Workshops and Events

With Dr. Elizabeth Wardle and Special Guests

Friday, December 6, 1:15-2:35 pm
King Library Room 133

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This workshop will provide an overview of the Miami Plan’s Senior Capstone requirements and share examples of innovative capstone assignments. Participants will spend time brainstorming about assignments for their own capstone courses and how to scaffold them.

With Dr. Mandy Olejnik and Emma Boddy

Every Other Tuesday from 2:50-4:10 on: September 10, September 24, October 8, October 22, November 5, and November 19 (Zoom)

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Have you been wanting to spend some time redesigning some writing assignments? Do you have a specific course in mind?  Join us for a 6-week certificate program designed to support tenure-line, TCPL, visiting, and other full-time faculty members who want to include writing for meaningful learning in their courses. “Writing” in this certificate program is broadly understood to include all forms of communication, including not only extended formal prose but all communication including charts, graphs, slides, and presentations. 

Completion of this program can be used to document efforts to improve teaching for the purposes of  annual evaluation and P&T dossiers. Participants will receive a Certificate of Completion, as well as a $200 professional development stipend for attending all six sessions and completing the activities and required reading (to be provided).

The certificate program is limited to 15 participants. 5 spots will be reserved for faculty who are new faculty to Miami in 2024.

“This workshop was exceptional. I walked away from every session with a new tip or tool that I was able to try out in my course almost immediately. The workshops themselves were well organized, with a lot of hand-on learning activities.” 

—Michele Frank, Accounting

“The workshop was interactive, informative, and the facilitators provided plenty of time to reflect as well as  learn from the peers. I've already used many strategies I learned in the workshop in my classes-especially those related to writing to learn, and giving feedback." 

—Harshini Siriwardane, First-Year Integrated Core in FSB

With Dr. Elizabeth Wardle

The Faculty Writing Fellows Program is a semester-long master class that supports teams of faculty members and their departments/programs in their efforts to teach students to write more effectively in their disciplines and professions and to use writing in ways that encourage deep learning of disciplinary material. All participants should finish the program with new ideas for writing assignments, new strategies for teaching writing, new writing-intensive course ideas, and/or suggestions for their departments on how to improve the overall teaching of writing of their majors, minors, and graduate students. At the end of the program, Fellows return to their departments to present their ideas and make suggestions for ways to integrate writing into their courses and programs to meet goals and needs that are specific to their context. Learn more about the philosophy of the program in the new book, Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices: Innovating Teaching Across Disciplines.

Fellows meet every Monday from 1:15-2:45 pm. Participants who complete the program receive $2,000 in professional development funds. 

This program is only open to teams who share a common program or learning interest. 

Interested? Email Elizabeth Wardle: wardleea@miamioh.edu

With Rena Perez and Emma Boddy, and Guests Meredith Perkins and Sam Norton

Friday, November 15, 1:15-2:35 pm and Friday, November 22, 1:15-2:35 pm
King Library Room 133

Learn about the genre of op-eds as a way to reach public audiences as a way for both faculty and students to have your voices heard. Various faculty members and student writers will share their experiences and advice on writing op-eds, and describe why they are such a powerful genre for making an impact beyond university walls.

*This workshop is also open to undergraduate students.*

Part 1: Unpacking Op-Eds as a Genre
Friday, November 15, 1:15-2:35 pm

This session will overview op-eds as a genre, their common features and structures, and some steps for how to begin writing and/or teaching them.

Part 2: Writing Op-Eds and Designing Op-Ed Assignments
Friday, November 21, 1:15-2:35 pm 

In this session, participants will be given guidance, time, and space in community to practice writing op-eds of interest to them or designing assignments for teaching op-eds.

With Rena Perez

Monday, October 28 from 11:40-1:00pm, King Library Room 133

This workshop will explore designing (or redesigning) assignments to guide students through composing in multimodal genres, such as podcasts, infographics, videos, etc. Participants will learn a process for scaffolding students in drawing on different modes to design texts that inform and engage public audiences.

