Possible Research Topics
Possible Topic I:
I am interested in conducting a research to study students’ reading strategies/habits. I want to examine the relationship between class readings and students’ interested areas. My expectations are people spend different amount of time reading assigned articles and I intend to study the factors that might contribute to their decision of allocating different time for different readings. One specific area I want to study is how much the class readings contribute to their final class project and . I am interested in this question since I always need to balance readings and class projects and carefully plan the time I spend on individual projects and readings. My research questions are: What decide/help students to decide how much time they devote to readings? What readings do they focus on and what readings do they skim? How have the readings shaped students’ understanding about the areas they are interested in? How have the readings attract their interest in some areas? For this research, I can do interviews or questionnaires. The benefits of the study are: It helps students to visualize their reading strategies/habits and see the connection of assigned class readings and their (class) projects. The limitations are since we do not have a large number of students in the class and students may have different interests for research, it can be difficult to identify trends and patterns.
Possible Topic II:
Another study is examining how blog promotes interaction between participants in the class. For almost the whole semester, students post their weekly reading responses on blog and one student posts class notes too. Then my questions are: To what extent is the blog promoting interaction between participants? How does it contribute to the class identity? Has the use of blog achieved the expected outcomes? In what days has it benefited the class? I am interested in this topic since I am always interested in assessment and technology. At the beginning of the semester I have received good feedback through blog too and I think posting weekly responses online have been conducive to class discussions. Therefore I believe such a study will help people be more aware of the pros and cons of the use of technology in class. Such awareness helps people make decision as to what are the best tools to teach and learn. I can do an empirical study by counting the number of posts, comments, and also pass questionnaires to collect data to ask participants evaluate the use of blog. The limitations are my attitude towards blog and building criteria can be challenging.
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Class Notes on Nov. 27
Class notes on Nov. 27
Class started at 2:30pm.
Lee greeted everyone and did a brief introduction to Liz Rohan and invited Dr. Rohan to share her interests with the class.
Dr. Rohan started to talk about her dissertation and explained how she developed an interest in a diary woman Jeanette Miller who did some missionary work in Africa.
She talked about her research method and explained her dissertation is pretty narrative and the texts are multi-modal. She said this created problems for editors since usually academia is against narratives. She herself was also challenged with how to present the dissertation to academic audiences. But she believed Miller’s diary was of value and was worth studying.
She mentioned some of the specific challenges such as:
- Miller’s work in Africa is hard to deal with since it is impossible to Rohan to prove what is said in the diary or experience Miller’s life.
- Her own attitude about Miller’s missionary work in Africa.
- How to present the dissertation to academic audiences
In the process of working on this topic, Rohan realized that she herself became more open when it comes to race. So she decided to show: “What is happening inside me though I cannot show what happened to her in Africa.”
Feminist anthropologists- they start to talk about themselves. Ruth Baharer (rock star Feminist anthropologist) helped explain why Rohan was talking about herself – she knew why the anthropologists were doing it but had problems saying why she was doing it. Rohan said women in the early 1900s used literary to gain agency and she showed a passage from her dissertation to show how the slums changed her. She realized that by studying other people, she started to study herself.
She then used PowerPoint to show:
- Miller’s diary is quite multi-model since she pasted other documents into her diary
- Fusion between the past and present
- Pictures of the woman, her house, and diary
- Documenting through photography for the fusion of past and present
Based on these documents, she found she started to talk about herself in her research and realized how space has been racialized.She said she did not want to convince the readers the legitimacy of Miller’s work in Africa but to make them feel it.To do this, she needs to open herself. The dissertation is not about her but what happens to us when we do research. She realizes she was far away from where she should be and the research helped me get home
Questions following her presentation:
The first question is about the importance of reciprocity between researcher and research participants. Advice on how we can have achieve such reciprocity in our research? (probably by Heather. If I am wrong, forgive me)
If we deal with alive people, people are suspicious about whether you are telling the truth or not. Dr. Rohan emphasized that we need to trust ourselves. “Trusting ourselves we are keeping projects alive. Although we may not represent them completely accurately, we’re keeping their work alive.” Meanwhile, it depends on the situation.
