Name: Jason Snart
Title: Professor of English
Institution: College of DuPage
Location: Glen Ellyn, IL
Phone: 630 942 2033
Email: snartj@cod.edu
Skype: Professor.Jason.Snart
Website: http://www.cod.edu/academics/divisions/liberal_arts/faculty/snart.aspx
Name: Beth L. Hewett
Title: CCCC OWI Committee Co-chair; Associate Assistant Professor
Institution: University of Maryland University College
Location: Forest Hill, MD
Phone: 443-904-6424
Email: beth.hewett@gmail.com; beth@defendandpublish.com
Skype: beth.hewett1
Website: www.bethhewett.com
This committee is charged to:
Charge 1: Continue to identify, examine, and research online writing instruction (OWI) principles and effective strategies in online writing centers and in blended, hybrid, and distance-based writing classrooms, specifically composition classrooms but also including other college-writing or writing-intensive courses.
Charge 2: Continue to identify, examine, and research effective practices for using OWI specifically for English language learners, individuals with physical and/or learning disabilities, and students with socioeconomic challenges in coordination with related CCCC committees.
Charge 3: Maintain and update the Position Statement on the OWI Principles and Effective Practices.
Charge 4: In consultation with the Assessment Committee and other relevant groups, review and update the 2004 Position Statement “Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments.”
Charge 5: Identify and/or create instructional and professional development materials and strategies to be posted on the Committee’s Web-based OWI Open Resource Webpage.
Charge 6: Provide the writing instructional community with access to information about OWI-specific faculty and program development that can assist with legitimizing online teaching for professional development, remuneration, and advancement purposes.
Charge 7: Share effective practices in OWI with the CCCC membership in various formats, including instructional workshops at CCCC conferences and events as well as other professional venues.
The CCCC Committee for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) is focusing its efforts over the next year on research about student experiences and expectations in hybrid and fully online writing courses, particularly in regard to accessibility. This fall, the committee has launched a pilot version of a survey for OWI students. At the 2016 CCCC in Houston, the Committee will offer several opportunities for members of the writing instruction community to participate in its work, including a half-day pre-conference Wednesday workshop. The committee and its 35-member Expert Panel continue to explore faculty and administrative aspects of OWI as well. It maintains the OWI Open Resource (OR). Through the OR, writing teachers can share specific teaching practices to help each other teach writing online. This work follows from the committee’s publication of A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for OWI in spring 2013 and the 2015 book Foundational Practices for OWI (Parlor Press), which was co-edited by committee members Beth Hewett and Kevin DePew.
Initial Report of the CCCC Committee for Best Practice in Online Writing Instruction (PDF), April 12, 2011
Fully Online Distance-Based Courses Survey Results
Hybrid/Blended Courses Survey Results
Read a review of the session we presented at the 2009 CCCC Convention titled “CCCC Committee Research into Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI).”
The CCCC Committee on Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction has gathered, reviewed, and annotated webtexts, articles, and books from 1980 through early 2008 that help us better understand those approaches and strategies that are most effective in OWI and compiled them into an annotated bibliography (pdf).
In November 2008, educators were introduced to the “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education,” and our concept of how to deal with copyright issues in the classroom has, literally, been transformed. As the official policy of NCTE related to fair use in the teaching of English, it is a document worth our attention as students learn to comprehend and compose texts utilizing a variety of forms of media.
“Copyright law and fair use are designed for all of us,” explains Renee Hobbs, Founder of Temple University’s Media Education Lab, and one of the co-authors of the code of best practices. In an interview with me at the 2009 NCTE Convention in Philadelphia, PA, Hobbs suggests that “It will actually interfere with your rights if you don’t learn how to apply fair use to your work.”
While many of us assume that copyright is designed to protect the rights of owners, Hobbs explains that it is also meant to protect the rights of users in order to promote creativity, innovation, and the spread of knowledge. Many educators may not realize that our own reasoning and critical judgment are core components of fair use and, according to the Code of Best Practices, “Copyright law does not exactly specify how to apply fair use, and that gives the fair use doctrine a flexibility that works to the advantage of users” (p. 7).
