My primary pedagogical goal is fostering students' critical thinking. In all the courses I guide, this occurs via traditional and nontraditional forms of composition. The underlying assumptions of my approach to teaching involve not only the idea of writing as a critical, social and political practice, but also of writing as knowledge making, as a form of action, as a recursive communicative practice involving planning, drafting and revision. Through these assumptions runs the possibility of change for all those involved, so vital as well to my pedagogy is the possibility of change. The proper implementation of technology can be quite complementary to this possibility. With the capacity for greater consistency, accountability and connectedness among and between students and teachers, online communicative technologies offer myriad methods of communication and interaction. My courses at the University of Michigan-Flint serve as examples of these ideas.
In my first two academic years at UM-Flint, I guided students through the following:
• ENG 111 College Rhetoric (3 sections)
• ENG 112 Critical Writing and Reading (2 sections)
• ENG 252 Advanced Composition (2 sections)
• ENG 345 Technical Writing (3 sections)
• ENG 298 Analysis and Criticism of Videogames (to be ENG 343 in Winter 2010)
• ENG 513 Digital Rhetorics, Digital Identities
The latter two were new courses for Fall 2009, and I also took on an independent study during Winter 2009 and developed a First Year Experience course in collaboration with Dr. Mike Lewis of the Journalism Program, which we plan to teach Fall 2010.
The first-year composition courses of ENG 111 and ENG 112 provide a consistent foundation for my overall approach to teaching. Both classes keep me grounded in terms of engaging students where they are and forcing important updates in assignments and related course materials. In fact, many of the compositions required in upper-level courses I first introduced in 111 and/or 112. Students in these introductory courses provide an excellent initial sounding board not only for new and revised assignments but also the reimagining of pedagogical approaches.
Perhaps paramount among these approaches and assignments is how often I encourage students to write about their majors and intended professions. By doing so in non-major courses, I think students are often better prepared for upper-level coursework and beyond. Framing students' work within the context of a major and/or intended profession often makes for a more consistent and beneficial learning experience. It also provides students the opportunity to experiment with writing in an academic setting that might be more comfortable than a workplace environment. This is perhaps the strongest connection among my first-year and upper-level courses as such ideas to take on weightier expectations in ENG 252 and ENG 345, two courses that advance composition in more challenging ways.
Additional similarities exist in ENG 298 and ENG 513, both of which address evaluative writing in online formats, albeit in different ways. In the former, students engaged in specific kinds of composing with videogames as primary texts. The latter course had graduate students immerse themselves in online communicative technologies as they learned how to not only construct meaningful identities but also how those same technologies might be used for pedagogical and rhetorical purposes.
In each of these courses, among my teaching responsibilities are the modeling of thoughtful and engaged scholarship and motivating students to push themselves not only as readers and writers but as thinkers and citizens, too. Material proof of this lies in the variety of compositions students create in the courses I guide, including blogs and PowerPoint presentations along with more traditional academic essays. Introducing such diversity in ENG 111/112 and reinforcing it in ENG 252 also helps students gain better awareness of how different contexts call for different skills and practices. Various and sundry compositions also provide helpful foundations for discussion and work within the idea of writing-to-learn, with many writing prompts in ENG 298 and ENG 345 designed toward critical reflection on research findings and the origins of personal views.
In order for students to feel comfortable in such reflection, the creation and development of community are essential. Teaching composition at any level is not only about aiding students in the construction of a composing self but also in the development a community. Appropriate use of online communicative technologies aids the formation of both and was of dominant focus in ENG 513.
Overall, I view teaching and learning as forms of public action; online communicative technologies like Posterous, a simple blogging service, and Twitter, a social networking service, illuminate both. Furthermore, the implementation of particular online communicative technologies (like Posterous and Twitter) facilitate and coordinate greater attention, encourage meaningful interaction and participation, promote better collaboration, help students develop narratives of their own learning as well as hone the critical consumption and crafting of academic (and nonacademic) work. By extension, this also involves challenging students' notions of what qualifies as writing, interrogating their prior knowledge and experience while also encouraging new forms of composition in first-year and upper-level courses. Each course I guide is itself a digital rhetoric, making an inherent case for not only the informed, responsible use of technology in college-level courses but also working as an example of what's achievable when this happens. In a later section of this very document, I explain how these technologies play as much a part in my research as they do in my teaching.
Prior to that, though, I think it important to close in mentioning other experiences related to my pedagogy. The aforementioned independent study focused on senior Alger Newberry's interest in comic-book writing and involved the reverse-engineering of a substantial graphic novel, Dennis O'Neil's Batman: Birth of the Demon, as well as a first-issue script of an origin story for an original comic-book character. In regular meetings with Mr. Newberry, we discussed preparatory readings as well as his writing processes and progress, all of which informed later design changes in all courses. Other pedagogical influences are evident in the hour-long guest lecture for Dr. Tom Foster's ENG 500 Introduction to English Studies course in Fall 2008 as well as in the podcast on social bookmarking websites I submitted to Dr. Mike Lewis' JRN 350 Online Journalism class. It was from these experiences that I developed and offered ENG 513 Digital Rhetorics, Digital Identities in Fall 2009 and worked with Dr. Lewis in the development of "Media Mix," a First Year Experience course available in Fall 2010. Furthermore, by attending Enriching Scholarship sessions in May 2009 at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus, including Jane McGonigal's keynote address, "Epic Win: Why Gaming is the Future of Learning," I felt vindication for what I introduced in my 2008-2009 courses as well as inspiration for what I later introduced in my 2009-2010 courses.