Category Archives: Pedagogy and Practice

Showing Our Work With AI: Our Students and Their Coursework

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Today, we met with colleagues to talk about AI stuff, but what we really talked about was learning. During the first part of the workshop, I offered some reflections on examples of coursework completed by various students, some using AI and some not. During the second half of the workshop, we got into an interesting convo, asking each about the learning our assignments promote: when and why does our course design invite students to use AI tools?

Here’s the doc I share during the discussion. I’d love to hear from you if have thoughts or want to collaborate on the next Showing Your Work with AI discussion about learning, course design, and engagement.

WritingwithMachines in Fall 2023

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Tech innovators aspire to move fast and break things. Well, one of the things they’ve broken is my class. And there’s nothing I can do this semester (or the next) except enter into my broken class with my students and together dialogue over what processes, tools, and content still have value and then sharpen our techniques and deepen our knowledge in pursuit of the goals we set. 

WritingwithMachines is officially on hiatus in the Letters department at MiraCosta college in the fall of 2023 to focus on a program-wide portfolio project for our 100-level composition course. What I am excited about is the way this project centers process and reflection in the student’s writing-reading experiences. The constraints of the final essay draft are no longer enough to inspire an investment of time and labor in developing ideas for a considered audience by crafting effective forms. For most students, they never were enough. The portfolio project we’re engaging encourages students and professors to play within an array of processes and source materials; to interpret texts with an awareness of the ways our cultural and/or personal experiences inform our reading; and to strive to engage the attention of others by making our own audience-aware texts. In short, this semester, professors and students alike in ENGL 100 will emphasize the value of showing our work.

I am still active in conversations around campus about the ways we (continue to) read and write with machines, and from time to time I will post to this blog if for no other purpose than to organize helpful frameworks and perspectives for myself.

In all, I am holding a deep epistemological and pedagogical humility. And I am finding as I apply this in dialogue with my colleagues and with my students, I am discovering hope.

Have a great semester my friends 🙂

Building Biliterate Brains

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Catch up on our second discussion orbiting around Maryanne Wolf’s Reader Come Home

To listen to our full convo, check out the Zoom recording or the podcast

All content shared and perspectives we discussed are collected in a Padlet.

Our next discussion will be May 10th, and we’re creating space: What topics are on your mind with regards to new technologies and how we teach writing, reading, and thinking?

Post your ideas to our Padlet! Or email curry directly. Stoked to explore these topics with you!

Reading, Attention, and Thinking-about-Thinking

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In our first discussion orbiting around Maryanne Wolf’s Reader Come Home, we got into

  • how unique and plural our experiences are when we engage content media
  • how time and labor demands often limit contemplative practices with content
  • how sometimes the goals we place on reading misalign with the goals we place on writing
  • how important it is for us to ask our students: what value does this [book, podcast, videogame, article, oration, play, story] have in your [journal, essay, project, life]?

To listen to our full convo, check out the Zoom recording or the podcast

All content shared and perspectives we discussed are collected in a Padlet.

Our next discussion will be April 26th, where we will continue discussing our experiences reading in different modalities to form “bi-literate brains.” We will be sharing from “Letter 8” & “Letter 9” in  Maryanne Wolf’s Reader Come Home. You do not have to have read the book to participate in the conversation. Hope to see you then to explore literacy, and what the teaching of literacy skills looks like today.

Voice, Bias, and Templates

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We had a really rich convo yesterday about concepts of voice, concepts of bias, and concepts of templates by which we mean reproducible structures, devices, or tools that shape our thinking for us, or with us. At one point in the conversation, we got here:

“We’ve created an academic voice, and we’ve imposed structures and processes and practice on our students, so that by the end of their training, they write with an academic voice. That’s ideological. That’s a system that takes in what students say–and how students would on their own arrange and express that–and mutes, mars, and shapes their voice. By the end, we all speak in this certain way when we write in this space. That’s not something ChatGPT is introducing; that’s something that has defined and does define an English class and an English curriculum.”

To listen to our full convo, check out the Zoom recording or the podcast

All content shared and perspectives we discussed are collected in a Padlet.

