The second edition of Emerging will be published in January. Given how early our semester starts (January 7—can you believe it?), it’s going to be tight, but fortunately Bedford/St,Martin's has agreed to help me out if needed and we can always start with one of the online readings (in the form of e-pages).I think it’s one of my favorite parts of teaching: designing a class, working out the assignments, thinking about the readings, tweaking the activities and pacing. In this I might be a tad bit weird; I imagine some of my colleagues just teach the same class again and again. But for me the intellectual labor of working out a class is the most thrilling part (commenting on student work being the least).How about you? Do you prefer to reuse the tried and true? Do you see your process as one of refinement, or do you do just restart each semester? Where’s the joy in a class for you — planning it, teaching it, or ending it? ... View more

One of my students in a popular cultural semiotics seminar recently wrote her term project on the reality television "Real Housewives of .  .  ." phenomenon. Not being a fan of such shows myself, it took her paper to prompt me to think seriously about the whole thing for myself. And I realized that such shows instantiate a far more profound cultural signifier than I had heretofore realized. The following analysis represents my thinking on the matter, not my student's. As is always the case, my semiotic analysis centers on a crucial difference. The difference in question here is not simply that between the actual realities of the lives of ordinary housewives as opposed to the reality TV versions, but also the difference between their current television representations and those of the past. That is, not only do most actual housewives lack the wealth, glamour, and business opportunities of the "Real Housewives" of Beverly Hills, New Jersey, or wherever, but their television counterparts of the past did, too. The classic TV housewife, enshrined within the history of the family sitcom, was an asexual middle-class woman who was totally focused on her children: Think June Lockhart, Jane Wyatt, and Barbara Billingsley. That the current crowd of glammed-up, runway-model housewives of today's "reality" shows reflects a widespread cultural return to the conservative gender-coded precept that a woman's value lies in her erotic appeal almost goes without saying. While a few less-than-glamorous women are cast in these programs as if to head off criticisms of this kind, their existence tends to prove the rule—and even they tend to be dolled up on the program Web sites. But this is an easy observation to make. More profoundly, however, is the fact that the reality TV housewife has become an object of desire for her largely female audience. Rather than being seeing as a hapless drudge of patriarchy, the reality TV housewife is a vicarious role model, even when she doesn't found her own business enterprise and simply stays at home. What caused this change in perception? To answer this question, I looked at the frequently reported economic fact that the household incomes for the vast majority of Americans have been essentially stagnant, when adjusted for inflation, over the last four decades. Now, add to that the exponential inflation in the costs of such basic necessities as housing and transportation and you get the modern two-income family: not necessarily because both partners in a marriage want to work, but because in order to maintain a middle-class household two incomes are now more or less essential. Certainly the efforts of the women's movement have contributed to the enormous growth of women's participation in the workforce, but the new image of the reality TV housewife suggests that something else is at work here as well. That is, with the housewife being presented as a fortunate woman who doesn't have to work, it seems that American women are nostalgic for the "good old days" of a time when they didn't have to work just to maintain a middle-class home. The fantasy now is to be a housewife, not to escape the role. That's quite a change. Just how much of an effect on American consciousness in general this stagnation of incomes has had is probably one of the most important social questions of our time. Can it help explain the hostile polarization of our political landscape, our dwindling sympathy for others in an increasingly libertarian environment, the growing resentment of middle-class workers (especially unionized workers) with decent jobs and benefits? I think so. And this will be a topic for future blogs of mine. ... View more

