May 7th Virtual Workshop: Designing and Using Writing-to-Learn Assignments – obsolete

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The AWAC Mentoring Committee is offering the second workshop in our series on WAC pedagogy, “Designing and Using Writing-to-Learn Assignments.” The workshop is presented by Marty Townsend, Professor of Emerita of English of University of Missouri, and Chris Anson, Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program at North Carolina State University. The workshop will take place virtually via Zoom on Thursday, May 7th, 2:00-3:30 Eastern Time. 

The relationship between writing and learning has been a fundamental part of the WAC movement from its beginnings. When students write frequently and informally about the material of their courses, they experience deeper learning—stronger analysis, synthesis, and integration of ideas—and enhanced reading processes (Graham & Hebert, 2010). And when this low-stakes writing is woven into the fabric of their courses, class sessions can be more engaging and socially dynamic.

In this interactive workshop, Marty Townsend and Chris Anson will explain the theoretical orientation of writing to learn, including distinctions between writing to learn and more formal, higher-stakes writing, and then engage participants in methods for designing and evaluating effective, learning-based writing assignments and integrating them into their courses to enhance student engagement.

Presenter Bios:

Marty Townsend is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Missouri (MU) and former Director of MU’s award-winning Campus Writing Program (from 1991-2006). Marty has spoken, consulted, and led faculty workshops at over 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. and in dozens of international settings.  She has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses on writing. Her research interests include WAC, WID, writing assessment, and writing program administration. She is a passionate advocate for teaching writing in all disciplines.

Chris Anson is Distinguished University Professor, Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professor, and Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program at North Carolina State University, where he works with faculty across the disciplines to enhance writing and speaking instruction. He has published 19 books and 140 articles and book chapters relating to writing, WAC, and WID, and has spoken and led faculty workshops across the U.S. and in 33 other countries. He is Past Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and Past President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and is co-chair of AWAC’s International Collaborations Committee. He is currently co-editing a new collection on the writing-enriched (WEC) approach to writing across the curriculum. His full c.v. is at www.ansonica.net

The workshop is free to AWAC members with advanced registration. The workshop will be archived for members on the AWAC website. The deadline to register is 5:00pm on May 5th. You will be sent an access link the day before the workshop. 

To register, follow the link to the event at {memberonly}http://wacassociation.org/events/#!event/2020/5/7/awac-virtual-workshop-designing-and-using-writing-to-learn-assignments

Feb. 21 Virtual Workshop: Closing the Assessment Loop–WAC Assessment Options and Strategies – obsolete

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The AWAC Mentoring Committee is offering its second virtual workshop on WAC program development and leadership, “Closing the Assessment Loop: WAC Assessment Options and Strategies,” on Friday, February 21st from 1:00-2:00 U.S. EST on Zoom. 

This virtual workshop offers descriptions of several WAC assessment practices that have been used successfully by two well-established WAC programs to “close the loop” for writing assessment. The presenters will speak for 30 minutes and leave 30 minutes for discussions and questions. Over the course of the discussion, other assessment models will be identified and pros and cons of each introduced.

Terry Myers Zawacki, emerita director of the George Mason University WAC program and currently a program consultant, and Tom Polk, interim WAC program director, will describe an ecological approach to both program and discipline-based writing assessment. Terry will describe the department-embedded writing assessment and other processes she developed in collaboration with the associate provost of institutional effectiveness with the goal of proving and improving WAC program effectiveness around faculty teaching-with-writing practices and students’ writing competence. Tom will describe surveys and interviews designed to understand faculty and student perceptions of writing instruction in designated WI courses. He and Terry will then explain current efforts to identify and synthesize the extensive existing institutional data related to student writing across the curriculum for the purpose of sustaining and re-visioning one of the first WAC programs in the country.    

