcome
Signifying/indirection—read between lines using culture for
(looked at with sounding)
often extreme displeasure
Narrative format, arrangement
Call response—audience participates by responding to the speaker
Seeks to involve speakers and audience.
Rhetorical questions, delivery
Narrativizing—everyday topic rendered as a story
African tribal culture, plantation tales, then move on to sermons
Introduction/anecdotal lead
Conclusion/exploratory essay
Revision, invention, delivery
Repetition—key words and sounds repeated
Anaphora
Parallelism
Antithesis
Compared to delivery, style, arrangement

Introduce these historically both in Greek/Roman and in African tradition

African verbal tradition is recursive.
They use black language practices.

Methods and Procedures;
Tier 1 fyc: base theme race and ethnicity
Comparative approach
4 class sessions (1 hr and 15 min)
Students coded and analyzed their own and author’s works with AVT
Students brought back examples from twitter, Facebook, music videos, etc, with AVT
Student interviews (15-minute small focus groups)—interviews were conducted by students

Ladson-Billings “culturally relevant pedagogy”

Smitherman, 1993 “The Blacker the Berry, The Sweeter the Juice: African American Student Writers and the National Assessment of Educational Progress”
–essays with AVT were given higher rating scores
–rhetorically effective

Titled from Contrastive to comparative, because contrastive limits and points up negatives
Translation in only one direction examines AAE in negative light.
Comparative leads to a more positive examination.

Positive AVT was often seen as showing intelligence.
Had transcriptions.
Students made direct associations of AVT with intelligence and academic writing.
“Students who used it had more engaging paper”
“I liked learning about Call Response in writing”
“if we could master this, imagine how much better our papers could be”
“When I used sounding, she was like, ‘Good job!’”

AVT tool to achieve academic success.
AVT seen as better.
“better to listen to”
“more exciting”
“more interactive reading and listening”
“Made me think, like, wow, I’ve been writing like an author.”
“I did my analysis paper on AVT and it’s like this really complicated thing.”

AA students discussing experiences with AVT
2 use signifying/indirection “I was saying slick stuff. I was all about indirection. I used it on Facebook. We’re smart and don’t even know it. Someone said, Why sarcastic? And I said no, it is signifying. I know how to say it.”

Potential implications:
College readiness
Pedagogical tool for teachers
Positively alters traditional views about academia
African American retention

Identification of AVT can help all students use these abilities.
Writing is not just presenting facts but it has style.
Helps AA students feel as if they belong in the university.

Erica Britt, University of Michigan- Flint, “Black Style in the Public Sphere: An Investigation of Black Modes of Communication in Public Speech”
From Florida
BA, MA from ?
UI at Urbana-Champaign, second master’s
Developing an oral history database of Flint, Michigan

What are Black modes of communication?

Going to continue with some of these themes…
How the tradition is embraced by our students

2008 study
*to explore how Black modes of communication can serve as critical and effective components of public speech

Theoretical framework:
Sociocultural linguistics: Bucholts and Hall 2005
Quantitative sociolinguistic methods (Labov 1972 a and b; Labov 1974)
Research on the indexical and lexical processes that contribute to identity performance (Silverstein 1975; Irvine 2001; Myeters Scotton 1984…_)

Speakers can index broader identities such as ethnicity (AA) or gender (male or female) through linguistic choices. However, linguistic behavior is not fixed to “obvious” or pre-assigned social categories.
Identities also emerge based on the momentary needs of an interaction (such as whether the seaker is acting as an interviewer, teacher, etc)
Linguistic cues have not only the power to signal a particular identity, but to both redefine speaker and hearer

Research questions:
How do rhetorical strategies like Black preaching style contribute to ethnic, professional, and political self-presentations?
How does Black preaching fit in with the structuring of a formal event and the broader act of speaking in public between a relatively homogenous group of hearers and a potentially ethnically mixed group of over hearers?
What are the costs and benefits?

Research data:
DVD recordings of the 2008 State of the Black Union
Yearly forum, initiated in 2000
Moderated by Tavis Smiley
New Orleans, LA
Broadcast on CSpan
Guests include black political figures, academicians, entertainers, college and high school students, and clergy members
2008 theme: “Reclaiming our Democracy, Deciding Our Future”

State of the Black Union: Structure
Panelists sit on stage facing the audience.
Smiley stands at a podium facing both the audience and the guests.

Speakers:
Cleo Fields, born 1962, lawyer
Sheila Jackson Lee (born 1950), lawyer, current member of Congressional Black Caucus
Eddie Glaude Jr (b. 1968), professor of African American studies and religion at Princeton
Chose these, because they don’t match the main group focus of academicians.

The black church:
AA most likely of all ethnic and racial groups in the US to declare a formal religious affiliation
85% of AA identified themselves as Christian
59% of black adults were associated with black Protestant congregations

Black church:
Center of education
Mentoring
Social services
Refuge from external sources of racism and inequality
Hub for political activism
Preachers:
Historically one of the highest and most visible leadership positions in the black community
Served dual spiritual and social leadership roles
Participate in the sacred-secular continuum of black life where “those closes to the spiritual realm assume priority in social relationships”
“only those blacks who can perform stunning feats of oral gymnastics become culture heroes and leaders in the community” (Smitherman, 1977, p. 76)

Preachers and congregants:
Preachers’ linguistic performances become tools for engaging the congregation in a highly interactive religious event
Congregants rely on preaching cues in order to make their churchgoing experience meaningful and memorable
Preaching is connected in specific rhetorical style

Preaching and sermon style
Suprasegmental features
Initial slow rate of deliviery
Sustained intonation
Manipulation of voice quality to produce gravelly tone
Stammer and hesitations, extensive pausing, alliteration
Treatment of words and phrases as motives that are delivered with rhythm
Expanding or contracting words in order to fit them into metrical units
“hitting a lick” or the percussiveness and punctuation of strong consonants
Mitchell 1970
Smitherman 1977

Findings:
Event framing
Preaching, membership, stance
Dramatic shift

“doing symposium”
speaker is giving a bunch of info, audience is passive, disengaged; no give and take between speaker and audience
“Throughout today’s proceedings, the ushers will be moving throughout the aisles… picu up index cards… write a question… we will try to get to those questions near the end…”

Lexical and semiotic cues
Event describe as a “conference” and “symposium” by the organizer
Panelists are on a raised, lighted platform, while audience members are seated in darkened seats in front of the stage

“dogin conversation”
1: having said that
2: I will be very disappointed and would be ready to fight
3: Because I’m one of those
4: Th-th-there-there goes that kingian commitment

Lexical:
Sitting in cushy, comfortable chairs
Up and away

“doing church”
We want you to vote your conscience. We just want to use the delibratous space every year to prick that consciences, but we gotta do it with a love languages. Can the church say amen?
AMEN.

Lexical and semiotic cues:
Event begins at church. Starts with a prayer.
Invokes church.

