To my fellow group members & colleagues,

The teaching artifact I am revising is quite an extensive overhaul of my digital portfolio prompt. What I have decided to focus on, however, is adding a journal component. This will be a reflective assignment in which they respond to a current world issue and share their thoughts on Blogs@Baruch, then share the reflection and some discussion questions with their class colleagues. This will offer an opportunity for the students to engage in low-stakes writing, communicate with their colleagues, and engage with/follow current events.

This will facilitate student engagement by encouraging the students to communicate with one another around current events. Each student will not only write a journal, responding with their own thoughts and reflections about a piece of current news, but they will also be tasked with creating open-ended questions to facilitate discussion among their writing group peers.

The seminar has expanded the scope of my project, and I am continuing to develop this semester-long project to draw in Vocat and to consider how the students can engage with their colleagues during discussions in class and outside of class using technology (Slack, Google Forms, etc.).

One specific aspect I would love feedback on: Is it better for the students to post this in a journal post on their own blog, then share a link within their writers’ group on Slack? Or, is it better for the students to simply share the whole thing in a Slack group and guide discussion within Slack?

Without further ado, my artifact:

Journal Entry Prompt and Guidelines

Throughout the semester, you will be expected to update your personal Blogs@Baruch portfolio site with readings on current events related to the topic you’ve chosen to explore. You’ll keep track of these readings in a blog or journal that will be housed on your site. It’s here that you will share five annotated articles of interest, which will be posted at regular intervals throughout the semester, your own reflection on these current articles, and questions that might guide a constructive discussion on this topic. 

Step 1. Read, annotate, and post a PDF of the article, linking to the original. Annotations are, by nature, free-form, but your marks should display your engagement with the text as well as highlight key passages for future readers (specifically your class colleagues who will read your journal posts). 

Step 2. Write an original 350-word reflection on the text. The brief is open-ended, so this post can be about whatever interests or shocks or awes or angers you most about this current news. Keep in mind that this assignment encourages conversational language, so spend your time developing your original response to the news article you’re sharing, not formatting the text perfectly. 

As mentioned, your response might be a casual reflection of your initial reactions. But, you might consider:

—analyzing the author’s rhetorical situation or the site of publication and the impact that these have on the tone of the piece

—writing a letter to the editor responding to the article 

—identifying any “holes” in the piece — e.g. is there anything this article missed or (gasp!) got factually wrong? 

—comparing the article you chose with a topically similar piece posted on a different site and for a different audience

Step 3. Once you have written your own response to the article, you will create three questions for your group members to respond to. These questions will follow your own reflection and will, hopefully, open up a conversation about this topic (so, steer clear of language that shuts down any constructive conversations). 

Step 4. When you’ve completed Steps 1-3, you’ll post a link to your group (either by email or Slack — however you’ve decided it’s best to communicate). The group members will have 48 hours to read and respond to your post in 100-word (minimum) comments on your site. You will be expected to engage with 5 of your colleagues’ posts throughout the semester. 

The journal posts on your site, and your responses to your group members’ posts, are worth 15 points. 

5 journal entries worth 2 points each. 

5 journal responses worth 1 point each. 

In order to earn the full 2 points for each journal, your entry must include:

1. A scan or PDF of the annotated article you’re responding to along with a link to the original article. 
2. Your 350-word reflection on this article. 
3. Discussion questions for your group members to respond to.

The project/artifact I’d like to work on is the revamping of the digital portfolio assignment prompt I use in ENG110 at City College. I’d like to make this more appropriate for a Baruch Writing 2 audience. I’d especially like assistance making this a more collaborative and engaging project that would be introduced at the start of the class and would be developed over the course of the semester.

While I’d like to give the entire prompt a revamp, I am most interested in developing a more casual, engaging, and collaborative journal feature. I’m considering having the students write reflective journal entries about current events which they could then share with their classmates. I am not exactly sure how this would look, so I’d like to work on this to see if it’s even feasible or valuable.

My goals are to:

1. Revise my existing digital portfolio prompt to be more Blogs@Baruch specific.
2. Develop, specifically, a journal requirement and consider how the students might share these posts among themselves in order to foster peer communication and engagement.
3. Provide opportunities for the students to create informal, reflective writing that they’d then be able to share with their peers.
4. Open up the opportunity to bring the real world into the classroom and understand what current issues the students are interested in.

The full text of the prompt is pasted below as well as linked here.

The Digital Portfolio and Self-Assessment Essay

The Digital Portfolio and Final Self-Assessment Essay are in many ways the most important documents that you’ll create for this class. Assembling the Digital Portfolio will help you to see your progress as a writer over the course of the semester, and the Final Self-Assessment Essay will give you the chance to evaluate that work based on your own criteria as well as the course learning objectives.