Most of us have heard about fair use “guidelines.” We may rely on charts that describe how we can use 10% of this kind of work or use 30 seconds of another type, but the unfortunate outcome of these documents is that they actually restrict our use of copyrighted materials in ways that the law never intended. In fact, quite the opposite is true; Hobbs argues that the guideline charts that educators reply on are unduly restrictive. How we apply our rights for fair use depends not on how much of a piece of copyrighted work that we use, but instead on the ways in which we use it.
Hobbs believes that the change in our thinking about copyright that must occur can be stated quite simply: “For many educators, the big ‘aha’ is that, “oh, those guidelines aren’t the law?’” Indeed, the guidelines were constructed mainly through the work of the media companies themselves, and do not accurately reflect all the rights that users have when transforming copyrighted materials.
Thus, Hobbs, along with Peter Jaszi, from The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and Patricia Aufderheide, from The Center for Social Media, created the code of best practices. Copyright law, as many of these previous guideline documents tend to suggest, is not static with certain limits on the kind or amount of material used. Instead, fair use requires judgment.
Moreover, as educators, can we leave discussions of copyright only in the norms of academia; even though we ask students to cite their sources as a means of attribution, a common expectation among academics. The code of best practices instead outlines five principles of fair use, one having particular implications for teachers and students that will be outlined below, and invite educators to think about copyright and fair use through a new lens: transformative use.
The key to applying fair use is understanding the concept of “transformative” use, and Hobbs argues that this is central to the fair use provision of United States Copyright Law. Educators are probably familiar with the “four factors” of fair use, which, according to Wikipedia’s article on Fair Use, include:
These are the factors that have guided the construction of many of the copyright guides noted above. But, there is more to fair use than just determining whether the use of a work aligns with these four principles.
For Hobbs, wrapping our heads around the concept of transformative use is essential if we are to truly understand when and how to apply fair use in our own work and, more importantly, if our students are to apply it to their own work. In order for us to use copyrighted materials, we need to apply a set of reasoned questions about how and why we are using the work.
In short, to use copyrighted materials under fair use provisions, the benefit to society needs to outweigh the costs to the copyright holder. If a copyrighted work is simply retransmitted, then it is a violation of copyright law. But, if the user “transforms” the material in some way, repurposing it in a new media composition, for instance, then fair use likely applies. Again, to quote from the Code of Best Practices, there are two central questions to ask about transformative use:
If we as educators can invite our students to think critically about their use of copyrighted materials in the process of creating their own digital compositions, and help them understand what it means to build on the work of another in a transformative way, then we can open up thought-provoking discussions about how we compose in the 21st century. One particular principle from the Code of Best Practices, and a tool developed by Hobbs and her colleagues, invites us to do just that.
Five principles are outlined in the Code of Best Practices, including discussions of how to create curricular materials and distribute students’ work. One of particular importance to teachers who are asking students to compose multimedia texts is Principle Four: “Student Use of Copyrighted Materials in Their Own Academic and Creative Work.” It states:
Because media literacy education cannot thrive unless learners themselves have the opportunity to learn about how media functions at the most practical level, educators using concepts and techniques of media literacy should be free to enable learners to incorporate, modify, and re-present existing media objects in their own classroom work. (p. 13 in PDF)
This principle encourages teachers and students to think about how they can repurpose existing media for their own compositions. However, it is not an excuse for simply copying and pasting the work of others, or taking it whole without changing it in any way from the original. Both are a violation of the law as well as the norms of academic honesty. In fact, the principle goes on to state that “Students’ use of copyrighted material should not be a substitute for creative effort. Students should be able to understand and demonstrate, in a manner appropriate to their developmental level, how their use of a copyrighted work repurposes or transforms the original” (p. 14 in PDF).