Cleo Fields:
Begins with a greeting and comedic narrative
Takes the position that members of legislature should be allowed to support their candidate of choice (as a “right”) and they should not receive negative treatment
Evaluates choices
Shifts to preaching style in climax: alliteration and repetiions, elevated tone
“if I was in the caucus, I would just give them my experiences and I would say you know… WEB DuBois started to teach, Rosa Parks could take her seat
Amen
And Rosa Parks took her seat
Amen
So we could all take a stand
Amen
We took a stand so Martin Luther could march
Martin marched so
(Aud responding)
Jesse Jackson could run
(Aud responding)
Jesse Jeackson could run
(Aud responding)
Obama could win

Sheila Jackson Lee:
Greeting
Uses preaching style, begins with love for community
“I am at a point having listened to my brothers and sisters of being full and those of you of the church understand what it is when you are full
amen
it means that there is a experiences that you cannot express, it is when you begin to look at your fellow church member and you see love or you begin to feel the realness of God and let me just say I love you my brothers and sisters
Aud: love you
Then a narrative working in New Orleans during the work after Katrina.
“We are on sacred ground and those of you who can in your mind as I speak get a moment of silence because we are on sacred ground…”
“I am the national co-chair for Hilary Rodham Clinton. I did not leave my blackness at the door.”
Amen

Eddie Glaude, Jr
Greeting
Shift to preaching style
Sermon structure
Preaching used as he reinforces his message about race
“Du Bois has made a philosophical claim to let suffering speech…” He’s made a political claim to put catastrophe in the center”
(audience is saying Um and Amen)
which the declaration of independence (aud respond) was signed for these folk to say that race doesn’t matter in this moment is to say they don’t want to deal with the hell that black and brown people are catching

Conclusion:
Speakers make limited use of AAE syntax and phonology
Preaching style does an extraordinary amount of interactional work for these speakers.
Preaching emerges as speakers display a range of affective and evaluative stances that signal to the audience members where they stand on key issues

Questions:
For Bonnie, study by Smitherman—framework of study, are you going to expand it? Are you going to look at it over more students? Two classes?
Bonnie: This was a small part of my dissertation research. This was part of a chapter. I have more data collection to do. I did it as a pilot study with my class.
What I found was the opposite in my class from the class as a guest lecturer. (Loud response from audience. Like a roar.)

Would like to commend all of you. Enjoyed all of your papers. Happy to see you doing that.
When it comes to HBCUs, examining mission statements and pedagogies. Consider the fact that composition and writing at HBCUs is the last frontier for rhetoric and composition. As a rhet comp person with HBCU background, rhet and comp are rare to invisible on HBCU campuses. Therefore you have to work with faculty who have never thought about what they are teaching and how.
One of the things I have been struggling with… is how to write. More AAs in rhet and comp at HBCUs. At 3 HBCUs I have been the only rhet/comp person and the only one who is interested in it. Might want to look at the attitude of teaching of writing. Rhet/comp people are isolated on the HBCU campuses.

As a rhet/comp person at an HBCU, taught at Howard for 30 years, thrilled to see another generation of researchers… loved the direction that you are going… Have a question for you, Bonnie, regarding the writing the students were analyzing and coding. Loved the idea that they were coding and analyzing their own writing, what was the nature of the literature they were analyzing? What was the nature of their writing? You did not give them any direction about the writing?
Bonnie: A month after the class started. … Students had written their first paper. That was the paper we analyzed. Nature of assignment was a narrative. Nature of assignment would have a good chance of using AVT features. Had them practice finding the AVT features in their narrative writing.
As you continue with the research, you might want to look at other genres… Narrative is a good place to start because they were more likely to have used AVT writing. But must be able to transfer it to other modes.
Audience issue—before you were born—when students wrote for an AA audience, then I saw more of these rhetorical devices from the AA devices. In some cases, I only saw them when a black audience had been assigned, even though I was a black teacher.
Modes can make a difference in whether or not the students integrate AA rhetorical devices.

Fri 2 CCCC

Confronting Digital Literacy Myths in Theory and Practice

Don Jones, U of Hartford (CT), “The Digital Literacy Debate: From Technological Determinism to Student Agency”

Printing press
Erasers
Typewriter
Computers
All of these were seen as a threat to print literacy.

Hard to hear. No one wants to use the microphone. The a/c is very loud.

Many students recognize there is a brand new truth. I’ve asked students to write short responses to technology.
One student says she is skimming and skimping on her ability to improve her literacy.
Depth and breadth of student responses.

Pay attention to the conceptualization of literacy and technology.

Polemics -> like sex, they sell, exaggerated claims catch attention. Students react to strong arguments, but they also get tired of it. Misrepresentation and framework of discussion.

Lindsay created PowerPoint slides: short life, Kindle and eReaders
She says PP is a quick way to get your point across. Gives numbers. Graphs. Paper is more convincing. PP limits what I can say and forces me to use pictures rather than words.

Pair of students (Aaron and Ashley) altered assignments: Used an IM exchange they made while writing the paper. Analyzed what was different between the IM version and the paper version.
Argued that he used more planning while IMing. He said that he is doing something with IM that isn’t being recognized.

Another student used Facebook Bumperstickers.
Disappointment! (old fashioned teacher with a bunch of students) no print literacy
Evil! (Apple’s icon) statement about trendiness
Etc.
Put through a good discussion of digital literacy, trashing digital literacy using digital literacy

“With this amazing access to information, we have to take responsibility for our actions.” –student Dan

Get students to engage in the issue and find their own answers.
They can reject polemical arguments. Can overcome technological determinism. Can learn to use digital literacy more deliberately and more responsibly.

Kelly Bradbury, College of Staten Island, NY, “Myths of Decline and Ignorance: Engaging Writing Pedagogy and Popular Views of Digital Literacy”

Talking about it from perspective with master’s level students.

Rhetoric of digital literacy
Accusations of anti-intellectualism
The Dumbest Generation, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, etc.
Technology positioned as an obstacle to literacy.
Importance of using and critiquing technology… still shapes students’ attitudes.
May support a myth of decline in literacy, when ignoring increase in digital literacy.

Discussions of digital literacy.
Student assignments aimed at:
What is the story we are being told by Am pop cul about the role of tech in lit ed and practices?
What are the consequences of this narrative for writing teachers, students, and ed?
What can we as teachers learn from understanding our own individual dig lit?

National Digital Literacy Narrative = sum of stories of relationship between literacy and technology created by American public
Focus on popular rather than academic examples. “explain how Americans understand technology” –Cynthia Selfe
Naming it allowed synthesis of research. Lent to our discussion the impression that stories are widespread and impacting.

1. Compose a personal digital literacy narrative. (significant event or moment with tech)
2. Research the National Digital Literacy Narrative:
find a pubic article or book (week 5)
find a popular media source (week 8—advertising, etc)
Found these in and posted them in Google Docs.
3. Weeks 11-13 Collaboratively compose a digital media text reflecting the National Digital Literacy Narrative
4. Revise the personal digital literary narrative in light of what they have learned this semester.

Dispersed throughout the semester to frame the discussion.
Theories of composition, audience, discourse communities, etc. was throughout the course. Then the four points framed the discussion.
Most of these 20 folks were planning on teaching high school student.

We agreed that we learned a lot about the NDLN and how it impacts theories of rhetoric.
Fear was a major component of the NDLN.

Overcoming Fear: one student’s journey
An avid believer in nature and reading, her image was flipping a book under a tree. She was apprehensive, routinely mentioned her fear of loss of print literacy. Skeptical reaction to receiving an e-reader.
May have been incited by Frontline’s Digital Nation. Viewing highlighted positive views, but also showed a lot about how young people use tech and lose concentration skills which lead to disjointed writing.
4th week 2 NCTE readings and chapter of Richard Miller’s Writing at the End of the World and an article on digital literacy
Does teaching students to read technology make any difference?
5th week only students supporting were pros and cons
“10 Reading Revolutions before E-Books” by Tim Carmody
8th week chose a comic
“My teacher isn’t qualified to teach spelling! She spells U y-o-u. She spells BRB as r-e-t-u-r-n. She spells BFN g-o-o-d-b-y-e…”

One group created a PSA on why we shouldn’t be afraid of technology. Theirs was five students reading Othello in different media, then each student said “No Fear!” The final picture was of all five students under a blossoming tree reading Othello.

“This class inspired me to put down my opposition… but to see if …” digital literacy could be used well to present literacy in general.

Anna said, at the end of the semester, it was “a fear of the unknown.” Technology is only technology. We are still the people using it. It is in our hands. Thus Anna challenged the idea that technology has the power.

Lessons learned:
The message of the media is complex, over-simplified, constantly evolving
Media said instructors must teach 21st literacy skills to students whose use gives them a prior experience/belief.

