revised outcomes statement

As we have announced, the Writing Program Committee has revised our Outcomes Statement, re-integrating 1010 and 2010 statements into one, programmatic set of outcomes. see here.

See also the permanent link for the Outcomes Statement, right.

peer review

following today's faculty conversation on teaching Writing, I wanted to provide a resource for further information on peer review and group work. To start, here is a bibliography developed by Rebecca Moore Howard (Syracuse).

I will be adding links to useful peer review sites soon (somewhere in the right hand column).

note: the defeated look of the presumed writer is intended to represent a common assumption about peer response, an assumption we hope to problematize as we continue to explore the practice.

"perhaps the professor should cut class"

following our conversations in this week's meetings, i have uploaded a link to a JSTOR copy of Donald Murray's 1973 College English article, "Perhaps the Professor Should Cut Class."

enjoy.

snowpeople

via Traci Gardner @ NCTE comes this useful lesson on non-sexist pronoun usage.

plagiarism (theory, practice, and smart pedagogical moves)

Let's assume that some students don't plagiarize intentionally. Rebecca Moore Howard, of Syracuse University, writes often from this perspective and has constructed detailed bibliographies to help us think about the matter from a more informed position (beyond that of the teacher-as-cop to the teacher-scholar as theorist). See, for example, her bibliographies on:

1.) attitudes toward plagiarism,

2.) causes,

3.) online plagiarism,

4.) famous cases of plagiarism,

5.) patchwriting (my favorite theoretical frame).

see also Howard's bibliographies on plagiarism ("p") and the following (links to which are found at her impressively massive main bibliography page) :

plagiarism histories, incidence, intercultural issues, intentionality, p & literary theory, p online, p & pedagogy, p policies, p & pop culture, p prevention, p punishments, p responses, p & science, p theories, p & writing center issues . . .

Nick Carbone has posted a useful, "converted practice" for helping students -- especially those who use (intentionally or not) -- patchwriting techniques to find their way into/through academic discourse (i.e., unfamiliar discursive territory). i am especially interested in the following passage:

[ . . .] I have students use CopyChecker, a small client side program that can be downloaded to their computer (When last I taught, it was free to students and may still be.).

With this, students can paste in one window their draft and in another window text from a source they are using. The program highlights matching and then students have a list of heuristics I give them: Is the match in your draft in need of quotations? Has it been cited? Should it be blockquoted?

[. . . ] I require my students to have digital copies of any digital source they are citing. So for each source, they are required to save and download a copy (or copy and paste into the notes section of http://bedfordstmartins.com/bibliographer, a free for any student/teacher to use tool I like [reminder: I work for Bedford/St. Martin's] better than citationmachine and other ad-supported tools of that kind). Because students have copies of their source material, CopyCatch is great tool. It makes checking for matching text a part of their research drafting process.

peer review tips from NCTE's "read-write-think"

via "read-write-think" (NCTE):

"'I liked your story about you and Paul. I think you should add a little more detail and you should change the end two sentences so it will sound better.'

Sound familiar? This student response to a peer's draft is all too typical of the way untrained students give feedback on each other's drafts during response groups [ . . .]"

read more by using the "via" link, above.