Serendipity35

"Granted, Technology Makes Better Writers" was the title Greg Fallon and I used for the presentation that we did at the NJ Best Practices conference last week. It's a mashup title because we were discussing our Writing Initiative (Title V grant) and focusing, for that particular presentation, on the technology components of our writing initiative.

Of course, what we were glossing over - the idea that technology actually improves writing - is not without controversy.

The presentation slides are on Slideshare (where you can download etc.) but what doesn't come through there is our discussion. Though we are certainly trying to add some online technology (Do we need to say Web 2.0 anymore? Yawn...) to our writing improvement initiative, it's not just to be doing the new thing.

Actually, at least half of our efforts are very much in the traditional sense "course redesign." The main thrust of the initiative is to create 25 Gen Ed (core) courses that are writing-intensive across the curriculum over the next five years. So, our efforts include the redesign by the piloting faculty member, a reference librarian, English department faculty member, writing center coordinator and myself.

The initiative touches on a number of movements in writing that are not new. Writing-intensive courses and writing across the curriculum, for example, are well established at other schools. Building a physical Writing Center at Passaic County Community College is an effort long past due. Our Library 2.0 efforts are in keeping what many libraries are doing now.

The workshop week we'll be doing this June will work with 20 of the faculty and redesign team members that will be involved in the initiative. The sessions will address other areas that are primary in our approach: critical thinking & writing, assessment, learning objects & learning outcomes, standardized rubrics, holistic grading, ePortfolios, eTutoring, Gen Ed standards, using course management systems for writing and incorporating streaming media objects. (There are about 25 topics for this blog in these lists alone!)

One of the presentation slides that we used listed our two broad technology aims: Consortiums & Collaboration, Web 2.0 & Online Applications. I'll talk more about all these in the upcoming months, but the one I'd like to pump right now is consortium & collaboration.

We are involved in several consortiums already (there's more on ePortfolio.org and etutoring.org in the presentation and to come), but we would love to work with other schools that are moving in the same direction or are already there. You can find my contact information in our LibGuide and on the image above - and maybe you'll discover LibGuides at the same time. Hope to meet some of you on the road.

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