Michael Harker, Georgia State University
Kate Comer, Barry University, Miami Shores, FL
“The Pedagogy of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives: Literacy Sponsorship in Action”

Handing out bookmarks from the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, daln.osu.edu

Michael Harker:
Academic view and popular view of literacy are different.
Situating literacy in a local context to be investigated as pointing to something else and looking at literacy as a thing itself is a strong tension.
Our attempts to gain a better understanding of the pedagogy of the DALN.

How are teacher-researchers using the DALN

What is it: national archive of autobiographical narratives of how they learned to read and write, how that continues, and can be tagged. “historical record of the literacy practices and values of contributors, as those practices and values change”

How do I use it: the new literacy studies, attitudes and definitions
UG seminar in introduction to composition
Use Norton Anthology and the DALN. I get to the DALN through literacy studies. It is an overarching approach to understanding literacy, usually interdisciplinary and qualitative and quantitative. Understanding of literacies is primarily ideological.

Teach students of connection of attitudes they have and the definitions they have.
Autonomous conceptions of literacy: stable definition, not being connected to social context
Ideological understandings of literacy: defines literacy in multiple contexts, presupposes social construction
One of my aims is to teach the students that in large part the definition of literacy they hold can limit or delimit the opportunities in the classroom.

Literacy sponsorship and literacy myths -> comes from new literacy studies
Sponsorship= support or deny and gain power from it in some way, abiding belief in literacy as leading to economic improvement (is one example)

Showed video by Grace Brown from DALN
“especially in taking a class about composition and rhetoric… I have learned a lot about the stereotypes of literacy… I had the right teachers. I had small classrooms. … All the things that stereotypically are seen as sponsors of our literacy… I internalized all of these things and they became inhibitors. I became obsessed with grades. … I had to be perfect. I still have those tendencies… because of the pressure, these things that are wonderful and were meant to aid in my education… ended up being inhibitors of my literacy. …”

enthusiasm for DALN
but despite my enthusiasm, Grace gets literacy sponsorship in a way that I am trying to teach…
so often when I am teaching, the host of the language is owned as vocabulary and as a way to discuss
He says that Grace Brown shows that she understands literacy sponsorship. (However, he says it is a sophisticated response and I am not sure it was.)

Kate Comer:
I was research assistant the first year.
We targeted the deaf and hard of hearing.
Want to show one clip that really stood out and became instrumental in my teaching.

“Personally, I don’t want to be able to hear. … That’s okay, right? … I was given the gift of deafness. … You all have not given me the access to literacy.”
Really? A deaf person can’t be literate and it is the hearing people’s choice.

Exigency and angles…
Increase their reach. Asked my students to study rhetorical narrative and used narrative theory. Then I asked them to write to influence how their audience would perceive their presentations.
“Public audiences” but they knew that we (as researchers and teachers) were their audience.
Thought about the site as a dialogue. For me, it became a tool that I could use to get my students to think about literacy and audience and…

Michael: Became curious on how colleagues are using DALN?
1. What are the defining characteristics of DALN pedagogy? (organic)
2. What latent attitudes about literacy inform DALN pedagogy? (what presuppositions? What underlying beliefs?)
3. What assignments do instructors design to introduce students to the DALN?
4. What are some “best practices” for employing the DALN in the classroom?

3 sections in the survey
Context: do you use it, in what courses, What role did the DALN play in the course?
Assignment: Please describe, learning objectives, how did they fit into overall course design
Evaluation: How would you evaluate usefulness, How did students respond, How likely to use it again

DALN contacts, so Selfe and Ulman (Ohio State U) gave them contact lists
Various listservs, including
Writing Program Administrators
CCCC-talk
And another that was at OSU

Report results at CCCC
Then write it up for general distribution.

Opening Results:
71 respondents
21 actually used in class
8 were thinking about using it

Contexts:
Fyc 50%
Digital media studies
Intro to rhetoric
Adv comp
Other= disabilities, pedagogy, basic writing, various special topics

Were using it primarily for readings.
Supplementary readings.

Secondary use: research database

Tertiary use: teachers did not require, but often students published on the site.

Using the site to evaluate…

Wide variety in DALN used:
Minieyes—used to represent
For creating literacy narratives
To get students to reflect on technologies
To be a gateway activity, to get to know each other
Some surprising: business writing courses (helped develop promotional work)
Training videos for new GA/TAs (to learn more about student body)

What were your learning outcomes:
Wordcloud -> dtata, understanding, learn, primary, media, research, goal, based, digital literacies,

Affordances and constraints:
70% said they would use it again in same way in same class
40% said they would use it in another class in another way
Great way to break the ice in class.

Primary constraint was experience:
Keywords change for every video. Challenging for students to find videos they wanted. (gender, women, female, etc)
Would changing the interface fix the problem? It was built on an archive system.

Implications:
Research and relationships
Ethics and representation
IF we are asking the students to use these as data, what kind of relationship are you promoting if they don’t support and add to the DALN?
How can we make sure the research is ethical and contributes?

The thing-ness of the DALN… it is its own thing. It’s an archive. They have to be able to understand intellectual property rights. They have to understand multimodal composition. To use media and to use editing software.

Promising directions for the DALN:
Create exhibits on topics (might be promising for students)

How to define DALN
How to define literacy
How to define digital literacy

Questions:
I’m wondering if you see the National Literacy narrative discussions, do they have an effect on the students? Do they respond negatively?
–I can see that at the undergraduate level.
–A way to get students to think on

William Carroll, Abilene Christian University
“’Hey, Are You Talking to Me?’ Fictions of Audience in the American Rhetorical Situation”

teach primarily British literature, teaching grad students and poetry
public discourse in the US
bi-furcated paper, as I finished up my paper I found some research

Prime Minister’s Questions: 1x week PM fields questions from others, including Opposition, first question is always “What is your schedule today?” because it is required to submit the first question. Occasionally it comes to fisticuffs. A really good rhetorical moment.

Although many watch the BBC’s PM?s because people who radically disagree are still talking. The format is a stark contrast to American political debates, where they don’t answer questions or respond to their others. Or the CNN empty-room lecture of the senator.

We have perfected speaking to ourselves.

Anyone who thinks differently than us is not an adequate audience. If we speak with only those who agree with us, is it still persuasion?

Failure of rhetoric in our public sphere…
(Johnathan Hayes’ research)

dialogue on abortion
Protestant church sermon delivered to teach the lost to those who have chased the lost from the building.

Sports… Reality of show is that sustained argument is never good. Loses points for a presentation of an evidenced argument. Gains points for sound bites with alliteration.

Fail to model what I know about appealing to our audience. Often we are not honest about who our audiences are. We do not deal with their attitudes and beliefs.

John Stewart of Comedy Show, interview showed 10M times, Stewart begs hosts to “stop hurting America”
S: “here to confront you, because we need help from the media”
V: “black/white… We’re a debate show.
S: “No. I would love to see a debate show.”
S: “you are doing theater, when you should be doing debate.”
V: “We do.”
C: “You need to teach at a journalism school.”
S: “You need to go to one.”
S: “Someone who watched your show and cannot take it anymore”

Honest exchange of ideas… watching our elected leaders deliver a well-written, well-presented speech to an empty room.
Cicero: good citizen speaking well
Rogerian idea of

Advocates of rhetoric have influence.
As teachers of rhetoric, we need to
1. be more self-critical as we evaluate our classrooms
2. be critical of our failings of rhetorical discourse
3. develop more rhetorical focus of audience

We assume what persuades us persuades everyone.
Johnathan Heyt, psychologist, The Emotional Dog and His Rational Tail…
Central thesis is that though the mind response is reasoning and then rational thought, instead we have an affective response and only use rational thought if we are called on to discuss our ideas
This is counterintuitive to how we go about.
The data indicates this is the way humans make judgments.
Intuitive and social.
Moral discourse, in its natural experience, is persuasion.
Failure of moral argument is misconception of audience. We assume they are moved by moral reasoning rather than emotions.
“wag the dog illusion” Reasoning about the facts convinces. (But really it is emotional.)
“wag the other dog’s tail illusion” Rational argument will convince other guy.

