The English department at Bedford/St. Martin's is searching for something new. We're coming out with a new edition of The Bedford Reader and we want the very best examples of writing your students have to offer! If we accept a piece for publication, you and your student will receive $100 each. We hope to celebrate academic success and provide future learners with attainable models. We're very interested in student research essays and essays written in response to one of the readings in the book. To submit work or to learn more, shoot us an email at compositionmktg@macmillan.com​. Long one of the most popular composition readers on the market, The Bedford Reader provides compelling readings by excellent writers. It takes a practical and flexible approach to the rhetorical methods, focusing on their uses in varied writing situations. The popular "Writers on Writing" feature illustrates the many ways writers create meaning from what they read and experience, and the Kennedys' instruction helps students connect critical reading to academic writing. Free exam copies are available on request. ... View more

How many times have you said or written “It’s on the syllabus”? I’m tempted to dismiss those exchanges with a frustrated laugh. Those darned kids, right? But I’m a writer, so I can’t just ignore that implicit feedback from my readers. When students ask these questions, they are either letting me know that they didn’t read the syllabus. they can’t find information on the syllabus. Those are both rhetorical problems. I’m not communicating with my audience. I never hear them say it, but I am pretty sure that when they see the wall of text that is my course website, they think, “tl;dr.” That’s “too long; didn’t read,” for those of you not up on textspeak. In response, I am rethinking the site and adding more visual cues. I already had lots of headings, bulleted lists, and the like. That’s not enough. Students are still stumbling around, unable to find the information. I decided to try more of an infographic-style, with charts, framed pull-outs, and related images. Here’s a before-and-after version of the page I have put the most time into so far. This is the design for the Assignments overview page from Spring semester: This is the new design for the Assignments overview page for my Summer II section: Kind of a big difference, huh? I am still struggling a bit with the design and layout. I am working with HTML and CSS to make the layout, so what might be a simple layout arrangement in Word or InDesign is a bit more challenging to pull off in a WordPress post. Beyond that, there’s the time requirement. I have spent at least a day reworking that page, tweaking things and trying different options. I think it’s worth it, but I am not sure I will have time to revise the entire site before classes start on July 7. I’m working on it though, and I’ll keep you posted on student response. I would love to hear some feedback from you as well. Do you have suggestions for improving the site? What strategies do you try for making you syllabus and course information more reader-friendly? Share some ideas by leaving me a comment or dropping by my page on Facebook or Google+. ... View more

Now that my grandnieces Audrey (11) and Lila (7) are out of school for the summer, they are engaged in all manner of activities: Camp (the sleepover kind!), hip hop and tap, volleyball, and, of course, reading. Their school has a voluntary summer reading program, and for the last few years, Audrey has been one of the top readers, gaining mysterious points for every book read. This year, Lila will be joining her, and she’s reading up a storm too. As near as I can tell, their public school offers suggestions, but pretty much lets them read whatever they want. They both love the Dork Diaries books, and Audrey is deeply into The Babysitter volumes while Lila any books about animals. Such programs are going on all over the country in elementary schools. But there are also dozens (if not hundreds) of beyond-school programs to get kids reading. It seems like everyone—from public libraries, to Barnes & Noble and Half Price Books, to Chuck E. Cheese, Pizza Hut, and Pottery Barn—is offering some kind of activity (online or in-person) for kids who want to read—or who can be cajoled to read. My little girlies are at camp right now but have promised to send me their summer reading lists when they get home. In the meantime, I’m wondering how much writing they are going to be doing along with their reading—and I wonder too if writing is involved in the programs listed above. I hope a lot. I have found some programs that focus on writing as well as reading, such as Scholastic, on whose site teachers offer writing activities, including the use of Kidblog, daily writing prompts, and writing journals. The Summer Reading at New York Public Libraries offers “Reading and Writing Fun,” where kids are invited to become storytellers, reporters, and more; and Start with a Book balances the focus on reading with writing activities like Create a Poetree, Review It, Explain It, and Write to Your Favorite Author. Perhaps schools across the country are inviting and encouraging young students to write as well as to read over the summer. If so, I’m very glad, since we all know that writing muscles atrophy just like any others if they’re not used. If Audrey and Lila don’t seem to be writing a lot, I plan to cook up some fun writing activities and games for them. So if you have any to recommend, or any information about outstanding summer reading AND writing programs, please let me know. ... View more

