Category: Uncategorized

Following are key definitions and how they are used in the specific context of OWI for the purposes of this document.

• Accessible: An information technology system that is accessible is one that can be operated in a variety of ways and does not rely on a user’s single sense or ability. For example, a system that provides output only in visual format may not be accessible to people with visual impairments, and a system that provides output only in audio format may not be accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Some individuals with physical and/or learning disabilities may need accessibility-related software or peripheral devices in order to use systems that comply with Section 508 (Guide to Disability Rights Laws). For the purposes of this document, accessibility issues also include those that affect multilingual writers and writers with socioeconomic inequality for whom literal access to technology has or can be problematic.
• Assistive technology or devices: Assistive technology is “any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities” (29 U.S.C. Sec 2202[2]). Examples include screen reader software, screen magnifiers, adapted keyboard and alternative input/ output devices, mobility devices, assistive hearing devices, and can include learning software, among many other things.
• Asynchronous: Referring to a learning modality that permits participants to communicate over flexible time periods; typically, there is a significant time lag (non-real-time) between and among interactions. Most often, asynchronous interactions occur through text although one-way voice and video communications also can be asynchronous.
• Digital environment: A learning setting that is computer-based or that uses other integrated technologies that can be accessed anywhere and anytime.
• Disability: According to the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), “the term ‘disability’ means an individual has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of his/her major life activities or there is a record of such an impairment or an individual is regarded as having such an impairment.” Caused by injury, disease or medical condition, or neurological, chemical, or developmental factors, severe disabilities affect about 12% of the U.S. population.
• Distributed environment: A learning setting that is linked through a computer network while being geographically dispersed.
• Fully online: Any writing course that meets in a completely online-based setting through computer mediation with no scheduled face-to-face interactions among or between students and faculty.
• Hybrid: Sometimes called “blended,” any writing course that meets in both a distance-based or computer-mediated setting and in a traditional onsite classroom.
• Learning Management System (LMS): Also known as a “Course Management System” (CMS). Some of the most common examples are Blackboard, Moodle, Angel, and Sakai. These are online sites that house the course’s content and facilitate communication among teacher and students.
• Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): Also known as scalable online educational experience (SOE2). College classes that are (1) extremely large with as many as 50,000 or more participants, (2) open access to all who can pay when they are not free, (3) online with potential for both asynchronous and synchronous components, and (4) courses that enable various set-ups such as credit, noncredit, drop-in, or enrolled participants.
• Multimodal: Strategically using modes of communication beyond traditional alphabetic text, for example, still image, motion video, and sound.
• Online environment: A learning setting that is Internet-based (e.g., through the World Wide Web) or Intranet-based (e.g., through a common server).
• Online: Referring to any communication or activity, such as instruction, that is mediated by digital, Internet-connected technologies. In most contexts, the word online refers to text-based technologies (e.g., discussion boards, emails, blogs, chat), but it also can refer to other media, such as audio (e.g., podcasts) and video (e.g., video presentations, live video meetings).
• OWC: Online writing course.
• OWI: Online writing instruction.
• OWL: Online writing lab or online writing center
• Synchronous: Referring to a learning modality that permits participants to communicate in real time or nearly in real time. Many real-time synchronous interactions occur through two-way voice or voice and video. Many near-real-time synchronous interactions transpire using text in a chat-based scenario.

Back to Main Page: A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI)

A position statement is a document that asserts the official position of an organization (in this case, CCCC) on a particular issue or set of issues. The position statement is itself a genre. However, effective position statements should make possible the creation of other genres intended for other audiences through their clear and cogent presentation of position, relevant evidence and/or data, and implications.

CCCC position statements should address issues associated with writing or literacy activities (including instruction, instructors, research, use, or other activities). These statements should be written with clear and explicit purposes and audiences in mind. They should synthesize positions or stances that reflect research/research-based best practices, and outline implications of this work for action.

