Writing and Great Works Programs, Baruch College, CUNY
Thinking and belonging together online
In my experience, the value of Hypothesis begins with its ability to transform the textual margins into a rich site of knowledge exchange and creative exploration, effectively popping the bubble in which students so often read and arrive at meaning.
Continue reading “Using Hypothesis for Social Annotation and Collaborative Learning”Linguistic diversity as a resource
Writing assignments that encourage students to reflect on their experiences within and across languages are an ethical choice, allowing instructors to highlight students’ multilingual abilities as a valuable resource for making meaning, and therefore to work against the default image of multilingual students as deficit or less than monolingual peers.
City neighborhoods as course themes
I design my ENG2150 course around a novel and historical event that tie to a specific neighborhood and call it Writing New York. The three core assignments are: Literary Analysis essay, group project (Team Mini-Doc), and final Research Essay; the assignments connect to the syllabus theme, which links to the neighborhood. The syllabus is readily adaptable to any neighborhood of the city and works well if a film can also be incorporated (the film provides an extra angle for developing analysis/close reading skills).
Continue reading “Writing New York’s Neighborhoods”Fostering trust in peer-to-peer learning
I started using writing groups in my classes in graduate school over ten years ago, at first for peer review, and then beyond just peer review to include almost every aspect of the class. Writing groups form such an important part of my teaching that I can’t imagine not using them now. They represent in tangible form, for me, a student-centered pedagogy, and one that brings me not only a lot of (frankly) joy in teaching, but that also saves me a great deal of time! Putting the onus on students for their own learning helps students learn more and takes the focus off of me, so for me this approach is a win-win on many levels.
Continue reading “Using Writing Groups in First-Year Composition”Confidence in community
I have changed my peer-review practice in two mutually reinforcing ways: I ask for less comprehensive reviews of drafts (e.g., inventories of ideas), and I use ongoing collaborative peer groups, the focus of this piece.
Continue reading “Collaborative Peer Groups”Purposeful and time-conscious feedback methods
Here are three things that can help to save time when commenting, to have a bit more work/life balance: