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What ‘lubricates’ your teaching?

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April 29, 2019
Alternative Presentations, Experience Design, Workshops
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With less than 2 weeks to go until the inaugural Academic Afternoon Tea, I thought I would share the preparatory (but also completely optional) task I set the people who have signed up, maybe one of you out there who won’t be able to join us would like to join in with this?

(One of the principles of Experience Design as taught by the College of Extraordinary Experiences is Co-Creation, the idea that ‘the group’ contributes to a shared knowledge base and design. This is, of course, also something that has become more and more important in Learning and Teaching, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, for example, as well as inviting the Student Voice into the classroom by making students co-creators.)

As we are meeting for afternoon tea, I have asked participants to think about what aspects ‘lubricate’ our teaching and learning?

In the best regenring tradition, let us try and explain and share these concepts as ‘tasting notes’ of tea blends – the brief descriptions of what a tea tastes like, what its properties are and even how to prepare it.

This probably makes more sense when looking at some examples, so here are two that I came up with:

Whimsicalitea

An often unexpected taste, this is best served in small portions (especially at the beginning, after which it might develop into an acquired taste by the drinkers and could therefore be used more frequently and in larger doses). Very useful to introduce a sense of wonder and playfulness into sessions, it can open up the imagination and the exploring of opportunities.

Insanitea

A strong blend that is related in taste profile to Whimsicalitea, but much more intense. As this is almost hallucination inducing it is imperative to use this in only small doses. However, it is sometimes needed to get people’s thinking off the beaten track.

As you can see, the link to ‘tea’ works quite well if you get hold of a term that in conventional spelling ends in -ty, but you could equally make up a more fancy name for your tea blends, maybe inspired by blends that are out there. Really, I think the most important thing is to reflect on some aspects of teaching and learning that make it special – and have a bit of fun with this.

AAC tea menu photo

The ‘menu’ I made for the Academic Afternoon Tea – including some of the submitted tea tasting notes

Here are some that were suggested by participants:

Jovialitea

A fresh taste of cheerfulness that tempts the taste buds and lifts the spirits. (Kath Houston)

Acceptabilitea

An essential, everyday brew that shows willingness to work inclusively and to recognise worth in all students. Best served with an open mind, a kind eye, and a pinch of salt! (Christy Anna Evans)

Joie-de-vivre-tea

A lively brew, made with an attitude that combines passion for your subject, love of your work and a joyous approach to life! (Christy Anna Evans)

Creativitea

Our blending muses know that whilst mood and motivation change throughout the day, a bold wake up cuppa can put the first bounce into the creative leaps and bounds we make later in the day. Whatever blend of creativitea you choose, the taste can be adjusted to creative state with the addition of milk and/or sugar. In need of a creative hit first thing, then go easy on the milk but sprinkle that sugar liberally. Feel your creative juices flow as you drink a cup of liquid toast and honey. Feel sweet enough already? Then forgo the sugar and milk and enjoy an unadulterated cup of warming inspiration. Creativitea: the best start to your day. (Sandie Donnelly)

Pragmatisane

For those moments when it just isn’t happening for you, turn to pragmatisane. Step away from the computer, let the battle go, and fill your cup with zesty lemon, sharp enough to zap any lethargy, blended with warming spicy ginger to comfort and ease any emerging anxiety. Find a chair with a view, put your feet up and sip on pragmatisane. As the ginger relaxes you, the sharp lemon cuts a path through any blockages. You’ll be rested and refreshed in no time. Pragmatisane, because paralysing creative blocks aren’t worth it … (Sandie Donnelly) 

My aim is to collect a whole menu full of teaching inspired ‘teas’ and to share this at the Academic Afternoon Tea (and also here on the blog).

If this sounds like fun, please add your own as a comment!

Looking back on the Chicken and the Egg issues – A conversation between Alke and Fiona

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September 13, 2018
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A bit more than two years ago, Fiona English and myself were asked by Julia Lockheart, the editor of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, whether we would be interested in guest editing a Special Issue on Genre and Regenring for that publication. A themed workshop and conference, as well as months of editing work later, not one, but two issues are now published (Volume 11: Numbers 1 and 2), by us jokingly referred to as the Chicken and the Egg issue respectively.