The key to transformative use is thinking critically about how the original material is employed in the new work, and Hobbs argues that getting to deeper questions about how and why to use copyrighted work is where teachers can help their students most. “Most teachers know how to deepen a conversation through asking the ‘why’ question,” she states, and she invites teachers to listen, probe, pair up critical friends, and teach students to support and challenge each other as they think about using copyrighted work. Hobbs and her colleagues and the Media Education Lab have created a thinking guide for reasoning fair use, and encourage students to think about each media element that they repurpose and how it aligns with fair use guidelines.
This process of critical engagement is important in developing a strong classroom community, and in creating media-savvy students. “Teachers give students the power to bring their lived experience with mass media, popular culture, and digital media into the room and students feel valued,” believes Hobbs. Because contemporary media culture does not typically show a respect for civil dialogue, she continues, we have to really practice how to create a respectful learning environment. “Students can learn to reflect on each other’s work when they are invited to offer feedback and when we teach about how to offer feedback to help them develop those skills where we can model disagreeing respectfully.” One strategy she employs, for instance, is to have students take guided notes as they listen and respond to each other’s projects.
Thus, Hobbs suggests that teachers design projects that connect school skills — such as critical thinking, participating, questioning, composing — to something personally meaningful in students’ lives from outside of school. Rarely do they get to compare and contrast the lived experience of popular culture with academic culture, and teaching them to create their own media, and examine copyright implications in the process, allows them to do so. This process can be “really powerful because of the way it taps into students’ own expertise and knowledge,” she concludes.
Given that students are creating products, this inevitably leads to questions about assessment. Hobbs believes that English teaches are well suited to the task, as we are always asking about audience, purpose, and whether a writer’s use of rhetorical devices helps him or her reach a goal. She strongly believes that we need to measure more than the superficial qualities of form and dig deeper into understanding how and why students are repurposing and creating content in new ways. “There is a form/content dynamic. If all we assess is the form, then we are doing students a disservice. We can’t just assess the prettiness of the work, we need to assess the content of the work.” In short, don’t just count words, slides, or images used, but engage your students in broader discussions about the purpose, audience, and effectiveness of their work.
Hobbs and her colleagues have created a variety of resources for teachers to use related to fair use. First, the Media Education Lab has a variety of multimedia materials and lesson plans for teachers to explore and use with their students. Filled with lesson plans, informational videos, and other multimedia curriculum resources, this website is the first stop for teachers who are considering how to incorporate copyrighted material into their own work, as well as for students who may use copyrighted work in their own new media compositions. One particular video, User’s Rights, Section 107 by Michael Robb Grieco, highlights the ways in which transformative use works, all to the tune of an upbeat alternative rock song.
Other resources include two wikis. A consistently updated wiki, The End of Copyright Confusion, shares resources related to presentations about Code of Best Practices. Also, award-winning librarian and edublogger Joyce Valenza has a set of resources for copyright friendly works available on her Copyright Friendly wiki. Hobbs and Valenza both encourage teachers to learn more about the Creative Commons license and how students can build on the work of others — as well as share their own — in ways that extend the rights of owners and users of copyrighted work. Understanding the difference between works that are copyrighted, public domain, copyright friendly, and Creative Commons licensed can help students make good choices about how to find and integrate the materials of others into their own work, as well as make choices about how they want to license their own materials.
Finally, in addition to the Media Education Lab website and the wikis, one other web-based resource can provide teachers with an introduction to these concepts. By listening to the Teachers Teaching Teachers episode, “Opening Up to Fair Use,” with an interview from Peter Jaszi, teachers can become familiar with the idea of fair use and gain insights with Jaszi’s brief overview of the Code of Best Practices.
As we invite students to create new media compositions, and use existing copyrighted materials to do so, we need approach their work with the critical lens that fair use allows. Through discussions of fair use and the transformative nature of their own work, we ask them to be critical and creative thinkers, engaging them in discussions with one another about the ways in which they remix the work of others. Also, we need to reiterate that fair use does not mean unlicensed distribution of copyrighted materials. Teaching our students how to repurpose copyrighted materials in a transformative manner is the essence of applying fair use guidelines, and is an imperative skill when teaching them how to compose with new media.
