Here in Northern Indiana, spring has swept across the wintered landscape like a magic wand. Daffodils trumpet sunny joy, hyacinths perfume the walk to campus with clustered purple blooms, and, now, cherry trees and magnolias are foaming pink and white into the sky. What could be less appealing than buckling down and finishing the semester? I’m sure most of us feel our students’ pain. I was glad, then, to have James M. Lang’s thought-provoking Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It on hand to remind me why it’s not enough to simply inspirit students: “Keep showing up!”  The premise of Lang’s book, which I’ve written about before, is for instructors to construct class experiences—think High Impact Practices— worth students’ time and attention. In these final weeks of the semester, with thinning attendance, I realized I needed to check my messaging and class structure to be sure I was making my class worth attending.  After all, even those of us who incorporate a lot of active learning in a classroom can fall into ruts: Opening question, pair and share, work with the text in small groups, share out insights again. Next class: Often more of the same. I needed to shake things up. I appreciate Mim Moore’s recent post about High Impact Practices (HIPs) offering a range of ways to re-orient our classrooms. And with Lang and Moore as inspiration, I have been sending out emails a few days before each class meeting with teasers about why attendance is worth each student’s time. Only in class, for example, would they have the chance to: Interact with a guest speaker who has made a career out of researched writing; Practice revision strategies that are essential for final drafts; Help design the self-evaluation rubric for class participation, and then evaluate themselves; See a brief scene from a new play and discuss theatrical rhetoric with the playwright; Collaborate on a summer reading list, movie list, and song playlist on course themes; Collaborate on advice for the next class; and, Cheer one another on as we celebrate the community we have built together while emerging from difficult times. These concentrated efforts have paid off, and not only in student attendance. I’ve found that when I design a class that I think will make students excited—or at least curious—to attend, I look forward to class so much more, myself. In this way, students are cheering me across the finish line, too—despite springtime’s beckoning call. Photo by April Lidinsky (2023). ... View more

Driving Around on Purpose: Learning to See through Photo Essays and Visual Storytelling   Kim Haimes-Korn is a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. She also trains graduate student writing teachers in composition theory and pedagogy. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition   Overview Our family came up with the term, “Driving Around on Purpose,” when my daughter was a young child. I taught a night class once a week for many years and felt bad about not being around during that time. My daughter and husband, however, turned it into a daddy-daughter date night and happily did their own thing.  After many years, I decided to rearrange my schedule, drop the night class and return home for Wednesday nights. I was expecting that my family would be relieved that I was back on deck for that day, but they were actually a bit disappointed as they were happy with their weekly hang-time.  My daughter, in all of her young insight, asked me if I could just “drive around on purpose” during this time to keep their hang-time intact.    Photo by Kim Haimes-KornAlthough I found it funny at the time, I was not a stranger to driving around on purpose.  On the contrary, I love a drive without a destination to create chances to start out in one place and see how one thing leads to the next. As a digital storyteller I seek out unstructured opportunities to connect visually with the world, the seasons, the sights, and the unexpected events that present themselves. Driving around on purpose is really about changing your state of mind, learning how to see and live the flow life and notice things that might go unnoticed. It is about finding the right light, right angle, new connections, and the right story to tell.  For me and all the busy people I know, this is a way to step outside of our overscheduled lives and enjoy the openness of discovery, which is where stories emerge.          I bring this practice into my classes to push students to do the same thing – learn how to drive around on purpose.  One of the skills of digital storytellers is learning how to see.  Students, in their busy lives often walk quickly by and through their experiences, rather than slowing down and observing their surroundings.  The concept of driving around on purpose is perfect for students generating microcontent and telling visual stories.    The idea of the photo essay is at the center of this kind of multimodal work. Photo essays tell stories and strengthen students’ abilities to see their world in new ways. As immersive storytellers, we often find ourselves in situations where we experience and interpret reality and then represent it for others in digital spaces.     The photo essay originally emerged as a genre through journalism and lived its origins in the early magazines. The term came about when W. Eugene Smith chronicled the back stories of a Rural Country Doctor (1948) and a Nurse Midwife (1951) through landmark photo essays in the iconic Life magazine. These essays defined the genre and were followed by others in different contexts and subjects. Photojournalists told stories that created behind-the- scenes portraits, slice-of-life experiences and life in the field. The photo essay surged during the Vietnam war and other cultural and historical moments as we were able to feel the emotional impact through images. Today, the photo essay has worked its way into popular mediums through online sharing and distribution in digital spaces where both everyday composers and professional storytellers share their lives, experiences, and ideas through visual storytelling.    The Format Magazine article, Advice for an Unforgettable Photo Essay (2018) offers a working definition and characteristics of photo essays:   Possibilities, discovery, and stories: these are some of the most effective elements of a photo essay. Collections of images can help produce a narrative, evoke emotion, and guide the viewer through one or more perspectives. A well-executed photo essay doesn’t rely on a title or any prior knowledge of its creator; it narrates on its own, moving viewers through sensations, lessons, and reactions.   Photo by Ed 259 on UnsplashWhen assigning photo essays or visual microcontent, I sometimes give students prompts to sharpen their focus and feed into my class assignments. For example, I have students investigate their sense of place, look for a series of related things (digital, visual series) or search for particular composing techniques. Other times, I leave it more unstructured and ask them to go on a walk-about or exploratory journey that encourages seeking out the unexpected. I also offer opportunities to choose their own paths and drive around on purpose according to their own terms. Prompts can encourage students to follow narrative paths that “focus on the story you’re telling the viewer” or thematic paths that “speak to a specific subject.” (2018).   