As I write this, a cease-fire has just been announced in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Hopeful news, but also a reminder of how tenuous peace can be in the world today. I’ve been thinking about how I might teach this event in our first-year writing class, because I always want students to think about how what they read and write and think about in the classroom connects to, interacts with, and can shape the world around them.Several essays from Emerging spring to mind. The natural place to start, I think, would be Madeleine Albright’s “Faith and Diplomacy,” about the role of religion in international relations. Coming from a US-centric perspective, we tend to think strongly about separating church and state. But as long as we hold onto that perspective, we lose sight of the fact that church is state in many places in the world and that a people’s faith has a profound impact on national relations in even more places. The current situation in the Middle East would be a useful test case for Albright’s claims about faith-based diplomacy.More interesting, though, might be Thomas Friedman’s “The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention.” Friedman’s basic premise is that any two countries embedded in the same global supply chain will not risk their position in that chain by going to war. But what about countries that aren’t countries? That don’t have the economic engines necessary to enter supply chains? What about Gaza? For that matter, what about Tibet? Friedman’s discussion of terrorism and rogue supply chains would be an interesting tool of analysis, too. And given the technological nature of the conflict, with Israel’s “Iron Dome” and the longer-range missiles used by Hamas, Friedman’s final thoughts about the benefits of collaboration might be challenged by thinking about the supply chains of war. ... View more

As I mentioned in my last post, I keep abreast of techie news by reading a series of tech blogs daily, including Engadget. One of their recent posts caught my eye: “3D Book Scanner Blows Throught Tomes at 250 Pages per Minute."Digital Humanities is a hot topic right now, and this seems like just the kind of tool we need to make more print sources available to more people in more places. It’s a giant leap toward a digitized library.But one of the comments also caught my eye: I need to get this and scan every single textbook from college and pdf in the torrents. I have SERIOUSLY been think[ing] of doing it. In fact [I] have been by buying digital copies and helping our poor students. That comment, of course, indexes any number of discussions and emerging issues, ranging from the changing nature of publishing to the cost of textbooks (well, the cost of education, period) to privacy and piracy and intellectual property.Any tool is value neutral. It’s what we do with it that matters. But how do we handle a tool that, on one hand can open up access to texts and, on the other hand, can — well — open up access to texts?So, super-fast digital scanner… good thing? What say you? ... View more

I confess that I am getting weary of seeing the Ayn Rand–inspired political meme, "makers vs. takers," still saturating the mass media. Attempting, apparently, to win by way of insult what they could not accomplish at the ballot box, Republican candidates and pundits alike seem to be consoling themselves for the stunning outcome of the 2012 elections by insisting that a bunch of nonproducing "takers" are taking over America. I'll leave to others the point-by-point critique of this inane meme, however, because what I want to do, in my feeble way, is introduce a substitute meme: Let's call it "cultures vs. vultures." So, who are "cultures"? Cultures are people who believe in the common weal. They believe that a society is not simply an aggregation of autonomous units aggressively competing with each other in a zero-sum game in which every success must be won at the expense of a cloud of "losers." They are doctors and nurses and nurse's aides who save lives; teachers who educate; fire and police personnel who serve and protect;  government employees who get us our driver's licenses, fix road potholes, erase graffiti, and so on. They are businesspeople who establish companies that employ people at a decent wage with benefits, and they are the people who work for them. They are writers and artists.  They are women and men who take care of their families, join the PTO, coach soccer and baseball.  They are …well, many of us. And who are vultures? They are people who buy companies in order to eviscerate them by selling off their assets and firing their workforces. They are corporations who ship employment overseas to maximize the hundred-million-dollar compensation packages of their top executives while squeezing their diminished workforces. They are financial services companies that invent complex investment instruments and sell them to uncomprehending investors who thought that they were buying safe collaterialized bonds. They are the bond-rating agencies that gave these bonds triple-A ratings. They are speculators in oil futures and short-selling stock investors for whom the stock exchange is a vast, global gambling house. They are the accounting firms who cook the books when they should be auditing publicly held companies. They are billionaires who think that they can purchase the entire American electoral system, and make the attempt to do so election after election. They are digital-technology entrepreneurs who want to eliminate America's universities on behalf of a tiny elite who will make the 1% look like a supermajority. In short, they are the kind of people that Ayn Rand–quoting-types admire, and they are the people who have so damaged the world economy that perpetual crisis is the new normal. Given the power of tidy soundbites in our meme-driven mediatized society, the substitution of a "cultures vs. vultures" formulation for a "makers vs. takers" one would not be trivial. It could change the nature of our political discourse. But I have no illusions. Though I am not a corporation, I am a person, and, in spite of the many claims for the democratic potential of the interactive Internet, ordinary people are not heard through our mass media. But perhaps I should change my blog moniker to Linseed Lohan? ... View more

