Introductions and EA Announcements

We welcomed Carlton Floyd, Chair of the English Department, who spoke briefly about the Writing Program and his plans to grow and support the work we do. Carla Petticrew, Executive Assistant to the English department, reminded faculty of the procedure for making copy requests, and asked for a lead time of 24-48 hours. Hannah Baldoz, Executive Assistant to the Writing Program and Writing Center, introduced faculty to the WP Faculty Manual, a living document that intends to provide useful info for new and existing faculty. WP faculty are encouraged to look in the manual when they are unfamiliar with a process (for example, “how to request books?”). Please let us know if there is missing information. We will add it!

Writing Program Announcements

Additional administrative announcements included the AI Resource Working Document, which is another living document the Writing Program will be updating as we learn new trends and policies, and receive input from the community. The group was also directed to NTT-related updates, forwarded from our representative in the Academic Assembly Deniz Perin-Coombs. Updates included recommendations in the NTT Report (page 5-6) and two Motions recently passed in the Academic Assembly. Thank you, Deniz, for your service and for keeping WP faculty apprised of these developments!

Finally, we clarified why it’s important to include the standard learning outcomes in our FYW syllabi (without editing). Our classes are intended to meet the core CFYW requirement. Our program is periodically assessed to verify this is the case.

Open Forum: Information Literacy

The meeting switched to an open forum format, where faculty were asked to comment on their experiences teaching information literacy (IL) and research in FYW. While research and IL is not yet explicit in our FYW Learning Outcomes, there is activity and interest in this area right now. We have an opportunity to shape what we want IL to look like in our writing classrooms. Here is a summary of WP faculty input:

• Beyond just scheduling the library presentation, teaching research requires a lot of pre-presentation scaffolding, and then being followed up with activities. Takes a lot of time to be useful for students.
• Students seem to be resistant to going to the library; want to use google or google scholar, and even then, they don’t always see the time-spent as useful.
• The challenge of teaching students to read academic scholarship at the first year level is pretty daunting. They are not ready to understand a full-blown scholarly article.
• In terms of digital writing, another challenge and topic is digital literacy: students aren’t as savvy with digital texts as they think they are
• Group research projects can be a way that students feel less intimidated and you get better buy-in
• Teaching LLC and research at the same time feels pretty much impossible to some faculty: there’s simply too much to cover.
• Some faculty have had success with a narrow research paper assignment aligned with a literary text: the assignment asks them to find one critical reading of the class text and discuss it.
• Are students getting library instruction in other classes? Do we know this?
• Must have an activity that students do after the class, otherwise, they “check out” during the session.

The Writing Program will be bringing this input to discussions with other groups. Faculty were encouraged to schedule a library session this semester and be ready to share ideas in the future on both the session and possible assignments. Faculty were also asked to be present during the session, and to include some kind of “follow up” and/or “pre-workshop” assignment. Example assignments (not exclusive to writing) can be found here: https://projectcora.org/.

Faculty Presentations

The topics for this semester’s faculty presentations were narrative and expressive writing, especially their role in potentially inspiring students about the value of reading and writing as we try to discourage them from resorting to AI and other forms of academic dishonesty.

Professor Joshua Hall, “Teaching and Grading Narrative Essays”

Professor Hall opened by stating what is important to him about teaching reading and writing–it’s a passion he wants to impart to students. Reading and writing are beyond practical “skills”–they are also tools for personal and intellectual inquiry and growth. To teach only “skills,” “rules,” “strategy,” and “utility” is to limit and devalue a richer experience of texts, thinking, and writing. This is one way to “advocate” for the importance of actually DOING the work of class, rather than allowing a bot to do it. Professor Hall shared his narrative essay assignment, which is the first major essay, and is written in class, by hand. The assignment asks students to reflect critically on the role of reading and writing in their own lives, and then construct a personal narrative. The prompt asks students to follow clearly stated conventions for academic writing (a central theme, transitions and structure, relevant connections and supporting evidence). A strength of this approach is its combination of personal narrative and reflection with well-defined skills, bridging personal narrative with academic writing.

Professor Anne Wilson, “Thinking and Writing Reflectively”

Professor Wilson challenges her students to write reflectively, emphasizing  the value of introspection, to learn to be patient with yourself, that it is okay to pause before you “know” something, and reflect first on how you feel about it. It’s through this process that students can begin to trust their own powers and insights, in order to start finding their own meaning and making original observations. It also meets students where they are. After describing this approach to teaching writing, Professor Wilson described  exercises she uses to get students to recall vivid detail in narrative writing, to also prepare them to provide more sensitive readings of texts and stronger academic writing. For example, she challenges students to write about a shared, powerful event: “tell me where you were when the [event] happened.” (The example she discussed from the past was the Cedar fire.) Students were asked to reflect on all five senses to connect with memories about a strongly felt and experienced event. After doing this initial exercise, students move onto class readings and writing, hopefully bringing with them the skills of attending to and capturing meaningful detail.