Evan: Oh, just so you know, the tentative title for this episode is going to be ‘Spies in the Classroom’. So that’s it.
Abby: Yeah, that’s pretty accurate I’d say.
Evan: Shhh!
Abby: Don’t tell anyone
Evan: We’re going to record for...we’re calling it Write.Think.Teach., right?
Genevieve: I think that’s the right order.
Evan: Yeah, okay.
Nora: Hello and welcome to Write.Think.Teach. My name is Nora McCook.
Genevieve: And I’m Genevieve Ritchie-Ewing.
Nora: Our guest in this episode is Abigail Owens, one of the Writing Associates at the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing.
Genevieve: Abby has experienced writing at Ohio State as an undergraduate student and a Writing Associate. Our colleague, Evan Thomas, interviewed Abby about her experiences both writing and working with students and instructors in courses that feature writing assignments at OSU.
Nora: Abby was most recently embedded in an engineering course and she has a lot to say about the types of conversations she has with instructors and students as part of her role as a Writing Associate. At the end, she tells us what types of assignments she would like to see at OSU and what she wishes other students knew about writing.
Genevieve: Let’s go now to our edited interview with Evan and Abby.
Evan: Hi everybody. I’m Evan Thomas.
Abby: I’m Abby Owens.
Evan: And Abby’s here to talk to us today about the Writing Associates program, that’s part of the Center for the Study of Teaching and Writing. Oh, by the way, WA is a term we’re going to use that means Writing Associate. So, Abby, what do WAs do?
Abby: WAs work with both students and professors in a certain class. We’re embedded within a class. So, like, we work with professors to advocate for what students need in the class. So, we are able to look at syllabi and we look at, you know, individual assignments and even like grading practices of the professors and, sort of, give a better student’s perspective on what like we think might make their class better and more successful in the future. And usually professors come to us with a set of core questions that they want to ask about like how to match their content with the writing in the class. Usually the professors have a writing intensive course that they don’t know how to deal with the writing aspect. And then we kind of help them out with that. And then we also at the same time have individual meetings with students to sort of, basically like a writing center tutorial. We sit down and we talk about individual papers. And then, we can then use those sessions to maybe judge whether or not the assignment was, you know, well formulated or like if the students aren’t prepared and need an extension on the paper or something like that. The WA usually meets with...well, for sure, we have to meet with the instructor at least once at the beginning of the term and then the middle and then I think once at the end. So at least three times to sort of go over like their core questions and like what, you know, how the sessions have been going with the students. But with the instructor that I was working with, I would talk to her after class about like what was going on in the meetings and whether or not I thought that students were prepared or I would ask her questions. Like, for example, people didn’t understand that like the difference between persuasive and informative, even though I knew that like she went over that in class. So, it was like every single group that I’ve talked to has said that their, the infographic that they were working on, the project that they were working on was informative instead of persuasive and that was only true for one group. Like every other group was persuasive. Yeah, and then, I guess with students, it’s pretty, kind of like, I’d say classically like a writing center tutorial, where I’ll go in and they’ll ask me questions about, you know, their writing or their projects that they’re working on. And then I’ll give them...I’ll kind of walk them through I guess like different ways to like (I don’t want to say ‘fix’ their essays), but different ways of improving their writing. There we go, that’s a good CSTW catch phrase.
Evan: Yeah, yeah
Abby: And, but then along with that, specifically like what makes a WA different from the student aspect is that we are embedded in the class so they can ask me specific questions about what my...what their instructor is expecting. And then also I can point out specific elements that they might be forgetting in their papers as far as like, if I catch something and be like oh she went over this in lecture on Tuesday like you should really think about you know this reading that we did or you know this in-class activity. So I have a lot more insight into what their doing in the class and the structure of their assignments.
Evan: And so then, these meetings are really important because you can both help students...help guide students through the difficulties of assignments, but then you can sort of close the loop and take it back to the instructor, right?