I’ll admit it; I am complete tech junkie. Each day I read four tech blogs just to stay on top of what’s happening in the world of computers and technology.  I “popcorn” the posts—skimming over them to predict emerging patterns a la futurist Faith Popcorn. Occasionally, I find a post worth sharing, like this one: “Educators Battle Eternal September by Teaching Digital Citizenship with MinecraftEdu.” I think the video explains it best: http://www.fastcompany.com/3003185/minecraft-classroom-digital-citizenship-101-topic-play Of course, video games and literacy has been an area of composition research for some time now, but what I like about the approach taken here is the particular mix of gaming and teaching. They’re not taking school and turning it into a game. They’re taking a very popular game, Minecraft, and thinking about what students can learn from and in it. Perhaps this approach is something we’ve been missing. I don’t know that my program is ready for this kind of experiment, but I like that it helps me think in new ways about how literate communities traverse real and virtual spaces. That, for me, is a good start. Have you ever used video games in your teaching? I’m wondering about not just the effectiveness but the sheer logistics. Please share your comments and experiences.   ... View more

For this last post in this series, I want to consider the final part of the general education law as presented to our committee:  Remaining courses (15 credits) to be determined by each university or college This provision prompted a colleague to say, “Now the local bloodbaths will begin.” And I imagine they will. The core is shrinking. Some department somewhere is going to lose 6 credits, 2 courses, and who knows how many students. I won’t predict a bloodbath, but only because I deeply believe in academic collegiality—call me an idealist if you will.  My hope is that at my own institution, those final 15 credits will be decided through rigorous processes with multiple points of faculty input. In other words, I hope we will harness what James Surowiecki would call the “wisdom of crowds.” However, I can predict one very local point of contention: Public Speaking.  I know our School of Communication and Multimedia Studies is quite eager to see Public Speaking as part of the core and, frankly, I’m not at all opposed to having it there. Students do need to know how to speak effectively.  And, after all, isn’t that where rhetoric really started? In the agora? And of course, my professional organization is called College Composition and Communication. We get to drop some course in our local bucket… shouldn’t Public Speaking be one? It is, of course, more complex than that. For starters, we are in lean budget times and, as in any famine, humans start acting less than humane. As resources become scarce, we genetically hoard and scavenge—it’s the way our ancestors survived. So yes, I am thinking about the implications for our writing program if Public Speaking can replace our second semester writing course, ENC 1102. I want to support my colleagues and I want students to learn how to “communicate effectively” in multiple modes. I also want to continue to support our graduate students and I also want to make sure that students have as much practice with writing as we can give them. Fortunately, there are advantages to the Byzantine structures of our state bureaucracy. Specifically, our “ace in the hole” is (I hate to sound so coldly calculating and strategic) FAC Rule 6A-10.030. That’s part of the Florida Administrative Code, the set of rules that governs public education; locally, it’s called the Gordon Rule. The rule states that students must take four writing classes, two of which must be offered by the English Department. Now, HB 7135, the state law that started this whole mess process, has more weight that anything in the FAC—law trumps code. However, the Communication Committee did reaffirm the Gordon Rule and, for now, it exists. Its existence means, of course, that even with Public Speaking in the core, students will still need to take another English course. It also means that if both ENC 1102 and public speaking are dropped in our local bucket, students are more likely to take ENC 1102—not just to knock out both the core and the Gordon Rule requirements in one fell swoop, but also because (as any speech teacher will confirm) students are terrified of speaking in public—more terrified than they are of writing. Darn. This is not the post I intended. I had hoped to talk about how to avoid a bloodbath. I think I’ve ended up sounding like Sun Tzu. So reader, let me crowd source this to you: Public Speaking or more writing? Ideally, both, of course. But if you were forced to put one and only one in the bucket, which would it be, and why? ... View more