Heyt: moral reasoning naturally occurs in a social setting.
Once morality is located in a group setting, people must use community’s language in order to convince.
Emphasize the audience for persuasion.

1. Persuasion works by triggering new affective bailiffs.
2. Persuasion by social group.
3. Role-taking is common way to make new moral decisions.
4. In an exchange when both parties begin with strong emotional basis, argument can lead to greater distance between the two parties.

We must recognize that social conditioning and emotional ties influence argument.
“People should take advantage of social argument… talking about … conflicting intuitions triggered… final judgment more nuanced…”

Classical theory did not privilege logos. Perhaps because they had a better idea of decision-making process.

Mark Williams, University of Louisville, KY
“Toward a More Civil Discourse”

3rd year PhD student
going into this, I thought this was going to be a hodgepodge group, but our pieces dovetail pretty closely

Last year… panel on Christianity in the classroom… shifts in position, head nodding, jerking elbows, noise in the room, whispered conversations…. A lot of people were pissed. The desire to just leave became stronger… Christianity is embodied social phenomenon. Rational discussions may not be able to discuss…

Not rational, but sensibility.
What happens if we make sensibility the focus?
Christian practices can make sense, if they don’t answer the questions of others.
Christian practices may create
Xian practices are social, response to circumstance.

Shared sensory mode

Historical bodies= habits, materialized language, media- form and transmit religious social networks

Premise that through the social relationship, Christians develop a relationship with God.
Real=
Lermen says: hallucinations, psych characteristics that create propensity for seeing and hearing God, real = felt reality of the experience, the real is a feeling
Kean calls it a “social fact” = institutions, songs,
Bruno Latourn’s argument= all facts create new realities. Impossible to see what the plural universe could create, even miraculous

New relationships bring up the option of in whatever sense it is used, Christianity is real.
Declaring it real allows a conversation. Saying otherwise ends discourse.

Crowley’s approach is different—textualized on official religious discourse, she elects not to complicate with individual use of media
Focus on media = focus on materialism, which shows differences and interferences

Left Behind series about the apocalypse-> in what ways were they read and used by the readers?
All of them had read the books. No one cited them. No one talked about the apocalypse. So just having read the book does not inform their experience.

Remember my own church-going experiences growing up.
Lining up on white carpeted hallways hundreds of small children singing “Jesus loves me” before Bible class…
I am not going to sing… but the lyrics are important.
Those were the earliest dogmas taught in my evangelical childhood.
They instilled and informed a relationship with Jesus. Lyric expressions of this love relationship were more developed and became more fervent. We would sing the song and the same verses and the same choruses, to think more, to feel more, and the idea was to get to where I felt God’s presence or I felt grateful or I felt loved. It was work every week to get to that point.
Interjections of prayers… teaching us how to do that and training us to feel that relationship
“for the Bible tells me so” offers a different way to look at Bible, it’s a guarantor of love
I still feel the force of that loving relationship with God. I spend the hours working on that. Tears and sweat. Begging God to help me believe in him. Cognitive belief and practical belief. I may not have believed in God, but I talked to God.
Listened to high level sermons.
Weeks of youth group works—praying, solitude, working
Books, Bibles, bracelets
Reading, journaling, texts
Christian music, music festivals, week-long mission trips, energetic leaders motivated and guilted us… convinced my dad to write a witnessing letter to his own father, who mowed the lawn at his own congregation

Witness…
Witnessed a lot in high school. (No definition of this. Assumes everyone understands.)
Homeless man went to church with me, if I would buy him a pack of cigarettes, so he did. And my dad and I wheeled him in while 2000 people in suits turned around and stared.

Personal statement to groups for scholarships.
Choice I made to use the letter as a witnessing experience.
National Merit Scholarship letter = witness
Never heard anything about this letter.

A few reflections on that letter:
Witnessing culture was built into my life, my body. Walking through Central Park with fake questionnaires. “Bigger or better” and compete… get something like a dead car and we would smash the hell out of it in the parking lot…
“Bigger or better” were a regular exercise of overcoming shyness.
Negative affective built up… just like after CCCCs.
Memory of interrupting vacationing adults at the vending machines.
I felt negatively compelled to witness. But if I felt compelled and I didn’t do it, how could I survive? God put them in my life and they might go to Hell.
Having passed the test again. Being faithful to the cause. Restful, because it wasn’t going to happen at the time.

National Merit… knew this was a bad idea. It wasn’t an academic act. It was a specifically religious act. I was going to look like a fool and I was risking big money. If it succeeded, God had been good to me. If it did not, I had made a commitment.

Perhaps, consider that our students are using our classes for other things rather than what we have suggested…

Acts of witness can acquire a certain social standing. Right to share that. HS student sharing with adults. Idea was to share the gospel while he ate the dinner I purchased. I didn’t know what to do. An African American businessman dragged the homeless man out of the Burger King while the food was left on the table.

Because they always occur in a world of social context, we must consider the multiplicity of the facets that are part of Christian witnessing.

Questions:
Bill, presentation focused on how to work with students, teachers of rhetoric… What is our responsibility to not just limit our work to the classroom but to social action?
I was telling Mark that my paper focused on my practicalities, but Heyt helped shift my paper. My assumptions about audience, when I teach strategies that I think are really good, it is often to impress the rhetoric, on my campus,
–students aren’t what they were ten years ago. Can’t read long things. Etc.
But a lot of times we make judgments about our students. We make assumptions about their choices. They work more, so they care less about their schooling. Whereas, perhaps, they work more because they care so much about their schooling. Without the work, they would not be in my classroom.
Students want what they learn to be relevant.
Rhetoric is relevant. We need to show them the relevance.
We need to be more self-critical of our practices. We need to know our students. We need to be in community with our students. It was delightful to me (Oxford). I think that getting to know my students, in classical and medieval models, is a good one. The questions I get are better when they can ask me off the cuff. I can see where the questions are coming from.
Three years ago, I got up on a Sunday morning, got ready for church, when students came over, there was a student on my couch when I got up in the morning, it was a female student, so I asked Laura to do that. I think I can ask my students to do a lot more…
In an age when I am on a bunch of committees, must publish, and 4/4, that is tough.

Community in a different way?
Encourage the students to engage in public discourse in some way.
Article I use, Dan Kahan, study on “protective cognition,” cultural cognition, same phenomenon you are talking about, priority not to rational engagement but to social engagement. Nature published the article. Excellent argument for science students… Public cannot seem to take in science messages as anything except political. Related to students engaging…

Mark: Maybe a loose connection, Delouse has a book on Foucault, he says, I can’t forget it, he said that the solution to political problems is not in thought and won’t arise spontaneously, but will arise from organization. It is a matter of associations and we can read that so many different ways.
They hear science…

One of the techniques Kahan recommends to share information, is to have representatives of the information to scramble the political message. So bearded guy with a pony tail versus guy in a suit give the same message. When they gave a message about the environment that had a strong political valence, the people who would have disagreed, were more likely to agree based on whether or not the person giving the talk looked like what they would expect to be someone they agreed with.

Mark: One more analogy, my mom works at a crisis pregnancy center; she is a prolife advocate and holds a strong position for sexuality. But as I, her son, whom she loves, have moved farther and farther left, she has been forced to deal with the dissonance. She and I are able to talk and come to agreements that you would never have thought we would agree. I don’t think she has compromised herself, but our relationship has changed her.
I doubt that very many people who have homosexual children don’t change.