Robert: Doing this helps you get home. It reminds me of writing organic writing.
The idea of not having the sense of our history leads to the loss of heritage, and loss of home.
The inclusion of personal journey to reach out different kinds of audiences?
Rolan: Academic people(gate keepers) do not like narratives. They like theories. Narratives should have a place in academia. People are threatened by story-telling, and they do not want to tell personal stories. Telling stories becomes feminized too.
Heather:
Embracing emotions seems like a feminist research by women or subjects as the subject.
Become feminized
- There is a desire and need to be able to articulate some connections
- There is a need to tell private texts. The emphasis on public texts prohibit the articulation of the private texts.
- A diary is semi-public documents at first for the missionary woman.
Heather: This kind of joy in research is difficult to bring to the freshmen. How can you bring it to tour students and have them enjoy it?
Rolan: Students are interested in texts. The idea of making archives every day, making archiving more personal, something becomes past very quickly. Think critically what we may say to link my research to teaching.
Lee: Can you tell us more about the relationship between your interest and your advisor’s interest?
Rohan: Writing studies is sick of reading and going back to writing stories about the diary woman.
People might be intimidated about the narrowness of the subject
Let Gail (her adviser) see the connection between the history of tech and tech has histories.
The class had a break at 4:15pm.
About 4:30, class started again.
Class discussed this week’s readings. Brittany asked whether context-sensitive analysis is very similar to grounded theory.
Lee answered: For grounded theory, we do not have a hypothesis. We start to collect data with an interest
For next week:
Read the assigned articles and think about possibilities of how we might study Eng 726 as a possible project. The detailed explanation of the assignment is  on the blackboard.
We do not post questions to the readings. We post our research possibilities instead.
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Questions for Nov. 27
After reading Rohan’s piece, what is your understanding of ethical feminist historical method? How does this piece impact your understanding of research method?
Do we need to historicize other research methods? How do you interpret Rohan’s reading other than a nice story?
Kates’ piece talks about using new narratives to disrupt racism and oppression. What ethical rules do we abide by to empower marginalized group in the research?
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For Class on Nov. 20
Purdy and Walker piece reminds me of the changes that digital literacy brings to our lives, particularly to the changes of the responsibilities of teachers, researchers, and information designers. As composition teachers, to accommodate the needs of our students, who on the one hand have achieved the e-language but on the other hand seem so confused and lost, what can we do to fill such a gap and how can we connect their daily lives with academic lives?
From Wysocki’s piece, I am shocked to learn that visuals are once considered as “other” and “subhuman”. I think visuals are freer to interpret and visual literacy itself is more demanding though visuals might make learning easier. Right now, may people still insist that visuals and online composition are not real writing. In a composition class, how can instructors help students understand online composition? Meanwhile, in composition studies how does digital copyright influence research?
MaKee and Blair’s piece focuses on senior technology literacy and I wonder whether some seniors might view such help as “cultural imperialism”. It is especially interesting if I think about other technologically marginalized groups of people. It is easy for us to see the importance of digital learning but how far should we go? We are possibly happy cyborgs but how might marginalized people’s lives be reshaped after being exposed to digital literacy and to what extent does such reshaping legitimize digital learning?
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Nov. 13 class discussions
Szwed says “It is entirely possible that teachers are able to teach reading and writing as abstract skills, but do not know what reading and writing are for in the lives and futures of their students” (422). I totally agree with him and feel it is so important to make myself and students be aware of the importance of reading and writing to their lives and careers. My question is: If most teachers had known this, we would have designed curricula differently. How are curricula and syllabus different based on such knowledge? How is “the relationship between school and outside world observed, studied,” (427) and promoted by teachers?
