A native of Detroit, Michigan, Dr.  began her academic career at Hampton University in Virginia, earning a Bachelor of Science in English Secondary Education with summa cum laude distinction. She went on to receive her Master’s and PhD in English Composition from Wayne State University in 2004. While pursuing her PhD, she was awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses on multicultural literacy. Since arriving to North Carolina Central University in 2004 as an assistant professor, she has become the Director of the Writing Studio, coordinates the campus-wide Writing Intensive Program, has served on the executive boards of the International Writing Center Association and the Southeastern Writing Center Association, and currently serves on the executive board of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. In May 2015, she received a University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence. She maintains an active research agenda on the interrelated notions of literacy, race, and identity in the writing classroom, and more recently she has focused on composition instruction and writing centers at HBCUs and on how writing center tutorials can impact student success. When I was a doctoral student, each year I would peruse my Cs convention book in advance (yes, this is when they always mailed them to your house in advance) and excitedly look through the panel options for engaging topics. Specifically, I would look for colleagues from HBCUs. As a proud graduate of an HBCU, Hampton University, I searched for faculty who could speak to the context that helped to shape me.   Year after year, sadly I was disappointed, for there would only be a handful of HBCU panelists, and maybe two handfuls of HBCU attendees. As a PhD student, I always wondered why. I could not comprehend why those who teach thousands of African-American students each year would not be at the forefront, or at the very least, actively engaged in this conversation, particularly when many of the sessions were focusing on issues related to race, AAVE, or multiple literacies. In various SIGs and caucuses, I would overhear some PWI colleagues making statements such as, “They’re too traditional at HBCUs,” or “They don’t know anything about new research.”  I never spoke of my concerns out loud back then, but internally I was conflicted.   On the one hand, I knew from my experiences at a graduate PWI that the variety of course offerings definitely were much more limited at my HBCU (as compared to offerings at the PWI). While our first-year composition courses at Hampton University (with a student population of about 6,000) did vary a bit from professor to professor, there weren’t nearly as many sections and variations as at Wayne State University (where I was a graduate teaching assistant), an institution with about 40,000 students.    On the other hand, though, I did not like that my HBCU professors (not yet colleagues) were seen as less than or incapable of participating in such conversations. There are multiple reasons why, historically, HBCUs have been less visible at national conferences, including our focus on excellence in teaching over research and less available funding.    In 2018, however, many things have changed. Even though many of us are at HBCUs where teaching is still privileged over research, the demand for us to complete research to obtain tenure, promotion, and post-tenure accolades is rapidly increasing.  The expectation that we present at regional and national conferences is not an option, but an obligation (despite limited travel budgets . . . but that’s another conversation for another day!)   What the 2014 HBCU symposium provided was a platform for us to be heard and to dialogue with those who have shared or similar experiences (see A Spark Ignited: What’s Going On with Composition and the HBCU). For me personally, it reminded me that my story was the story of many. It gave me the motivation to reinvigorate my efforts to have HBCU experiences included in more mainstream discourse. Since that time, my current HBCU (North Carolina Central University) was asked to host the 2016 North Carolina English Teachers Association conference. I was asked to be a facilitator at the 2016 IWCA (International Writing Center Association) Summer Institute; I was asked to serve on the editorial advisory board for College English; and I was elected to serve on the executive board of the Council of Writing Program Administrators.  I do not list these things as some sort of “brag list,” because that is not it, not at all. Rather, I include these accomplishments to say that I am certain my activity surged in recent years because I gained energy, strength, and perhaps a sense of authority from my colleagues at sister HBCUs. Other HBCU colleagues have felt that energy, too, for we are being seen and heard even more at mainstream professional conferences.    There are many more HBCU leaders who already exist; in many cases, we just have not had the honor of hearing their voices. So, it is my hope, that at the upcoming symposium at Howard University, someone else will leave there feeling revved up, charged up, emboldened and ready to continue the conversation. (See Wading into Waters: Ruminations on Composition and Rhetoric at the Modern HBCU). There’s still lots of work to be done. Let’s get it! ... View more

A friend whose daughter is in seventh grade told me recently that her class was known to be very “rowdy” and difficult to control (his daughter is not part of the difficult group!). So, the teacher has instituted a system of punishment: when several students misbehave, the entire class has to write something like “I will never do X again” one hundred times. The whole class. One hundred times. Writing as punishment. Where have we heard this story before?   Research over the last fifty years has repeatedly shown that writing is affected by prior experience—in fact, that’s one of composition’s threshold concepts. My own informal research bears this out: for some twenty years, I asked every group I spoke with to call out their earliest memories of writing. And for twenty years, those early associations were very often about punishment: being made to write “I will never X again” over and over, being made to sit on their left hands if they were left-handed so they’d be forced to write “right,” or being ridiculed for something they had (or had not) written. For others, many people’s first memory of writing is learning to write their names—there’s something about seeing that name—YOU—inscribed on paper or a board or a stone that brings a sense of agency. Yet many of these memories are also marked by feeling that parents or grown-ups laughed (no doubt often kindly but not so to the child at the time) at these early attempts. So for many people, prior experience with writing had been negative, and this attitude and these feelings went with them as they went on in life so that they dreaded writing or felt inadequate when they had to write.   Fortunately, such prior experiences and associations can be mitigated, and that often happens as writers become more confident or encounter more positive experiences with writing, though the early experiences linger on. I believe that many of our students arrive with such negative prior experiences and that it’s in our classrooms that they can begin to move beyond these experiences and to build more positive associations, and hence gain more agency. And I know that many writing teachers talk with students about these issues, drawing them out on their early experiences and systematically helping them construct more successful encounters with writing.   How I wish I could speak with that seventh grade teacher and share the research evidence with her, that I could explain that writing should be used for celebration, for self-expression, and for creating knowledge—not for punishment. But I don’t have an opportunity to do that, and right now what I know is that my friend complained to the teacher about the assignment and especially about making students who were not misbehaving in any way share in the punishment. In response, the teacher said that this was a “tried and true method that works.” Tried for sure. But true? I doubt it. And while it may “work,” it works toward negative ends.   What I can and will do is spend some time with my friend’s seventh grade daughter, which will be a big treat for me. We will do some storytelling and writing together and I’ll do what I can to show her that writing is fun and meaningful, that it’s a way for her to voice her thoughts and share them with others. And I will be grateful for all the writing teachers across the country who are working with students and with other children they know to experience the gifts writing can bring.   Credit: Pixaby Image 2290628 by purpleshorts, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

