teaching
In the descriptions that follow, I provide an overview of selected courses taught along with a discussion of challenges and/or innovations of note. Additionally, I provide links to sample syllabi, assignments, and rubrics throughout. Unless noted otherwise, I have developed syllabi and assignments for all courses listed below.
For ease of navigation, an index of courses is in the left margin. Each section ends with a link back to the index as well.
English 402 :: Technical & Professional Writing
Technical and Professional Writing at WSU is a writing-intensive course focused on research writing: defining, proposing, reporting progress; presenting a final product; other professional writing needs.
semesters & syllabi:
- spring 2010: 23 students (online course through ANGEL)
- summer 2010: 21 students
description:
- Instruction in Technical and Professional Writing is concentrated around five core-concepts, which provide students with the theoretical foundations needed to analyze workplace practices and develop documentation (print and digital) for a variety of communication situations. These core concepts include (these principles are adapted from WSU Vancouver TPW):
- Rhetorical Analysis - write for a range of defined audiences and stakeholders
- Document Design - make rhetorical design decisions about workplace documents implementing design principles of font, format and layout
- Editing for Clarity & Conciseness - draft, research, test, and revise visual designs and information architecture
- Genres of Workplace Writing - understand and adapt to genre conventions and audience expectations
- Workplace Practices & Collaboration - understand, develop and deploy various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing documents both individually and collaboratively
teaching challenge:
Although designed as part of the English curriculum to serve Rhetoric & Professional Writing students, this course has become a foundational [W} writing requirement for many majors. At Tri-Cities, approximately nine (9) different majors as diverse as Mechanical Engineering, Business Administration, Environmental Science, Nursing, (and so forth) enroll in this course. The major challenge in teaching a "service" course of this nature is designing the course broadly enough to reach all majors while still maintaining enough focus to challenge students and provide projects that allow hands-on application of the theories and principles informing writing in technical and professional contexts.
teaching innovation:
In adapting the five core concepts listed above, it was important to me that the projects completed in class be evaluated in accordance with those principles. Thus, one of my first innovations was to develop a rubric according to these principles that would allow students understand the expectations for projects and how their grades were determined. Student response to this rubric was positive. The feedback I obtained indicated that students had a clear understanding of what was expected of them and how their projects were evaluated.
accompanying materials:
english/dtc 375 :: language, texts, and technology
The course catalog describes this course as, the "Relationship between technology and communication; writing practices from a historical point of view."
semesters & syllabi:
- spring 2011: 24 students
description:
Continuing to build course frameworks on WSU's Six Learning Goals for the Baccalaureate, this course guides students to explore communication through history and to consider how different technologies influence and change how we communicate, and ultimately, how we think. Each of the unit assignments addressed specific learning objectives; they also engaged students in communication proficiency, critical thinking, and information literacy goals.
teaching innovation:
One of the biggest challenges in teaching this course is the narrow perception of "writing" as strictly alphabetic text. Thus, with each unit focussing on different developments and technologies in communication history, students had the unique opportunity to work with different technologies and mediums to discover their affordances and challenges. For example, in the first unit, our readings discussed the development of clay tablets and the use of markers and symbols to communicate. Thus, students were required to make their own small (salt dough) clay tablets and to develop a symbolic mark to communicate. Then they wrote an essay incorporating their experiences of using the technology, of developing a representative symbol, along with the course readings and class discussions. Having the tactile experience of a different technology helped students think more critically about the influence of technology on communication. Thinking rhetorically about what symbol would best represent students on their clay tablets reinforced the exigencies of historical, social, and cultural contexts surrounding such communications, but also broadened their perceptions of what constitutes "writing." Additionally, the various projects through each of the units incorporated multiple literacies that evinced deep engagement with rhetorical strategies and tactics.
accompanying materials:
response project 3 - aural literacies through podcasts
English 361 :: Everyday rhetorics of popular culture
English 361 is designed to explore rhetorics as language and image of popular culture. As an Humanities [H] designated course, it explores the cultural and social underpinnings of knowledge in the arts and humanities toward participating in the building of inclusive communities (WSU Catalog). Students engage in the history of ideas, are acquainted with significant cultural traditions, and are provided with direct experience of important cultural achievements (WSU Catalog).
