WSU Writing Program Welcomes Michigan State Expert William Hart-Davidson for May 8 Lecture, Workshop
PULLMAN, Wash.—William Hart-Davidson, Michigan State University professor, will present “Many-to-Many: Networks, Peer Learning, & the Long Arc of Learning to Write,” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 8 in room 518 of the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE) at Washington State University. The public is welcome to the free lecture, hosted by the nationally acclaimed WSU Writing Program.
Hart-Davidson will also lead an all-day faculty workshop that day from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. in CUE 518. It is titled, “Changing Modes to Focus on the Moves: Multimodal Writing and Outcomes-Based Evaluation of Communication Learning Goals.” Registration for the workshop (lunch provided) is through Jen O’Brien, coordinator of the Writing in the Disciplines program. Her email is jennifer.obrien@wsu.edu.
“Bill Hart-Davidson is a well-known expert in using new technologies to communicate and we welcome his insights into how that first into the future of teaching and learning,” says Diane Kelly-Riley, WSU Writing Program co-director and head of writing assessment.
Hart-Davidson is associate professor of rhetoric & writing, co-director of MSU’s Writing in Digital Environments Research Center, and directs the rhetoric & writing graduate program. He co-invented Eli Review, a web service for coordinating and evaluating peer review. He is currently president of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing.
“Dr. Hart-Davidson’s public presentation and faculty workshop are the final events of our semester-long professional development series titled ‘Composing the New Classroom: Teaching & Learning Remix,” says Kelly-Riley. Instructional faculty attended the series, which featured six presentations by professors and librarians who are familiar with employing multimodal techniques in their classrooms.
“It has been enlightening to hear that faculty are expecting, and students are eagerly responding with, various means of ‘compositions’ in response to assignments in disciplines across our university,” says Kelly-Riley. “We heard in the series that professors from English to engineering to entomology are using multimodality, and we hope that others who attended the Remix series will try it in their classes in the future.”
Multimodal teaching and learning has become somewhat of a national trend at universities. Multimodal refers to the use of effective tools to communicate that create visual, verbal, and auditory stimuli to boost learning, comprehension, and knowledge retention. Teaching a lesson in a multimodal fashion might include a lecture and readings plus such things as moving images, animations, color, music, sound, interactive illustrations, narration, and video.
Students might also use similar techniques in their response to an assignment, communicating in ways that might include or go beyond writing.
The series also helped instructors to be prepared to assess what the students submit.
For more information on Hart-Davidson’s visit, the Remix series, and its participants’ blog, visit http://multimodal.wsu.edu. To register for the workshop and lunch, please email jennifer.obrien@wsu.edu.
April 25, 2013
CONTACT: Diane Kelly-Riley, Co-Director, WSU Writing Program, University College, 509-335-7959, dokelly@wsu.edu
Jennifer O’Brien, Coordinator, WSU Writing Program’s Writing in the Disciplines unit, 509-335-7959, Jennifer.obrien@wsu.edu
MEDIA: Beverly Makhani, Communications Director, University College, 509-335-6679, Makhani@wsu.edu