Jeff Galin, founding director of FAU’s WAC program, writing center, and community writing center, will briefly describe three sets of assessment practices: 1) Despite admonitions from some scholars in the field, there are ways to use common rubrics across disciplines for evaluating certain types of academic writing that provide useful and effective strategies for departments to establish benchmarks across traits, identify specific traits to target in a given year, and establish curricular interventions to foster improvement in both teaching and student writing. 2) Assessment within a WEC pilot program provides much more fine-grained assessment practices for participating departments.  3) WAC program self-assessment using sustainability indicators enables WAC programs to track their program’s long-term viability to anticipate program shifts and weaknesses.

The workshop is free to AWAC members with advanced registration. The workshop will be archived on the AWAC website.

To register, click here.

The deadline to register is 5:00pm ET on February 19th. You will be sent an access link the day before the webinar. 

Nov 15 Virtual Workshop, “Filling Your WAC Backpack: Starting Your WAC Program Prepared” – obsolete

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The AWAC Mentoring Committee is offering the first workshop in our series on WAC program development and leadership, “Filling your WAC Backpack: Starting a WAC Program Prepared.” The workshop will be presented by Chris Basgier of Auburn, Michelle Cox of Cornell University, and Joan Mullin of University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The workshop will take place virtually via Zoom on Friday, November 15th, 3:00-4:15 Eastern Time.   

This online workshop is designed for anyone who is starting, or thinking of starting, a WAC program at their institution. The panelists will begin with a discussion of the relationships and distinctions among WAC pedagogy, WAC initiatives, and WAC programs. They will provide a brief overview of the WAC programs they’ve led, after which they will describe the essential contents of a “WAC Backpack”: the characteristics and habits new WAC administrators need when initiating conversations about WAC and building sustainable programs. Participants will have ample time to ask questions about signals of WAC success, useful resources, cautionary tales, or anything else they need to get started with WAC.

The workshop is free to AWAC members with advanced registration. The workshop will be archived on the AWAC website.

To register, click here.

The deadline to register is 5:00pm on November 14th. You will be sent an access link the day before the webinar. 

AWAC Virtual Workshop on October 15: Moving WAC to the Web – obsolete

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The AWAC Mentoring Committee will be offering two series of virtual workshops for free to AWAC members in the 2019 and 2020 academic year. One series will focus on WAC pedagogy for instructors across disciplines. The other series will focus on WAC program development and leadership for WAC program administrators and faculty across disciplines; these workshops will be helpful for institutions hoping to create or further develop a WAC program. Each semester, we will feature one workshop from each of the two series.  These will be live, interactive, one-hour events, and we will archive a video of the workshops in the resources section of the AWAC website.

Our AWAC Virtual Workshops will begin with a webinar workshop in collaboration with the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) entitled “Moving WAC to the Web: Using GSOLE’s OLI Principles to Creating Accessible Resources for Online Writing across the Disciplines.” The webinar workshop will be led by AWAC Mentoring Committee members Amy Cicchino (Auburn University) and Lindsay Clark (Sam Houston State University) and by Traci Austin (Sam Houston State University) and will take place on Tuesday, October 15th from 2-3pm ET. The workshop is free to AWAC members with advance registration. 

The workshop webinar will explore how GSOLE’s “Online Literacy Instruction Principles and Tenets” can frame online literacy instruction across disciplinary contexts. By focusing especially on the first principle—accessibility—the leaders will engage administrators and instructors in a process of linking principle to practice. More specifically, the webinar leaders will describe their own experiences with developing accessible online course materials, which involved using Blackboard Ally. Then, participants will be invited to share their experiences and to collaboratively respond to a course design scenario. This webinar thus responds to a gap between national documents and local practice and focuses on how to develop local practices to support the first principle, accessibility. 

The deadline to register is 5:00pm on October 13th. For more information and registration, click on the link below:

Oct 15 “Moving WAC to the Web: Using GSOLE’s OLI Principles to Creating Accessible Resources for Online Writing across the Disciplines (Webinar)