Teaching Philosophy Draft

For students of writing, learning takes place when their role ceases to be a passive and begins to focus on their own native literacies and innovative skills. When students begin to realize that behind each piece of writing exists an author who has made choices in the creation of that rhetoric, they begin to evaluate those choices and participate in a scholarly analysis. Frequently, students see writing as a static medium, made up of finished products instead of something that was created and fashioned based on the choices of the author. In order for students to become thoughtful participants in any discipline, they must learn to pay attention to the ways in which rhetoric is deployed across multiple media formats. By identifying authorial choices and how to convey the structure and shape of these choices within a disciplinary language, students learn how to deploy rhetoric themselves in multimodal environments, as well as with multiple media platforms. Thus, the objective of my composition course is to teach students to identify their own writing and the writing of others across media formats as an active conversation into which they will enter.

The first objective of this course is to help students define a conversation in relation to their colleagues in the classroom. In a seminar format that mixes writing, reviewing, and workshop elements, students participate and learn by innovating and generating their own ideas. Reading assignments will only form a small amount of class time in order to give students an introduction to their field of choice. This will be supplemented by targeted media projects that encourage students to use the digital tools at hand to explore different ways of framing questions through different literacies.  The goal will ultimately be to see them work across these multiple fields in order to understand how modern literacy includes presentation tools, internet sources, and other media innovations that will actually help them to address a wider audience of more diverse peoples. 

My role in the classroom is to help students bring their ideas to life, not prescribe those ideas for them. My role is not hugely different from their own. I am a part of their scholarly conversation and, in many ways a resource for their own investigations. My job, as I see it, is to demonstrate the type of audience member that I want each student to be both inside and outside the classroom.

Under this philosophy, students are taught an awareness of composition and the rhetorical situation in and through multimodal, analytic and research oriented workshops. In order to become successful students and professionals, students need to be able to locate and situate themselves in a multitude of rhetorical across disciplinary conversations and media formats.  

A useful database of digital research tools

Hey Everyone,
Lauren Holt (one of our program's alumni, who is currently serving as a Brittan Fellow over at Georgia Tech) shared this site with me and it is so great I thought I'd share it with all of you. It is basically a searchable index/catalog of digital tools (many of them free) which might be really useful for some of the digitally-mediated projects we are all thinking about for our classes next year. Hope it helps!

http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/

Yours Truly,
Adam

101 Syllabus

Hey folks!

My website is still in development, but here's a link to a draft of my 101 syllabus for those who'd like to have a look:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pk729z0atm4tvqh/Intimate%20Public%20Syllabus%20Draft.docx

It's still very much a work in progress, but any feedback is more than welcome!

-Aaron

MRose ENG 181.009

After class discussion/workshop on Monday, I decided to revise my 101 into a 181. I'll figure out what to do for Spring 2014 later. For now, I made few changes to the readings and started weaving-in the web instruction stuff. I anticipate students' personal websites will solve many logistical problems, and prohibit useless end products.


I had a great meeting with Kate Doubler (and Amy Hildreth Chen) today. Kate was kind enough to display and describe a variety of artist books from the MARLB collection. I had planned on integrating the art book into my semester, but I couldn't figure out quite how till Kate gave me some great suggestions. You can read the sequence if you want, but after some reading and writing-on texts, I'm asking students to "alter" their editions of Walden. The whole "alteration" proces will be documented with photos and reflective narratives displayed in a series of web pages. This is their last major assignment sequence and it culminates in a "instal" show. I'm really excited because the project seems fresh, and a great use of Emory resources. Plus students get to read texts by making new ones, and the project draws together all the skills developed in previous assignment sequences.

Anyway...I have lots more work to do, but I'm happy with my draft. If you want to check out my site click here. 

Adam's 101

Here is the link to my 101 page (though it is still very much a work in progress):

http://ewprogram.com/adamnewman/teaching/eng-101-2/

-Adam

Assignment justifications and syllabus

Hi all,

I'm just going to go ahead and post what I have, though I imagine this will change a good bit when I see what everyone else is doing. I split the assignment descriptions into student/philosophy of teaching bits to show what would be student-facing and what would be administration-facing content.