Bill, you talk about the Rogerian argument, specific activities? Thesis is about modeling civil dialogic. Rogerian argument, rather than typical arguing one side, students basically choose something within their field of study and find all the voices, more than two sides. Their job is not to solve the issue, but to direct the discussion in new directions, to find agreement among the various voices.
Christa Tibbit, “The Civil Conversations Project” online audio

Bill: Try to make my classroom a safe place to be wrong. “Your students almost came to fisticuffs.” No, they didn’t. In order to have an exchange, you have to really say what you think. There won’t be real discussion, if folks don’t feel safe to say what they believe. Gender is a big issue on our campus. Students don’t see that. One of the specific activities I do, when we start studying rhetoric. Bring in advertising that depicts females from magazines they read (males) and vice versa. Then the males have to take the physical stance of the position of the females in the ads. Male posturing have become more like female posturing over the years… it is changing… The students start to understand that there are gendered arguments being made, as they have to start embodying them.

Mark, curious about the music use. Music as rhetorical strategy to create specific responses. Why music?
Mark: TR Johnson’s work, he teaches at Tulane, rhet/comp, Rhetoric and Pleasure. He has a whole thing about how sound impacts the body. Takes a really strong position. Takes risks in his scholarship. He wants to say that music is more immediate. Music, even in the womb, is the rhythm of the mother’s heart, so beat and rhythm is part of life. Music is embodied in particular ways. … I think that needs a lot of unpacking. Sometimes it privileges voice as more immediate.
Bodily Arts music and rhythms part of rhetorical training in Greece… female author…

I have lucked into a class that is on sports and sports culture and the whole phenomenon of Tim Tebow. How others are viewing that witnessing. Either through the lens of his quarterback quality. What the kids are going to do, is to find some ways that the witnessing is about… connecting to how they feel, what they think of the sport itself…

I don’t know anything about sports. I am hoping that sports might be a place where I can show civil discourse that offers hope, that isn’t clearly divisive. Comment about your mother’s changing views, Mark, and your suggestion that parents change their thinking because of family… That is one place that I might like to turn my attention. One place where I have thought about places with different views: organic local farming, homeschooling.
Where do you find hope for the discourse we are talking about?
Mark: Creative nonfiction, literature, short stories—how much beautiful, famous, critically acclaimed literature addresses religion in ways that we would laugh out of a lecture hall
Other: after doing the whole you may not write about x… Then make a list of the things they want to talk about and say what they want to… Then I make them write the other side. What I wind up with is that students say I “did see this.”
Other: bringing it out to the community, Progressive Media Project, started with assumption that we have to stop screaming at each other… Intentional about what would be the most supportive, accessible format to engender civic and civil discourse and take it out of the silo. We came to the conclusion that Op Ed pages are a potent force for discussion. We get people who are great on this and then ask them to talk to the person who disagrees with you… Audience very specific but not your group… Teach folks how to smarten up their ideas by focusing on civic conventions. Opinion and attitude of author is the first statement in the op ed. Going to be doing something on this tomorrow on immigration. Students do Op Eds in the classroom. Take strongly held positions in a genre that has conventions, don’t use inflammatory language…
Other: Ted Talks:
William Ury “The Walk from No to Yes”
“On Being Wrong” Katheryn Schulz –she’s a wrongologist
Bill: One of the things is past the cultural moment “A Purple State of Mind” … red and blue… Represented two different groups (blue and red) and then conversations back and forth… They both are really disenchanted with the nature of discourse. Show that they are good friends and had a website and blog… Local food movement is interesting. Red state locovorism… ours are blue state local food movement. John Birch society is the red state local food Abilene group.

M. Elizabeth Sargent –“Betsy,” University of Alberta
UofA trying to integrate WAC and Writing Center
Arc btw 1st day of 1st year, 50-?
Writing Strategies Inventory and then at the end re-complete the Inventory
Based on Writing About Writing approach, structured around Beaufort’s conceptual model of the 5 knowledge domains (discourse community knowledge, writing process, subject matter, rhetorical, and genre knowledge) -> some include metacognitive knowledge as another circle, but her position is that this IS a metacognitive model

Fall term, 1000 students on waiting list
20 per class, other option is 40 per class (U limits #s of courses allows b/c of that)
email bsargent@ualberta.ca -> will send an electronic copy of Writing Strategies Inventory

39 sections over 5 years
about 750 students (at the end of this term)

reflective writing about their conscious understandings, which increases transfer
goal = help students see themselves as writers who can transfer
“If you are confronted by a prickly writing situation in a dark alley someday…”

Beaufort’s model as heuristic

“The trick, with this as with any genre, is to satisfy its requirements while escaping its confines” (Nancy Mairs)—disaster writing

Writing Strategies Inventory
Graphs by Question
Getting Started, Drafting, and Research
3. Can you start writing without first having to know exactly what you want to say?
Yes is much more prominent in end.

Many people did not understand question at the beginning of the course.
Huge change because they have never before written for someone besides the teacher.
Huge change in giving feedback

Reflecting on the writing process
Yes significantly different

Class Graphs
All think they are pretty good at proofreading at end of term.

Random students in database
Student ID 533 wrote ecstatic responses about changes in his writing.

Gives them three graphs after they turn in the last one.
One shows the positive/negative change per question.
This is used to write the overview for the portfolio

Student M compared 5 pairs of questions
10. Beg=question End=Sometimes/somewhat
Then wrote a really long paragraph answer.
22. beg= no/never tried end=yes/often
Even longer paragraph. “constantly overuse phrases” that hedge, “commitment issues much?”
34. beg=sometimes end=rarely, not very well
“A so-called deterioration in my writing. I sort of think I may have just not understood exactly what it meant. … I might have lied a little bit… I didn’t know what I didn’t know before. I didn’t understand enough to know that I didn’t understand.”

It is the act of filling it out and writing about it that makes the difference.

E. Shelley Reid, George Mason University
“Teaching it Forward”
Using myself as a guinea pig.
Questions:
What do we want to transfer?
Solving writing problems orientation/ability
How should we teach for transfer?
Decoder assignment example
How can we assess thransfer of learning and what do we do then?
Indirect interviewing with students (n=5)

Rebalancing a writing class is challenging
Students already intuitively solve writing problems outside the classroom
Interviews suggest low transfer… BUT…

Solving Writing Problems: Rhetorically
Be able
Not to Write a Document
Not Follow a Production Process
To Solve advanced problems better (interpretive knowledge)
To Evaluate a Writing Problem
To Choose and Apply Appropriate Strategies
To Self-Assess Solutions

How much about Problems
Official class materials
Amt of class per week
Grade weights

Asked us to answer:
One thing to transfer: ability to write as a process
Then think about how much of your textbook supports this: 1 essay
How much time in the last few weeks have you spent: 10%
How much time students spent doing the thing in the last few weeks: ?

Decoder Assignment: 7 angles
Context, community/discipline, genre, approach, evidence, development, presentation
Everything after context is framed as context dependent.

Student decodings:
5-minute presentation decoding a writing task
decoding our composition assignments, before and after drafting
final quiz: decode someone else’s task
Students can do this readily

Approach/stance:
Challenges:
Explain how this problem applies to all their other writing:

Invited 80+ to interview, got 5
How do you solve writing writing problems? How do you start a writing task?
Tell me about one writing task for in and out of class
Students had a category for structure

Problem-evaluation: minimal evidence
Stepwise problem solving: minimal evidence (7 won’t transfer)

School
2 of 5 aud as starting
4 of 5 begin with content
5 of 5 discuss content at length

Extracurricular writing
5 of 5 focus on the audience

School = content
Extracurricular = rhetoric

Low transfer of solving writing strategies.
Students have the capabilities, but they are not crossing to school writing.

What do we want?
How to spend enough time?
What will transfer look like?