Photo essays are stories of discovery or ones that make a statement. They can entertain, persuade, or inform and present thoughtful connections between composed images to tell stories and communicate meaning. They are short, visual stories (microcontent) that can stand-alone or be integrated into larger projects. Steps to the Assignment:  Assign students a prompt (structured or unstructured) and ask them to venture out and take at least 10 images on their phone in which they visually represent a story or idea.  I encourage them to engage in strong composing practices as they learn to compose strong images.  Although I usually assign 10 images (for micro-stories), I encourage students to overtake and curate more than they need so they have more to choose from to create their stories. Sometimes, I intentionally assign more images, depending on the nature, purpose, and depth of the assignment. I emphasize the importance of context and varied visual perspectives (such as different distances (micro to macro), angles).   Once students collect their images, they should edit, sort, and arrange them so they tell a story, communicate an idea, or explain a perspective.  Students can prepare them for submission through an array of options: they can present them as an advancing slide show or a gallery of captioned images. They can add title slides, text, and music if they want or just let the images speak for themselves.  I usually have them include an accompanying context statement through which they discuss their purposes and processes.   Finally, students share their stories with others in either full class or small group formats to see the reactions of an active audience.  Students can also add them to existing forms and platforms such as blogs, social media posts, written articles, or other spaces.   Here are some example prompts/ideas for short photo essays:  Transformation or change  Journeys or photo walks  DIY – process of how to do something or how things work  Day-in-the-life  Community  Personal space  Profile/portraits of people  Behind the scenes  Persuasive statement towards an idea or cause  Technique driven – Composing techniques, black and white, etc. Seasonal portraits Nature Architecture  City Life Objects  Moods or emotions  Experiences or events Choose your own adventure   Reflections on the Activity: I am glad I learned how to drive around on purpose and find meaning through photo essays. It nurtured my love of visual storytelling and shaped my ability to shift my state of mind and find stories to tell. I find students also embrace these opportunities as engaging assignments that help them learn to see, critically interpret their experiences, and hone their skills as visual storytellers. ... View more

I recently recorded a pedagogy podcast concerning supplemental instruction (SI) in the most difficult first and second-year courses at my university, sharing the Zoom platform with a colleague from psychology and another from math.  Our conversation began with a discussion of difficulty.  What leads us to perceive something as difficult?  The ratio of time and effort required?  The subject matter itself?  Comments on Rate My Professor?    We talked about the benefits of working our way through difficulties, as well as strategies for motivating ourselves to stick with challenges—from growth mindset to research-based study strategies such as spacing (spreading smaller amounts of study over days or weeks rather than cramming at the last minute).  Cramming and spacing can both yield immediate benefits on a test, but the knowledge gained through cramming is less likely to persist, while learning acquired over time tends to last longer.     But what motivates students to exert energy to space their studies strategically or to connect with SI and other campus resources?  Sharing our own struggles, bringing former students and peers to show how their learning extends beyond the classroom—all of this can help students see potential in difficulty and address the “when will I ever use this” question that seems to arise in so many of our class conversations.     Such conversations, however, address the students who recognize and respond to the difficulty inherent in our assignments.  But what about students who do not seem to be aware of that difficulty?    I recall using a variation of Mariolina Salvatori’s difficulty assignment in one of my FYC courses at a community college a few years ago.   I drew on Salvatori and Donohue’s book, The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty, and this insightful piece from Meghan Sweeney and Maureen McBride in creating the assignment:  students were invited to explore their difficulties in reading Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman.”  I was surprised by a handful of students who wrote that they encountered no difficulties at all in the reading.  It was clear from subsequent work that they had not actually grasped basic details of the reading, much less nuances of key themes.    This semester, I have not used the difficult paper per se, although I have incorporated elements of its structure into the reflective pieces students have written over the semester.  And I am once again befuddled by a disconnect between what I perceive as the difficulties embedded in the course and the students’ assessment of their own writing practices.     After reviewing the grading specifications for the final portfolio—an end-of-the year project to which I devote the final three weeks of class—I asked students to estimate the amount of time they would need to complete final revisions, edits, and annotations (reflective notes) for the curated portfolio.  Several suggested that at least an hour— “maybe even two”—might be needed.   Many of these students do not yet have full first drafts; they need to complete substantive revisions and extensive editing for at least 4 pieces (2500+ words).    In short, it appears that most students have underestimated the time and effort required for accomplishing the portfolio. I am used to complaints that the portfolio requirements are too difficult; I am not so accustomed to assertions that “it’s no big deal.”   Now I am wondering how best to communicate realistic assessments of what is required to my students, and yet also invite them to enter this process that—despite difficulty—can bring energy, magic, and incredible satisfaction.  My consternation echoes a concern articulated (and explored in depth in this post) by one of my heroes in FYC/developmental/corequisite work, Cheryl Hogue Smith: During this post-COVID sea change, however, I feel like students are in an academic version of The Matrix, not knowing a world of learning exists outside of their passive realities, not even knowing there’s a red or blue pill to choose from. And it’s this fight I don’t know how to win.   Photo by marco fileccia on UnsplashI don’t have answers, but this is just one of the difficult questions I will consider this summer.  I hope to look more into recent publications in the scholarship of teaching and learning, such as this open access collection published by the Association for the Teaching of Psychology.  I am also working through a collaborative investigation of the ways students use language to position themselves in relation to difficult materials in advanced courses.  I will review student work and my own feedback from this current semester.   Then I will tweak (yet again) my syllabi in preparation for fall courses.       How are you helping your students recognize, value, and persevere through difficulty?  How do you help those who are overwhelmed by difficulty—and also those who don’t even perceive that difficulty?  As always, I would love to hear from you. ... View more