The concept of fair use has the power to transform our teaching in a digital age, and both we and our students will be better readers, writers, and thinkers when we adopt a fair use approach in our classrooms.
Author Information
Troy Hicks
CCCC-IP K-12 Representative
Assistant Professor of English
Director, Chippewa River Writing Project
Central Michigan University
Kim D. Gainer
Radford University
A few days ago my daughter was in her bedroom working on a paper about the French painter Edgar Degas. “You should go to the library,” I called from the kitchen. “I am in the library,” she hollered back. Clearly, my daughter and I have a different understanding of what it means to be “in” a library. Her university (which also happens to be my university) subscribes to over two-hundred databases, including many full-text ones, and after two years my daughter has yet to find it necessary to physically check out a journal. In some ways, this is all to the good. Our university’s bricks-and-mortar library, while a respectable size for an institution with 9,500 students, is still a finite structure with only enough shelving to accommodate a fraction of the journals that my daughter can access via online database. She has, moreover, become quite adept at making use of this type of resource. For one thing, she is skillful at picking out the specific databases that would be most useful for the particular project that she is working on. For another, she has developed the knack of combining search terms that will return hits likeliest to be relevant to her topic. As a mother, I find myself, as we say in my family, “grinning like an idiot” in my pride at her skill in navigating through various databases, each with different coverage, each set up slightly differently from the others.
On the other hand, as an instructor at a university that has experienced significant budget cuts, I worry about the cost of those databases. I also worry about the fact that, once our students graduate, some of them will no longer have easy access to these resources. In some cases, public libraries have joined in consortia designed to control costs, for example TexShare; still, the number of databases our graduates are able to access is likely to be significantly fewer than the number they can utilize now. Moreover, after they graduate, some of our graduates may need to redefine their understanding of what it means to be “in” a library as not all public libraries are able to support remote access to the databases to which they do subscribe. That fact will also reduce our graduates’ access to resources. While enrolled at the university, they do not need to subtract travel time from the time available to devote to their project. In addition, they are able to access databases via the university’s library portal twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
In some online communities, it is not uncommon to see a blogger or a commenter broadcasting an appeal for a copy of an article published in a journal to which he or she does not have ready access even via interlibrary loan. The rationale for such requests is that the article is behind a pay wall and that the would-be reader finds the charge for access to one article to be excessive. (Indeed, charges of thirty dollars or more are not uncommon.) When owners of databases have locked up access to a journal, it is probably inevitable that readers unaffiliated with subscribing institutions are going to be faced with what are arguably excessive fees for access to individual articles.
Open access may be at least in part a solution to the problems described above. Open access resources are available free to any reader with access to the web. Of course, this fact does not mean that the resource is “free” in all respects. Someone or some organization must bear the expense of providing access to such resources. However, the cost is shifted from the reader. One way of doing so is through online institutional depositories open to the public. Another way is by charging the author a fee for publication (which may be subsidized by grant money or by the author’s institution). This author-pays model is the one that has been adopted by the non-profit Public Library of Science (PLoS), which in the space of a decade has become a major online publisher in several scientific disciplines.
One problem with relying upon open access at the present moment is the unevenness of coverage. Some disciplines are embracing open access more rapidly than others. The chart below shows the percentage of articles by area available via open access during a recent period. Open access availability ranged from a high of forty-five percent of articles in mathematics to a low of ten percent in the arts. (The humanities, including literature, came in at sixteen percent.)
| Math | 45% |
| Earth & Space Science | 38% |
| Social Sciences | 36% |
| Professional Fields | 31% |
| Psychology | 28% |
| Physics | 27% |
| Engineering and Technology | 24% |
| Biology | 24% |
| Health | 17% |
| Humanities | 16% |
| Clinical Medicine | 14% |
| Biomedical Research | 13% |
| Chemistry | 11% |
| Arts | 10% |
Another problem is that open access portals do not always succeed in matching the subscription databases when it comes to facilitating searches. Subscription databases often allow for the simultaneous searching of a plethora of journals. This consolidation of resources in one place has a monopoly effect on subscription fees, but it also is what makes the databases appealing to users. Moreover, the extensive indexing provided by subscription databases is something that their owners can point to as constituting “value added.”
