DRAFT      COURSE DESIGN PROJECT      DRAFT

ENGLISH 640

Spring 2007

 

 

Purpose

To design a course or workshop that foregrounds in our own minds technologies of meaning making, that is, those literacies, oralities, auralities, and embodiments underpinning the overtly stated course content. Consider these literacies, oralities, auralities, and embodiments as hidden agenda. In other words, the reading, writing, viewing, moving, and listening practices you’re inviting enrollees to undertake will not necessarily be apparent to them as content per se. Rather, you’ll invite enrollees to your course under the auspices of content (e.g., wine, college prep, zoo keeping, writing. internship), but you’ll be concentrating on how to deliver this content via carefully selected technologies of meaning making. Moreover, you’ll design with an eye to theorizing your meaning-making choices.

 

We of English 640 are interested precisely in the hidden agenda, in the relationship between course content/experience and the literacies* you ask students to undertake or explore or become proficient in. We are also interested in your sense of why a particular literacy is valuable in general, important to explore, or necessary to develop as praxis. The reflective theory paper(s) that accompany your course design will address each of our 640 interests by linking course readings, myspace commentary, class discussion, and/or your personal resources external to 640 to the literacies you embed in your course.

 

*Literacy will become our code word for the quartet “literacies, oralities, auralities, and embodiments.” Reading and writing are both included in the sub-term literacies; visual and verbal forms of literacy are implied.

 

problem

You’ve been invited to teach a course of your own design. Your interviewers (those who screened applicants for the job) were not interested in the kinds of literacies or technologies you’d embed in your course, but you are not one of “them.” You are very interested in having your students or enrollees explore new literacies or develop a literate practice—or some combination of the two. Imagine that you have at your good access to technology and to technical assistance. 

 

Audience Imagining

More to come here. We all have a sense of what audience analysis means, but we’ll want to discuss the different ways in which each of us “knows” or “creates” an audience for the course.

 

Part I: Course Documents Section

For each document, determine the technologies of representation and distribution. In other words, don’t get trapped in UNM English culture ways of writing these documents. Think alternative.  Town crier for advance publicity?

 

1.     Course Overview for Advance Publicity

2.     Course Overview for Enrollees

3.     Policy Statement (expectations)

4.     Syllabus Overview (4 sections?)

5.     Two assignment sequences

6.     Course Objectives

 

  1. Course Overview.  This invitational text announces the course to the public, confirms your worth before your employers, and attracts enrollees.

 

  1. Course Overview for Enrollees. This is what enrollees will see once they enroll.

 

  1. Policy Statement. This document sets up both expectations and boundaries for enrollee performance. It’s also a place for establishing your ethos. Policies will differ considerably in this class, given the variety of projects.

 

  1. Syllabus. This device paces the course. It maps out major milestones, due dates for big assignments, course units, themes.  Example: wineries, wines, tasting terminologies, food accompaniments.

 

  1. Assignment sequences. These documents are the heart of the project. Here you’ll think through which technologies of meaning making you want to advocate, advance, invite students to explore, have students practice, and so forth. 

 

  1. Course Objectives. Two forms are useful here: a short form for public viewing and a richer version that houses your hidden agenda.

 

Part 2:  Theory Section

 

Under development.  Generally speaking I expect 8-10 pages of cogent, coherent discussion of the technologies of meaning making you’ve decided to implement in your course design.  This discussion may be blocked out any way you see fit. A possible strategy would be to offer an overview of your values regarding literacies and a general rationale for using the technologies you’ve chosen, followed by discussions of the various assignments.

 

Think of this theoretic and practical writing in two ways:

--a theoretical justification for the course literacies you’ve chosen

--the opening up of a set of questions, the developing of a problematic for you and others to discuss as scholar-teachers. Here you would write as a problem poser who expects not to have all answers but to set out provisional answers and invite further inquiry.

 

 

Resources for Theory Paper

 

Theory/practice Authors

Brodkey

Johnson-Eilola

Selber

Wysocki

Sirc

Ong

De Certeau

Selfe and Hawisher (remember that some of the interviewees talked about teaching)

Pandey

Quarshie-Smith (talks about teaching)

Liu

 

Guests

Stephanie  Holinka on blogs

Kathlene Ferris on archival/digital resources

Tristan Clum on Audio

Megan on Dreamweaver, audio, video

Each other

 

Myspace Comments—our very own

 

Our Datacloud imagery

 

Courses Online

Look for online syllabi by googling either key terms central to your course or authors we’ve read or the literacies themselves. Some of what you find will not be helpful (lists of readings and assignments), but you may still troll for ideas on representing course content on a Web page or on a class activity. Be sure to look at Wysocki’s courses. Check Kairos (the online rhetoric journal) for course designs and pedagogy discussions.