Jimisha Relerford is a Master Instructor in the Department of English at Howard University. She serves as director of The Writing Center and is currently a student in the PhD program. Her research interests include early 20 th -century African American literature, archival studies, and composition pedagogy.    Yes, we’ve come a long way, but, as I write in March of 2003, I see that we’ve still got a long way to go, especially if we’re going to exploit the full teaching potential of the Internet. -Teresa Redd Much has changed since Teresa Redd, then a Howard University professor, published these words fifteen years ago in Computers and Composition. Whereas Dr. Redd’s Howard University students and fellow composition professors were limited to accessing the internet primarily through wired connections in dormitories and computer labs, virtually anyone on campus now enjoys hi-speed wifi throughout the campus. Many students and faculty did not yet own home computers in 2003, and few could boast advanced computer skills. Current composition instructors at Howard are, in general, highly computer literate, and the vast majority of our students are high-level digital content consumers, many of them also skilled content creators. Most students own a laptop computer, and many also own tablets and high-performing smart phones. Indeed, it isn’t uncommon to walk into a classroom and see not bright, eager young faces, but students hidden behind rows upon rows of open digital devices. But in many ways, Dr. Redd’s words still apply to the experience of teaching with technology at HBCUs, specifically at Howard. We still have a long way to go before we harness the full potential of digital technology for teaching and learning in composition classrooms.   In the years since its publication, a robust body of research on technology use at HBCUs has joined Dr. Redd’s article, and much of it reiterates challenges that persist. Rather than offer a lengthy recap of those challenges here, I instead examine three “scenes” from my own experiences with using technology in my current roles at Howard: composition instructor, graduate student, and Writing Center director. (The use of “scenes” as an organizational metaphor is adapted from Jacqueline Jones Royster’s “When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own.” Jones explains that the scenes are singular in terms of their being narratives of one individual’s experiences, but they are also plural in that they constitute data that can yield conclusions that are applicable to many.) These experiences illuminate the complicated relationship between students and faculty on the one hand and digital tech on the other. Taken together, the scenes show that while the conversation about technology use at HBCUs may not be an easy one, it remains as necessary now as it was in 2003.   Scene 1: Misadventures in Teaching with Technology When I started teaching my first composition course as a new lecturer at Howard in 2015, I was excited to find that the department required at least one multimodal assignment for all first-year composition courses. With lofty goals in mind, I envisioned and planned a multimedia essay assignment, which tasked my students with developing an-all digital composition that included video, image, sound, and text elements. I’d developed the idea for this assignment after a conversation with a former colleague at Georgia State University who had used a similar video essay effectively in her composition classes. Unfortunately, I soon learned that my goals might have been somewhat ambitious. Several students required more assistance with video editing than I was knowledgeable enough to give; my colleague had assured me that she did not have to teach her students video editing for the assignment, as they relied on existing knowledge and on-campus resources.Not all of my classrooms were equipped with Smart projectors that semester, so I was limited in my ability to work through problems with students in class; my colleague always taught in a room equipped with Smart technology. Most of my students brought their own laptops or tablets to class, but a few of them didn’t own either, and at least one of them vocally bemoaned the possibly of having to spend late nights in the computer lab to complete the assignment; my colleague’s students – their entire freshman class, in fact – had all been assigned iPads by their university. Suffice it to say that I learned quickly how difficult it is to adapt an all-digital assignment from one classroom setting to another, particularly when the one doesn’t have access to the same technological resources as the other. Even in the thick of the digital age, when personal computing devices seem virtually ubiquitous, the issues that Redd raised concerning access and skill level (“the digital divide”) remain relevant for many HBCU composition students.   Scene 2: Digital Humanities…Yes, We Do That Here My role as a doctoral student in the English program affords me yet another perspective on the relationship between technology and learning at Howard. Recently, I was prompted to consider this relationship during a conversation with a fellow graduate student about our research interests. When I mentioned that I’m interested in exploring the digital humanities for both my research and my pedagogy, my classmate’s response was, “Digital humanities? Do we even do that here?” In retrospect, I wish I had prompted her to elaborate on what she obviously perceives to be a disconnect between the program in English at Howard and the digital humanities, but at the time I was too surprised by her response to pursue it further. Later, I tried to reconcile what I know about Howard’s English department with my classmate’s words. I know that in the summer of 2016, the department hosted “Seshat: A Digital Humanities Initiative,” a 2-week program funded by an NEH HBCU Humanities Initiative Grant. The program exposed literary studies scholars to theories, methodologies, and tools related to digital humanities, culminating in scholars’ redesign of four existing humanities courses at Howard University. I know that at least one recent graduate of the doctoral program, Tyechia Lynn Thompson, undertook digital humanities research for her dissertation, an innovative study that used geospatial mapping tools to examine depictions of post-1960’s Paris in the writings of African American authors James Baldwin, James Emanuel, and Jake Lamar. And I know that in 2015, David Green, director of the composition program, implemented a full-scale revision of the first-year writing course sequence, developing courses that emphasize (alongside traditional academic essay-writing) multimodal composition, digital content creation, and web design. These developments suggest that Howard’s department of English has indeed demonstrated some investment into harnessing the potential of the digital humanities for faculty, emerging scholars, and undergraduates.   Scene 3: To Print or Not to Print… As the director of Howard’s Writing Center, I collaborate with graduate and undergraduate student tutors at the beginning of each academic year to review and update our policies and tutorial procedures. One of our long-standing policies, which has persisted after vigorous debate among the tutors and myself, is that we prefer students bring hardcopies of their papers for tutorial sessions. The general consensus among the tutors is that reviewing a printed document during a face-to-face session with a student is more efficient and effective than attempting to conduct a tutorial session while scrolling through a digital document on a computer screen. However, last semester a student took issue with this policy, insisting that students shouldn’t be expected to bring hardcopies of their papers since “nobody prints anything out anymore.” A graduate tutor responded incredulously – surely the student prints essays and papers for her professors? The student insisted that all her assignments were submitted through email or Blackboard. This exchange is unsurprising considering that the young woman, a “digital native,” is accustomed to developing documents that are intended solely for digital consumption. Composing, revising, and sharing documents completely online is now standard practice, and, for her at least, printing paper is beyond passé. The exchange serves as a reminder that in spite of the challenges faced by HBCUs with regard to technology use, the vast majority of our students have wholly adopted the digital as a way of life. It is now up to us – scholars, instructors, departments, institutions – to decide if we will do what is necessary to catch up.               Redd, Teresa M. "‘Tryin to Make a Dolla Outa Fifteen Cent’: Teaching Composition with the Internet at an HBCU." Computers and Composition, vol. 20, no., 2003, pp. 359-373. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own." College Composition and Communication, vol. 47, no. 1, 1996, pp. 29-40. Thompson, Tyechia L. “Mapping City Limits: Post-1960s Paris and the Writings of James Baldwin, James Emanuel, and Jake Lamar.” Howard University, 2016. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. ... View more

