Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference
Sustainable Writing/Program/Administrators
Friday, July 17th
Boise, Idaho
Sustaining Frameworks for Technology and Literacy
Abstract:
In environments of diminishing resources for technology purchases, innovative curriculum development, and professional development and support, administrators and teachers of writing must constantly be reimagining productive and generative approaches to textual and multimodal pedagogies. Our panel reports on a local initiative from administrative, support, and teaching perspectives: student-owned laptop required writing courses.
Speaker #1: Vandenberg
“The Backpack Lab: Leveraging Students’ Personal Laptops in an Independent Writing Department”
The potential to acquire and upgrade fixed computer resources at scale is limited, yet studies suggest that up to 85% of college students own their own laptops. Leveraging students’ own technology—their own visual/physical/conceptual composing spaces—may offer the most sustainable approach to the programmatic convergence of technology and literacy in f2f settings. Speaker #1 will explain the Laptop Required Program’s origins in an independent writing unit committed to electronic portfolios, multimodal writing assignments, and other expressions of digital literacy. This speaker will share assessment data revealing consistently strong student perceptions of the pilot, now beginning its third year.
Speaker #2: Moore
“Professional Development for Literacy & Technology Teaching Environments”
As is the case with most writing programs, our population of faculty come from a wide range of pedagogical traditions, have been trained in the teaching of writing from the 1960’s to as recently as last year, and view technology use in the writing classroom through an astonishingly diverse range of lenses: ideological, cultural, and curricular. The speaker provides background on professional development and support structures underlying our laptop initiative, focusing on our programmatic commitments to high-quality writing instruction and the need to support faculty so they might continue to teach from their own strengths and pedagogical commitments as we continue to explore the relationship between technology and literacy.
Speaker #3: Hermes
“Navigating Technological and Literacy Contexts in First Year Writing”
Studies have shown that the use of laptops can have a positive effect on student attention and learning—if these tools are used for course-related, instructional purposes. However, in-class laptop-use can also be distracting as students spend time on activities unrelated to learning, such as checking email and social networking. As instructors, how do we integrate the use of computers into our classroom instruction, but in a way that complements it pedagogically? The speaker describes her experience in negotiating this complex cultural and pedagogical tension.
20th Annual DePaul Teaching and Learning Conference
DePaul University, Chicago
May 1, 2015
A Report and Reflection on an Ongoing Laptop-Required Initiative
Abstract: Our Departmental Laptop-Required Initiative has accumulated evidence of its effects and efficacy since its inception in 2012, in a curriculum that focuses on research, writing, collaboration, and using technology in the service of meaning making. Our presentation will include data from Online Teaching Evaluations and Instructor feedback and reports. Each presenter on the panel will connect our laptop initiative experiences and accumulated data to faculty teaching in different disciplines in order to highlight productive uses of a laptop pedagogy across disciplines.
Speaker #1: Vandenberg, “Laptop Required: A Programmatic Alternative to the Fixed Computer Classroom.”
Speaker #1, the department chair, will explain the Laptop Required Pilot’s origins in a department heavily committed to electronic portfolios, multimodal writing assignments, and other expressions of digital literacy but short on computer classrooms. He will explain the successful appeal to university administrators to launch the pilot, elaborate policy and procedures that have ensured programmatic continuity, and describe the program’s potential for other university units that require students to work with computers
Speaker #2: Moore, “The Scholarship of Teaching & Technology: A Laptop Pedagogy”
Speaker #2, the department’s Coordinator of Pedagogy & Technology, will discuss contexts for faculty professional-development efforts and ongoing structures of support, especially those that highlight the interconnected relationships between digital technologies, social literacies, and academic literacies. Three areas emerge as interesting trends worthy of scrutiny and reflection: assumptions about reading in print versus on a screen, and the implications for those differences in laptop-required sections; thinking in terms of classroom space and arrangement — who should sit where? What does the arrangement promote and inhibit? — and the related issues of control: what happens when students look at a computer and not the instructor?
Speaker #3: Fink, “Technology and Everyday Pedagogical Concerns”
Speaker #3, an instructor within the department, will explore the teaching of writing in laptop-required sections, focusing on the creation of a practicable communal, digital space for both reading and writing assignments, including a possible framework for a “writing studio” approach, the sharing of various documents, potential topics for discussion, sample writing prompts, and collaborative investigative projects where laptops may be used in small groups to broaden student research capabilities.
