Our panel will explore how we might reverse our initial pedagogical impulses, and look for ways to incorporate online teaching approaches, techniques, and technologies for use in traditional courses.

If you would like to join us, please review the panel abstract below for a more detailed description of the panel, and follow the link below to create a NeMLA account and submit your abstracts (250-300 words) via the NeMLA convention site.(use url below)*
Thanks!

http://www.cfplist.com//nemla/Home/S/15579

*Please note: All presentation abstracts must be submitted through the official NeMLA site.

NeMLA Panel Abstract

Despite the considerable differences between online and traditional "face-to-face" writing courses (both in delivery modes and media, as well as student-instructor and student-student interaction), when initially constructing web courses, most of us tend to rely heavily upon the traditional pedagogies with which we are most familiar.

Similar to the way we teach students to approach building multimodal communication skills by first accessing and applying what adaptable print-based skills they already possess through the "process of transfer," as educators we also tend to utilize the traditional pedagogies we know best as the foundations upon which to build our initial approaches and techniques to face the unfamiliar challenges presented by teaching writing online.

Thanks, in great part, to the process of transfer, or what is also termed "uptake" in cognitive studies, we have already developed a considerable reservoir of pedagogical approaches successfully adapted for online writing courses. We have also developed a growing volume of new pedagogical approaches specifically created for web courses utilizing new theories and technologies.

Up until now, however, although we have employed traditional pedagogies to help build online ones, we have yet to truly consider whether the online pedagogies we have developed so far have anything of value to give back to traditional classroom practices: Could they help serve as a base to create, transfer, or uptake innovative new or modified pedagogies for our face-to-face courses?

Indeed, the time has come to broaden the boundaries of our traditional pedagogies and take full advantage of the many wonderful technologies, techniques, and approaches our online pedagogies might have to offer.

This panel will examine, present, and discuss such opportunities online pedagogies have to offer our traditional teaching practices, as well as weigh the advantages and disadvantages of transferring and adapting what we do online for use in our face-to-face courses.

Posted Description:

This panel will explore how online composition pedagogies might be utilized for use in traditional "face-to-face" writing courses through the process of transfer, or "uptake."

Presentation proposals should be centered upon (but are not limited to) one of the following topics:

1) a specific online pedagogical approach that could be successfully utilized in a traditional "face-to-face" composition course;

2) the issues and ramifications of incorporating online pedagogical approaches, techniques, and/or technologies into traditional composition pedagogies;

3) the connection between the use of online pedagogies for traditional courses and the recent and coming changes in composition theory and practice; and

4) the meta-analysis of pedagogical applications and processes and/or the parallels between what we teach our students about thought, idea, message, and product generation alongside our own processes as teachers and scholars.

Please make sure to center your presentation and proposal upon a substantial critical/analytical element and/or stance. Thanks in advance for submitting to our panel!

Chair:
Rod Zink
Director of Composition
Assistant Professor of English and Humanities
Penn State Harrisburg