In my last post I considered the implications of an institutional economy that privileged speedy graduation.  In this one, I'd like to consider the implications of the legislated categories for the statewide Gen Ed core: Communication, Mathematics, Natural Science, Social Science, and Humanities. Perhaps like me you rankle at their reductiveness. In an age where inter- and multi-disciplinarity is increasingly the trend in both theory and practice, the five mandated “buckets” (as I have termed them) feel downright reactionary.  Apparently, the categories reflect in part the demands of our accrediting body, SACS. Actually, the categories mandated by SACS are humanities/fine arts, social/behavioral sciences, and natural science/mathematics. Curiously, there is no mention of writing instruction specifically anywhere in SACS guidelines. Presumably, it is considered part of the "humanities," though the social science leanings of our discipline offer some complications. Our state categories are a curious reflection of what SACS requires.  The humanities are included, fine arts are not.  Natural sciences and Mathematics are divorced.  Behavioral science is, presumably, part of social science.  I suppose the addition of Communication is a boon and a hopeful sign that as a state we value the ability of students to communicate. I will say that some of the other committees opened the day discussing who should be where: is history a social science or part of the humanities? Even buckets so reductive have leaky boundaries, it would seem, and the implications of who goes where have ramifications for departments across all institutions in Florida.  Who will gain?  Who will lose? As a bucket, Communication is darned leaky too.  Our committee included people in English and Communcations and Composition/Rhetoric.  We all agreed that communication happens both in writing and in speech but also visually, multimodally, technologically. The fetishism of five (a maximum of five courses in five categories) did not mesh at all with who we are and what we do. In the end our committee selected a single course, a writing course (ENC 1101, our first semester writing course) and yet we also felt compelled to add a statement on the varieties of communication, in the hopes that local institutions (where buckets are not so neat) might find ways to more fully represent communication and thus might also find ways to prepare students more fully for the world that awaits them. Five buckets--four for accreditation, one in recognition of a fundamental need, all permeable. Five buckets--too few, too limiting, too reductionist. Five buckets--one now filled with a singe course, a writing course. Victory? Perhaps. 15 credits of the core remain for each school to decide.  As a colleague commented, "Now the local bloodbaths will begin."  Indeed. So, what are your buckets?  What fills them?  And, again, where does writing sit in your school? ... View more

As I contemplate the results of the November 6 election, I find I am absolutely astonished: My ballot turned out to be virtually identical to the overall results of California. Good gracious, even Proposition 30, the temporary tax increase designed to stave off absolute financial disaster for public education, passed. I mean, Californians voting for a tax increase? How did that happen? Well, you couldn't have guessed it from reading the oft-maligned "liberal media"—nor from reading the responses to many online news stories involving Californian or national politics. For in spite of the common right-wing canard that the media have a "liberal bias" (as if the Fox News network wasn't a member of the mass media), and ever since Sarah Palin and the Tea Party burst onto the national stage, the media have provided such heavy coverage of conservative movements that it has been difficult to detect any non-conservative pulse in the American electorate. Even the Los Angeles Times, traditionally a moderately liberal news organization, has served as a conservative crystal ball recently, reporting that support for Proposition 30 had fallen drastically below 50% on the eve of the election (it passed by a 54% to 46% margin—which the Times reluctantly described as "appear[ing] to squeak by with a victory"). And the comments from readers to the Times on the issue prior to the election itself seem to all have demanded that every teacher and professor in the state be fired in lieu of any tax increase. No, the outcome of this election was not at all apparent in either the traditional or digital media. Which takes me to my point. While I would not go so far as to describe myself as hopeful, it is nice to see that the power of the mass media (a power that I regard as indisputable) is not yet absolute. Even with the anti-Prop 30 forces outspending their opponents by twenty million dollars or so (with a lot of that coming from mysterious out-of-state forces), Prop 30 passed; and Prop 32 (which would have ended the ability of labor unions to make election campaign contributions, and which the same mysterious out-of-state forces spent a fortune to support), failed. In short, a whole lot of television time went to naught. One takeaway that I am fairly confident of is that when it comes to the comments sections on online newspaper and other Internet news sources, conservative responders appear to outnumber liberal or moderate ones. Perhaps the liberals are on Twitter (a real possibility), or Facebook, but if you went by the election news story responses on Yahoo! during the primaries, you would have sworn that Ron Paul was a shoe-in for the Republican nomination. So, we have to be careful when trying to use the mass media as a bowl of tea leaves to predict American electoral behavior. The last four years have presented a disproportionate coverage of Tea Party activity, which has granted that movement a lot of real power (the media can create their own realities sometimes), but this election's results reveal that it isn't all Tea in America. There's a lot more going on that just isn't as sensational, and thus doesn't invite those click-the-links that make money for digital media. Is there a new, moderate, "silent majority" out there? Let us hope so. ... View more

