Tag: writing pedagogy

Write Nerdy to Me: Utilizing Fanfiction in WAC/WID Courses

By Caitlin Dungan

Caitlin Dungan is a PhD student in Mason’s Writing and Rhetoric PhD Program. Caitlin is a Graduate Research Assistant for Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum Program, and her current research interests include fanfiction, digital media and rhetoric, online feedback practices, and participatory culture.

It’s interesting, perplexing, and – I think – exciting that geek culture has emerged as mainstream. Realms previously reserved for a few indoctrinated fans are now open for participation to the many. One of the side effects of this growth in fandoms is the increasing number of emergent writers embracing fanfiction as a creative outlet. As young fans pursue this unique composition practice and post their works on online forums like fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own, how much of this self-sponsored writing is informing their writing practice in the classroom?

Guest Post: Gaming Across the Curriculum

By Steve Holmes

Steve Holmes is an Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University. His primary research areas include classical and contemporary rhetorical theory, continental philosophy, digital rhetoric, videogames, mobile and handheld media, and multimodal composition. His most recent publications appear in Rhetoric Review, Enculturation, and the Fibreculture Journal.

One aspect that writing teachers are increasingly facing is the need to address the role of medium in student composition. Our students communicate through different technologies (laptops, mobile phones, tablets) and social media (SnapChat, Instagram, Twitter, Yik Yak). In turn, a greater number of professional, industry, and academic communication situations are demanding ever greater familiarity with a variety of digital literacies. Since Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe published Gaming Lives in the 21^st Century in 2007, a growing number of composition scholars have sought to make videogames an object of inquiry (Waggoner et al.; Colby-Shultz et al.). Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) scholarship has commendably begun to address these forms of digital writing, but lags behind in attention to videogames and gaming.

Recent NPR Story: “Turnitin And The Debate Over Anti-Plagiarism Software”

“The fact that anti-plagiarism software can’t tell the difference between accidental and intentional plagiarism is just one reason that Rebecca Moore Howard, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Syracuse University, is not a fan. Here’s another reason: ‘The use of a plagiarism-detecting service implicitly positions teachers and students in an adversarial position,’ Howard says.”

Read or listen to the whole piece here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/25/340112848/turnitin-and-the-high-tech-plagiarism-debate

From Writing “Intensive” to Writing “Integrated”: Keeping Student Writing at the Center of Your Class

By Michelle LaFrance

In WI courses, achieving a balance between crucial content, key learning goals, and explicit writing instruction is never an easy task. Because this balance is so delicate, “traditional” classes have often posed writing assignments as supplemental to the other work of the course—a paper or project completed outside class.

To kick off our new program blog, The Writing Campus, I wanted to ask faculty who teach WI courses to think about the ways they manage this important balance: What do you do to overcome this divide between simply assigning writing and the need to teach writing?