In first-year composition, my students study, analyze, and evaluate relationships between people, places, objects, and technology. In each course, students get some exposure to information technology, actor-network theory, discourse analysis, digital literacy, and rhetorical theory.
University of Wisconsin-Stout
Humans of UW-Stout Facebook Project
I developed the "Humans of UW-Stout" Facebook Page Project as a way to support students’ transition, to encourage listening over talking, and to get them out of their comfort zones a bit. Over fifty students became amateur photographers and storytellers over the course of the first two months of the semester.
2015 article about the project: "English class students engage with ‘humans’ of UW-Stout” by the University of Wisconsin-Stout University Communications.
Digital Literacy Maps
Literacy maps are visual, relational representations of discourse community literacies.This assignment was the first assignment of the semester–intending to teach them about discourse community membership and literacies–and almost all of my students in two sections (nearly fifty students) wanted to make their maps public to offer models and to share their work outside of the classroom walls.
Fall 2013: English 101.013 Maps
Fall 2013: English 101.015 Maps
Profiles of a Place
This is the third assignment of the semester, a profile of an unfamiliar place on campus, where students are gently pushed out of their comfort zones to profile a place on campus that they are unfamiliar with. Most students were completely unfamiliar with creating a blog, so this assignment gave them some important digital literacy skills (inserting hyperlinks and images, navigating the admin page, and formatting text, among others) and gave me a chance to teach them about being rhetorically and digitally savvy.
A Selection of Fall 2015 Blogs
Applied Arts Building
Counseling Center
Fireside Cafe
Fitness Center
Fryklund Hall
Jarvis Hall
Memorial Student Center
The Niche Boutique
The Society of Automotive Engineers Baja Club
Stout Adventures
The Stout Library
Celebration of Student Writing at the University of New Mexico
2011. "Beginning writers make words jump off page." University of New Mexico Daily Lobo.
2010. Celebration of Student Writing promotional YouTube video.
2010. "Words Taking Shape." University of New Mexico's Daily Lobo.
2009. "English 101 students showcase newfound skills." University of New Mexico's Daily Lobo.
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Students in my Cal Poly English 145 were tasked with teaching the class key concepts and terms. They could use powerpoint, WordPress, or another electronic medium. The result was our "Fear the Colon * Respect the Comma" WordPress home page. Here you’ll find students’ teaching moments on advertising analysis, fallacies, propaganda, grammar, and ethos, pathos, and logos.