{"58908":{"#nid":"58908","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Reengineering English","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA remarkable symposium on April 9th might well be considered a signal moment in the birth of the 21st-century technological university. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EEnglish professors from around the country gathered to engage the future of English studies, exploring conceptual and curricular innovations that are developing nationally and being delivered at Georgia Tech, where the Writing and Communication Program is among the national leaders in rhetoric, multimodality, and digital pedagogy.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ERhetorical Reflections: Borderless Communication in a Multimodal World \u003C\/em\u003Ewas hosted by Georgia Tech\u0027s Writing and Communication Program, headed by program director, Professor Rebecca Burnett. Extending the symposium\u0027s concurrent sessions, the Brittain Postdoctoral Fellows in Burnett\u0027s program presented 23 posters, showcasing the program\u0027s innovative approaches to curriculum in first-year composition and in technical communication.  \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAmong the first-year composition posters was one by program instructor, Dr. Melissa Graham Meeks, who uses wikis (online encyclopedias) to engage students. This semester, she assigned Thomas Friedman\u0027s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. As a way of encouraging students to learn research techniques, she had them build a wiki indexing key ideas, terms, events, and people mentioned in Friedman\u0027s book.  Students\u0027 work on the wiki encouraged reflection on Friedman\u0027s influential thinking as well as the pros and cons of online encyclopedias. The wiki required advanced writing skills that leveraged design and Web features to meet the needs of undefined, online audience. The assignment also prepared students for a traditional research paper. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWhat\u0027s going on in Meeks\u0027s classroom is leading-edge digital pedagogy (d-ped). It is the norm across Burnett\u0027s program.   \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022D-ped allows us to take advantage of complex cognitive, affective, and social factors that affect learning in ways that enable us to move beyond linear text encountered in print books,\u0022  says Burnett. \u0022A wiki, for example, allows a kind of hyperlinked synergy that more typically reflects the way today\u0027s students think about and engage with the world around them.\u0022   \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAlso featured prominently in the symposium was the program\u0027s multimodal approach. Where most English\/communication programs emphasize writing and perhaps one other mode of communication, Burnett\u0027s program focuses on WOVEN communication, with an emphasis on written, oral, visual, electronic, and non-verbal competence. The WOVEN approach was highlighted in the symposium\u0027s keynote presentation by the program\u0027s Assistant Director, L. Andrew Cooper, and Kimberly Hampton, the Editor for Custom Media at Bedford\/St. Martin\u0027s, a leading publisher of educational books and a co-sponsor of the symposium. The keynote presentation focused on the program\u0027s groundbreaking electronic-textbook for first-year English. Cooper spearheaded the creation of the e-book, which embeds video and audio and includes sections encompassing all five WOVEN modalities. Bedford\/St. Martin\u0027s is using the program\u0027s e-book as a national model for e-textbooks.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EInnovation generally engenders tensions and concerns over what is being lost and gained, and the refashioning of English curriculum is no exception. The symposium embraced the debate that is raging in academia over the transition to digital and multimodal pedagogy. When introducing plenary session speaker Andrea Lunsford, Interim Dean Kenneth Knoespel noted that the Stanford professor \u0022is not one of the hand-wringers who believe that student writing has gone into a state of sad decline because of texting and Facebook.\u0022  Lunsford believes that \u0022we\u0027re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven\u0027t seen since Greek civilization.\u0022  (Wired magazine interview)\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EDespite or perhaps in support of the revolution, Lunsford emphasized an underlying theme of Burnett\u0027s program and the symposium: no matter how fun and glitzy the technology, rhetoric remains central to what is taught.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAlso central, is the ability of professors to assess students\u0027 work across the spectrum WOVEN communication. A set of criteria and strategies to apply them were outlined by Lee Odell, professor at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, and Susan M. Katz, professor at North Carolina State University.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EInforming the dialog that unfolded at the symposium was Burnett\u0027s support of borderless communication. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Historically, we have put borders around classes, but what students learn in our 21st-century classes links directly to what happens beyond the walls of our classrooms. Students should understand what they learn in classes is designed for a broader purpose and situated in a broader context,\u0022  says Burnett. \u0022We\u0027re helping students learn processes. We\u0027re helping students construct arguments and analyses that move beyond the borders of specific classes. We want students be skillful as they engage in borderless communication in a multimodal world.\u0022 \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBurnett hasn\u0027t abandoned traditional pedagogy, but innovation means embracing technologies in use every day by students and instructors, meeting students on their own ground. This symposium offered a directional call for the discipline.\n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"A remarkable symposium on April 9th might well be considered a signal moment in the birth of the 21st-century technological university.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Symposium engages the future of English studies"}],"uid":"27167","created_gmt":"2010-06-03 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:06:59","author":"Rebecca Keane","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2010-06-03T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2010-06-03T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"58909":{"id":"58909","type":"image","title":"Stanford\u0027s Andrea Lunsford","body":null,"created":"1449176204","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:56:44","changed":"1475894517","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:57","alt":"Stanford\u0027s Andrea Lunsford","file":{"fid":"190777","name":"tvg85259.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tvg85259_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tvg85259_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":29654,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tvg85259_0.jpg?itok=6_UNSH-x"}}},"media_ids":["58909"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/lcc.gatech.edu\/writingcomm\/","title":"Writing \u0026 Communications Program"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/files\/wysiwyg\/file\/Rhetorical_Symposium_Agenda_4-9-10.pdf","title":"Symposium Agenda"}],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"9897","name":"Burnett"},{"id":"2183","name":"communications"},{"id":"9899","name":"digital pedagogy"},{"id":"4179","name":"english"},{"id":"9898","name":"Lunsford"},{"id":"4720","name":"writing"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cstrong\u003ERebecca Keane\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIvan Allen College of Liberal Arts\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/contact\/index.html?id=rkeane3\u0022\u003EContact Rebecca Keane\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404-894-1720\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["rebecca.keane@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}