Unexpected questions:
Do a majority of students already know and use rhetorical strategies outside class?
If so, how do we leverage that knowledge?
If we leverage that knowledge, will rhetorical awareness for curricular writing be a disservice, since their other professors are only focusing on content?

Will leave you with questions.

Kara Taczak, U of Denver, “Transfer of a Transfer Curriculum”
Continuation of studies conducted as part of dissertation

Research on transfer shows that writing can transfer.
FYC knowledge about writing may be responsible for transfer.
Building on previous research…
What happens when a teaching-for-transfer curriculum is itself transferred, taught in a new FYC context at a different institution?

2 years:
designed and tested a syllabus of Teaching for Transfer (tft)
Key terms, reflection, theory of writing
11 key terms: genre, audience, etc.
reflection used at different deliberate points
Students created a theory of writing using key concepts they learned in the course and from other writing experiences. !!!
A reflective framework informed by theoretical writing content, including key rhetorical terms for writing that guides students to develop a theory of writing

FSU study:
*reflection offers students a chance to look backwards so that they may go forward, and reflections becomes part of their writing process (all said)
*reflection has a direct link to transfer (4 of 6 said)
*can intentionally teach for transfer (4 of 6 said theory of writing is important, 5 of 6 said they had enacted or would enact their theory in the semester or next)

FSU v. DU study:
FSU Research 1 institution with 40,000 students
DU private university dedicated to the public good with over 11,000 students
FSU traditional college age, live on campus
DU upper-middle to upper class, few on scholarship or do work study, traditional college age, deep dedication to receiving As
FSU participants from Liane’s course
DU from my own course
FSU 6 for 2.5 semesters (35 semesters)
DU 12 for 25 weeks
FSU: 11 key terms- genre, aud, rhet sit, reflection, composing, critical analysis, context, discourse community, circulation and knowledge
DU: 7 key terms—rhetorical situation, audience, genre, reflection, argument, the rhetorical appeals, and knowledge
(Won’t use rhetorical appeals in the research course)
Order of them changed. I started with rhetorical situation at DU.
I think I have noticed that this played a part in how they responded.

DU: tft 12 participants, 10 females and 2 males—whole class, all participating
1 discourse-based interview so far, 2 more interviews, and an exit survey
analysis of the sources, final iteration of theory of writing, and writing from other courses

DU Preliminary Findings:
Students are able to develop a theory of writing, based on prior knowledge and new knowledge, that they use to frame and reframe writing situations both inside and outside the comp course

Students’ Theory of Writing:
Different from FSU, each student defined their theories using key terms
“theory of writing is that good writing stems from a rhetorical situation and takes into account audience, genre, and connecting to the reader” (one example)

Why is this different?
Hypothesis: TFT has been reimagined to focus on fewer key terms. I’ve now taught the course 6 or 7 times over 3 years, so I’ve gotten better.

Theory of writing requirement does not discourage previous knowledge. It allows them to already have knowledge and integrate it.

Prelim findings:
*by teaching explicitly for transfer, students begin to make the connections themselves about the importance of transfer
“a working theory of writing that will continue to grow and help me grow as a writer” –one of students
All students said one of most important things was their theory of writing.
“Don’t be turned off by the amount of writing… yeah, it’s scary… but you can apply it to your future writing” –another student

Students do respond to a transfer curriculum.
“Don’t just write the class away because it’s not just a writing class … different kind of writing class, you learn how to put together a good piece of writing and how to really construct that with … [with] key terms… will help me in the future … key terms in writing when writing my own assignments”

Liane Robertson, William Paterson U, New Jersey
“Comparing Transfer Across Contexts: Two Studies of Transfer”

Study 1: does transfer occur between fyc and other academic writing contexts? If so, does the content matter?

Study 2: this and another question.

Transfer is related to content.
7 study participants across 3 fyc sections
syllabi, student writing material, multiple interviews
first interview: could they identify content taught and apply to writing assignments
second interview:

tft: content
Prior knowledge creates resistance—false sense of expertise is a barrier to new learning
The practice of writing does not suffice as content—conceptual framework needed
Perception as novice releases prior knowledge and allows for new learning (as Summer and Saltz suggest)
Content with clear purpose retained better; opportunity to seek transfer = transfer
(Michael Carter)

Total of 3 participants. Both of the two successful transfer students were scientists. One understood genre of lab report, he did a much better job of writing the lab report, as evidenced in his better grades. “I started to think about the discourse community…” Understanding discourse community allowed him to better communicate with his professors. Demonstrated he had a framework to apply information.
Hypothesis: Science may encourage the idea of failure possible. Helps students feel like they don’t know everything.

New study’s context:
Northeast, “edgy”
Commuter students, age diverse, first generation students
Comprehensive, lit-based or themed fyc
Expectation of passing
Work and family primary focus
Imposter syndrome

Preliminary findings:
Similar prior knowledge developed from HS experience of lit-based course
Share a common belief that they learned to write in their HS classes
Expectations, priorities, perceptions as novices, the barriers were more easily overcome, students identified themselves less as writers
Clearly articulated intention of course content = successful application of content in new context—helps students see application of new information to transferred
“In my psych class, we had to analyze a case study, and I realized it was a genre. And we had to write an analysis. And that was a type of genre, I think.”

Lit-themed class students were different.

Potential implications
*Content not tied to instructor or department interests, but to student interests and application may increase successful transfer
*Understanding of connections between contexts of writing can help students to learn to transfer between those contexts
*Ability to release prior knowledge that creates barriers to learning is critical for transfer

Final question: Threshold concepts—collapse of barriers created by prior knowledge (X and Lamb)
Research in the area of threshold concepts (Linda Ava Casner?)—emerging area

Question:
Does it matter that we are doing the same thing and the acronyms are different?
–Writing about writing is part of transfer, but not everything.
–Transfer is muddy. Has lots of parts. Difficult to wrangle.

Perhaps all of you might reference might use Susan Jerrett, pedagogical memory.

Struck, Shelley, by your findings that the academic writing kept talking about content. Take the student results as an insight.
Transfer is so tied to the content. (Beaufort book shows that.)
We can design a course to move them forward, but we don’t know the content that they are going to be working in. Mentioned Linda Adler, one thing for history student to learn, but if I don’t know much about history competing narratives, I can’t really write it.
A: Teaching them how to do the transfer and transfer to the next course.

What do you have your students read?
We don’t read a reader. We want them to be reading writing theory and practical pieces. They start with Bitzer. Talk about rhetorical theory.
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” next.
Then we have them read in the genre.
Then we have them create a genre fr

Linda K. Hughes, TCU
“Widening Literature’s Audience through Service Learning and Civic Exchange”
8 books, a contract for feminist anthology from Oxford University Press

In teaching, there is always something new to learn.

In the 70s, many more English majors. Now it holds steady.
Creative Writing programs are flourishing.

Today’s students are mostly taught “instrumental learning.” That is, they look at the surface meaning.

Lack of sustained reading makes literature harder.

Reconceptualization of university’s as community partners does not always consign prominence to humanities

Summers “What You (Really) Need to Know” New York Times, 22 January 2012.

Service learning and study abroad were presented as key ways of increasing humanities importance:
empathy
critical thinking
imagination

Various conferences, local campus occasions, presidential speeches led me to develop/create a reason why humanities is important.
“Why read literature?”

2004 National Endowment for the Arts report Reading at Risk
2008 report is Reading on the Rise

Created a New Course: Why Read Literature?
I decided the course
1. Had to live up to the critical inquiry
2. Had to include diverse theoretical and historical readings
3. Had to be proven on students’ pulses
4. Had to consider the question in relation to communities beyond the classroom.