Position Statement Guidelines

Position statements should:

• Be no longer than 4 pages (excluding appendices)
• Include an executive summary
• Clearly identify the purpose(s) of and audience(s) for the statement
• Include a clear statement of no more than 1–3 sentences of the goal or thesis of the statement
• Outline research-based actions associated with the position and implications
• Use language that is direct and accessible to an educated audience

Position statements may:

• Outline the exigency for the statement as part of the purpose
• Position the point(s) advanced in the statement as an alternative to the exigency
• Include a synthesis of research with citations or references to additional information
• Use concise, descriptive headings to help organize the statement

Position statements should avoid:

• Buried leads—putting the primary argument of the position statements deep in the document
• Becoming articles—documents that include levels of exploration of subjects appropriate for a group of researchers rather than other audiences (unless appropriate for the audience)
• Include resolutions or advocate for CCCC action outside of the established resolution process.

How Position Statements Come About

The genesis of CCCC position statements can come from a resolution or sense-of-the-house motion passed at an Annual Business Meeting; from a strategic governance motion; from a committee or task force; or from the CCCC Executive Committee or officers. (See /cccc/resources/positions/creation.) Position statements cannot, however, be generated by or from an individual.

The Executive Committee and/or Officers will authorize a group of people to create position statements. The authorization will include a charge, broad parameters for the statement (i.e., the broad issue/s it should address), and a timeline for submission of a draft statement. Statements will then be reviewed by a working group of the Executive Committee. Comments will be returned to the primary author/chair of the authoring task force by the CCCC liaison. Each statement will also have an Executive Committee liaison, who will work with the task force to coordinate recommended revisions and guide the statement through the EC approval process. Once the Executive Committee approves the statement, it will be posted on the CCCC web site.

Models:

http://legacy.ncte.org/positions/statements/contingent_faculty
/cccc/resources/positions/writingassessment
/cccc/resources/positions/promotionandtenure
/cccc/resources/positions/secondlangwriting

Resources:

Frameworks Institute materials on framing messages about education (P–16):
All education: http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/issues-education.html
Higher ed: http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/higher-education.html

SPIN Works! (Strategic Press Information Network guide to writing, frame changing, op-ed pieces, and more): http://spinacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/SPIN-Works.pdf

The Op Ed Project (Resources on writing and pitching op eds): http://www.theopedproject.org/

A conversation with Steven Fraiberg, author of “Pretty Bullets: Tracing Transmedia/Translingual Literacies of an Israeli Soldier across Regimes of Practice” (17:15).

Steven Fraiberg is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. His research focuses on multilingual literacy practices in classrooms, communities, and workplaces. He has published in CCC, Kairos, Computers and Composition, Israel Studies Review, and Technical Communication Quarterly. His forthcoming book (coauthored with Xiaoye You and Xiqiao Wang) published by Utah State University Press is titled Inventing the World Grant University: Chinese International Students’ Mobilities, Literacies, and Identities.

 

 

 

This bibliography presents sources that composition researchers can use to supplement the “CCCC Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Research in Composition Studies.”

Read the full bibliography, CCCC Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Human Participants: A Bibliography (November 2003, revised March 2015)

Rhea Estelle Lathan is an assistant professor of English rhetoric and composition at Florida State University and author of the SWR Series book Freedom Writing: African American Civil Rights Literacy Activism, 1955-1967.

In this conversation with Telsha Curry, Lathan talks about different types of literacy and social activism, how the ideas of gospel consciousness manifest in Lathan’s pedagogy, as well as how they relate to current movements such as Black Lives Matter. (1:30:12)

 

In this conversation with Brett Keegan, Yancey and McElroy talk about the genesis of their edited collection Assembling Composition and the growing interest in scholarship on assemblage theory. (32:01)

 

 

Kathleen Blake Yancey is Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University. She has served in several elected leadership positions: as president of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE); chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC); president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA); and president of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA). Immediate past editor of College Composition and Communication, she co-founded the journal Assessing Writing and coedited it for seven years: she also co-founded and co-directs the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research; and she is the lead investigator for the Transfer of Transfer Project, a cross-institutional research study of the efficacy of the Teaching for Transfer (TFT) writing curriculum.

