HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 19:22:00 EDT
From:         "Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Subject:      (Fwd: *C&CD*) Do colleges require only first-year writing? (8)

Entry: 8
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 05:01:00 EST
From: IN%"RobertRoyar@Delphi.COM" Robert Royar, (C&CD Moderator)
Message-id: <1992Dec29.050100.v7.055.1.Grendel.Lair@Cratylus>
Subject: Do colleges require only first-year writing? (8)
Reply-to: "Computers & Composition Digest (R. Royar)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Organization: Cratylus Educational Software

>From: CROWLEY@NAUVAX.BITNET
>Subject: Standardizing Composition Classes (*MBU*)
>Message-id: <01GSV3I45ZK08WX75X@ulkyvx.bitnet>

>    4.  Institutional politics:  I have concluded that the one thing that
>makes FE different from all other college courses is the fact that it is
>required.  If we don't require it, perhaps (this is a big perhaps) it might
>assume the status enjoyed by other university courses.

Does this mean that many colleges do not require other courses from all
students? We require math (which includes basic math if placed in it),
history, philosophy, intermediate writing, lit, and a few others. These are
all part of a 30+-hour "core curriculum" with standard syllabi (our admin
showed us accred-agency docs that suopport their claim that standard
syllabi are necessary for these courses) but what NYIT and our accreditors
call syllabi (10-25 page documents) are a bit more elaborate than what MBU
has been calling syllabi (which we would call course outlines).

As an undergrad I had to take 12 hrs of required German language (the
specific language was mandated by ones major which for me began as
Chemistry). I had to take history, and a few electives from a very
constrained range. Even at the senior level there was one required
(non-English) "elective" which I hated to have to take.

I assumed that most colleges had some required core courses. Is this just
naive?

 -- Robert Royar (RobertRoyar@Delphi.com) New York Institute of Technology
    "If the Russians can get rid of the Communists, the Americans can get rid
    of the Republicans."                                        - Rudy Rucker

------------------------------
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 15:05:41 EST
From:         Karla Saari Kitalong <KITALONG@MTUS5.CTS.MTU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Standardizing

Myles, One of our TAs here at Michigan Tech is getting some sort of special
credit for "interning" with an experienced teacher of film. He helps grade
tests, quizzes, papers, etc., prepares and teaches some lessons, and
attends the class. He probably does some other stuff, too. I think he's
getting a lot out of it. Our GTA training program here is designed
primarily for teaching first-year comp, although we have a developing
program for Technical Writing and foreign language instructors. But those
of us teaching or aspiring to teach "odd" courses like film appreciation,
photography, or computer applications, or intro to mass media, are
unevenly mentored. Often, the reason we're teaching such courses is that
the faculty member who usually teaches it is on sabattical or otherwise
unavailable for a particular quarter, which often means he or she is
likewise unavailable to mentor us. The internship program that Tim is
participating in is (could be)a way to plan for an up-coming sabattical without
overly taxing student-teacher, regular teacher, or department resources.

 ------------------------
 Karla Saari Kitalong
 ------------------------------
 Academic Computing Specialist - Department of Humanities
 Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI  49931
 -----------------------------------------
 E-mail:  kitalong@mtus5.bitnet * kitalong@mtu.edu
 Voice:   work - (906) 487-3262 * home - (906) 482-3656
 ----------------------------------------------------------
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Date:         Mon, 28 Dec 1992 10:53:00 CST
From:         SLATIN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      Standardizing Composition Classe

Dear Grinch Crowley:

Let's hear why you think we should drop the first-year writing requirement.

John Slatin
UT Austin
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Date:         Tue, 22 Dec 1992 09:35:57 EST
From:         smh@AAL.ITD.UMICH.EDU
Subject:      structuring comp programs

Marcy,
Here at Michigan part of our writing program is set us as a lab course.
Students who are judged to need the most intensive help w/academic
writing are placed in practicum, a half-semester course that meets
4 hrs./week in class and then each student is required to come for
a half hour conference with the instructor.  That conferencing time
is built into our work load, so it's not something "extra" demanded of
faculty.  It's a wonderful environment for teaching (the course is
also credit/no credit, with portfolio assessment at the end).  So
I'd say if you're thinking about the ethics of requiring work from
adjunct faculty, you might think about creative ways to restructure
the program so you're not simply adding a huge number of contact hours
on top of what people are already doing.  Having the time to talk to
all of my students every week is a marvelous way for me to keep up
with what they're doing and to tailor assignments for individuals.
Susanmarie Harrington
University of Michigan
English Composition Board
1025 Angell Hall
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1003
smh@aal.itd.umich.edu
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Date:         Tue, 22 Dec 1992 09:59:07 CST
From:         Eric Crump <C509379@MIZZOU1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standard English

On Tue, 22 Dec 1992 00:06:00 EST <MLB14@PSUVM> said:
>but I'd really like to do something much more exciting.  Like making all
>freshman writing courses lab courses--have the whole shootin' match done by
>means of tutorials.