Gayle Yamazaki, a colleague at Macmillan who teaches psychology and works on the psychology book list as a Senior Educational Technology Advisor, has a Community blog post that makes a philosophical exploration into the implications of machine generated conversational response​. Gayle looks at a human-machine transcript from research in machine conversation. Gayle focuses on a transcription between human and machine kicked off when the human opened with the question, "what is moral?" The transcript reads like two drunk graduate students unintentionally putting a "Who's on First?" spin of things. That is, even though the machine response is artificially generated and sometimes flummoxing, you can imagine a reasonably realistic condition -- college bar, close to closing, after two TA's have graded a stack of mid-terms, table littered with beer and whiskey glasses -- where two humans might say what is ascribed to both the human and machine in the transcript. Go read the excerpt at Gayle's post; it's a hoot. I'll wait here for you to come back. Oh good, you're back. The excerpt I have below is from a different transcript in "A Neural Conversational Model," by Oriol Vinyals and Quoc V. Le, the researchers at Google, and unlike Gayle, I don't want to look at whether injecting a machine with personality will make them more like us, or at least more like us when we manage to be "coherent, realistic, and relevant" as opposed to some other things humans can manage to be. I want to flip the question. What does Vinyals's and Le's research reveal about the human capacity for machine like talking, reading, and writing? Vinyals and Le wrote a simple program that required few rules to make a conversation generator. The machine generated language came from two datasets -- "a closed-domain IT helpdesk troubleshooting dataset and an open-domain movie transcript dataset" (2). So the machine lines you see in the transcript at Gayle's post came from movie transcripts. The machine lines you see in what follows came technical support helpdesk transcripts, a narrower and more focused collection. Both excerpts, the one Gayle shared and the one above, come from scripts. Yet in the helpdesk sample above, you can see more how the machine role is scripted. If you've ever called technical support, you recognize the script's arc: a how-may I help you? opening; queries to narrow and discern the issue; a suggested solution; confirmation that the solution works; the offer of further assistance; and the well-wishing sign off. Clearly there are times when we all talk like a machine -- either in deliberate scripts the way technical support agents are trained to use, or even in our own small rote ways: for example, "have a nice day," is a ritual parting with strangers with whom we've interacted briefly -- tellers, cashiers, ticket agents. Good technical support agents, sales people, funeral directors, waiters, and other people who use pat lines and scripted moves excel at making the words sound fresh, as if said for the first time and only to you because you are the special center of their attention. Yes, you are. But we've all had (or on off days have been) waitstaff, flight attendants, call center operators, tellers, and sadly, even funeral directors who clearly didn't have their heart in the work. The delivery is often monotone; you can tell they may be off processing something else in their cybertronic acting brains. And it's not just those kinds of jobs that ask for machine like consistency or insist on lawsuit averse scripts. As professors and writing teachers, we may be asked to read in machine-like ways. So if you have ever scored writing for placement, program review, or other situations, you may recall (or experience some day), getting a rubric and some writing samples.  In these contexts, the assessment team explains the rubric, the prompt that generated the writing sample, and how your are to apply the rubric, how you are to score, as you read. Then in a practice called "norming," the readers read, learning to all read the same way, so that any two readers are likely to apply the same score (or score range) to a given piece of writing. And so it is that we train people to read like machine. And too, there is also writing we ask people to do that is very proscribed and scripted. Lawyers, for example, have less work writing wills and other legal documents because one can go to a site like Legalzoom.com and download a template. Businesses use boiler plate language. Ever see the Lazlo Letters where Don Novello wrote strange and odd letters to businesses and elected officials and then published those next to the boiler plate he got back? The machines above look smarter than the human agent who sent him those letters. In fact, for certain kinds of writing, templates have been replaced by software that actually does do the writing. And where machines can do something, eventually machines are going to do something and humans will do it less or not all. What does all this mean for talking, reading, and writing? Find things to talk, read, and write that machines cannot imitate. Create conversations in classrooms that come from having students read and write about things in ways that machines cannot do. Get away from rote assignments, the same old prompts. You cannot avoid that stuff always, but the more you can work away from that stuff and into places machines cannot follow, the more fun and humane things will feel. ... View more

College writing instructors don't typically use the term "differentiated instruction" (nor do most professors outside of schools of education), but the need for it is increasing as developmental reading and writing courses disappear and students with an even wider range of abilities enroll directly in FYC.  Here's some interesting advice for differentiating instruction, some of which can apply to post-secondary courses as well as K-12: http://www.edutopia.org/article/differentiated-instruction-resources   It would be great if I could find a collection of resources and strategies aimed at college writing courses and students, but so far no luck.  I'll keep digging, though! ... View more

Today's guest blogger is Jeanne Law-Bohannon. Every week, I read Andrea’s Multimodal Mondays blog.  I am as much a consumer of the amazing material posted by colleagues as I am a producer of my own content.  Now that summer is upon us, I would like to use my space on the blog to explore expanding examples of multimodal composition, to ask “what counts,” as lessons, assignments, and writing opportunities for students. I also want to investigate how students themselves perceive their learning from multimodal compositions. This week, I examine weekly discussion forums in my summer online graduate course.  At my university, we have a unique graduate program that offers an M.S. in Information Design and a certificate in technical communication completely in an online environment.  There is no formal cohort, but some students take courses in a loose order of offering each semester, taking courses in sequence but at their own pace.  Others pass in and out at varying intervals.  We are a large, comprehensive state institution, but many of my online students reside outside of Georgia, some as far away as Utah.  So, the importance of creating a community of scholars in a completely online environment is an important hurdle to overcome for both my students and me each semester. One of the foundational tools I use to create community is the Discussion Forum widget inside of my course management system.  