In my last post, I considered the implications of an institutional economy that privileged speedy graduation.  In this one, I'd like to consider the implications of the legislated categories for the statewide Gen Ed core: Communication, Mathematics, Natural Science, Social Science, and Humanities. Perhaps like me you rankle at their reductiveness. In an age where inter- and multi-disciplinarity is increasingly the trend in both theory and practice, the five mandated “buckets” (as I have termed them) feel downright reactionary.  Apparently, the categories reflect in part the demands of our accrediting body, SACS. Actually, the categories mandated by SACS are humanities/fine arts, social/behavioral sciences, and natural science/mathematics. Curiously, there is no mention of writing instruction specifically anywhere in SACS guidelines. Presumably, it is considered part of the "humanities," though the social science leanings of our discipline offer some complications. Our state categories are a curious reflection of what SACS requires.  The humanities are included, fine arts are not.  Natural sciences and Mathematics are divorced.  Behavioral science is, presumably, part of social science.  I suppose the addition of Communication is a boon and a hopeful sign that as a state we value the ability of students to communicate. I will say that some of the other committees opened the day discussing who should be where: is history a social science or part of the humanities? Even buckets so reductive have leaky boundaries, it would seem, and the implications of who goes where have ramifications for departments across all institutions in Florida.  Who will gain?  Who will lose? As a bucket, Communication is darned leaky too.  Our committee included people in English and Communcations and Composition/Rhetoric.  We all agreed that communication happens both in writing and in speech but also visually, multimodally, technologically. The fetishism of five (a maximum of five courses in five categories) did not mesh at all with who we are and what we do. In the end our committee selected a single course, a writing course (ENC 1101, our first semester writing course) and yet we also felt compelled to add a statement on the varieties of communication, in the hopes that local institutions (where buckets are not so neat) might find ways to more fully represent communication and thus might also find ways to prepare students more fully for the world that awaits them. Five buckets--four for accreditation, one in recognition of a fundamental need, all permeable. Five buckets--too few, too limiting, too reductionist. Five buckets--one now filled with a singe course, a writing course. Victory? Perhaps. 15 credits of the core remain for each school to decide.  As a colleague commented, "Now the local bloodbaths will begin."  Indeed. So, what are your buckets?  What fills them?  And, again, where does writing sit in your school? ... View more

I think my status update on Facebook said it all: Trains are a little sad. Then again, maybe trains are fine; maybe it's only me that's a little sad. I'm writing this on Amtrak's Silver Service to Tampa, Florida. I'm headed toward the first meeting of the Communication Committee, one of five faculty committees that will help decide the new general education curriculum for all public higher education institutions in Florida. In this series of posts, I'd like to reflect on this process and its implications—not for my school or even for my state but for the ways in which writing, rhetoric, and composition—and education itself—are conceived and conceptualized in institutions of higher education today. The problem is, I'm stuck. Looking out at the monotonous scrubby landscape offers neither inspiration nor direction (Florida, you see, is surprisingly empty in the middle and unerringly flat everywhere). How does one tackle an artifact of this size? Not a paper or a class or a course or a program or a department or a school, but an entire statewide system and bureaucracy legislated into existence? How does one respond when (literally) hailed by the juridical? I suppose the law itself is a good place to start, or better, the reductive summary of the law provided to the faculty committees: Required general education credits statewide lowered from 36 to 30 beginning fall 2014 Students must take one course, for a total of 15 credits, in each of the following 5 categories: communication, mathematics, natural science, social science, humanities Each category will have a maximum of 5 courses. Courses will be uniform across all state universities, state colleges, and community colleges Faculty committees to be formed to