FALL 2015

WRITE TO LEARN,
LEARN TO WRITE
WRITING INTENSIVE CURRICULUM PROGRAM NEWSLETTER

Index

Welcome

Teaching Writing in the 21st

Century Classroom
Danah Hashem
3
Survey Says: Salem State
Graduate Students Want and
Need Writing Support
Megan Grandmont
6
Providing Productive Feedback
on Student Writing
Tanya Rodrigue
8
Spotlight on Faculty: Roopika
Risam, PhD
Jane Foley
10

Mark Your
Calendars!
Monday, April 11,
11 am-2 pm

Writing Vertically:
Salem States third
annual writing
pedagogy conference

Welcome to the second issue of Write to

Learn, Learn to Write, the Writing Intensive
Curriculum (WIC) Program newsletter. This
issue focuses on the here and nowpresentday issues, concerns and considerations
related to the teaching of writing in higher
education in general and at Salem State
University in particular.

Tanya K. Rodrigue, PhD

In Teaching Writing in the 21st Century

Classroom, Danah Hashem discusses the changing nature
of literacy in present day and the way it has impacted our
understanding of writing and writing instruction. She advocates
that instructors teach students how to communicate using visuals,
gestures, the alphabet, sound, and speech through multimodal and
digital writing assignments. In addition to fostering 21st century
literacy skills, the incorporation of such assignments, Hashem
argues, has several other benefits such as accommodating students
learning differences.
While Hashem explores writing and writing instruction within a
global context, Megan Grandmont explores it within a local context.
In The Survey Says:Salem State Graduate Students Want and
Need Writing Support, Grandmont reports findings from a 2014
Salem State graduate student and faculty survey about writing,
writing assignments and writing needs. While specific findings
reveal interesting information such as the kinds of writing tasks most
frequently assigned, the surveys most notably reveal that faculty and
students agree more writing support is needed at the graduate level.
Grandmont notes the kind of support the institution has offered to
date in response to the survey findings.
In Providing Productive Feedback on Student Writing, I offer
some tips, strategies and time-saving techniques for best feedback
Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 1

Welcome cont.

practices on student writing. This brief article is meant to begin a

discussion that will continue in a spring Brown Bag lunch event
(Providing Productive Feedback on Student Writing,
March 14, 11 am-12 pm, Meier Hall 102D).
Our Spotlight on Faculty section features Roopika Risam, PhD, an
assistant professor in English, affiliated faculty member with the
School of Education and the coordinator of the new Digital Studies
Graduate Certificate Program. In an interview with English major
Jane Foley, Risam discusses the value of using digital writing across
the curriculum, the possible challenges disciplinary instructors may
face in doing so and advice and ideas for how to integrate digital
projects in the classroom. Risam also describes the new certificate
program she developed, which is set to launch in May 2016.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of Write to Learn, Learn to Write.
If you are interested in writing an article or book review for the
newsletter, please email me at trodrigue@salemstate.edu.

Write to Learn, Learn to

Write is a newly launched
newsletter sponsored by the
Writing Intensive Curriculum
(WIC) program. It will be
published in fall and spring
each academic year. The
newsletter functions as a site
for faculty to both acquire
and share ideas, insights and
practical experiences about
the teaching of writing.

Sincerely,
Tanya K. Rodrigue, PhD
WIC Coordinator
Assistant Professor in English

CALL FOR ARTICLES

I am actively seeking article submissions for upcoming issues of Write to Learn, Learn to Write on
various topics related to writing pedagogy. Some possible topics are: an effective or challenging
student writing activity or assignment; the process of designing a W-designated course; the benefits
and challenges of teaching a W-designated course; the function and purpose of writing in a field or
discipline; and the role of writing in careers related to a discipline. Articles should be approximately
750-1200 words. I am also seeking submissions for book reviews that should be approximately 300-500
words. Please send ideas, drafts or polished writing to Professor Tanya Rodrigue at
trodrigue@salemstate.edu. All submissions will be considered, yet given space limitations, not
everyone will be asked to further develop their drafts or ideas.