With Dr. Elizabeth Wardle

October 17 and October 24, 1:15-2:35 (Zoom)

This session describes the ecology of grant funding, how to find grant funding, and how to write the narrative section of grant proposals. The focus will be on non-governmental grants, although the rhetorical strategies will be effective for all grant proposals.

Part 1: Finding Funding Sources
Thursday, October 17, 1:15-2:35 pm

This session will discuss the ecology of grant funding and how to find grant funding, with a focus on finding non-governmental grants using The Foundation Directory.

Part 2: Understanding the Rhetorical Moves of a Grant Proposal
Thursday, October 24 from 1:15-2:35 pm

This session will describe the elements of the grant proposal genre and describe the rhetorical moves that grant proposals typically make.

With Dr. Tim Lockridge, English

Thursday, September 19 from 1:15—2:35 pm (in-person), King Library, Room 133

Writers often seek and celebrate flow states, or the long stretches of uninterrupted deep focus. But what happens when something prevents or disrupts flow? Why is it sometimes difficult to find momentum or simply get started? And how might our writing tools and environments shape the way we enter and exit those flow states? This workshop will discuss two concepts—friction and resistance—that can help us better understand the ebbs and flows in our writing process. We'll also evaluate the role of generative AI writing tools, many of which promise to erase friction and facilitate creativity and productivity. Participants will analyze and discuss their own writing processes, and they'll leave the workshop with an understanding of "friction's invitation," which offers a way of reevaluating writing tools, environments, and tasks.

With Dr. Mandy Olejnik and Rena Perez (HCWE) and Dennis Cheatham (Art: Communication Design)

September 6 and September 13, 1:15-2:35, Zoom

The rise of ChatGPT and similar large language models has brought renewed focus on teaching and learning in higher education, especially related to writing instruction. This two-part workshop series is dedicated to helping faculty play and learn more about these AI tools, both in terms of how it impacts student learning as well as how it impacts faculty writing and teaching practices.

Part 1: Explore and Play with AI
Friday, September 6 from 1:15-2:35 pm (Zoom)

Part 1 is for people who are unfamiliar with AI tools and would like hands-on exploration. It provides participants with an introductory opportunity to learn more about how AI works and then actually play around with a few AI tools.

Part 2: Redesign Writing Assignments around AI
Friday, September 13 from 1:15-2:35 pm (Zoom)

Part 2 is for those with some experience and knowledge about AI tools. Attendees will draft AI-related assignments and policies. This session will not include a basic overview of AI, so participants who need an introduction should attend Part 1.

Participants are welcome to attend  both or either, depending on their comfort level with AI tools. Please note that Part 2 requires some previous experience with AI, either in Part 1 other contexts.

With Elizabeth Wardle and Lizzie Hutton.

4/10/2024 and 4/17/2024

This two-part workshop will first introduce research on how to help students read in the ways people in your field/discipline expect, and then provide a heuristic for helping students take effective notes on their reading and then synthesize what they have learned in an appropriate review of what they read. Please plan to attend both sessions.

Part 1: Teaching Students to Read Effectively for Your Courses. Research tells us that faculty in different disciplines read and use texts differently, yet students usually have  little to no instruction in how to read as we expect. This workshop will share some of the research about reading and provide suggestions for how to help your students read more effectively.  

Part 2: Teaching Students to Write Effective Syntheses and Literature. Once students know how to read in active and purpose-driven ways, they struggle to take notes and look for patterns and themes. This workshop will share some methods for helping students take notes on ideas and themes across multiple sources, with the goal of synthesizing multiple sources and writing a literature review.  

Led by: Howe Local Advisory Board members Jennifer Kinney, Tamise Ironstack, Anne Whitesell, and Mark Dahlquist.

Want to jumpstart your writing flow alongside faculty during J-term? Our faculty-led writing retreat is an ideal space to do so! Set aside a day, three days, or drop in for any duration of time. Snacks, coffee, and writing solidarity will be provided. You can participate in-person or via Zoom.