When I was a grad student at Ohio State University, one of the professors in the department insisted that the sign announcing our department be changed from “English Department” to “Department of English,” and I remember the debate that ensued on the ramifications of that grammatical shift and the high dudgeon many colleagues worked themselves into over it. I also remember at the time thinking what an odd name it was in any event. Though I had read William Riley Parker’s 1967 essay “Where Do English Departments Come From?” and understood the lineage that had shifted, at Harvard, from rhetoric, briefly to folklore, and then to literature, and particularly literature in English, the name still seemed odd to me, given what I knew about the Department I was currently studying in. “English” did not seem parallel, to me, with the Departments of German or Spanish or Chinese. In my department, students studied and wrote dissertations on literature in English and sometimes literature in translation, certainly, but also on the history and theory of rhetoric, on folklore, on creative and other forms of writing. So “English” just seemed an odd name to me.    University Hall at Ohio State University   So odd, in fact, that in the 80s I advocated for changing the name of our departments, arguing that our name should reflect the work that we actually do. My arguments went . . . nowhere. Nevertheless, as the years wore on and as scholars of rhetoric and literacy/writing studies began to grow in number, some departments began to change their names (Oregon State, for example, went from “English” to “Writing, Literature, and Film” and new departments, separated from English, grew up around the country, with names like “Writing and Media Studies” or “Writing and Rhetoric Studies” or “Rhetoric, Media, and Social Change,” “Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication,” and so on, names that signal more clearly what the department studies and values than does the single and vague word “English.” In “The Colonialism and Racism of the ‘English’ Department,” Elizabethada A. Wright doesn’t consider this slow evolution away from “English” and doesn’t cite William Riley Parker’s work or a number of others, such as Gerald Graff or John Guillory or Robert Scholes, who examine and question the formation and practices of “English.” But that is not the focus of Wright’s critique, which centers on the hegemony of English and of its colonializing tendencies. In this regard, I was expecting to encounter the work of James Slevin, whose Introducing English includes a searing indictment of the earliest attempts to force “English” on native inhabitants.  Nevertheless, I take the point of Wright’s article seriously, and I think all of us—especially all of us in departments of “English” should be at work right now examining how when and why our departments came by that name, articulating the mission that name suggests and comparing it with the missions that other, alternative names could carry forward. We would also do well to be asking our students what they think of the name of our departments – in what ways the name seems appropriate and adequate to what they are studying and learning in their classes and what alternative names they might suggest, along with their rationales for doing so. What’s in a name? A very great deal. Years ago, my colleague Nicholas Howe said if he could form a department of his own, he would call it “The Department of Interesting People.” I am still not sure what my department title would be, but I know it would aim at using language together to create a better future. And it would NOT be “English.” What would your department name be—and why?   The image in this post is in the public domain. ... View more

The most difficult times of the pandemic often felt like living in a chrysalis, and for the sake of metaphor, I can imagine a butterfly emerging. With imagination, I can picture the butterfly wondering what happens next. Where will they go? What will they do? How will they avoid the predators that eat butterflies for breakfast?  Butterfly at the Voelker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary, and Victorian Garden Queens, NY Photo by Susan Bernstein, July 27, 2022   That metaphor seems like college right now–all of us, students and teachers, emerging from the chrysalis. Teachers might remember what college was like before March 2020. A teacher, newly emergent, might feel nostalgia for pre-pandemic classrooms, for the time before the devastating memories of transitioning to online learning in the midst of a global emergency. The chrysalis formed in that transition. The hope of returning to normalcy kept the chrysalis viable.   This is not necessarily the fault of teachers, and especially not the fault of contingent faculty, who exist in a labor system that offers no stability. For contingent faculty, there is no normalcy. Students who are entering college for the first time also have not experienced normalcy; they cannot find comfort in the memory of pre-pandemic college classrooms because no memory exists, and nostalgia also does not exist. What first-time-in-college students–and especially FirstGen and BIPOC students–encounter in college classrooms is their complete reality of college: College might include pre-pandemic relics that now might not make much sense, including general education requirements, course overloads necessary to complete general education requirements, and expensive unpaid parking fees (on campuses with too few parking spaces, no less) that place holds on registration for the next semester. This list does not include student loans and the astronomical financial costs of college, many of which seem opaque, such as the high costs of required materials for required courses. This is the only college world the students have ever known. No wonder, then, that many people do not stay in college, or choose not to enroll at all.  Yet these alternatives to college completion are not the same as a chrysalis that fails to develop. The butterfly still emerges, and still searches for the means to launch their flight. College could well have been that means, but a launch pad littered with obstacles fabricated from nostalgia offers precious little space to begin a successful flight. Success in the wake of this pandemic must be differently measured. But that is not all. College also needs to change. The launching pad needs to be cleared of pre-pandemic debris that served no one before March 2020, and that three years later remains intolerable.  The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, and in that moment of emergence, the world is made new. In that moment, attention must be paid. This is not a metaphor, but a call to refuse nostalgia and to refuse normalcy. This is a call for change. ... View more