I have the same fantasy, Marcy: writing development (nee instruction)
made personal, because as you point out later in your note, students
are not so generalizable as we sometimes make out. Their differences
are not only delineable by institution and geography, but by individual.
One of the things that frustrated me about classroom teaching was the
that I >knew< that no matter what I did, I was creating a helpful
environment for only a fraction of the class, leaving many students      o
either bored or frustrated or both. In tutorial or small-group situations
there is at least a better chance of discovering individual learning
styles and reacting to them. Stephen Minot said in a Poets&Writers
article a while back that the best thing writing teachers could do was
"Be nimble." That's my motto (do people >have< mottos any more?) and
it's easier to do with a handful of writers than with 25 students.

--Eric Crump
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Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"
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Date:         Wed, 23 Dec 1992 05:04:00 EDT
From:         "Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Subject:      (Fwd: *C&CD*) RE: (Fwd: *C&CD*) RE: (Fwd: *C&CD*) RE: RE: So much
              CS,  so little time [LONG] (2) (10) (16) (12)

Entry: 12
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 00:19 EST
From: Marcy Bauman <MLB14@PSUVM.BITNET>
Subject: RE: (Fwd: *C&CD*) RE: (Fwd: *C&CD*) RE: RE: So much CS,  so little time
 [LONG]
(2)(10)(16) (12)
Message-id: <01GSLHT3DW748WWG8Z@ulkyvx.bitnet>
Reply-to: Computers & Composition Digest (R. Royar) <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>

Jonathan,

Thanks for the info about MIL-ST ???.  I will write to the address you sent
(which is on the previous screen, so Ican't refer to it more cogently.) I'd
like to know more about that, and my tech writing students would, too.

Couldn't help but notice that the brief overview of the software design
process that you sent didn't allow for documentation.  Does the long version
(contained in the document I'm about to send for) explicitly state when and
where and how documentation ought to be done?  I still don't know how to
counter the attitude that documentation is the expendable part of the
project because "once the users start using the system, they'll never need
the documentation anyway."

Marcy

------------------------------
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Date:         Thu, 31 Dec 1992 11:08:00 CST
From:         SLATIN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Standardizing Composition Cl

David, so far my major fundraising has been internal, and my sales pitch has
consisted of dragging various associate deans over to the Lab and sitting them
down in front of a screen while classes are going on.  Since they use email
themselves, they don't have to stretch all *that* far to get the point.  And
since they're looking for things they can point to when the legislature goes
into session next month (yikes! next week! damn), I'm perfectly happy to be
the Showcase allowing UT Austin to demonstrate that it actually knows that
undergraduates exist-- so far I've been able to make them cough up some of
what I need to make reality match appearance.  Like Dave Schwalm, I walk a
fine and funny line...

As for data, we've got 6 years' worth of InterChange transcripts, Mail
messages, drafts and finished essays on disk, and are now working out ways to
make that material accessible while prserving its integrity.  So far I've
mostly pointed to it; we're just startingt o get some dissertations that look
at it.  Wayne Butler's is one; Paul Taylor's is another; Susan Romano will I
think be working with these materials.

But for me the main goal is to get people writing, writing at all.  It seems
to me that we often lose sight of a key difference between ourselves and our
students, or many of our students: that we write habitually, that it's
"natural" to us tos it down at a keyboard when we have something to "say"; our
students don't do that and haven't done it.  The formal writing you and I do
is just the tip of the iceberg for us-- it's flung up out of situations like
this one.  The formal writing our students do *is* the writing they do.
That's what we have to change.

John Slatin
UT Austin
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Date:         Fri, 1 Jan 1993 18:09:18 EST
From:         "David Tillyer, CCNY" <DATCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standardizing

On the subject of observations, I have some thoughts for Eric.  I am
an adjunct and work at three universities (nine classes, last term) and
at every university I have to be observed at least once a semester.  I am
45 years old and have been teaching off and on for 15 years.  I know
my way around a classroom, but I still have to have some "expert" sit on
the periphery taking notes of everything I do.  Students are intimidated,
I do different things than are necessary in the sequence, nothing is
served.  It's no picnic for a whole language, anti-grammarian like myself
to have to sit through a post-observation conference with a conventional
pedagog.