semesters & syllabi:
- spring 2010: 17 students
description:
This course teaches students to use a variety of methods of interpretation and analysis. Students use various modes of rational inquiry to understand complex human artifacts and, ultimately, to raise questions about the nature of rational inquiry itself. This is done to further develop students' communication abilities and interpretive and critical thinking skills.
teaching innovation:
Since this course had not yet been taught at the Tri-Cities campus, I was able to create a course that would appeal to both English and DTC majors. Following the brief course description available from the catalog, I developed the specific popular culture focus and assignment sequence, and developed project assignments that would engage students in new media composing as well as allow for traditional essay responses. It was particularly rewarding for me that every student in the class was willing to challenge themselves to compose new media projects for every one of the course assignments.
accompanying materials:
- project 1 - Reading Movies and Television
- project 2 - Reading Video/Computer Games
- project 3 - Reading Music: The Rockumentary
- project 4 - Reading the Everyday Rhetoric of Space and Place
- project 5 - Reading the Everyday Rhetoric of the Human Form
English 360 :: principles of rhetoric
This course introduces students to common rhetorical principles (audience, subject, purpose, context, forms of appeal, logical fallacies, and so forth) and to the disciplinary history of rhetoric and writing studies.
semesters & syllabi:
- fall 2011: 13 students
description:
The course approaches common rhetorical principles by examining how rhetoric and writing—in conjunction with research—can be used to support active local and global citizenship. For example, the principles of rhetoric are consistently employed not only in literary analysis, but also in law, politics, education, science, and religion. Assignments in the class offered students the ability to identify and apply these rhetorical principles while composing, interpreting, and presenting persuasive "texts"—oral, print, and/or electronic—of their own.
teaching innovation:
This was the first time the course was offered at WSU, Tri-Cities, so part of the challenge is always adjusting the course to fit within the guidelines of the department and catalogue while still addressing the specific needs of our regional campus population. For example, I've noted the isolated and fairly insular notions that our commuter campus population posses in regards to college education. Thus, in introducing students to the disciplinary history of rhetoric and writing studies, I also provided a broader context for their own educational experiences. Accordingly, I introduced students to the hundreds of scholarly, mostly peer-reviewed, journals nationwide that publish undergraduate research. Course assignments scaffolded the academic research process, required collaboration, and directed students to think more critically about the research they do for various courses — inviting them to take ownership of their scholarship rather than just going through the motions to obtain a grade. Throughout the course, assignments built up to a mini conference based on the National Conferences of Undergraduate Research. Though the dates of our course did not line up with the deadlines for the conference, students learned how to locate and interpret Calls for Proposals. They learned how to rhetorically craft proposals based on the conference guidelines, and how to situate their work in the public sphere. The course and the assignments proved to be a rather enlightening and positive experience for students, according to their final reflection essays.
accompanying materials:
analysis two - rhetorical analysis of a website
DTC/English 356 :: The Rhetoric of Information
The Rhetoric of Information is a core, upper-divsion requirement for the Digital Technology and Culture program and is also cross-listed as an upper-division English course (elective or requirement, depending on which English Option a student has selected).
semesters & syllabi:
description:
I redesigned this course for Tri-Cities DTC and English students as a survey course to introduce an early major to the social and cultural role of information through various principles of information literacy and communication design. In keeping with the NCTE Statement on 21st Century Literacies and WSU's Six Learning Goals of the Baccalaureate, DTC/Engl 356 introduces students to advanced techniques for locating and evaluating information from public and academic databases, as well as considering the responsible deployment of information. In terms of deployment, the course introduces students to document design, color theory, typography, data visualization, remix, and the ethical considerations of each, including issues of usability, copyright, fair use, and intellectual property. Each of these issues is undergirded by a foundation of the social, historical, and cultural theories that inform communication design.
teaching innovation
- fall 2009 - prior to my arrival at Tri-Cities, this course focused solely on databases, information retrieval, and understanding information architecture. However, upon my arrival, I was asked by the campus director of DTC to redesign the course to bring it in alignment with contemporary student needs by adding a component that would help students understand what to do with data once they obtained it. In this first semester of its redesign, I maintained, but reduced, exploration of databases and information retrieval, and I focused the course more on information visualization techniques and developed the survey repertoire.