Cushman says “In studying politics from the social distance that film and other artifacts provide, these critical pedagogues find abundant evidence of ideological domination. That is, their methodology supports their claims about false consciousness because their methods do not give them access to evidence that would suggest otherwise” (249). I do not think this is a surprising finding because people for almost all the time are restricted in the ideological world they are exposed to. I have encountered many interesting doubts and questions in the US as an international student and wonder whether such false consciousness can be “corrected” or not. I also wonder how likely people are willing to accept different thoughts even if they have access to “other” evidence. Meanwhile, since old knowledge or stereotype is also important to our knowledge construction, how can researchers approach the world without pre-assumed false knowledge?
When I was reading p.252 about the same article, I wonder whether Cushman’s experience of eviction is an access to “other” evidence or “false consciousness”.
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book review
Kinkead, Joyce A., and Janette G. Harris, eds. Writing Centers in Context: Twelve Case Studies. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993. p274 ISBN: 081415868Reviewed by Ruijie Zhao
Between a brief introduction and an epilogue, Writing Centers in Context: Twelve Case Studies covers twelve case studies written by the directors of eleven writing centers and one rhetoric associate program in American universities. These case studies highlight the practices of each writing center and the rhetoric associates program, informing readers of their history, services, and problems. Writing Centers in Context successfully redefines writing center and reminds scholars and researchers of the importance of contextualizing writing centers.
The eleven universities studied are Purdue University, Medgar Evers College, University of Toledo, Lehigh University, University if Southern California, Harvard University, University of Puget Sound, Johnson County Community College, University of Washington, Utah State University, and Colorado State University. The writing center and rhetoric associates program of Utah State University are examined separately in two case studies in two chapters. The wide distribution of universities and schools serves Joyce and Harris rather well. In fact, the choice of schools startled me when I was going through the content pages before reading. Surprised that the University of Toledo and Harvard University could be discussed in one book, I wondered what the selection criterion might be. After finishing the book, I believe Joyce and Harris have made good choices in terms of selecting schools. They try to cover colleges and universities at different levels so as not only to present a more accurate picture of writing centers in different schools but also to accommodate the needs of different readers who can contextualize for themselves and gain a better understanding of what needs to be accomplished.
The information of the book is presented in a detailed and consistent way. Its parallel information on the history, physical description, chronology of a day, the tutors, and the clientele in each institution highlights the problems and strategies each writing center faces. Some unnoticeable phenomenon and/or problems are discussed in their specific contexts, winning the readers’ trust while educating them on the importance and difficulty of engaging in writing center work. The major parts of the book—introduction, case studies, and epilogue make the book complete. These twelve chapters basically follow the same pattern, detailing out everyday occurrences in the centers, thus providing an overview of the activities taking place in different writing centers.
Though the book might seem boring and tedious because the twelve articles follow the same pattern, focusing on either same or very similar topics from the beginning to the end, it provides the readers a convenient way to compare and contrast the different centers and find easy patterns among them. For example, I notice that in smaller community colleges such as Medgar Evers College and Johnson County Community College, open admission is stressed (29, 145). Such deliberate choice of giving out important information justifies the overall objective of these two writing centers that strive to give “individualized tutoring ”and “personalized instruction” to students (30, 147). Of course, admission is not the only factor that shapes the philosophy of the writing centers. Administrative structure plays a part too. Since writing centers at both colleges are situated in the Humanities Division and supervised by the Humanities English Program/Department, their targeted student population are those who take class in the writing program. Such model calls for a philosophy and pedagogy that agrees with the philosophy and pedagogy of the writing program. A further comparative study of these two universities and the rhetoric program and writing center in Utah State University explains the importance of context of writing center work. The rhetoric program and writing center in Utah State University are “not connected administratively or physically”, allowing them much freedom in forming their own philosophies. Such minute information promotes the key concept “context” of the book rather effectively.
