The #GSOLE24 Conference Team would like to let everyone know they have extended the Call for Proposals until November 7.  

If you would like to submit a Proposal to present at the GSOLE Conference next year, please follow this link: 

https://gsole.org/2024-Conference-Call-for-Proposals

Call for Proposals:

Global Society of Online Literacy Educators

Sixth Annual Conference

Visions and Sites of Online Literacy Education

An Online Interactive Global Conference

Proposals Due: Monday, Oct. 23, 2023 Ext. until Nov. 7

Proposal Decisions By: Monday, Nov. 27, 2023

Submit Your Proposal Here

The Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) invites proposals for its sixth annual online international conference. This event will be hosted online with asynchronous presentations and synchronous elements. Synchronous presentations will be Thursday, February 1, and Friday, February 2, 2024. As an international organization, we will do our best to accommodate reasonable presentation times for participant presenters from around the world.

Online literacy education is an enduring and emerging field of practice and research. Our theme of “visions and sites of online learning” creates space for us to take stock of what we know, what we’ve learned, what has changed, and what remains the same.

Check out this excellent Critical AI Literacy Resource  curated by #GSOLE's own Dr. Mary Lourdes Silva!

Here you will find some great resources to you understand and work with AI tools.  

Critical AI Literacy Resources

GSOLE is proud to offer a series of online Webinars over the next several months, starting in November with "Critical Language Awareness (CLA) Meets 'Digital Story-Mapping'" presented by Mary Lourdes Silva.  
Register Now at this link: https://gsole.org/webinars

In this 90-minute webinar, Dr. Silva will take participants on a journey from analogue story-mapping to digital story-mapping that applies a CLA approach. Participants will have a chance to create their own analogue and digital maps and share stories pinned to specific locations on the map and in their memories. They will learn to use applications like Google street view, Google My Maps, and Knight Lab. Last, based on an educator’s area of interest or discipline, they could apply a CLA approach to narrate geological maps, historical maps, political maps, demographic maps, linguistic maps, economic maps, literary maps, and social or cultural capital maps.

GSOLE is also offering more Webinars throughout the year and into 2024!

Click here to visit the #GSOLE Webinars Page for all the info and register now!

Reducing Barriers to Learning: Creating Accessible Learning Resources
by Katharine H. Brown, Mark Smith, & Heesun Yoon
Auburn University

Abstract

Accessible document design is essential for the removal of barriers to learning. This article explores how the authors retrofitted over 300 learning resource documents and PDFs for accessibility and published them in a new Open Educational Resource (OER) for University Writing at Auburn University. Working collaboratively, the authors learned about accessibility standards and the technical processes of creating accessible documents and PDFs. Using the four principles of document accessibility, including visibility, audibility, mobility, and searchability, the authors describe their retrofitting process and provide readers with considerations for document accessibility. Their article addresses OLI Principle 1: “Online literacy instruction should be universally accessible and inclusive.”

OLOR Series: OLOR Effective Practices

Author(s): Katharine H. Brown, Mark Smith, & Heesun Yoon

Original Publication Date: 5 June 2023

Permalink: olor/ep/2023.06.05/

#GSOLE is thrilled to announce our newly elected leadership!

Executive Board At-Large Members:

Congratulations Michelle Stuckey, Mary Lourdes Silva, and Nitya Pandey!

Michelle is Clinical Associate Professor and Writing Program Administrator at Arizona State University, where she directs a large, fully online first-year writing program. At ASU, she mentors faculty and peer tutors in OWI, collaborates with faculty to design curricula and assesses course outcomes, and innovates in the field of OLI to meet the needs of diverse student populations.

Mary Lourdes is an Associate Professor of Writing at Ithaca College specializing in Language, Literacy, and Writing Studies. She has been active in GSOLE, serving on numerous committees, including the Conference Planning Committee. She is also a musician who plays Flamenco guitar and Spanish classical music.

Nitya is a doctoral candidate in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Florida State University and will be joining Ohio University in Fall 2023 as Assistant Professor of Instruction. She studies the care ethics of multimodal pedagogy in asynchronous online courses and is interested in supporting professional development and training programs that can have long-term positive outcomes in virtual pedagogical cultures.

