Reflective Introduction

My final project is to redesign the WRA/ENG 395 Writing Center Theory and Practice course to an online version, as well as extend its technology component. The course is designed to examine the techniques of tutoring writing in both face to face and virtual settings. Generally, the course explores how composition theories and pedagogies have influenced writing center practice overtime. In turn, the course also examines how writing center practice has and continues to influence composition theories and pedagogies. The goals of the course are:

• To help students develop a sound knowledge/understanding of the various composition theories that inform writing center practice

• To prepare students to acquire a variety of effective peer consulting skills that would enable them to staff various tutoring spaces across campus and work with a variety of student writers across disciplines
• Have students engage in multimedia compositions to help them develop skills to tutor in both digital and non digital writing genres
• To nurture students to grow pedagogically—and theoretically—technologically into informed writing center consultants

• To expose students to both face to face and virtual consulting through observing of sessions to appreciate differences in tutoring approaches, and the value of peer collaboration in writing center practice and pedagogy

Given that this is an online course, and because I want students to focus on practical components of writing center work, a number of technologies have been chosen for specific reasons.

1. This course is offered by (*Michigan State University) and thus all course materials including readings and lectures will be uploaded in ANGEL, MSU’s course management system. However, because ANGEL has a tendency to breakdown, I have decided to use imeet.com as a forum not only to have synchronous chat during the semester (assuming that everybody will be in the same time zones), but also as a tool where I will upload readings and recorded class lectures. This will be our backup technology.
2. This course will prepare students to tutor online/virtually. Secondlife has been chosen for that purpose.
3. Peer responses will be conducted through Eli.
4. Students will use class blog as forum to post weekly responses to readings, consultation observations and or engage in any other course related talk.
5. Skype will be used to allow students to observe and listen to f2f sessions at MSU writing center.
5. Because students will be doing a multimodal project during the semester, Creative Commons will be a crucial technology that helps students to learn issues regarding academic honesty and plagiarism. Students will need to visit this site at http://creativecommons.org/ and learn more about responsible use of other people’s works, fair use and the available licenses.
6. Since students will be assessing and sharing a lot of information online for their research, social bookmarking tools like Delicious, Zotero, Mendley, Diigo or Clipmarks are recommend for note-taking, keep track of online sources among other affordances.
7. Google docs will be used for group collaboration on projects.
8. Xtranormal: in the past, this course has used podcasting as the technology to create materials that can be used as educational resources for writing centers. I have introduced Xtranormal as an alternative because it is a tool built in a way that facilitates dialogue between characters. Because writing center practice is grounded on tutorial talk (Socratic dialogue), Xtranormal is a tool that can be used to create videos with pedagogical value to writing centers. Besides, it has the affordance of recording and uploading one’s voice-- thus just like podcast, it allows students to give “voice” to their writing. In addition, it allows tutors to practice and develop speaking and writing strategies which are both crucial for writing tutors.