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Spring Quarter, 2018 sessions

Here’s the lineup so far:

  • Friday, April 6th: 10:00-11:00 a.m.

    Teaching WRD Courses Online, with Tricia Hermes and Erin MacKenna Sandhir. We have a small collection of correspondences with students from our online courses (anonymously) that we would like to share on Friday, and that we think can help to characterize the shifting roles and kinds of situations that online faculty occasionally encounter. We’d like to begin, in writing-workshop fashion, by asking “How would you respond to these emails?”

Interestingly, we could just as easily receive these kinds of emails in our face-to-face classes as well, but we want to use this opportunity to think together about the role of technology (in general) and e-mail (in particular) in our online work. Other possible productive outcomes:

 

 

  • As part of our ongoing Teaching Online D-WRD series, this will be a good time just to check in and to ask about problems, challenges, opportunities, new assignments, methods, strategies, etc.
  • To look ahead to any specific D2L tool and feature workshops – quizzes? Grades? Video? Something else?
  • Revisit critical and rhetorical interface issues – both human and technological – and how we can establish a rhetorical presence that can lead to increased student engagement
  • Sugary treats.

Infants and children are always welcome at D-WRD sessions!

  • Friday, May 4th: 10:00-11:00 a.m.
    From WRD to the Workplace: Intersections between First Year Writing and Professional Writing. Many First Year composition students mistakenly see the main goal of classroom writing as developing skills that will help them succeed in college, but sometimes have a harder time imagining the how the skills learned in WRD 103 and 104 can enhance other areas of their lives. This D-WRD session, led by Alan Ackmann, will explore how concepts often discussed in First Year Writing, such as reflection, multi-modality, rhetorical analysis, design, and writing with technology also transfer into professional contexts, and ways we as instructors can make these links more meaningful for our students.

  • Friday, May 18th: open, come-and-go-as-you-please Digital Writing Portfolio & Digication workshop as we prepare for upcoming portfolio assignments and submissions. That’s the end of week 8, so the timing is good. We can also look at strategies for assigning, supporting, collecting, reading, and assessing Digital Writing Portfolios
Digication released some substantive improvements last Friday, so you could get some hands-on practice and support with test-driving those, as well —
 
Updates include:
  • Improved design and functionality for the Rich Text Module, Module Prompts and Conversations
  • Improved design and functionality of the settings panel for editing styles
  • Improved Table Module Design Customizations