For this session of THATCamp Digital Writing, I would like to stage a conversation about the ways digital writing can be taught, encouraged, and evaluated in the classroom. What type of assignments and class activities do you set up in your class that produce innovative and original digital composition? What grading criteria/rubrics have you come up with to assess the work of your students? How do we model a process of digital writing in ways that merely reproduce earlier modes of composition pedagogy?
I will kickstart the session by sharing my own experience in teaching an “Introduction to Multimedia” course this spring semester at Rutgers University and will relate the various ways in which my experience as a composition and English literature instructor came to inform my approach to teaching “digital writing.” I will share course materials I used this past semester and I am curious to see what other students and teachers have used in the past to either evaluate others or their own work (maybe by the end of the session we can have a general grading rubric that lays out the core principles we see as being necessary when dealing with the wide-ranging concept of digital writing). On a larger scale, I am also interested in discussing the ways inquiry into the very difference (whether in scale, medium, or process) of producing digital writing can be woven into discussion, assignments and the very structure of courses that deal with digital writing.
This looks like an interesting session. I’d like to share ideas about digital writing assignments, too. I’m wondering whether you include these in other traditional writing courses. My rationale is that contemporary students need to practice writing in digital spaces in their first-year experience. What’s your take on this notion?
I also would like to discuss digital writing assignments and how to assess them. I’m an art historian and I’m hoping to find more ideas for assignments that allow students to combine writing with images in fruitful ways, and to find technologies that enable interactive commentary on their work.
I, too, am excited about this session: I second the assessment issue; the other day, I told a colleague that I needed to create a rubric for digital writing assignments, and she told me to just use my traditional one. I’m sure she was trying to be supportive, but I felt like she was missing the point…I’m happy to know I’m not alone.