2 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

Teaching Writing in the 21st Century Classroom

By Danah Hashem, MA/MAT in English, WIC graduate assistant
As educators, one of our primary goals is to equip
students with flexible and sophisticated literacy
skills that they can apply inside and outside of
our classrooms. We want students to enter future
studies and workplaces with a certain competence
in formulating and communicating their
thoughts. But what does it even mean to write
effectively in our current era of digital, globalized
communication and technological workspaces? What does it look like
to teach literacy skills to modern students in ways that prepare them
to be successful in todays society?
In their 2013 position statement, the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE) attempted to answer these questions by defining what
it means to be literate in the 21st century. Their definition pays close
attention to the ways in which technology has complicated the idea of
literacy, creating a need for students with multiple literacies who are
capable of meeting the diverse needs of todays society and culture.
Their definition explains that:
Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society
must be able to

Some Examples of
Multimodal Writing
Projects

PowerPoint Presentations
Posterboard Presentations
Photo Collage
Digital Storytelling
Infographic
Video Projects (such as a
remix or a commercial)
Audio Projects (such as a
radio essay or a podcast)
Blogs
Twitter Essay
Digital Interactive Timeline
Photoessay
Data Visualization
Website

Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;

Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships
with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
strengthen independent thought;
Design and share information for global communities to meet a
variety of purposes;
Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of
simultaneous information;
Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts1

I have bolded particular words in the quote above to demonstrate

the overall theme here and elsewhere, which is that writing is
increasingly relying on a variety of technologies and media. Texts that
rely on different kinds of media, multimedia texts, are comprised of
a combination of communication systems such as visuals, gestures,
the alphabet, sound, and speech. These different systems are referred
to as modes. In the words of semiotician Gunther Kress, a mode is

NCTE, The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies, National Council of Teachers of
English, February 2013, www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.
1

Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 3

a resource for making meaning that enable

people to communicate and express themselves
in various ways.2 So, essentially, modes are
systems we use to make and share meaning.
According to this NCTE statement, teaching 21st
century literacy skills involves teaching students
about modes, how they function as vehicles of
communication, and how to choose from among
them to accomplish specific communicative goals.
Often times, teaching literacy skills is associated
with teaching students how to read and write
alphabetic, print texts. Many educators tend to
view alphabetic texts as the most academic and
rigorous form of scholarship. Multimodal texts
are commonly thought of as less intellectual, less
academic, and less scholarly. Yet, as the NCTE
organization notes, this is no longer the case.
Their definition of 21st century literacies statement
lists flexibility and fluency in multimodal texts and
textual design as necessary skills when defining
literacy in the modern age, suggesting that, at the
very least, a commonplace dismissal of all texts
that are not alphabetic is up for questioning.
In addition to necessary 21st century literacy
skills, there are other benefits to incorporating
multimodal work in the classroom. A few of these
include:

Teaching students how different modes interact

with one another and the audience equips them
with the ability to critically and meaningfully
analyze writing composed in any combination of
modes. 3

Teaching students to apply the practice of

rigorous and academic reading to multimodal
texts enables them to insightfully approach
a wide variety of works in disciplines
that commonly use modalities other than
the alphabet such as art, music, drama,
mathematics, and the sciences.
Offering students an opportunity to compose
multimodally is a fun and alternative way to
engage English language learners who might
otherwise have difficulty connecting with
and completing a writing assignment in the
alphabetic mode. Students who struggle with
English as a nonnative language may thrive
when given an assignment in which they can
express their ideas freely without the added
concern for grammar, academic language, and
spelling.