This seemed like a good point for us two co-guest-editors to reflect on the process, so here a conversation that we had one September morning, in case you are interested in our thoughts on the process, the idea of using two different forms of editorial (one traditional, one as an abecedary) and whether we would change anything.

Find out more about Issue 1 (the Chicken) here.

Find out more about Issue 2 (the Egg) here.

(This was a typed chat, and I have tried to get rid of typos but have not changed grammar or structure of the unscripted exchange.)

Cover image for the two Special Issues on Genre and Regenring

Alke: So, the two issues are out and I thought it would just be a nice idea if we reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Do you think we achieved what we wanted to do?

Fiona: I’m actually really proud of these two issues. The range and quality of the articles is fantastic – so interesting to read and so well written. The production side too is great. They look and feel good in the hand.

Alke: I agree, as the physical things, the journals worked out really well. Now for me this was one of the surprising things – that I always thought of the journals as a physical entity, but that is not how the publisher saw them, they see them as separate articles… that took me a while to realise. If we had thought about them like this, would we have done anything differently, do you think?

Fiona: Yes I know what you mean. The on-line article as stand-alone access makes the experience quite different. I don’t think we would have done anything differently in this particular case nor do I think we should have. The flow of the physical versions works really well and hopefully people will actually get to see this. However, if we do another thing like this we might think about it differently and provide a different kind of threading to preface each article. Maybe that’s something we could do in any case? If the publisher let us.

Alke: I’m not sure we should volunteer any more work on this, to be honest 😉 And I really like them as a collection – I think this is where the value of this lies, to see the different ways of using genre side by side, in a way. I seem to remember that one of the things we wanted to do at the beginning was give people the confidence to try out more and to take more ownership (shouting about?) the practice they were already doing, almost giving them a theory to be able to justify their playing with genre as a ‘serious’ thing – and I think that this collection does show that off, and hopefully does that.

Fiona: I agree – and I’m certain this has been achieved. I’m glad we pushed some people to write differently while leaving others to their own devices. It means that we have a range of genres which then means that readers can consider the affordances of each as they read. What do you think about setting up a kind of feedback forum? Getting readers’ responses to the different articles with regard to how the genres used impacted on their reading and on their attitude to the ‘knowledge’ being explored/developed.

Alke: I think that would be really interesting – maybe I could ask for that at the end of this blog post and also ask the contributors to add to.

Fiona: Yes great. It could also comprise an element of any seminar/party we might plan for the future.

Alke: I love it! A feedback party instead of a launch!

Fiona: It would be good to get feedback on people’s own attitudes to alternative genres for academic production and how they might be valid in the context of REF!!! And yes, a feedback party –

Alke: I think we might have found our angle for the follow-up event! Now, we also played with genre, not just in our own, separate contributions, but in the two editorials… which in a way are very different…

Fiona: Yes I’ve been thinking of the differences in experience doing them. The essential difference in terms of process is that one is a kind of narrative – it tells a story in a chronological order so to speak. The second works as a kind of glossary – explanation of terms of ref or rather concepts that are explored across the issues – and as such required a different kind of thinking – explanations and definitions rather than narrative. We had to say more about our frames of reference in the second one and more about the journal as a flow in the first. Is that right?

Alke: In a way, yes. I have to admit that I (maybe naively) had thought that the abecedary would be so much easier to do as a format than it actually was. In the end figuring out what to include and what not, and having the constraints of the alphabet was a really interesting challenge!

Fiona: the abecedary was a challenge for sure – but a very interesting one as it forced us to foreground concepts and key issues and to use the alphabetic constraints to think of fresh ways for describing/defining them. In other words, the affordances of each genre ensured that we approached the same information differently and in the process of so doing produced different ways of articulating it. This made us rethink – always a good thing.

Alke:: Exactly. And I am really glad that we decided on taking on that challenge rather than going for something like a conversation (which we had also considered), especially because it made us think about the content more in terms of definitions, rather than just rehashing the narrative in a two-person narrative way!

