The meeting opened with a round of introductions. We are all  returning faculty this Fall, and we welcomed back Halina Duraj from English!

Writing Program Announcements
Union updates
Deniz Perin-Coombs informed folks about the collective bargaining process and encouraged folks to participate by making their concerns heard, regardless of how they voted in the election. 

Fall In-class writing assessment
This Fall, the Writing Program will be piloting an in-class writing assessment and a manual scoring session. The group discussed the reason why this step is necessary and the procedure for the process.  (See this document for more information on the background and instructions.)

During the discussion, faculty raised some good questions.

• Q: Should we tell students it’s an assessment?
• A: We can leave this up to the discretion of faculty. On one hand, transparency is best, because students should be producing quality writing for the activity to be assessed properly. On the other, some students experience test anxiety. We recommend language that explains we need to get a sense of their writing level, and that it is not part of their grade.
• Q: Should we move forward with class schedules, even though some students might be moving out of classes?
• A: Yes. All students who require replacement will be notified by the Writing Program by Friday September 13. These conversations will be handled for you. We do not anticipate a large number of students will need to be re-placed. This timeline is similar to the usual add/drop complications with students—so please proceed normally with your teaching plans.
• Q: What about students feeling singled out when we want them to build confidence in their writing?
• A: You can communicate to students that this same procedure is being used for all students across campus. It does not determine how well they do at USD.

While the Writing Program had other announcements planned, we ran out of time for this portion of the workshop. None of these are time-sensitive and will be revisited in the future.

Presentation from Professor Hugh Burkhart on Information Literacy
Hugh Burkhart made time to come speak to the group (generously!) about his team’s ongoing efforts to equip students with information literacy skills. See his full presentation here.

After presenting some statistics on how many students the library reaches through their instructional sessions, Professor Burkhart discussed compelling research on the impact of early student access to formal library and information literacy training. These impacts include improving the likelihood students will ask for support in the future and reducing “library anxiety,” which is particularly prevalent in students who did not receive library instruction in high school. These students tend to come from historically underserved populations. Professor Burkhart then described the basic topics of library instructional sections, and recommended faculty help facilitate by encouraging student engagement. 

Faculty asked important questions about the length of the session and whether it leaves time for hands-on work. Does the session tend to take the entire class, or can it be structured to allow for in-class working sessions? Professor Burkhart agreed that hands-on activity can be highly effective, and you can ask librarians to reserve time.

Working Session with Professor Megan Little
Professor Little led a working session with faculty, in which the group examined the relationship between Information Literacy and our FYW Learning Outcomes. (See her full presentation here.) First, in small groups, faculty discussed their interpretation of the phrase “across/in multiple discourses.” Here are some thoughts that were shared about why we teach “across multiple discourses”: to teach students to analyze genre, context, and argument; to prepare students for writing they’ll need to do in other disciplines; to equip students with tools to interrogate solitary or reductive “truths.” While these interpretations differ, they share the common theme of fostering rhetorical and discursive awareness. Simply put: It’s our job to prepare students for diverse academic writing and reading challenges ahead of them. 

Professor Little then asked the group to consider how, given the language of “multiple discourses,” information literacy is related to the work we do. The “traditional research paper” is not the only way to teach information literacy. Smaller, repeated assignments, with rhetorically specific writing tasks, can be another approach. Students can be challenged, throughout the semester, to question the appropriate way to integrate different types of sources into academic writing. Students can practice how they frame the source (as fact? as evidence? as an interesting example to analyze, but probably not credible? as an important subjective perspective, useful and telling, but also limited in certain ways? and so on). Students should be encouraged to ponder questions such as: What type of information can each type of source provide? And, does my writing demonstrate I understand what the information can be used for (and not used for)? Professor Little shared her personal classroom experience: the majority of her students come into FYW unable to tailor their writing and arguments for different types of sources. They tend to discuss them all  “flat,” as if they provide the same kind of evidence and should be discussed the same way. A novel, scholarly article, an op-ed…they all “prove” the same thing, unless we teach students otherwise.

Professor Little provided examples of smaller information literacy assignments, conceived of as narrowly defined rhetorical tasks, and asked the group to brainstorm ideas. The ultimate goal is to build a list of assignment ideas that can be shared across the team in an (in-progress) document: Resources for Teaching Research-Based Composition.