- fall 2010 - after receiving feedback from students in the first semester I taught the course, I retained much of the survey content, but reorganized and refocused the course around a broader concept of communication design. The broader scope and greater emphasis on the cultural, historical, and social theoretical underpinnings is thus far proving successful.
English 301 :: Writing and Rhetorical Conventions
A course I recently redesigned for the Tri-Cities campus, English 301 is "designed to provide students with advanced practice in and study of style, argument, and other discourse conventions" (WSU Catalog).
semesters & syllabi:
- fall 2010: 25 students
description:
English 301 is a Tier II "written communication proficiency" general education requirement and
therefore designed as a course for all majors that rely on, or are enhanced by, excellent
communication skills. This requirement supports the communication proficiency, critical
thinking, and information literacy goals outlined in WSU's Six Learning Goals for the
Baccalaureate.
teaching innovation:
In order to engage advanced writing concepts and rhetorical conventions, I wanted students to have a thorough grounding to the ancient Western rhetorical tradition, while still gaining valuable context for contemporary applications and deployment. At the time I was developing this course, a call for papers for From Reflection to RE: Action: Civic Engagement and Technology—A Special Issue of Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy was issued. The central question for this CFP was one with which I found resonance for my course and adopted:
How can emergent technologies be used to enable teachers, students, and community partners to have productive moments of (un)civil discourse in the public sphere? What are the rhetorics of consumerism, individualism, privilege, and capitalism, which are often part-and-parcel of these emergent technologies used in the classroom?
accompanying materials
- Rhetorical Technalysis - rhetorical analysis of emergent technology
- Rhetorical Technalysis & Remediation - a second rhetorical analysis building on the first and adding a meta awareness component requiring students to enact the same form of the emergent technology they analyze.
English 200 :: Expository writing
This variable credit course is designed for transfer students who need to make up writing credits.
semesters:
- spring 2010: 4 separate independent studies
description:
Writing projects developed in consultation with the students ranged fields from General Science, Nursing, Psychology, and Viticulture & Enology.
teaching challenge:
Typically taught as a regular course offering on other campuses, Tri-Cities offered this course as an independent study. However, the large number of transfer students we have in comparison with the other campuses of WSU meant more independent studies than it made sense to administer. Thus, as WPA, I worked with the campus academic advisors to determine other options for transfer students to meet their writing credit requirements.
English 101 :: Introductory Writing
Introductory Writing is "designed to develop students' academic writing, critical thinking, rhetorical strategies, reading and library skills" (WSU Catalog). First Year Composition at WSU is part of a university-wide integrated writing program that has received national acclaim, including the CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence (2009).
semesters & syllabi:
- fall 2009: 20 students
description:
English 101 is heavily activities-based—that is, it works from the assumption that writers learn best though occasions for situated, hands-on practice in processes of rhetorical production and interpretation. Such activities may include workshops for invention and revision of essays, work in directed reading groups, participation in electronic discussions and design projects, and individual and group conferences. These activities and others will help students learn the various related processes in which effective writers engage to create and develop compositions: invention, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading.
teaching challenge:
Although I've taught First Year Composition courses of all different themes for several years, coming into my first semester at WSU with an integrated writing program meant learning a lot of procedure and expectation along with learning about the particular student body I was working with. Simultaneously viewing my experience that first semester from an instructor point of view and from a Writing Program Administrator (WPA) point of view, made this a rewarding and challenging experience. I learned quickly which aspects of the integrated writing program had been well-implemented at my regional campus and which areas needed enriching.