Stephen J. McElroy is director of the Reading-Writing Center and Digital Studio at Florida State University. He has pursued his broad interest in visual rhetoric, multimodal design, and digital composing—in terms of both theory and practice as well as both past and present—recently in the Computers and Composition article “Assemblage by Design: The Postcards of Curt Teich & Company,” which examines the design and production of picture postcards in the early twentieth century, focusing specifically on cards produced by Teich & Company and depicting scenes of Key West, Florida. Examining microhistories of design and production through the lens of assemblage, he argues, helps us better attend to and better theorize our current composing practices.

Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) series. 157 pp. 2010. College. NCTE/CCCC and Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2956-4.

Listen to the Podcast Interview with authors Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau and interviewer Brandon Alva:

Book Description

The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations is an informative study on the challenges, expectations and adjustments facing first semester, two-year college students…more (PDF)

Author Information

Howard Tinberg, a professor of English at Bristol Community College, Massachusetts, is the author of Border Talk: Writing and Knowing in the Two-Year College and Writing with Consequence: What Writing Does in the Disciplines and is a coeditor of What Is “College-Level” Wriitng?; What Is “College-Level” Writing? Volume 2: Assignments, Readings, and Student Writing Samples; and Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom.

Jean-Paul Nadeau, a coauthor of Foundations for Learning, is an assistant professor of English at Bristol Community College.

Review

http://crw.sagepub.com/content/39/2/201.full.pdf+html

Purchase The Community College Writer from Southern Illinois University Press.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
April 2016

Executive Summary

As the non-tenure-track (NTT) cohort of writing faculty grows, departments and programs need to provide equitable working conditions for all faculty, including reasonable workloads and protections against unnecessary changes; access to shared governance and curricular decisions; transparent and fair hiring, evaluation, and renewal processes; access to technology and other resources necessary for job performance; access to professional development and scholarly resources; and fair compensation. To provide such conditions, departments need consistent and transparent policies developed as much as possible in collaboration with NTT faculty.

Introduction

The term non-tenure-­track (NTT) refers to all faculty who are not protected by tenure. Faculty off the tenure track face conditions that tenure-­track and tenured (TT/T) faculty do not—even NTT faculty in the most secure positions.

From 2005 to 2012, the number of contingent faculty members increased from 48.2 percent to 52.9 percent at doctoral-granting universities, held steady at about 61 percent at masters-granting universities, grew from 55 to 57 percent at baccalaureate colleges, and stayed constant at almost 80 percent in two-year colleges.¹ One 2010 study, for example, found that roughly 75 percent of faculty were working off the tenure track, most part-time.² While data vary based on differing reporting mechanisms, contingent faculty employment clearly continues to rise in US colleges and universities. Additionally, it is challenging to obtain comprehensive and accurate information about contingent faculty demographics and working conditions following the discontinuation of the National Postsecondary Faculty Survey, an instrument that attempted to gather this information.

These figures are especially significant for faculty teaching college writing courses. These courses include those labeled “basic” or “remedial” writing and general education courses such as first-year writing. The Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW), which brings together faculty and disciplinary associations around issues related to academic labor practices, found in a 2012 survey of contingent teachers that 16.4 percent of all contingent faculty in the United States were from English language and literature departments; most of these faculty were teaching writing courses. A 2007 Association of Departments of English of the MLA study also found that almost 70 percent of composition courses housed within English departments are taught by contingent faculty.

As institutions encounter tightening budgets, calls for flexibility, and greater demand for instructional activities supporting students, many are relying on NTT faculty, especially in writing courses. With increasing pressure from state legislatures and campus or system governing bodies to maximize “efficiency” through such measures as increasing class sizes and demanding higher teaching loads, such situations are becoming more common and the need for specific disciplinary recommendations more urgent.