At Kennesaw State most of us use Desire 2 Learn, but there are many other options out there, including open access programs like Canvas and Edmodo. Context My summer Digital Rhetoric course is part of Kennesaw State University’s online graduate program in Information Design and technical communication. Throughout the course, students practice applying theory from texts to content creation praxis.  They demonstrate deep understandings of presented material by responding both their professor and each other in dialogic discussion forums. Assignment Dialogic, multi-thread discussions in an online forum that encourages content understanding and evaluation, applicable for both graduate and undergraduate students. Goals and Measurable Learning Objectives Create rhetorical responses to a text Synthesize content-meaning through critical responses to a text and to colleagues Respond using dialogic methods to “keep the conversation going.” Background Reading for Students and Instructors Acts of reading and viewing visual texts are ongoing processes for attaining learning goals in democratic, digital writing assignments. Below, I have listed a few foundational texts. You will no doubt have your own to enrich this list. The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 2, “Rhetorical Situations”; Section 6a, “Collaborating in College”; Ch. 7, “Reading Critically” The Everyday Writer or Writer’s Help 2.0 for Lunsford: Chs. 5-11, “The Writing Process;” Ch. 20, “Writing to the World” Writing in Action: Ch. 4, “A Writer’s Choices”; Ch. 9, “Reading Critically” EasyWriter: Sections 1c-1g in Ch.1, “A Writer’s Choices”; Section 1h, Section 3a, “Reading Critically” Before Class: Student and Instructor Preparation Creating an academic dialogic requires some front-loaded preparation and design by instructors.  What I do is peruse our weekly reading and pick out my top ten keywords.  I then pair those keywords with Bloom's verbs, which help me frame and measure what I want students to learn from the discussion and help students understand what they should “do” to achieve the learning objectives. Students often report how much they like these explicit instructions, because the instructions are transparent.  Each week, we typically begin at the foundation, with comprehension and then build to analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  A good digital resource for Bloom’s verbs and Web 2.0 tools is available from Indiana State’s Samantha Penney. In Class and/or Out My online graduate classes run in modular form, from Mondays to Sundays.  Each week is a learning module with measurable outcomes, with readings divided into weekly chunks as well. I don’t place release dates on the readings or discussions themselves, so students can move fluidly between modules. I do, however, set end dates for the discussions, based on our weekly times.  I have found that graduate students require less structure, in terms of release dates and restrictions on responding in discussion forums, but I think part of that phenom comes from participating in a democratic learning environment, where instructors approach students as colleagues and not as novice learners. Each week, I present keywords, framed with Bloom's verbs, and ask students to respond doing the same.  I then create the first discussion thread, giving my interpretations of the keywords and explaining difficult terms and theory, often using visuals. Students respond to the initial keyword/Bloom’s query by mid-week, then to each other by week’s end using our course discussion model, 500 words in an initial thread, then at least 250 words in two separate responses to colleagues.  I include myself as a colleague in each discussion. By using keywords and Bloom's, we keep the conversation going during the week. Students' Reflections on the Activity Here are some excerpts from students regarding their experiences with discussions: “Each discussion was perfectly planned and helped prepare us for the next one; each forum was relevant and timely, and none of the work felt like busy work. I enjoyed participating because I got to flex my creative muscles while learning something relevant to my field.” “My classmates and I were mutually supportive and complimentary. Our e-discussions were great to generate conversations, but I miss the camaraderie that traditional classrooms afford. These types of dialogic discussions come really close, though.” “I have taken other classes, with video lectures, but I like it better when the professor participates in the discussions with us. It makes me feel like I can actually say something.” My Reflection Discussion forums like the one I describe here “count” for me, in terms of multimodal composition, because they combine best practices like measurable learning outcomes with authentic student voices using digital tools.  Dialogic communication is tough to engender in online learning environments, but I think it’s important to keep trying, using new tech like VoiceThread to add voices and even faces to the convo. Guest blogger Jeanne Law Bohannon is an Assistant Professor in the Digital Writing and Media Arts (DWMA) department at Kennesaw State University. She believes in creating democratic learning spaces, where students become stakeholders in their own rhetorical growth though authentic engagement in class communities. Her research interests include evaluating digital literacies, critical pedagogies, and New Media theory; performing feminist rhetorical recoveries; and growing informed and empowered student scholars. Reach Jeanne at: Jeanne_bohannon@kennesaw.edu and www.rhetoricmatters.org ... View more