Speaker #4: Ackmann, “Gathering Evidence from Individual Teaching Practice”
Speaker #4, a WRD faculty member, will discuss the practice of gathering individual evidence by keeping consistent and accessible records while teaching a new course or with new technology (like WRD’s laptop pilot). This process involved maintaining regular logs of effective exercises, resources, student concerns, and the opportunities or challenges of the new technology, as well as regular reflection and adjustments, ultimately creating an archive that can be referenced when assessing the efficacy of a course or practice, and provide a useful evidence base for course revision.
CCCC 2015 Conference
Tampa, Florida
March 20, 2015
A Report and Reflection on an Ongoing Laptop-Required Initiative in an Independent Writing Program
Abstract
A report and reflection on an ongoing Laptop-Required Initiative in an Independent Writing Program.
We have arrived at an interesting point in writing studies in relation to pedagogy and technology: writing-program administrators must advocate for digital writing opportunities amid diminishing resources, and writing faculty continue to negotiate our imperfect understanding of the relationship between digital technologies, social literacies, and academic literacies. At the same time, students arrive on campus with their own expectations and assumptions about writing, how it is composed, where it gets distributed, and the ways in which readers might read it. Fortunately, in increasing numbers, they are also bringing their own wireless devices and a willingness to incorporate them in their own learning.
In this panel, three speakers who work in an independent writing department at a large, Midwestern University reflect and report on a two-year old pilot program requiring students to bring their own laptop computers to designated sections of first-year writing and a sophomore-level business writing course. Panelists engage with recent scholarship — especially Amy C. Kimme Hea’s Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Researchers, and Stuart Selber’s collection, Rhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and Communication to contextualize program design, faculty support, and pedagogical innovation. This important scholarship provides a framework that allows us to generalize our experiences for broad application across a range of programs and contexts.
Speaker #1: Vandenberg, From Concept to Assessment: Administering a Personal Laptop Required Pilot
Speaker #1, the department chair, will explain the Laptop Required Pilot’s origins in a department heavily committed to electronic portfolios, multimodal writing assignments, and other expressions of digital literacy but short on computer classrooms. He will explain the successful appeal to university administrators to launch the pilot, elaborate policy and procedures (including advance messaging to prospective enrollees and scheduling processes) that have ensured programmatic continuity, and describe the expansion of the program to mathematics and computer science. While accounting for challenges, including limited access to electrical outlets and the inevitable potential to distract posed by wireless devices, this speaker will share assessment data revealing consistently strong student perceptions of the pilot: by unexpectedly high margins, students attribute increased engagement, enhanced learning, and even improved writing ability to the structured use of their own laptop computers in writing classrooms.
Speaker #2: Moore, “Supporting A Laptop Required Initiative: Negotiating Technology and Literacy”
Speaker #2, the department’s Coordinator of Pedagogy & Technology, will discuss contexts for faculty professional-development efforts and ongoing structures of support, especially those that highlight the interconnected relationships between digital technologies, social literacies, and academic literacies. As is case with any department whose faculty have a range of disciplinary backgrounds and attitudes toward technology, the process of creating links between technology and literacy-based learning outcomes reveals a wide range of pedagogical commitments: some faculty members enact a “writing studio” approach, where they are able to work alongside students as they plan, draft, and revise their work; others emphasize the collaborative group-work possibilities such as file sharing and peer reviews using shared documents; and some focus on information literacy in research-focused courses. Three areas emerge as interesting trends worthy of scrutiny and reflection: assumptions about reading in print versus on a screen, and the implications for those differences in laptop-required sections; thinking rhetorically in terms of classroom space and arrangement — who should sit where? What does the arrangement promote and inhibit? — and the related issues of control: what happens when students look at a computer and not the teacher? The speaker documents support materials that we have designed and developed that pay attention to literacy and disciplinary practices while emphasizing local, contextual pedagogies.
Speaker #3: Fink, “Teaching in a Communal, Digital Space”
Speaker #3, an instructor within the department, will explore the teaching of writing in laptop-required sections, focusing on the creation of a practicable communal, digital space for both reading and writing assignments, including a possible framework for a “writing studio” approach, the sharing of various documents, potential topics for discussion, sample writing prompts, and collaborative investigative projects where laptops may be used in small groups to broaden student research capabilities. As is to be expected, when teaching writing in a laptop-required environment, instructor interaction with student work inherently changes, from which a new set questions arises: how does one collect and effectively respond to assignments? At what cost? And are there solutions? With any initiative, introducing new technologies in the classroom presents unique pedagogical opportunities, though it is not without certain everyday challenges, which when considered are both predictable and amendable via lesson planning.