Summary of Recommendations

Given increasing institutional reliance on NTT faculty in writing courses and departments, recommendations here emerge from two core principles:

(1) Departments, programs, and faculty must work to ensure equity³ for NTT writing faculty by attending to issues associated with employment: compensation; job security; benefits; access to resources; access to shared governance; and opportunities for professional advancement⁴; and

(2) Decisions about hiring, workload, and working conditions should be made based on policies applied consistently to all faculty and take into consideration parameters of existing agreements, such as union contracts. Where no parameters currently exist, departments should develop and apply consistent and transparent standards based on factors such as seniority and quality of performance. NTT faculty should have as much input into those standards as possible.  

These principles can be applied to a number of practices and situations affecting NTT faculty and their efforts: workload; hiring; evaluation and renewal; basic workplace resources; support for professional development and scholarly activity; and compensation. Each of the following sections outlines specifics related to these principles and their application.

Workload: Teaching and Service

• NTT faculty workloads should be limited to a maximum twenty students per section of first-year and/or advanced composition courses and a maximum fifteen students per section of basic (or “remedial”) writing courses. Generally, NTT faculty should not teach more than three sections of such courses per term⁵. If TT/T faculty teaching loads exceed three sections of first-year, advanced, or basic writing courses per term or exceed the class size recommendations, NTT faculty teaching loads should be consistent with those of TT/T faculty. NTT faculty should not teach larger sections of the same course as TT/T faculty.
• Departments should not use recommendations regarding numbers of students or sections to prevent the creation of full-time NTT positions, nor to deny health care benefits to NTT faculty.
• NTT faculty should have access to teaching assignments in their areas of expertise and at various levels of the curriculum. NTT faculty should not be assigned exclusively to courses enrolled by students at any one level.⁶
• NTT faculty should be protected against last-minute schedule changes/reductions.⁷ When such changes are absolutely necessary, departments should follow clear and transparent policies for determining how those changes or reductions are made.
• Departments should provide full-time schedules for NTT faculty who want them before offering overloads to TT/T faculty.
• NTT faculty should be included in and receive credit for department/program/campus governance. Such participation should be compensated.⁸ When NTT faculty are included in service, they should have voting rights on matters connected to that work.
• NTT faculty should be included in curriculum decisions for courses that affect their teaching and receive credit for their involvement.
• NTT faculty should be able to vote on all policy matters unless specifically excluded by department code, faculty manual, or collective bargaining agreement.

Hiring, Evaluation, and Renewal Practices

• NTT faculty should be hired through formal, transparent, and systematic processes, e.g., submission of an application letter, CV, names of recommenders, and teaching materials followed by a formal interview process and reference check.⁹
• NTT faculty should undergo rigorous, systematic evaluations on par with evaluations of TT/T faculty in terms of frequency and rigor. Most frequently, these include: teaching observations; student evaluations; teaching portfolio; and evaluations of scholarship and service where appropriate.¹⁰
• If NTT faculty are involved in evaluations of superiors, they should receive appropriate provisions/protections.
• NTT faculty should be hired into long-term (multiyear) lines, including the creation of “teaching specialist” lines¹¹ (or their equivalent), as often as possible.      
• Institutions should develop pathways to tenure-track or other secure positions for NTT faculty whose quality performance has kept them continually renewed.¹²
• Departments should provide timely notification of renewals and non-renewals so that NTT faculty have enough time and notice to find other work and/or apply for unemployment insurance and other forms of assistance.
• NTT faculty should be granted due process rights, including written rationales for renewal and non-renewal decisions, and opportunities to respond to evaluations and non-renewal decisions.