In the days that have passed since the murder of nine worshippers at Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, I have been able to think of little else. Nine lives offered up to white supremacist hatred. I will not write or say the name of the murderer. He doesn’t deserve the distinction. Rather, these are the people I remember, honor, and take inspiration from: Sharonda Coleman-Singleton Cynthia Hurd Susie Jackson Ethel Lee Lance Rev. Dapayne Middleton-Doctor Rev. Clementa Pinckney Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Tywanza Sanders Myra Thompson Like millions of Americans, I have wondered at the terrible ironies attending their deaths: the Confederate flag flying high in the South Carolina State house, the killer posturing with the flag, the NRA’s ongoing and unconscionable control of a Congress too weak to legislate common-sense gun control laws. And these nine Black lives—and countless others—Black Lives that Matter, paying the price of such cowardice and delusions. Also like millions of Americans, I have been heartened by the words of love, hope, and resilience coming from the Emanuel AME Church, by the strength of its congregation, and by the expressions of forgiveness, given with a clear-eyed vision of what the sacrifice has been and continues to be. But events like this, so often portrayed as the acts of a single deranged individual, do not come out of nowhere. They are deeply embedded in the culture of their communities, a product of their time and place. And so as these awful events unfolded, I’ve been thinking about—no, fairly haunted by—an essay I read just two weeks before these shootings. “Memories of Freedom and White Resilience: Place, Tourism, and Urban Slavery,” by Kristan Poirot and Shevaun E. Watson, appeared in the most recent issue of the Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and I read it with great interest. In the essay, the authors report on field research they carried out in Charleston, along with reading in local historical archives, about what they describe as “the successful construction of the locale [Charleston] into a premier U.S. heritage tourism destination” (92). To write the essay, they spent quite a lot of time in Charleston, especially participating in numerous tours of historic sites, including plantations, and taking a very close look at Charleston’s “tourism imaginary—a manufactured version of the city that emerges from fragments of promotional materials, place narratives, and built environments” (93). They begin by considering an event on February 15, 2014, when a monument to Denmark Vesey was unveiled after a long campaign and great controversy, eventually showing how the varying constructions of Vesey and his life (was he a freedom fighter and civil rights leader, or would-be mass murderer of innocents?) reflect the radical divide in Charleston, a divide that is covered over neatly in most of the city’s promotions of itself as a major tourist destination. As Poirot and Watson note, Through painstaking rhetorical analysis, Poirot and Watson capture the undercurrents (and often “overcurrents”) of denial and whitewashing that have created such a successful and pleasing portrait of a city, one that nurtured at least one murderer bent on eliminating the Black population of Charleston. That characterization is mine, not the authors’, who were writing well before the events of June 17. Indeed, as ethical rhetoricians, they are judicious in their conclusions: I focus on this essay at such length because it points up the role rhetorical analysis can play in learning—and perhaps in opening minds. If teachers of writing and their students take up such projects of rhetorical analysis, tracking the construction of local memories and putting them in context—it can offer one means not just of understanding how such memories get constructed but also of changing them. And that would be one way of honoring the nine members of the Emanuel AME Church—as well as the church itself and its ongoing work to secure liberty and freedom for all. ... View more

In "When You're Not Ready," Ashley Smith, reports for Inside Higher Ed on how Florida's remedial education changes result in higher drop out rates. She writes, This passage is useful for unpacking the issues at hand. First, the intent of the law: Legislators tried to address a pressing issue: too many remediation programs fail to keep students in college. Those students, likely to be poorer, take out loans to take these courses, accumulating debt. In Florida, some students were placed on a remediation path that required nine courses: 3 remedial writing, 3 remedial math, and 3 remedial reading. And this issue is not a Florida issue alone. The National Conference of State Legislators explores it here, http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/improving-college-completion-reforming-remedial.aspx, offering suggestions legislators can study and encourage colleges to follow. The models they suggest appear in a section called "Encourage Colleges to Innovate Remedial Education," and include: accelerated remedial course sequences; learning communities; traditional college courses applying an ALP model; and "remedial courses combined with job training." All of those models -- explore the links in each to learn more about them -- work because they are serious about applying insights from the scholarship of teaching and learning into programs that were developed and supported over time. They include in their operation time and space for faculty professional development. Sadly, Florida legislators, rushed the process. In 2011 they passed a law that "made college placement testing mandatory for most 11th graders. High school students who don’t make the cut are required to take courses during their senior year that are designed to address remedial needs" (Fain, Remediation if You Want It). In 2013, after only two years of implementation, they passed a law that says, essentially, if you graduate from a Florida high school, you will not need remediation in college, allowing students to opt out of remediation testing and/or remedial courses. Those are the students now failing more than they had when remedial testing and placement was required. Yes, the situation they sought to address was indeed dire and unconscionable. But if the legislature had been serious about addressing the issue, they'd have done more than write a law based on the magical thinking that asserts by virtue of graduating high school in Florida, you are ipso facto, presto chango, College Ready. Asking high schools in one grade -- the 12th -- to address deficiencies in college readiness that have grown over the prior 11 grades, and to demand that change only two years before changing the rules for college remedial testing, shows how little legislators know about systems and people, about teaching and learning. They view the education process as a factory.  