Fiona: Yes – that’s very true. And it was fun too! Playing around trying to find a way of using all the letters – only one cheat with the X.

Alke: Thinking about it, I think we could have made ‘xerography’ work… the idea of copying stuff, or not, would have worked int the context of gains and losses!

Fiona: xerography – yeah – but then we’d not have had ‘eXpectations’ – though we’d probably have squeezed that in elsewhere. Gains and Losses – yes – that’s true. What do you think these were between the two editorials?

Alke: Well, the first editorial gives much more background info as to how these issues came about, while the abecedary only really mentions the workshop and conference in passing. But they were both really important events. And, as you say, the second one is much more about definitions, being clear about what we are talking about and mean, which is easy to gloss over in a way when you are writing a narrative.

Fiona: Yes I agree. The first one tells the story of how things came about and why and how the journal is organised. It makes an easier read, probably, as a whole because it does what people expect despite the informal tone we use. It is also more effective in profiling the different articles because they are introduced within a narrative structure. This is the story of how we got together and this is the story of how we got the contributions for these special issues and this is the story of how the issues have been organised. The Issue One editorial had to go first – the chicken before the egg otherwise readers would have been totally confused.

Alke: LOL

Fiona: t’ll be interesting to get feedback from the readers/contributors of Issue Two about how they feel about the editorial. They won’t have seen the first one.

Alke: That’s a really good point! I hadn’t even considered that!

Fiona: No nor had I until we started this discussion. (the affordances of a dialogic genre 😉

Alke: 🙂   Would we change it if we had to do it again? Or better: is there anything we would change?

Fiona: That’s a good question. Did we point out in the Egg that we had done a different kind of editorial for the Chicken? I can’t remember. I think we saw them as two sides of the same coin and forgot that not everyone would read everything. Again, back to the thing about single article purchases too!

Alke: let me just check…We do mention it under ‘A is for abstract’ – sort of. Phew!

Fiona: That’s lucky – or rather not lucky – we took it into account. It’s amazing how quickly one (I, that is) forgets what one’s done almost as soon as you turn over onto the next page! I constantly have to keep checking back in things I’ve written to see what I said about something.

Alke: Well, I guess that comes with doing a lot of things. And once they are published, on file, so to speak, you don’t need to keep the details in your head, because you can just check back. but I think it is a really interesting point, that we didn’t just conceive this as a physical journal, but as a double issue, and didn’t really ever saw them as split up!

Fiona: That’s right!

Alke: maybe that means we misjudged our audience?

Fiona: Hum – yes perhaps. Not our audience exactly, but how our audience might read. This is food for thought. What we did with these two Issues could never be done via the on-line single purchase approach. We thought of these issues as if they were a book – a complete thing. That’s indeed what they are. The market forces behind the publishers, though, see/treat everything as stand-alone. It’s the same with modular university degrees. The idea that there is no need for an overall view/story but that things can just exist – contextless and floating out alone. In fact, the publisher’s approach militates against special issues!

Alke: I think you are right. In the book I just wrote they asked for each chapter to have its own separate bibliography so that the chapters could be sold separately (we decided to ignore that request for now…), but that changes the whole argument you can make and splits it into bite-sized chunks.Some things you want to say are bigger than that!

Fiona: Absolutely – this is a problem indeed and one which, in my view, leads to people picking up fag ends as the saying goes. In other words, piecemeal knowledge – knowledge with no context – in other words, not knowledge!

Alke: In fact, I think if at the beginning of this process somebody had told me to edit a collection of separate but related journal articles, I don’t think I would have been up for that! It is that context that makes it interesting and useful!

Fiona: Me neither. The whole pleasure of it was to put together a unified piece of work not lots of separate pieces of work.

Alke: So hopefully people will read both issues and not just pick out the odd article!

Fiona: I do hope so.

Alke: Anyway, anything else we would change?

Fiona: I don’t think so. For me the contributors have done a fantastic job in honing their articles not just in terms of academic content but in style and voice more so than in most other journal articles. I think they also saw themselves as working as part of a whole too. I mean they understood what they were writing to be a contribution to an overall story too. I think we got the range and balance right too across each issue.

