English Department Spring Meeting Materials
UW-Baraboo on April 1 and 2, 2005


Click a link in this table to jump to the description of part of the meeting.
From the description, you can jump to the notes and handouts.
SoTL Workshop
Assessment & Closing the Loop Workshops:
Business Meeting


SoTL Workshop Greg Ahrenhoerster and Holly Hassel (Friday) ~ $ ~ funded by the UW Colleges' Departmental SoTL Grant

1) We will be providing some basic information about what the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is.
2) Holly and I will briefly explain the SoTL projects that we each are working on. Click here to view the packet with information about SoTL and their projects.
3) We will introduce the idea of conducting an English department SoTL project each year (if there is interest) and possibly using it as our Departmental Assessment activity.
4) We will do some brainstorming activities for both individual and group SoTL projects.

Chris Taylor sent this article from the Two-Year College English Association ahead of time as background for two-year colleges and SoTL. (Note: we are not a community college, so the points about no expectations for research don't apply; however, the discussion of the kinds of SoTL projects done within two-year colleges is very helpful.)

Assessment & Closing the Loop (Friday & Saturday) ~ $ ~ funded by the Department Assessment Coordinators' assessment money

“Working with Rhetorical Strategies in Student Writing" Chris Taylor (Facilitator) and Greg Ahrenhoerster (Notetaker)

The first item in the Content section of the Composition Rubric addresses the student's use of rhetorical strategies. Session participants will discuss three related questions:

· What are rhetorical strategies?

· How can we help students develop their understanding and use of rhetorical strategies in their writing?

· How do we assess the effectiveness of rhetorical strategies in relation to an essay's purpose?

This conversation will address both the teaching and assessment of rhetorical strategies in composition courses.


Click here to read Greg's notes.

“Discipline-Specific language: Which terms are important to us?" Jennifer Stolpa (Facilitator) and Jane Oitzinger (Notetaker)

Assessment of students' work in literature courses includes examining their fluency with discipline-specific terms. As individuals and as a department, what terms do we wish students could use correctly? We will look at terminology related to literature from different genres and periods, and, if time allows, rhetorical terminology applicable to both literature and composition courses.

Click here to read Jane's notes, which include the top 10 terms each group selected. Click the appropriate category to read the initial brainstormed lists generated by groups about key terms in poetry, fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, and periods/theory. (Actually, some of these lists contain notes about periods and theory, in addition to the specific genre, but the discussion focused on the genres, so the other elements were done quickly.)

“Incorporating sources: Closing the Loop and Citing the Digital Library" Chuck Rybak (Facilitator) and David Ostrenga (Notetaker)

This forum will share ideas and methods concerning the department's commitment to teaching and assessing research strategies and the use of documentation. Of special interest will be new teaching methods incorporated by faculty, and how and why these methods have met with success or failure. The session will also include discussion of database use and the citing of internet sources.


Click here to read David's notes.

“What's in a Word?: Reading Comprehension" Scott Emmert (Facilitator) and Nancy Chick (Notetaker)

As part of the fall 2004 assessment of literature courses, we focused on how well students were able to “analyze the meanings of specific words.” This discussion session will seek to define the problems students have when it comes to understanding and analyzing specific words and will brainstorm teaching strategies for overcoming these problems.


Click here to read Nancy's notes.

Business Meeting (Saturday morning) ~ $ ~ funded by an English Department Professional Development Grant (as was Friday's lunch and dinner and Saturday's breakfast and lunch)

Click here to see the agenda.

Notes on “Working with Rhetorical Strategies in Student Writing”

Click here to see the handouts, including the discussion questions, a bibliography, and some articles on disciplinary discourse and rhetorical strategies.


Chris Taylor led the session. She was asked by the Assessment Committee to lead this discussion because “meets audience expectations of deliberate rhetorical strategies” was one of the lower scoring assessment criteria on the fall 2004 departmental composition assessment activity.

Chris started by asking us what we understand the term “rhetorical strategies” to mean. A number of definitions were offered:

It was noted that there is also an aspect of “visual rhetoric” (how the audience sees the text displayed).

So….how do we get students to understand what a rhetorical strategy is? Two practical suggestions were given:

Chris then talked through a handout on how “discourse” varies from one academic discipline to another. Perhaps we should be more consciously explaining to students that they need to adapt their discourse and rhetorical strategy when they move from class to class and even from professor to professor.

Dave Cole explained how this is being done at Baraboo, where they use a common set of 101 assignments that were derived by professors from five different academic disciplines (English, history, psychology, philosophy, and biology).