They asserted that a quality control test and then quick retooling of the assembly line to remove defects is all that is needed. But education ain't no factory, and in real life, even good business people know that to change operations takes more care and planning, retraining and motivation of workers, than simply the dictatorial insistence to fix it, damn it! So the high schools were set up to fail because they were not given the time nor funding to develop a program that could address in one year the remedial needs of students tested in 11th grade. An analysis of the bill's effects -- http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2011/1255/Analyses/h1255z.EDC.PDF  -- shows the changes the required, but makes no mention of support or monies for institution remedial courses in high schools or training faculty to teach such courses. The bill itself, http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2011/1255/BillText/er/PDF, made available funds only for more standardized testing: But no where did that bill suggest or request or require funding for faculty and curriculum development to met the demands the bill makes. Similarly, colleges faced with de facto placement of students not ready for college courses in those courses received no professional development support for faculty on how to address courses with mixed ability students. Some programs on some campuses turned to textbook publishers, hoping that putting students in online tutorial programs via required supplemental labs would do the trick. I do a lot of campus travel to Florida community colleges, working closely with several departments on using what modest technology Macmillan has to help address remedial needs in the remedial courses that do fill, and as well the traditional first year writing courses that are seeing students who in the past would have been in a remedial course.  I am convinced that simply asking students to do online activities, even if they're adaptive, such as our LearningCurve software is, or comprehensive, such as our Launch Pad Solo for Readers and Writers seeks to be, will not work for most students in isolation. Unless the software's use finds integration and purpose in the course work students are doing, and unless instructors create assignments that give students practice applying what the software teaches to their own and classmates' writings, their own and classmates' reading responses, the software will do nothing but get the students good at doing the activities the software offers. Don't get me wrong, LearningCurve does a good job of teaching the content of a handbook. So the module in LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers on fragments explains why fragments can be issue, helps distinguish between their intentional and accidental use, instructs a bit with video to complement the text, includes a LearningCurve multiple choice exercise in identifying and defining what a fragment is, and offers a consoling ten question multiple choice concluding quiz students will almost always pass if they do the unit that comes before the quiz. But doing all that doesn't mean students, in the heat of composing and peer reviewing and revising, will write with full control over fragments. Because the software doesn't give them practice in writing, peer review, sharing writing, talking to other writers, reading good writing, discussing that writing with classmates. Those necessary and student centered communal learning activities, which research shows to be the most effective means of learning to read and write, require classroom teachers to set a safe place for learning and sharing, and assignments that encourage every student, weak and strong, to participate, and to improve. As Joshua Kim writes in "EdTech and Supporting Teaching by Teachers," And when I visit and work with faculty, they are ache to learn how to help students succeed, and we try help them make our technology assistive rather than a "false idol." Faculty want more time and space to try new approaches. But with increases in teaching loads, gutted support for community colleges from the state, an increasing reliance on part-time faculty, administrators running academic departments who do not rise from faculty ranks nor necessarily have degrees in the discipline the supervise, support is sparse, time is limited, and morale is low. That work -- the work of designing courses to make the best use of what software can do, in the context of the student readiness reality Florida legislators created by burdening community colleges with essentially unfunded mandates -- is the work that needs to be done. Unless and until it is done, unless their is fully funded and sustained faculty and curriculum professional development at the high school and community college level -- perhaps in summer joint high school/college sessions -- neither of the two bills above will achieve the aims, worthy aims, the legislator intended. But what do you want to bet that now that those laws have passed and aren't working, the blame will get pushed not to the lawmakers but to the schools and teachers not given the tools needed to make it all work? ... View more

Last week, I proposed a compass-based activity for Discussing Ethics Scenarios in Professional Writing classes. This week I’m sharing ten scenarios to use with last week’s ethical compass. Most of the scenarios have alternative solutions or choices that you can discuss beyond the simple choice of where the situation falls on the ethical compass. Ten Ethical Scenarios You need an illustration for a pamphlet you are designing. You have saved the perfect image of the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, but you cannot remember the source and do not know whether the image is free to use under Creative Commons or in the public domain. You decide to use it anyway and hope for the best. Is the choice right? Your colleague has written a progress report that indicates the project is on schedule and on budget. The report does not mention that the colleague has been substituting cheaper, generic supplies, rather than ordering the brand of supplies that the client requested to avoid going over budget. The supplies meet safety requirements, and it’s likely that the client will not notice the change. Is the colleague doing the right thing? The marketing department has asked your supervisor for screenshots to illustrate the forthcoming features that will be added to the app you are developing. When you tell your supervisor that the features are not programmed yet, he tells you to fake something in PhotoShop. Is your supervisor choosing the right solution? The disposable knives, spoons, and forks that your company manufactures are not recyclable. Though they are made with 10% recycled materials, they go to the landfill, not the recycling bin. A customer has asked on your company Facebook page whether the spoons are eco-friendly, and the social media manager has replied that they