If, as I noted in last month’s post, attempting to keep students from using chat generative pre-trained transformers is all but impossible, how might ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence language programs be used productively for teaching and learning? That’s a question that has already generated a tremendous amount of thought and research among educators, with the proliferation of ideas and suggestions growing on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Among the resources I recommend are the work being done by Anna Mills, who curates AI Text Generators: Sources to Stimulate Discussion Among Teachers for the WAC Clearinghouse, and Rhonda Grego, Dean of the School of English and Humanities at Midlands Technical College in Columbia, South Carolina, who has created a detailed and annotated list of scholarly articles with a focus on classes in which writing is a major component of the syllabus. As with my previous posts, the rapid development of AI, and educators’ responses to its perils and triumphs, means the following ideas are only suggestions, places to begin. Actively assign ChatGPT as part of the coursework. While we want our class discussion to be models of invention and creativity, ChatGPT obviously offers a much quicker way to generate essay ideas worth discussing. Rather than a desultory ten or fifteen minutes with students kicking around one or two obvious or half-formed ideas, they could spend their time evaluating and critiquing the ideas offered by GPT, which is particularly adept at generating pros and cons for specific arguments. AI appears equally deft at summarizing complex arguments. Students can practice this essential skill by writing their own summaries of readings or topics in-class, then comparing them with AI-generated summaries. Conversely, the AI summary can be created first, then dissected by the class for flaws and omissions, of which there are sure to be some. Indeed, just about any early-process writing activity, from generating a thesis to locating sources to creating an outline, can be supplemented, or complicated, by AI input. In this model, AI acts as a kind of tutor, prompting students to try ideas, answering questions, responding to student concerns and skepticism--essentially becoming something like the online writing guide that so many software developers have worked so long to create. Allow students to use ChatGPT as they wish, but ask them to be honest about how they have used it. Once students begin using AI as a partner, it will be tempting for them to say, as they might to an overeager parent, “You’re so good at this, why don’t you just go ahead and do it yourself?” If, as we will see in next month’s post, detecting this sort of plagiarism is problematic, should we just give in and acknowledge its inevitability? Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at Wharton, concedes: “I think everybody is cheating ... I mean, it’s happening. So what I’m asking students to do is just be honest with me.... Tell me what they use ChatGPT for, tell me what they used as prompts to get it to do what they want, and that’s all I’m asking from them. We’re in a world where this is happening, but now it’s just going to be at an even grander scale.” Clearly, this approach is not without its drawbacks. What criteria are we using to grade student work not actually produced by students? Whom (or What), exactly, are we grading? Mollick’s proposal may but pragmatic, but it is not far from a tactic discussed last month: not grading at all. Emphasize the writing process and have students show their work. A more productive approach is to insist that students be transparent about their own writing processes. While we may preach the gospel of process, too often, especially for teachers with heavy composition loads, it’s much easier simply to assess product. Among the many recommendations composition teachers have made for responding to AI, two occur frequently: 1) Have students do more work in class, with the teacher maintaining a productively intrusive presence from the beginning to the end of the assignment, and 2) insist that each of those stages in the process is read and assessed by the instructor to ensure that the work is consistent with the student’s own writing. If ChatGPT is part of the process, its use should be akin to that of tutoring session or a database search, and every aspect of its use should be well-documented. Prioritize quality over quantity. An emphasis on an instructor’s close involvement in the composition process, in tandem with AI’s ease in creating competent product—ChatGPT can meet a semester’s word count in a couple of minutes—should encourage educators to move away from word count as a mark of achievement and toward fewer essays, with more drafts, more in-class work, and more attention to detail. Again, students may consult AI as they compose, but the instructor’s emphasis should be on helping them craft their own sentences and paragraphs rather than cutting and pasting ready-made computer-generated prose. Assign multimodal writing. Many professors devoted to multimodal composition have been frustrated by the pace at which their colleagues have adopted non-alphabetic writing practices, but ChatGPT’s wizardry with words should go a long way towards making college composition classes places where, in addition to written text, “essays” consist of images, sound, video, computer graphics, and whatever else persuasively forwards an argument. Insist on accuracy and facts. Those who are doubtful of AI’s impending ability to conquer the world often point to the wild inaccuracies to which it is given. In class, let AI have its say on the topic under discussion, then have students do their best to identify what is false or misstated. Because ChatGPT is so error-prone, students will need to be more alert than ever to fact-checking information, certainly a worthwhile development in our era of exaggerations, lies and blatant misinformation. Nurture the individual writer. ChatGPT relies on groupthink and hivemind; its prose lacks individual creativity and flair. Media Studies professor Ian Bogost compared a conversation with ChatGPT to “every other interaction one has on the internet, where some guy (always a guy) tries to convert the skim of a Wikipedia article into a case of definitive expertise.” Bloviating generalizations that anyone can make are just as unappealing in college writing as they ever were. Instead, we writing teachers should be cultivating the distinctive voice given to every human being. In class, analyze the prose of ChatGPT, pointing out its blandness, the fact that, as Bogost notes, the writing is “formulaic in structure, style, and content” and “consistently uninteresting as prose.” Rewrite sentences and paragraphs to rehumanize AI’s list of facts and figures. Peter Elbow, Anne Lamott, Natalie Ginsberg: be ready in the wings; we may need you. ... View more

