Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“My Books Will Be Read By Millions Of People!”: The Laguardia Community College Octavia E. Butler Project On Wikipedia.”, Ximena Gallardo C., Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

[This book chapter (“My Books Will Be Read By Millions of People!”: The LaGuardia Community College Octavia E. Butler Wikipedia Project.”) originally appeared in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Octavia Butler, edited by Tarshia Stanley, published by the Modern Language Association of America." Pages 45-51. ISBN: 9781603294157]

In this essay, we examine the innovative community college classroom project that resulted in the first installment of Wikipedia Project Octavia E. Butler: the crafting of thorough, rigorously researched, well-written Wikipedia entries for Butler’s works by teams of undergraduate students.

The first part of the essay focuses on our design of a …

Reframing Readiness: Through The Cracked Looking Glass: The Framework For Success In Postsecondary Writing As Assessment Model, David Hyman

Publications and Research

The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and National Writing Project) describes experiences and habits of mind that will equip students for success in college writing. This column highlights examples of the values espoused by the Framework and aims to increase understanding of this statement, advocating for its rich conception of writing.

Digital Literacies And Visual Rhetoric: Scaffolding A Meme-Based Assignment Sequence For Introductory Composition Classes, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

Introducing students to the practice of academic writing ideally goes beyond teaching strategies like drafting, outlining, and revising in order to encourage deeper skills such as critical thinking and metacognition. This post discusses an assignment series focusing on reflection, genre analysis, and multiliteracies leading up to the design of original memes.

Unfolding: An Academic Autobiography, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

An academic autobiography of one who came to academia later in life than most, Unfolding uses blog post from the past decade stitched together by a narrative of what brought one person to teaching.

Writing At Transitions: Using In-Class Writing As A Learning Tool, Nate Mickelson

Publications and Research

Drawing on the fundamentals of Writing to Learn pedagogy, this article describes how teachers across the disciplines can use in-class writing as a learning tool. Because in-class writing activities foreground the power of writing as a means for processing and integrating information, using writing prompts during times of transition common to every class—at the beginning or end of class, when moving from topic to topic or activity to activity, or at the conclusion of a particularly rich discussion—can serve to focus and extend student engagement. Offering practical advice and examples from his own teaching experiences, the author shows how structuring …

The Academic Librarian As Writer, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

Writing can help the academic librarian meet the performance criteria of faculty rank or status. More significantly, it actively engages the librarian in research, scholarship and publication. This article explains how the academic work environment can support the librarian writer. Suggestions are also made for getting started in writing productively.

Writing Intensive Courses In Theatre, Alisa Roost

Publications and Research

Most professors believe writing matters. Through writing our students are better able to synthesize ideas, communicate those ideas, and make connections across fields. While it can take significant time to grade all the assignments, it can threaten coverage of material, and our students rarely appreciate it, writing assignments can be crafted to reduce grading, add depth to coverage, and spark interest. What follows is an overview of how I incorporate writing into my theatre courses and some ways of crafting engaging writing-intensive courses.

Making Writing Matter: Using "The Personal" To Recover[Y] An Essential[Ist] Tension In Academic Discourse, Jane Hindman

Publications and Research

Considers how constructing a hopeful professional discourse requires substantial revision of current professional discursive practices. Notes that the search for local knowledge and a shared, more hopeful discourse has rekindled interest in the rhetorical as well as material authority of ideologies, in various forms of writing collected under the overdetermined rubric "the personal." (SG)

Special Focus: Personal Writing, Jane E. Hindman

Publications and Research

This introduction to a special section of College English treats the nature, role, and problematics of personal academic discourse and professional work. It address the place of personal writing in professional contexts and aims to clarify the myriad denotations of "the personal" in academic discourse and to suggest viable criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of personal writing's contributions to knowledge-making in English studies.

Does Our Complex Writing Lower Test Scores On Mathematics Word Problems?, William (Bill) H. Williams, Sandra P. Clarkson

Publications and Research

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we describe one of a series of studies at Hunter College to determine whether students' reading proficiency affects their performance on mathematics "word" problems. Based on this study, we reached some specific conclusions:

1. Reading ability is a separate, quantifiable factor which impacts the performance of all students on mathematics word problems.

2. Less complex writing leads to better results on word problems for all students.

3. Less complex writing leads to even more improvement in test results for “weaker” readers [those needing reading remediation] than for “average” readers [those exempting reading remediation].