Tag: Writing

Combating the “Kids Today” Trope in Student Writing

Post author By caitedungan
Post date October 6, 2014

Nick Carbone, Director of Teaching and Learning for Bedford/St. Martin’s, discusses the tendency of faculty to view their incoming students as progressively less skilled than in years past. He gives several reasons why, despite how it may appear, the written word is not necessarily in decline.

“There was no magical time when students arrived at college as literate and able as faculty imagined students used to be when the faculty were students themselves…Things are not getting worse. In many ways, since students are writing more in their everyday lives, things are getting better.”

“Faculty Who Diss Student Writing Under the ‘Kids Today’ Trope Forget That They Were Students” – Nick Carbone

Tags College Composition, Higher Ed, Mason WAC, Teaching, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum

Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing Technology

An Attempt at “Teaching Naked”: Implementing José Bowen in ENGH 302

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date October 2, 2014

By Caitlin Holmes

Caitlin Holmes is the Assistant Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at George Mason University. She blogs regularly about teaching here at thewritingcampus.com. You can reach her via email at wac@gmu.edu.

Dr. José Bowen, President of Goucher College and author of Teaching Naked, came to George Mason’s Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence on September 18-19. During his visit, he led a 4-hour long workshop and then delivered a keynote presentation. During his presentations, Dr. Bowen spoke passionately about the importance of integrating technology more effectively into and out of the classroom as a way to encourage student accountability for learning and – most importantly – to transform the classroom into a site of thinking, not just knowledge acquisition.

Tags College Composition, composition, higher education, pedagogy, Teaching, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing in the Disciplines

Teaching Writing Technology

Guest Post: Gaming Across the Curriculum

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date September 25, 2014

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.

Tags College Composition, education, Gaming, higher education, MMORPGs, pedagogy, RPGs, video games, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing pedagogy

Evaluating Writing Reviews Teaching Writing Technology

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

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date September 13, 2014

“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

Tags College Composition, higher education, pedagogy, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing in the Disciplines, writing pedagogy

Teaching Writing

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

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date August 28, 2014

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?

Tags College Composition, higher education, pedagogy, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing education, Writing in the Disciplines, writing pedagogy