However, when the observor is really willing to make serious suggestions
that will cause me to evaluate my classroom manners, I very much appreciate
that.  With the herd of observations these folks have to do, however, cogent
comments are very few.  Ah well.  David Tillyer, CCNY, BMCC, Hunter College
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 15:41:50 -0500
From:         ENGMYLES@UBVMS.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Standardizing Composition Classes

usage, spelling, mechanics, apostrophes:  drill?  no.  show the kids how
to look the problems up!  The Style handbook in Webster's 9th is easy to
use; spelling is easy to solve by a combination of absolute rigidity and
flexibility; usage dictionaries are lovely excuses to teach the problems
of language conventions.  teach themhow to fish, collaboratively.
Myles
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Date:         Thu, 31 Dec 1992 15:32:50 EST
From:         "David Tillyer, CCNY" <DATCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standardizing Composition Cl

John Slatin talks about getting Deans to make the jump from their personal
use of Email to use of Email with writing students.  Would that we could
do that.  I don't think we have more than two department heads on Email,
outside of the sciences, let alone Deans!

Serious question, do people out there have problems with all technology
naturally going to the sciences?

David Tillyer, CCNY
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Date:         Fri, 25 Dec 1992 22:46:08 EST
From:         Bill Condon <USERLCBK@UMICHUM.BITNET>
Subject:      Totorials

Irv,
It's not institutionally unworkable.  We hold half-hour conferences
with each student in our Writing Practicums each week.  An
institution has to be willing to support that level of instruction,
but once that support is there, believe me, it's not only workable--
it works like a charm!
Bill Condon
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Date:         Tue, 29 Dec 1992 11:52:00 CST
From:         SLATIN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      Standardizing Composition Classe

An addendum, Grinch: having sat in lately on a couple of meetings with people
from Engineering and Natural Sciences, people who are quite manifestly sincere
in their desire to see both better student writing and better writing
instruction, it's pretty clear to me that the mechanics-emphasis that you
describe as hoop-jumping *isn't* hoop-jumping to them: to them it *is*
writing. (That doesn't mean it's not hoop-jumping, it just means that that's
not why people in Bidness or Chemistry or whatever are complaining about the
quality of student writing.  They know, and we know, that all's not well in
that quarter; their description of what's wrong is about as far off as my
description of a problem in comprehending chemistry would be, but that doesn't
make it insincere or merely reflexively authoritarian; we need the kind of
conversation with those colleagues that Bill Wresch described in today's
posting).

And I still haven't heard an argument, or at least not a persuasive one, for
elminating the requirement, though I have heard lots of arguments for major
overhauls both of the course and of the general context in which the course
exists.

I've recently put forward a proposal to turn the entire campus into what I'm
grandly calling a Writing-Intensive On-Line Learning Environment: I want to do
something on the order of what Karen Schwalm's been doing at Maricopa together
with what we've been doing with Daedalus.  I'd like to see every course
offered at UT Austin with an associated electronic conference, as well as lots
of other conferences about everything from Bill Clinton to the local Humane
Society, course evaluations, campus politics, whatever.  Maybe, just maybe, in
an environment where everyone's writing all the time-- informally, for the
"mere" purpose of getting something said-- the quality of formal writing will
go up. Whatever "quality" is in this context.

But we'll have to do some work to break the hold that the 7th-grade unit on
grammar has on people's conceptions of "English class."

John Slatin
UT Austin
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 10:54:45 -0500
From:         ENGMYLES@UBVMS.BITNET
Subject:      Re: High school/college comp cou

John: when is the last time the department of English and its TAs met
with the English Depts of Austin high schools?  Or the Buffalo idem with
Buffalo idem? (in Buffalo?  Never.)
Myles
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Date:         Tue, 22 Dec 1992 10:17:03 EST
From:         mer <MROSE01@UKCC.UKY.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Standard English

David and Marcy:

Let me confirm what David just said about "rigidity" in the freshman compositio
n program.  When I first arrived at ASU, accompanying my wife who was beginning
a two year post-doc in psych., David assigned me four sections of ENG 102, and
handed me a detailed syllabus which laid out the reader, the kinds of essays
assigned and so forth.  Having had free reign all through grad school (UMich)
on how to design and run my course, I was annoyed that I was being told how to
teach my courses.

One week into the semester I saw the wisdom of the design, saw that I was
quite able to emphasize whatever issues I wanted to do, and saw the justice
in regulating the content and workload of the freshman composition program
in light of the enormous range of experience and preparation of those teaching
it.

Given the size of that program, its impossible to understand how it could be
done competently any other way.
                             knows,
Besides, as any jazz musician^ a certain amount of restrictions are necessary
for truly original improvisation.

