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Program Matters

This fall (2006) we have 139 sections of ENC 1101: 69 sections will be taught by Adjuncts, 52 sections by GAs, and 18 sections taught by Instructors. We have 52 sections of ENC 1102, 28 sections by Adjuncts, 18 sections by GAs, and 6 sections taught by Instructors. We have 30 adjuncts, 48 GAs, and 8 Instructors teaching at least one section of composition. Last year we worked with over 9500 students.

Below are some more specific program matters we should consider in the fall.

• We are a program in process. We teach and enact the processes of literacy, creativity, and dialog. We undergo constant revision as we dialog on our desired outcomes and work. As much as possible, we engage "the wisdom of crowds," including the wise advice of our teachers, students, colleagues, and disciplinary associations.
• We invite you to collaborate with us. Share your ideas for new projects and practices. Use "Teaching Wiki" to collaborate in a password protected space; use "Writing Wiki" to collaborate in an open forum space. Use the listserv to chat. If you want a SharePoint login for CollegeWriting.Us, let me know. We want to avoid becoming stale. New projects must focus on the desired outcomes: 1101 Outcomes | 1102 Outcomes I ask that you email new projects directly to me. As much as possible, I'd like to identify major contributors to assignments and Web pages. We may have missed your name on one of the pages you authored or edited. If so, let me know and I will see that it is added. We know we must edit the website some more and we invite you to inform us of any problems.
• The FYC Website is primarily intended for you, the instructor. We understand that some of you prefer to point your students to the program website rather than develop your own pages by copying our information on to your pages (occasionally with minor modifications). This approach is acceptable to us, but you must be forwarned: we make changes to the website all the time. Hence, you might find it useful to develop your own course website. To do this, you have a range of tools available to you: a) Blackboard, b) writingwiki or teachingwiki, which requires a login or password. The bottom line is that if you don't want to see any changes in your teaching documents throughout the semester, you need to build your own course website on a stable server.
• We must work this year to revise our program to better address weaknesses identified by the Office of Assessment. From the Assessment Report, we know that we are making measurable improvements in various aspects of our students writing. For example, +61.5% of the students improved from 1101 to 1102 in the category "Reasoning Supports Main Idea." The Holistic Score that accounts for the 16 CLAQWA traits showed that 52.4% of our students improved from 1101 to 1102. We have good reasons to celebrate our successes yet we must also explore what we can do differently to address the weaknesses identified by the assessment analysis. (I have reproduced the key results in your handout; on Wednesday, Terry Flateby and I plan to discuss these results with you. We want to hear your thoughts on how we should account for these findings.)
• This year we have broadened the membership/scope of the FYC Policy Committee to better account for the demographics of our community.
• For the third year in a row, I have submitted a proposal seeking funds to support many of our efforts, especially mentoring and eportfolios; still no word back...but we are hopeful.

Standardization Matters

To be fair to our students and to enable us to determine what works and what does not, we need to "standardize our curriculum. If you teach for us, you must follow our FYC Policies. Our goal is to develop a standardized program that is flexible and that engages your expertise and recommendations. Our reality is that last year's teacher evaluations identified widespread differences in how we teach and what we value. Some focus on grammar while others ignore grammar; some read and grade blogs while others do not assign blogs or do not read them; some assign the three required projects and respond and grade to them three times while others make up their own projects and ignore our desired outcomes; some assign all As while others use the five point scale, As through Fs. Clearly, we must work more as a group.

I understand that our efforts to standardize the curriculum contradict some of our core values as humanists. We all want to value and celebrate individual teaching styles. Individuality is important to us. Yet we are in a context that demands some standardization. Hence we have worked to standardize the curriculum in a way that empowers our teachers and students to help design our practices. Teachers in the program are invited to attend the FYC policy committee meetings. I encourage teachers in the program to use Teachingwiki to dialogue about our practices. In our academic work, we must encourage dialog and dissensus. At our homesite, we have a variety of projects for your to use. Within our standardization, we are trying to allow space for unique approaches. If you don't like something we're doing, let me know. If you have new ideas, let me know. There is no one solution and we can make our program stronger by engagement and mutual respect. Yet, when we work with students we must employ our standardized curriculum. The FYC Website represents the results of our review process. The projects that have been approved by the FYC Policy Committee have been through our review process.

Below is my take on some of our most important efforts to standardize the curriculum.

• Use Blackboard for grading during the semester. This way if you make a mistake students find it. This way we have fewer grade disputes. Also, by Spring (if not by Fall) we will submit our grades through Blackboard. If Academic Computing is not ready to receive all grades electronically this Fall, then we will need for you to download copies of your grades for the Writing Program (see Teacher's Guide for instructions).
• Unfortunately, Blackboard still does not have a way of adjusting grades based on Attendance. As a result, you need to create a column to track attendance in Blackboard and then you should remind students throughout the semester about your attendance policy. You must follow the attendance policy. This must be a system-wide practice.
• Use our required textbooks, which are agreed upon by the instructors; no extensive course packs. Use our books even if you hate them but then be involved in choosing new books next year. The textbook selection process has been 100% collaborative.
• Conduct three intellectually sequenced, rhetorically focused major projects that

1. address general education topics
2. are broken down into doable steps, including the annotated bibliography, perhaps blogs, peer review.