The key concept “context” is also manifested by the different focuses of each chapter. Even though writing center is the focal point of the book, each individual chapter discusses different aspects and possibilities of writing center work. Harris promotes multiversity in the writing lab in Purdue University; Greene centers on responding to changes in the writing center in Medgar Evers College; Mullin and Momenee emphasizes collaboration in the writing center in Univerity of Toledo; Lotto discusses creating a community on the writing center in Lehigh University; Clark examines computers and conversation in the center at the University if Southern California; Simon looks at the student-centeredness in the center at Hard University; Neff studies how the writing center serves as the center of academic life at the University of Puget Sound; Mohr studies how to establish a writing center for the community in Johnson County Community College; Okawa redefines authority in the writing center at the University of Washington; and Kinkead specifies on the land-Grant Context of the writing center and tutoring of the Rhetoric Associate Program at Utah State University. The richness of these chapters provide the readers with a more thorough understanding of the possibilities and potentials of writing center work, thus demystifying writing centers and echoing the editors’ claim that “a model writing center is difficult, if not impossible” to describe (xv). In addition, these chapters reiterate that writing centers exist within “multiple contexts,” and they have to negotiate and compromise among various forces. Based on these new understandings, readers may be able to view writing centers in a new light and redefine its role as an institution that is dedicated to “connecting, integrating, and collaborating” in productive ways rather than a ideal remedial lab that is resided by the weak.
The way the information is presented helps the readers to understand the detailed and sometimes abstract description. Maps, charts, and tables are used effectively with the descriptions in the chapter. Consider, for example, the physical description of the writing center: Every chapter discusses how physical space creates a friendly and productive learning environment, but the descriptive words might demand the readers’ imagination to understand how the center is set up. However, an actual map of the center marked with tables, chairs, bookshelves, couches, computers, reception desk, etc., next to the descriptive words of the physical settings definitely helps the readers “view” the center. Transcribed dialogues between tutor and student, real student evaluation forms and tutor report forms not only support the authors’ narration and description, but also provide a blueprint to those in the field. Detailed information of the population, history, and size of the university helps the readers see the position of the writing center, thus understanding the implementation of some policies and strategies. Most authors of the chapters use first person to reveal the challenges, problems, and strategies of writing center work and such story-telling style wins the trust of the readers and helps them to contextualize themselves in order to take further steps.
Since the targeted audiences are people who “are developing new writing centers,” …“practitioners who are finding solutions to common problems,” as well as scholars and researchers who are interested in the history and future of writing centers (xvii), the detailed description, the consistent layout, real sample handouts, maps and charts satisfy the needs of these different groups of people. Scholars who are interested in the history of writing centers can choose to look at the history section of the twelve case studies; new writing center developers can obtain a good understanding of what other writing centers have done and come up with their own strategies; while practitioners can learn how the other writing centers deal with similar problems. The method of the research matches the purposes of the book rather well. Case study allows the authors of each chapter to focus on their cases in greater detail, thus providing detailed information without being too judgmental. The texts are easy to read and each writer’s position as the director of the writing center make the book interesting and reliable.
The limitation of the book is its lack of theoretical and in-depth discussion. The authors of the twelve major chapters focus on describing instead of arguing why the current philosophy fits the center best. In addition, they do not plan what measures they might take in the future to meet needs in the composition filed. Meanwhile, there is little discussion as to how the current trends in the composition filed influence the policies of the writing centers. However, the multiple voices from different directors of the writing centers and the editors this book should enrich the readers’ knowledge of a writing center, thus serving as a practical guide for scholars and researchers who are interested in writing center work.
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questions for week 10
1. Lauer and Asher understand that there are two kinds of roles for ethnographic researchers–the observers outside of the scene and participant observers. I wonder how the validity of the research might be defined/perceived differently for these two kinds of researchers.
2. Moss thinks it necessary for researchers who study their own communities to defamiliarize themselves with their communities to validate their research. How can these researchers be free from the influence from their experience within the community during data selection and data decoding process? If researchers need to defamiliarize their own communities, what might be the adavantages to study one’s own community then?