Other suggestions for helping students to understand this concept include

Towards the end of the discussion, we briefly took up the question of whether, as writing instructors at the same institution, it is important for all of us to use the same lexicon. In other words, when we teach this material, should we all be calling it “rhetorical strategy.” There was disagreement about this, with some folks saying it is more important to be consistent with whatever textbook we use (and the texts are not consistent with each other) and others contending that it would be beneficial to at least let the students know that the term exists, even if it is not the term that is used in the text.


Notes on "Discipline-Specific language: Which words are important to us?"

I'll insert them as soon as I get them....



Notes on "Incorporating Sources: Closing the Loop and Citing the Digital Library"

Chuck Rybak began the session by noting that one out five students is not meeting expectations when it comes to integrating and citing sources. After mentioning changes that he has made in his instruction, he asked the group to consider the methods, challenges, and difficulties of presenting research and documentation. The ensuing discussion generated suggestions in three areas: (1) Expanding the Quality of Traditional and Electronic Sources; (2) Avoiding Plagiarism and Improving the Integration of Source Information; and (3) Improving Citation of Electronic Sources. A summary of these suggestions follows.

Expanding the Quality of Traditional and Electronic Sources
While electronic research offers advantages for students and teachers (efficient access to quality information and easy method of checking papers for plagiarism), the group expressed concern that students could throw a paper together without ever leaving their computer. To ensure that students would acquire at least some familiarity with traditional library resources, it was suggested that students might be required to gather some of their information from the library stacks. Another suggestion is to have students complete a scavenger hunt exercise by finding answers in the stacks.

As for the quality of students’ electronic sources, the group agreed that students need guidance in locating and evaluating good online materials. To some extent, class discussion, group workshops, and student conferences can be helpful in this regard. Nevertheless, practice exercises can also be instructive. Here are a few suggestions:

•    Ask students to complete an assignment sheet where they not only identify their topic, key words, and source information, but also evaluate their sources.
•    Ask students to submit an annotated bibliography in advance of the research paper.
•    Ask students to evaluate and rank articles on a given topic from various sources (e.g., Good Housekeeping, National Enquirer, and JAMA).
•    Caution students against relying on databases (e.g., CQ Researcher) that summarize research and arguments.
•    Direct students to quality sources of information, such as Google News and Proquest Wisconsin Newsstand.
•    Require students to attend a library orientation that stresses research strategies, including the critical examination of sources.
•    Note: Crystal will send Nancy a copy of a source evaluation sheet that she uses. Click here to see Janet LaBrie's handout, "Judging Reliability of Web Sites."

Avoiding Plagiarism and Improving the Integration of Sources
To counteract the temptation to plagiarize, teachers need to design “smart assignments” that really focus students’ research. One suggestion is to require students to write a series of papers that explore a given topic from different perspectives and in different ways. Although some students might become bored with the same topic over an extended period of time, this approach is generally well received and has the advantage of introducing students to different rhetorical strategies. Of course, it is also necessary for teachers to check for plagiarism, perhaps by using a subscription service such as Turnitin.

Because many online articles lack formal page, paragraph, and screen numbers that could be used to cite information in a research paper, it is often difficult to determine how well students are distinguishing between their own and others’ ideas. Thus, it is important for teachers to show students how to integrate information by using cues (e.g., reference to authors’ names). In addition, it might be a good idea to require students to submit hardcopies of their articles with paragraph numbers penned in the margin and with cited passages highlighted; it should be noted, though, that some in the group felt that such a requirement would be unnecessarily onerous for the student.

Improving Citation of Electronic Sources
Some of the discussion concerned the technicalities of online citation; for example, how does one document a web article without an author and title (answer: cite and underline the home page), and how does one properly present a URL so that it appears in angle brackets (answer: right click on the URL and de-select the underline)? Other discussion concerned documentation resources for teachers and students (e.g., Hacker’s Rules for Writers, Raimes’ Keys for Writers, and Columbia Online Style). However, most suggestions concerned strategies to help students learn proper documentation. These include:

•    Show students how sample papers are documented.
•    Ask students to read documentation guidelines and models, and then give them an ungraded quiz so they can learn from their mistakes; after further class work, students will take a graded quiz.
•    Ask students to use New Tools, a subscription service that helps students to learn bibliographic entries by placing source information in boxes; the program explains why certain information must appear in certain places.
•    Ask students to correct documentation errors or supply missing citation information in graded papers.
•    Alert students to the fact that their other teachers might require other documentation styles and that it is their responsibility to find out what is expected of them.

