Education Commons^™

Creative Writing Pedagogy: Building Curriculum For High School Students, Elizabeth Lengel

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis serves as a rationale for the creative writing pedagogy I use and how it serves my high school creative writing class. As my school district made the decision to overhaul our English curriculum, the English department decided to add Creative Writing as an English class elective.

The work for planning these new classes was spread around the English Department, and I was assigned to design the curriculum for the new Creative Writing class. Designing an entire class from scratch leaves a lot of room for creativity and innovation. However, as excited for this new course as I was, …

Productive Disruptions: Using Commonplace Books To Resist Eurocentrism, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Lived Experiences Of Male Generation Z Collegians: Transcendental Phenomenological Approach, Nona Pratt Oshman Reynolds

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to examine the academic experiences of 11 male Generation Z born between 1995-2012 and describe their undergraduate collegiate experiences by exploring their thoughts and perceptions. The central question is: What are the academic experiences of male undergraduate Generation Z college students? Intrinsic and extrinsic factors are sinuous in the lives of Generation Z males; therefore, sub-questions investigated the views of participants regarding the implications of generational shifts, motivations, societal trends, and technology within higher education. Purposive, criterion, and snowball sampling were used to select 11 participants. The educational theories of constructivism, sociocultural, …

I Told You That To Tell You This: Metagaming And Metacognition In The Hybrid Classroom, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper theorizes the use of play and gamified methods to foster metacognition, or strategies for learning and learning about learning, in online graduate instruction. In the process, it calls into question the determinism of “serious” games as being the only means of facilitating metacognition. Ultimately, by adopting metagame approaches—that is, approaches based on0 goals and achievements that are external to the game and/or are developed by the players themselves—metacognition can and does occur because students participate in the development of the rewards. Moreover, any metagame feature ultimately becomes a commentary so that an approach based on metagaming offers its …

Flipping The Jane Austen Classroom, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

The contemporary Austen classroom might appreciate cultural and racial diversity, examine popular culture’s distortions of the original texts, and consider multimodal ways of reading. This paper reflects on a course that “flipped” the research process in order to “find” Austen and her works in the popular culture and to evaluate our understanding in the twenty-first century. Students discovered the commodification and distortion of “Jane Austen” and conducted research for creative projects to learn more about the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the written texts.

Engl 487: English Capstone Experience—A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio, Kelly Stage

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio documents the teaching objectives, strategies, and assessments for a capstone course in the English major at UNL. As the English Studies Capstone and as an ACE (Achievement-Centered Education) 10 course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, English 487 must help students meet key outcomes for the department and the University, but it also allows flexibility and creativity in the methods chosen to meet these requirements and structure the course. This portfolio thereby reflects on the intellectual labor of designing a particular version of these requirements and on guiding students through the design. The assessments included here are measuring traditional …

Treasure Hunt Without A Map: Archival Research At The University Of Pennsylvania, Meghan Strong

English Independent Study Projects

Under the supervision of Meredith Goldsmith in the English Department, I spent this semester developing archival research projects for lower level students in the humanities. My project corresponded with the aims of the Council for Undergraduate Research, which works to develop undergraduate research skills throughout the disciplines. The Kislak Center is a nearby resource that has the potential to provide students with opportunities to develop crucial research skills while discovering little pieces of history that are hidden away in the archives. The final exercises presented here focus on the subjects of Walt Whitman, Marian Anderson, and Michel de Montaigne.

Incarceration, Identity Formation, And Race In Young Adult Literature: The Case Of Monster Versus Hole In My Life, Tim Engles, Fern Kory

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Dialogue, Selection, Subversion: Three Approaches To Teaching Women Writers, Karen Gevirtz, Martha Bowden, Jonathan Sadow

Department of English Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Keeping Mason's 'Shiloh' C.R.I.S.P., Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

As Kansas foreshadowed for us in "Dust in the Wind" (1978), "nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky." This past year the two of us have transitioned from teachers into our new roles as co-directors of the university's Teaching & Learning Center, but we have still spent a lot of time in the classroom-as observers. One of our unit's services is assessing the classroom presentation of instructors, especially that of new faculty, and we have been overwhelmed by one major pedagogical problem shared by over 90% of the teachers. In short, no matter the discipline, a common problem stands …

Using Knowledge Surveys And Tests To Teach Literature: Do We Assess And Make Asses Of Ourselves, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

Even before the end of the twentieth century, literature teachers were under a great deal of pressure to join the assessment movement, but recently the screws have been tightened, this time by the federal government through the six regional accrediting agencies.

Modeling The Writing Assignment On Literature, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

Charlie has been teaching his junior-level American Lit Survey II for 36 years, but last summer after reflecting on the course with Hal, he decided to try a new way of teaching students to write. He set up critical writing communities in his class and then he created one for himself in order to model a particular writing skill.

What Do We Really Want To Teach In Alice Munro's 'Walker Brothers', Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

No matter how long or often we teach a course, in order to keep ourselves fresh, to provide a challenge, and to adapt to the shifting academic environment, we like to change the syllabus. Next semester, to include more contemporary and non-USA Americans in our Introduction to American Literature II survey, we're adding Alice Munro's "Walker Brothers Cowboy."

Connecting White Noise To Critical Whiteness Studies, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Connecting White Noise To Critical Whiteness Studies, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

The Mini-Casebook--Easy As Pie, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

Presents a casebook on the song "American Pie" that considers how to define the parameters of short narrative. Describes the creation of an end-of-term cumulative writing project that the authors have successfully employed for the last decade. Discusses how they put together a casebook that teaches the necessary research skills.

Curriculum, Pedagogy, And Teacherly Ethos, Marshall W. Gregory

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In considering how curriculum and teaching influence education, it is revealing to note that most faculty members treat curriculum the way bankers treat investments. They generally spend much time, planning, and careful thought on curricular matters-reasoning here, analyzing there, relying on experience, and carefully considering both the long-term and short-term dividends of knowledge - but when it comes to teaching, many faculty members operate less like bankers and more like barnstormers, flying by the seat of their pants and guiding themselves primarily by instinct or by repeating whatever worked yesterday.