Transferable Literacy

Last week, a colleague and I got into a slightly heated debate about a grade on her student’s paper. The instructor wanted to reduce the student’s grade on a paper draft by a full letter grade because she the student was unable to change the spacing between lines in her paper.  Unfortunately, the debate was less about the pedagogical approach to such a grade reduction and more about the instructor’s approach to helping this student–and the rest of her class–acquire the literacy they need to adapt their paper to a specific format. The problem, as I see it, was two fold. First, the instructor did not recognize the teachable moment that happened upon her. Second, as with many new instructors, she had a few misguided notions about the literacies we should be teaching in our First-Year Composition classes. Last week, I made this a teachable moment for her; now, I make this a teachable moment for the rest of the world.

Teachable Moments

Before I delve too far into teaching, let me step back a second and explain the idea of a teachable moment. I had not heard this term before I began my doctoral studies, so I’m sure there are still quite a few teachers out there with no idea what a teachable moment entails. A teachable moment occurs when an instructor happens upon a moment or an event when she realizes that instead of chastising or penalizing students, she can take the opportunity as a chance to teach the students something that will help them in their lives–be it educational or personal. Let me give you an example.

A few semesters back, I told my students that I would add the course deadlines to the calendar on Blackboard. This, I rationalized, would mean there was no way they could pull the old “I didn’t know it was due” excuse. Over the weekend, I spent hours carefully loading each deadline–papers, blogs, peer writing days, etc–into the Blackboard calendar. I even put a free participation grade on the calendar for the following class period. It was simple enough–all the students had to do was speak to me before class and tell me they saw the opportunity. Class started the following week and not a student even mentioned the assignment. I gave them until the beginning of the following class period. Then, I caved and asked if anybody wanted to take the offer. They looked at me completely perplexed. Then, one timid student in the back raised her hand and said:

We don’t know how to get to the calendar on Blackboard.

My first instinct was to scold my students for not speaking up ahead of time. But then, I realized that if I scolded them, I was missing out on an opportunity to provide them with this needed literacy. This, is a teaching moment.

Teaching moments are a great way to increase your students’ literacies, especially the e-literacies. We all take for granted, from time to time, that our students automatically know how to accomplish tasks on a computer. But when we stumble upon a skill they do not have, we stumble upon e-literacy teaching moments. It took me approximately five minutes to show my students how to access the Blackboard calendar and add the calendar to their Blackboard homepage. Now, once the calendar is on the homepage, the students don’t have to think about checking a calendar again in their academic career. All events entered into any class calendar are automatically loaded to the homepage calendar. So, at first, it seems like a useless literacy. But once the calendar was in place, my students began tinkering in the settings feature that allowed them to access the calendar. Immediately, they started changing the colors and layout of their Blackboard homepage. This, I knew, was a literacy they would remember. So, what does this have to do with teaching literacies?

Teaching General, not Specific Literacies

I use the Blackboard example because it demonstrates a need to teach our students a general literacy. In the long run, my lesson aided students in my class, but the lesson applied to any class they took that involved a Blackboard component. In core classes, we have to prepare students for the academic world. So, if we are going to prepare students, we have to make sure they understand how to apply what they learn in the classroom to their other classes.

In First-Year Composition, we teach students to research and write. We teach them to use the MLA handbook to appropriately format and cite their papers. Unfortunately, we also get a large amount of negative feedback from other departments about the use of MLA instead of APA, Chicago, Tarabian, or other style manuals that specific departments use. I’ve heard the argument that “X style manual should be used in classes where a majority of the students have declared X major” enough to know that even other departments don’t understand why MLA is our manual of choice. Yes, I realize that many of our students will have to learn another style manual. But that is why we don’t require students to memorize the MLA manual.

Teaching Adaptation

The literacy that we teach composition students is not an MLA literacy; it is a style manual literacy. If I teach a student how to distinguish between a scholarly journal and a magazine, this is a literacy she will carry into each subsequent class. The rules for types of works don’t change; what changes is the manner in which the student cites the publication. Yes, we require citations in First-Year Composition and yes, we require these in MLA. This is to help the students demonstrate more than just an ability to use MLA appropriately. If students can appropriately cite works using MLA, then I know I have given them the literacy to transfer MLA citation into other style manuals by finding the appropriate citation style and using the manual to appropriately write the citation.

Too many core class instructors want to emphasize their discipline’s specific features. This is not just the teaching of a specific style manual, but the teaching of a specific discourse, a specific way of thinking, or even a specific approach to studying for a test. In the grand scheme of things, I believe this is where we tend to fail students. We cannot make every student in our core classes decide to major in our discipline–and I should think we wouldn’t want all the students in our discipline. So why, then, are we so ethnocentric about our way being right. Why are we so hesitant to teach students skills that can be adapted to any class in any discipline? I’ve heard many professors telling me their students were not taught to write in composition. I have to agree with the professors; we don’t teach students to write in composition. That is a skill they should pick up in their K-12 education. Our job, if we do it properly, is to teach students to write in a specific discipline. But we don’t teach students to write to their major discipline in composition (WAC and WID programs do, but that’s another ballgame). We teach (or should be teaching) students to step into a discourse, analyze the key features, and write to that discipline. This is a transferable literacy. A student may write on global warming in composition and become a psychology major. If I don’t teach a specific transferable literacy–the discourse analysis–then my student will not be a “good writer” in her psychology classes.