As mentioned at our department meeting, the librarians at UW-Washington County have spent a lot of time putting together "how to" models for citing sources that students retrieve using various databases and subscription services.  The Washington County library has that material posted online at http://washington.uwc.edu/library/citingelectronicresources.htm.  A brief preview of what you might find there includes:
  1. Formulas for how to construct the citations
  2. Formulas and examples for BOTH MLA and APA formats.
  3. Examples for the most often used databases (Lexis-Nexis, Proquest, Opposing Viewpoints, Ebscohost, etc.)  Note: the examples are not double spaced, so students need to be reminded of that sometimes.


Notes on "What's in a Word?: Reading Comprehension"
The Fall 2004 Assessment activity data showed an 18% fails to meet expectations, 47% meets expectations, and 39% exceeds expectations with students' ability to “analyze the meanings of specific words"--a relatively high "fails" rate and a relatively low "exceeds" rate. This discussion sought ways to close the loop with this ability. Scott distributed this handout with the relevant section of the rubric, as well as a poem participants may use as an example. There were many loving references to Herrick's "liquefaction" throughout the discussion. Scott divided the session into two segments: 1) what's the problem? what is it that students aren't doing or learning? and 2) what can we do better to help students learn?

What's the problem? What is it that students aren't doing or learning?
  • Students can read textbooks with definitions in the back, key terms in bold, study questions, etc., but they have difficulty reading literary texts because they think the process of reading is the same for both kinds of texts.
  • What does "analyze" mean when we're talking about "analyzing meanings of specific words"? It's beyond simply "define," but this might be what students assume. It involves understanding the roots of the word, the multiple definitions, the connotations, how the word changed over time, and the context in the work of literature.
  • Students don't know where to look up words.
  • They have difficulty taking the dictionary and applying the definition(s) to the context.
  • They take the first definition in the dictionary and stop there.
  • They plug in a synonym without considering the word a deliberate choice.
  • They take words out of the context.
  • They're not fascinated with words, as we are.
  • They see words as coins: worthy only by denomination. Instead, they should see words as coin collectors see their coins. [--J. D. Whitney's lovely analogy]

What can we do better to help students learn?
  • Teach students how to use the dictionary.
    • Bring a dictionary to class, look up words from a text, consider its multiple definitions, the use of a thesaurus, etc--in short, model effective use of a dictionary and perhaps thesaurus. We model, and then have students apply.
    • Require students to bring a dictionary to class to acculturate them to using it readily and without embarrassment.
  • Show students the multiple meanings for a single word and how these multiple meanings of the specific word lead to multiple meanings in the text. (For example, use "beat time" in Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz")
  • A la Brooks and Warren, use a synonym for a word and ask students what difference the substitution makes. [Thanks, Dave Cole!]
  • Enthusiasm is contagious, so show students how "wordstruck" you are: “Wordstruck is exactly what I was—and still am: crazy about the sound of words, the look of words, the taste of words, the feeling for words on the tongue and in the mind.” ~Robert MacNeil, Wordstruck
    • Share words that fascinate you. Ken Grant wowed his colleagues with his list.
  • In discussion or writing, have students select the single word or short phrase that "unlocks" a specific poem or story or play. They should also explain why. Then, have them share their answers, so they'll see the variety of meanings, key words, etc., within a single word and a single work.
  • Have students read aloud...often. Put the "specific words" of the text in their mouths. We want to go beyond "analysis of specific words" to the sounds, resonances, and joy of words.
    • You or the students read aloud a passage. Then students freewrite about it. Then read it aloud again. Then freewrite again. Then read aloud again. Then freewrite again.
    • Ask a student to read aloud a single passage. Then ask another. Then another.
    • Have students read a longer poem aloud by taking turns with stanzas.
  • Bring in recordings of writers reading their work (or the writers themselves).
  • Meet students where they are: introduce popular music and/or contemporary poetry (more familiar entryway to poetic language), and then move backwards.
  • Encourage/require students to write in their texts to change their definition of "reading" from "turning pages" to "engaging with the text." Guide them by telling them to mark specific references to __?__ within the text (ie, John Pruitt tells his students to mark every time they see a reference to the horizon, the color blue, or Janie's hair in Their Eyes Were Watching God).
    • Show them our annotated texts.
    • Model effective annotating by reading a text aloud and showing it on the overhead, marking it up as you or the students read it aloud.
    • Explain to students the difference between annotating a text for an exam (marking information) and annotating a text for interpretation and analysis (responses, questions, connections).
  • Bring a passage we consider key to a text, and have students figure out why it's key. Discuss. Then, next time, have students bring to class two passages they consider key. (We model, and then students apply.)
  • Put each word from a (short) poem students haven't read on separate slips of paper, and have students put them together to create the poem (or a poem). Then show them the original poem, and discuss the poet's choices and their own choices, and the differences.