The writing tips below are mostly reasonable. I’m contesting the advice that turning means the same thing as turning around. I loved helping students with application essays come to understand that they didn’t need “I think.” The whole essay was…
Category: Teaching
What Writing Stage Are You Working On?
This is a cool idea. Would be fun in faculty writing retreats as well. If you could be sure writers consistently and accurately changed the markers, it would be an interesting way to study writing workflows. Here is a close…
Rethinking Technical Writing Discussions in Online Asynchronous Classes
It’s that point in class planning where I have great, big, giant goals—but I’m not at all sure that I can design a course to meet them. Zoomed out, the big targets are better discussion posts/student interaction, solutions for group…
A Policy for the Groups I Want
The dreaded hour has come: Folks in my Tech Writing course have reported group members who they cannot contact or who are not responding and other group members who are not contributing to the projects. Now I have to figure…
Working Bibliography on Higher Ed Syllabi
Al Harahap asked about research on what people (ok, really students) look for in syllabi today on Facebook. Here’s an “as-is” export of all the sources I have in my Zotero bibliography.
The Challenge of Ethics Discussions
For the third week of Technical Writing, our template focuses on ethical considerations, asking students to respond to two online discussions. One of the discussions asks students to find the code of ethics for their field and then discuss what…
Visual Outline of Group Work for the Fall
Today is the last day of the second week of classes. I got my groups set up yesterday, using the Group Preferences Form that I developed a few years ago. I ended up aiming for five people per group, but…
Wrapping Things Up
After writing yesterday’s post, I read up on group assessment, reviewed some materials on contract grading, and revisited some information on ungrading. I’ve been collecting references in Zotero for years now, so it was relatively easy to pull up the…
Temporary Signs of Progress
On Friday, I ordered Ellen Carillo’s The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading (2021). It arrived today, and I read it quickly. It’s a short but very useful book. I was especially pleased to have some of the questions that…
A Tentative Effort Expectations Contract Chart
I’ve spent the day reading (and rereading) on contract grading, including all of these resources: Inoue, Asao B. (2019). Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/…