Hello, my name is Patrick Corbett and I am an assistant professor in the English Department at New York City College of Technology. While you may think of the typical English professor as a literary scholar, my graduate course work focused on writing pedagogy and assessment, language and cognition, the rhetoric of technology, and human-interface interactions. These seemingly disparate fields have resulted in a teaching practice that is student-centered, but also focused on the technologies that people use to create meaning in their lives. As you will see below, I love to teach writing at every level and I am aggressive in seeking new ideas and methods to advance students’ ability to create meaning in written and visual forms.

Courses Taught: Materials from Courses I Have Taught at City Tech

Here you will find a brief history of my teaching at City Tech, including the courses that I have taught and how I have developed them. As you click on each course, you will find a catalog description, the synopsis that I provide students, examples of feedback I have received from students, and the most recent copies of the course syllabus and assignments along with OpenLab website links and other materials I have developed for students when applicable.

Pedagogy: An Exploration of My Teaching Practice

In the pedagogy section, I articulate the trajectory of my teaching philosophy from my graduate training, my scholarship of teaching and learning, to its existing form as I practice it today. I share this through three dimensions of my pedagogy: the theoretical, the methodological, and the ethical.

Course Design: How I Construct the Student Experience

As you explore the course design section, you will see that I rely heavily on what I call a “writing + design” framework to build the student experience. Over time I have combined my deep training and practice in writing pedagogy with principles of design thinking, human-centered design, and experience design to create meaningful learning experiences for my students that stay relevant as they move into their professional lives.

Evaluations: What Others Say About My Work

Student and peer evaluations of my teaching convey how others perceive the effectiveness of my methods. These perspectives cannot provide an accurate measure of whether students objectively learned content in my courses or that my methods are proven effective. They do, however, communicate the sense that I am able to engage learners and maintain their attention in innovative ways. Through this engagement, I can guide them as they work on developing greater facility with their writing. 

The Future: What I Am Working On and Towards

Currently, I am writing a proposal for a book on creating change. The book, which is an extension of my classroom method, integrates design thinking methods and project development with conceptual writing and design exercises.