Online Writing Instruction (OWI) programs, like online learning classes in general, are becoming more popular in post-secondary education. Yet few articles discuss how to tailor course assessment methods to an exclusively online environment. This thesis explores video analytics as a possible course assessment tool for online writing classrooms. Video analytics allow instructors, course designers, and writing program administrators to view how many students are engaging in video-based course materials. Additionally, video analytics can provide information about how active students are in their data-finding methods while they watch. By means of example, this thesis examines video analytics from one semester of a large western university’s online first-year writing sections (n=283). This study finds that video analytics afford stakeholders knowledge of patterns in how students interact with video-based course materials. Assuming the end goal of course assessment is to provide meaningful insight that will help improve student and teacher experience, video analytics can be a powerful, dynamic course assessment tool.

Recently, disability and writing studies scholars have demonstrated the extent to which widely accepted approaches to the teaching of writing fail to address the fraught intersection between mental disability and academic commonplaces, such as multimodal texts and assignments, with real consequences for the well-being of our students (Yergeau; Oswal; Selfe). Given the dramatic rise of online and other multimodal forms of instruction that has characterized and continues to shape college writing classrooms in the era of COVID-19, the barriers to access (social, physical, and institutional) that exist in multimodal writing classrooms require deeper examination. Drawing upon disability studies scholarship from Price, Kerschbaum, and Walters, my dissertation examines the complex relationship between writing instruction and mental disability in the context of Metro University’s First Year Writing Program (FYWP) and explores the affordances disabled students bring to bear on the multimodal spaces of their writing classrooms. In addition to examining the program’s standard syllabus, policies, and assignments, I conducted individual interviews with Metro undergraduate students, including students with disabilities, to collect data on students’ experiences of course policies (e.g., participation; grading) and practices (e.g., online peer review; multimodal composing) in the first-year writing classroom. I used methods drawn from critical discourse analysis and disability studies to identify elements of the curriculum that presented potential barriers to students with mental disabilities, including cumulative, interconnected penalties for absences, tardiness, and late work; a policy of not grading essay drafts; and the absence of policies designed to address issues linked to mental health. My analysis has revealed conflicting levels of access to participation in the course, pointing to the need for multimodal learning environments flexible enough to address a wide range of access needs at once. This work contributes to emerging writing and disability scholarship on the role of multimodality in developing non-normative writing pedagogies and inclusive program designs. The study was reviewed by the IRB and deemed not to be human subjects research. It was conducted in partnership with the university’s Disability Resources and Services and FYWP, which adopted attendant policy recommendations. / English

Current First Year Writing research seeks to address the need to help students meet the Council of Writing Program Administrators objectives on source evaluation while also changing current pedagogy methods (Meola, 2004; Ostenson 2014; SHEG, 2016; Wineburg & McGrew, 2017). This paper seeks to compare two different source evaluation pedagogies, YSearch and Decision Based Learning, taught by Brigham Young University’s library to determine which module is more effective at teaching students source evaluation skills. To answer these questions, this study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods utilizing a quasi-experimental design by conducting an open comparison between the two pedagogy modules.

This project focuses on the way that new graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in English develop both their professional identity as teachers and their view of Composition as a field. Drawing on social theories of disciplines (Prior, 1998; Hyland, 2004; Carter, 2007), disciplinary enculturation (Hasrati, 2005; Bazerman and Prior, 2005; Thaiss and Zawacki, 2006), and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger 1998), this dissertation examines the transition that composition GTAs undergo during their first year of graduate school. Many of these GTAs move from little or no knowledge of Composition as a discipline to teaching their own writing courses. I focus on GTAs from MA and MFA programs at a large research university in their first year of teaching composition. Using multiple types of data, including in-depth interviews, observations of practicum and mentoring sessions, and teaching genres written by the GTAs, I construct a narrative that shows the role that teaching composition plays in the overall identity construction of graduate students as professionals. This wide data set has allowed me to see the various ways (and various genres) in which Composition is constructed in the lives of new GTAs. Teacher preparation programs offer a variety of assistance, including experience shadowing current teachers, practicum courses and individual or group mentoring. I study the ways these activities help GTAs in one first-year writing program move toward a fuller understanding of and participation in Composition, and how these experiences relate to the overall graduate student experience. Each of these experiences helps move GTAs toward participation as composition teachers. However, the degree to which these GTAs participate in Composition as a discipline has to do with their relationships with mentors and the connections they make between the multiple communities of practice that they must continually navigate. / Ph. D.