A few weeks ago, I posted some tips for fostering reading across the curriculum.  That post recognized that no matter what we do to improve instruction in an integrated reading and writing (IRW) developmental or ALP course, students will need on-going support in reading as they encounter challenging texts in disciplines outside of English.  After writing that post, I took some time to read the latest issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and I found a relevant and (quite frankly) disturbing article by Annie del Principe and Rachel Ihara, “A Long Look at Reading in the Community College: A Longitudinal Analysis of Student Reading Experiences.”  The authors (English professors at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY) interviewed a cohort of students through their reading experiences across multiple semesters at the college.    They state the bottom line early in the article: In brief, we found that by the end of their time in our CC, all of our student subjects had learned the lesson that reading isn’t truly “required” in their classes and that it’s very possible to “get by,” and even succeed, in coursework without doing much, or even any, assigned reading. (183)   The authors recognize that theirs was a small sample and thus conclusions must be drawn carefully; unfortunately, their experience echoes what I have frequently heard from my students.  Students often say they don’t need to read:  in many classes, they are only tested on what is covered in lectures.  When I have tried to make the case that reading ahead of time can help lectures and class activities make more sense (after all, readers build connections and points of knowledge that they can connect to what they hear and do later), students shrug.  They tell me that reading the PowerPoint posted online after class is just as good.   I remember encountering Janet Emig’s “Writing as a Mode of Learning” as a graduate teaching assistant.  It was the first time I had thought about the affordances of writing as a method of learning—not just reporting what had been learned before.  Reading as a mode of learning, however, was a given.  I didn’t need a theoretical account of how deep and extended reading increased vocabulary, content knowledge, critical thinking, or the ability to craft sentences with syntactic complexity and nuance.  Learning by reading seemed self-evident, much as the rationale for integrating reading and writing instruction seems obvious to me.   But perhaps the time for the theoretical rationale has come, as more and more college classrooms appear to be abandoning reading as a mode of learning.  If integrated reading and writing instructors are going to partner with professors across the disciplines to enhance reading practices, we may first need to make the case that reading can and should be an integral part of a student’s learning in the college classroom.  And we must also celebrate and emulate instructors who are helping students read texts (and making the investment in a textbook worthwhile).   One such instructor is my colleague Curtis Morgan, a professor of history.  Morgan could rely solely on lecture (my ESL students have rated him a top guest speaker), but he has chosen to make reading a significant part of the learning in his courses.  Students in his introductory classes write up analyses of documents in their textbook (an exercise which requires reading not only the target document but also related background material in the text).  In addition, they are required to read 500 pages of material that they find on their own, with summaries of 50-page increments to be submitted regularly.  Morgan invites students to “specialize,” using the reading to develop an initial expertise in a particular area of history – thus giving them a stronger base for developing responses in papers and exams (I cannot help but think here of the paradox of the freshman year, where students must be both novices and experts, as detailed by Sommers and Saltz, 2004.  Morgan’s approach helps students navigate that dichotomy).   In more advanced classes (at my institution, these are sophomore level courses), Morgan requires students to present written reports on assigned texts, and he creates what he calls “book clubs” in his classroom to give students a platform for discussion and debate about these readings.  He also assigns a research essay, which of course requires reading.  Many of my developmental, ESL, and ALP writers tell me that an 8-page reading is “too long,” and that they did not read in their high school courses.  When I can point to examples of courses such as Professor Morgan’s, I can show them that reading is not merely one more in a succession of meaningless hoops required for college success; it is a means to learning (and, in some cases, a rush of pleasure in newfound understanding).   The more I think about it, I would say that conspiring with colleagues across the disciplines to make reading meaningful may be the most important professional development for my work as an integrated reading and writing instructor.    And now I need to get back to the stack of articles awaiting me.  There’s still so much to learn.             Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... 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I have always considered myself to be a “professional writing” teacher.   I have, however, almost never taught a course called “professional writing.”   I would argue, though, that in any community partnership course, there is a significant amount of writing that replicates the work of the traditional professional writing course. For instance, through community partnerships over the past year, my students have worked with local Syracuse residents as well recent immigrants to Syracuse. They have corresponded with individuals and students in Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Collectively, they have produced dialogues concerning women’s rights, educational access, and global conflicts. While doing this work, they have also produced the following documents: Business Letters Executive Summaries Strategic Proposals Budget Proposals Grant Proposals Partnership Agreements Power Point Presentations Book Manuscripts Author Permission Letters Workshops The list could go on.   The point is that community partnerships necessarily draw students into the genres which are the typical focus of a professional writing course. Yet to some extent, professional writing courses are considered distinct from the field’s focus on community as well as community literacy. Nor have community writing/partnerships courses readily adopted professional writing as an informing and important source for their work.     My own sense for this seeming divide has to do with the politics associated with each set of classrooms. While community literacy might be critiqued for its noblisse oblige, such courses are often seen as being on a “progressive” side of our field. And while professional writing has deep roots in the non-profit world, I would argue it is too often seen in the service of corporate interests – too often, that is, its emergence in the field is seen as a sign of the corporatization of the university. Each characterization is necessarily a caricature, but one that carries weight in our field. And similar to our current political debate, there seems little space to draw these opposites into a constructive dialogue.   Ultimately, I would argue, this lack of dialogue, this disciplinary divide, hurts how our students understand the possibilities of writing – in all its forms – to inform and enable active public debate focused on real change.   With the hope of enabling conversations that allow greater nuance and alignment across courses, I suggest the following practices:   Archive of Community Writing While community literacy projects often produce quite a bit of writing, this writing also seems to vanish at the end of the term. With that in mind, departments might consider creating a digital archive of student work. Rather than be organized by project (“after-school literacy program”), the work might be divided by professional writing genre (“strategic proposal”). Such an archive has two immediate benefits. First, teachers are able to see the types of common writing that occur across their specific community projects. Second, professional writing teachers will have examples to their students of how “professional writing” can emerge in community projects. And perhaps more importantly, all teachers will begin to see how their work might both intersect and mutually support each other.   Common Project Among Courses One common feature of community projects is that they exist within a particular teacher’s classroom. As a result, most community projects fail to take full advantage of the resources within an entire department. It might be useful, then, to consider how one particular project might be integrated across a series of classrooms, such as a professional writing and advanced literacy course. Elements of the project could be divided among the classes, with several group meetings designed to show how seemingly different writing “genres” and “writing theories” when brought together enable a stronger set of work to be produced. If the first suggestion, the archive, was to highlight to teachers the ways their work might intersect, this suggestion is to help students see how the emphases of their coursework intersects.   Forums of Community “Business Writers” Public events can also be used to work against a perception that professional and community writing are two different enterprises. Invite individuals who do work in community-based issues – such as gentrification, education, and the environment – to share all the ways in which they engage in “public writing.” Here the idea is to show that the work being assigned by teachers has a “real life” purpose that can support students’ civic or communal values. As with the other examples, the goal is to show that what are often seen as oppositional forces within a minor, major, or discipline have common ground that speaks to important public purposes.   Of course, I recognize that in the current political moment, fraught with divisive racist rhetoric and economic disparity, finding common ground between two courses, two elements of a field, might not seem the most important of tasks. Yet if we imagine such work as demonstrating to students how seemingly rigid boundaries can be brought together through nuanced engagement, then, perhaps, they might be able to transfer such work to the civic space, which is clearly in need of such lessons. ... View more

