Changes and Shapes

In August of last year, I took on the role of Writing Program Coordinator here at Sac State. One of the initial challenges I face in this role is deciding what success on the job looks like.

During the prior six years, I had a measurable vision of what I wanted to achieve. As the large-scale writing assessment coordinator, I told everyone my plan: I was going to replace the timed-writing assessment with an ePortfolio. It was a big project; we assess more than 7000 students a year. So, I figured, if I put a functioning program in place within five or so years, I could say I'd succeeded. 

In my new role as Writing Program Coordinator, the goals have not taken on such a clear shape (yet). 

I aim to remedy that between now and the end of the semester because I learned something about myself while working on the ePortfolio project. I need to know the shape of the project I am working on in order to forge ahead and simultaneously negotiate the day-to-day tasks of administering a program.

The initial outlines of a project are coming into focus at this point. Here's what I'm thinking:

In the past 8-9 years, our writing program has undergone two significant transformations, both of which speak to a programmatic philosophy. 

First, under the initial direction of Dr. Amy Heckathorn and the subsequent direction of Dr. Angela Clark-Oates, the placement procedures for freshmen were changed. We had been using a statewide timed-writing test to determine if students required extra instruction. We shifted to a directed self-placement model for which students perform a self-assessment and determine their own path through the first-year writing requirements. 

Second, the writing assessment we perform when students transition from lower-division coursework to upper-division coursework was changed. We had been using a timed-writing test to determine if students require extra instruction before taking a Writing Intensive course. We have since switched to an ePortfolio used to advise students and then allow them to choose the kind of support they need to complete the final Writing Intensive course requirement.   

Both of these changes put more decision-making power into the hands of our students. The changes also (attempt to) remove the stigma of remediation from the writing development support we offer in our program. 

And that's where I think I need to put my efforts: I aim to more fully integrate the courses our Writing Program delivers and the student support we offer throughout a student's career here at Sac State. 

My research has focused on how writing skills transfer and transform over the course of a student's time in college. This is an exciting opportunity for me to apply that research and build a learning environment that fosters writing development alongside/with the academic development students do in their disciplines.  

My initial sketches of a writing resources map are here. I intend to make it look nicer and also show where these resources link up with other learning resources on campus. 

I'm excited to see how this turns into a more concrete goal this year.  

The False Narrative of Good and Evil with ChatGPT

The New York Times published another article on ChatGPT today. This one is a well-research piece by Kalley Huang who interviewed professors, students, and administrators to learn about higher education's response to ChatGPT. 

Huang's reporting confirms a lot of what I've been hearing in the discussions I'm being pulled into as a Writing Program Administrator. 

But there is an issue with how the larger story is developing, and Huang's piece demonstrates that issue.

I posted the following comment: 

Higher education is being framed as a form of policing in this article, and that is deeply frustrating. 

The question not asked in this reporting is important for context. How has the lumbering behemoth of higher education marshaled a response to this disruptive Silicon Valley technology within two months of ChatGPT's launch? 

The answer is simple. The responses to this disruption are all well-established practices developed by scholars of Composition & Rhetoric (a discipline that, among other things, studies the development of writing ability in college settings).

Here are the "innovations" described in this article: Mr. Aumann will support his student's writing by including low-stakes in-class writing exercises that build towards the more significant assignment. Professors are going to develop more collaborative writing assignments. Assignments include reflection and revision memos. "Gone are prompts like 'write five pages about this or that.'” Professors will look beyond the canon for assignment prompts. Writing instructors will teach students about the benefits and pitfalls of new writing technologies. Institutions are going to revisit their academic integrity policies. 

That list describes the basics required to teach writing. It is not a response to attempts to cheat. We Compositionists are not plagiarism police. Our job is to teach students why writing their own paper is more valuable than submitting an "A paper."

I get pointed questions about student cheating all the time, especially when I work with people to make changes in higher education writing settings. People love to imagine ways students will cheat. 

And yeah, I can name a number of times I have identified papers or passages that were lifted from other sources. I'm not here to say it's a non-issue.

But I am here to say that the public likes to think of things using established narratives, and the following narratives are very popular:

• Cheating students outwit professors
• Professors catch cheating students

From School Library

These are stories we like to tell. And because these stories do happen from time to time, they become the stories we tell most often. News articles, department meetings, conference presentations, blog posts, op-eds in the Chronicle of Higher Education (so often), Tiktoks, Tweet threads, family gatherings, professional small talk sessions, everywhere we look!

And if you have a good plagiarism story, people lean in to listen. You get rewarded with engagement. 

The most common one I used to hear was about students who figured out ways to outwit Turnitin.com. People love those tales.

And I am very much aware of this happening again with ChatGPT. 

I would like to remind everyone of this 9-year-old gem from Neil deGrasse Tyson:

When Students cheat on exams it's because our School System values grades more than Students value learning.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) April 14, 2013

We must re-examine our practices if our students don't understand why we are teaching the very challenging processes of writing to learn and writing to contribute to a community.

If we don't teach students the value of doing their own writing, our course is nothing more than a hoop to jump through... Or worse, a gate intended to withhold opportunity from some in favor of others.