2020-2021 Webinar Series

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Listings of Past Webinar Series

The listings below document the efforts of past webinar leaders, as well as the evolving interests of online literacy educators.

Members may watch recorded webinars by clicking on the image accompanying each listing.

Webinar Descriptions

Racial Justice in Virtual Tutoring: Considerations for Antiracist Online Writing Center Praxis

Webinar Leaders: Zandra Jordan

Date of Webinar: August 31, 2020

Overview

The webinar will explore the ways our commitments to antiracism and racial justice can translate into online writing center tutoring practice. The leader, Zandra, will share the ways her identity informs her ethics, and will invite participants to explore their own values and the values that shape the identities of their writing centers. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting racial justice through writing center practice, the webinar will stress that by examining our shared commitments and values, we can think through our individual contexts and determine strategies for action.

The first step is to develop a clear ethic: we need to recognize and account for race in our writing center practice, and then question what a justice-oriented practice should look like. This is particularly important in our current moment, when so many writing centers have shifted to online delivery. This webinar will thus recommend strategies for ensuring that our practices and our engagement with writers through the online medium are promoting racial justice.

Participants will:

Inquire about their ethics and values around racial justice and antiracism
Reflect on how attitudes around race and difference are encoded into the language we use when we give verbal and written feedback
Recognize that neither asynchronous nor synchronous online writing center interactions are neutral
Acknowledge the unique challenges with and opportunities for antiracist praxis in an online writing center
Tailor an ethic of racial justice to their particular contexts

Webinar Leader Bios

Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan is Director of the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. A trained rhetorician and ordained Baptist minister, she holds a B.A. in English from Spelman College, a M.A.T in English from Brown University, a MDiv from Emory University's Candler School of Theology, and a PhD in English and Education from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Teaching Writing Online: Translingual and Antiracist Pedagogies

Webinar Leaders: Cristina Sanchez Martin

Date of Webinar: October 9, 2020

Overview

This webinar will engage participants in a conversation about how to use the affordances of online spaces to develop antiracist writing pedagogies that can function to restore language equity and justice in first-year composition courses. More specifically, the facilitator will provide a framework to investigate writing and languaging identities through antiracist pedagogies (Baker-Bell, 2020) and Pedagogical Cultural Historical Activity Theory (P-CHAT) paired with transnational and translingual perspectives (Sánchez-Martín & Walker). The facilitator will also share specific examples of how she facilitates antiracist pedagogies in her online first-year composition courses, invite participants to reflect on how their own language identities inform their teaching, and use the proposed framework to develop their pedagogies.

Participants Will

Be introduced to a framework for introducing antiracist pedagogies in their online courses
Reflect on the ways their own language identities inform their teaching
Engage in small group activities and share key takeaways with the full group
Discuss specific strategies for facilitating antiracist pedagogies online

Webinar Leader Bios

Cristina Sánchez-Martín is assistant professor in the Composition and Applied Linguistics (CAL) and MA TESOL programs at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she does research on and teaches about writing, language, and identity from a transnational perspective.

Intersectionality in FYC: Pedagogical Frameworks and Practices

Webinar Leaders: Iris Ruiz

Date of Webinar: November 2, 2020

Overview

Dr. Iris Ruiz will be engaging attendees with hand-on experience with antiracist pedagogy. Thinking through the tensions of between theory and practice in Online Writing Instruction, Ruiz will consider the ways that we think about the "technicalities" of online learning: the "right" way to provide accessible shells that will provide a one-size-fits all model of best practices for designing and implementing remote and digital learning in its various formats. Hybrid, synchronous, asynchronous, hyflex, etc, are examples of online pedagogical models that are characterized by a variety of digital-aided learning activities, but there is still something that has not been well- established within the parameters of traditional conceptions of "access" and the circulation of what constitutes "access."

Dr. Ruiz calls educators to pay attention to the realities of being forced to move online while considering that we are "double-tasked"--we are also faced with a resurgence of Black Lives Matter movements within a nation that is racially-divided with visible white supremacist hate-groups operating across the US. This workshop will explore pedagogical adaptations that can be one way to conceive of the "curricular imperative" in an age of increasing race-consciousness and within an era of blatant white nationalism.

Participants will:

Critique traditional conceptions of “access” in OWI
Reflect on the “double-task” of moving online during the resurgence of BLM movements
Explore racially conscious pedagogies

Webinar Leader Bio

Dr. Iris D. Ruiz is a Continuing Lecturer for the UC Merced Merritt Writing Program and a Lecturer with the Sonoma State University Chicano/Latino Studies Program. Her current publications are her monograph, Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy, and a co-edited collection, Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy, in which she also contributed a chapter on the keyword “Race,” a co authored caucus history, Viva Nuestra Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of Our Caucus. She's also written on Decolonial Methodology in Rhetorics Elsewhere and Otherwise. Her 2017 co authored article, “Race, Silence, and Writing Program Administration” deals with race and WPA history, and was published in the CWPA Journal and received the 2019 Kenneth Bruffee award. Lastly, she’s written for the Journal of Pan African Studies about her journey toward a decolonial identity titled, “La Indigena.”

Writing in Black: Methods for Teaching African American Students to incorporate Black Language in Composition

Webinar Leaders: Wonderful Faison

Date of Webinar: February 23, 2021

Overview

This workshop focuses on antiracist writing assessment and tutoring. The facilitator will discuss the theories of linguistic racism and antiracist assessment, and then describe how she applies that theory to her own practice as a writing instructor at an HBCU. She will particularly focus on labor contracts and rubrics, sharing examples and inviting participants to practice antiracist assessment in response to a student sample. The facilitator will also reflect on the ways that the global pandemic has created a moment for innovation and invite participants to explore strategies for applying antiracist assessment in their own online writing courses and online writing centers.

Participants Will:

Learn theories behind linguistic racism and antiracist assessment
Examine models of Labor Contracts and Rubrics
Assess a student sample using anti-racist assessment practices

Webinar Leader Bio

Wonderful Faison, PhD, professionally known as Dr. Wonderful, is the English Department Chair and an Assistant Professor of English at Langston University. She is interested in linguistic racism and racist pedagogical and writing assessment practices.

Developing Critical Digital Literacies that Sustain Cultural Sovereignty in Online Writing Courses

Webinar Leaders: Les Hutchinson

Date of Webinar: April 14, 2021

Overview

This workshop focuses on the role culture plays in students’ acquiring critical digital literacies. The facilitator will discuss cultural sovereignty, the right all peoples have to practice their culture, and how writing educators can support students’ use of their cultural knowledge in the online writing classroom. After a brief presentation where the facilitator will go over key terms related to cultural sovereignty and their application in syllabi, course texts, assignments, and conversation; participants will have the opportunity to converse about the content in small groups and (re)design key parts of their course design using these concepts to create a more inclusive and culturally relevant online course environment for all students.

Participants Will . . .

Learn Indigenous theories and applications that define cultural sovereignty
Examine their own pedagogy and course design for opportunities to bring in students’ cultural knowledges to the online classroom in practical, accessible ways
(Re)Design a facet of their course design to support students’ cultural sovereignty in future classes

Webinar Leader Bios

Les Hutchinson Campos or “Dr. Hutch” currently teaches in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication program within the English department at Boise State University. Their research focuses on cultural and digital rhetorics, particularly with attention to privacy and online safety. They also serve as the Executive Director of the Indigenous Idaho Alliance where they work with local tribal communities and all Indigenous peoples toward sovereignty and land back efforts.

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