Working with three chapters from Johnson-Eilola and Selber's text, I continue the pattern of making connections between the concepts discussed and my work in the University Writing Program in this post. I conclude the post by considering some possible questions for Tuesday's class visitor.
Blakeslee and Savage’s discussion of the role of writing in technical communication as something as assumed, put in the background, “regarded as no more important, powerful, or complex than any other aspect of technical writing” (364) seems to speak to the idea of the “transparency” of writing (Russell, 1997; Carter, 2007). Within the academy, professors typically learn to write in their disciplines by a process of acculturation via various apprenticeship discourses; therefore, they aren’t necessarily able to clearly discuss what they do as effective writers or to see the writing itself as specific to their discipline. As a result, faculty may continue to view writing as generalizable to all disciplines, distinct from disciplinary knowledge and to be taught/learned as a general skill. These transparencies of writing seem like an opportunity to articulate terms, concepts, practices, and approaches to writing in specific concepts, much like the authors do in this chapter.
Burnett, Cooper, and Welhausen’s chapter on collaboration offers valuable ideas on collaboration that can be applied to an area of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) that both the QEP director and I have been struggling with. Writing and Learning Communities (WLCs) offer a venue for inquiry into writing instruction and student writing. Used at schools across the country, the learning community model aims to nourish the scholarship of teaching and its application to student learning. As part of a WLC, 5-6 members from across the university identify an issue—this might be a common area of struggle instructors or their students face as developing writers—to explore further to help students become stronger writers. Based on the knowledge generated by their investigation, members complete projects aimed to help faculty teaching and/or student learning.
In the context of this chapter, we set up WLCs with either the QEP director or myself as the groups’ facilitators (464) in that we schedule meeting times and spaces, established and maintain technologies for communication outside of face-to-face meetings, and recommend policies for interactions and whatnot. As facilitators, we tend to deal with logistics of group setup and try to let the group make key decisions and meaning on the topic. Each group also has an internal group leader who motivates, works on bridge-building, and communication of needs and key ideas. These roles are something that we continue to reconsider based on participant feedback also, of course.
In exist surveys of the former participants, we learned that we could be better facilitators and continue to improve certain aspects of the WLCs. I have attached my portion of a presentation at CCCs last year below. The notes at the bottom of slides 4 and 5 provide examples of some of the feedback on participant experiences. We responded to this feedback by providing more structure for meeting times, revising and clarifying the final project expectations (rather than leaving it up to the group to decide), and providing access to more examples of final projects. Each of these revisions seem to be supported by ideas expressed on the vertical axis of their matrix heuristic (458-459) While the groups report that these tweaks were positive, we still have room for improvement.
While I realize that there are a lot of variables with group collaborations that cannot be controlled, ideas from the horizontal axis of the authors’ matric pointed out some things we could consider while continuing and revising the WLCs. For example, we could also encourage group leaders to integrate some trust exercises and collaborative construct a statement on acceptable methods of negotiation within the group could be ways to encourage cognition and learning (460). Also, either making the group size overall smaller (2-3 people per group) or finding a way to break the WLCs into smaller groups for work could also assist in their goals of collaborative learning (461). Explicitly naming and discussing aspects of collaboration like handling social loafing (462), enacting groupthinks, and dealing with conflicts (463) could also be beneficial along with doing more to encourage knowledge leadership (464) from all participants. I will continue to think about this…
In conclusion, I thought I would brainstorm a few, possible questions for Dr. Kirk St. Amant cased on his chapter since he will visiting our class on Tuesday:
Blakeslee and Savage’s discussion of the role of writing in technical communication as something as assumed, put in the background, “regarded as no more important, powerful, or complex than any other aspect of technical writing” (364) seems to speak to the idea of the “transparency” of writing (Russell, 1997; Carter, 2007). Within the academy, professors typically learn to write in their disciplines by a process of acculturation via various apprenticeship discourses; therefore, they aren’t necessarily able to clearly discuss what they do as effective writers or to see the writing itself as specific to their discipline. As a result, faculty may continue to view writing as generalizable to all disciplines, distinct from disciplinary knowledge and to be taught/learned as a general skill. These transparencies of writing seem like an opportunity to articulate terms, concepts, practices, and approaches to writing in specific concepts, much like the authors do in this chapter.