Alke: Yes, I agree. I wouldn’t change the content. However – and this totally shows my roots as a designer – if I had realised how easy it was to change the cover image, I would have asked for two different ones: one of the furoshiki laid out, so you could see it whole, and one of it wrapped up, rather than combining those two ‘states’ into one image. but then maybe that would have put too much focus on that one artefact? Anyway, just a tiny thing with hindsight 😉

Fiona: Yes – that would have been good. And I don’t think it would have put too much onto the one piece. I think it would have perfectly represented regenring. But tant pis! They are still beautiful objects these two issues.

 

Find out more about Issue 1 (the Chicken) here.

Find out more about Issue 2 (the Egg) here.

 

If you have read both, one or just parts of these special issues, please comment on this post with some feedback about the above topics or others!

Exploring Genre(s) and/in the Creative Arts at EAP in the North

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May 26, 2018
Workshops
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One of the reasons that this blog has been fairly quiet over the last few months, is that Fiona English and myself are in the process of co-guest editing two special issues of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. We are really excited about the mix of content, which represents a number of genres as well as discuss using genres in teaching and learning. (Of course I will let you know when the issues are actually out, one of them is going to print soon, the other is about to enter the typesetting stage.)

a preview of the cover image for the forthcoming journal issues

So when we heard that EAP in the North were running a workshop on Exploring Genre(s) specifically in the context of the creative arts, we thought this was an excellent occassion to visit the University of Edinburgh and chat a little bit about our expertise in this and check out what other people are doing.

It was such a lovely event, and I was reminded of our own ReGenre conference last year (indeed, one of the attendees of that event was here giving us an opportunity to catch up), because it was run in a way to allow for lots of sharing and discussion along the way.

Alex Collins from the University of Edinburgh showed us how he engages art history students with core skills via workshops that are backed up with his online Art History Toolkit (check it out here, but be aware that he might ‘wipe’ content in preparation for the new term to then populate it again as the term progresses – though he is currently looking at other ways of running this, and I really do hope it’ll become a permanent resource for all of us to dip into – there is lots of good stuff here, not just for art history students!).

Clare Carr was talking about some of the different genres music students at Durham University are being asked to write in – and wondered whether assignment setters need to be more precise about how they brief and also describe the genres they are actually after. The term ‘essay’ means many things to many people!

This linked in perfectly for an exploration of what an ‘essay’ is or could be – and the Dress-up Doll of Formality exercise I introduced delegates to. After some fast and furious discussion and outfit drawing on the tables, the sharing with solutions of the group was rich (and we are hoping to get the produced images up on the EAP in the North website). This short taste of regenring was a great lead into a quick overview of Fiona’s work – and of course us talking a bit about the forthcoming special issues.

After a short refreshment break, Clare Maxwell was talking about writing genres specifically within Design in her work at the University of Leeds, genres that are very often located in the overlap of academic, vocational and creative work – but sometimes difficult to locate in publications of designers (that old theory/practice divide is still coming up it seems). One of the issues of discussion following on from Clare’s talk was the role of ‘I’ in writing – and the necessity of authors to be aware of what it does.

We then broke off into small groups, where some people had brought ideas to share and discuss. In the group I joined, Anna Rolinska laid out her plans for a Pre-Sessional English for Creative Disicplines course at Glasgow School of Art, which was fascinating, with all of the group then sharing ideas, which hopefully gave Anna some more inspiration. I hope she will write a little post on this later in the year.

Most of us ended up in the pub for a drink and more chat afterwards. On top of everything else, it was a gorgeous day – Thank You to Alison Thomas and her team for organising such a fabulous event!

The setting for the workshop was this lovely campus, need I say more?