Final Thoughts

If you teach core classes, think about how you’re teaching them and what specific literacies you teach your students. These are not always e-literacies, but they can be valuable literacies for future educational growth. If you teach something centered around your major, look at how you can turn this specific literacy into a more global literacy. And don’t be frustrated if your students don’t immediately pick up the literacy; sometimes it takes time.

Please, be patient…

I’ve reconsidered the purpose of my blog over the past few weeks. I’ve been wanting to add more pedagogy related posts and start giving my blog a more professional feel. So, I’ve redesigned the layout and now I’m working on updating all the tags and categories so they better reflect what I’m working with. Please be patient with me during these changes. I’m hoping to complete them by the end of the week.

Technology and “Good” Pedagogy: Not Always Components of the Same Recipie

I’ve kept every assignment I’ve created for my composition classes over the past few years. Occasionally, when I want a fresh approach to an assignment, I whip out this notebook and take a brief trip down memory lane. I left myself notes on the assignment sheets so that I can create better assignments as I progress with my teaching. As it stands, I have two (of about 30 assignments) that I’ve scrawled–in red Sharpie–ENGAGEMENT! These are the assignments that really “worked” for my students. These are assignments that, for one reason or another, students were eager to come to class and talk about, where students approached me after class and asked for a final read-through before they sent it off for publication. Both of these assignments were for a different class, a different semester, and on a different topic. But I pull them out every time and try them again with my students. They continue to better engage my students in their writing. These are the assignments that strike a chord.

When my colleagues ask me for assignments to engage their students with, I offer these two up readily. But my colleagues are shocked at the content of the essay and often respond with a breathless “You wrote this.” I sigh and reply, “Yes, I wrote this.” They aren’t surprised at the writing of the assignments, but rather at the lack of my techno-enthusiast pedagogy involved in these two engaging assignments. I am the technology guru in my small department and my colleagues seem to have this vision of my classroom that somewhat resembles a scene out of a Sci-Fi movie.

I won’t deny that specific facets of new technologies, or e-technologies as I call them, have the ability to create better writers, but this process does not occur overnight and students cannot be forced to like the technologies. Josh Keller at The Chronicle of Higher Education spoke specifically to this point last summer.  Jeffrey T. Grabill, director of the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center at Michigan State says their study specifically demonstrated that students viewed social writing “as more persistent and meaningful to them than their in-class work was” and goes on to credit the increase in social media as a reason for this view.

Does that mean we should immediately pull e-technologies into our pedagogy? NO! Requiring students to blog or create a wiki does not make them better writers. A student who blogs on a regular basis will not necessarily be enthused about blogging in class. She may be an “A” writer on her blog and turn in “C” papers for her classes. While she is getting the experience of writing in her own way–and while this experience is aiding her writing improvement–the scenario is different. When she’s blogging, she has chosen to do so on a topic that engages her. As instructors, we must tap into this engagement. We must find ways of creating assignments that engage our students and not continue to require perfunctory writing assignments. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe made this point over a decade ago, and it continues to ring true in our bustling e-world. e-technology is not the “cure” to the disease.

Students who compose messages for an audience of their peers on a social-networking Web site were forced to be acutely aware of issues like audience, tone, and voice.

This quote should strike a chord with all instructors of writing. I spend four months trying to help my students learn to assess the audience, tone, purpose, and the appropriate voice for their writing assignments. It’s good to know that these lessons pay off–even outside the classroom. However, I still need to pull these articles into the classroom. To do this, I don’t necessarily need assignments that force blogging or podcasting, but I do need to keep these technologies in mind. I also need to keep in mind, as Christine Hult pointed out, not all students are experienced computer users.

What we need is the creative mind to create assignments that deal with real audiences on topics that matter to our students. One of the assignments that I’ve found frequently engages my students is relatively vague. Students choose an audience they are familiar with and a problem the audience is facing. Then, they use whatever medium they are most comfortable with to persuade the audience to consider a solution the student decides is the best for the problem. Essentially, it is a standard “problem-solution” essay, but by allowing students a good bit of leeway with their topic and their medium, I can engage them in learning writing skills they will carry with them into their personal and professional lives.

e-technologies have their place in the composition classroom and I am a full supporter of this transition. However, before we consider using any of these technologies in the classroom, we must consider our pedagogy. Why this technology? What do my students think of this technology? How do they use this in their real lives? How will I use it in the classroom? How does the technology supplement student engagement? What skills will the students learn using this technology? Can these skills be applied to their real lives? These are all good questions to keep in mind when considering new technologies. Also, keep this in mind:

The calculator did not make math fun. Why should we expect the computer to make writing fun?