Multimodal work can respect, engage, and

attend to students learning differences. Asking
students to strategically communicate ideas in
modes that come naturally to them encourages
diverse academic identities. 4

The real world is multimodal. The social, career,

and recreational spheres of modern life are all
multimodal, featuring complex combinations
of sounds, images, and text. If we dont teach
our students to be smart consumers of the
information and entertainment that they are
bombarded with, they will struggle to navigate
the fast-paced culture in which they live.
Assigning challenging and rigorous analyses
of composer choices in multimodal writing as

Kress, Gunther, What is mode? in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis 2010, ed. Carey Jewitt (USA: Routledge, 2010), 54.
NCTE, Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies, National Council of Teachers of English, November 2005, www.ncte.org/positions/
statements/multimodalliteracies.
4
Rodrigue, Tanya K., An Epistemological Process for Multimodal Assignment Design, Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging
Pedagogies 3, no. 1 (2015): 372-373.
5
Murray, Joddy, Composing Multimodality, in Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook, ed. Claire Lutkewitte (Boston, MA: Bedford/St.
Martins Press, 2009).
2
3

4 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

well as asking students to make those choices

in their own works helps our students become
smart, capable individuals who can successfully
navigate society. 5
The ways in which multimodal writing can be
brought into our classrooms are numerous and
oftentimes more accessible than it first seems.
It would be unrealistic and overwhelming to
suggest that educators everywhere overhaul
their lesson plans so that they rely entirely on
multimodal writing and communication. Much
more reasonably, educators can begin to slowly
incorporate these increasingly necessary skills into
their existing coursework, adding a multimodal inclass activity or a multimodal option for a project
to their lesson plans. Simple adjustments such as
asking students to compose a video or an audio
reflection instead of an alphabetic essay can teach
students to capitalize on the rich possibilities that
accompany the skilled use of technology and
multimodality in communication.
Because we as educators are not experts on
some of the technology that students might use
to compose multimodal work, it often seems
implausible that we would use those technologies
in the classroom. However, multimodality,
much like the current culture of technological
communication in which our students need to
operate, is not something to be mastered so
much as it is something to be explored. This
exploration can provide students and educators
the opportunity to learn together, discovering new
means for effective communication while openly
allowing for a lack of technological expertise.
Although the prospect of assigning multimodal
work can be intimidating, it also brings with it
the potential for deeply enriching and relevant
educational experiences that fosters truly literate
students.

classroom is not only limiting but insufficient in

the goal of fostering 21st century literacy skills.
Regardless of our general comfort level with the
idea, literacy for todays students means something
different than it has meant in the past. In order to
best serve students, educators in all fields need to
adapt expectations and classroom design to teach
this new understanding of literacy.
Join me next semester at the WIC brown bag
lunch event, Using Digital Writing Activities in
the Classroom for more information and ideas on
fostering digital literacy skills in your classes.
Bibliography
Kress, Gunther. What is mode? In The Routledge
Handbook of Multimodal Analysis 2010, edited by
Carey Jewitt, 54-67. USA: Routledge, 2010.
Murray, Joddy. Composing Multimodality. In
Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook,
edited by Claire Lutkewitte, 325-350. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martins Press, 2009.
NCTE. Position Statement on Multimodal
Literacies.National Council of Teachers of English.
last modified August 18, 2008. www.ncte.org/
positions/statements/multimodalliteracies.
NCTE, The NCTE Definition of 21st Century
Literacies. National Council of Teachers of English,
last modified February 2013. www.ncte.org/
positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.
Rodrigue, Tanya K. An Epistemological Process for
Multimodal Assignment Design. Journal of Global
Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies
3, no. 1 (2015): 372-373.

My point here is that the casual disregard for

texts that are composed in modes other than the
alphabetic may be based more on cultural biases
than on an accurate reflection of the 21st century
world. If this is true, it follows that the commonly
exclusive focus on alphabetic writing in the
Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 5

Survey Says: Salem State Graduate Students Want

and Need Writing Support
By Megan Grandmont, MA/MAT in English, graduate assistant in the School of Graduate Studies
In 2014, the School of Graduate
Studies and the writing center
distributed surveys to graduate
students and faculty in an
effort to discover more about
writing experiences and writing
instruction at Salem State
University. The student survey
sought to elicit information about writing tasks
graduate students find challenging and the kind of
writing support they may want or need. The faculty
survey was intended to gather data on the writing
tasks students frequently need assistance with
and the writing skills students need to succeed in
particular disciplines.

