This study is based on a semester-long qualitative study that investigates student perceptions of and interactions with social software and mobile technologies, particularly as they move between digital and physical spaces. As digital technologies become more ubiquitous, both within the classroom and without, it becomes increasingly important to investigate the ways these technologies are influencing lived writing practices, particularly if instructors are incorporating these technologies into their teaching. In particular, this dissertation investigates constructions of student identities in technology-rich environments, and the ways that digital, mobile, social, and spatial factors both afford and constrain student identities. This dissertation focuses on movement—of students and information—between academic and non-academic spaces. The research focuses on the lived practices of students as they use mobile technologies and social software as a part of their writing practices and habitus, and this study explores in depth both their physical contexts and their habits and attitudes towards the ways the digital meets the physical. This study is based on 10 semester-long qualitative case studies which followed students as they engaged in writing activities, both within class and without. The findings from this study point to the ways that contemporary students are rapidly embracing an existence which incorporates machines into their self constructions: their identities and their physical bodies. These students have adapted their writing styles to incorporate multiple kinds of physical technologies, and almost all interactions in their social sphere are mediated through social software and digital technology. This dissertation presents the findings from this study, arguing for a conceptualization of student as cyborg. / Methods and methodologies -- Findings : cyborg bodies -- Findings : cyborg identities. / Department of English

Responding to Student Writing: Strategies for a Distance-Teaching Context identifies viable response techniques for a unique discourse community. An overview of paradigmatic shifts in writing and reading theory, 'frameworks of response' developed to classify response statements for research purposes, and an overview of research in the field provide the theoretical basis for the evaluation of the empirical study. The research comprises a three-fold exploration of the response strategies adopted by Unisa lecturers to the writing of Practical English (PENl00-3) students. In the first phase the focus falls on the effect of intervention on the students' revised drafts of four divergent marking strategies - coded correction, minimal marking, taped response and self assessment. All the experimental strategies tested result in statistically-significant improvement levels in the revised draft. The benefits of self assessment and rewriting, even without tutorial intervention, were demonstrated. The study is unique by virtue of its distance-teaching context, its sample size of 1750 and in the high significance levels achieved. The second phase of the research consisted of a questionnaire that determined 2640 students' expectations with respect to marking, the value of commentary, their perceptions of markers' roles and their opinions of the experimental strategies tested. Their responses were also correlated with their final Practical English examination results. The third phase examined tutorial response. The framework of response, developed for the purpose, revealed that present response strategies represent a regression to the traditional product-orientated approach to writing that contradicts the cognitive and rhetorical axiological basis of the course. There is thus a disjunction between the teaching and theoretical practices. The final chapter bridges this gap by examining issues of audience, transparency, ownership, timing of intervention and training. The researcher believes that she has successfully identified practical and innovative strategies that assist lecturers in a distance-teaching context to break away from old response blueprints. / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)

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This thesis argues that with the racial and ethnic diversity becoming more pronounced in the diverse disciplines of the two year college we are going to need to adapt a cultural studies pedagogy in the writing class.

This study steps into a long running discussion of the place of imaginative literature in First Year Composition (FYC) courses. Chapter one surveys the scholarship, including the work of Erika Lindeman and Gary Tate, two compositionists whose debate has been at the center of this discussion, and three scholars' responses to the issues their debate raises. Instructors might be able to include imaginative literature in FYC courses if they use the literature to support the courses' rhetorical goals rather than to "teach the literature" itself.

This thesis suggests the incorporation of "Genre Theory" into First Year Composition (FYC) at California State University (CSUSB) as a means of alleviating the lack of transfer of what is learned in FYC to other university writing. In examing the feasibility of that incorporation, it takes into consideration the demands made on the FYC course across universities and specifically at CSUSB.

This thesis follows two international freshman students in an English composition class at California State University, San Bernardino. The results indicate that the students generally experienced feeling challenged and overwhelmed about the unfamiliar topic, but detailed assignment guidelines played a key role for students to progress in understanding the assignment.

This project presents qualitative investigations into the relation of science systems to education systems, and suggests post modern constructs as models of systemic change, with application toward reading and writing literacy for the college-level adult learning.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 327-342). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xxi, 342 leaves, bound 29 cm