Readings assigned:
Aristotle, Horace, Sidney, Shelley, Arnold on literature
“In Defense of Reading” -> Keillor’s intro to good poems, excerpts from Freedom Diary
reading for pleasure “Reading the Romance” and “Crisis at the Outset in Professing Literature” and “Ideology in Cultural Form and Canonical X”
next turned to science “Science that Makes Us Unique” and “Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction”
then considered book readings and public “Reading Oprah”
first section of Reading Lolita in Tehran
Also read literature throughout the whole course.

Inseparability of critical thinking, critical reading, and classroom experience. The addition of civic exchange and service learning was even more important.
This added a lot of work. Getting students there and getting their liability wavers.

2 high school experiences
2 senior citizen groups (one independent living and one assisted living)
Students select and present a literary work to a Fort Worth civic audiences, whose members receive a copy of this work in advance. Each group (7-9 students) must present on the work for no more than a total of 25 minutes.
The Fort Worth civic audience chose a work. They sent the students the work to read. Then the civic audience presented.
Students had to respond to both of these in a reflective essay.

Easier for the high school students.
Working with a teacher makes sure that the civic audience has a presentation ready.

First visit with senior citizens always went well on the first visit. Retired persons have fewer resources or reasons for creating second presentation visit. (One student group went prepared with a Shakespeare poem to talk about, if their group was not prepared.)

At semester’s end, they had to synthesize the course reading and the service learning experience to answer the question of the title of the course.

Student Responses
Danny:
“moved by Kemunyakaa’s poem… more moved by the pleasure that the senior citizens derived…”

Catherine:
“at the end of my high school career, I was terrified of college… Through service learning these students were given a glimpse into the world that is college. … They made me feel helpful because I could see their relief after our second meeting.”

Kristal:
“any way two totally different generations can come together in one room and have truly meaningful conversations and learn something from each other? The answer is yes.”

Catherine:
“not until I was outside the classroom that I understood the reasons we have talked about in class…. gives common ground where there is none”

Catherine:
“Most people in the room came right out and said they did not like poetry. This allowed us to relate to each other… We were still able to have an in-depth conversation on our different interpretations… I was afraid to go too deep in a discussion and what I felt the poem meant because it made me feel very vulnerable…”

Mary:
“I got to explain to them that reading literature is a personal experience that is all a person’s own. The emotional aspect in reading cannot be tested and cannot be right and wrong. … It is not until I have reached college that I understand reading for pleasure and testing.”

HS teachers:
“My students were so excited to have a chance to participate… more important they were proud of their work… This particular class received no grade or extra credit for their work… They agreed to participate in order to be part of an intellectual exchange with you… because of your work… they were motivated”

“This is my new understanding of the term student self-directed learning… watching my students lead a discussion of a Robert Browning poem.”

They put together an experience that depended on reading literature… got more than they experienced.

Senior Citizens:
Residents were more interested in talking about their war (WWII) than about Vietnam. Students learned about the stark contrast between the returning veterans… Even less expected was that we would all be meeting a poet. (famous Dutch-American poet and carried out hematology research–an international literary figure)

Heaney poem was chosen by the senior citizens.
“When we climb the slopes of X
we were eye level with the cups of the telephone poles…”
One of the residents stood up and recited from memory in high school and had never forgotten.

Students came away with a fresh appreciation of older persons’ knowledge.

Three students returned to talk about the poet one more time.

Activities Director said:
“We have many scholars in our community… and as an outsider, watching our residents interact with the students… Not everyday that they can share with such bright, young students… Residents still inquire about the students…”

DIFFERENT experience at other senior citizens’ center
One person spoke up for the first time about her brother being killed in the Korean War but also afterward when no one ever paid tribute to the fallen in that war.
One of the students in my class was from South Korea. His grandfather had taught him to honor the American soldiers who gave them freedom. Every year they celebrated.

When I paid a return visit this year, the Activities Coordinator told me that the resident had died recently. When her family came, they were told of the experience.

Unexpected and immeasurable outcomes…
Especially when we take literature beyond the classroom and into civic studies.

Though any comments on a take-home final exam are suspect, every final mentioned communal reading.
Private effects, as well as public ones.

Daniel is a CS major. Asserted that without literature there would not be much reading outside of one’s self and “encourages socialization. … Reminds me of Plato’s cave story. Being in a class setting has helped me untie the bounds of reading on my own.”

Catherine, interior design major. Catherine found the theoretical readings crucial. After the HS experience, we read “Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals…”
Catherine said, “Unless we read … in conjunction with theoretical readings…” our reading is limited. “opened my eyes to cultures other than my own”

Jordan, CJ major. Singled out TSEliot’s Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
“This poem allowed me to learn a lesson personally more than anything else… Trhough the reading and analyzing of this poem I learned … it can be very difficult to not be insecure about the way you look or act… Literature has the power to teach someone to be themselves, rather than someone society wants you to be.”

Alexis, education major. Positioned literature’s social function
“creates curiosity and keeps society thinking and questioning”
“Before this class I saw reading as a burden… I now see it as less intimidating and a completely essential part of my learning experience not only while at college but in life.”

Dr. Hughes’ said
“I also see a public social dimension… have a fresh sense that part of its meaning is what happens… beyond its text…”

There were many great panels at the conference. There were even more good presentations. This meant that it was difficult

Rhetoric
5 excellent panels

William B. Tanner to grad student paper: Wendy Hanks “Why Illegitimate Children Are No Longer ‘Bastards’”

Pedagogy and Rhetoric: a whole panel receives this award–
Evaluating Student Writing Panel
Carol Johnson-Gerendas
Stacia Dunn Neeley
Carrie Shively Leverenz

Randy Popkin Memorial Award: Mina L. Sommerville-Thompson “Sharing in the Connective Spaces”

Literature

Shakespearean Award: Lorrie Wolfard “This is the Very Coinage of Your Brain”

World Lit: Maryjane Hurst “Transcendence and Mythic Vision in Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Denise Chavez’s Face of an Angel”

British: John Tindell “The Basil Pot’s Corruption of Isabella”

American: Dave Kuhne “Women in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction”

Creative Writing
Poetry: Sally McGreevey Hannay Poems from The Great Big Middle

Honorable Mention:
Sharon Klander
Brenda Bradley
Matt Byars

Prose: Cheryl Clements “I Hope This Reaches You”

Honorable Mention:
Douglas Haines “Everything Must Go”

TCEA: Travis Franks “Carving Memory on Consecrated Ground”

Then, for the award with the most prestige,

Frances Hernandez Teacher Scholar Award:
John Ruszkiewicz

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

David Kuhn, “Gender Roles After the Collapse: Women in American Post-Apocalyptic Fiction”
(Spoke last year on Law and Order in Post-Apocalyptic Novels.)

Have read 50-60 of these novels in the last few years.
American novels published within last 100 years.

Women have four different presentations.

First
Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague
Harlan Ellison’s The Boy and His Dog
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Women are sex slaves, food, victims.

Go, Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler
One Second After (2009) by William R. Fortschen
Lights Out (2010)
Women are equal.

The Stand by Stephen King
World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron by James Howard Kuntsler
healer, shaman, spiritual leader

Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
Midnight
women become leaders and warriors, guide others to a new future

Women’s characters match authors’ desires.
victim- problem
equal- after collapse, still problems
shamans- magic and mystery may replace science
warriors/leaders- feminist issues

In London’s Scarlet Plague, 2012 half dozen or so survivors become tribes. Chauffeur: turns wife of former employer into sex slave. “You had your day before the plague, but this is my day.”
“We who mastered the planet, who were as very gods, now live in …

A Boy and His Dog (novella and movie)
Novella is by Harlan Ellison.
the dog taught boy to read and do math
dog finds women for the boy
WWIV has killed off most of the women and the few surviving women are living underground. Savage parody of American culture.
guy, woman, and dog flee to the upper world– to save the dog, the guy kills and cooks his lover.
Movie is worse than the book.

