From The C's

"Opening the Academic Gates: Instructional Attitudes and Literacy Programs"

The panel from Jones County Community College, Sharon Gerald, Patti Smith and Jeanne Ezell, brought their collective experience and many handouts to discuss the current projects they have been working on at JCJC.   My MC colleague, Jill Kronstadt, guest blogs this post.

Session E.25: Academic Gateways vs. Academic Gatekeepers:
The Realities of Academic Literacy Issues in the Two Year College

Patti Smith, “Opening the Academic Gates: Instructional Attitudes and Literacy Programs; Jeanne Ezell, “The Monster Gatekeeper: Edited American English and the Status Markers of Academic Literacy; and Sharon Gerald, “Technology as Gateway to Rhetorical Literacy,” all from Jones County Junior College, Ellisville, MS

This session focused on three academic literacy barriers to student advancement and graduation, including 1) lack of college-level reading skills upon entering college; 2) Standard American English in first-semester composition as a “Monster Gatekeeper”; and 3) lack of technological proficiency.

Reading skills:

Professor Smith discussed a sweeping program to introduce collegewide reading requirements as part of a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) for an accreditation initiative. She noted that nationwide, 50% of high school students do not have an ACT score high enough to predict success in college reading tasks. JCJC found that 70% of its own first time freshmen had ACT scores below college level (the full report is available at http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/reports/reading.html). Exacerbating the problem, many faculty do not assign enough reading because students are unlikely to complete reading assignments. Frequent misconceptions about reading included: 1) students learn to read in elementary school; 2) learning to read is the same as reading to learn; 3) supporting content area literacy means teaching phonics and other “reading” skills; and 4) teachers are information dispensers. 

The JCJC literacy program aimed to increase students’ reading comprehension and institute best practices for integrating reading into the curriculum collegewide. Ultimately, the college used a Reading Apprenticeship they adopted from WestEd, a company that has developed a strategic literacy initiative framework. The program was first introduced in Composition I because the faculty have more background in literary, the course integrates reading and writing, and 97% of students must complete the course. The class will begin in the fall, hopefully addressing one of the biggest barriers to college success.

Standard American English (SAE):

Dr. Ezelle, nearing retirement, recounted her experience as a composition professor and as a scholar of rhetoric and linguistics. She argued that economic inequality, rather than diversity, has increased the number of students who enter college without mastery of SAE. She cited the many studies that have found that direct grammar instruction (especially “Drill and Kill” worksheets) has not shown any improvement in Standard Written English. Earlier in her career she did not spend classroom time on grammar instruction, she now tells students that such instruction will not improve their grammar, but can be “consciousness raising” for errors that they may (or may not) find in their own writing. Better results are obtained by editing grammar in small groups within the context of writing assignments, and she advocated concentrating on status-marking errors that can signal “lack of education or carelessness to many educated readers” (Ezell). She felt that SAE should be presented as a dialect preferred by educated people, specific to audience and purpose, and that teachers should be educated about language and dialect, referring to the NCTE position statement on teachers of English language arts.

Sharon Gerald discussed the many ways that technological and information literacy can function as a barrier to student success. She referred to Stuart A. Selber’s Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, which divided information literacy into functional literacy (students as efficient users), critical literacy (students as informed questioners), and rhetorical literacy (students as reflective producers). She argued that these literacies, as well as technological proficiency, were critical in helping students acquire “broader academic literacy” (Gerald). She also presented her e-Portfolio assignment, which she has used to facilitate development of these literacies in her courses. Finally, she distributed the NCTE position statement, “21^st-Century Literacies,” which consolidates NCTE’s research on the link between technological literacy and other kinds of literacy.

My thoughts:

Examining all three of these “gatekeeper” literacies may give MC opportunities to increase success in the composition sequence. Comparing this session with the one looking at English 106 repeaters, I wondered how significant a factor poor reading scores might be in poor outcomes for a course that requires sources (i.e., lots of reading and analysis). I imagine there is data on the percentage of MC students who require reading courses before they can take other college-level courses, but I was also impressed with how JCJC planned to increase reading throughout the entire curriculum. Being so new, I don’t have the “institutional memory” or experience at MC to reflect on how grammar instruction and technological literacy are currently being integrated into composition courses, which of our current approaches are most effective, and which barriers are the most significant to MC student success in composition courses. I’m also interested in how outside factors, these three included, may impact our other composition outcomes.