Happy New Semester! I hope you are all ready for the new school term. Today is the first day of classes for me, so I have been busy getting new resources online and revising those that I want to use again. I am teaching four sections of Technical Writing, all completely online. Before I return to the series of posts on digital literacy that I started last month, I want to share the one big new thing I’m trying this semester. Every term, I try to improve everything about my courses. It’s a nice goal, but it’s next to impossible to achieve. With four sections of student to respond to, it’s hard to rethink and rewrite everything at the same time. I certainly want to improve my courses, but I need to be realistic about how I do it. That’s where my idea of one big new thing came from. Starting this semester, I am going to stick to just one change so I can make improvements while still keeping my workload manageable. My one big thing this semester is to change how groups are set up in an effort to improve participation during the term. A big challenge with writing groups in an online course is time management and scheduling. Since there is no class meeting time, students have no shared time slot when they are all available to collaborate. Here’s what usually happens: Student A shares a draft with the group early on the day the project is assigned. Student B shares a draft late in the evening on the day before the project is due. Student C shares a draft just before lunch on the day the project is due. Student D shares her draft a few hours before the project’s midnight submission deadline. With no overlap among their schedules, students have difficulty giving and getting feedback. They need to keep checking back in the course CMS to see if anyone has submitted a draft or left them feedback. I’ve tried different strategies to address the problem. Setting strict deadlines for peer feedback hasn’t worked. Scheduling in extra time to allow for the time management issues hasn’t worked either. No matter what I try, students still work on their own schedules. Worse, students who need extra time, get sick, or have a conflict may not be able to meet the requirements of the stricter schedules or systems. I also tried creating groups that were based on majors. I grouped all the computer science majors together, all the environmentally-focused majors together, and so on. I hoped their shared interests and overlap in other classes would help collaborate. That idea backfired as students dealt with due dates in other classes. When there was a big project due in the senior-level civil engineering course, the civil engineers group couldn’t collaborate successfully. Everyone in the group was burdened in the same way, so there was no one with a light load to help pick up the slack. I have been asking everyone for advice as I’ve tried to improve online group work. In a meeting with colleagues last month, we may have come up with a solution, one that seems so obvious in hindsight. Instead of fighting the underlying challenges that complicate online group work, the solution is to take advantage of them, to turn that constraint into an affordance. Specifically, on this first day of classes, students will complete a survey that tells me about their time management and work preferences. It includes questions and multiple choice answers like these: Which of the following best describes when you like to do work for your classes? I'm an early bird. I am up and working first thing in the morning. I'm a morning person, but I won't be up and working before dawn. I'm a midday person. You'll find me working any time from 10am to 2pm. I'm an afternoon person. I'm likely to work any time from noon to 6pm. I'm an early evening person. You'll find me working from 6pm to 10pm. I'm a late evening person. I do most of my work from 9pm to midnight. I'm a night owl. You'll find me working late into the night and sometimes in the wee hours of the morning. Which scenario best describes how you work or how you prefer to work on projects? I dive in immediately and prefer to finish as early as I can. I hate being rushed. I usually work exactly to the project's schedule. If the schedule allows a week, I work during the whole week. I like to be close to finished a day or so ahead of the due date. I usually wait until work is due. I like the pressure of a deadline. It’s complicated. The way I work depends upon the other things going on at the time (classes, work, student organizations, etc.). As you have probably guessed, the idea is to arrange groups so that the early birds are all together in one group while the night owls are in another group. I expect it to be complicated to arrange, but I hope the similar work preferences will allow students to collaborate more easily. Here’s the explanation that I’m sharing with students: The information you share in this survey will help me set up writing groups, where you will share drafts and give one another feedback. One of the big challenges of writing groups is the different schedules and ways of working we all have. My plan is to create groups of people with similar working patterns, rather than a random mix. For instance, I will make a group of people who prefer to work in the evening. That way, the group members are more likely to be online at the same time. Likewise, I will try to pay attention to how people work, sorting those who like to finish early into a different group from those who work best at the last minute, under the pressure of a deadline. Please know that I am not judging your answers in any way. I don't care how you work. I'm a night owl myself. This system will only work if you answer the questions honestly so that I can setup groups that have a better chance of working together smoothly than a random distribution sorted by the computer. I want to stress that last paragraph to students in particular. This system won’t work if they choose the answers that they THINK a teacher wants to hear instead of giving me honest responses. That’s my one big new thing for this term. I will report on how it works later in the semester. If you have feedback or suggestions, I would love to hear from you in the comments below—and come back next week for the return of my series on digital literacy assignments. Have a great week, everyone!   Photo credit: The Early Birds by Kristin Klein, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license ... View more

On January 15, I attended a celebration of the life and work of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., as I try to do every year. Held in our community center, the event draws a full house of people from the Mendonoma coastal communities, from little ones to oldsters like me, all who want to remember King and to be inspired, again, by his words and deeds. Local supermarkets and bakeries donate food and drink (including a very large birthday cake) to sample as we listen to local musicians, singers, poets, and speakers. This year I was particularly struck by a poet who read a piece called “Strapless Dresses.” In it, she tells about being a clerk in a department store in the South in the days of segregation and struggles against it. In vivid and terse language, she paints a picture of two African Americans who come in to the store, much to the disapproval and disregard of most of the staff. The poet steps up, though, encouraging them to look at dresses and to try them on. This they refused to do, but they did indeed buy one of the dresses, which the poet saw as an act of true courage, one she still remembers well over fifty years later. During a brief break, I walked around the room, looking at photos of King and some of his closest associates and reading passages from his speeches, the words ringing in my ears from memory. But I didn’t need to depend on memory for very long, since one of the presenters, Peggy Berryhill, founder of the Native Media Resource Center and General Manager of our local public radio station (KGUA), spoke about her own connection to King and his legacy, as well as her work in support of indigenous people and languages, racial harmony, and cross-cultural understanding. More to the point, she introduced us to drummer, singer, activist, and artist Sheila E. and her August 2017 song/video “Funky National Anthem: Message 2 America,” which was filmed in San Francisco’s Mission District and directed by her brother. According to Gail Mitchell in Billboard, Sheila E. was granted the right to use King’s likeness and his words in the video, along with those of other past leaders. In Sheila E’s words, We are living within a web of deceit and lies, but the essence of America still remains… It’s time to take a stand for the freedom we speak of, for all Americans and the world. A time to embrace those ideas and words that have come from great voices of guidance to us in other turbulent times. Voices of our past, which can still lead us to a better future. Then we watched the video, most of us rising to our feet as the momentum built, as we were carried along by words and images that took us back fifty years to King’s time—and pulled us forward to work that must be done today. It was one of those moments of group solidarity that people experience in communities all the time, but what struck me so powerfully was the thoroughly multimodal nature of the experience: the video with images and music and voices; the room we were in with posters, quotations, flyers, challenges ranging around the walls; and our own voices joining in with those in the video. So, two points to make here: first, if you haven’t seen "Funky National Anthem," do so right now! But second, think of this performance and think again of why our students want to create such multimodal projects; why they not only want but demand to develop and produce them: because they reach audiences in ways that go so far beyond what a traditional print text can do. Perhaps most important, such multimodal productions can feature real people’s spoken voices, in all their richness and diversity, along with images that remain in viewers’ minds and memories for a very long time, and that can bring events from fifty years ago alive again to instruct, challenge, and inspire us. Credit: Pixabay Image 516061 by jensjunge, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