With Mandy Olejnik, Rena Perez, and HCWE AI Working Group Participants 

Following last year’s workshops and working groups centered on innovating with AI, this session shares classroom pedagogy, approaches, and examples generated by Miami faculty.

With Brady Nash, Katherine Batchelor, and  Beth Rimer

The rise of ChatGPT and similar large language models, often referred to as artificial intelligence (AI), poses foundational questions about what it means to write, read, and teach. Much of the popular and educational discourse surrounding AI has fallen into binary, pro-con “hot takes” regarding the impact of these tools on what it means to use writing as a measurement of accumulated knowledge, to evaluate information online, or to plan for instruction. In this workshop, we will engage in discussions of how to foster and support robust, nuanced, “both/and” conversations and approaches to AI in relation to reading, writing, and teaching.

With Will Chesher, Emma Boddy, and Special Guests Meredith Perkins and Devin Ankeney

In this working lunch, participants will learn about the process of creating, refining, and submitting Op-Eds. Special guests will share their expertise and experience on Op-Eds from the position of an Op-Ed writer and an Opinion Editor. 

Participants will have work time to plan or create their own Op-Ed, with the option of meeting with a Howe Writing Center consultant. We’ll end the session with next steps and goals.This working lunch is open to undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty/staff. Food will be provided. 

With Elizabeth Wardle, Will Chesher, and Guest Faculty

ePortfolios are AAUP high-impact practices for student learning, encouraging reflection of student learning across time. Learn more about this ePortfolios and how you might be able to implement them in your own courses and programs. The session will include an overview by HCWE staff and examples from faculty who have implemented ePortfolios in their own courses and programs. 

With Mandy Olejnik and Rena Perez

Are you teaching a graduate course this fall? Are you mentoring graduate student writers on thesis or dissertation projects? We invite you to participate in a special 5-part series dedicated to supporting graduate student writers in your courses, and to helping you reexamine your writing assignments and writing structures in your graduate programs.. Based on our previous series, this 5-week certificate program is designed to support tenure-line and TCPL graduate faculty members who want to include writing for meaningful learning in their graduate courses. “Writing” in this certificate program is broadly understood to include all forms of communication, including not only extended formal prose but all communication including charts, graphs, slides, and presentations. Writing contexts can be primarily course-based and/or longer-form graduate writing like master’s projects or doctoral dissertations.

Completion of this program can be used to document efforts to improve teaching for the purposes of  annual evaluation and P&T dossiers. Participants will receive a Certificate of Completion, as well as a $200 professional development stipend for attending all five sessions and completing the activities and required reading (to be provided).

We previously offered this certificate series for all faculty working with students across all levels and are now offering a version especially for graduate faculty.

Co-sponsored by OLE and HCWE

With Mandy Olejnik  and Elizabeth Hoover

This special 3-part workshop series invites faculty to innovate Miami Plan Signature Inquiry courses, and focuses on the ways writing can be used to both promote and assess learning and how it can be scaffolded throughout a course. Faculty will attend 3 sessions throughout the semester to work on their Miami Plan courses and innovative pedagogy. Attending all 3 sessions and completing the requirements will allow participants to receive $200 in professional development funds.

With Elizabeth Wardle, Darrel Davis (Educational Psychology), Jay Smart (Psychology), Amber Franklin (Speech Pathology and Audiology), Sherrill Sellers (Family Science and Social Work), Madelyn Detloff (English and GIC), Naaborle Sackeyfio (GIC), Yvette Harris (Psychology)

This interactive workshop and writing session will invite underrepresented faculty to engage in a variety of activities around the narrative of the dossier, and the special challenges that narrative presents for faculty members who are underrepresented in their departments and programs. The workshop will provide a safe space to engage in community with others facing similar challenges, walk through a series of activities to help faculty members externalize and shape a narrative about their work, and receive confidential feedback from others who are not in an evaluative or supervisory role.

