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Tag: First-Year Writing Program

Piloting ePortfolios in the First-Year Writing Program

Students working on ePortfolios in Dr. Kidd's classroom.

by Jessica Fordham Kidd, Department of English On February 22, 2019, Natalie Loper, Brooke Champagne, and I participated in the Faculty Technology Showcase with a presentation on the First-Year Writing Program’s (FWP) ePortfolio Pilot program, which is in its second semester. This ePortfolio initiative was inspired by Dr. Kathleen Blake Yancey’s visit to UA in February 2018 when she presented “EPortfolios for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment.” Her faculty website lists her recent scholarship, much of it related to ePortfolios. The […]

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Marshmallow Launchers Spur Student Writing

Students firing marshmallow launchers on the Quad

by Donna Branyon, Department of English For the final project in EN 102 (freshman composition) and EN 319 (technical writing), we do versions of the marshmallow launcher project. Students are presented with an imaginary rhetorical situation: The UA Writing Center provides snacks for clients and consultants. They would like to be known as the most congenial department on campus, so they want to provide snacks as quickly as possible. Because the Writing Center is woefully understaffed, consultants can no longer […]

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A Taste of the Tide: Digital Humanities + Experiential Learning

internal page on Taste of the Tide blog featuring different recipes

by Lauren Cardon, Department of English Incorporating a digital humanities (DH) assignment and emphasizing experiential learning are two of the best ways to implement active learning techniques in the classroom. Fortunately, UA provides an excellent range of pedagogical resources on campus like the Alabama Digital Humanities Center (ADHC), Learning in Action (LIA), and the Active Learning Initiative (ALI). Faculty and staff within these programs offer workshops to promote their initiatives among different departments; however, several of them (Emma Wilson, Tyler […]

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Session Recap: “Fraught with Possibility: Can Good Pedagogy Negate Turnitin’s Problematic Image?”

By Jessica Fordham Kidd and Dr. Natalie Loper, Department of English At the Teaching Professor Technology Conference 2016, we led a session that simultaneously asked participants to critique plagiarism prevention software and consider best practices that would make it a legitimate addition to the college classroom. We discussed various criticisms of plagiarism prevention software, specifically Turnitin. Some say it can create a negative classroom environment or antagonistic student-teacher relationships, while others raise ethical questions about the use of student work. […]

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