determine courses offered in each category Remaining courses (15 credits) to be determined by each university or college For the remainder of this post, I'll focus on that first point: the reduction of the core from 36 to 30 credits. The intent of the law, we have been told, is to ensure that all students have a common experience at Florida schools. Bracketing for now both the wisdom and possibility of such a goal, what's clear is that reducing the credits in the core seems hardly related to that intent. Indeed, when you consider as well a second piece of legislation penalizing students for taking “too many” credits (by radically increasing tuition once they exceed allotted/expected credits), then another motive seems to lie behind this law: getting students to graduate, quickly. Reports from our provost suggest that four- to six-year graduation rates are the new currency in our statewide educational economy. I say "new" currency but it might be more accurate to say "newest."  Graduation rates, while highlighted, circulate with existing currencies including retention rates, FTE (full-time equivalent, a measure of bodies in classrooms), and SCH (student credit hours, which are essentially bodies in course times credits for course). Newer currencies don’t seem to displace older ones; all remain in use. Pointedly, actual currency, the U.S.-dollar kind, rarely enters the system these days. I'm no economist, but I imagine any economy with multiple currencies is subject to tectonic disjunctures or, at the very least, radical fluctuations in wealth and value. Fun times. What does any of this have to do with the teaching of writing?  Well, in the midst of it all I find myself thinking of Cynthia Selfe's call to "pay attention" in Technology and Literacy in the 21 st Century. Perhaps it's not just technology that requires our attention, as Selfe suggests, but also the institutions in which we find ourselves. What happens to writing instruction in a smaller core? What happens when it is dumped in the larger category of "communication"? Who serves to gain from these reconfigurations?  And, most of all, how can we best serve our students in a system intent both on expansion and contraction, one that wants higher enrollments with smaller budgets, greater outcomes with a smaller core? Like Selfe, I believe the place to start is locally—with our colleagues, in our departments, in our colleges, at our schools. It's not simply a matter of making sure writing stays in the core (that's already happened as I finish this post in Tampa), but rather a question both of how best to expand our concerns with and for writing throughout the institution and its support systems. It's also a question of how indeed to get blood from a stone. What challenges are you facing locally? Where does writing sit in your school? In the center? All alone? Well supported? And, most importantly, what strategies of advocacy should we engage now? Which have you found successful? Which have failed you?     ... View more

Thanks to the links included in posts right here on Bits, I have now become an avid reader of The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education. With their daily updates and wide range of academic voices, these sites offer a wealth of information about the state of the academy and insights into the lives and morale of the professoriate. Except that a startling number of bloggers on The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education aren’t professors at all. They are assorted businesspeople with lots of advice for those of us who have dedicated our lives to education, and with a not-so-veiled agenda. The main theme these days from the corporate pundits is that professors in the liberal arts just don’t get it. We’re behind the times, teaching all that literature and history stuff when what we should be doing is instructing our students how to set up their own Web sites, write computer code, and, in short, become trained workers for their own companies and consumers of their high-tech products. Now, it’s not as if I run around telling corporate CEOs how to run their businesses, though I would like to note that just as the corporate pundits try to blame high unemployment rates on us outdated liberal-arts types, it was the American financial services industry that plunged us into the Great Recession in the first place (look it up), and it was corporate America in general that demanded the free-trade agreements that have driven offshore a huge percentage of America’s working-class and middle-class employment opportunities. These are the facts. So why do academic Web sites like The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education tolerate, and even encourage, businesspeople who stand to make huge profits from the destruction of the American university by replacing it with the likes of MOOC and TED? Why do they tolerate, and even encourage, schemes that would, in effect, turn academic employment into a kind of NBA, with a tiny handful of academic superstars pulling in huge salaries while the futures of I don’t know how many educators are being destroyed? (Just listen to Sebastion Thrun and others crow about how in just a few years there will only be ten universities left in the country.) The comments in response to these corporate “evangelists” of the brave new world of digital culture, who weigh in with their advice to professors to get with the times and get out of their classrooms and onto Facebook, suggest that many of us aren’t buying it. But for some reason The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education are, by virtue of the high profile they give to non-academics on their academic sites. And this brings me to the semiotic point: when traditional academic forums are allowed to be overrun by corporate evangelists trying to reshape American higher education for their own financial profit (please look at how much hard work is going into ways to successfully “monetize” the MOOC), the moon is really in a new phase. This is a sign.  