Basic Workplace Resources

• NTT faculty require office space that allows them to comply with FERPA and Title IX regulations. They also should have access to a desk and locked storage space; building and workspace access on weekends and nights, including building/office keys or electronic passkeys; access to faculty lounges and dining halls; mailboxes in the main department office; and adequate faculty parking.
• NTT faculty need access to technology required for teaching including but not limited to: campus email address and phone service; course management software; photocopy machines and codes; and representation on mailing lists, listservs, and rosters for departmental and university opportunities.
• NTT faculty should receive written notice of policies that differ for TT/T and NTT faculty. Such policies should not discriminate arbitrarily based on status.

Support for Professional Development and Scholarly Activity

• NTT faculty should receive funding for travel and professional opportunities. This support should be proportional to NTT faculty workload.¹³
• NTT faculty should be eligible for no- or low-cost access to graduate courses at institutions with graduate programs, or for subsidized graduate credits if their institutions do not have graduate programs, where such credits enhance professional development or lead toward improved credentials for the teaching of writing.
• NTT faculty should be eligible for institutional grant funding without requiring TT/T sponsors. Where such eligibility violates policies, departments should offer opportunities to NTT faculty, including collaborations on projects, in order to help NTT faculty become eligible for such resources.

Compensation and Benefits¹⁴

• Consistent with MLA’s current recommendation, NTT faculty should be paid a minimum (as of 2016) of $7,350 for a standard 3-credit-hour semester course or $4,900 for a standard 3-credit-hour quarter or trimester course.¹⁵
• NTT faculty should be eligible for health insurance.
• NTT faculty should be offered retirement benefits.
• NTT faculty should be offered support for filing unemployment claims, and other non-salary benefits.
• NTT faculty should be eligible for additional benefits available to TT/T faculty, including sabbatical leave, family/maternity leave, and sick leave.

Endnotes

1. Reported by Steven Shulman, Chair of the Research Committee for the AAUP and co-director of the Center for the Study of Academic Labor (CSAL).
2. As reported by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW).
3. The term equity is used deliberately. The term is distinct from but in service to equality. While equal compensation and institutional support for equal responsibilities is important, achieving equality will also involve adopting restorative policies (e.g., low-/no-cost access to PhD programs; retirement buyouts for longtime NTT faculty; etc.) that help to redress injustices that have been endemic to the contingent system.
4. Adapted from the New Faculty Majority’s “Seven Goals.”
5. These recommendations are consistent with both ADE recommendations and the CCCC Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing.
6. Following the recommendation that no faculty teach more than three writing courses per semester or more than sixty students, NTT writing faculty whose contracts mandate four sections per semester will need assignments beyond introductory courses to fill their workloads. Furthermore, teaching across a curriculum improves teaching at each level of it. Finally, access to different courses/areas enhances NTT faculty inclusion in departments, especially as they are more involved in developing and assessing courses.
7. The NFM/CFHE “Who Is Professor Staff?” report highlights harms to students and faculty from just-in-time hiring. Also harmful for faculty and students are sudden changes/reductions in schedules enabled by NTT faculty’s contingent status. Departments should not allow TT/T faculty to force NTT faculty schedule changes unless the change is required by policy.
8. NTT faculty should have governance responsibilities as part of their base workload calculation. An array of models exists for crediting committee work, including several that constitute 10 to 20% of an NTT’s base workload. Alternately, NTT faculty’s shared governance responsibilities can be compensated via reassigned time or overload pay.
9. The Delphi Project and others advocate aligning NTT with TT/T hiring practices as closely as possible. Hiring NTT faculty under dubious conditions enables systemic, untenable bias and disrespect. Formal processes provide institutions the benefit of the full range of an NTT faculty member’s qualifications. Poor hiring practices also hurt students and expose the institution to legal risk.
10.  Rigorous evaluations are essential faculty development tools. They also buffer against arbitrary and capricious non-renewals. Evaluation processes should reflect the actual work of NTT faculty, providing faculty opportunities to document teaching excellence and improvements, and be rewarded. Such processes should be connected to career ladders and potential rank and salary advancement.
11.  Long-term contracts offer some job security. We endorse them as improvements over casual and temporary employment, but we advocate for the codification of formalized long-term protected employment, or instructor tenure.
12.  Those pathways should not deny NTT faculty access to continued part-time work if they want it. Pathways should also exist for faculty who have been in part-time positions. One model for NTT-to-TT conversion process is in the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty (APSCUF) Collective Bargaining Agreement (see Article 11.G).
13.  Such that a full-time NTT faculty member receives the same travel funding as TT/T faculty; a 50% NTT faculty receives half as much; etc.
14.  SEIU’s aspirational call for a combined salary/benefits package of $15,000/section in 2015 offers a strong reminder that per-section salary is not the only relevant figure. Models for benefited positions include Colorado State University, where a 50% appointment qualifies the employee for full benefits participation, including retirement and health, maternity leave, family leave, and sick leave, employee study privileges, tuition scholarships for family members, etc. See http://www.hrs.colostate.edu/benefits/.
15.  See “MLA Recommendation on Minimum Per-Course Compensation for Part-Time Faculty Members” for an explanation of how they arrived at this figure.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