One year ago, I wrote here about the threat of a Constitutional crisis. In doing so, I cited a speech made by Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, on the occasion of the 200th birthday of the Constitution in 1987. Marshall wrote, “I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.” He continued, “Along the way, new constitutional principles have emerged to meet the challenges of a changing society. The progress has been dramatic, and it will continue. The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 could not have envisioned these changes. They could not have imagined, nor would they have accepted, that the document they were drafting would one day be construed by a Supreme Court to which had been appointed a woman and the descendent of an African slave. ‘We the People’ no longer enslave, but the credit does not belong to the Framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of ‘liberty,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘equality,’ and who strived to better them.” Since the 2020 elections, across our nation, dozens of laws have been proposed—and most of them have been passed—that acquiesce in outdated notions of liberty, justice, and equality. Often these laws have been passed with their proponents knowing full they will not withstand a constitutional challenge. They do, however, reveal the biases of those who support them. They also reveal why Marshall was right in stressing that the Constitution was and must remain a living document. For example, there is endless debate about what rights to gun ownership are established by the Second Amendment, an amendment written before bullets as we know them had even been invented, let alone semiautomatic weapons. When Marshall wrote of “new constitutional principles [which] have emerged to meet the challenges of a changing society,” he had in mind, among others, the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which ended slavery and the denial of the vote based on race, respectively. During his lifetime, he saw progress toward a more just and equal nation. Had he lived into the twenty-first century, he would have been horrified to see us moving backward. Last week Marshall would have seen a glaring backward movement in the area of racial justice as he watched with the rest of the nation what happened in Tennessee. The Tennessee state legislature expelled Rep. Justin J. Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones, two young black representatives because they took part in a peaceful protest against the gun violence that most recently took six lives at an elementary school in Nashville. These representatives were removed from political office after being duly elected by their constituents, leaving those constituents temporarily without representation. Representative Gloria Johnson, a white Democrat, participated in the same protest but was not removed from office. Ironically, quiet racial gerrymandering of voting districts is what brought into power state legislatures that are able to get by with such blatant injustices. While both Rep. Justin J. Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones have been reinstated, the backlash from their expulsion will unravel in the weeks to come. Our Constitution assumed men of honor would be the ones enforcing it. Unfortunately, as the Constitution evolves we may have to legislate standards of integrity as well. For the better part of 200 years, Americans used the power of the vote to say no to politicians involved in a scandal or espousing blatant racism—except in the South, where that remains a problem. Our Founders didn’t think they needed to be made explicit. Perhaps today they do.   "Constitution"  by EpicTop10.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ... View more

You may have seen a post on Inside Higher Education's blog by Georgetown Professor Edward J. Maloney, “The 4 Stages of AI.” Amidst all the wringing of hands and near hysterical hubbub surrounding the current state of artificial intelligence research and practice, I found Maloney’s take sensible, straightforward, and worth a read. In brief, Maloney has surveyed responses to the current status of AI “from ‘don’t worry about it’ to ‘it’s the end of humanity,” concluding that no matter who turns out to be right, “much of how we work and communicate is likely to change.” That is the conclusion I have certainly come to, and like so many other teachers of writing, I am interested in engaging with the latest AI developments that we can use for writing, coding, and research. Likening our current situation as the AI version of “the seven stages of grief,” though Maloney articulates only four stages, which he describes as moving from defensiveness to avoidance to acceptance to reimagination. I think this framework can serve us teachers of writing and reading and speaking very well. We can begin, Maloney suggests, with considering whether and how to regulate some AI programs—from an outright ban, as Italy seems to be trying to do, to the use of tools to detect AI at work, to asking students to cite any text generated by AI, or other such policies. Maloney hopes that we will move beyond a focus on regulation, moving from a ‘position of restriction” to one of opportunity to learn how to work effectively with AI. Maloney’s second stage of AI is therefore to “adapt” to the definite downsides and limitations of the current tools through more one-on-one or small group writing with our students, doing more and more writing in class, or tying assignments closely to in-class discussions that ChatGPT and similar programs would not be privy to. But he cautions that we should retain a strong focus on student learning (rather than on restrictions and punishment).     In Maloney’s third stage, “integrate,” we would use AI tools to foster learning and engagement, helping students learn how to use AI productively and ethically. Many writing teachers are already well into such integration, asking students to use ChatGPT, for example, to outline or draft essays they would then revise, or to use AI to revise and polish drafts they’ve already written. Other teachers are asking students to analyze pieces of writing by ChatGPT or similar programs and to write evaluations of them. As Maloney puts it, “We should teach our students to use these tools in the same way we teach them how to use a calculator, a spreadsheet, or the internet, all tools that have been variously banned …” To me, these three stages seem well conceived and described. But it is the fourth most drew my attention. Here Maloney acknowledges that engaging AI is bound to affect and change how we teach, and one strong implication of such change is that we may well “need to reimagine what it means to learn, communicate, or create.” Doing so, he says, may reveal that our current approaches to teaching are “structurally misaligned” with the needs of students today and in the future. The AI thus may do far more than add to how we teach: … the new crop of AI tools have the potential to shift something fundamental. Human beings are language-producing beings. Our primacy in this domain may be changing. If that happens, communication may change. What we think of as knowledge production may change. Indeed. It seems to me inevitable that communication and knowledge production will change, are already in the process of changing. All I need to do is look over the forty-five years I (and others!) have been arguing that writing is not a solitary, singular act (the myth of the lone author struggling in a garret to produce a great and unique work) but rather thoroughly collaborative seems positively quaint today. As teachers of writing and reading and speaking, we need to be charting these changes, documenting them and analyzing them. We are going to need new robust definitions of basic terms like “writing” and “speaking” and “reading,” not to mention “collaboration” that can underpin our efforts to teach these communicative acts in swiftly changing times. Seems to me to be a pretty exciting time to be teaching, and learning!   Photo by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash ... View more