Treasurer:

Congratulations Megan Von Bergen! (@meganvonbergen)

Megan is a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee whose research helps writing teachers and administrators identify which institutional practices encourage effective, equitable writing assessment. As a WPA and teacher, Megan believes students and teachers are not “brains on a stick” (Smith 2016) but are best served through professional environments that contribute to human flourishing. Such environments are achieved through full recognition of human diversity –– racial, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and more –– and the willingness to commit, every day, to concrete professional actions that further the goal of inclusion and respect for all.

Please join us for a virtual workshop event for graduate students and new-to-WAC professionals interested in learning more about writing across the curriculum (WAC), writing in the disciplines (WID), writing-enriched curriculum (WEC), and writing across the globe (WAG), hosted by the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum (AWAC) Mentoring Committee, in collaboration with the WAC Graduate Organization.

This free Zoom event is scheduled for Tuesday, May 16th from 4-5:30pm Eastern/ 3-4:30pm Central/ 2-3:30pm Mountain/ 1-2:30 Pacific.

The workshop, “Joining the Conversation: Learning about WAC,” is intended to help graduate students and professionals from across the disciplines and writing studies learn about WAC and will feature breakout rooms by experts in a number of WAC-related topics. These topics were identified through a survey completed by graduate students across the country: “Joining WAC conversations and networks (include conferences),” “Teaching writing in the disciplines,” “TILT assignment design,” “Teaching writing in STEM,” “Inclusion-Diversity-Equity-Accessibility (IDEA) in WAC,” and “Demystifying WAC program administration.”

Please register by completing this brief survey.

Registration will close Monday, May 15th at midnight (ET).

Questions? Please contact AWAC Mentoring Committee Co-Chairs Lindsay Clark (lclark@shsu.edu) and Amy Cicchino (cicchina@erau.edu) or WAC-GO Chair Barbara Green (bgreen@purdueglobal.edu)

The IWCA is currently seeking nominations for Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, three At-Large Representatives, a Two-Year Institutions Representative, and two Peer Tutor Representatives.

The IWCA Nominations Committee hopes to recruit a slate of candidates from a range of institutions and across a variety of identities to run for this year’s election. The IWCA Board is made richer when it is comprised of writing center professionals who represent the broader international writing center community. We encourage nominations and self-nominations of Black, Asian-American, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander writing center professionals; members of the LGBTQ+ community; individuals with disabilities; our colleagues at international writing centers; and writing center folk at two-year colleges, secondary schools, HBCUs, HSIs, and tribal colleges.

Being elected to the Board of IWCA means having an opportunity to sit at the table when a variety of important decisions are being made that will inform IWCA’s

• conference and event planning (annual conference, the Summer Institute, and the Collaborative);
• organizational priorities like those being addressed in the Social Justice Task Force and the Accessibility Task Force;
• Mentor Matching program;
• decisions about grants and awards;
• financial planning;
• And more!

If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague for a Board position, please complete the nomination form here. All nominees must be IWCA members in good standing. Nominees who are not current members of IWCA will be given an opportunity to join the organization after accepting a nomination. Self-nominations for any of the above positions are encouraged.

If you cannot access the Google form, please send the following information to IWCA Secretary Beth Towle (batowle@salisbury.edu) by June 1, 2023:

• The name of the nominee
• The email address for the nominee
• The name of the position you are nominating the individual for. 
• You an also include any comments that you think are appropriate

 

Nominations are open until June 1, 2023. After the nominations stage closes, Beth Towle will contact each nominee to determine whether the nominee accepts the nomination and, if so, to request a short (no more than 150 words) personal statement about the nominee’s experience and goals. Elections will be open from September 1 until September 15th. Elected candidates will be notified by October 1st. 

Please direct any questions to Beth Towle: batowle@salisbury.edu

_______________________________________________________________________

 

The CCCC Online Writing Instruction (OWI) Standing

Group Invites GSOLE Members to Attend

Webinars in OWI Research

The CCCC Online Writing Instruction (OWI) standing group would like to invite you to the first of several webinars which are part of our new Webinars in OWI Research series. We plan to hold these two in spring and another two this fall.