Leigh Ann Jones is an assistant professor of English at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she teaches rhetorical criticism and history, composition, and pedagogy in the undergraduate and graduate programs. She also codirects Hunter’s first-year writing course. In addition to her work on rhetorics of national masculinity, Jones has published on performative epistemology, a multimodal approach to composition pedagogy. She is the author of the SWR book From Boys to Men: Rhetorics of Emergent American Masculinity.

In this conversation with Vincent Portillo, Jones talks about the book’s focus on national organizations for boys and young men, including the Boy Scouts of America, the Sigma Chi college fraternity, and the US Army; the interdisciplinary nature of her book (it draws from history, political science, and rhetoric); the work of transforming a dissertation into a book; and some possibilities for political intervention in the rhet/comp classroom. (22:14)

Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Committee on Computers and Composition,  November 1998, Revised November 2015

Digital media and work with technology has become a critical, integral part of teaching, scholarship, and service in the academy, transforming the ways faculty engage with students, conduct research, and serve their campus, local, and national communities. These guidelines—originally written in 1998 and updated in 2015—are designed to advise departments in evaluating work with digital media and technology for which there is not a convenient print analog [see also the 2012 MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media and the American Association of History and Computing Tenure Guidelines]. Thus, we offer general principles for evaluating such work, bearing in mind that the rapid pace of technological change means that each case will need to be decided on its own merits.

Digital media and work with technology are defined in this document as any work of teaching, scholarship, or service that is developed and distributed on computers. While innovations like additive manufacturing, enhanced fabrication, and other studies in materiality defy our screen-based expectations, generally digital media and work with technology is also consumed and archived on computers. Digital media work may be communicated through number of mediums, including alphabetic text, images, sounds, video, audio, graphics, and animation. Its distribution may be achieved through a variety of methods, including content management systems, personal or professional websites, blogs, social networks, digital archives, and online peer-reviewed publications.

These guidelines are intended for use by promotion and tenure committees, candidates for promotion and tenure, job and fellowship candidates, departmental hiring committees, and others assessing or evaluating digitally mediated works. The purpose of this document is to ensure that prospective hires are informed about whether and how work with technology and digital media will be considered in the tenure and promotion process, provide some general principles to promotion and tenure committees, and safeguard that candidates’ work with technology is explained accurately and evaluated fairly.

This document consists of three parts: general statements about digital media technology and its potential impact on review processes, guidelines for review committees, and guidelines for candidates for hiring, reappointment, promotion, and tenure.

In preparing these guidelines, we have tried to address the fact that work with digital media has reconfigured instruction, research, and professional service in the academy. Changes in technology require that faculty be familiar with online course management systems, open-source instructional materials, and ever-evolving digital technologies. New forms of scholarship continue to emerge in electronic environments, and while some digital media scholarship may mimic print scholarship, it also differs from print scholarship in important ways. Finally, service loads for faculty who work with technology may include managing department and organizational websites, as well as developing and maintaining listservs, databases, surveys, and online forums.