At a recent Teaching and Learning Conference sponsored by the University System of Georgia, I was struck by the number of presentations focused on HIPs:  high impact practices. HIPs are described by George Kuh and Carol Schneider in a 2008 book as evidence-based teaching practices that can transform the lives of students who participate in them. The list of practices includes first-year seminars, internships, capstone courses, e-portfolios, and service learning (among others). The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has developed training for HIPs through an annual Institute.     The HIPs are not meant to be small tweaks tagged onto existing course structures; rather, they require the intentional design of experiences—often multi-semester experiences—that engage students in deep, active, and reflective learning.  Some of the exemplary models suggest a strong level of institutional commitment to implement the HIPs—from personnel and training to technology (for e-portfolios) and scheduling resources.    Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash   But while the adoption of one of the HIPs can seem daunting to individual faculty, there is a second HIP publication that is equally important—but not always as well known. In a 2013 publication, Kuh and O’Donnell outline eight characteristics that make a practice “high-impact.” It’s not that all HIPs demonstrate all eight traits, but they all involve some combination of these: Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels Significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters Experiences with diversity, wherein students are exposed to and must contend with people and circumstances that differ from those with which students are familiar Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications Public demonstration of competence   Even without significant institutional investment of time or resources, instructors of FYC/corequisite and stand-alone developmental courses can ensure their students have access to “HIP classrooms” and learning experiences shaped by these eight elements.     Over the past two years, for example, I’ve seen the power of inviting Writing Fellows (junior and seniors) into the corequisite classroom to talk—and listen—to non-traditional and multilingual students. For our FYC students, such embedded tutoring covers element #3 (interactions with peers); for the Fellows, it covers #4 (experiences with diversity). Both groups then reflect and revise #6 (periodic, structured opportunities to reflect).     What does your HIP classroom look like? Are you making intentional changes to be more HIP-focused? I’d love to hear about it. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Jordan Hill, composition instructor in the Global First Year program at Florida International University. A recently-selected Fulbright Scholar, he will soon move to Italy to research a short story collection. Idioms I tell my class of international students that a certain American literary character is “an odd duck.” They stare at me with tilted heads and confused smiles. I imagine what they must be imagining—Jay Gatsby as a strange waterfowl. I clear my throat. “Sorry, everyone,” I say. “An ‘odd duck’ is an idiom. An expression.” How can I explain this? “An odd duck is sort of like a black sheep.” Again, the quizzical faces. Too late, I register my second, unintentional idiom. I sigh and explain what happened. They laugh, and I try again.   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines.   ... View more

Whether one regards the sudden emergence of ChatGPT as an opportunity, a disruption, or a disaster, it is here to stay and will have to be adapted to if one wishes to continue to impart the critical thinking and writing skills that are the traditional learning outcomes of a college composition class. This is not unlike the introduction of the pocket calculator in the classroom more than a generation ago. Of course, a great deal of attention has already been paid to this topic, and will continue to do so in the years to come as AI technology evolves, but for the purposes of this blog I wish to focus on a simple set of DO/DON'T recommendations, especially if one has adopted a popular cultural semiotics approach to writing instruction. I will start with a single DON'T: DON'T create writing assignments that ask your students to "write a semiotic analysis of... [fill in the blank]." I am quite confident that ChatGPT would be (or will soon become) perfectly capable of generating a semiotic analysis of practically any popular cultural topic given the enormous amount of relevant material to be found on the Internet for AI to aggregate, as well as the growing cultural familiarity of the word "semiotics" itself. I also wouldn't be surprised if the generated texts turned out to be rather astute—after all, as I have noted before, artificial intelligence and the semiotic method as I describe it in Signs of Life in the USA have a good deal in common insofar as both explore and identify significant patterns in human behavior. So, if you want to be sure that your students are discovering their own semiotic patterns and presenting them in their own words, DON'T (I repeat) present them with these kinds of open-ended assignments. On the other hand, I very much doubt that ChatGPT would be able to make anything out of something like this: "After carefully situating your topic in an historically informed system of associations and differences, write an abductive analysis of it." Of course, you wouldn't want to write your instructions in quite this highly condensed a manner. If you are using (or have ever used) Signs of Life in your writing class, however, you will recognize that the gist of the semiotic method as it is presented in that book is contained in this sentence.   This takes me to my recommended DO: DO create assignments that require your students to make explicit the particular elements of the semiotic method that they have employed in the formation of their own analyses. My DO/DON'T recommendation, of course, is simply a version of traditional assignment-writing practices intended to ensure that the work that students turn in is their own, adapted in this instance for users of Signs of Life in the USA, and I wrote my assignments in precisely this manner when I was teaching my popular cultural semiotics classes. It was helpful to me, and I hope that it may prove helpful to you.   Photo by Jonathan Kemper (2023), used under the Unsplash License. ... View more

