Friday, April 18, 2008

April 22 and 24 meeting in HEAV 306

Our WPA seminar will meet in HEAV 306 (the graduate conference room) next week, April 22 and 24. This space should make it a bit easier to work on the class project.

shirley

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Assignment for April 15 and 17

WPAs’ Knowledge in Context: Writing Programs in Higher Ed Institutions
Harris will present his SPA in class on April 15
We will end class in time to attend the English 106 Showcase Awards presentation.

Read the following for discussion on April 15:
Hesse, Douglas. "Understanding Larger Discourses in Higher Education: Practical Advice for WPAs." Allyn and Bacon Sourcebook for Writing Program Administrators. Eds. Irene Ward and William Carpenter. New York: Longman, 2002. 299-314. (coursepack)

McGee, Sharon James. “Overcoming Disappointment: Constructing Writing Program Identity through Postmodern Mapping.” Discord and Direction: The Postmodern Writing Program Administrator. Ed. Sharon James McGee and Carolyn Handa. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2005. 59-71. (coursepack)

Maid, Barry. "More Than a Room of Our Own: Building an Independent Department of Writing." Enos and Brown. 453-466. (textbook)

Merrill, Yvonne, and Thomas P. Miller. "Making Learning Visible: A Rhetorical Stance on General Education." Enos and Brown. 203-217. (textbook)

Ritter, Kelly. “Extra Institutional Agency and the Public Value of the WPA.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 29.3 (Spring 2006): 45-64 (on disk)

for April 17:
Class will meet in Computer lab in ENAD 138
to work on an online exericise on WPAs in the Borader Higher Education context

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Assignments for April 1,3, 8, and 10

Assignment for April 1 and 3:
Professor Rose at CCCC. No reading assignment. Use class time for workshops on projects

Assignment for April 8 and 10
Full draft of Fourth Project is due on April 10.

Megan presents her Situated Performance Activity on April 8.
Cris presents her book review and Harris presents his job description analysis on April 10

Representing WPA Knowledge
Read the following:

Smith, Dorothy. “The Social Construction of Documentary Reality.” Sociological Inquiry 44 (1974): 257-268. (coursepack)

MLA Commission on Professional Service. "Making Faculty Work Visible: Reinterpreting Professional Service, Teaching, and Research in the Fields of Language and Literature." Profession 96. New York: MLA, 1996. 161-216. (coursepack)

Bullock, Richard H. "When Administration Becomes Scholarship: The Future of Writing Program Administration." WPA: Writing Program Administration 11.1/2 (Fall 1987): 13-18. (on disk)

Hult, Christine. "The Scholarship of Administration." Resituating Writing: Constructing and Administering Writing Programs. Ed. Joseph Janangelo and Kristine Hansen. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1995. 119-131. (coursepack)

Roen, Duane H. "Writing Administration as Scholarship and Teaching." Academic Advancement in Composition Studies: Scholarship, Publication, Promotion, Tenure. Ed. Richard C. Gebhardt and Barbara Genelle Gebhardt. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996. 43-55. (coursepack)

Bushman, Donald. "The WPA as Pragmatist: Recasting 'Service' as 'Human Science'." WPA: Writing Program Administration 23.1/2 (Fall/Winter 1999): 29-43. (on disk)

Speculation: Consider this week’s reading in the context of our other reading, writing, and discussions this semester. All of these readings are at least a decade old. Based on your own reading of more recent scholarship, would you say that it is time to update these discussions/descriptions of WPA scholarship? If so, what would be the most effective form for this updating to take? If not, what ideas about WPA scholarship seem to be most resistant to change? Your response can take any form, but should be equal to a 500-word short essay in scope.

We'll begin our discussion of the readings on Tuesday and continue on Thursday. Please have your response ready for Tuesday's class.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Assignment for March 27

Full draft of Third Project is due.

Focus: Writing Program Assessment as as Knowledge-Making Activity

In-Class: Assessment Project: We will particpate in the ICaP assessment project with Paul Lunch and Kristine Johnson

Preparation Reading:
Schneider, Barbara and Richard Marback. “Judging WPAs by What They Say They Do: An Argument for Revising ‘Evaluating the Intellectual Work of Writing Administration’.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 27.3 (Spring 2004): 7-22.