• Respond to each project at least three times. I recommend that you grade all three readings of each project; this way students take the review process seriously. Be clear to students that they should not give you rough drafts to grade; you are not a copyeditor or coauthor. If you wish, you may allow students to write additonal revisions but three are absolutely required.
• Use the FYC Program's Assessment Form three times, once for each project. Feel free to use other response methods for other reviews, such as one-on-one conferences, CLAQWA, or holistic approaches. If you use these other response methods, please observe the overall grading patterns of the FYC Assessment form, including, for example, 20% for grammar or 15% for language or 10% for intros...
• Three blogs, 250 words spread throughout the week. I recommend public blogs, Internet blogs, because then I think we are teaching the rhetoric of public discourse, which is a survival skill. However, you may have students blog using BlackBoard. Always give students the option to not publish their blog--on the Web using the "Additional Features tab" at http://writingblog.org or by keeping their blog out of Blackboard. You can either treat the blog as a separate probject or you may link blog assignments to major projects. This effort stresses two critical skills: regular writing and public discourse.
• Conference one-on-one with students at least twice/semester, once before the first drop date without academic penalty and once before the portfolio. Use these sessions to review (and perhaps grade) student projects.
• Maintain portfolios for all students, either print or online. If you choose print portfolios, you need to have students turn in a copy to you and then you need to turn in all portfolios to the writing program. We will keep the print copies for a short while, maybe only a few weeks but no longer than a semester. We prefer online portfolios and students may archive their work at either Blackboard or Writing Wiki.
• Observe the suggested grade distributions and attendance policy and incomplete grading policy. I will not support "incomplete" grades for students whose circumstances do not fall within USF policy guidelines.

Teaching Matters

Anyone who is paying attention knows that our program is shaped by the work of numerous theorists and scholars in English Studies. From the Current/Traditional Paradigm, we value analyzing discourse conventions and genres. From Rhetoric Theory, we focus on purpose and audience, and we explore the role of the author as an agent for change. From the Expressivists/Romantics, we underscore the importance of daily writing and the value of connecting private discourse to public discourse. From Process Theorists, we emphasize three drafts and eportfolios, understanding that while we may organize our texts deductively, we often think inductively, engaging the generative power of language. Thanks to process theory, we understand there is no one ideal process and value the recursive nature of thinking and writing. From Postmodernism and a broader awareness of the Social Construction of knowledge, we view the world as text and better understand the role of interpretation and collaboration in the construction and defense of knowledge claims. From Critical Theory, we explore writing as social action and service learning discourse; we broaden our canon and better understand language practices as cultural. From the Technorhetoricians, we engage new authoring tools, new reading practices, and new ways of contructing knowledge.

Now, we are at a stage of synthesis and agency, employing our theories and research to better inform our practices. We are at a stage that I call datagogical--an exciting stage in the literacy story. As a community we have powerful authoring tools and a deep and rich history of pedagogy and literacy practices. Working as a group, we can significnalty help the 9500 students that come to us seeking the critical writing and reading and reasoning skills they will need to succeed in college and life. At a minimum, we need to meet students' needs, addressing the concerns of functional literacy. Ideally, we are doing much more. Ideally, we are developing citizens of the world.

My hope is that in the days ahead we can engage "the power of crowds" and our wiki, blog, and other digital spaces to improve our writing program. Below are some more specific goals related to our teaching effort.