For the potential of open access to be fully realized, funding models will have to be clarified, coverage within the disciplines will have to be increased, portals that consolidate resources will have to be created, and systems for indexing articles will have to be put in place. The task may seem rather daunting. At the same time, powerful forces are encouraging movement toward open access, including governmental regulations and institutional and professional pushback against high fees for subscription databases. When the success of the Public Library of Science, as well as that of the crowd-sourced encyclopedia Wikipedia, is considered, it is not impossible to believe that within a decade readers, whether or not affiliated with well-equipped libraries, will be able to access the resources that they need and want.
For additional IP Caucus/Committee coverage of open-access issues, see the following:
Characterization of Institution
Private Liberal-Arts College [quite small!]
Characterization of Department
B.A. in English Literature
How would this case turn out in your department? At your university/college?
To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever presented an on-line publication as a credit for tenure or promotion in my department. I believe that I have several colleagues who are techno-phobes, making minimal use of any electronic technology [we can’t assume that email memos reach everyone!], and there’s another contingent like me, who can manage email and a few other processes but do not routinely create course web pages or do a lot of work with students on line. There is a third group, probably 30-40% of the department, however, who are into instructional technology in a big way altho not [yet?] publishing on line. Most of those in this third group are untenured, however.
Nevertheless, I think Thomas would get tenure in our department. Some of my colleagues might be uneasy about the all-on-line publications, but I don’t think they could get away with the kind of response reported of the curmudgeons in your case scenario because the rest of us would not let them. I can’t imagine that we would direct a junior person to “publish properly,” meaning, in print, especially if we had hired him/her precisely for technological knowledge.
I do think we would be concerned about whether the on-line journals were referee’d, whether the presses doing on-line publication were reputable, etc., and since most of us would not feel competent to pass on those matters ourselves, I can imagine that we would solicit outside letters in this case, which we do not normally do. We would be very concerned that the work be professionally judged to be of top quality, regardless of the medium of publication.
What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Thomas? Which did she/he fulfill? Fail?
At my own small, private Liberal Arrts school, department chairs have no formal responsibilities to tenure candidates other than to see to it that Statutory procedures [including observance of deadlines] are followed. If Thomas was going to get in trouble because of publishing only online, here the Department Chair would have no formal obligation to tell her.
Of course, the Chair would have a moral obligation to tell her. It is considered very bad form to tell a pre-tenure person that everything is fine in his/her biennial evaluations, and then sock him/her with tenure-denying objections in the tenure report. However, though bad form, it is perfectly legal to do so according to our procedures [in fact, that is exactly what happened to me when I came up for tenure, but the suddenly objecting people were in the minority and I got tenure anyway].
Seems to me that the head in your example should have done more to defuse the curmudgeons’ response. Were I to meet with that response here, I would probably go to the academic dean seeking institutional guidelines for this type of publication and let the dean play the heavy in bringing the curmudgeons into line. Our dean is EXTREMELY eager to get faculty onto the web for instructional technology; to approve on-line publication is a logical extension. The head should have addressed the opposition immediately after it surfaced.
What are the Personnel Committee’s responsibilities toward Thomas? Which did they fulfill? Fail?
We have no Personnel Committee.
What are the responsibilities of the Dean? Which did she/he fulfill? Fail?
[At my school (small, private, liberal arts college)], the Dean’s responsibilities to tenure candidates consist in little more than telling them [candidates] what the deadlines are and also telling them if any unsolicited letters have turned up in their files [these you may see, solicited letters you may not see]. The Dean also deals with requests from people to alter the tenure clock; department chairs are not empowered to make decisions on that.
