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.