I recently had an opportunity to sit in on the dissertation defense of Dr. O.W. Petcoff at Texas Tech University’s program in Technical Communication and Rhetoric. In addition, I had the pleasure of reading her dissertation and talking with her about her work, both before and after the defense. Petcoff was teaching developmental reading and writing at a Texas community college, where one major goal was to help her adult learners achieve “area mastery proficiencies” called for by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Her dissertation grew out of observing what she calls her students’ “borderline obsession with texting” and their familiarity and comfort level with emojis as means of communication—she describes some of the texts she saw (but could not comprehend) as “a combination of hieroglyphics, shorthand, and Klingon”). Increasingly intrigued by the disconnect between her students’ traditional academic literacy skills and heir avid communication via texting, she asked “how were they able to so freely communicate with fellow classmates, some of whom spoke different languages, but struggle with traditional reading and writing?” They were doing so, she found, using a combination of emojis and textisms (defined by linguists as abbreviations, letter/number homophones, and emoticons).      Petcoff set off to do what teachers of writing do: move from close observation of students and their ways of communicating to research. She read deeply in semiotics (and discovered Marcel Danesi’s The Semiotics of Emoji) and began to trace the history of pictorial language and ideographs. She returned to the Students’ Right to their Own Language and many other calls for attending to, and respecting, all of our students’ languages and dialects—and she began to conceptualize her dissertation study, “Exploring Emoji as a Literacy Instructional Tool in the Developmental Reading and Writing Classroom.”  I am certain that Petcoff will be publishing her findings and the implications of those findings in a number of venues, and these publications will be ones to watch for. In her carefully designed study, Petcoff analyzed her students’ communicative abilities related to their use of emojis and textisms, showing that their understanding (reading) of texts improved significantly and that emoji serve as a powerful semiotic multimodal literacy and rhetorical tool within an instructional framework based on semiotics, new literacy theory, and anti-racist practices.  Language—our means of making sense of the world—is always changing and shifting and adapting. And language is already visual: as Leslie Marmon Silko reminds us, written words are, after all, images. The evolution of language into more pictographic visual signs is entirely possible if not already well in progress. So we need much more work on these issues. In the meantime, teachers of writing and reading can gather important information from close observation of student writing on devices of all kinds.    Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels. ... View more

Many commentators have noted students’ disengagement with college classes as well as their difficulties with teaching styles and course materials. In a recent article in Inside Higher Education, Colleen Flaherty, following research by Sarah Brownell and her colleagues, offers that “students concerned about teaching style are balking at instructional strategies at least as much as at perceived difficulty.” Brownell and her colleagues studied the efficacy of active learning, including barriers to active learning.  A significant finding of the study was that generalized anxiety increases students’ discomfort with small group work. “Much of student anxiety in active learning,” the researchers noted, “stems from a fear of being evaluated negatively and in the case of group work, students fear being evaluated negatively by a peer or group of their peers.”   Anecdotally, as I suggested in a post earlier this semester, anxiety is the shadow side of flow. It’s easy to imagine how students would feel anxious about their writing being judged, and worse still, not earning “A”s for their writing. Perhaps earning an “A” signifies aiming for perfection, with “A”s as essential for admission to competitive colleges, and perfection might have meant adherence to specific models, and following rules such as not using “I” in their writing. After surviving interrupted in-person schooling throughout the worst parts of the pandemic, it makes sense to me that students would not want to engage with strangers, even if those strangers are classmates or their teacher in a college writing course. It also makes sense that students would take comfort in what they already know, rather than commit to learning something new. Yet as many postsecondary educators (see Knesek for a helpful overview), earning an “A” is not the same as learning new processes and approaches to writing and rhetoric (see Von Bergen). Ungrading is certainly one solution, one which I experienced many years ago. Without the fear of a low grade appearing on my transcript, I found it easier to take risks and experiment with learning. But my high school and college years did not take place in the midst of a global pandemic. Moreover, at the end of the semester, again, in my experience, college require grades for transcripts, and students require grades to keep and apply for scholarships and post-graduate education. Ungrading does not automatically set us free from the larger systemic problems of grades and grading. Even with a philosophy of “A” for everyone, (in colleges that require letter grades, everyone still needs to have that “A” listed on a transcript. Past the halfway point of the term, I wanted to suggest to my students other considerations for growing their writing. In the Daily Syllabus Update, I posted the following list.  Tips and Hints: College Writing, as we have discussed, is different from high school writing in many ways. For instance: Following a “model” essay project does NOT mean “A” level college writing. Growing your writing often involves writing outside your comfort zone.  Writing projects do NOT have to be perfect. Learning matters more than perfection. Submitting all writing projects and journals by the final deadline matters more than perfection. Writing grows over time and with practice. DO NOT save your Writing Projects and journals for the last week of class or for the final deadline. Students in previous semesters report that this writing strategy does NOT work. In posting these “Tips and Hints,” my hope was to offer students the means to navigate through anxiety to successful completion of the semester, but not merely by adding another required course to their transcripts. Indeed, writing is a requirement, and it is also an opportunity to write– not as a means of following a model to perfection, but through the process of engaging practices and processes that allow for learning, and therefore for writing. Photo by Susan Bernstein, February 15, 2019  ... View more