As a new year and a new term begin, it’s time to look at the basic terminology of argumentation and how it relates to today’s headlines. A claim is a statement that your argument supports—the thesis statement of your argumentative essay. A claim of fact drawn from the headlines may or may not need to be supported. The statement that a bomb cyclone hit the Eastern coast of the United States on January 4, 2018, does not need to be proven. It is simply a fact verifiable by a number of different sources, although you might need to define the key term “bomb cyclone.” A claim worded as though it is a fact may need proof if it is open to interpretation or can be verified only at some point in the future: Flood damage along the East Coast from the high tides of January 4, 2018, will run into the millions. A claim of value goes beyond fact to make a statement of relative worth. Because estimation of worth is subjective, a claim of value may be relatively more difficult to defend. Claims of value most often deal with aesthetics or morality. The thesis of a movie or book review, for example, is a claim of value: Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a disappointment to some long-term fans. Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour is Oscar worthy. Other judgmental statements are also claims of value: Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury is an unbiased report of what those inside the White House think of President Trump. Fire and Fury is a self-serving and unsupported attack on the Trump presidency. A claim of policy is future oriented. It states what should or should not be done. It is the most difficult thesis to support because it requires proving that a problem exists and that a proposed solution is a feasible and desirable solution to the problem. President Trump should be impeached for obstruction of justice. Robert Mueller should be fired as special counsel to the investigation of Russian interference into the 2016 US presidential election. When you seek support for your argumentative claim, you will most often be looking for a blend of factual support, which appeals to an audience’s reason, and appeal to needs and values, which appeals to the audience’s emotions. The more controversial the issue at hand, the harder to overcome a reader or hearer’s emotional investment in the matter. Over the last two years, we have realized as never before the extent to which the “news” has become biased. News networks that are on the air twenty-four hours a day no longer even try to clarify the line between reporting the news and commenting on it. Add to that the fact that the “news” on our Facebook feed during the campaign was being influenced by Russia, and we have to be more cautious than ever about what sources we trust for reliable information. We also must be aware of what assumptions underlie our arguments. We cannot construct an effective argument if we cannot understand our own biases and the biases of those with whom we disagree. Abortion is such a very difficult issue to discuss because those who believe a child is a human being from conception may be trying to talk or write to those who do not define a fetus in the same way. Those who voted for Trump primarily because of his ability to influence Supreme Court decisions for decades, including those regarding abortion, were willing to dismiss what others saw as disqualifying flaws in their candidate. The basic question that can help a writer or speaker get to the heart of underlying assumptions is, what do I have to believe in order to accept that claim? What do I assume about the electoral process or same-sex marriage or the legalization of marijuana that shapes my argument? What does my opponent believe? Claim, support, assumption—these are the elements that shape all arguments and that will be our means of approaching the issues that appear daily in the local, national, and international news. Image Source: "Newspapers B&W (4)" by Jon S on Flickr 8/11/11 via Creative Commons 2.0 license. ... View more

As I gear up for the new semester, I’m finalizing my course syllabus, and again, as before every semester, I find myself curious about the best strategies to balance my desires to convey important information to my students and to create an engaging document that students will read. This school year, I’ve focused on two components of the syllabus: the content/structure of the syllabus and the use of the syllabus after the first day of class. Inspired by strategies David Gooblar presents in “Your Syllabus Doesn’t Have to Look Like a Contract,” I carefully consider the visual choices I make in presenting syllabus content. Depending on the course, I model the writing and structure of documents that I expect my students to create throughout the semester. Then, I provide other necessary course information. In my fiction workshop I ask my students to write letters responding to their peers’ work as well as their own, and so my syllabus for the course begins with a letter from me to my students. In the brief letter, I outline the three units of the course, provide an overview of our workshop structure, and make the final portfolio requirement clear. On the other hand, in my professional writing course, my students create professional documents, from emails to grant proposals to memos, and so I open the syllabus with a memo to my students. The memo format models the genre conventions of memo writing, and it clearly and succinctly conveys introductory information, including course structure, contact information, and office hours. Many of my students have been under the impression that the syllabus is a single-use document, forgotten or discarded after the first day of class. To counter this, I make clear, both verbally and in writing, my expectation that the syllabus be a guiding document—a road map—to follow throughout the semester. I ask my students to bring their copies of the syllabus to each class and each class I return to it. Specifically, I speak to the course goals and student learning outcomes, sections I include in every syllabus I write, regardless of course. (Many instructors, I’m sure, are required to include similar sections.) I find each is useful in helping students see the expectations I have for their learning and the tangible work we will do to achieve those expectations. For example, when introducing or reminding my fiction students of their reading responses, I’ll ask them to return to the syllabus with me and recall the established goal of “understand[ing] primary and advanced tools of engaging creative writing.” Then I guide them to the corresponding learning outcome: “craft thoughtful responses to assigned readings, identifying the tools used in each.” I find this practice useful near the end of the class when I ask students to review what they’ve learned and I remind them about their homework. I find the regular use of the syllabus serves several purposes. When I encourage students to use the syllabus as a functioning, working document in class, I find they turn to the syllabus for questions they might have about the course—my office hours, major assignment deadlines, etc.—before asking me. Students also return to the letter and the memo when looking for examples of document structure and design. Finally, since we continue to use the syllabus and reiterate course goals throughout the semester, when I ask students to identify what they’ve learned at the end of the course, they are able to, with specific examples. With these approaches to the syllabus, it lives throughout the semester as useful and important as it was on the first day of class. ... View more