Using Feedback Bunting

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July 22, 2017
Conferences, Uncategorized, Workshops
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Here the 2nd promised addendum to the write-up of #ReGenring17

Collecting delegate feedback after or during an event can always be a bit challenging. There are standard feedback forms around, of course, but they might not actually capture the information you are most interested in. I, for example, am usually more interested in delegates’ responses to the content of the event than in their thoughts on the organisation of the buffet (not that this is not important, but if something was fundamentally wrong with that, I probably already know). So I leave the formal feedback forms for collecting metrics for the venue or the funders.

Feedback Bunting in action

But I do want to know what people actually thought about and during the event and since my events are usually quite creative, I like to find ways of tying this in. Apart from the maybe ubiquitous post-its, I have in the past used postcards and luggage tags to get delegates to leave some impressions of the event with me – and their thoughts on how to improve it for next time round. And then somebody at one of the Writing-PAD East Midlands meetings mentioned ‘feedback bunting’. I was immediately attracted to the idea. Could we somehow give delegates little ‘flags’ in different colours for their comments and invite them to populate a string as the event progressed?

Using relatively small flags has the advantage that delegates can add comments in bite-sized pieces as they occur, so instead of having to do a summary of feedback of the day towards the end, it can grow organically.

Ready to try this out for the recent ReGenring conference, I first looked into pre-produced bunting but decided against that as it would have been difficult to add comments once this was hanging – and I didn’t want to end up with un-displayed but filled in bunting at the end of the event. Rather, I wanted to find a way to allow delegates to secure their flags on the string without needing clips or a stapler, so tried out a folded version with a slot cut into both sides from opposite ends, so they could be slotted together (see the second way on the drawing below). In theory this worked well, but in practice this turned out to be over-designed, most people ended up just folding their flags over the string which worked just as well if not better than a complicated slotting maneouvre. (Although if the event had been outdoors that might have been a different matter.)

a very basic drawn instruction on how to make feedback bunting work

Having explained the idea during my part of the Welcome, I left flags on the tables for people to start filling up (which started pretty much immediately). During the Sharing Session in the afternoon I could be found walking around pressing some more onto people while asking “Have you left some feedback yet?” Maybe I was slightly too pushy, but it was really lovely to see the bunting chain grow over the course of the day.

I will definitely be using this simple, but effective, way of collecting feedback again and would recommend it for events big and small.

I am also thinking that this might be a fun way to organise a to-do list. I always have a number of projects on the go, and having one per flag would remind me of those projects and give me some space to add notes (and if I run out of space on one flag, I can always add another one). Plus as urgencies and priorities change, the order of these flags could be easily switched around. Something to try out in the next few days, I think 🙂

Call for Papers for Genring and Regenring Special Issue

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July 16, 2017
Conferences, Workshops
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(Last) Call for Papers – final deadline 15th August 2017
For a special issue of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice guest edited by Dr Fiona English and Dr Alke Groppel-Wegener, we are currently looking for submissions that celebrate the practice of genring and regenring. Even though the journal title includes ‘creative practice’, these examples do not have to come from a creative practice background (as we would argue that genring and regenring could be seen as a creative practice by itself). You also do not have to have been present at the workshop and conference we have been running on this subject – if you are doing any sort of genring and/or regenring we would love to hear from you!
We would suggest the following formats:
Examples focusing on the process of (re)genring
We want to showcase a selection of genring and regenring practice, based on a template – see my recent post on this blog giving a bit more information on the template here (and email me (Alke) on tactileacademia[at]gmail.com for what information is needed if you want to contribut an example).
The examples should be focused on the process of (re)genring and should concentrate on one outcome genre only. They are not about the assessment, module or unit, but about the genre itself.
Case Studies
Between 2000 and 3000 words, these should be description and analysis of examples of your practice. These should be wider in scope than the examples.
Full Papers
Between 5000 and 7000 words, these should contain theoretical discussions that take the subject beyond the examples and case studies.
Reviews
Have been to an event linked to genre, genring or regenring recently? Want to review an outstanding example you have come across? These are usually between 500 and 2000 words.
As this issue is celebrating reGenring we are, of course, open to genres other than the academic paper. However, please keep in mind when planning your submission that we are constrained by the format of the journal, and the JoWiCP in particular.
This means:
  • landscape orientation of pages (we can probably somewhat play with their standard layout, but only with good reason)
  • pictures need to work in black and white as we cannot guarantee them being printed in colour (although in the online version they would be in colour). Please ensure that you have ownership, or have obtained copyright clearance for any image submitted.
We would suggest that submissions that don’t follow the traditional academic paper genre are bookended by an academic abstract (about 150 words) that explains the chosen genre and the reasons for choosing it and a conventional bibliography. We will be using Intellect publishers style guide, which you can download here.
We will also need an author biography of 50-100 words with all submissions.
All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.
Journal contributors will receive a free PDF copy of their final work upon publication. Print copies of the journal may also be purchased by contributors at half price.
Final deadline for submissions (via tactileacademia[at]gmail.com) is 15th August 2017.

