composition

The Four Big To-Dos of #4C13 It's been a week and a half since I returned from the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication in Las Vegas, NV. I wanted to avoid the bombardment of #4C13 posts that immediately followed the conference. But now that a little time has passed, I want to share with you what I learned during my (way too brief) time at CCCCs. These are a few things you should be doing if you are interested in the field of Composition. Stop Being Afraid of Data In the panels I attended and presented in, one thing became obvious: there is need for more empirical and qualitative research. While "big data" has become a buzz word, the presentations that I attended that were based on empirical and/or qualitative research were doing important work that managed to speak into the needs of students and other developing writers while still taking into account the concerns administrators and other stakeholders in the education field. Research enabled these p...

If you’re reading this post, it means I've landed safely in sunny Las Vegas, NV and am most likely sitting comfortably in the Riveria Hotel, where the 64 th annual Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) is being held. I’m a first-time attendee this year. The theme, “the public work of composition,” drew me in, being that it speaks directly into one of my research interests, Public Discourse. On the schedule are many interesting panels, ranging from inquiries into digital literacy and service learning to “everyday writing” and writing centers. Scholars such as Kathleen Blake Yancey, Victor Villanueva, and Ellen Cushman, will be presenting. I am also looking forward to seeing the familiar faces of some of my favorite professors and classmates. Anne Ellen Geller’s presentation is “ Waiting for IRB: Researching Seniors' Meaningful Writing Experiences across Three Institutions” (C.14). Harry Denny will present at a panel titled “Developing Methods for Self-Spo...