This past October, I travelled to Boulder, Colorado for the Conference on Community Writing (CCW). The tone at the conference was celebratory, seeming to announce that community writing/partnership practices had “arrived” as an important element in Composition and Rhetoric programs. Indeed, during the conference, there were numerous panels where speakers discussed how they had transformed their upper division writing courses into sites of community inquiry and investigation.   I wondered, however, what about the community writing/partnership work being done in First-Year writing? Does “community” only belong in the upper division? Placed within a special niche separate from our historical role in supporting marginalized/non-traditional students?   I would argue just the opposite.   I have always believed that “community” should be a central focus in any required freshman writing course. One of the central elements of a community writing course is an investigation of how ‘academic’ and ‘everyday’ knowledges both rely upon argumentation, sources, and persuasion. Community writing focused courses enable students to understand the affordances (and limitations) of each individually, and ask them to find ways the two can be brought together for greater insight and effect.   Moreover, in such a classroom, students come to understand academic knowledge itself as a community literacy. That is, academic writing is the name of a particular community literacy, with a history, a set of practices, and participants. By putting academic and everyday communities into dialogue within a classroom, students learn, hopefully, the power of such communities when joined together. And in the process, students come to understand the potential value of their home community’s literacies in their own college education.   Yet too often, students are immediately asked to imagine themselves as “in the academy,” either entering with a deficit and needing ‘skills’ or being asked to take on the role of a historian or other discipline-specific identity. In both situations, their home literacies and knowledges are too often framed as unimportant for the educational journey that lies ahead. And in such scenarios, it is too often the literacies of marginalized students, from differing heritages and legal statuses, that are ushered out of the classroom. Too often, that is, the dismissal of community leads to a re-instantiation of standards which benefit white, middle-class students. If we want to remain true to the legacy of open access education, of advocating for all literacies and languages, then I would argue that freshman writing is one of the most important places in which to invest in a community literacy/partnership framework. And I would further argue that such an investment does not necessarily mean the creation of actual community partnerships – work which while important is not always possible given the often burdensome-workload placed on first year teachers.   As one way to begin such work in our classrooms, I might suggest the following:   Assign students a short essay where they discuss the intellectuals in their own communities. Ask them to not just describe the individuals, but to describe these individuals’ sense of how the world works – what justice means to them, why there is injustice, how their community attempts to foster equality. Consider how these essays might provide some key terms from which to understand subsequent academic readings. After reading a scholarly essay, ask the students to identify the key research questions addressed. Break them into small groups focused on answering how those questions would change if located in their home communities. Ask them to revise the research questions accordingly. Use these questions to enable students to see how “community-based research” might provide a way to value academic-based research. Before writing an academic response to an assigned scholarly essay, ask students to imagine themselves as someone from their community who they consider to be an “intellectual.” Have them write a short essay about how this person might respond to both the writing and content of the essay. Use these essays to discuss any limitations in the academic essay, particularly in how it imagines its reader as well as the “community” to which it is speaking. What might a writing that brings these two community insights together look like?   Clearly these examples are not exhaustive. (See Writing Communities for other such assignments). And without too much effort, a community partnership could be embedded within each assignment. For instance, a meeting might occur in a neighborhood-location where community intellectuals engage with students on a topic previously studied through an academic essay.   The most important point is that through investigating the relationship between community and academic practices, students are simultaneously thinking about how knowledge is produced in each community, how “facts” are deployed to convince their specific audiences, and why certain ways of speaking are being used. In short, students are learning about the nature of research communities and what it means to join in their work. Which is, to my thinking, one of the primary goals of freshman writing.   It is time, therefore, to see community literacy/partnership as existing within (and supporting) the historical legacy and current ambitions of freshman writing courses. Such an integration of insights and efforts would truly be a cause for celebration. ... View more

Global Partnerships, Local Acts During the past year, my students have worked with students and activists in the Middle East/North African region. For many of them, the act of corresponding and writing with students from this region has enabled them to hear from communities at the center of today’s public debate, such as Syrian refugees. As a result, the student writing for my classes has demonstrated a larger global framework through which they now understand public rhetoric about this region and, often, has produced personal connections with individuals from that region that humanize the harshness of our current public rhetoric.   Yet global partnerships are more than just student interactions. Such partnerships are also structures designed to provide a platform for teachers, students, institutions, and communities to build a transnational space for dialogue.  In the final post for the year, I want to offer three tactics to insure any such partnership can reach its potential, as well as survive challenges emerging from the current political context.   Participant Safety In a global partnership, the political context of public speech will necessarily be fraught. This is particularly true when there is actual violence occurring amongst the nations in which the project is situated. In such an environment, there needs to be increased awareness of how participation in a project is not an “innocent act.” Indeed, participating in a project located within Trump’s United States will necessarily impact how any dialogue is understood, no matter how seemingly innocuous.   Given this situation, there has to be a clear understanding among the partners on how student privacy/anonymity can be ensured. This might mean that students are provided with pseudonyms when they interact online; it might mean that certain types of private/personal information are placed “off-limit” in “student-to-student” conversations. There will also need to be regular dialogue with the global partner to understand how the public framing of student participation in the project might differ within each national context. While we might frame a discussion around “human rights” in the United States, that same discussion might be framed differently within the partner’s national context. Which is to say, the partnership must be consistently aware of how differing national rhetorical contexts must be navigated to ensure the safety of participants and the continued possibility of dialogue.   Institutional Awareness Given the current political context, global partnerships need to be fully discussed across a set of university sites, including departmental, collegial, and, possibly, university-wide offices. There are several reasons for this discussion. First, in my experience, global partnerships necessarily are perceived as “university projects.” It could well be that the administrative figures above your specific global partners reach out to your university about a certain issue, believing it to be the appropriate response. For this reason, it is best that your university understands both your partnerships and the structures you have put in place for its success. This will enable productive dialogues with your university. Second, given the current political context where publicly engaged programs are facing political attack, you want your university to have overtly or tacitly approved your partnership so you have a backstop to any seemingly random criticism. Essentially, then, the more a partnership is understood and supported by your university/college, the better.   Circulation Protocols All partnerships produce materials that speak to the work done. Often these partnerships also have the goal of circulating these materials publicly. In a global partnership, it is important to have in place protocols which have layers of approval – from the author, to the partners, to perhaps partnering organizations. (It might also be important to have policies on how authors will “mask” elements of their story for anonymity.) In addition, any discussion with the authors will need to be overt about where their writing will intentionally circulate (based on the partnership plan) as well as how it might circulate unintentionally (through social media). Such discussion also have to occur with partnering organizations, who will need to decide how/if to publicize their participation across printed/digital products which emerge from the project. And unlike other projects where students might be given a strong editorial role in any publications (for experience, etc.), here such decisions should be made by those partners responsible for the project. This is a case where faculty expertise needs to outweigh student learning.   I recognize that, to some extent, the tone of this post seems ominous. Given such a tone, who would ever want to initiate such global partnerships? One response would be that such a short post is unable to capture the excitement and interest students feel about such opportunities. (See earlier blog posts.) Yet perhaps a more important response speaks to the current political moment. At a time when public rhetoric is so divisive, so bigoted toward different Middle Eastern and North African cultures, I believe it is morally and ethically necessary to create partnerships which can provide opportunities for transnational dialogues, premised on trust and pointed towards greater understanding. If we truly believe in the public power of writing and rhetoric, then we have no other choice. ... View more

