Thomas Simon, Philosophy
Word processed versions of papers often have the consistency and lure of processed cheese. Not only do instructors often find enough spelling, grammatical, and other "mistakes" on the first page to discourage any further reading, but the papers often lack cohesion and coherence as well. In this session, the presenter will suggest some reasons for these problems and then demonstrate one possible solution: "free-writing," an approach he has adopted in his own teaching.
Carey Applegate, English; Genevieve Baumann, English
Forty-five education majors + two ENG 101 instructors + one field trip to Chicago + numerous writing crawls + three writing projects based in urban education + one student-generated wiki = ONE WILD RIDE! Within the framework of a majorspecific inner-core course, students explored urban education through a variety of experiences, including a wiki that became a vehicle for the development of a crossclassroom community. Stage 1: In miniature writing communities, students created wiki pages based on their own primary and secondary research into an aspect of urban life. Stage 2: Students from both classroom communities gave crosscommunity feedback and suggestions for revision. Stage 3: The virtual walls between the classroom communities became fluid as students' ownership of the project expanded to include the entire wiki. By the end of the project, students had formed connections among a diverse array of areas of expertise to create a well-rounded, unified project and had become, essentially, one class based in two classrooms. The experience led one student to say, "This has been, hands-down, one of the coolest things I've done for a class!"