3. For McKee and DeVoss’s piece, I wonder how researchers interested in crosscultural and hybrid research tackle the dilemma if different cultures define ethics differently? Which set of criteria should they cling to? How do they define the validity and reliability of their research then?
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Questions for Wk9
In Charney’s piece “Empiricism is not a Four-letter Word”, she seems to talk a lot about the technical communication field. I wonder how much her concerns about the resistance to empirical research applies to composition studies in general. I do not have a problem with the objectivity of research, but I do not really understand why rhetorical strategies should be useful for accomplishing the dissociation/denial of the association of value and fact. Is opposition to power really conducive to reform? If “coding is interpretive”, can researchers be free from value? If researchers use their value to decode, we may get different pictures out of the same data. How can this be a big problem?
In “Coding Data” piece, the author says “researchers construct meaning with the data, identifying patterns and looking for answers to their questions.” When researchers construct meaning, are they using their values? If rhetorical studies should isolate value from the facts/data, what strategies can help the researchers to forget their values if this is possible at all?
I always have a question about reliability and validity. To me, if the research is valid, then it has to be reliable. If it is reliable, it has to be valid. How can we test validity and reliability separately?
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Question for Oct. 9
According to MacNealy, there are different types of surveys, sampling, designs, and questions. For the research we want to conduct, what are the factors to determine the type(s) we use for our research? Do we need to stick to one type for reliability for the research? How important is it to articulate the reasoning behind our choice in the final research write-up?
Lauer and Asher note that “surveys provide a means for teachers to learn what others are doing, thinking, or feeling about a particular subject.” (qtd in Anderson) My question is: Do we provide everything found based on the surveys to better inform the readers or are we selective as to make our focal points clearer? Since the sample survey is done by researchers funded byCCCC, what might be the differences if we as students conduct our surveys?
Do we have hypothesis before we collect data? If we are not guided by hypothesis or theories, how do we make decisions as to the variables included in the research and the research method/type? How to best reach the target population? Meanwhile, how do we beieve that the tables in Lauer’s book are reliable?
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Observation Reflection
How did you approach the observation activity?
I approached my observation activity with excitement. I am usually sensitive but never really tried to observe people or a setting closely. I asked my 111 students to choose a campus setting to observe and encouraged them to come up with a dominant impression for the settings they picked. I thought it would be really interesting and easy.
I have been really interested in the coffee shop in the Student Union. So many Professors and graduate students need to rush there and “recharge” to get energy. I wanted to find out the charm of this place.
What did you learn about the site you observed by studying it?
Honestly, I did not know people could buy juice there. I thought it was where people buy coffee or tea. The biggest shock is Starbucks can be so busy early in the morning. Even though most people leave immediately after they get what they order, it can get really crowded sometimes. I am also surprised that this coffee shop is where diversity meets—diverse needs/ethnicities/age/profession/mood.
What did you see as the challenges of observing and representing the site?
My biggest challenge is the fear that I may leave important information out. There are so many activities going on at the same time in this small place. I need to let myself calm down and observe in a chronological and spatial order so that the information looks organized and complete.
What did you learn about yourself as the observer/researcher?
I realize that I need to ask more questions. There seems to be an order/rule guiding daily occurrences. Even for the layout of the tables and the color of the walls/furniture, it is possibly a deliberate choice rather than an accident. Therefore it is vital for a researcher to forget his experience and bias when taking notes. I also realized that I could be easily distracted as an observer, thus missing some important information. I think people have to go to the same setting numerous times to get not only the details but also a more objective viewpoint.
How would you assess your observation skills? And your notetaking skills?
I think my observation skills are fine. My first draft is rough because I did not fully understand the expectation of an observation note. I tend to be more patient and attentive when l observe. I wrote down almost everything that I saw in the coffee shop. I also jotted down my reflections in parenthesis. For notetaking, I should leave more white apace as the margin so that I can add information or comments later on.
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