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Articles Conference Reviews |
B.15 Social NetworksB.15 Online Social Networks and Academic Writing Heidi Huse, University of Tennessee at Martin, “We Have to Read All That?!? Teaching Academic Scholarship in a Facebook World”Heidi Huse kicked off this panel by reviewing complaints of faculty at her institution that students “just don’t read,” citing a lack of intellectual curiosity among many undergraduates. Hunt described a survey she conducted that examined the study habits of college students. Her survey targeted both students and faculty in order to examine how students’ reported habits matched up with the faculty’s concerns about student performance on coursework and reading assignments. Few larger conclusions can be drawn from this survey, as only 14 students and 30 faculty members responded (9 in the English department, 21 from across campus). Huse reported that many faculty members were disappointed with students’ performance in reading and writing assignments and had begun to assign less writing and shorter reading assignments. While several of the students surveyed reported reading a great deal outside of class, many also reported that they did little writing in response to English and other courses at the university. Huse concluded that defining and promoting academic scholarship across the university can be a challenge given student and faculty attitudes. Kevin Hunt, Goldey-Beacom College, “Remixing the Research Paper: YouTube as a Site for Exploring Conversations between Texts”Kevin Hunt reported on the use of YouTube in his writing class as a site to assist students in engaging in critical thinking, reading, and writing that is closer to their own experience. He stated that in his courses on research writing, students have a difficult time viewing research as a social process and seeing how written texts are part of an on-going scholarly conversation that they can contribute to. Hunt described YouTube’s design as fostering an ongoing conversation, through videos and video replies, but also through comments on the videos. Hunt showed several videos taking different viewpoints on the high fructose corn syrup debate and demonstrated how he used these videos in class to encourage students to consider issues of authority and voice. Hunt encourages his students to create hybrid writing activities that combine text, interaction, and video in order to view the research project in a new way. His approach provided a concrete activity easy to incorporate into other writing classrooms in a way that engages students in critical issues of research writing. |