are. Has he made the right choice? Your department has just learned of a significant security flaw in the shopping cart software the company markets. The director of software development is not releasing details on the flaw to the public, leaving millions of users’ personal information at risk. She wants to avoid giving hackers information that could lead to security breaches. Your team is working overtime to fix the flaw, and the director plans to send out a press release on the flaw when the fix is ready. Has she made the right decision? You are writing specifications for a project your engineering firm is designing. You confess to your supervisor that you are behind schedule, and he suggests that you copy several sections from a similar specification that a colleague in the office wrote for another project. Is the supervisor suggesting the right solution? You are preparing a resume for an entry-level job. Your friend tells you to change the details on your active membership in the military reserves to suggest that you are no longer serving. He explains that some employers may be concerned about your military service causing you to miss work. You know it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of military service, and you are proud of your service. You include the information against your friend’s advice. Did you make the right choice? An intern who worked in your department has asked you to fill out a recommendation form for a scholarship application. You agree, but when you review the form, you notice questions about the intern’s religious affiliation and her commitment to her faith. You do not feel it’s appropriate to answer these questions, so you write, “I do not have enough information to answer this question” in that section of the form. Did you make the right decision? Your company has been taking shortcuts with quality control, resulting in the manufacture of food products that barely meet health and safety requirements. You create anonymous accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and you post evidence of the quality control issues on the accounts, tagging the corporate accounts. Was your action right? You wrote an extensive manual for using petroleum drilling equipment that your company manufactures. To save money, an editor pared down the manual, removing 2 pages of information overall. You review the changes and restore half of the information, which consisted primarily of important safety warnings. Your supervisor is unhappy about the cost, but you stand firm that the information must remain in the manual. Have you made the right decision? Because I am teaching online, I plan on using the scenarios throughout the term, posting two or three each week on our online discussion forum for students to respond to. I’ll try beginning with an anonymous poll on each scenario to gauge where the class stands before discussing the nuances of the situation and possible alternative responses. In the face-to-face classroom, I think I’d have students work in groups to propose ways to deal with the situation and then as a class work to a solution we all feel ethically deals with the scenario. This activity grew from conversations during the Pathways Summer Institute, sponsored by the Virginia Tech Office of General Education. Where do you find your ethical discussion starters? Do you have resources to share? Let me hear from you. Just leave me a comment below, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. [Photo: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument by Kevin Dooley, on Flickr] ... View more

I first met Brent Peters, English teacher from Fern Creek Traditional High School in Kentucky, when he was pursuing a Master’s degree at The Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont, and I knew at first glance that I was talking to someone very special. As I got to know him better, I learned about the food literacy initiative Brent and colleague Joe Franzen were undertaking at their school. As Brent put it in an essay for the Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal: The Fern Creek Food Literacy program has grown exponentially. Most compelling to me is the partnership formed between the Fern Creek group and Rex Lee Jim, former Vice President of the Navajo Nation, Evelyn Begody, and other members of the Window Rock School District. Out of this partnership grew the Navajo Kentuckians, who have exchanged views, vistas, and visits, who came together at a 2013 Food Literacy Conference held at Middlebury College in Vermont, and who together presented their program and its results at the 2014 NCTE conference. In their work together and in their individual schools, these students are learning about nutrition and sustainability, about planting and harvesting, about “good” and “bad” foods, about managing crops and money. They are making a difference in their own choices of food and they are influencing their family and friends, often to change habits of a lifetime. And they are reading and writing in their own notebooks and journals about all they are learning in their “food lit” classes and in their gardens and markets. What the students say about their experiences is insightful and inspiring. Last spring, the Navajo Kentuckians traveled to Montana for the International Indian Health Service Conference, where they presented their work and listened and learned from others. Here’s what Courtney Jones, a student at Window Rock High School, wrote to participants after the conference:   You can see photos and listen to students at this conference and at other events on the Navajo Kentuckians website. And check them out on YouTube. I think you will be as inspired as I have been. ... View more