Rhetoric, Composition, and Reality

I’ve been plagued with a dissertation question since my prospectus hearing last week. It’s a bit odd, in retrospect. I walked into the hearing thinking I knew all the answers to any questions my committee could ask. I know my topic. I have a relatively firm grasp on the methodology, I’ve mastered the art of summarizing my topic into a succinct three minute sound byte (which I refer to as the “elevator speech,” courtesy of Dr. Burns).  I walked the walk and talked the talk through the entire hearing. But there was one thing I did not expect.

I expected this hearing to be much like my oral exams; my committee would ask questions and I would answer correctly. If I answered enough questions correctly, my prospectus is approved. After the closed door session, I expected to return and learn which of my committee members wanted to see my dissertation chapter by chapter or all at once. But the last half of the meeting involved a few more questions–questions my committee wanted me to consider while I was writing. Most of the questions were rudimentary–keep your naysayers in mind, explain specifically why your sample group was chosen, etc. But there was one question that has haunted me.

Will you ground your study in composition or in rhetoric?

This is a valid question in my program. We are specifically a rhetoric program, not a rhetoric/composition program and there’s been some discussion about making sure we keep a solid foot in rhetoric in our dissertations. Since my dissertation is composition based, I hadn’t given much thought to the rhetorical grounding as a separate entity; I was using the appeals in my argument and I had a strong invention grounding. But alas, invention has much become a part of composition more than rhetoric. I am focusing on research, which is also very much grounded in composition. I’ve spent hours contemplating a rhetorical connection that I could make. Everywhere I looked, I turned up a blank. I couldn’t squeeze anything into my dissertation that was a solid foot in rhetoric. But then, I realized the reason nothing was fitting was not because there isn’t a rhetorical connection, it’s because the connection is already there, hidden in the base argument that I already have–I need no revision to the argument. I just need to emphasize the rhetoric already in the work.

Kairos!

Kairos is the opportune moment for persuasion. Kairos not only provides the speaker (or in my case, writer) with the perfect moment to speak, but also constrains the speech by requiring the speaker to think about the audience addressed and use appropriate decorum in their address. While many First-Year Composition instructors talk to their students specifically about the audience and decorum of a written piece, there is little, if any discussion of kairos.

So, I know now that I need to ground my rhetorical foot in kairos. When we teach students to write argumentative essays, we don’t always provide them a rhetorical foot to ground their writing and then we complain when they don’t give us revolutionary, up-to-date arguments. I don’t think we can blame the students if we require them to only use “scholarly” sources that are held behind the academic firewall. So, as I delve into the great realm of using social bookmarking as a component of composition invention and research, I can now start to really delve as well into the way I ground my dissertation into the historical aspect of rhetoric and demonstrate how social bookmarking can better help writers grasp how to write for a specific opportunity–much as they will have to do in their own professions.

Now, don’t get me started about the kairos of my own topic…

The Multimodal Dissertation: Where to Start, When to Stop?

At my prospectus meeting last week, I was asked if I had intentions of making my dissertation multimodal. It was a question I was expecting, but it was not the committee member I expected to ask. I was further floored when the third member of my committee was ecstatic when I answered yes.  Suddenly, it was not just my dissertation chair that wanted to see my dissertation in a more digital format–it was my entire committee. The reason? If I do complete a multimodal dissertation, it will be the first in the department. I will truly blaze a new trail.

Though it’s a bit premature, I’ve already started contemplating the basics of my multimodal dissertation. I know I could take the easy way out of this and have the text online with links to other sites, but that seems to be just a bit too easy.

I could add the video I capture from the interviews, but that is a shaky situation given IRB codes.

As I pondered these ideas, I started to really think about what I am doing for my dissertation and I’ve had a few further ideas. First, since all the students are using Diigo for my research, I could easily link directly to their pages (with appropriate permission, of course).  Then, if I have the permission to use the video interviews, I could include that as well. I could even put together a mash-up if I only have permission to use the audio portion of the interview.

The more I ponder this, the more I think on my own citations. Much of my research is available online (or in a form I can easily put online) and much of this information has already been annotated using Diigo. Perhaps this is another way that I could use the site in my dissertation. I could link to the Diigo toolbar at some point and then allow viewers not just to see the page I’ve cited, but also the annotations I’ve added and how dialogues emerge as other users annotate and comment on the page. This, I think, would be an awesome means of creating a truly multimodal dissertation that allows me to show off exactly what Diigo allows the user to do and how this is important in the classroom.

I’ve also been considering having the text of my dissertation as a blog site. This would allow the social aspect to continue after my dissertation is complete. Right now, this is my most novel idea and I think that combining this with the in-text use of Diigo is an excellent means of harmonizing the dissertation.

Unfortunately, the more I think about making my dissertation multimodal, the more ideas spring into my head. I know I’ve got to be careful about the multimodal aspects, and I know I have to give them serious thought.  But what I’m really beginning to realize is that I’ve also got to give serious consideration to what I’m doing and how multimodal I can go without postponing the dissertation defense.

For now, I’m going to focus on writing the dissertation. That is, after all, the important aspect of the process. Once I’ve started revisions, I can really think about how to make this multimodal in a way that truly develops my argument in a more effective way.