Abby: Yeah. And that’s really cool to see actually. I remember like one specific thing. We were doing an infographic project and she looked at the rough drafts that they put on Carmen ahead of time. And she was like really nervous about them. She was like ‘oh my god’ like they were not...they did not look good at all. And she was like really nervous. And then by the time everyone turned in their final drafts, she was like they were all great, like what did you? And I’m like I talked about their audience and like they all thought that they were being informative when they were actually being persuasive. And I helped them like you know kind of put everything together. I don’t know. Like I don’t know. She seemed like pretty impressed with that, I guess. All of these projects that they’ve been doing, they have been targeting a like an outsider audience. As far as like the CEO of Walmart is not necessarily going to know all of these like intricate, you know, like engineering sort of details. So they’re trying to pitch this idea to someone who inherently doesn’t know anything about engineering or what their talking about. So they have to put it into layman’s terms. And I was the person to sort of be like, well I understand this.
Evan: You’re the layman!
Abby: Yeah, I am the layman. And so like that was really helpful I think for them.
Nora: In the last part of Evan’s interview with Abby, he asks her to take a step back and reflect on what she would like to see students and instructors do and know more about with regard to writing. Abby is in a unique pedagogical position as Writing Associate at Ohio State. Like other WAs, she has been a successful student writer in multiple courses and has trained to know a bit about writing pedagogy and writing across different disciplines. As you’re about to hear, Abby thinks carefully both about different real-world genres from her perspective as a writer and also about the process of teaching and learning from her perspective as a student. Let’s hear the rest of our interview with Abby.
Evan: What’s one thing that you wish that students would understand?
Abby: I wish that students would understand that writing is very important. I think writing is what gets everyone from point A to point B as far as like their ideas and their...I would like... engineering ideas and engineering aspirations are never going to come to fruition unless they can communicate effectively to others outside of their own community. I felt like a lot of my professors kind of felt short sometimes with like writing. And like a lot of what people emphasize now is especially like the digital media and different you know facets that are more than just writing. Like writing is important, but I think overall the communication aspect is like such like just so much more important than just physically being able to write a good five-paragraph essay. It’s great that you can write a five-paragraph essay, but I feel like...the impression that I get is like as soon as you graduate, it completely goes out the window. Nobody writes a five-paragraph essay; nobody reads a five-paragraph essay. You don’t go to a blog post about Kim Kardashian and go, ahh yes, here is their thesis statement. But, yeah, I think writing has to go beyond just that into more like applicable methods of communication that other people will be able to like realistically pick up and read.
Evan: Yeah. What’s something related to writing that you would like to see more instructors do in their classroom?
Abby: Bam, already answered, digital media! I think that’s huge, especially because...I mean like for a specific example, Kickstarter, you need to make a video. Oh my god, where was this? Where was this two months ago? Kickstarter, you need to make a video in order to get funding for the idea that you have. And if you’re an engineer and you’re like I want to build the new and improved Tesla and I need funding for this. And like this is going to be a really inexpensive car; like everyone’s going to drive it. It’s going to like you know revolutionize the whole market. If you can’t make that Kickstarter video, you’re not going to go anywhere. I think the professor that I was working with really did put an emphasis on real-life skills because we worked on their real-life resumes. We worked on real-life cover letters. And we did real research on you know diversity in the workplace and like things that are actually like pretty important and pretty real-world applications or have real-world applications.
Evan: What does that real-world application do for students’ engagement with the assignment?
Abby: It definitely...I mean it makes it...So like I remember when I was younger and like in math class, and you’re doing all these weird problems about like you’re measuring the height of a building from like the shadow of this tree. And you’re like what like people don’t do that. And it’s like why are we doing this. And you know maybe, especially as a student, you don’t necessarily see that big picture because you’re learning all of these things. But if you’re able to be, as a professor, if you’re able to be like here’s the assignment, here’s how you can apply it to your career, your personal life, people are going to take it more seriously and get more engaged with the material because they you know they know that it’s going to be worthwhile for them to put a lot of effort into perfecting I guess their craft.
Genevieve: Thank you for listening to Write.Think.Teach., a production of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing at Ohio State. If you missed the first part of our Writing Associates interview with three other Writing Associates besides Abby, you can find that episode by searching on iTunes U or at cstw.osu.edu.
Nora: If you want to learn more about the Writing Associates program, contact Chris Manion at manion.12@osu.edu. Calls for applications to have a WA embedded in your course go out mid to late semester in the fall and the spring. See you next time on Write.Think.Teach.