Last week, I posted an activity where students compared codes of ethics from different disciplines. Today, I’m sharing an activity that asks students to apply those codes to some simple scenarios. It’s a bridge activity between examining the codes and discussing more detailed and complex case studies. Like last week’s post, this activity grew out of the Pathways Summer Institute, sponsored by the Virginia Tech Office of General Education. My inspiration is the ‘90s Parker Brothers game A Question of Scruples. When the game was popular, some colleagues used the cards from the game in the classroom to talk about ethics. When playing the game, people read short scenarios that end with a question that generally asks, “Would you do it?” For instance, one card in the game asks, “You make long distance calls as part of your work for a middle-sized firm. Do you make private calls if you know they cannot be traced?” The classroom activity uses the questions as discussion starters. The teacher or a student reads a scenario. Students answer with the yes, no, or depends cards from the game and then talk about their answers. Teachers and students can write their own scenarios, based on readings or issues the class is exploring. The customized game provides a simple way to introduce and discuss ethical situations. Instead of using Scruples, I am planning to use a digital compass activity, as explained in the Learning & Leading with Technology article “Developing Ethical Direction” by Mike S. Ribble and Gerald D. Bailey. In this activity, students choose a response from a compass image, which offers these 8 options: Right I am not sure it’s wrong Depends on the situation As long as I don’t get caught Wrong What’s the big deal? It’s an individual choice I don’t know As with the game Scruples, the teacher or a student reads a scenario, and students respond by choosing a direction on the compass. I will probably gather responses anonymously using a Google Form, which can also calculate the totals for each scenario in a friendly bar graph. After making their choices, students will consider how the codes of ethics for professional writing and for their fields support (or don’t) the choices of the majority for each scenario. As the activity relates to the Virginia Tech Pathways curriculum, students will “articulate and defend positions on ethical issues” (Indicator of Learning 3 for the Ethical Reasoning Integrative Learning Outcome) by discussing the responses and the ethical principles behind them. That’s my plan for the activity. Next week, I’ll share a list of ten ethical scenarios students will respond to, and I’ll discuss how the ethical principles relate to other goals for the course. Meanwhile, if you have ideas for talking about ethical reasoning in the writing classroom, please leave me a comment, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. I’m looking for ways to explore ethical reasoning throughout the entire course, so I would love some advice. [Photo: Compass Study by Calsidyrose, on Flickr] TAGS: Activity Idea, Business Writing, Ethics, Professional Writing, Technical Writing ... View more

When my daughters watched Sesame Street -- the t.v. show or one of the movies -- back when they were little girls, and I watched with them, my favorite moment came when Oscar the Grouch sang "The Grouch's Anthem" in a movie called Follow that Bird (Click the image to go YouTube to hear/see the song.): I love that song and believe fully in the spirit captured in the lines, "Don't let the sunshine spoil the rain/Just stand up and complain." And today it is raining and it is Monday, so it's a grouch's kind of day, no sun to complain about. And it got off to a grouchly start too, which made me happily grumpy: I woke to the sound of the garbage truck trundling down the street, with the trash-container-grabber reaching out, squeezing, lifting, dumping, and dropping the plastic barrels. I woke and realized our container still sat in by the side of the garage and not at the curb. So I rushed up, threw on a raincoat and boots, rushed out of the house dressed like a flasher and dragged the barrels to the curb just before the truck reached the house, much to the mirth of the driver. And then to make me even grouchier, I find myself out of my favorite breakfast meal -- potato chips and beer, forcing me to rely on brandy and toast instead. So I am home and grumpy and writing. And that to me seems a good combination for getting work done, don't you think? Sometimes writing, or rather, some kinds of writing, works better with a sour disposition: love poems, self-evaluation performance reviews, letters to editors, revising a prior draft, writing the utility company to dispute a bill . . . It's not that one wants to be mean, but that one wants to be unsentimental, unblinded by the sun, unfooled by a blue-sky view of things. So the rainy and cloudy days, oddly enough,  when making certain kinds of judgments and finding the words to go with them, inspire, for grouchy curmudgeons, clarity. And it is good practice, writing while grumpy, for putting a writing teacher into students' shoes. I write today on some projects forced on me, assignments, if you will, that seem to me pointless busy work even if on one level I know they are not. Certainly the work is dull. But it has to get done; goes into the h.r. grade book; will be read and scored. I'll be sorted, ranked, and tracked by it. And like many students, I'll be content with passing it in and getting it behind me and then forgetting it. Like so many assignments before, it will be writing forgotten, left in the box outside the professor's door, never to be picked up. I'll save my energy and enthusiasm for more important-to-me projects, one of which is asking how do I avoid giving my students work that makes them feel like I feel now? What I want to avoid is lecturing to them about how sometimes you have to write things, do work, that you don't like writing, don't care a lot about, and so you have to suck it up and do it because blah, blah, blah. Of course that is true, and they know it and I know it. So maybe the thing to do is come up with a pedagogy for teaching writers to write when they do not want to write. A lot of time we focus on making assignments attractive, trying to find ways to tap intrinsic motivation while at the same time meeting curricular outcomes. But what if we acknowledge that we all sometimes write under grouch conditions? Is there a way to celebrate that as well? Maybe developing a rhetoric of genial subversion, like the Advanced Placement students who wrote, then crossed out so examiners could not help but see and read the phrase but couldn't count it in scoring, "This is Sparta (http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/ap-exams-inspire-internet-age-mischief-high-schoolers-inspired-sparta-prank-articl… ). The right kind of grumpiness, grouchiness, curmudgeonly-ness can be puckish fun, for the writer, so that at least the tedium finds relief, and that relief, that steam-let-off, might be just the thing to make the writing work a bit better for the poor sap who is required to read what was required to be written. ... View more