Harrington, Susanmarie. “The Place of Assessment and Reflection in Writing Program Administration.” Discord and Direction: The Postmodern Writing Program Administrator. Ed. Sharon James McGee and Carolyn Handa. Logan, UT: Utha State UP. 140-157.

Juergensmeyer, Erik and Karen P. Pierce. “Becoming the Learner: Collaborative Inquiry, Reflection, and Writing-Program Assessment. “ WPA: Writing Program Administration 30.3 (Spring 2007): 29-56.

Assignment for March 25

Documentation Strategies for Archiving WPA Knowledge
Last 20 minutes of class on March 25 will be spent on prep for assessment activity on March 27

Read

Rose, Shirley K and Irwin Weiser. “The WPA as Researcher and Archivist.” The Writing Program Administrator’s Resource: A Guide to Reflective Institutional Practice. Stuart C. Brown and Theresa Enos, ed. Matwah, NJ; Earbaum, 2002. (textbook)



L'Eplattenier, Barbara. "Finding Ourselves in the Past: An Argument for the Need for Historical Work on WPAs." The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher: Inquiry in Action and Reflection. Eds. Shirley K Rose and Irwin Weiser. Portsmouth, NJ: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1999. (on reserve)



Mirtz, Ruth M. "WPAs as Historians: Discovering a First Year Writing Program by Researching Its Past." The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher: Inquiry in Action and Reflection. Eds. Shirley K Rose and Irwin Weiser. Portsmouth, NJ: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1999. (on reserve)



Guba, Egon G. and Yvonna S. Lincoln. "Using Documents, Records, and Unobtrusive Measures." Ch. 8 in Effective Evaluation: Improving the Usefulness of Evaluation Results Through Responsive and Naturalistic Approaches. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981. (coursepack)


Choose one of the following options

Option #1

After reading these essays, examine the following article by E. Shelley Reid and note the number and kinds of documents that are mentioned in this narrative. Develop a tentative set of categories for classifying these documents:

Reid, E. Shelley. “A Change for the Better: Curriculum Revision as Reflective Practice in Teaching and Administration.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 26.3 (Spring 2003): 10-27. (on disk)



Option #2

Imagine the following scenario: Due to a natural disaster, paper will not be available for the next semester of classes. All communication and record-keeping will have to be managed using some other means. The good news is that electronic and other resources for these alternative means of communication and record-keeping are virtually unlimited.As the Associate Director of your writing program (choose whatever program you wish), you are responsible for documenting the program’s activities and practices and maintaining the program’s archive. How will you carry out this responsibility for the coming semester? Develop a plan for documenting and archiving the writing program for the coming term. Your plan should be ready for presentation to and review by the Director of the program, and, of course, can be in any appropriate format.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Hint for March 20 WPA Seminar meeting

Seminar members--
Unfortunately, the discussion on WPA-L for the last couple of days has not been as heavy as usual, so it may not provide a very good sampling as a good basis for the exercise for class tomorrow (March 20). I recommend you spend a few minutes browsing the WPA-L archives at this URL http://lists.asu.edu/archives/wpa-l.html if you haven't been reading WPA-L regularly.

Shirley

Monday, March 17, 2008

Reminder WPA Seminar Assignment

Thi is just a reminder that the following readings scheduled for discussion in our March 18 meeting are all available on the CD of digital files I distributed.

Reflective Practice as a Mode of WPA Knowing

Brady, Laura. “A Greehnouse for Writing Program Change.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 29.3 (Spring 2006): 27-43.

Blakesley, David. “Directed Self-Placement in the University.” WPA: Writing Program Adninistration 25.3 (Spring 2002): 9-40.

Graban, Tarez Samra and Kathleen J. Ryan. “From ‘What Is’ to “what Is Possible’: Theorizing Curricula Document Revision as In(ter)vention and Reform.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 28.3 (spring 2005): 89-112.

Stancliff, Michael and Maureen Daly Goggin. “What’s Theorizing Got to Do With It? Teaching theory as Resourceful Conflict and Reflection in TA Preparation.” WPA: Writing Program Admnistration 30.3 (Spring 2007): 11-28.