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Writing Showcase: Robert Baird

Creating a Scholarly Writing Community

Tool: Blackboard Vista Discussion Board with Grading Rubric

Instructor: Robert Baird, Cinema Studies

Course: CINE 495: Film in the Age of New Media

Students: 30 Juniors, Seniors and a few grads from Cinema Studies, Communications, History, Theater, Computer Science

Learning Objectives:

  • Develop students film analysis abilities (see conventions and style, articulate unique qualities of from, combine with class readings, and practice cinema discipline vocabulary and terminology
  • Attempt to Introduce undergraduates to the Writing Community Associated with Scholarly/Professional Writing: synthesis, quoting, rebuttal, elaboration of writing of peers

Pedagogical Model: Before, During, and After the Lecture

  • Before: student and faculty engagement before the lecture (everyone has a dollar in the poker game)
  • During: Use of student writings/postings in class provides clarification, validation, fresh perspectives
  • After: study review, exemplary models, participation archive, online & gradeable

Online Writing Affordances:

  • Simplification of paper Distribution and Collection
  • Public Authorship: engagement, competition, community

Resistance & Concerns: online writing not scholarly or rigorous; too much work; lone scholar idea dominates the humanities; undergraduates will "cheat" if they work together and read each other's work!

Strategies for Campus Adoption: traditional advocacy by campus exemplars and advocates; WAC Programs; perhaps some way of getting student satisfaction with online engaged writing shared with faculty beyond word of mouth method.