What are Thomas’s responsibilities? Which did she/he fulfill? Fail
[I]t sounds like both the head and Thomas, after discovering that this opposition existed, basically forgot about it and hoped it would go away. Thomas evidently did not attempt to obtain any print publications and the head did nothing to educate the curmudgeons.
Since Thomas knew the opposition existed, maybe she should have attempted to educate them once she realized the head was going to do nothing. At the very least, she might suggest to the head that outside letters be solicited when she came up for tenure.
Depending on how bold she is, Thomas might also have tried to build a bridge to a powerful dean herself. The case makes her sound like an invaluable teacher of both undergrads and graduate students, something deans generally can recognize and reward. Then, even if the curmudgeons succeeded in getting a minority negative report out on her at tenure time, she might sail through at the next level. If the curmudgeons managed to carry the day at the department level of course, that would make it more difficult.
See above.
Pavel Zemliansky, Ph.D.
University of Central Florida
In July of this year, I attended a two-day meeting of the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), in Washington, DC. The meeting was devoted to the problem of rising textbook costs and to finding ways of addressing these increases. I was invited to the event as a co-editor (with Charlie Lowe) of the open access series of peer-reviewed composition volumes Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. The meeting was sponsored by the publisher Flat World Knowledge and attended by its president Eric Frank. Participants also included Creative Commons’ Director of Global Learning Cable Green, several faculty members from DC-area colleges and universities, and leaders of area student groups concerned about the cost of textbooks.
According to the Student PIRGs’ website, an average student spends about nine hundred dollars per academic year on textbooks, and textbook costs are rising four times the rate of inflation. The primary purpose of the meeting was to launch a campaign that the organizers call “The Textbook Rebellion.” The campaigners are currently on a national tour promoting the cause of stopping the rising costs of college textbooks and educating faculty and students about open access and low-cost alternatives available to them.The campaign employs some clever tools and tactics, from the “Mr. $200 Textbook” character to social media and online petitions.
During the first day of the two-day event, attendees gave presentations on their work in the open educational resource movement and how the educational products they create can help alleviate the problem of textbook costs without sacrificing the quality of those educational materials. For example, when presenting on Writing Spaces, I emphasized the idea that all contribution to the series are peer-reviewed by experts in the field of rhetoric and composition and that we, as editors, see the peer review process as a necessary condition forestablishing and maintaining the quality and reputation of our publications within the profession.The second day of the meeting was devoted to the development of strategies and tactics for “The Textbook Rebellion,” including the collaborative writing of a petition to be distributed nation-wide by e-mail. The complete text of the petition can be found on the organization’s website.
Clearly, any time there is conversation about open access educational resources, intellectual property issues are bound to come up. Using alternative models of creating and disseminating educational resources inevitably demands an approach to intellectual property that is different from that used by mainstream commercial publishers. However, at this meeting, the primary focus was the reduction of textbook costs, and the explicit discussion of IP issues played only a secondary role. In fact, as the meeting progressed, the group reached a consensus that in order for the “rebellion” to be successful, it must carry a single and simple message, and that this message should be about lowering the costs of textbooks for students.It was also agreed that, when recommending a non-commercial alternative educational resource, priority should be given to open access resources. When such open-access resources are not available, other, low-cost alternatives should be considered. The reasoning behind this approach is that the campaign would both educate faculty and students about the availability of free or low-cost textbooks while simultaneously putting pressure on commercial publishers to reign in the costs of their products.
As a university professor, I found attending the meeting to be useful, and not only because I was able to contribute to a worthy cause. The event also allowed me to hear the opinions of some very engaged and articulate students about the costs of textbooks. It also forced me to compare and juxtapose what we, as faculty, value in a college textbook. To be sure, most of our students are interested in learning with high-quality resources, but in this time of economic uncertainty, the cost factor seems to trump a lot of other considerations. These other considerations may include things like textbook supplements (CDs, test compilations, and so on) that might seem very important or necessary to the instructor but that also significantly raise the cost of a textbook.
