Low Stakes Assignment

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This is more of a class discussion than an assignment, but it did really help with engagement. I asked students to reflect on just the title of Anzaldua’s “How To Tame a Wild Tongue.” We spent probably 20 minutes thinking about how “tame” relates to “wild”, for instance, and what the implications are within that relationship. We also talked about “How To” as a genre (“it’s like an instruction manual,” a student said), and how thinking about that genre could be useful–or not–for thinking about what the text is trying to say. Really slowing down and thinking about the title’s six words helped some students feel less overwhelmed, I think, and gave them a model for how to read by focusing on specific details and the thoughts and feelings those details provoked.

Welcome to the semester!

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UPDATE: We’re slowly adding some theoretical texts to the website that may be more accessible to students, but I also wanted to draw your attention to the free ebook BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING which has a number of short readings about misconceptions about writing that you may find useful to use in your 1101 course. I’ve pointed out a few that I find pretty helpful for talking about genre and discourse in the readings section of our blog. There are also a few that I think will be very helpful for discussing research, once we get there. I do intend to add a section to the website for readings on research. 

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say hi and update the site for the semester. You’ll notice that it’s no longer called “Summer Institute,” but instead “2019 Professional Development” as, sadly, it’s no longer summer.

To recap: we will be meeting on Sept 11 (location TBD) from 4-5:15. In preparation for this meeting, please just write up briefly a low stakes (either in-class or homework) assignment) that has worked well for you this semester, especially if you feel it increased student engagement. Please post this on “low stakes assignments” on this site. We’ll spend most of this session just checking in with you about how the semester is going thus far, what you are struggling with and how you’re feeling about your units, both current and forthcoming.

Also, if you haven’t done so yet, please post your units and syllabi on the site. If you’re struggling, please email or come see me. Also, I’m adding some more short, accessible theoretical readings to the site.

Hope you’re doing well, and please feel free to stop by!

(my students made that.)

 

Repurposed Multimodal Project

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This assignment asks students to re-think, or re-envision, one of the assignments they have written previously in the semester, presenting it in a totally new genre, perhaps changing  modes: for example, a revision that goes from a written essay to an audio podcast, website, graphic, video essay, rap album, or mixed modal. This assignment builds on the generic, rhetorical and audience awareness that students have worked on all semester long, asking them to consider what discourse community they are trying to reach and, not only what diction, but also what mode of delivery would be best for delivering that message.

This “translation” is key to transfer, one of the core learning outcomes of this course. If students can take a message and transform it for different audiences and media, then they are well on their way to being able to transfer writing skills across fields, disciplines and discourse communities.

As with all the units in the course, reflection and transfer are critical, as Taczak and Robertson point out, “students who develop a reflective framework that allows them to understand writing indifferent contexts are able to reimagine previous writing knowledge that they can adapt to a new situation.” In addition to the main writing project, metawriting assignments should ask students to explicitly concern themselves with transfer. For activities in this regard, see Yancey and Beaufort.

Theory

Nelson Graff: Teaching Rhetorical Analysis to Promote Transfer

Brian Ray: “More than just Remixing: Uptake and New Media Composition”

Jaclyn Fiscus: “Genre, Reflection, and Multimodality: Capturing Uptake in the Making”

Voss, Julia: Who Learns from Collaborative Digital Projects? Cultivating Critical Consciousness and Metacognition to Democratize Digital Literacy Learning

Models/Examples

Justin Graffa: The Art of Trespassing (Student Multimodal Project)

Chelsea Harrison:  College Students and Social Media (Student Graphic Text)

Hanrick Kumar and Calvin Tiu: To a Rapper’s Delight: An in Depth Look at the Construction of a Musical Collaboration (Student Audio Project)

Sample Assignments

Repurposed Assignment 1

Remediated assignment 2

Remediated assignment 3