Listening to the Data

While faculty reported the research paper as
the most frequently assigned writing task and
the kind of writing for which students need
more support, graduate students ranked it as
the most challenging writing task.

The greatest disconnect between faculty and

student responses was in their respective
treatment of the masters thesis or capstone,
often an extended, heavily-researched piece of
writing. Students identified the masters thesis
or capstone as the second-most challenging
writing task, yet faculty ranked additional
support for the thesis or capstone relatively
low on a list of proposed writing services. This
finding could indicate that faculty are unaware
of the extent to which students struggle with
these genres.

A majority of faculty indicated that students

area of greatest need in their writing was
citation conventions and logic. This finding
diverges somewhat from students own selfreporting, perhaps suggesting that students
may not have a strong understanding of citation
practices.

Among students, the two most highly-rated

potential workshop topics were Submitting
a Paper for a Conference Proposal or Call
for Papers and Habits of Writers in Your
Discipline. Together, this data suggests that
students desire to better understand and more
fully participate in the scholarly life of their
disciplines.

Faculty highly rated a proposed workshop

on academic writing for multilingual student
writers.

146 graduate students and 47 faculty from a range

of disciplines such as criminal justice, social work,
education, and business completed the surveys. Here
are a few graduate student responses:
I had not been in school for 35 years and I needed
specific help and I was greatly disappointed that
help was not available. Jos P. 6
This is a struggle. I have a registered learning
disability Michelle B.
as an international student, I have some
problems about how I can write properly
Jenny L.
I had no experience in academic writing when I
started this program. I was surprised at the lack
of support compared to the high expectations.
David H.
These responses capture the general sentiment of the
data: students and faculty alike want more writing
support at the graduate level.
6

All student names are pseudonyms.

6 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

Responding to Student and Faculty Needs

Taking the findings from these surveys into
account, heres a sampling of some of the forms of
writing support that have been developed over the
past year:
The research paper. In January 2015, the writing
center and the library facilitated a workshop
on Introducing Campus Writing & Research
Resources. A workshop on Using Sources
Effectively will be offered this November.

The masters thesis or capstone. Over Spring

Break 2015, the School of Graduate Studies and
the writing center co-sponsored a three-day
Thesis and Capstone Writers Retreat. Writing
center tutors were available for consultations
during the event.

Citation. In September 2015, Professor Tristan

Abbott, coordinator of the writing center,
offered a workshop on Plagiarism and
Citation.

Conference presentations. In May 2015,

Professor Julie Kiernan of theatre and speech
communication developed a half-day workshop
series entitled Taking Research from the Page
to the Stage.

Support for international/multilingual

students. Education professor Sarah Dietrich is
facilitating writing workshops for multilingual
students on a monthly basis throughout the
2015-2016 year. Students who attend six
workshops will receive a Multilingual Writer
Certificate of Achievement.

Reflecting on Graduate Student Writing Support

Salem State University is not the first institution
to start paying attention to the unique needs of
graduate student writers. A recent issue of Across
the Disciplines , a scholarly journal that focuses
on writing and writing pedagogy across the
curriculum, is devoted to graduate writing across
the disciplines. In the introduction, the editors
suggest that while faculty may expect graduate
students to enter programs with well-developed
academic writing skills, in reality graduate students

are arriving in need of explicit writing support.