The student PIRGs and The Textbook Rebellion have certainly taken up a worthy cause. Textbook costs are a serious concern for both students and faculty, and high-quality free or low cost alternatives are becoming increasingly available in many disciplines. In the early stages of educating the public about these issues, creating and spreading unified and simple messages about the cost of educational materials is important. However, as the movement matures and develops, it will be very important for its leaders to include such larger issues as intellectual property and maintaining high quality of free and low-cost educational resources in their campaigns. If the goal of the movement is to bring about change by educating the public about this issue, then such education would be most effective and long-lasting if the problem is examined in all its complexity.
This column is sponsored by the Intellectual Property Committee of the CCCC and the CCCC-Intellectual Property Caucus. The IP Caucus maintains a mailing list. If you would like to receive notices of programs sponsored by the Caucus or of opportunities to submit articles to either this column or to an annual report on intellectual property issues, please contact kgainer@radford.edu.
Teresa Thomas, a new Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition, has just been hired by University X to assume the position of Assistant Professor of English. Her specialty in computers and writing was enormously appealing to a department that had so far failed to distinguish itself in electronic media. In hiring her, the head knew that the graduate students would be well served by her technological expertise, and she herself expected Thomas to be able to contribute substantively to the wider field of rhetoric and composition. Thomas had, after all, a fine background in classical rhetoric, and the head envisioned her as doing the same kind of exemplary scholarship, say, as that of a Kathleen Welch or a Richard Lanham. The committee had been very impressed with her dissertation, although one or two had questioned its form. It was one of the first hypertextual theses to appear and was, of course, published entirely online. The Rhetoric of Online Scholarship was surely timely and the head found it very publishable. And she also knew that both the faculty and graduate students would really benefit from Teresa Thomas’s contributions to the department. Her 2/2 teaching load should also provide her with the time to work on her research. Or so the reasoning went.
In her first years, Thomas published widely. There was an webtext (an article) that appeared in Kairos,a refereed online journal, as well as a multimedia piece which appeared in the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), another refereed online journal. Now her dissertation was also being considered by Athens University Press as one of their major online reference works. In addition, she had written two grants-one to the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for $150,000. and another to the University Computer Funding Board for $75,000. Both grants were funded. The first allowed her and the graduate students to study how undergraduates adapt software such as FrontPage, Macromedia’s Dreamweaver,and Photoshop for their own Web creations; the second gave them the computers for the department’s first fully networked lab. Two dissertations that Thomas directed based on the FIPSE grant were also underway, and graduate students flocked to her and her classes on a regular basis.
She was similarly impressive with the undergraduates. Her classes on writing and technology were consistently over-enrolled, and she was also a tremendous hit in teaching another course cross-listed with Women’s Studies on women and technology. And, in addition to her teaching, she had also organized a reading group on Online Rhetorical Bodies, which was contributing to her ongoing interest in all things rhetorical. By the time Thomas came up for her third-year review, she and her colleagues believed that they had all been right in their choices. Thomas was in all ways a superior colleague, teacher, and scholar, and the department was treating Thomas well.
In her third-year review papers, Thomas was praised by two internal referees. She had afterall stellar teaching evaluations, two online articles, a contract for an online book, and two grants. The third referee, however, wanted to know why none of the publications, forthcoming or otherwise, were print-based. Could one really expect to receive tenure at a premier research university with no print publications? And, yes, there were the grants—very nice, of course—(they mean a great deal in the sciences he guessed), but why was everything online? A very difficult and contentious faculty meeting ensued in which several judged Thomas as having produced essentially no scholarship or at best scholarship of a spurious kind. The head was directed to speak sternly, but helpfully, to Teresa so that she might use the next few years to publish properly.
When the head apprised Thomas of some of the department’s worries, she was certain Thomas would understand. A few well-placed articles to accompany the online publications was surely something Thomas could achieve. And Thomas could talk to Athens University Press about producing a print copy of the reference work based on her dissertation. They had a good talk, and Thomas seemed amenable to the head’s suggestions. Thomas continued to go happily about her day-to-day work, perhaps with a tad less enthusiasm, but she nevertheless continued to excel in teaching and good citizenship activities.