Everyone has a secret vice, I suppose, and mine is reading online newspapers like Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education—as in multiple times every day. I admit that there is something compulsive about the matter, something that goes beyond the unquestionable usefulness of such reading for someone who is both a university professor and a cultural semiotician, something, I'm afraid, that is akin to the all-too-human attraction to things like train wrecks. This might surprise anyone who does not read these news sources: after all, wouldn't one expect there to be nothing but a kind of staid blandness to higher education reporting? Tedium, not harum-scarum, would seem to be the order of the day on such sites. But no, in these days when signs of the culture wars are to be found everywhere in American society, even the higher-ed news beat is not immune to the kind of squabbling and trolling that defaces so much of the Internet. The situation has gotten so bad that the editors of The Chronicle of Higher Education have discontinued the comments section for most of its news stories, while Inside Higher Ed has polled its readers as to whether it should do the same. So far, IHE has decided to continue with posting reader comments (though it just shut down the comments section responding to an article on a recent controversy at Texas State University), and although I think it would be better for the overall blood pressure of American academe to just scrap the comments section altogether, on balance I hope that that doesn't happen. Here's why. Because for the purposes of cultural semiotics, the comments sections on the Internet, no matter where you find them, offer invaluable insights into what is really going on in this country. Unlike formal surveys or polls—which, though they claim scientific precision, can never get around the fact that people, quite simply, often lie to pollsters and other inquisitors—online comments, commonly posted in anonymity, reveal what their authors really think. It isn't pretty, and it can make your blood boil, but it can get you a lot closer to the truth than, say, all those surveys that virtually put Hillary Clinton in the White House until the votes were actually counted. Among the many things that the comments on IHE can tell us is that the days when we could assume that what we do on our university campuses stays on our university campuses are over. Thanks to the Internet, the whole world is watching, and, what is more, sharing what it sees. This matters a great deal, because even though the sorts of things that make headline news represent only a very small fraction of the daily life of the aggregated Universitas Americus, these things are magnified exponentially by the way that social media work. Every time a university student, or professor, says something that causes a commotion due to an inadequate definition of the speaker's terms, that statement will not only be misconstrued, it will become the representative face of American academia as a whole—which goes a long way towards explaining the declining levels of trust in higher education today that are now being widely reported. This may not be fair, but all you have to do is read the comments sections when these sorts of stories break, and it will be painfully clear that this is what happens when words that mean one thing in the context of the discourse of cultural studies mean quite something else in ordinary usage. Linguistically speaking, what is going on is similar to the days of deconstructive paleonymy:  that is, when Derrida and DeMan (et al.) took common words like "writing" and "allegory" and employed them with significantly different, and newly coined, meanings. This caused a lot of confusion (as, for example, when Derrida asserted in Of Grammatology, that, historically speaking, "writing" is prior to "speech"), but the confusion was confined to the world of literary theorists and critics, causing nary a stir in the world at large. But it is quite a different matter when words that are already loaded with socially explosive potential in their ordinary sense are injected into the World Wide Web in their paleonymic one. Another part of the problem lies in the nature of the social network itself. From Facebook posts that their writers assume are private (when they aren't), to Twitter blasts (which are character-limited and thus rife with linguistic imprecision), the medium is indeed the message. Assuming an audience of like-minded readers, posters to social media often employ a kind of in-group shorthand, which can be woefully misunderstood when read by anyone who isn't in the silo. So when the silo walls are as porous as the Internet can make them, the need for carefully worded and explained communications becomes all the more necessary. This could lead to lecture-like, rather boring online communication, but I think that this would be a case of boredom perpetrated in a good cause. The culture wars are messy enough as they are: those of us in cultural studies can help by being as linguistically precise, and transparent, as we can. ... View more

Students came into class today on fire about the latest news of powerful men who have been fired for sexually predatory behaviors. Part of the conversational aftermath of the #metoo movement is the reminder that these abuses don’t just happen in Hollywood, journalism, or politics. This abuse happens to people who have far less power, who may have nothing to gain – and perhaps a lot to lose – by outing a manager at a fast food job they need, or a predatory president in small business that might contribute meaningfully to the local economy.  Of course, that default setting to “silence” is one way a “system of privilege” works.   My students have been analyzing the essay “What is a ‘System of Privilege’?’” by Allan G. Johnson. Johnson’s tightly written text anchors the chapter on sociological readings my co-author Stuart Greene and I included in the 4th edition of From Inquiry to Academic Writing.  Because of the before-class chatter about predatory behavior, I led the students in a visual exercise about gender and privilege that is not original to me, but one I recommend. I wrote on the board: “What do you do every day to protect yourself from sexual assault?" I drew two columns, one for men, and one for women. I called on the men first.  “Uhhhhh….”  Awkward silence. Then laughter. A student ran his fingers through his hair in thoughtful embarrassment and said, “Uh — I keep my pants up? And I try to just … be aware?” That elicited some laughter, but by this point the women were on the edge of their seats, hands shooting up.   What followed was an avalanche of strategies, tactics, and survival skills that are second-nature to women socialized in U.S. culture. As my handwriting reveals, I could hardly write fast enough to keep up with the torrent of routine behaviors women use to keep themselves safe, from walking in darkened parking lots with “Wolverine keys” at the ready, to buddy systems to watch drinks and get home safely, to a range of small weapons tucked into purses. The air was charged. Women were angry, but also seemed vindicated to share this anger.   I made room for some silence as we looked at the evidence on the board before asking: “So, what do we make of this?”  One person immediately said: “That is privilege. Some people never have to think about sexual violence. Other people have to think about it all the time.”  Some of the men talked about how their female friends frequently ask them to serve as their “bodyguards” at concerts or at bars. Other men nodded, one noting, “Even though I’m smaller than some of my female friends, they still see me as their protector. I don’t know how to feel about that.”   We dove into Johnson’s essay, then, and students made connections to insights by Jean Kilbourne on “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence,” and the lively analysis by Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden of alternatives to toxic masculinity in animated films in the essay, “Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar.”   With a little prompting, students could draw out intersectional insights that unpacked these simple categories of “male” and “female” behavior. As Traci Gardner reminds us in her powerful post “Who Counts When We Talk about Sexual Harassment?” repeating simplistic gender binaries erases the experiences of trans* and gender-nonconforming people, as well as sexual violence experienced by men. Further, an intersectional analysis reminds us that men of color receive fear responses that are often heightened, as the terrible record of police violence reminds us. Male students let down their guard as they revealed their hurt feelings when women cross the street to avoid them, or pull their purses close when they pass, or assume they are “players.” Privilege might empower some, but it warps the human experience of all.   At the end of class, dozens of students spontaneously lined up to take photos of the board to share on social media. Their words are now part of the cultural conversation.  #StudentsToo.   Photo Credit: April Lidinsky ... View more