• Work students through the Writing Process. Remember that all students, all composing processes, are not alike. Be flexible. Requiring outlines of all students, e.g., overlooks what we know about writing development and composing. We must be careful not to ignore students' weaknesses. For example, from the Office of Assessment's research, we know that the majority of our students are not at a passing level when it comes to introductions, conclusions, word choice, reasoning that supports the main idea. We cannot ignore such weaknesses. We need to be creative in how we face these challenges. When it comes to grammar and mechanics, for example, we must avoid the "kill and drill" exercises that have caused so many of our students to dislike writing. Yet this does not mean that we should reject wholesale exercises in grammar and mechanics. We must not be narrowminded. We have, for example, diagnostic grammar tests in MyCompLab that students can complete out of class and then work on exercises that teach them about aspects of grammar they find confusing. For our motivated students, such exercises may be exactly what they need. For others, we can provide more contextual exercises, such as having students keep track of common errors they make and then author style guides teaching others how to avoid these errors. The bottom line is that we must meet students at their point of need.
• Keep the focus of the course on the students' writing. The central text is not assigned reading; it is the text of the students. Be sensitive to what students need when you read their writing. You do not need, for example, to comment on all students' blogs but you at least need to scan them.
• Meet deadlines. Return papers, ideally, within one class period. The longest you should hold papers is one week. Identify patterns of error. Please follow our suggestions for Responding to Student Writing.
• Prepare students for peer review by
• Modeling good feedback practices in your responses to student papers
• Modeling in the large group how to critique papers
• Grading peer review efforts (if you don't track and grade this activity, don't do it. Some students tell us (for some instructors) that peer review is a joke, the blind leading the blind. If this is the case in your classroom, get serious about peer review or delete it from your practice.
• Maintain rigorous standards. We must revise our inflated grading practices if we are to meet our students' needs and be treated serously as writing teachers. Right now, our grading practices appear tremendously inflated: 43% were grades of A- or higher; 74.5 were grades of B- or higher. We seem to have forgotten that a "C" grade is not a failing grade; it's an average grade. Repeat, a C is an average grade.
• We honor and respect the work of teachers who allow students to continually revise, yet it is hard to believe that 43% of our students are writing well enough to receive mostly As. According to USF's Office of Assessment, which compared the assessment essay completed by 143 randomnly students completed in 1101 with the assessment essays they completed at the conclusion of 1102, 52% of our students are not at the level they should be after completing 1102 when it comes to grammar and mechanics; 40% do not provide sufficient ideas to develop a main idea; 63% are not where they should be when it comes to "closing supports the main idea"; Sadly, given that a 3 on the CLAQWA means that students are where they should be after 1102, note that 52% of our 1101 students 46% of our 1102 students are not writing at the level they should be at the conclusion of 1102.
• Once students receive their B or A, they may think they can write well. Imagine their surprise, though, when they take other courses and receive low grades. Imagine their surprise when they can't write a cover letter that gets them a job or an internship or an acceptance to a good graduate school. Isn't it logical that our students believe they are exceptional writers when they receive such high grades? Would it not shock some of 1101 students to know that according to the Office of Assessment results 52% are not at the level they should be for sophomore-class writing? +How fair is it to our students that only 12% are not passing, and this number includes the many no-shows in our classrooms, when 52% of our 1102 students and 76% of our 1101 students are not using Standard English in their assessment essays?
• We would rather see complaints by students that a teacher is too hard than view all B+s and As and loveable comments. If we don't make distinctions, we're not teaching. Please don't get me wrong here: I can see the possibility of high grades in a writing classroom that uses a process-pedagogy combined with eportfolios. We understand allowing students to revise with teacher comments and student comments in mind results in higher grades. We're fine with that. Personally, I would be delighted if every student earned an A+s. However, all available evidence suggests that 43% of our students do not deserve As. The evidence suggests, instead, that the majority grade should be Cs--i.e., average.

• If you assign mostly As and Bs, you need to ensure
• students are actually writing the documents;
• you are not copyediting/coauthoring your students' documents;
• you employ inclass writing (which can include essays and brief summaries of reading) to constitute at least 15% of your overall grade. If we don't include some graded solely inclass writing, then students say we are sponsoring academic dishonesty. In other words, students tell us that cheating is widespread and that it's our fault because we condone it with our loose practices).
• your students have archived their work at Blackboard or WritingWiki or in print, so that we can check the validity of the grades.

• Now I understand some of you are worried about receiving low evaluations because of low grades, but frankly we'd rather hear that you are tough than that you walk on water. I understand this will create some problems--angry students and so on. But I also know that many students will respect us more because of our frank and honest feedback. As a community, we must work harder to define what an A or B grade is. And as a community we must decide what to do about our grade inflation. This year, we are asking for a new Assessment Form to be used to evaluate students' grades at least three times. We also plan to upload some sample A and B and C grades. If we are unsuccessful at changing our grading practices, then perhaps next year we will need to employ some form of distributed assessment. At the very least, we need to look at the portfolios of students in classes that receive all As. We must ensure the writing warrants such grades.
• Clarify Your Expectations for Students. Model professional behaviors. Classes start on time, stay on track (focused on composition). Problems should be addressed on a one-on-one basis. Ask students to meet you in your office or hallway to discuss pro blems. If problem persists, contact JoeMoxley or Kim Murray.
• Provide extensive feedback. Employ Explicit Evaluation Criteria. As discussed above, use the FYC Program's Assessment form.
• Keep transparent records. Update Blackboard grades daily. Include attendance records in Blackboard or at your class website throughout the semester.
• Avoid grading on very subjective criteria such as originality or improvement. The current syllabi account for improvement by providing a portfolio grade at the end and by weighting the second readings of projects more heavily than first (i.e., 5% for 1st reading and 10% for 2nd reading). Otherwise, we're not evaluating improvement. I cannot recommend an "effort" grade because I'm not sure how we can measure effort. I understand a contribution or particpation grade but you need to assess throughout the semester and be transparent about the criteria you are using to measure and reward participation on your syllabus. You need to reveal to your students whatever criteria you are using to evaluate participation.

Conclusion

What gets done is what we believe in. The question now is as a community--a community that offers a single course that is taught by nearly 100 teachers, a community that defines for students their eligibility as college students--what do we believe in? As a community, how can we help our students be prepared for academic writing?