Sharing ReGenring – with a little help from my template

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July 7, 2017
Conferences, Uncategorized
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Here the first follow-up post promised in my write up of the #ReGenring17 conference.

For the afternoon we had scheduled a ‘Sharing Session’ – essentially some time for people to just talk to each other. In order to give some broader starting points than just the keynotes, I had put out a Call for Practice as a first announcement of the conference, and quite a few people had responded to that.

The idea was that people would pick an example of their genring practice to show off, so that delegates could have a look at this. I had decided to give a structure to this by asking the sharers to fill in a very basic questionnaire about their projects to send to me the week previously, which I then fitted into a basic template. So everybody who shared their work had a poster that was following the same format.

here one example of those posters, this was the example I sent around to the sharers

One of the feedback comments stated

The posters are informative but all have the same format (template), Maybe delegates could present their work/research in chosen individual ways?

Let me explain that decision…  I decided on using a template on purpose, for a number of reasons:

  • This needed to work as a stand-alone piece of work, so even if the sharer didn’t bring any other artefacts or documents to show and wasn’t present (due to talking to somebody else at that time), this still needed to make sense. Current poster practice (see my recent blog post on this – told you it made sense to have it as an interlude before this post) shows that stand-alone posters often use what I call a ‘Spineless Report’ or ‘Box Set’ approach. I really didn’t want any of the former, because people get either bored by too much text or frustrated when not having the time to read it all. But a ‘Box Set’ like approach I thought was much better – ask the sharers about something specific.
  • When everybody uses the same template what you end up with are posters that are much easier to compare.
  • I wanted to steer the sharing session towards the process of genring and regenring, so the template was designed to prompt the sharers into that, rather than just show off the fabulous outcomes that they achieved.
  • And I was also already thinking of the special edition of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice that we are putting together on the back of this. For that we had been talking about a section that shows off examples, like a catalogue in a way, so I actually designed a format with that in mind. I think I can pull the posters into spreads for the journal pretty easily to achieve this catalogue section, making little extra work for the sharers. So it is a multi-genre performing template.

In short, while choosing a template format for the sharing session loses the individuality of expression from the sharers, it gains the easier comparability. As sharers were encouraged to bring extra materials, the format of which they were free to choose themselves, I think they had the opportunity to still customise what they were showing sufficiently.

So why this template?

one previous workshop participants found that a mankini represents the genre of ‘Tweet’

I have designed and worked with a template/format that looks at genre before: the Dress-Up Doll of Formality. In a nutshell this is an activity I designed for my students to become more aware of the ‘rules’ of a genre, by likening writing for a specific audience to dressing for a specific occassion. So what I ask them to do is to design an outfit for a Gingerbreadperson that is like a genre they explore (tweet, academic essay, billboard poster, etc.) and then also add why they chose this outfit. It gets the students to pay attention to the rules in a visual and fun way (and I have also run this as a workshop for staff and management, which can be much fun). This works fine in the context it was designed for, but seemed too simple in the context of this conference. And, of course, it puts the focus on the established rules of one genre, but not on the process of genring or regenring.

a visual representation of Fiona’s theoretical genre framework

Of course there is a theoretical framework custom-made for this, Fiona English’s work, which looks at genre in the context of two orientations, the social and the material, breaking these down further into contextual and discursive as well as thematic and semiotic aspects respectively, to then break these down even further. This one seemed at the other end of the spectrum, a bit too complex. I didn’t want to scare the potential sharers away by sending them a template that basically meant they would first have to read a chapter or book in order to understand it.