Their observation echoes the results of the student
and faculty surveys at Salem State University.
There are many reasons why writing support is
needed at the graduate level. The editors of Across
the Disciplines7 note that graduate writing is
marked by its increased duration, complexity, and
length, as compared with undergraduate writing.8
Salem States graduate students may also struggle
with academic writing for other reasons, as they
themselves describe in the quotes above. Some are
working professionals who have been out of school
for a number of years and others have learning
disabilities. Many are first generation graduate
students (and may have been first generation
undergraduate students as well), with minimal
background knowledge about graduate school and
its expectations. And finally, many are international
or multilingual students whose first language is not
English.
But what these surveys reveal more than anything
else is how deeply invested Salem States graduate
students are in improving their writing skills.
Students demonstrated a keen understanding of
the importance of writing to their academic and
professional futures. Salem State must avoid
the possibility of losing worthy students due to
discouragement over their writing abilities, like one
student who heartbreakingly shared, My writing
would be the reason I stop the program if I ever
were to. Thus the institution must continue to
provide ample support to graduate student writers.
Bibliography
Brooks-Gillies, Marilee, Garcia, Elena G., Kim, Soo
Hyon, Manthey, Katie, and Smith, Trixie. Graduate
Writing Across the Disciplines, Introduction,
Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language,
Learning, and Academic Writing 12 (2015).
wac.colostate.edu/atd/graduate_wac/intro.cfm.
Marilee Brooks-Gillies, Elena G. Garcia, Soo Hyon Kim, Katie
Manthey, and Trixie Smith, Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines,
Introduction, Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language,
Learning, and Academic Writing 12 (2015), http://wac.colostate.edu/
atd/graduate_wac/intro.cfm.
8
Ibid.
7

Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 7

Providing Productive Feedback on Student Writing

By Tanya Rodrigue, WIC coordinator and assistant professor, English
When I walk into class the day a writing assignment
is due, I feel two strong opposing emotions:
excitement and unease. Im excited to engage with
my students work, to see how they explored their
topic of inquiry and what they learned. Im excited
to see how their writing improved over multiple
drafts with revision feedback from me and their
peers. Im also excited to learn from my students,
not only about the content of their writing, but also
the extent to which my teaching, scaffolding and
assignment was successful.
With that excitement comes the reality of what Ill
need to do with this student writing: read it, write
comments and assign it a grade. This is where the
feeling of unease enters, a feeling that emerges
from multiple questions and concerns. How long
is it going to take me to assess these papers?
How much time can I realistically allot to this task
when I have so many other things to do? How can I
provide students with feedback that will help them
become stronger writers? What kind of feedback
will be most helpful at this stage in the semester
and at this stage in their writing development?
To assuage this feeling of unease, Ive learned
strategies and techniques to give students
thoughtful, productive feedback without spending

All suggestions are from Nancy Sommers Responding to Student Writers

8 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

an inordinate amount of time doing so. If you too

would like to be more efficient in giving productive
feedback, below are some suggestions about
marginal comments and a list of time-saving
techniques that may be helpful.9
Marginal comments
Think of writing in the margins as engaging in
conversation with the student about his/her
essay.

Less is often more: too many comments can be

overwhelming for students and possibly make
them feel inadequate or insecure about their
writing.
Be specific. Avoid commands or one-word
comments (like awkward, vague or unclear).
Make a specific suggestion, ask a specific
question or identify and explain in detail the
strength or the limitation youre referencing.

On early drafts, comment on global issues (like

idea development) rather than local issues
(like grammar). Connect your comments to the
specific assignment and its learning goals.

On final drafts, comment on both global and

local issues. Connect your comments to the
specific assignment and its learning goals.

Time-Saving Techniques
Skim through multiple student papers before
commenting.

Give yourself a specific amount of time to

spend on each paper and perhaps even a
specific number of marginal comments.

Always, always, always keep in mind the

specific thing you want students to learn from
each paper. Use that identified purpose/focus
as a guide for commenting.

Dont spend time correcting grammar/

mechanical issuesidentify patterns of error
and ask students to fix the errors.

Set priorities for what essays you want to

comment on throughout the semester and
at what stage in the writing process. Be sure
to utilize other methods of feedback such as
peer review and conferences.