General Statements

Digital media affords new venues for learning about candidates’ work and assessing the candidate’s role within the profession.
For example, a person’s web page may offer outside reviewers a wider lens through which to view a candidate’s teaching, research, and service. While new software tools allow better ways to find citations of publications to demonstrate the impact of a candidate’s work, citation practices and other evidence of a candidate’s reach to audiences are themselves changing. For example, a candidate’s sustained and careful participation in social media venues and other collaborative academic forums like discussion lists related to their areas of pedagogical or scholarly expertise can have an impact on the profession, but that impact may be measured only by number of visitors, shares, or crosslinks.

Work with technology is often collaborative.
Those who work with digital media often work closely with other departments and campus personnel, such as computing support and librarians. In addition, teachers who work on different campuses may link their courses for collaborative research and composition between colleagues, peers, or students in several class sections. Collaborative scholarship is also common with digital media publications that require equal amounts of research, writing, and digital media design.

Work with digital media is time-consuming.
Scholars who work with digital media in the classroom must spend a portion of their time learning, enhancing, and teaching new software skills to students and even colleagues. They may find themselves providing technical support to students and colleagues outside of class and office hours, sometimes taking on responsibilities that would not reasonably be expected to fall under their purview, and that cannot be easily documented in the ways other teaching and service obligations may be.

Additionally, such scholars may find themselves taking on a disproportionate number of committee assignments as expertise with technology is increasingly in demand as classroom-, department-, and campus-level resources and functions are digitalized. Finally, faculty who work with technology in their research must keep abreast of best practices and trends in a rapidly accelerating and expanding field.

Digital media often creates access for diverse audiences, and in some cases, may provide more inclusive access for teachers and researchers.
Scholar-teachers are increasingly focused on using digital media to widen access, particularly for those with disabilities. For example, scholars may create a companion website for a conference where papers can be posted in advance for those who cannot attend and/or for participants who benefit from reading scripts (including Deaf audiences, audiences with traumatic brain injuries, etc.). They may provide rich visual description or speak-aloud functions in online media for those who cannot see or easily process text (including those with visual impairments and some learning disabilities). Teachers working in face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes may employ digital media in their instruction to improve learning for all students, but especially for students with disabilities or learning differences. While all such approaches cannot be listed here, this use of digital media seeks to fully include and empower all scholars, teachers, and students.

Guidelines for Review Committees

It is important that tenure and promotion committees work with departmental hiring committees to ensure that expectations for work with digital media and online teaching, scholarship, and service be communicated to prospective new hires. Further, prospective hires should be informed about whether and how work with digital media and online teaching, research, and service will be considered in the tenure and promotion process.

Hiring, reappointment, tenure, and promotion committees must work flexibly to find ways to acknowledge digital media work done by candidates, because the pace and scope of technological change make it difficult for any set of guidelines to account completely for the ways the technology (and thus the work done with it) is redefining our profession.

The following general guidelines are designed to aid committees in assessing work with digital media. In such assessments and evaluations, we find it important that:

• the candidate’s work be evaluated in the medium and native environment in which it was intended to be viewed. Printing off web pages, for example, is a poor substitute for evaluating those pages online.
• the candidate’s work be evaluated with respect to local conditions on campus. For example, early adopters of a particular technology on a campus generally face more obstacles than those who come later. Similarly, on campuses where support for technology is limited, individuals who work with digital media may gain experience through challenges with implementation and troubleshooting that benefit colleagues later.
• members of review committees educate themselves about the candidate’s work, and embrace the opportunity to understand new work in digital media, the candidate’s specific uses of it, and the significance of such work.

The following guidelines provide additional recommendations for assessing digital media in teaching, research, and service.