So I needed to find a middle ground. Fairly simple to break down, but giving pertinent information. And it needed a simple visual as well, something that could be customised to show a flavour of the individual projects, but still somewhat uniform. And it needed to make sense as a visual metaphor for the process of genring and regenring.

I decided to ask people to focus on the gains and losses that the ‘new’ genre has opposed to the ‘old’ genres it is inspired by or based on. I thought that was probably the most crucial concept, information that people new to genring would need (or want to have) when considering their own projects for the future. And I stumbled across the Venn Diagram as a visual that shows the idea of two different ‘pools’ of genre that overlap – and this overlap is what we are interested in.

template example from Welcome Presentation discussing the outcomes of the Make-Your-Own-Nametag activity

So we first identify the genres the ‘new’ genre is based on. In our context this is often a traditional academic genre (which I put on the left) and a non-academic genre (which I put on the right) – although of course in a different context these might not be linked to academic genres at all, or could all be academic genres. The ‘new’, or featured, genre is in the middle – an ideal place to put an image giving a sense of an example of that genre. And then it is simply a matter of identifying the gains and losses of that genre in the overlap. Of course you ‘lose’ and ‘gain’ things from both sides of the Venn Diagram. For this exercise it is important to try and list all the gains and losses; identifying losses in particular is hard, because usually these are things you are happy to lose, otherwise you wouldn’t decide to try this new genre. But listing it all is really helpful in allowing you to make an informed decision.

I think this template might actually become a simple way to familiarise people with the concept of genring and would also work as an activity sheet to think through potential gains and losses when switching from one genre to the next, so I also made them as a handout with simple instructions that you can download here (including the space we had on the poster for a description of the new genre): Genring Handout blank

From Nametags to Feedback Bunting

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June 25, 2017
Conferences
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Last week was a crazy week for me, but the highlight undoubtedly was the ReGenring Academic Writing and Assessment conference I co-organised at Nottingham Trent University.  (And as co-organiser I might be slightly biased as to how fabulous an event it was…) I promised to write this up quickly for some people who couldn’t join us, so here are my impressions of the day:

The Trent Institute for Learning and Teaching that was hosting us had booked us into a great lecture theatre in their conference centre in the Newton Building. This location worked really well, apart from the fact that they don’t allow you to put up your own signage. Official signage apparently has to be ordered weeks in advance, and we didn’t quite make that deadline, so in a way the day must have started for many people with the challenge to find the room…

But find it they did and then delegates were immediately set the task of making their own name tags, my favourite way to start a workshop. Turns out it also works for a conference. With more delegates than I had previously worked with coming, I had been a bit worried whether we would have enough ‘making’ space, but people seemed to make good use of the set up table and then drift over to continue started conversations on the other tables once their name tag was finished.

some of the things I cam home with

After a brief welcome by my co-organiser Lisa Clughen and myself, we started off with a talk by Julia Molinari about what makes our writing academic. This was a great start to the formal part of the day, as it set out a theoretical background for the question of where academic writing sits within the production, reflection and dissemination of knowledge – and whether it is the only way of doing these things. Julia argued for diversity within work with examples from long ago (Galileo argued his findings as a conversation) and from right now (and one of her examples, Nick Sousanis, we would hear from directly later on). What I took from her talk was questioning the contexts of ‘theory’ and ‘academia’ – and becoming more aware of the differences of these contexts (which might in turn help to break down the traditions of the latter).

After this theoretical grounding, we moved into the practice when David Hindley and Lisa Clughen talked about student perceptions and experiences of academic blogging. This was a reflection on the evaluation of one of Dave’s modules that asks students to write an academic blog post of 600 words as an assessment instead of an essay – plus making 3 informed comments on posts their peers put up. I was really interested in this, as it is a very different way of using blogging than I use (I use it to formatively prepare research for an essay at the end). Introducing the comments as a way of engaging the students beyond their own research seemed to work very well, and what also was interesting was that all students contribute to the same blog, hosted by Dave, so he is the person that posts the contribution, so he de facto becomes the editor, which allows to cut out concerns about students posting inappropriate material. While these practical aspects were interesting, the findings from the evaluation, which included questionnaires and focus groups, really were the star of this talk. They showed how students were not only feeling empowered by this way of contributing to debates in their field, but also how they found the joy in the research and writing. Clearly this works!