More techniques and strategies will be presented

and discussed at next semesters brown bag
lunch event, Providing Productive Feedback on
Student Writing. I hope to see you there!
Bibliography
Sommers, Nancy. Responding to Student
Writers. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2013.

BROWN BAG ANNOUNCEMENTS

Monday, March 14, 11-12,
Meier Hall 102D

Providing Productive Feedback on Student

Writing
As instructors, we want to provide students with
the kind of feedback that will help them become
stronger writers, yet this is often a difficult task. In
this workshop, led by Professor Tanya Rodrigue,
we will discuss best practices for responding to
student work in efficient and productive ways at
all stages of the writing process.

Wednesday, February 17,

11-12, Meier Hall 102D

Using Digital Writing Activities in the Classroom

As the demand for individuals with digital literacy
skills increases, we as educators are faced with
the task of integrating the teaching of these skills
to help our students meet the challenges that
await them. In this workshop, English MA/MAT
student Danah Hashem will discuss practical
ideas and approaches for helping students
effectively use digital tools to read and write.

Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 9

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
JF: How do you use digital writing in your classes?

Roopika Risam, PhD, has been a faculty member

of Salem State since 2013. She is an assistant
professor of English, as well as an affiliated faculty
member with the School of Education. Dr. Risam
is also the coordinator of the new Digital Studies
Graduate Certificate Program. For the fall 2015
semester, she is teaching a first-year seminar called
Race and Cyberspace. Previously, she has taught
African American Literature I, World Literature II,
English Methods, and Young Adult Literature.
Outside of her work at Salem State, Dr. Risam
is active on the executive boards of several
digital humanities organizations including Global
Outlook: Digital Humanities and the Association
for Computers and the Humanities. She is also
on the editorial board of two digital journals
(DHCommons and DSH: Digital Scholarship
in the Humanities) and the managing editor
of a digital journal (Digital Literary Studies).
She has had several articles related to digital
humanities published in the journals including:
Revising History and Re-authoring the Left in
the Postcolonial Digital Archive in Left History,
Beyond the Margins: Intersectionality and the
Digital Humanities in Digital Humanities Quarterly,
and Toxic Femininity 4.0 in First Monday. Dr.
Risam also has articles forthcoming in South Asian
Review and Debates in Digital Humanities.
Jane Foley, an English major with a professional
writing concentration, interviewed Dr. Risam in
October of 2015 about the importance of using
digital writing across various disciplines.
10 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

RR: I often assign students multimodal projects.

In African American Literature I, I teach students
how to use digital textual analysis tools like Voyant
(voyant-tools.org) to find patterns in words, word
frequencies, and phrases. For example, we ran
Frederick Douglass' essay "What to the Slave is
the 4th of July" through the tool and noticed that
"God" was a frequent word - yet it had not been
a prominent theme in our discussions. This gave
us a push to go back to the text and look for his
references to religion and to consider why we had
not talked about them before. When I teach Young
Adult Literature (YAL), I use digital writing as well.
I teach the class from the perspective of why YAL
is so popular - we read novels but also consider
demographics, readership, and advertising. I asked
students to create a book trailer for a text, which
they really enjoyed. It allowed them to take their
reading of a book and understanding of readership
and advertising and put that all together in a
multimodal form.
JF: Why do you think it is valuable?
RR: Digital writing is essential to the literacies
that students need in the 21st century. While the
first iteration of the internet (Web 1.0) was largely
comprised of static webpages that communicated
information, the current mode (Web 2.0) has
blurred the lines between consumer and producer
of information. Blogging and social media
platforms give users with internet access the
possibility to share ideas and produce knowledge.
If students understand how to effectively write in a
digital milieu, the possibilities for them are endless.
JF: How can professors across the disciplines
incorporate digital projects into their classes?
RR: I, along with other faculty who comprise
the Digital Humanities Working Group (Susan