Burnett, Cooper, and Welhausen’s chapter on collaboration offers valuable ideas on collaboration that can be applied to an area of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) that both the QEP director and I have been struggling with. Writing and Learning Communities (WLCs) offer a venue for inquiry into writing instruction and student writing. Used at schools across the country, the learning community model aims to nourish the scholarship of teaching and its application to student learning. As part of a WLC, 5-6 members from across the university identify an issue—this might be a common area of struggle instructors or their students face as developing writers—to explore further to help students become stronger writers. Based on the knowledge generated by their investigation, members complete projects aimed to help faculty teaching and/or student learning.
In the context of this chapter, we set up WLCs with either the QEP director or myself as the groups’ facilitators (464) in that we schedule meeting times and spaces, established and maintain technologies for communication outside of face-to-face meetings, and recommend policies for interactions and whatnot. As facilitators, we tend to deal with logistics of group setup and try to let the group make key decisions and meaning on the topic. Each group also has an internal group leader who motivates, works on bridge-building, and communication of needs and key ideas. These roles are something that we continue to reconsider based on participant feedback also, of course.
In exist surveys of the former participants, we learned that we could be better facilitators and continue to improve certain aspects of the WLCs. I have attached my portion of a presentation at CCCs last year below. The notes at the bottom of slides 4 and 5 provide examples of some of the feedback on participant experiences. We responded to this feedback by providing more structure for meeting times, revising and clarifying the final project expectations (rather than leaving it up to the group to decide), and providing access to more examples of final projects. Each of these revisions seem to be supported by ideas expressed on the vertical axis of their matrix heuristic (458-459) While the groups report that these tweaks were positive, we still have room for improvement.
While I realize that there are a lot of variables with group collaborations that cannot be controlled, ideas from the horizontal axis of the authors’ matric pointed out some things we could consider while continuing and revising the WLCs. For example, we could also encourage group leaders to integrate some trust exercises and collaborative construct a statement on acceptable methods of negotiation within the group could be ways to encourage cognition and learning (460). Also, either making the group size overall smaller (2-3 people per group) or finding a way to break the WLCs into smaller groups for work could also assist in their goals of collaborative learning (461). Explicitly naming and discussing aspects of collaboration like handling social loafing (462), enacting groupthinks, and dealing with conflicts (463) could also be beneficial along with doing more to encourage knowledge leadership (464) from all participants. I will continue to think about this…
In conclusion, I thought I would brainstorm a few, possible questions for Dr. Kirk St. Amant cased on his chapter since he will visiting our class on Tuesday:
- Are there any standard elements of effective international communication that can be assumed and practically applied in real-life situations? Could you offer an example?
- What may be the pros and cons of viewing culture as an organization system? Other, alternative approaches that can be helpful? Please explain.
- I started thinking about your discussion of cultural rules (for example on page 482) as applicable to institutional disciplines. What do you think the benefits and/or the drawbacks of applying these ideas on international communication to WAC/WID pedagogies may be? Why?
- We have recently started to consider tech comm's history of hyperpragmatism (Scott, Longo, & Wills, 2006) . What do you think the binary of humanism and utilitarianism (8) has contributed to your understanding of professional and technical communication? What from it do you hope your students will take with them? What are the immediate or broader limitations that you consider as a teacher?
- You are hosting a dinner party for the tech comm scholars (living or not) that you feel have most significantly influenced you as a teacher, researcher, and/or theorist. Who would invite? Why? How have they informed or influenced you as a teacher, researcher, and/or theorist?
wlcs_flinchbaugh_cs2015.pptx |