abstract: This yearlong project examines how multilingual undergraduate writers--including international visa students and U.S. permanent residents or citizens who are non-native English speakers--exercise agency in their first-year composition placement decisions. Agency is defined as the capacity to act or not to act contingent upon various conditions. The goal of the project is to demonstrate how student agency can inform the overall programmatic placement decisions, which can lead to more effective placement practices for multilingual writers. To explore the role of agency in students' placement decisions, I conducted a series of four in-depth interviews with eleven multilingual writers between Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 in the Writing Programs at Arizona State University. To triangulate these placement decisions, I interviewed some of the multilingual student participants' academic advisors and writing teachers as well as writing program administrators. Findings showed that when conditions for agency were appropriate, the multilingual student participants were able to negotiate placement, choose to accept or deny their original placement, self-assess their proficiency level as deciding to choose a writing course, plan on their placement, question about placement, and finally make decisions about a writing course they wanted to take. In the context of this study, conditions for agency include the freedom to choose writing courses and information about placement that is distributed by the following sources: advisors' recommendations, other students' past experience in taking first-year composition, the new student orientation, and other sources that provide placement related information such as an online freshman orientation and a major map. Other findings suggested that the academic advisor participants did not provide the multilingual students with complete placement information; and this affected the way the multilingual students chose which section of first-year composition to enroll in. Meanwhile, there was no formal communication about placement options and placement procedures between the Writing Programs and writing teachers. Building on these findings, I argue for improving conditions for agency by providing placement options, making placement information more readily available, and communicating placement information and options with academic advisors, writing teachers, and multilingual students. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012

abstract: My study examined Automated Writing Evaluation tools (AWE) and their role within writing instruction. This examination was framed as a comparison of 4 AWE tools and the different outcomes in the Writing Program Administrators “Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition” (the OS). I also reviewed studies that identify feedback as an effective tool within composition instruction as well as literature related to the growth of AWE and the 2 different ways that these programs are being utilized: to provide scoring and to generate feedback. My research focused on the feedback generating component of AWE and their relationship with helping students to meet the outcomes outlined in the OS. To complete this analysis, I coded the OS, using its outcomes as a reliable indicator of the perspectives of the academic community regarding First Year Composition (FYC). This coding was applied to text associated with two different kinds of feedback related AWEs. Two of the AWE used in this study facilitated human feedback using analytical properties: Writerkey and Eli Review. While the other 2 generated automated feedback: WriteLab and PEG Writing Scholar. I also reviewed instructional documents associated with each AWE and used the coding to compare the features described in each text with the different outcomes in the OS. The most frequently occurring coding from the feedback was related to Rhetorical Knowledge and other outcomes associated with revision, while the most common codes from the instructional documents were associated with feedback and collaboration. My research also revealed none of these AWE were capable of addressing certain outcomes, these were mostly related to activities outside of the actual process of composing, like the act of reading and the various writing mediums. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Composition 2017

abstract: The Stretch Model is a model of first year composition (FYC) that “stretches” the first semester's class over two semesters in order to help writing students who arrive at university with low test scores to succeed in their composition courses. Originally piloted in 1994 at Arizona State University (ASU), the Stretch Model of composition has been found to be effective in terms of retention and persistence of first language (L1) writers (e.g., Glau, 1996; 2007). It has become known at ASU and abroad as the Stretch Program. Since 1997, a separate track of the Stretch Program has been solely for second language (L2) writers, and L2 writing students are now roughly 17% of the program's population. Until fairly recently, there was no attempt to collect L2 data to support the Stretch Program's claims for effectiveness for the L2 population. As many universities across the nation have garnered inspiration for their own programs ("Stretch Award" 2016), and L2 writers have the potential to be in any composition class (Matsuda, Saenkhum, & Accardi, 2013), it is imperative to include the voices of L2 writers in the analysis of the Stretch Program. This study addresses the need for L2 writers' voices to be included in the analysis of the Stretch Program at Arizona State University. From the quantitative analysis of 64,085 students’ institutional data records, and qualitative analysis of 210 student surveys, findings include L2 writers have the highest rates of passing, but the lowest rates of persistence in the three-semester first year composition requirement when compared to Stretch L1 students and the traditional FYC population. Survey data also lends L2 student perceptions to complicate the main features of the Stretch Program including perceived writing improvement, having the same teacher and classmates for two semesters, and having more time to work on their writing. The quantitative findings are consistent with Snyder’s (2017a) analysis of the 2012 fall Stretch Program L1 and L2 cohorts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2018

No description available.