Computer Connection, Part 2:"Invention in the Digital Age: New Approaches to Thinking about Writing"

I left Tina Bacci's  presentation thinking "My God, she uses EXCEL as a TOOL FOR WRITING!"

This University of Rhode Island graduate student  discussed the history of computers as writing tools, noting that software development tended to deal with invention strategies, whereas the trend these days is to focus on the multimodality in layout and design that computers afford. 

Bacci suggested that rhetorical invention online had been  often overlooked. She asked: "Where CAN we be now?"

Three paths to consider:

• Use PowerPoint as a writing tool throughout the drafting process: doing so, Bacci asserts, helps the student avoid writing a "thesis driven" first draft and makes the student more likely to revise her work.  Because the PowerPoint slides can contain both visual and verbal information, their use widens the kind of thought students use to write--from the strictly verbal to the visual and metaphorical.

• Use Publisher to create sites for papers: this gives students an online place to think through and create their papers, and, as such, will change over the course of the project. The page also functions as a place to store information of all media and to develop the writing assignment itself.

• Use Excel to develop timelines, lit reviews and working bibliographies: Excel gives the student writers a visual medium for categorizing and organizing information, as well as creating graphs and so forth to watch trends.  Excel can also function as an outline program, and, with the main ideas in cells, makes it easier for students to cut and paste information as well as hyperlink to other sites.

In each case, the technology and the rhetorical needs drive both process and product and are, in my humble opinion, worth a try.  Or two.

The Presentation Online

Collin Brooke of Syracuse University couldn't make it to the conference, but his presentation did.  While this has nothing to do with Basic Writing, per se, I'm linking to it here because I want to record alternative ways of delivering the conference to and from far away. And because the content is fascinating.

Moodle and Excel Not Strictly BW, But. . . .Part 1

One of the most interesting sessions I attended at the C's took place in the Exhibition Hall.  While not explicitly directed at Basic Writing instructors,  both are fine examples of the kinds of things we can be doing in the classroom, whether it be virtual or face-to-face.

The first speaker, Jessica Schreyer, from the University of Dubuque,  thoroughly and thoughtfully explained the ways that she uses Moodle as the web platform for her courses (In fact, The University of Dubuque , it should be noted, uses Moodle as its course platform for all of its courses). What I was most impressed with was that she used Moodle to encourage her students to collaborate on projects from papers to discussions to peer reviews and class feedback.

Jessica described Moodle as being a "shared space" more than anything, in which student, teacher, peers and course materials formed a dynamic cycle in which each interacted with the other.  She has taken advantage of many of the communications features in the program which enable the participants to collaborate both through formal assignments and through discussion lists, to name a few.  She creates a program flexible enough so that each student chooses his own degree of participation, though the teacher, through public response and praise can certainly motivate students to become frequent users. 

Using Moodle has given students more access to "classroom" resources, whether they be course materials, college links, outside links, or the instructor and other students. And it is this last group that has been most significant as the students develop the confidence to become each other's resources.  And they become partners with the instructor in revising the course in that Moodle affords her the ability to post a ten -item questionnaire at the end of each unit, so that the students can give her immediate feedback.

2008 Computer DisConnection

In a far corner of the noisy exhibition hall, separated from the fray by festive Mardi Gras-style curtains, was the tiny space where the Computer Connection held their technology -related sessions. 

I know this because I chaired one of these sessions.  I'll devote another post to the remarkable work that these two scholars shared with us, but this post is devoted to how annoyed I am with the 4C's about the ever-so-slow way that they use technology at the conference, but more importantly, how shabby the situation was yesterday.

Although elegant and certainly indicative of the bon temps to be had by all, the curtains were thin and did nothing to insulate the room from the noise outside. Convention noise--people talking, walking, shuffling papers and books, coughing, dropping things and so on-- noises appropriate  and expected for an exhibition hall, too.

