Session 1: Flipping Your Writing Classroom
Flipping classrooms is an engaging alternative to a ‘sage on a stage’ classroom lecture. Instructors “flip” the class by posting course material online and requiring students to watch it before coming to class. This pedagogical alternative to instructor lectures, transforms class time to time for students to engage in collaborative, hand-on activities that would usually be thought of as homework. The flipped classroom has been proven to promote engagement and information retention by successfully utilizing active and collaborative learning (Prince, 2004; Tetreault, 2006). The technological tools we will discuss and play with in this workshop are just a few that instructors can utilize to create active and collaborative learning spaces for their students in and outside of the actual, physical classroom.
Session 2: Engaging Students' Processes and Products
Writing is a recursive process. This means that writing is done in stages – drafts, reviews, edits - that are not linear in nature. This approach to writing is on developing procedures for rendering ideas into text, rather than beginning with form and assuming that students will have ideas to plug into the form (Smagorinsky, Peter et al.). The technological tools we will discuss and play with in this workshop are just a few that instructors can utilize to create active and collaborative learning experiences that encourage engagement of and inquiry into their writing processes.
Session 3: Lightening Your Feedback Load
Providing effective feedback to student writers can, at times, seem like an overwhelming and fruitless task. In this workshop, we will discuss and play with a few approaches and teachnologies that can make this aspect of writing instruction less daunting for instructors and more engaging for students.