No description available.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:33:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leandro Gaspareti Alves.pdf: 6778628 bytes, checksum: b54316901ee7e43f5cb77c5e1b0d4315 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-25 / The relationship between school and family has been pointed out in literature and neoliberal policies, especially in the 1990s, as important to combat failure and promote academic achievement. Some studies have highlighted that such relationships are immersed in conditions that may promote both the approximation or the distance between them. We chose to investigate one of the proposals of the Reading and Writing Program developed by the Education Department of the State of S?o Paulo, which is a set of formative actions, articulated in different fronts involving not only the formation of literacy teachers but also the distribution of teaching and guidance materials to second graders parents. The study aimed to investigate how a teacher, the management team and the parents of students in the 2nd year of elementary education in a state school in Campinas, understood the guidance material "Conversation with the parents" from the Reading and Writing Program. The procedures for data collection involved analysis of documents, such as the school documents and the Program Guidance Material for parents, observation in the classroom and in meetings with the parents, interview with the teacher, the parents, the pedagogical coordinator and the principal. As an analytical procedure we built, based on empirical data, two categories of analysis: (i) Implementation of "Conversation with the Parents guide: an informative, prescriptive and vertical process; (ii) Literacy practices in the school environment and extra school, which was divided into three different aspects: (ii.a) Influence of Early Childhood Education in child literacy practices; (ii.b)Circulation of reading and writing materials in school and family; (ii.c) Mediation between the teacher, parents and students. The results of the study indicate that the guidance material "Conversation with the Parents" occupied a marginal place in the whole formative process of the professionals involved and consequently for parents. Both the teacher s mediation in relation to the parents and the parents to the students, presented similarities, complementarities and contradictions with the content of the guidance material. We consider that such finding suggests that the guidance material had a positive repercussion; however, it could have been better discussed by school and family, in case there had been a solid formative process for the professionals involved, considering the process of initial reading instruction and literacy. / As rela??es entre escola e fam?lia v?m sendo apontadas pela literatura e pela pol?tica neoliberal, especialmente na d?cada de 1990, como importantes para combater o fracasso e promover o sucesso escolar. Alguns estudos t?m ressaltado que tais rela??es apresentam-se imersas em condi??es que podem promover tanto a aproxima??o como o afastamento entre ambas as inst?ncias. Optamos por investigar uma das propostas do Programa Ler e Escrever, de responsabilidade da Secretaria de Educa??o do Estado de S?o Paulo, que se constitui em num conjunto de a??es formadoras articuladas em diferentes frentes de atua??o, envolvendo al?m da forma??o de professores alfabetizadores, a distribui??o de materiais pedag?gicos e orienta??o aos pais do segundo ano do Ensino Fundamental. O estudo teve como objetivo geral investigar como uma professora do 2? ano, as gestoras do Ensino Fundamental de uma escola da rede Estadual de Campinas e os pais dos alunos dessa turma compreenderam o material de orienta??o Conversa com os Pais do Programa Ler e Escrever. Os procedimentos de coleta de dados envolveram an?lise documental do Guia de Orienta??o aos pais e de documento da escola, observa??es em sala de aula e de reuni?es de pais e mestres, entrevistas com os pais, professora, coordenadora pedag?gica e diretora. Como procedimento anal?tico, constru?mos a partir dos dados emp?ricos duas categorias de an?lise: (i) Implanta??o do guia Conversa com os Pais : um processo informativo, prescritivo e vertical; (ii) Pr?ticas de letramento no ambiente escolar e extraescolar, que foi subdividida em tr?s aspectos diferentes: (ii.a) Influ?ncia da Educa??o Infantil nas pr?ticas de letramento da crian?a; (ii.b) Circula??o de materiais de leitura e escrita na escola e na fam?lia; (ii.c) Media??o entre professora, pais e alunos. Os resultados do estudo indicam que o guia de orienta??o Conversa com os Pais ocupou um lugar marginal em todo o processo formativo dos profissionais envolvidos e, consequentemente para os pais. Tanto as media??es da professora nas suas orienta??es para os pais quanto destes em rela??o aos estudantes, apresentaram rela??es de similaridades, complementaridade e contradi??es com o conte?do do guia. Consideramos que tais rela??es com o conte?do do guia sugerem que ele teve uma repercuss?o positiva, por?m poderia ter sido melhor discutido na parceria entre escola e fam?lia, caso houvesse um processo formativo consistente para os profissionais da Educa??o de modo que levasse em conta a realidade das fam?lias, tendo em vista o processo de alfabetiza??o e letramento.