Instructors have different views, understandably, on how much of themselves to disclose in the classroom. I hope, though, we all see value in revealing ourselves as fellow writers, rather than the people who simply create assignments and respond to them.  I’ve played the song “Tub-Thumping” by the band Chumbawamba in class sometimes, with its rousing and danceable chorus, “I get knocked down, but I get up again …” That’s certainly how the drafting and revision process can feel, even to those of us who have, well, been knocked down plenty. Students should know that is what it’s like to be a writer. How often have you spoken with your students about your own writing process and the inevitable struggles that come with it? I appreciated a recent “Tiny Teaching Story” by Xinquang Li, in which the classroom is re-imagined as a “tea house.” Li describes the way students’ eyes “light up” when we really engage them as people. Consider those golden moments in your classroom when a conversation achieves “lift-off.” Usually, that happens when students stop lobbing comments just to you—the artificial ping-pong of question-and-answer—and start really engaging with one another. And that can only happen when we are humble enough to share power in the classroom. When I achieve that conversational magic in the classroom, I thank bell hooks, whose inspiration to consider the classroom a “radical space of possibility” is the wisest teaching advice I’ve ever received.  At this point in the semester or quarter, most students are deep into revision, and are probably new to meta-cognitive reflection on this process. That takes practice! Channeling our best bell hooks and Xinquang Li, we might reflect, ourselves, on whether our classroom revision conversation is a substantive discussion that values peers as fellow writers rather than the old instructor → student dynamic of “correction.”   In our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing my co-author, Stuart Greene, and I offer steps for peer-workshop groups, easily adapted to online formats, to empower students to take ownership of this process: The writer distributes copies of the draft to each member of the writing group (ideally, the group should not exceed four students.) The writer distributes a cover letter, setting an agenda for the group. For example, the cover letter might describe what the writer believes the strengths of the paper are and what could use some improvement. The members read the cover letter. The writer then reads the draft aloud, while members follow along, underlining passages and making notes to prepare themselves to discuss the draft. Members ask questions that help the writer identify concepts that need further elaboration or clarification. Discussion focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the draft, appropriate to the state of writing and the writer’s concerns. (Even in the early stage, readers and the writer should sustain discussion for at least ten minutes before the next student takes a turn as a writer.)  While what happens in peer-workshop groups may not unfold as organically as a conversation over fragrant cups of tea, these guidelines move students through the dynamics of engaging with one another seriously as thinkers and writers. To me, this is the essence of bell hooks’ vision of the classroom as a “radical space of possibility.”  On revision days in class, I conclude with a talk-back session to hear that patterns that emerge from peer workshops. Just as students find they are in good company with their struggles (Why are opening and closing paragraphs so challenging, for example?), I often reveal my own writerly struggles in those discussions (I also struggle with openings and closings and lean on trusted friends and editors for help). Since we all enjoy good company, I recommend reading or re-reading John McPhee’s classic “Draft No. 4”  (perhaps with “Tub-Thumping” playing in the background). If a prolific writer of McPhee’s caliber can “get knocked down” but “get up again”—with humility and wry humor—so can we all, as fellow travelers on the writer’s journey.   Photo by April Lidinsky (2023). ... View more

  Elizabeth Catanese is an Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Community College of Philadelphia. Trained in mindfulness-based stress reduction, Elizabeth has enjoyed incorporating mindfulness activities into her college classroom for over ten years. Elizabeth works to deepen her mindful awareness through writing children's books, cartooning and parenting her energetic twin toddlers, Dylan and Escher.   While taking education courses in college, my peers and I were asked to think of metaphors for our pedagogy. At the time, I found inspiration in the idea of being the conductor of an orchestra, using my conductors’ wand to help bring out the creative genius of my students. I imagined my hair getting ruffled by the breeze created by my own motion as my body kept time—the community of it all, the uproarious appreciation of the crowd. But after 15 years of being a college professor, my metaphor for teaching has evolved from “I am a conductor,” to “I am a circle-creator.” It’s a metaphor that reminds me to bring students together (often into the shape of a circle), to constantly renew my commitment to circle back to previous concepts before building on them, and to help students build cyclical routines. My new metaphor is not as glamorous, and in the strict sense of definitions, it’s only metaphor-adjacent, but it works a lot better for me. The circle-creator metaphor speaks to me because I find it valuable to be at the edges of the classroom, alongside my students, where we can encourage each other and learn collaboratively. This allows for insights to come from the voices of students, rather than just my own, resulting in a deeper understanding of the material. However, creating a literal circle in the classroom can be a challenge, as my current Humanities 101 students can confirm. After attempting to arrange desks into a circle, the result often looks more like an octopus having a bad day. Additionally, one or more students may end up sitting outside of the circle (by choice or by chance), and the pace of discussion can make it easy to miss opportunities that help students deepen their analysis. That being said, I like the circle formation precisely because it is not always easy; together in the circle, we strive to make meaning together, and there is always something about the literal or metaphorical configuration to improve upon next time. The circle-creator metaphor also works for me because it reflects the iterative nature of teaching. A student may understand a concept one week and forget it the next. To solidify and deepen our understanding, I remind myself to circle back to previous concepts before moving on to new ones. For example, before discussing the shift to monotheism in Ancient Rome under Constantine, I asked my students to recall what they remembered about the shift to monotheism under Akhenaton in Ancient Egypt. My students and I think about how history repeats itself, and we repeat ourselves too. Thinking about the circle-creator metaphor helps me to slow my teaching down—to offer reminders and opportunities to rethink, instead of just plowing ahead. When teaching study skills in my English 097 class, I also think about the circle-creator metaphor in terms of routines. I encourage my students to make small changes in their study process, such as writing down exactly when they plan to do their homework for the class. We then circle back the next day to see how it went. If a student says that a strategy didn’t work for them, I remind them that it may be useful to try it more than once. We also talk about how good habits, once established, can come and go. I share with them that I, too, constantly slip and have to circle back to my better habits like going to bed on time, and properly managing my grading time. I believe that using metaphors for teaching can clarify our practices and our values and keep us fresh. The circle-creator metaphor works for me because it reflects the power of collaboration and the cyclical nature of learning. Comment below about the metaphor(s) that work for you! ... View more