This is what hypercapitalism is all about. It is a world where the only thing that matters anymore is money, and the only people who matter are those who have it. Even our own journals are caving in. And we professors, who have chosen a vocation that has never before been about money and whose annual incomes, even in the ranks of the academic “stars,” may not equal the effective hourly wage of a Google or Apple executive, just don’t stand a chance. ... View more

 I never cease to be amazed by the number of my colleagues who exhibit little to no awareness of FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which is the educational equivalent of HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Both pieces of federal legislation mandate absolute privacy when it comes to information, whether pertaining to health (HIPAA) or, more relevantly, student grades (FERPA). It wasn’t all that long ago that I could walk through the halls of our department and see boxes of graded student papers outside the doors of my colleagues’ offices (yikes!). I understand FERPA, and I celebrate it. I also detest it. The problem is that I grade student work electronically using my word processor’s Track Changes and Comment features—good for the environment (well, good for trees anyway) and good for my sanity and health (for me, typing doesn’t produce the kind of repetitive stress that writing does). Actually, electronic grading isn’t the problem. Returning electronically graded student work is. "FERPA-ly" speaking, e-mail is not a secure medium; someone could intercept the e-mail or a roommate could see it on the student’s computer, revealing the grade and breaking the law. So, returning graded student work by -email is technically illegal (well…let me say “non-FERPA compliant,” instead). Blackboard and other course management systems are okay (or FERPA-compliant, if you will) since they are considered “secure” environments. But Blackboard is a royal pain in the ass and always seems to be, technologically speaking, about five years behind the curve. To return one student paper through Blackboard can take me as many as five mouse clicks. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but add in Blackboard’s slow response time and suddenly returning student work takes almost as long as grading it (not really, but that’s how it feels). I’ve tried using Dropbox, but that involves getting each student to download and install Dropbox and then create and share folders. Besides, when I did try it I discovered it’s eerily pan-panoptic. I get a little pop-up whenever the student puts anything in the folder; they get one when I do the same. It’s like we’re always watching each other or, what’s worse, always acting as though we’re being watched. Of course, I could print the papers but that defeats much of the purpose of electronic grading. What to do? Dream. In my dream, there is what I call the “FERPA-fied student locker.” The interface is simple: Dropbox simple. Each student signs up for an account in the locker with a code to add them to my class. When I sign in I see this:   To return work, I just drag and drop the graded file into the appropriate folder, where it is encrypted and stored in the student’s online locker. That’s what Web 2.0 is, folks—not just leveraging the “wisdom of crowds” through crowdsourcing but also Web applications that feel like a desktop environment. Drag and drop, drag and drop.  Let me say it one more time because I love and want it and need it—drag and drop. That’s all I want. No discussion boards. No online peer revision. No electronic grading. No assessment tools. And no, not that other thing either. Just this. Does the FERPA-fied student locker exist? No. Can it? Yes. “We have the technology. We can make [it] better than [it] was. Better...stronger...faster” (and I’m fairly certain it won’t cost six million dollars). ... View more