One thing I wasn’t sure about was how commonly accepted the idea of the three levels of writing (textual, rhetorical, and discursive) is in rhet/comp discourse. I talk about them like they are fairly transparent (i.e. “this assignment develops the discursive level”) but maybe I should cite McComiskey more specifically when I use those terms and situate them more fully. Looking forward to seeing how everyone else handles this. 

Assignment 1: Short essay and content for “Links/Resources” and “About” pages

·         Student description 

The final draft of your first assignment is due by email before class on September 20^th. In 900-1200 words, you will describe the history of a hobby, how it is practiced today, and what different groups participate in it. Write about points of conflict or interest in your hobby’s community of practice, and suggest a way that the discourse could be enhanced.

There will be several pre-writing steps to the final submission of this paper, including a mindmap, a resource list, and a peer review session. After you’ve received feedback, you will use this research to construct two pages on your website. One page will provide a list of different communities, resources, and forums available in your hobby. It will include several sentences explaining what each resource is, how it is useful, and whatever else seems relevant. This will be your “Links/Resources” page. The second page will be an “About” page that describes what kind of a resource your website is in light of the resources you’ve already identified. You must complete all the pre-writing phases in order to receive credit.

·         Philosophy of teaching justification:

In this assignment, students research and collect available internet resources cultivated by and for their hobby’s community. They will use these materials to craft a “Links/Resources” page for their web projects, identifying important discursive currents and common questions already circulating. Then, they will create an “About” page for their own hypertext projects that inserts them usefully into the array of resources already available and poises them to contribute to their community of practice. This assignment is focused on rhetorical aspects such as audience, purpose, and context. It is designed to teach students how to find (and construct) audiences and prepares them to make an original contribution in their final hypertext project. They will learn about the ways in which texts interpellate people and call certain audiences into being, as well as strategic rhetorical decisions that they can make to evoke their own audiences.

Assignment 2: Essay on self cultivation in relationship to communities and institutions.

·         Student description

The final draft of your second essay is due by email before class on October 30^th. In 2700-3000 words, you will engage with some aspect of self-cultivation from the texts we’ve been reading, focusing on identity formation through the Stoic, Christian, and geek technologies of the self.

·         Philosophy of teaching justification:

This assignment is designed to teach students about the discursive level of writing by making them more aware of the ways in which institutional forces work to shape individuals. Students will use the invention techniques introduced in assignment 1 in order to produce a formal, academic paper. They will take the insights from the previous assignment about audience formation and talk about the institutional apparatuses at work that make it possible to call certain audiences into being. To get at these issues, they will write about audience construction using what they have learned from their readings in the philosophy of self-cultivation. By thinking about how selves are called into being across Stoic, Christian, and modern geek cultural technologies of the self such as self writing, they will become more able to critically engage with attendant explicit and implicit cultural values in their hobby communities.

Assignment 3: Blog page and abstract

·         Student description

For this assignment, you will create a blog page for your website and post onto it a revised version of your previous research paper. Adapt the style to accommodate the kind of audience you are constructing and the genre you are working within. You will also abstract your paper and post the abstract on your coursework page, along with the title of the paper.

·         Philosophy of teaching justification:

Like assignment 1, this assignment focuses on the rhetorical aspect of writing. It uses reversioning to make students conscious of different audiences and registers of formality, from academic writing to more popular forms of blogging. It is also designed to help the students find and foreground their most important ideas and contributions in the transition from essay to post.

Assignment 4: An original contribution to your hobby’s discourse through your hypertext project.

·         Student description

For this assignment, you will complete the project that we will have discussed individually earlier in the semester and post it to your website. It should follow from the work you have already done about available resources and needs within your hobby community, and the style and medium should be appropriate to the topic. As part of this assignment, you will present to the class both the content of your project and the kinds of decisions you made when putting it together. Talk about your compositional decisions regarding the project’s audience, purpose, style, and how you navigated the implicit and explicit ideals encouraged by the institutional context your project is a part of.

·         Philosophy of teaching justification

The final assignment for this class combines writing on the rhetorical, discursive, and textual levels. The site will be free of errors and suitable to professionally represent the student’s work at Emory. The audience discovered and created will be plausible for the community that already exists around the student’s hobby, and the rhetorical decisions the student makes will consciously engage this targeted group with its contribution. The student will show critical thinking about the kinds of institutional pressures at work within the hobby’s ideals. Though students may not choose to explicitly address the large social questions that the institutional contexts of their hobbies involve in the hypertext project, they will be prepared to describe in their presentation how their familiarity with these questions translates into the decisions they made about their projects. 