With Elizabeth Wardle, Darrel Davis (Educational Psychology), Jay Smart (Psychology), Amber Franklin (Speech Pathology and Audiology), Sherrill Sellers (Family Science and Social Work), Madelyn Detloff (English and GIC), Naaborle Sackeyfio (GIC), Yvette Harris (Psychology)

This interactive workshop and writing session will invite underrepresented faculty to engage in a variety of activities around the narrative of the dossier, and the special challenges that narrative presents for faculty members who are underrepresented in their departments and programs. The workshop will provide a safe space to engage in community with others facing similar challenges, walk through a series of activities to help faculty members externalize and shape a narrative about their work, and receive confidential feedback from others who are not in an evaluative or supervisory role.

With Heidi McKee and James Porter

Professors Heidi A. McKee and James E. Porter teach professional writing/communication courses in the Departments of English and Emerging Technology in Business & Design. Their most recent collaborative research focuses on human-machine teaming and the rhetoric and ethics of AI-based writing systems, an inquiry that  began with their co-authored 2017 book, Professional Communication and Network Interaction: A Rhetorical and Ethical Approach (Routledge). Their most recent work examines "Team Roles and Rhetorical Intelligence in Human-Machine Writing" published in the Proceedings for the 2022 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference.

This workshop will engage faculty in the exploration of issues and questions that arise with the use of AI writing technologies in teaching and learning. The facilitators will begin the workshop with a presentation that will demonstrate some AI-based writing systems  (especially the new ChatGPT) and share some current research about AI writing, including work the facilitators have done on human-AI collaboration. The workshop will then provide an opportunity for participants to test out some of these systems using their own writing prompts and will engage participants in discussion of some key questions, such as: What ethical and pedagogical concerns arise with the use of AI by students? What is an acceptable level of AI assistance (and does the answer depend on the course and/or disciplinary context)? Should we “AI-proof” writing assignments? How should we revise/update our policies on plagiarism and academic integrity to account for these systems? And, finally, how might AI help us and our students in meeting course outcomes? 

With John Warner (author of the Just Visiting blog on Inside Higher Ed, which has recently hosted a number of columns about AI and writing; also author of Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities and The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing)

ChatGPT is yet another tool to be aware of but not afraid of. It presents you with an opportunity to reflect on your values as a teacher and how your assignments enact those values. In this workshop you will be asked to explore the values you have for your discipline and your course and then  consider what you value in your assignments. If you want students to learn to think in your discipline, what are the implications for your writing assignment design? What is the purpose of what you assign?

The workshop will remind us that ChatGPT is not writing, it is a pattern-matching, syntax-generating machine.  ChatGPT does not understand truth or evaluate for accuracy. If you understand the patterns it enacts and consider what you are asking for in your assignments, you can design assignments that encourage creativity, learning, and communication in the service of becoming an educated person. This workshop will encourage you to keep your focus on teaching and learning, which are Miami values.

With Mandy Olejnik, Rena Perez, and Brenda Quaye

As previous HCWE workshops this semester have demonstrated, AI tools (including ChatGPT and the newly-unveiled GPT-4) are entering our classrooms and our students’ educational experiences. What does that mean for syllabi and policy, especially for statements and policies that limit what support students can receive? How much is too much support from a language generator tool? How could and should students disclose help they received from such tools? What syllabus statements and program policies can help clarify what we mean by “academic integrity,” as well as invite productive discussion and exploration of tools that will now be ubiquitous?

In this interactive workshop, participants will put to use what they have learned about AI/ChatGPT so far this semester in order to draft, share, and modify policy and integrity statements. They will draw from example resources and statements shared during the session to create their own, collaborate with colleagues, and leave with a draft and plan for implementation.