My foundations in the eLearning discipline lay in the intersection of computers and writing. It was the central concern of my dissertation and the subject of my early scholarship. Though my research interests have shifted to questions of writing program administration, I continue to think about technology, in part because I am more nerd than academic.One might find it curious, then, to discover how little technology we use in the writing program I direct. There are some logistical reasons for this, primarily connected to budgetary concerns, but there are some pedagogical concerns as well. Anyone who has taught a course online will testify to its remarkable ability to consume time. One quick example: it takes 50 minutes to listen to and guide a classroom discussion; it takes many more to read through that discussion online and respond accordingly.At the same time, eLearning is the trending buzzword at our school. The administration has even created the Center for eLearning despite drastic slashes in our budget.Personally, I’m not ready to endorse a fully online writing class. I know such a beast exists, and I know that many teachers and schools find ways to make it happen successfully.I don’t see how it could work given our students, our resources, and our pedagogy. A hybrid course, however, has some appeal—though I must confess that the appeal is logistical, strategic, and perhaps even Machiavellian: hybrid courses would allows us to double the number of Tuesday/Thursday sections, the most popular class time for a student population that values extended weekends.I’d love to develop that hybrid course. I’ve fully intended to do so for at least three years now. But I’ve discovered that being a writing program administrator is 40 percent being a firefighter, 40 percent being a police officer (there are many policies that need to be enforced and many disputes that need to be mediated), 10 percent cheerleading (particularly in lean budget times), and 10 percent existing despite exhaustion.So I ask you, dear readers, what are your thoughts on hybrid writing courses? Have you taught one? What are some key ingredients to making them work? What tools do you use? ... View more

This is the post I’ve been avoiding. I’ve been avoiding it because, simply, I’m tired of the election, frightened by it, sick of it, overwhelmed by it, have been driven to the brink of paranoia around it.  It’s not that I’m apathetic (far from it); it’s just that I’m done.  In fact, I end up avoiding almost all political news (which drives my hubby crazy since politics is his hobby/passion/addiction, one exacerbated by living in Boston and listening to talk radio).  I won’t use this forum as my soapbox though I will say I envy those of you who get to look at the issues, who have the exorbitant luxury of considering where candidate X stands on jobs or taxes or education or Syria or the national debt or any other issue.  For me, every election is a single-issue election.  As a queer, I need answer only one question: which candidate gives me the best chance of existing for another four years? Despite my personal aversion to any discussion of the looming election, it’s no doubt something that can (maybe should) be taught in the FYC classroom.  For me, though, it’s not about advocating for whichever left-ish or right-ish or middle-ish position you think is “correct” or “just” or “true.”  For me, teaching the election has everything to do with helping students to see that polarization is a central problem -- one that everyone needs to address. It’s a lesson I learned for myself on a recent power walk through my neighborhood in Wilton Manors, which statistically has the second highest per capita gay population in the country or, in other terms, has “1270% more gay men per capita than the national average,” which is to say that I live in one of the gayest places in the country if not on earth.  As I jammed to my Glee playlist (OMG, Blaine’s rendition of “It’s Time”) and upped it to a pace of about 13’31” per mile I passed a house with a sign for a candidate I do not support.  At first, I was repulsed: “Seriously?  Seriously? Do you know where you live?  How dare you?”  But then I caught myself and realized that not only could I tolerate that adversarial difference—I could celebrate it. To translate my epiphany into the classroom, I would turn to “Making Conversation” and “The Primacy of Practice,” Kwame Anthony Appiah’s contributions in Emerging.  If anyone were to ask me which essay was central to Emerging, which reading somehow embodied the spirit of the text, I would probably point to Appiah.  His argument isn’t a kumbaya-like “we should all get along / teach the world to sing in perfect harmony” utopianism (though students are often tempted to read him this way).  Rather, Appiah perfectly understands that “cosmopolitanism” is, as he puts it, “the name not of the solution but of the challenge.”  That is, we no longer have the option of living like separatists; the world is all at once too crowded, too mobile, and too interconnected.  We thus have only two options: find a way to live with those who are different than us or destroy ourselves (I’m paraphrasing with some exaggeration here to make my point, but not by much). That’s what strikes me with this election and that is what I would bring into the classroom: how do we get along, here in this place, now at this time?  The answer isn’t about convincing the other side how wrong they are nor is it about winning or losing, triumphing or decimating.  As he goes on to explore in “The Primacy of Practice,” it’s not about this or that set of values (since people with the same values can fight as easily as those with different values); rather, it’s about getting used to difference.  His essay is a great way to get students thinking about that process and, perhaps, practicing it as well.  Much needed, I’d say. Because, believe me, there’s no better opportunity to get used to difference than this election.  All it takes, really, is a walk through the neighborhood.     ... View more