Rigidity does not necessarily mean stiflement.......mer
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Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 10:55:46 -0800
From:         "(Peg Syverson)" <msyverson@UCSD.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Standard English

>Russ, I am intrigued about your notions of having the authors know something
>about their topics that their audience doesn't know--and you creating those
>opportunities by avoiding common texts and assignments.


> How is it possible to maintain a situation where students
>write for real audiences and purposes and still maintain a fairly homogenous
>writing curriculum?  Any ideas?

Irv Peckham, I am sure,will have something to say about this, but one way
that has been used in our writing program at UCSD is to have students write
in specific genres. This is not a new idea, of course: what students share
is a particular structure, rather than a particular content or topic. They
dealt with genres such as proposing a solution to a problem, speculating
about the causes of a trend, making an evaluation, and so on.  We would not
argue that in two quarters we can provide an exhaustive set of genres,
rather that by engaging students in a range of genres, and helping them to
recognize not only some features common to writing in a particular genre,
but the even more important concept that writing is a) shaped by its
purpose and audience, and b) marked by certain features which it shares
with other writing in a particular genre.

I think this was a very humane way to teach writing; not necessarily the
only way to teach freshman comp, but overall a good experience for both
teachers and students.
Peg Syverson, msyverso@ucsd.edu
Dimensions of Culture, 0525, UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92093
(619) 558-1514
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 12:15:13 EST
From:         "David Tillyer, CCNY" <DATCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: High school/college comp cou

John Slatin talks about the colleges helping to define the high schools'
curriculum so that students will be ready for a college writing environ-
ment.

This is what the City University of New York is doing in theory with
CPI the College Preparatory Initiative.  There is supposed to be large-
scale hish school/college collaboration going on.  We'll see.  In new
York we have an electronic list set up to discuss this project--CPI-L.
David Tillyer CCNY
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Date:         Fri, 1 Jan 1993 22:27:05 -0700
From:         "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: High school/college comp cou

I agree 100% with Dave Roberts that "the writing project work is the most
important thing I've done and the most effective teaching I've ever been
involved in." I watched the writing project (and its the dynamic of the thing,
not the director) transform careers, turn weary teachers into self-confident
professionals, transform curriculum in individual schools and districts, and
turn project directors into very humble servants. Being a project director
does require a VERY understanding spouse. (Thanks, Dear.)

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 08:33:00 CST
From:         SLATIN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Standardizing Composition Cl

Hey, Karen, good to hear from you! and Happy New Year to all.  I think the
Writing-Intensive On-Line Learning ENvironment (I tried to come up with
something that made for a better acronym, but gave up) is a long way from
happening at UT in any official institutional way-- though at some level it
already exists, judging by reports I get from and of students staying up all
night playing in the MUDs (I can't remember what it stands for; something
about virtual, self-constructing D&D environments with multiple users; in
Austin, MUD stands for Municipal Utiilty District, meaning something outside
the city limits that screws up the local environment) and other electronic
environments.  Setting up this sort of thing requires, at a minimum, that
every student and every faculty member have automatic access to a campus
computing account, something we're hoping to set up by next Fall.  That of
course requires funding from somewhere, a problematic issue of course at any
time. How do your campuses handle such things?  What sort of fees do students
pay for access to computing, and how much do they get for what they pay?

John Slatin
UT AUstin
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 17:58:02 EST
From:         "David Tillyer, CCNY" <DATCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: WIOLE

We at City College (CUNY) are putting together an electronic component of
our Fluency First program, a FIPSE-funded whole language program for ESL
learners that encourages communicative writing over correctness at the
earliest levels.

I'm toying with names as Eric is.  I like W.E.L.L. (Writing Electronically
to Learn Language), the acronym has the depth I want along with the positive
feeling, but non-acronymically it's a little weak. Oh w.e.l.l.

What we are trying to do is to provide a writing environment through Email
to make students interested in writing. Meaning-driven communication is our
goal to provide incentive for reluctant writers.  Ours is an ESL program
so it is not exactly the same as some of the others described.

We are also hoping that Uncle Sam will see fit to fund some of our research.
What better way to spend the break than writing grant proposals?
David Tillyer, CCNY
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Date:         Thu, 31 Dec 1992 09:47:00 +8
From:         lips <LIMLEUNG@CPHKVX.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: WIOLE

Hello Eric,

I am from Hong Kong. Is there a way for me to get a copy of your
'Online Writing Centre'? Much appreciated.

Matthew Leung
Language Institute
City Polytechnic of Hong Kong
Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon Tong
Hong Kong
Fax: (852) 788 8234   E-mail: LIMLEUNG@CPHKVX.BITNET
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