Teaching
Online and hybrid courses require significant preparation of digital materials, as well as intensive work on best practices for offering and evaluating online student work. This work can provide key innovations in teaching and student learning, and the additional pedagogical investment and time devoted to preparing these materials should be accounted for in reappointment, tenure, and promotion reviews. If qualified reviewers are not available on the candidate’s home campus, outside reviewers should be asked to provide observations and evaluations of the candidate’s online teaching, e.g., online course management, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), course websites, discussion boards, or blogs.

Courses offered in the classroom often have substantial and significant online components, such as course websites, electronic portfolios, and blogs, which extend student learning. Candidates who teach in traditional classroom settings, but who employ digital media technologies as a part of their course instruction, should receive assessments of their pedagogical use of digital media as a part of the review of their teaching.

Research
Intellectual work with digital media should demonstrate similar academic standards as other scholarly endeavors: it should be innovative (offering new research, insights, processes, or discoveries; or providing potentially productive syntheses of existing research), subject to scholarly peer review, and distributed in appropriate venues.

Intellectual work with digital media should be evaluated by experts who are knowledgeable about the use of that technology. If qualified reviewers are not available on the candidate’s home campus, outside reviewers should be asked to provide evaluations of the candidate’s digital media work, e.g., instructional software, video productions, tool innovations, or digital scholarship.

Service
Department administrators should ensure that the full scope of service performed by candidates who specialize in work with technology and digital media is apparent to the institution’s review committees. While digital media scholarship may be highly visible, digital media service may be less visible to department colleagues as it typically involves solitary work managing department and organizational websites, as well as developing and maintaining listservs, databases, archives, surveys, and online forums.

For more information, see the “Tenure and Promotion Cases for Composition Faculty Who Work with Technology” website at /cccc/committees/7cs/tenurepromotioncases.

Guidelines for the Candidate

It is crucial for candidates whose teaching, research, or service relies on or incorporates technology to clearly articulate the nature and value of their work, and not to assume a review audience that is already familiar with certain technologies. Such guidance begins during the hiring process and continues through the review process for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.

During the hiring process, when candidates first negotiate for new academic positions, they should ask about whether and how credit for use of technology in teaching, service, and digital media scholarship is awarded in the reappointment, tenure, and promotion process. They should also inquire about resources and support for work with technology, meeting with technology support services, if necessary, during the campus visit, and negotiating hardware and software packages as a part of the job offer.

Candidates should be prepared to explain and advocate for the value and complexity of their work with digital media, rather than offer only the final “product” (such as a website, social media platform, interactive research article, etc.) for review.

It is important that candidates find ways to situate their work in terms of the traditional areas of teaching, research, and service, and also to explain the ways in which their work overlaps with or redefines those categories. The burden of understanding work with digital media, the candidate’s specific uses of it, and the importance of such work is the responsibility of the committee, but the candidate is uniquely positioned to argue for the merit and innovation of an approach.

It is important for candidates to find others on campus who also work with technology, and to network with those colleagues. Faculty outside of the candidate’s own department can help to contextualize digital media work in terms that are important to the institution as a whole and can attest to the value of the work done by the candidate.

Finally, candidates for new academic positions, reappointment, tenure, and promotion should also familiarize themselves with professional statements, like this one, about the increasing importance of digital media work within the field of composition. Professional statements like those below can help candidates for new positions, reappointment, tenure, and promotion better articulate the value of their work, locate that work within current conversations within the field, and provide review committees with guidelines for evaluating their work with technology. Links to some of those statements are included below.

Conference on College Composition and Communication

• Beginning Composition and Rhetoric Faculty Guidelines
• Scholarship in Composition: Guidelines for Faculty, Deans, and Department Chairs
• Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction
• Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments

Two-Year College English Association

• Research and Scholarship in the Two-Year College

National Council of Teachers of English

• Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies
• Policy Research Brief on 21st-Century Literacies
• Conference on English Education Beliefs about Technology and the Preparation of English Teachers

Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project

• Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing

Modern Language Association

• Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media

American Association of History and Computing

• Tenure Guidelines

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.