  Today's featured guest blogger is Colleen Kolba, Digital Teaching Fellow at University of South Florida  I expected the worst during finals week my first year as a teacher: a huge stack of papers to grade, frustration over revision advice not taken, late nights to meet grade submission deadlines. While I certainly had a lot to grade, what I really struggled with was unexpected: boredom at the conformity of my students’ work. Their writing was polished and it was evident that their skills had improved over the semester. But the writing lacked energy, originality, and their own voices. I found myself wondering what they had really learned.   In preparation for the next semester, I re-examined how the course learning goals might still be met while allowing students to present their learning in a more individual and authentic way. If students could tell me how they would best be able to present their learning, then maybe they would engage with the final project with more investment. And when students are invested, they spend more time, produce higher quality work, and engage in the work more deeply.   Enter, the “pitch your own final” final exam. A final exam designed to give students agency over their own learning. What I’ve detailed below is how I present Pitch Your Own Final in my Introduction to Literature course (a writing-intensive general education class offered at my university), although different iterations of this same final can be applied to courses throughout the English discipline. How it works:    A month before the end of the semester, I introduce the final exam. The guidelines are as frustratingly open-ended as they come: “Engage with at least one course concept in a new way to demonstrate what you’ve learned in this class.”   It’s important to note that I’ve scaffolded this kind of project into my course. Throughout the semester, my students have been given a little more agency over each assignment that they complete, in order to prepare for an almost instruction-less final.   The class is usually in a mild uproar at this final project. They ask question after question to try and get me to tell them what I want. I ask them to tell me what I want. This makes them furious. They beg for examples. I learned early with this kind of project to not give them examples (a practice I otherwise offer in my class) because what many produce will be a near copy of that example. I ask them to trust me, as they’ve done all semester, that they’ll get much more out of the project if they’re in control.   Students then develop pitches for their final projects. This is a critical step. It allows me the opportunity to give students feedback about their initial direction. I can jump in early to make sure students are either doing enough work for a final project or not too much work (I’ve had students pitch me ideas that would turn into a book if executed as they describe). What I usually receive is a mix of analytical and creative work, synthesized together to demonstrate the student’s evolved understanding of what literature is.   On the last day of the semester, students present a portion of their work to the class, and the results are diverse and astounding. I’ve had students examine literary translation through dance choreography, create video games, and one even live-coded music. They’re invested in the work because they’re allowed to take what they’ve learned and connect it to a mode that they already know (either in the form of their major, hobbies, or a medium they’re familiar with). Many, as they present, tell the class that they discovered that they knew much more about literature than they thought and that it relates to their own interests in relevant and unexpected ways.    I step out of the classroom that day with arms full of large, weird textual/visual/analytical projects and an inbox full of links that will lead me to a new and surprising project and perspective. I’m looking forward to grading, at this point, because with each new project, I get insight into a completely new, non-conforming perspective.   Quick end note: As you can imagine, I’ve implemented this type of final in courses in which I’ve had the freedom and luxury to design the class myself. While I’ve used this final to meet departmental and university-level learning outcome requirements, I acknowledge that assigning a final exam like this is a luxury afforded to those with complete creative teaching control. ... View more

When Things Fall Apart – But the Work Must Continue When the semester began, my students were going to work with a colleague of mine in the Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) region on a project to support local schools combatting ISIS recruitment efforts. The same political turmoil which would allow such ISIS recruitment, however, ultimately pulled the project under and, more tragically, led to my partner and friend being the object of political persecution. In response, the project had to shift to working with another set of schools, also in the MENA region, where a discussion was held on human, political, and gender rights.   This reframed project then encountered complications locally in Syracuse. The project had intended for about eight high school students at a local community center to join the emerging discussion about human rights. Instead, almost twenty students from all ages joined. This provided more input and interaction, but also changed the work my students would be undertaking at the center, and significantly altered the planned discussion with the MENA students.   All this affected students’ individual and group work. Our imagined “prompt” group, for instance, had been assigned the task of developing discussion questions for all the partners. Given the disruptions, they had to create questions for a different type of audience than initially imagined. And, once younger students in Syracuse joined, prompts had to be replaced with more activity-based work. Mid-way through the course, then, their group mission shifted significantly, as did that of each working group in class, in response to every transformation of the process.   Given this experience both in the current project and in projects past, I have come to believe that the key to any assessment of a community project is to embed it not in the successes of the partnerships, but in moments of struggle and collapse. Not only are such moments more common in any community effort, but they also ask the students to place themselves in the work of praxis – connecting theory and strategy to produce a desired goal. I always tell my students the moments of disruption/change are the “teachable moments.” My assessment of their work, then, focuses in on how their individual and group praxis enabled the project to move forward. And as a class, we’ll produce a set of materials and discussions to gauge this aspect of our work.   What is Community? How did you help to create/sustain it? At the outset of the term, the students read theoretical works about how communities emerge and gain power, and historical pieces about the specific communities/regions in which they would be working. For one of their final assignments, students test how these theories stood up against the community work they undertook this term. How did the difficult daily work of our project enable them to develop their own theories of what makes communities emerge or fall apart?   I am also asking them to generate a portfolio demonstrating the concrete work they did to support the community conversation. This might be emails to other students, drafts of prompts, discarded website projects, etc. The goal is to create a map of their involvement and the particular strategy that emerged for them and for their group’s project. Here the question is not so much a theoretical “What is community?” but an organizational question of “How is community created?” Students will write a short essay describing their emerging sense of community organizing.   How did we work together? Our work occurred as a collective that attempted to move toward the same goal. During our final class, my hope is to begin with the “strategic maps” created by students to retell the history of their work, referring to how our theoretical understanding was altered by experience. Specifically, the students will have to collectively consider how our original goals were tempered: What can we reasonably have expected individual students or groups to have completed? What might we have done differently? This will lead to the creation of a “collective rubric” on which individual/group products can be understood. The goal here is to show that in such work, assessment is about how to understand not only what happened but what needs to happen next.   How do we value the work? Hopefully through the work of the class and these final assignments, students have come to understand that they are being assessed for their ability to theorize and strategize towards a collective goal within a dynamic environment. Here the “point” is not so much being “correct,” but working through specific concrete issues with tactical moves and conceptual continuity. It is the overcoming, not the denial of obstacles and set-backs, that will ultimately earn them the “A.”   In this way, a student that can theorize about community, but cannot document the specific tasks they took to actually instantiate or rebuild that community, would not receive an “A.” Nor would the student who can list multiple tasks, but has no conception on why they were done. It is the student who can weave both together, who has learned to work through disruption to enable continued progress, that has truly understood the nature of praxis in any community project.   Final Note: The Community Response# In the vast majority of such projects, I invite the community partners to attend final class discussions about problems faced, work achieved, and next steps. The global nature of this project made that difficult, to say the least. In my next and last post of the year, I will talk about strategies for community input within a global context. ... View more