However, the presenters inside the room had to compete with this noise and the audience had to deal with the distractions as well.

The whole situation wasn't fair.  In 2008, there's no good reason for any technology exhibit/presentation to have to be that way.  Given that computers and online tech have become part of so many of the regular sessions, at least in the presenting, if not in the work presented, it doesn't make sense for the Computer Connection to be relegated to a dusty corner of the exhibition hall.  There should be either one room dedicated to the Computer Connection sessions for the duration of the conference, or the sessions should be collapsed into the overall schedule and highlighted by topic as the other sessions are.  Not to do so gives the appearance that the 4C's views technology as something that should be exhibited, like an artifact or an oddity, at a county fair (and the curtains don't help with the image!).

"Exposing Some Basic Realities: A Conversation About BW Strategy from Portfolios and Stretch Courses to Studios and Mainstreaming"

My day began with a very energizing session given by Jenifer Fennell, Kathleen DeVore and Gill Creel of Minneapolis Community and Technical College.  The group shared  their department's  experience of moving from timed-writing to portfolios, offering this thought:  perhaps portfolios aren’t the last word on assessment, but instead are the opening gestures of an ongoing discussion, "raising more issues," than solving them. To what degree should error reduction play a part in portfolio evaluations?  Should a second language student be expected to rid her writing of all traces of her first language in creating her portfolio?  How can pedagogy guide changes in the classroom or of the structure of the class itself?

And that’s what I brought back from this engaging session—that portfolio assessment is and should be subject to ongoing discussion and scrutiny as student populations and faculties change on our respective campuses.

Gill, as the first speaker, provided some background to the college’s portfolio system.  Like many schools, MCTC used to expect students to pass both the course and the exam in order to move to credit-level writing.  The timed writing, as all three presenters pointed out,  resulted in superficial, empty writing which didn't seem to have any relation to the student, the class, or even the institution. As the department developed the portfolio program, it also created assignments that engaged students and resulted in stronger writing by the semester's end.  Examples of the assignments are on Gill's web page, and I encourage you all to see the exciting work they're doing.

The second speaker, Kathleen, discussed what the next step should be in using portfolios. She noted that the topic of error correction kept "creeping" back into the discussions of writing, and more importantly, the switch from tests to portfolios did not result in all of the department members becoming ardent compositionalists-- to be fair, she added, not everyone in their depart ment of 31 was trained to be one--many members having MFA or lit degrees.

So, what is the next step?  Kathleen suggested that the answer should be found in the hows and whys of infusing the writing classes and portfolios with an examination of critical literacy though she reminded the audience that community college instructors don’t have time to research things with the same depth as our university colleagues, as we are hired to each 5/5 or 30 hour loads. Despite making this point, her presentation was impressive for all of the work she has done.

Jenifer, the last speaker, spoke about the ways that critical literacy and portfolio use influenced changes not only in assignment we give, but also in the way we shape the courses. The writing that she and her colleagues have seen from their students has been incredible--in writing and talking about issues connecting with their own lives, the students have been creating texts that are much more developed and reflective than in the past.  In terms of assignments, she asked how can we create work that results in a student-focused activity rather than an assignment sheet that is not only teacher-centered but which results cookie cutter essays that lack original idea and insight. Regarding our own assignments, she asked, "How can it be critical literacy if it is all the same?" If we expect students to write critically and from their own lives, is it fair to expect second-language learners to "eradicate all traces" of their home language? 

So what are the ways some of these changes may come about on a course-level?  Stretch, studio and intensive models were offered as possible shifts in structure. 

That their discussion struck a nerve was evident in the comments and questions posed at the end of their presentation.  And if I were writing an article for the Basic Writing Electronic Journal, I would cover these questions in greater detail, but as a blogger at a convention, I'm discovering the real world limitations between time for writing and time for attending.  I will say that the time spent at this particular session was extremely useful, and I encourage you to contact the presenters as they have so much to offer--much more than can be said here.

The Sign Says It All

In the coming posts, we'll be sharing what we've learned at the conference-

About writing  and books,

And, of course, All That Jazz!

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