My syllabus is still a work in progress. I realized about halfway through that I was assigning too much reading, so now my next goal is to go back and stretch out what I think is important for them to read over more sessions and to add more workshops in. This should give you a general sense of how things fit together, though. 

Hobbies and the Self: From Greeks to Geeks

English 101: Expository Writing

Fall 2013, Emory University

Section 001: MWF 9:00-9:50am, Callaway N203

Dori Coblentz                                                                         Office: Callaway N207A

Email: dcoblen@emory.edu                                                     Office Hours: W 10:00-11:00 by 

Course website: DoriCoblentz.com/english101                          appointment, and online

Course Description: English 101 is the first course in Emory’s two-semester lower-division composition sequence. It satisfies the first-year English writing requirement and gives students a foundation for writing in their own field in later coursework by deepening their understanding of style, audience, and genre.  Students will prepare to write traditional research essays as well as write within the conventions of new media discourses and steward their online presences.

Theme: This section will focus on hobbies, broadly defined as recreational activities that form an important part of our leisure time. We’ll explore how communities (particularly online communities) form around hobbies and how hobbies shape the way we think about ourselves and others. You’ll be using your own and your classmates’ texts as major sources for the work we do in this class, and we will also be looking at excerpts from a number of other texts relevant to themes of self-cultivation. This course will culminate in a digital portfolio that you can add to throughout your time at Emory. As part of this portfolio, you will be writing a website that showcases the work you do for this class: a hypertext that explores an aspect of a hobby’s community of practice, and a 3,000 word research essay informed by our course readings on the care of the self.

Required Books and Materials

Most of our readings will be available on the course website.

Recommended: Hacker, Diana. A Writer’s Reference. 6^th edition.

Grade Distribution

20% Attendance and participation, including submission of the discussion question due each class

10% Assignment 1: Short essay and content for “Link/Resources” and “About” pages

5% Assignment 2: Wikipedia entry

20% Assignment 3: Essay on identity formation

10% Assignment 4: Abstract of your paper on identity formation and adapted blog post

25% Hypertext project

10% Presentation

Class Attendance and Participation:

You have three excused absences (any absence may be excused provided that you contact me about it ahead of time by email). If you miss more than six classes, it is an automatic failure. Attendance will be taken based on my collection of your short, casual discussion questions due at the beginning of each class. Throughout the semester, you will be asked to watch videos, look through websites, and read other online materials as well as complete traditional textbook readings. Being well-prepared for class means doing all of the readings, thinking about them, and having something to say about them during discussion. Taking notes that summarize each reading’s main argument and highlights a few questions that it raises is a good way to do this, and to have a record of your work for your future self.

Assignment 1: Content for “Links/Resources” and “About” pages

The final draft of your first short essay is due by email before class on September 20^th. In 900-1200 words, you will describe the history of a hobby, how it is practiced today, and what different groups participate in it. Write about points of conflict or interest in your hobby’s community of practice, and suggest a way that the discourse could be enhanced. There will be several pre-writing steps to the final submission of this paper, including a mindmap, a resource list, and a peer review session. You must complete all the pre-writing phases in order to receive credit.

Assignment 2: Wikipedia entry:

By September 30^th you will create a short (300-600 word) Wikipedia-style contribution about the issue you’ve chosen to focus on for your hypertext project. Email it to me before class. Actually posting it on Wikipedia is optional.

Assignment 3: Essay

The final draft of your second essay is due by email before class on October 30^th. In 2700-3000 words, you will engage with some aspect of self-cultivation from the texts we’ve been reading, focusing on identity formation through the Stoic, Christian, and geek technologies of the self we’ve read about.

Assignment 4: Abstract and blog post

For this assignment, you will create a blog page for your website and post onto it a revised version of your previous research paper. Adapt the style to accommodate the kind of audience you are constructing and the genre you are working within. You will also abstract your paper and post the abstract on your coursework page, along with the title of the paper.

Hypertext Project

By October 16^th, you will have completed a draft of your hypertext project that will show the site’s layout and address the findings of your first mini essay in regards to a point of conflict of interest in your hobby’s practice. By December 9^th, the final project is due.

