Writing Assignments That Matter

1. CREATE! Writing Assignments That Matter

2. Deep in the bowels of Composition National Headquarters… a CONSPIRACY is hatched!!! No! OMG… I knew it !!! Our worst fears are true… a statement of LEARNING OUTCOMES!!!

3. But do we fear the CWPA outcomes statement for FYC because it represents limits on our creativity and freedom…. Or because it calls for more creativity and freedom than we’re prepared to give? That’s a rhetorical question! Well, I haven’t actually seen the statement... I am a very creative person!

4. The OS aims to “describe the common knowledge, skills, and attitudes sought by first-year composition programs in American postsecondary education.” What is the CWPA OS anyway? Told you! What does the OS really ask from faculty? It’s like 1984 !!! The OS asks that FYC be designed so that students “write in multiple genres…use a variety of technologies to reach a range of audiences… use electronic environments for reviewing and sharing texts… locate research material in informal electronic environments....”

5. The digital composing plank of the OS is being updated and revised. A new draft will be released in July 2013 at the CWPA Institute in Savannah. wpacouncil.org Digital composing is by far the newest plank in the OS and already the most outdated!!! That’s in Georgia! They’re getting closer! The Common Core outcomes are more recent and specific, asking K-12 students to use “the Internet to produce, publish and update individual or shared writing products [and] make strategic use of digital media in presentations to enhance understanding of findings.” corestandards.org

6. Today,we’ll brainstorm creative assignment design in relation to the existing CWPA OS and beyond…. Can I ask a serious question? I didn’t see anything about multilingual writers in the OS or CC… Not everyone is so fortunate! Lots of FYC faculty have classes full of linguistically impoverished persons who only write English! Yeah, 30 percent of my students are multilingual. Yep, the OS is imperfect and incomplete. Can YOU design assignments to feature the unique abilities of multilingual learners?

7. There are many demands on our creativity. Calling encounters with primary evidence“the central tenet of intellectual life at Emory,” the campus QEP proposal challenges faculty across the curriculum, including in the first year, to frame “first-hand encounters with primary evidence” through such means as “performance, experiment, interview, or the examination of original texts, manuscripts, art works, historical documents, or fossils.” What about civic engagement? Who are the multiple audiences the OS refers to? Will your students’ writing circulate to readers beyond the class? How?

8. Three challenges for FYC syllabi ASSIGNMENTS THAT MATTER!!!

9. 1st Challenge: PRIMARY EVIDENCE • Discriminate between primary evidence and • secondary interpretive material. • 2. Identify, locate, and analyze primary evidence across several branches of the arts and sciences. • 3. Become literate in quantitative and • qualitative methods. adapted from Emory QEP proposal

10. 1st Challenge: PRIMARY EVIDENCE “Citizen Science” has become synonymous with the crowdsourcing of unpaid labor for big data, as at scistarter.com But is there a real citizen science out there? Can your class scaffold legitimate, modest, yet originalcontributions to academic discourse?

11. 5 minutes. In your small group, choose a team name and scribe. Comprehensively list diverse ways actual scholars outside of literary study make original contributions to scholarly knowledge. Use the Twitter feed to make comments and ask questions across groups and rooms. Hint: many real scholarly aims are modest. Much useful scholarship doesn’t depend on accepting the author’s analysis. 1st Challenge: PRIMARY EVIDENCE 2 minutes. By yourself, brainstorm how you might scaffold one or two of these ways of making a legitimate modest contribution to a scholarly discourse into a 101 FYC assignment sequence. How will students know they are not duplicating someone else’s work? 5 minutes. Present your ideas to your small group in less than 30 seconds. Record the group’s favorite ideas in your section of the Google doc. Brief notations for future expansion are ok. 1 minute. Pick 1 person from your group to present 1 idea to the room. That person will have 60 seconds to choose an image and compose a five-word presentation, eg with a pic of a person in business wear on a bike: “Emory. Unmotorized Commute. Incentives. Survey.” It’s ok to browse syllabi on the internet.

12. 3 minutes. In small groups, create a list of the not-so-obviously “literary” texts that active literature and cultural studies scholars might work with (in, for instance, Custerology, or disability studies). 1st Challenge: PRIMARY EVIDENCE 2 minutes. In small groups, list ways other than close or theorized reading that LCS scholars contribute to scholarship. 2 minutes. On your own, brainstorm at least one assignment sequence for 181/110 that scaffolds an authentic scholarly contribution to LCS. 5 minutes. Present your ideas to your small group in less than 30 seconds. Record the group’s favorite ideas. When using “literature” as a theme for FYC you might want to watch out for: Relying on just one or two LCS evidentiary modes, particularly close reading; devoting too much class time to discussion of readings; overly familiar and repetitive assignments; framing the objects of analysis more narrowly than working LCS professionals; failing to provide students the opportunity to produce usable scholarship. Class time recovered from discussion of readings and devoted to studio research & writing can make everyone happier about the class, including you!

13. SCAVENGER HUNT!!! Everyone in the top 2 groups wins a $50 certificate

14. 2. NEW MEDIA & DIGITAL PUBLISHING “Publishing requires deep consideration of audience, purpose, structure, text features, and format. Whether text blogging via WordPress, photo blogging via tumblr or Instagram, or video blogging through Vimeo or YouTube, the Common Core demand for students to actually publish their writing is a significant leap.” .--edudemic.com/ 2012/09/18

15. 5 minutes. In your small group, list some ways digital publication can be integrated into FYC, using separate lists for 101 and 110/181. Feel free to use a search engine, linking back to your sources. 2. NEW MEDIA & DIGITAL PUBLISHING 3 minutes. Brainstorm two assignment sequences, one for 101 and another for 110 or 181. Both should combine digital publication with an opportunity for students to make an authentic scholarly contribution. If publishing is sharing, with whom exactly will your students be sharing? 10 minutes. Share your ideas. Brainstorm how these assignments can be revised to more effectively feature the unique abilities of multilingual students to make authentic contributions to scholarly discourse. Briefly record the group’s favorites for later expansion. Link to sources, where available. Select 1 person to make a 60-second presentation on a sequence for 101 and another to present an idea for 110/181. 3. ENABLING MULTILINGUALISM We’ll hear the presentations at DINNER!

16. english.emory.edu/ writing_program Contact Marc Bousquet pmbousquet@gmail.com theme adapted from “Boom” pop-art template kindly shared by presentationmagazine. com