In McCarthy’s The Road
few women in the novel
eliminates any women characters because it is about a father and son

Women do play essential roles in some works.
George R. Stewart’s The Earth Abides.
protagonist is an academic
Many years after plague, tribe.
Bring back guy who has STDs and is a misogynist.
Age, not gender.

One Second After, William R. Forstchen
Black Mountain, NC
EMP attack
town’s mayor, Kate, retains system of order
co-eds from the local religious college take up arms and fight

David Carter’s Lights Out
women play active roles in defense.
Refuse to be second class.

Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler
post-war novel
Three groups:
Mortimer Tate is the narrator.
Sheila not only leads the crew of muscle men, but organizes and leads the attack on Atlanta.
Annie and the other strippers are able to fight against the other groups.

Logic, science, cheap energy (before collapse)
Magic, mystery, romance (after collapse)
Stephen King The Stand
epic account of good versus evil

World Made by Hand
gradual apocalypse
spiritual leader = Mary Beth Ivanhoe, prophetic powers
“a real strangeness in this world of ours”
Brother Joe also has mysterious powers.

The Witch of Hebron (sequel to World Made by Hand)
woman is a herbalist

Feminism
Ardath Mayhar’s The World Ends at Hickory Hollow women lead
told from woman’s POV
Lucinda assembles survivors. Rescues the neglected children and places them in safe homes.
Woman-led gang of prostitutes is the bad guys.

Into the Forest
most artful, best literary work
Single family.
They burn down their house after one is raped and made pregnant.
The baby was a boy. “What’s wrong with a boy?… All that work for a boy.”
The sisters and the new babies create their own Herland.

genre-busting novel Midnight
Ellen Connor
craziest of these, not well written
romance and post-apocalyptic literature and a hint of Twilight

Trudi Beckman, Tarrant County College, Southeast
“The Tangibility of Mourning: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’”

Grief history.
Mourning was important, rituals, language.
Women were the last to quit mourning.
Poe thought grief of a woman was most poignant.
He like other Americans would be familiar with mourners books.
1836 Mourning Rituals and Dress

American not the only culture embracing mourning. Also Western Europe.
Proper display of mourning included dark clothing, decorating residences. Crepe on the door knockers. Blinds closed during funeral processions.

Middle class families driven to bankruptcy by all the mourning requirements.
Those who felt left out by the experience could consult mourning books.

Some public displays of mourning were acceptable. There were constraints.
Dark, somber clothing.
Women were expected to wear black streamers on their bonnets. That meant that if they weren’t crying, they still looked like they were.
Men, in evening wear, would be great at a party or at a funeral.

Heavy dark purple bordering on black– mourning for royalty (common color for funeral home)

spatial placement of the bust was reminiscent of Victorian graveyard sculptures

The more elaborate the marker, the more truly grief stricken the family appeared to others.
The space has become the grave. “grave-like chamber space”

Readers participate in Poe’s lost performance, placing them in physical contact with the dead
By the end, the speaker seems to be losing his senses.
Melodramatic grief could fall outside an acceptable range of mourning behaviors, especially for males, whose mourning was more reserved.

Victorian practices connected with Egyptian and Greek mourning. Lots of relation to the myths of Greek stories. (Woman marries while pregnant with god’s child and he kills them and turns the bird black.)

Persons of women bore symbols of wealth and servitude. Also wore mourning. Feminizes emotion of mourning.

Mother or wife would be at the head of the body in Greek experience.

Physical bodies are separated in the poem.
Speaker’s emotional estate devalues the masculine and values the feminine.
Though society in general devalued women, in mourning, Poe’s speaker’s status is lowered, by being emotional, and then raised, because feminine authority is found in mourning.
Last stanza–feminine authority, speaker wrapped in never-ending sorrow “Grieving shall be lifted never more!”

Paula Kent, Texas Women’s University
“Talk is Not So Cheap: The Role of Gossip in Wharton’s The House of Mirth and Cather’s A Lost Lady”

in American culture, gossip is usually seen as a feminine conversation
By looking at literature, Patricia Myers Spats “in literature, a way to take gossip seriously”

Wharton’s book (1905)
Cather’s book (1923)

How does gossip effect the two women?
Gossip= small talk, tattling, may or may not be truthful
Deborah Jones’ “women’s gossip”

Combine the two definitions: How do women use language to tattle on each other?
Exploration of women’s gossip in both novels, effects are lessened for married women, worse effects for single women.
Gossip is a powerful tool.
Can also tear women apart.

Deboarah Jones “language of women’s strengths… sometimes X and attacked”

despite criticism, gossip plays some role in some women’s conversations
Most obvious in literature written by women and about women.

Framework for function of gossip:
form of small talk that relates to women
build on the term, one element of gossip that brings all women into it: “scandal”
Scandal can further malicious intent and form a bond between the women gossiping.
Gossip is a judgement of the morality of others. Behavior is regulated by the gossip. Connects women who are otherwise isolated.

Ambiguous nature of scandal gossip indicates how complex women’s conversations can be come.

Comments…
Look at: Emma (article on gossip), The Great Gatsby (Daisy Miller)

Can it be that Poe is attempting to de-fix the mourning as feminine?
One of the articles I skimmed through said that Poe’s poem was a masculine inversion of Browning’s The Courtship of Lady Geraldine.

Elaborate culture of mourning… The cultural mourning was also artistic. A whole material apparatus, the hair weaving, the quilts, so an intricate weaving between text and artistic mourning.

Note: These are not the better lines, but the thoughts that were part of the poems.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Jeffrey DeLotto, Texas Wesleyan University
“Geckos on the Bathroom Screen”
Each summer they come…
moth
soft-bellied fly
quiet
claws hooked
leans forward and lashes back

“Ebb Tide Quiet”
an old gray…
egrets
sank into the sand
a child upon his knee
braving the march of days
unnumbered ties
nibbling mice

Two modern versions of dramatic monologue…
Can I show him how to catch a fish, guaranteed?
always got a bucket on the boat
magic soup
heavy squall
down in the Keys
Hatteras hole there
built the superstructure on site
I was in the bottle more than not.
I saw Jean.
I quit the bottle. She didn’t tell me to. She just looked so disappointed.
Don’t make it happen. It will, in its time.
Jean told me about the cancer.
Smiling like she knew something.
Canadian Club. See these hands? They were clocks.
2300 hours.
That bottle still looking at me.
I came to see that day…
smell the hand of God in everything.
Jean was right.
flashing by in the night
words of feeling

Another one of my marina dramatic monologues
“Gilbert”
flat plastic box, saffron like gold
boiling water, smell the steam rising
sloop–them your kids?
Catalina
mince shallots real fine
I was trained. Culinary school with a sous chef…
braised asparagus
just working in town, she thinks she can say whatever
fixed his action… Then they put me in for a while.
You see these thick eyes?
Deglaze the stock.
Strain it through this old tee shirt.
smell that saffron

Corbin Lockmiller, Tarrant County College NE; UT Arlington
apologize for the delay– You would think it would be easier to get around in a building shaped like a box.

Began with a recitation of TS Eliot.
filled with fancies
men in bits of paper
world by the cold wind
in and out of unwholesome lungs

Three Strings
songs of the fate as they are sewing
unbind them
sewers sing
needles stitching in between the lines

romance
remember Marlowe
through brine, fire, and sleepless weather
stretching everywhere
youth and all
himself I saw
tows the lines together
pass the bottle
Conrad dead

dreamt I climbed a ladder
how much farther?
spat fire
spittle slipped from his chin
pillaring flames
scraping claw
burning the fate of lines
blood said burn

Questions:
Where did you get that?
JD- had a sabbatical, wanted my wife to go with me, we sold the house, took our two young children
CL- reading Conrad

commonality in both poems
Brother Ray (JD) phoenix of his own sort