Edwards, university archivist and Justin Snow,

digital initiatives librarian) are happy to work
with faculty who wish to develop digital projects
for classes. But on their own, professors should
consider starting small. Think about the objective
of a digital project and ask whether a digital project
is really the most effective way of meeting that
objective - sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't,
but it's important to not do a digital project for the
sake of it but because the digital dimension offers
something that an analog project can't. Professors
also risk overestimating their students' familiarity
with technology. The myth of the "digital native"
suggests that millennials, in particular, possess
innate understanding of digital technology because
they grew up around computers. Yet, this is an
exaggeration - access to these technologies varies
based on socioeconomic status, race, gender, and
location. Plus, because of the digital native myth,
K-12 schools have eliminated computer classes and the result is professors often end up knowing
more about the technologies they are using than
students. From the perspective of accessibility, it
may be wise to offer students the alternative of
completing an analog project as well.
JF: Where do you see the future of digital writing in
college and why is it important?
RR: Digital writing is only going to become more
important, given that our students will be entering
a workforce in which they will need technical skills
and familiarity with technology to be successful.
Digital skills, along with discipline-specific skills,
help students be prepared for a range of careers.
The kinds of jobs our students are getting are ones

that didn't exist a decade ago, but having digital

fluency puts them in an advantageous position.
JF: What are the possible struggles or obstacles in
advancing digital writing into the disciplines?
RR: The main challenge will be tradition disciplines tend to cling very closely to the forms
of assessment that have been most prevalent. In
English, for example, the literary analysis essay
that uses close reading as its method is the gold
standard. Convincing English faculty that a digital
writing assignment is an appropriate substitution is
not the easiest feat. I'm not suggesting that it's an
either/or - both are advantageous for students.
JF: Tell me about the new certificate program you
have designed in digital studies.
RR: The Digital Studies Graduate Certificate
will be launched in May 2016 and is a 12-credit
(four course) interdisciplinary certificate that
can be completed fully online, face-to-face, or a
combination of both. The two core courses for
the certificate, ENG 713 - Digital Humanities and
ENG 830 - Digital Writing, introduce students to
using digital tools and media to interpret literary
and cultural texts and to composing multimodally
for multiple audiences and purposes. Certificate
students select two more electives based on their
interests and career goals, from English, history
and library and media studies - options include
more coursework, directed studies, and internship
experiences. The program offers students
advanced skills in digital writing, data visualization,
quantitative and qualitative data analysis, digital
content strategy and curation, cultural heritage
preservation, digital stewardship, mapping, topic
modeling, interdisciplinary research, and critical
thinking about technology. Additionally, it offers
training in digital tools necessary for humanities
careers in project management, education, libraries,
publishing, public history, journalism, museums,
archives, #altac or alternative academic careers in
digital initiatives, digital projects management, and
digital scholarship.
JF: Thank you for your time.
Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 11

CID STRATEGIES
Composing CIDs (Course Information Documents) for W-II and W-III courses can be a bit
overwhelming. Below are tips for composing effective proposals:
For existing courses, reflect on what you already do in relation to the W-II or W-III goals and
criteria.

For new courses, reflect on how you can both integrate writing into your courses for purposes of
achieving course learning goals, and how you can incorporate instruction into the classroom via
discussion, homework and in-class work.

Be certain your course achieves CID goals and criteria.

In course descriptions, be sure to include W-I and/or W-II as prerequisites and to identify the
course as a W-II or W-III course.

For W-II courses, carefully consider how other prerequisites may prevent students from across the
disciplines from taking the course.

Use language from the W-II or W-III CID in the course proposal, and be very clear as to how youre
seeking to achieve goals and meet the criteria. The emphasis in the W-II course is on providing
students with opportunities to write for various purposes and audiences, while the emphasis in the
W-III course is on disciplinary writing. Be sure this is clear in your proposal, and be sure to define
the purposes and audiences.

Try to incorporate writing into the topics and/or subtopics, course goals and course objectives in
both the W-II and W-III course.

12 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015