[ Note: A new TAC-WAC cohort comprising Public and International Affairs (PIA/GOVT) faculty will convene in spring 2010.]
During Fall of 2008, Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program collaborated with the Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) program on a semester-long faculty learning community to explore approaches for incorporating technology when teaching Writing-Intensive (WI) courses.
Faculty participants first attended a fullday summer workshop that introduced them to the goals of the learning community and focused on discussing such issues as their learning and writing goals for students, challenges encountered in teaching with writing and teaching with technology, and successes with both writing and technology, as well as an overview of various technologies to use with writing. Starting in September, these faculty met biweekly to read about writing in disciplines and to discuss new technologies that they themselves are trying out (a wiki, a blog, Facebook, Delicious, Twitter, Blackboard, and others). The goal is to help them determine which ones fit with the disciplinary writing and learning goals they have for students in their WI courses. However, the participants’ final projects are intended to benefit not just the students in their courses but also colleagues in their departments who can also benefit from using technology to facilitate writing in their courses.
In response to a reflective exercise that asked faculty, among other things, to describe one thing they have learned in the group that they believe will help improve how they teach student writing, Shannon Davis (Sociology) explained how she has “been reminded of the importance of being transparent about the writing process with my students.” Paul Cooper (Chemistry) adds that he has “become really conscious of trying to engage the students…. My main attempt at this is through real life examples so they can relate the material they learn to the real world.” And Esperanza Roman-Mendoza (Spanish) frames what she has learned in the group more broadly: “Thanks to our discussions and readings… I was thrilled to see that we all share the same concerns and challenges on the subject of student writing, like … the need to constantly adapt our expectations regarding how students take advantage of what we think is a more innovative, productive, and rewarding way of learning.”
In January 2009, Sarah Baker and G. Morgan presented on this collaborative learning community at the Educause Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference.