With this unusual series of discussions, the Center’s Teaching with Writing program offers University of Minnesota faculty members, TAs, and other instructors a venue for discussing controversial issues related to teaching with writing. Here we will focus on teasing out tangled and difficult teaching issues rather than providing strategies and solutions. To help frame discussions, we will send registrants one or two short articles in advance.

No more Engaging Controversies discussions will be offered during Spring 2008. Check back in August for Fall discussions.

recent discussions

academic writing meets digital literacy

Friday, April 11
10:30–12:00 pm
12 Nicholson Hall

It is reasonable to suspect that ubiquitous digital interfaces are affecting students’ writing and thinking strategies, but what, specifically, is changing? And, in what ways might we alter the ways we assign and teach writing to make our teaching relevant to today’s computer-literate students?

For this discussion, we've selected three articles:
 
WIDE Research Centre Collective. “Why Teach Digital Writing?” KAIROS 10.1. Fall 2005 http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/10.1/binder2.html?coverweb/wide/index.html (Click link)
 
Sosnoski, James. “Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines,” in Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies,” Hawisher, Gail and Cynthia Selfe (Eds). Logan Utah; Utah State University Press, 1999. (See attached)
 
Berninger, Virginia W. and William D. Winn.  “Implications of Advancements in Brain Research and Technology for Writing Development, Writing Instruction, and Educational Evolution,” in Handbook of Writing Research, McArthur, Steve Graham, and Jill Fitzgerald (Eds). New York: Guildford Press, 2006.  (See attached)

If you have time to read only one, we suggest the first of these, “Why Teach Digital Writing?” even though the other two are engaging and provocative too.

Questions to consider as you're reading (PDF file)

RSVP now!

disciplinary differences #2

Friday, February 1
10:30–11:45 am
12 Nicholson Hall

Some faculty members and students perceive absolute and irreconcilable differences between the writing (and thinking) done in scientific and humanistic disciplines. Others feel that beneath superficially differentiated formats and styles, all academic writing engages similar core questions and ideas. Who’s right? How do these beliefs affect student writers?

Here are two readings that should help us frame our discussion on Friday: Judith Langer's "Speaking of Knowing: Conceptions of Understanding in Academic Disciplines," and Susan Peck MacDonald's "Patterns in Disciplinary Variation."

writing = skill or ability?

Friday, March 7
10:30–12 pm
12 Nicholson Hall

First-year students usually write differently from fourth-year students. Is it either realistic or pedagogically sound for us to expect threshold skills that progress toward mastery? Or, is writing an ability that advances and recedes as students’ academic abilities mature? Are abilities acquired differently from skills?