Writing & Rhetoric Spotlight

All seniors in the Writing & Rhetoric major complete an electronic portfolio through our capstone course, WRT 495. If you visited Lippitt Hall at 5:30 pm on December 16th, you saw a group of six accomplished and proud Writing & Rhetoric majors presenting their impressive e-portfolios. This class, Peter Collins, Bryan Johnson, Ray Mathieu, Justin Mockler, Kate Stone, and George Whaley, marked the third year for graduating our pioneer Writing & Rhetoric majors. Their professor, Dr. Jeremiah Dyehouse, says of their efforts, "Unlike many student portfolios, which demand only limited decision-making about the ways in which the writings will be presented, these portfolios result from a rich process of decision-making, from the pixel up, as it were. For this reason, among others, I am proud to have played a role in their appearance here today."

The students have revised and polished their e-portfolios since September with an eye toward their future careers. Writing & Rhetoric congratulates its hard-working class of 2009.

Every other spring, URI community members gather in the Writing Center, 4th floor Roosevelt Hall, to look at and listen to the research proposals of graduate students in WRT 647, Seminar in Research Methods.

The class, led by Prof. Mike Pennell of Writing and Rhetoric, spends the semester designing original research projects using a variety of methods, as well as learning the value of mixed methods research and critical methodologies for the study of all types of writing.

Proposal topics have ranged from technology-integrated writing classrooms to links between writing and gender to the connection between video games and writing. Equally varied, the proposed research methods have ranged from qualitative observation, interview, and archival research to more quantitative methods such as surveys.

The poster presentation event began in 1999 under the instruction of Prof. Libby Miles, now chair of Writing and Rhetoric. “A great research design makes sense to different audiences and addresses questions worth answering,” said Prof. Miles, who attended the most recent session. “Each year we do this, the work gets better and better.”

Writing and Rhetoric students are no strangers to a public audience for their writing projects. In addition to its graduate offerings, the department’s several upper level writing classes feature both occasions for and writing technologies that support students’ writing as both community-inspired and community-building.

Has the library seemed particularly bustling lately? Perhaps that's because of the outreach activity of Humanities Reference Librarian Jim Kinnie and his staff. In cooperation with Writing and Rhetoric at URI, the library hosts a research orientation for students in the Early Credit High School Program, which offers Writing 104 to high school seniors at 24 high schools across Rhode Island for early college credit. Since the students write the same assignments and meet the same criteria as students in WRT 104 on campus, they also participate in a library orientation session to acquaint them with academic research and databases.

Program Coordinator Jean Zipke notes the students' enthusiasm and appreciation for the lessons they learn from the library staff. She says of the library visit, "there's nothing as exciting as hearing an entire high school class exclaim 'Wow!' when they see what they can find at the URI library."

The Early Credit High School Program and University Library offers a wealth of sources and information to the students, helping them to shape their projects for class, as well as get a glimpse of what classes will be like when they enter college. Dean Winifred Brownell, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, describes the ECHSP as "an exemplary outreach program for the university." And, of course, a "field trip" to URI is always enjoyable.

Among the hustle and bustle of one of URI's smallest departments - with one of the fastest growing majors and highest enrollments in its first-year course offerings - Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Kim Hensley Owens has begun to coordinate the newly reinstated Friday afternoon "Brown Bags." This series of presentations, talks, and workshops are given by Writing & Rhetoric faculty and have gained in momentum and reputation since last year.

Brown Bags, held on various Fridays at 1pm in Roosevelt Hall's 4th floor Writing Center, have played host to a number of faculty research presentations including those from Prof. Owens, Prof. Michael Pennell, Prof. Jeremiah Dyehouse, and Prof. Libby Miles. More recently, Profs. Nedra Reynolds and Michael Pennell held a teaching-with-technology training to introduce and explain two different types of software to complement writing staff's teaching practices. Professor Hensley Owens welcomes the variety of presentations, saying: "I have thoroughly enjoyed the breadth of presentation-types, which have expanded from the original plans for research and teaching to include professional development. We've also begun to have graduate students practice their job talks as brownbags, providing them with needed practice and feedback, and attendees with up-to-the-minute research findings."

Brown bags are held in the casual atmosphere of the Writing Center and usually draw a crowd of a dozen or so people. Bryna Siegel, the first graduate student to present a portion of her dissertation research at a Brown Bag, notes that “it was a great chance for me to practice talking about my work in preparation for the job market and dissertation defense as well as a nice opportunity to discuss what I've been working on with the support and collegiality of my peers and faculty.

Brown Bags have also featured several faculty research presentations, including those from Professors Hensley Owens, Pennell, Dyehouse, Miles, and Shamoon. More recently, Professors Reynolds and Pennell held a teaching-with-technology training to introduce and explain two different types of software to complement writing staff’s teaching practices. Past workshops have included CV-building and CCCC proposal writing. Brown Bags aptly represent the good work that Writing & Rhetoric believes can come from a friendly and collaborative environment.

In 2007, Professor Jeremiah Dyehouse, Director of the URI Writing Center, conceptualized a technology for collaborative writing: two computer monitors and keyboards yoked through a single CPU. Writers sit shoulder-to-shoulder, both able to read and write simultaneously on the same document. From this idea grew the Collaboration Station, a computer installation for collaborative writing and research funded by URI's College of Arts and Sciences. The Collaboration Station, installed in the Writing Center in Fall 2007, has been a hot topic of conversation and writing ever since.

As a component of the Writing Center's three-year plan, Professor Dyehouse and a cohort of Writing Center tutors presented on their research project on tutoring interactions as well as the Collaboration Station's role in the project in both 2007 and 2008. Last spring, they introduced the Collaboration Station at the Northeast Writing Center Association Conference at the University of Vermont. The research project is ongoing, as Professor Dyehouse explains: "The Collaboration Station represents more than a new way to write or conduct tutoring sessions. It will help us, we hope, to think about how teams work together in writing centers." A second iteration, Collaboration Station 2.0, will be installed in the Writing & Rhetoric Production Lab and will be ready for student use by the end of 2009.

Day to day, the Collaboration Station sees use in collaborative writing as well as during tutoring sessions. Students have used it to work on group projects for classes such as WRT 235: Writing in Electronic Environments. Additionally, tutors have found ways to incorporate the technology into tutoring sessions. For instance, former Writing Center tutor Claudine Griggs recently published an article in Praxis: A Writing Center Journal describing her successful experiences using the "cycloptic nerve center" during tutoring sessions, highlighting that: "the technology helped to facilitate a more egalitarian conversation" between tutors and students.