She also continued to publish. During the next two years, she was approached by Houghton Hall to do an online textbook. They offered her a lucrative contract for work that Thomas was essentially already doing online with her students. Teresa truly believed that in this 21st century the Web is every bit as critical a medium for literacy activities as books, paper, pens and pencils had been in the 20th century. She had a passion for experimenting with the new technologies. For the FIPSE grant, for example, she had created a Web site and database that served researchers around the country and broke new ground in demonstrating the potential of a living, flexible archive.
When Teresa Thomas came up for tenure three years later, she had all the requisite kinds of publications and her outside letters were extraordinary. She had yet, however, to publish anything in print. Even her syllabi were all online.
Tenure and Promotion Cases for Composition Faculty Who Work with Technology
Research I University
Characterization of Department
Ph.D. granted in English
M.A .granted in English
B.A. granted in English
How would this case turn out in your department? At your university/college?
I think that the department would grant tenure to Teresa. (The College response may follow the same that you present in the scenario.) She obviously is productive within her area of specialization. Not only that, she has performed productively in the three key areas assessed: teaching, research, publication–even though online. Whether some adminsitrative personnel and faculty are ready for online publications or not, they are fighting a losing battle. That should be a very plain and clear message to academia; the world has already contracted Web-mania, including colleges and universities. The Web is the present and the future! (Duh-h-h-h) Even for the College of Arts and Letters here at MSU, we realize that money talks. Teresa has done very well with the grant writing and funding, using students to help conduct research and bringing computers to the campus for a lab (even though I do not know how many computers she purchased for the research). She gets “superior” teaching evaluations from both undergrads and grads, which some people still aspire to do! She was a vehicle to bring distinction to the dept.’s electronic media, which she accomplished in part.
What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Thomas? Which did she/he fulfill? Fail?
The dept. Head must remain abreast of the reasons Thomas was hired. I think the Head failed to support Thomas the first-time around, standing up for the technological advancements that Thomas was to bring to the dept.
What are the Personnel Committee’s responsibilities toward Thomas? Which did they fulfill? Fail?
The Personnel Committee is responsible for ensuring that adequate and appropriate mentoring has occurred and must take additional steps to protect and help Thomas successfully get tenure, even though her case is unique. The Committee fulfilled a portion of its responsibilities, yet seems reticent to explore and break new ground for publication possibilities, especially in the dawning of a new age of technology
What are the responsibilities of the Dean? Which did she/he fulfill? Fail?
The Dean must be abreast of situations such as this one that have actually taken place at other universities/colleges throughout the U.S. She must explore the other cases (assuming they do exist) and observe resolutions/solutions taken. After an extensive and thoughtful review, the Dean should make an appropriate decision. A full disclosure and understanding of the case at hand is requisite, of course.
What are Thomas’s responsibilities? Which did she fulfill? Fail?
Thomas must recognize that she will need to publish some work in print. We have not become totally a Web-based society, especially as it pertains to academia.
What went wrong? What went right?
See above.
Student-centered pedagogy can benefit from a perspective of devised theater that sees trust-building and responsibility-sharing as the bases of successful project-based work. This article summarizes various approaches from devised theater, a collaborative approach to theater-making, as well as performance theory and improvisation. It offers pedagogical insights from a case study of The Devised Theater Project, a class and set of student-created performances at Stanford University in 2008-9.
Full Text
Author:
Kevin DiPirro is a lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University where he teaches composition, performance, and playwriting. His plays have been performed in New York City, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. He is currently a Hewlett Foundation writer for American Theatre magazine.
Copyright © 1998 - 2025 National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved in all media.
1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096 Phone: 217-328-3870 or 877-369-6283
Looking for information? Browse our FAQs, tour our sitemap and store sitemap, or contact NCTE
Read our Privacy Policy Statement and Links Policy. Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Use