For the last couple of years I’ve posted during late May or early June about “why I love spring term.” And now even though I am officially retired, I still love spring term, because it’s the time of so many celebrations of student accomplishments. A couple of weeks ago, Stanford had four celebrations for student writing—one for outstanding writing in the first-year course, one in the second-year course, one in the Writing in the Major course, and one for writing of students in the fairly new Science Writing notation program. In my view, we can never give too many awards, can never celebrate too much for the work our terrific students are doing. But now in the interests of full disclosure: my absolute favorite award is the one for students in our second-year course: The Lunsford Oral Presentation of Research Award. I was completely surprised—and honored and humbled—seven years ago when this award was announced, and I am honored and humbled right now as I think back over those years and remember all the students who received the award. This second course is the one in which students focus on multimodal composition and especially on “translating” a text meant to be read into one to be heard and seen. Though this is a required course, students consistently rate it as one of their best Stanford experiences, and they do magnificent work in it. So every term, instructors are invited to nominate a student for the award, which yields three winners and (usually) three honorable mentions a year. But all nominated students are invited to the celebration ceremony, held in late spring, and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) lays out a buffet of goodies for students to enjoy while we all mingle and talk. I love it! This year, the witty and wonderful Marvin Diogenes, Acting Director of PWR, was emcee, announcing the winners and calling on their instructors to say a little about what made the students’ work so outstanding and then to present the winning student with a check, a certificate, and a book (or two!) specially chosen by the instructor for the student. This year, the winners also received another gift—a flash drive with the winning presentations on it, in the shape of a golden key. Marvin had everyone laughing as he engaged in a bit of rhetorical hyperbole, saying he was certain the students would keep this key forever, bringing it out to show when they graduated from Stanford, when they finished grad school, got their first jobs, went into retirement, etc., etc., etc. Here are a couple of photos of this event:                               Students arriving for the LOPRA celebration                                             Award winner Jinhie Skarda presenting "The Star of Interstellar: How Art Informs Science And that’s (part of) why I love spring term! ... View more

Recently, I read an article in the New York Times about Snapchat, the video messaging app that has barnstormed its way toward valuations in the billions of dollars. The article’s title, “Snapchat: A New Mobile Challenge for Storytelling,” caught my attention and got me looking around the Snapchat site and watching some of their “stories.” The ones I watched were mostly reportorial, with someone giving information accompanied by images. But they got me wondering about other kinds of stories and how they might be told and circulated via Snapchat. One aspect of the app—its claim that snaps are deleted after 24 hours and can’t be retrieved—has been challenged by some who say that nothing on the Web is completely irretrievable, and by others who object to the cursory nature of snaps. Privacy issues aside, I like the idea of the ephemeral nature of Snapchat postings since it seems to open a special space for experimentation and creativity. I’m much more interested in this aspect of Snapchat than in the ability to “follow” people (aka celebrities), as detailed in a Time article on viral Snapchat stars. I also like the way this app demands multimodality—telling stories with words and images. And I’d particularly like to hear whether Snapchat is being used in classrooms. So, if you have any information on this topic, please let me know! ... View more

At my presentation at the Computers and Writing Conference last week, I shared ten narrative remix assignments and related student work (example shown in the picture on the right). When it came time for the Q&A session, someone asked, “How do you know that students are doing the work?” When I heard that question, there was a moment when I stopped and panicked. What if they were cheating? What if it wasn’t their work? Who was doing the work? How did I know for sure? What caught me off guard, I think, was the fact that it never occurred to me that students might be cheating. I just knew, in that way you know in your gut. So when I was asked the question, I found myself constructing an answer for why I knew. First, I explained that I know because I see them work. I walk around the classroom and pay attention to what they are doing. I use microconferencing to talk with students frequently about where they are on the projects and to provide feedback on whatever they show me. So I see their work and I see them working. I also ask them to write about their work in dialectical blog posts at the end of class. Their entries are organized around two headings: What I Did, and Why I Did It. When I review their posts, I see a running list of the things they are doing. When relevant, they include links to drafts or related artifacts of their process. So I see them talking about their work. That’s where I left the topic in the presentation. I’ve realized as I thought about the question since Friday, however, that there’s something more. I know because of the assignment students are working on. It asks students to choose something a topic that is a passion project and to take a risk. I encourage them to choose something that they want to learn or know and to make that part of the work they will do. With those parameters, they are all deeply engaged in the projects. They eagerly call me over to look at what they are doing before class even starts. I have found them in the hallway outside of the classroom sharing their prototypes with anyone who will watch. There are times when I have to force them to stop working and leave the classroom so that the next class can come in. That’s not the behavior of students who are doing dishonest work. So, yes, I know students are doing their own work. How about you? How do you know that students are turning in multimodal projects that are their own work? What do you do to ensure academic honesty? Let me know by leaving a comment below or dropping by my page on Facebook or Google+. ... View more