Toward Antiracist First-Year Composition Goals

We are finally ready to offer the FYC goals statement that my colleagues and I worked on. If you are unfamiliar with the history of how this document came to be, you can read about it in my past blog posts on the subject: "Why I Left The CWPA (Council of Writing Program Administrators)," Apr 18,…Toward …

What is a labor-based grading system and how will it produce a final course grade in a writing course?

This is a series of blogposts meant for students who are in courses using grading contracts of some kind to determine their final course grades, or those who just want to understand better what grades are, what they do in classrooms, and how they effect learning. This is the fourth post in a series of five blogposts meant to address…What …

Audience Created

The concept of audience is a key composition concept. I love the series of Lunsford & Ede articles on audience and have been known to teach them as an example of how a concept in the field keeps being revised and re-examined. I think it’s time to re-look at “audience” again. Lundsford & Ede’s concept …

Use of Screencasts for Providing Feedback

The benefits of screencast to provide feedback, I have found, has been a real learning experience during the covid teaching experience. Scholars of writing pedagogy have long advocated that we should rethink how we provide feedback during writing activities. Such methods, Anson, Dannels, and Laboy (2016) found, "allow students to perceive an individualized instructional process …

Imagining Possibilities for Asynchronous Discussions: Multimodal Galleries

While not all aspects of the shift to online and hybrid instruction have been smooth—and many will be jettisoned or revamped significantly in future semesters—I have found one unexpected boon in the process: new possibilities for asynchronous discussions. I had taught composition online prior to the onset of the pandemic, but in 2020 I shifted my…Imagining …

Supporting Educational Equity

What role could course materials play in supporting more equitable learning environments? We sat down with Ann Shin, Norton’s editorial director for educational publishing, to discuss an ongoing initiative to create inclusive and equity-minded course materials. Ann ShinImage Credit: Justine Knight Photography First off, could you tell us a bit about your role at Norton?…Supporting …

Thesis-Driven Versus Inquiry-Driven Assignments

Does the strong emphasis on the thesis/support model in our schools have something to do with the polarization of our society? In my previous post I described a “Survey of Opinion” assignment in which I asked students to find three op-eds taking different positions on an issue they were interested in and analyze the way …

Multimodal Mondays: Foundations of Non-Linear Writing

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too…Multimodal …

Calm and Compassionate Online Teaching: Q&A with Shelley Rodrigo

Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo has been teaching online for more than 20 years. She has also developed and administered an online writing program and supported instructors as an instructional technologist. Shelley is the interim director of the writing program; associate professor in the rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of English (RCTE); and associate writing specialist (continuing …

Infographics to Support Writing Development Within Process-based Writing Pedagogy

Undraa Maamuujav, Jenell Krishnan, & Penelope Collins Infographics are visual representations designed to present information, data, and knowledge quickly and clearly (Krauss, 2012). A writing curriculum that explicitly teaches writers how to develop infographics as an authentic method of planning their ideas and communicating them to an intended audience may hold unique affordances for their…Infographics …