The Digital Portfolio

The Digital Portfolio should include, at a minimum, the Self-Assessment Essay; final drafts (revised based on instructor feedback) of your Language and Literacy Essay, Researched Essay, and Rhetorical Analysis Essay; plus any additional documents (or screenshots/portions of documents) you composed this semester that help you demonstrate the extent to which you’ve met the course learning objectives and developed your understanding of writing and our course topic.

So what sorts of “additional documents” might you include? Consider including earlier drafts of essays, examples from homework, peer reviews, etc. Or, you may want to include copies of your annotations of course texts or copies of the notes you took while reading to demonstrate that you have developed strategies for critical reading. Use this same approach for all of the Course Learning Goals. (Be mindful that the documents you choose to include in your Portfolio should be referenced in your final Self-Assessment Essay, which is further explained below. You will describe the documents, and their significance, in your essay. Thus, you’ll need to be very choosy in selecting which documents best represent your learning and development as a writer and be ready to refer to and analyze them in the Self-Assessment Essay.)

The portfolio will be composed on a WordPress site and housed securely on CUNY Academic Commons, a password-protected CUNY server. It will be read by your instructors, some members of the class, and other CCNY faculty and administrators. If you would like to opt out of creating a WordPress site, please make a Portfolio in Blackboard. While the arrangement of the Portfolio is up to you, it should be easy to navigate. As with any Web site, you want to be able to find what you’re looking for without any interference. This might mean scanning handwritten notes, taking screenshots of annotated Web sites, and turning your essays into PDFs or Web texts.

The Self-Assessment Essay

The Self-Assessment Essay, which will serve as an introduction to your Portfolio, is a kind of research paper. Your development as a writer is the subject and your work this semester is your evidence. Thus, your task is to demonstrate, with evidence, how you’ve developed as a writer and thinker this semester. Evidence may come in the form of a quote or screenshot of your work or through your retelling of a central learning moment. Your cover letters, homework assignments, and in-class reflections should serve as valuable sources of information and provide you with quote-worthy passages. And you should include in your Portfolio any relevant items that you reference in your Self-Assessment Essay.

This essay answers this question: To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives this semester? Importantly, then, your essay should quote and respond to each of our course learning objectives below. That said, your essay should not be organized in the bulleted format in which the objectives are presented. Here are the Course Learning Objectives you will address in your essay:

Students will

1. Recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users, and be open to communicating across different languages and cultures.
2. Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.
3. Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.
4. Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.
5. Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
6. Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.
7. Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias.
8. Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.
9. Practice systematic application of citation conventions.

Your Self-Assessment Essay should be 3 to 4 pages (12-point font, 1-inch margins, double spaced) plus any images you choose to include. It will not be evaluated on whether or not you have achieved the course goals, but on how well you demonstrate your understanding of the goals that you have achieved and your thoughts about the goals that you have not achieved. Please use MLA citation within the body of your essay and on a Works Cited page as needed. Compose a relative and inviting title for your essay. As always, you are encouraged to personalize the delivery of your essay as you see fit. Thus, you decide the order, tone, style, and language you’ll craft in order to best reach your audience. You’re welcome to draw on your “native,” “home,” or “other” languages, literacies, and ways of being as you so choose.

Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? 

Hi everyone! My name is Molly Mosher, I teach in the English Department, specifically Baruch’s first-year writing program. I also teach in the same department at City College, so I read a LOT of student essays and talk a LOT about rhetoric and research. I love teaching in the hybrid model because I think it gives the opportunity to teach during in-person time and have students apply the techniques/lessons during asynchronous time. Also… I am sure I am not the only one but I especially love smaller classes. The smaller the class, the more time I am able to get to know each student personally and through their writings.

Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? 

I will be working on my ENG 2100T class as well as preparing materials for the future, 2150T. These classes cover first-year writing (Writing 1 and Writing 11) for Baruch students who are (predominately) non-native English speakers. I want them to feel comfortable sharing in class, but I find they are shy (could be language related, could just be the pressure of being an 18 year old first-year!!).

What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

Compose as a process: Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of your work by members of your discourse community (e.g. instructor and peers), revision, and editing, reinforced by reflecting on your writing process in metacognitive ways.

Compose with an awareness of how intersectional identity, social conventions, and rhetorical situations shape writing: Demonstrate in your writing an awareness of how personal experience, our discourse communities, social conventions, and rhetorical considerations of audience, purpose, genre, and medium shape how and what we write.

Read and analyze texts critically: Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g. essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, trope, genre, audience, and purpose.

Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing: Identify sources of information and evidence credible to your audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in your writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing the arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in your writing, using a citation style appropriate to your audience and purpose.

Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose: Adapt writing and composing conventions (including your style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.

What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?

I want to develop a series of low-stakes asynchronous discussion board posts. I want to love these (I don’t currently) because I think they are a great way for students to engage with material and with each other in a casual and conversational way. I would like to develop a series of topics / questions that are engaging and interesting so that the students overflow with responses!

I want to determine a) how much weight these should carry and b) basic rules of engagement. It would be great to develop the actual discussion questions too. My goal would be to use these developed discussion board posts in the spring.