Our next discussion will be April 12th, where we will discuss how our experiences reading in different modalities form us (as thinking, writing humans) and assist metacognition. We will be sharing from “Letter 3” & “Letter 4” in  Maryanne Wolf’s Reader Come Home. You do not have to have read the book to participate in the conversation. Hope to see you then to explore Attention and Thinking-about-Thinking with new writing technologies.

These are the [spaces] Where Writing Happens

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We’re exploring the spaces in our classes where writing happens. Some of us met in Zoom to share our thoughts. Some of us are participating asynchronously. You can too. Today or whenever. 🙂

Thinking about Material Affordances – A [Doc] Where Writing Happens

Thinking about Language Affirming Practices – A [Discussion] Where Writing Happens

Thinking about Contexts and Lived Experiences – A [Padlet] Where Writing Happens

Each space offers a different frame and a different mode of writing-to-think and writing-to-express. We might think of these as models for designing spaces where writing happens in our classes. We might simply use these spaces for reflection and collaboration. Like all shared, asynchronous spaces, these are simply spaces for our conversation to have already started and to be ongoing.

If you’d like to catch the convo we had in the Zooms, you can watch here or listen on our Letters Department Podcast.

Thank you for collaborating!

Communicating in Community Weeks 0 – 3

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What classroom community goals do you set for Weeks 0 – 3? What assignments/activities help you know who your students are and which help your students know who you are?

Watch or listen to The Ways We Make First Impressions Through Fourth Impressions at the beginning of the semester, a WritingwithMachines Discussion.

Then add your own plans for Pre-semester through Week 3 communications to our Google Doc

Your time listening/watching is eligible for FLEX.

This discussion is our fifth and final of a sustained series focused on our Online Teaching Principle for Communicating with Students. At the center of this deep-dive project, we’re asking this question: how do our communication tools, spaces, and methodologies promote student growth and student agency?

Thank you for the awesome convos, colleagues!

We Speak to Students Through Our Design Decisions

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What do we communicate to students from page to page, assignment to assignment? Why? How?

Watch or listen to The Voice, Verbs, and Grammars of our Courses, a WritingwithMachines Discussion

Then add your own exploration of Course Design Choices to our Google Doc

Your time listening/watching is eligible for FLEX.

This discussion is the fourth of a sustained series focused on our Online Teaching Principle for Communicating with Students. At the center of this deep-dive project, we’re asking this question: how do our communication tools, spaces, and methodologies promote student growth and student agency?

We will continue this series of professional conversations with one final conversation

First Impressions, Fourth Impressions: Communicating in Community Weeks 0-3, Thursday May 12th 3:30-5:00pm in Zoom

See you then!!

Feedback on Writing Can Be a Conversation

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How do you establish a culture of conversation in your class? How can your feedback on drafts sustain that conversation with each of your students?

Watch or listen to Dialoging in End Comments, A WritingwithMachines Discussion

Then add your own exploration of Feedback-style Convos to our Google Doc

Your time listening/watching is eligible for FLEX.

This discussion is the third of a sustained series focused on our Online Teaching Principle for Communicating with Students. At the center of this deep-dive project, we’re asking this question: how do our communication tools, spaces, and methodologies promote student growth and student agency?

We will continue this series of professional conversations with

Verbs, Voice, and Grammar (of Canvas): Speaking to Students Through Course Design Decisions, Monday April 11th 1:00-2:30pm in Zoom

First Impressions, Fourth Impressions: Communicating in Community Weeks 0-3, Thursday May 12th 3:30-5:00pm in Zoom

See you then!!

Communication in 3rd Spaces

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How do open, curated spaces encourage our students to lead, self-advocate, and belong within a community of readers and writers?

Watch or listen to Communication in 3rd Spaces, A WritingwithMachines Discussion

Then add your exploration of 3rd spaces to our Google Doc

Your time listening/watching is eligible for FLEX.

This discussion is the second of a sustained series focused on our Online Teaching Principle for Communicating with Students. At the center of this deep-dive project, we’re asking this question: how do our communication tools, spaces, and methodologies promote student growth and student agency?

We will continue this series of professional conversations next semester exploring instructor feedback, Canvas course design, and pre-semester outreach as sites for rich and effective communications. See you then!!