Alone and Online: Designing Content and Using PDCs
as an Adjunct Instructor of First-Year Writing.
Jessie BorgmanWestern Michigan University and others
CCCCS 2013
What the experts are saying…
What the students are saying…
What I am saying…
Assignment examples…
Experts
Design assignments to encourage one-to-one interaction between student and instructor
Allow for advanced planning; develop a schedule with due dates and stick to it
Chunk information and content; use modules or small mini-lessons
Students
Think writing is difficult; do not have a lot of time; are balancing many things
at once
Want to pick their topics; want to research
and write research papers
Unsure about technology-basedwriting; still want to learn
to write academic essays
Assignments
Exploring Your Writing Process and the
Five-Paragraph Essay Genre
Two Part Research Project: The Effects of Technology on
Degree/Career Field
My Thoughts
Listen to our students; trust our guts and our own educational training
Heed the advice of experts and not get too crazy with technology; it overwhelms students, especially older students
Anticipate that they will need extra help; have available resources for each of the assignments
THE ASSIGNMENTS
“To make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full
range of literacies—emerging, competing, and fading—English composition teachers have got to be willing to expand their own
understanding of composing beyond conventional
bounds of the alphabetic...”
Cynthia L. Selfe, Writing New Media, (54)
COMPOSITION AS PUBLIC WORK
In what sense is writing public work?
How might composition, as a field and as a teaching subject, become more expansive, reaching out to diverse disciplines and to diverse publics?
At a time when considerable attention is being paid to improve “College Readiness,” what public role might composition on play to assist in the preparation of all students for college success?
“…writing like all literate practices, only exists because it functions, circulates,
shifts and has varying value and weight within complexly articulate social,
cultural, political, educational, religious, economic, familial, ecological, artistic,
effective and technological webs…”
Anne Frances Wysocki , Writing New Media (2)
WORKS CITED
Allen, Elaine, I. and Jeff Seaman. Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011. Wellesley: Babson Survey Research Group, 2011. Print. Gillman, Todd. “Designing Effective Online Assignments”. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 03.22 (2010): n. pag. Web. 15 January 2013. Hewett, Beth L. The Online Writing Conference. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2010. Print. Hewett, Beth L. and Christina Ehmann. Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction. Urbana: NCTE, 2004. Print. Smith, Robin M. Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print. Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why. Urbana: NCTE, 2009. Print. Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004. Print.