With Anna Mills, City College of San Francisco

Given newly accessible language models like ChatGPT that can generate passable text, should we rethink our writing assignments? What can we do to prevent learning loss due to misuse of these tools? Students still need practice forming their own sentences and paragraphs to help them think through the material. This interactive talk will offer strategies to encourage continued organic out-of-class writing. First, we can emphasize the purpose of assigning writing, highlighting the value of writing as a practice that helps us think and learn. Second, we can communicate explicit policies on AI writing assistance. Third, we can establish the expectation that AI-generated text may be identifiable by rapidly evolving software. Fourth, we can modify writing prompts so that text generators can’t complete them well, at least not without effort from a skilled user. Finally, we can begin to incorporate critical AI literacy into our classes, teaching students to recognize the mistakes and shortcomings of AI text in our disciplines. Some will want to use text generators as part of creative pedagogical experiments, but we must keep front and center students’ awareness of and confidence in their own thinking and writing. In this workshop, we will discuss some sample policies, revised writing prompts, and exercises that teach AI literacy.

Sponsored by the Roger & Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence, the Ohio College Teaching Consortium, and the Ohio Writing Project.

This interactive working day is open to all teachers across Ohio, both K-12 and postsecondary, at all institution types.

Schedule:

• 8:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.: Guest speakers will give short talks on pressing ideas around AI and other related technologies and their implications for teaching.
• 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.: Participants will work with others in small groups to develop policies, rethink writing assignments, consider how AI can inform their own writing and teaching, and/or engage in future-casting about next developments in AI tools.
• 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.: A panel of teachers and students will share how they are currently using AI across K-16 spaces.

Numerous resources will be shared throughout the day in "sharecase" booths. Participants will leave with ideas and materials that they can incorporate into their teaching immediately, and with connections across institutions for future collaborations.

With Rena Perez and Will Chesher

In this 2-part workshop series, we will discuss how we join academic conversations as graduate students. This includes addressing possible sites of trouble like identifying genre expectations, ethically integrating sources in our writing, and discussing how we critically read as scholars. Please plan to attend both sessions. 

Part 1 will review the importance of situating citation as joining an academic conversation and discuss how we continue to learn to read, synthesize, integrate, and cite as academics and writers. Part 2 will include participants bringing a current work in progress to the session. In small groups, we will consider these possible sites of trouble in our work and discuss processes, resources, and tools to address these challenges.

With Rena Perez and Will Chesher 

In this workshop, participants will first learn about best practices and principles of facilitating peer response in their online synchronous or asynchronous courses. This includes identifying different methods and types of peer response, and even the use of platforms like Eli Review to guide students through the process. Participants will then create a peer response plan to incorporate in their classes.

With Elizabeth Wardle and Rena Perez

In order to complete writing assignments successfully, students need four types of knowledge: subject matter knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, genre knowledge, and process knowledge. This workshop draws on scholar Anne Beaufort’s (2007) work to invite participants to unpack one of their major writing assignments and consider how they can revise the assignment scaffolding to make these various types of knowledge visible and accessible to students. Participants will leave with a revised major assignment and a new lens for assignment design.

With Elizabeth Wardle, Elizabeth Hoover, and Leighton Peterson

Guest Facilitators: Heidi McKee (English) and Elena Jackson Albarran (History and GIC)

This workshop invites discussion around how to design creative, innovative, and effective capstone courses. Participants will identify their learning goals for their capstone courses, see examples of creative capstone assignments, and take time to brainstorm and redesign assignments together with the group while working through some backwards design activities.

With Mandy Olejnik and Special Guests

This series invokes discussion around different “sites” of high-stakes writing genres that instructors advise, and offers research-based strategies and methods for advising. Part 1 focuses on honors senior projects while Part 2 focuses on master’s theses/doctoral dissertations. Participants may register for one or both sessions, depending on their interests. 

With Elizabeth Wardle and Rena Perez

This workshop draws on the Decoding the Disciplines model (Middendorf and Shopkow) to invite faculty to examine stuck places or  “learning bottlenecks” that students encounter in their disciplines and courses. Faculty will “decode” their tacit assumptions and mental processes, consider how to model what they know and do, and design  scaffolded support for students. 

With Mandy Olejnik and Rena Perez

Have you been frustrated with research papers students write in your courses? Are you looking to shake it up and imagine different kinds of writing assignments? This interactive workshop explores innovative major writing assignments that aren’t traditional research papers. Participants will explore creative assignment ideas and do a “gallery walk” of creative assignments they can adapt.