Presentation:

You will give an 8-10 minute presentation of your hypertext project to the class on December 2^nd, 4^th, or 6^th in which you will show the content of your project and describe the kinds of compositional decisions regarding the project’s audience, purpose, style, and how you navigated the implicit and explicit ideals encouraged by the institutional context your project is a part of.

Grading Policy

A (92%-100%)

B (82-88%)

C (72-78%)

D (62-68%)

F (50%)

Course Policies

Late Policy:

Because this is a workshop course, it’s important for you to be at every class meeting with your readings completed and your discussion question written. If you cannot meet a deadline you must contact me before the class in which it is due to discuss the situation.

Classroom and Online Environment:

Because our classes are short, it is especially important that you arrive on time (excessive tardiness will affect your participation grade). You are welcome to use your laptop, but please only use it for notes and other class-related things. Be prepared to lower the screen during discussion.

Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Date	Topics	Reading Due	Assignment Due
Wed 8/28	Introductions: Hobbies, play, and self-cultivation
Fri 8/30	Genre, style and audience: discovering and adapting a topic.	Clear and Simple as the Truth excerpt [weblink]	Discussion question In class: Hobby mindmap.
Mon 9/2	No class meeting – Labor Day
Wed 9/4	Stoicism and self-cultivation.	Epictetus selections from The Enchiridion	Discussion question Post mindmap
Fri 9/6	Christianity and self-cultivation	St. Ignatius selection from Spiritual Exercises	Discussion question Post list of communities, resources, and forums available in your hobby.
Mon 9/9	Modern geek culture and self-cultivation	Neal Stephenson, Some Remarks (vegging /geeking out excerpt)	Discussion question
Wed 9/11	What happened in between? Perspectives on Stoicism, Christianity, and modernity 1	Foucault on self-care excerpt	Discussion question
Fri 9/13	What happened in between? Perspectives on Stoicism, Christianity, and modernity 2	Hadot on St. Ignatius excerpt	Discussion question Draft of a 900-1200 word paper for peer review.
Mon 9/16	What happened in between? Perspectives on Stoicism, Christianity, and modernity 3	Cont. Hadot on St. Ignatius excerpt	Discussion question
Wed 9/18	What happened in between? Perspectives on Stoicism, Christianity, and modernity 4	Teskey: excerpt from Delirious Milton on modern selfhood.	Discussion question
Fri 9/20	No class	None	Turn in short essay 1 via email and post to class blog before 5 pm
Mon 9/23	What kind of self are you cultivating? Evaluation of how these discourses of self-cultivation work with your hobby	Everyone else’s short essays on the class blog.	Discussion question Substantive comments on 5 of your classmates’ papers.
Wed 9/25	Tech day to set up Wordpress blogs	[article on composing in hypertext] [Wikipedia guidelines]	Discussion question
Fri 9/27	Genre, style, and audience revisited. Rhetorical strategies for Wikipedia, class research papers, message boards, etc.	Clear and Simple as the Truth “other styles” section	Discussion question
Mon 9/30	Genre, style, and audience re-visited again.	Neal Stephenson on Dante versus Beowulf writers	Turn in Wikipedia Entry by email before class Discussion question
Wed 10/2	Privacy and stewardship of your online presence	[privacy articles]	Discussion question Post your Wikipedia contribution to the blog
Fri 10/4	Copyright, citation, collaboration.	[creative commons article] [how to cite sources/ avoid plagiarism article]	Discussion question.
Mon 10/7	TBD	The Wikipedia entries of your classmates	Discussion question Post substantive comments on 5
Wed 10/9		Thinking Fast and Slow excerpts	Discussion question
Fri 10/11		Thinking Fast and Slow excerpts	Discussion question
Mon 10/14	Fall Break
Wed 10/16			Hypertext draft due
Fri 10/18
Mon 10/21
Wed 10/23
Fri 10/25
Mon 10/28
Wed 10/30			Essay 2 due by email before class
Fri 11/1
Mon 11/4
Wed 11/6
Fri 11/8
Mon 11/11
Wed 11/13
Fri 11/15			Blog Post and About pages due before class
Mon 11/18
Wed 11/20
Fri 11/22
Mon 11/25
Wed 11/27	No class, Thanksgiving
Fri 11/29	No class, Thanksgiving
Mon 12/2			Presentations
Wed 12/4			Presentations
Fri 12/6			Presentations
Mon 12/9			Hypertext final project due.
Final Exam?