Study shows students often need explicit writing instruction for ILPs

SNL’s Independent Learning Pursuits (ILPs) are our way of doing prior learning assessment (PLA). In "Composing Knowledge: Writing, Rhetoric, and Reflection in Prior Learning Assessment," Cathy Leaker and Heather Ostman use their experience working with students on PLA submissions at Empire State College to argue that students need direct writing instruction to craft successful submissions:

. . . many of our students have a good deal of ‘subject matter knowledge,’ but they needed explicit direction in the particular conventions used to articulate such knowledge within “academia” . . . Similarly, the students could talk broadly about their knowledge, but they had little practice with the specific rhetorical strategies that might make that knowledge visible within a particularly challenging context of academic assessment. And finally, many students floundered in their efforts to articulate their learning within a loose genre that seemingly had no distinct features or explicit requirements beyond the expectation that it should represent learning and not experience. However, these problems suggested less a skill deficit that must be remedied than a misdirected pedagogy that could be redirected. We discovered that through explicit attention to writing process . . . and through the meta-learning afforded by guided reflection, our students not only crafted their prior learning portfolios with greater confidence and success, but also began to think more deeply about the role of writing as a less than neutral tool for asserting knowledge claims. (696-697)

Leaker and Ostman developed a course for students at Empire State to help students write their PLA submissions. At SNL, students have the option of working on ILPs as part of the Academic Writing for Adults and Writing Workshop courses. In addition, the Writing Center is planning to offer workshops on ILPs for SNL students each quarter. These two-hour workshops will take place in conjunction with one of the regular Saturday Suburban Campus Writing Groups on the Oak Forest, Naperville, and O'Hare campuses this fall. Plans are also in the works for Loop and Online ILP workshops. A workshop schedule will be sent to instructors after the start of the quarter.

Work Cited

Leaker, Cathy, and Heather Ostman. "Composing Knowledge: Writing, Rhetoric, and Reflection in Prior Learning Assessment." College Composition and Communication 61.4 (2010): 691-717. Print.

Whom to ask

Please contact Katie, KWOZNIA1@depaul.edu, for all issues pertaining to

-- the Academic Writing for Adults (L4) course
-- writing issues related to placement and admissions
-- suburban campus writing support
-- the writing blogs, wikis and website

Please contact Steffanie, STRILLER@depaul,edu, for all issues pertaining to

-- the Writing Workshop course
-- the DePaul Writing Center
-- service/community-based learning in writing classes
-- the staffing and scheduling of academic writing classes

"Plagiarism lines blur"

Kevin Buckely shared this article on how students, including one at DePaul, often do not think they need to cite information they gather from online sources, particularly when these sources do not have obvious authors. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html

New Interview on the Writing Guide for SNL students

SNL graduate Joy Boggs talks about making the transition from writing in the business world to writing for school and now to writing as a graduate student in DePaul's Women's and Gender Studies Program. See Conversations with SNL Writers (http://snl.depaul.edu/writing/index.html).

Synopsis of Computers and Writing Conference 2010 By Katie Wozniak

In May, I attended the annual Computers and Writing Conference at Purdue University. Scholars in the rhetoric and composition field have become very cognizant of the role that technology plays in the writing classroom and the way that it shapes both student and faculty perceptions of writing situations. The Computers and Writing conference supports the development and continuation of study in these areas. Presentations at this year’s conference covered topics ranging from social networking to gaming, digital scholarship to multimedia composition, and new media to research methods. Major authors in the Computers and Writing field include Cheryl Ball, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Patricia Sullivan, David Blakesly, and Cynthia Selfe.

My conference presentation, titled “Hacking the Writing Classroom: A Floor Plan that Merges Virtual and Face-to-Face Learning Environments,” was a response to a presentation by Walls, Schopieray, and DeVoss at last year’s Computers and Writing Conference. In essence, I proposed a restructure of the physical and virtual writing classroom with special attention to the functions of collaboration, access, and a/synchronicity. Moving from the linear, industrial age setup of the classroom, I suggested a spider web structure as an heuristic for thinking about learning, technology, and writing. This spider web heuristic might be applied not only to the floor plan or layout of the classroom, but also to furniture, technology, and communication within the classroom.

In addition, I attended several presentations that focused on writing technologies and learning environments, as these are my research interests. Here are a few synopses of select presentations:

• One presenter described her experience with Aspergers autism, the stereotypes surrounding autism, and the limits and enhancements she has experienced in the writing classroom (both face-to-face and online). She noted that autism has been regarded (incorrectly) as a completely debilitating disease, especially when it comes to communication; however, many students with Aspergers autism have found that they are able to communicate better with “normal” students through writing rather than speaking in class, especially when an ongoing discussion is available on an internet forum.
• Several presentations focused solely on the latest (and greatest) writing technologies for brainstorming, annotating, and collaboration. These included applications such as Dabbleboard, diigo, box.net, WriteBoard, SubEthaEdit, Google Portfolios, and Google Docs.
• Since more and more students are using multimedia both as resources and modes for writing, concern has grown with how to properly document and cite them. One presenter offered the following video, titled “How to Cite a Cereal Box in MLA Format”: http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-cite-cereal-box-mla-format-331096/ This video isn’t just about how to cite a cereal box, however. It presents an interesting way of looking at citation styles as “guides” rather than “rules,” helping students to critically analyze the reasons why we cite in the first place and how they can problem-solve when they can’t find the “right rule,” especially for multimedia sources.
• I can’t rave enough about the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, sponsored by over thirteen colleges and universities. It is a repository of wonderful stories about reading, writing, and learning from people across the world, documented forever on the web. You can contribute your own literacy narrative, too! http://daln.osu.edu/

Have You Scheduled Your Writing Center Presentation?

