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last.updated 6.1.10

Designing Writing Courses

Purpose

Once you have the goals for your course and an understanding of the technologies that you can use to mediate your course, you have to design the pedagogy. In today's class we will talk about and implement strategies for designing a writing course from a distance.

Pedagogical Tool Review Presentations

Chvonne and Zsuzsanna will present their Pedagogical Tool Reviews to the class.

Discussion I –Teaching Writing from a Distance

Log into SecondLife and transport to where 'Hareway Dinzeo' is (If you cannot find this character, try logging out and logging back in). Once we have all gathered, we will discuss the following questions:

• What questions do you have about the readings?
• Why are WAC strategies conducive for distance learning courses? What are process scripts and how might one design them for a writing course? How does one complement F2F curriculum and customize it for learners?
• If Warnock sat down to talk to Grady & Davis, what would this conversation look like? On what points would they agree or disagree? How does their different contexts account for their differences?
• How feasible would usability testing be in your teaching context? Why? Do you imagine yourself using heuristic evaluation or a pluralistic walkthrough? Why?

Freewrite–"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

For the Class Activity below, we will be designing a required general education sophomore-level WI Introduction to Literature course at a four-year university. Based upon the suggestions from the readings, how would you design this course? What are some of the units you would create? How would you facilitate group work? Think about some process scripts you would develop. Think about how you would complement F2F instruction.

You will have 20 minutes to freewrite.

Class Activity–Designing a Distance Literature Course

We will represent the committee the English Department has put together to design a required general education sophomore-level WI Introduction to Literature course (too many cooks stirring the pot?). We will draw upon our collective ideas and agendas to negotiate the different ideas that everybody has for designing this writing course. The committee chair will be taking notes in Google Docs so that other members can follow along.