A special thanks to Kevin DePew for leading this Webinars in OWI Research working group.

Contact Kevin (Kdepew@odu.edu) if you’d like to get involved in this working group. To learn

more about all of our working groups please visit our

website: https://sites.google.com/view/owistandinggroup/home

To learn more about all of our working groups please visit our website:

https://sites.google.com/view/owistandinggroup/home

Cheers,

Jessie Borgman

OWI Standing Group Chair

Upcoming Presentations

Presentation Title: A User-Centered Approach to Researching Student Needs in Synchronous Online Classes 

Speaker: Meghalee Das, Texas Tech University

Presentation Description: This webinar discusses the application of user experience (UX) research methodologies to studying the needs of students in synchronous online classes conducted over video conferencing platforms like Zoom.  It particularly focuses on methods like user journey maps, environment analysis, surveys, interviews, and affinity diagramming. The webinar also presents the preliminary results of a survey conducted on international students, where participants shared their experiences in online classes, and the instructor qualities and inclusive classroom practices they valued the most.  

Speaker Bio: Meghalee Das is a PhD candidate in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at

Texas Tech University (TTU). She teaches first-year composition and technical writing courses in face-to-face and online formats, and also serves as an instructional development consultant. Her research interests include user experience (UX), cultural inclusivity, online instructional design, and digital rhetoric. She has authored chapters in key edited collections and the custom textbook used by the TTU English Department's technical writing courses, and her articles have appeared in Technical Communication, Programmatic Perspectives, and Intercom. For her dissertation, she studies the UX of international students in online learning environments to develop culturally-inclusive and user-centered pedagogical strategies.

Time: May 3, 2023 1:30-2:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://odu.zoom.us/j/93236659157?pwd=RVdQeE0xOFhTV0hVckV1ckdVY2QvZz09

Meeting ID: 932 3665 9157

Passcode: 787184

Presentation Title: Always Doing More: Examining Writing Program Administrator approaches to Online Writing Instruction & Professional Development 

Speaker: Melvin Beavers

Presentation Description: Within Beavers’ 2018 study of 10 WPAs, the participants indicated when asked to describe their role as WPA, that their role(s) was layered, or not easily pinned down to one thing or another.  What emerged, as a result, was a theme that he termed “Administrative Rhetorical Mindfulness”, based in part on the repeated interview phrase, “a desire to do more”.  This presentation will present an overview of the mixed method research design followed with a review of the findings, discussion of themes, and a reflection of the choices made to ultimately gain a greater awareness about the professional development landscape for online writing instruction.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Melvin E. Beavers (he, him, his) currently serves as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion fellow at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. Additionally, he is an Assistant Professor and served as the First-Year Writing Director in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing from 2019-2022. His research interests involve DEI training and facilitating, writing program administration, composition pedagogy, online literacy instruction, rhetorical theory, and popular culture studies. He teaches first-year writing and a variety of upper-level writing courses. His work has been published in Academic Labor: Research and Artistry, the WPA Symposium on Black Lives Matter, and an edited collection entitled, Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing.  Additionally, Dr. Beavers has recently been awarded an Inclusive Leadership Certificate from Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education.

Time: April 24, 2023 3:00-4:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://odu.zoom.us/j/96995840892?pwd=QTRuSDkwTHNLTkV6bFk0c2J2SFJzQT09

Meeting ID: 969 9584 0892

Passcode: 203304

Please join us for GSOLE’s Annual Member Gathering! In the past, we have held this session at CCCC, but this year, we’ll meet online on March 22, at 3:30 pm ET. At this Zoom session, you’ll have an opportunity to learn, engage, and contribute.

This meeting is free and open to everyone!  Please register now here: GSOLE Annual Meeting Registration

Register now for the March 2023 #GSOLE Webinar featuring Kitty S. C. Burroughs! 

"Globalising literacies: Fostering engagement and innovation in HyFlex instruction" “Reflective Writing in HyFlex Instruction: From Gaining Self-Knowledge and Identity to Building Empathy and Safe Learning Community"

Register here: https://gsole.org/sys/website/system-pages/?pageId=18008