Dear Faculty Member: The Center for Writing-based Learning would like to remind you to schedule your informational presentations for Summer Quarter 2010 at the Loop and Suburban Campuses.  Presentations are a great way to get your students excited about utilizing the Writing Center’s services at your campus. Presentations are about fifteen minutes in length and will include a demonstration of our online scheduling service as well as a quick tour of the resources available to students on our website.  A writing center consultant who works at your campus will deliver the presentation and take any questions from both the students and you.  Furthermore, the consultant can also lead a discussion about how the Writing Center can aid your students as they tackle work specifically for your course. Finally, please note that Writing Groups begin this Saturday—June 26—at the Naperville, Oak Forest, and O’Hare campuses at 10 am, an invaluable resource for students who live in the suburbs.  Meeting on Saturdays throughout the term, these groups allow students to work on their writing in an atmosphere that promotes the sort of collaborative and active learning valued by SNL.  Most importantly, the groups allow students to practice reading and responding to the texts of others, allowing them to develop critical reading skills that they can utilize when assessing their own texts.  Also, our Lincoln Park and Loop Writing Centers are open, and students are welcome to schedule one-on-one and online appointments. Should you have any questions, please feel free to email me (tmcnamar@depaul.edu) or consult the Writing Group page on the Writing Center website (depaul.edu/writing).  Please encourage your students to use our services! Thank you for your continued support, Tom McNamara Lecturer, Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Writing Groups Coordinator, UCWbL 802 W. Belden Chicago, IL 60614

Writing Workshop is for all SNL students – from talented writers about to graduate to struggling writers just starting at SNL

by

Rita Leganski

Writing Workshop isn’t always about remediation. In my spring 2010 class, I had a student who was completing her degree with Creative Writing as a Focus area, and who wished to concentrate on her advanced project, a series of short stories. She was a talented writer, but had not taken any formal writing courses. She had completed two stories prior to the start of the quarter, which we used as her writing samples, and I centered my instruction on various literary techniques. Class instruction consisted of discussion of readings and exercises in the following texts:  The Elements of Style (Strunk & White); Sin and Syntax (Constance Hale); and, What If? (Bernays and Painter).

We workshopped those first two pieces in terms of point of view, connotation, abstract vs. concrete, structure, and style. She then made several revisions and applied what she’d learned in the writing of two new stories. Of particular note was her application of ethos and pathos as well as employment of a motif that joined all of the stories together.

This student’s workshopping efforts culminated in the production of four different short stories that showed how the lives of the various protagonists had been affected by the same event. Collectively, the stories comprised an opus titled "Olam Ha-Ba: A Story in Four Voices," for which she won an Award for Excellence and was selected to speak at Naperville’s Scholars’ Night.

I had another student who was at the beginning of her academic career. She had not decided on a Focus area yet, but felt it would be some facet of business. Prior to Writing Workshop, she had taken Critical Thinking and we used her final paper from that class to practice revising. It was clear that she was quite accomplished at critical thinking, transition, proving a thesis statement, organization, and correct grammar; however, it was also clear that she showed an inclination toward clutter, as seen in sentences that were sometimes 40+ words long and so heavy that they lacked meaning.

Classroom instruction included using the prompt: “What am I trying to say?” and discussing the Hacker online exercises, various handouts regarding clutter, and a careful examination of an example of one of E.B. White’s revision process. Concision became our goal. We concentrated on identifying redundancy and metadiscourse, and by the end of the course, she was producing clear, concise, coherent sentences. The following examples show how she revised the same paragraph from draft 1 to draft 3. Draft 1 includes a 43-word sentence.

Draft 1:

"This essay ties to our course segment on morality. It intends to send the reader into thought about recognizing these tragic events of human rights should they occur in the future under different cuircumstances, and have an understanding of the challenges that exist which may tempt us to turn a blind eye. We will never know if there could have been any intervention that would have been successful is [sic] saving the majority of the six-million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. And we don t know for sure if we can prevent a like event in the future. But we can commit to being more observant in general, and acknowledge some retrospective learnings, as well as potential missed opportunities of the past..."

Draft 2:

"This essay ties to our course segment on morality. Individually and within society as a whole, we should have learned enough to recognize and intervene if another Holocaust were to occur. By reviweing the past and noting the direction of our future, we can hopefully understand the challenges that may tempt us to turn a blind eye."

Draft 3:

"We should have learned enough not only to recognize but to inervene if another Holocaust were to occur. By reviewing the past and noting the direction of our future, we can identify the challenges that may tempt us to turn a blind eye."

It is of particular note that she applied the listing and freewriting techniques to refining her choice of a Focus area, and has gone from Communications to Telecommunications in the process.