Nick talking about his first comic ‘Lockerman’

Our third keynote speaker, Nick Sousanis, gave a very eloquent and entertaining whistle-stop tour of his work, with specific focus on Unflattening. I have mentioned this book on this blog before, and if you haven’t looked at it yet, you should really get it! Nick’s subtitle for his talk was ‘reimagining scholarship through comics’ and he also talked about some work he does with students who are not confident when it comes to drawing, but that the format of comics – the combination of text and images, but particularly layout of pages within and around the boxes and the gutter – is a rich environment to explore when you are exploring what you are trying to “say”.

After all this food for thought, we needed some actual food and therefore relocated to a room a floor above to have lunch. I wasn’t really at lunch, as I was setting up the afternoon session, but when I popped up to grab a sandwich it was great to see how many people were sitting together and talking with each other.

While the morning had been carefully scheduled, we had planned the afternoon as a ‘Sharing Session’. Whenever I am going to events like this, it often seems like there is too little time to think and talk through the presented ideas. So instead of planning more formal presentations, we had put out a ‘Call for Practice’ so that people who are using alternative genre as assessments or in teaching could self-nominate and bring some materials to share with interested delegates. As we were particularly interested in the process of (re)genring, I had designed a simple template that I fed the information I had from people into, so that everybody who had responded to the Call for Practice could have a poster made that showed off ‘their’ genre within a very simple theoretical framework (looking at the gains and losses – I think I’ll blog about the details of this separately in the next few days). So when people drifted back into the room after lunch (or after going for a walk, or visiting the local comic book store), we had the posters set up and the people who had brought examples, etc. started to show off their practice. This worked really well, there was a lot of conversation around the room, clustered around posters as well as continuing conversations around the tables. We didn’t just have tea, coffee and cake, TILT had also sprung for some prosecco (particular thanks to Lisa for this brilliant idea!), so it really felt like a celebration.

Nick then led us in his Grids and Gestures drawing exercise. This was something he had mentioned in the morning, when we didn’t have the time for it. And it turned out to be the perfect thing for the afternoon, drawing together the sharing session with an activity (must remember that for the next conference!). If you want to know more about Grids and Gestures – and maybe do your own -, check out Nick’s blog here or his write-up of the activity in the SANE journal here.

We ended the day with Fiona English drawing the different strands together in a plenary. She reflected on the richness that using different genres allow to communicate (and produce) research, and that maybe investigating genring and regenring within a theoretical framework will allow us to convince the sceptics about the usefulness of this as a process.

I wanted to end this post by telling you about feedback bunting, but I’m already over 1000 words, so will leave that, too, for another post on another day. But I do want to say thank you to all the people who came to this day and made it so successful, and particularly to Lisa, my co-organiser! One of the feedback comments ended with “more please!!!” – we will try our best!

 

another reGenring conference update

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April 7, 2017
Conferences
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We have now confirmed our other speakers for the morning of the reGenring conference.

Julia Molinari will ask ‘What Makes our writing academic?’

In this talk, I would like to explore in what sense a text that does not follow established conventions of English Academic Discourse (EAD) can be considered ‘academic’? I will argue that such a text can be academic not in virtue of its textual features or of its modes, but in virtue of the extent to which it fulfils an academic purpose and practice. I will draw on theories of multimodality (A. Archer & E. Breuer, 2016), of higher education (Barnett, 1990, 2012, 2013; Besley & Peters, 2013) but also of the philosophy of sociology (Winch, 1990) to argue that since creativity, imagination and argumentation are amongst the purposes and practices of a higher education, then we need to look beyond language – understood as just one of many modes – to more fully fulfil the range of our academic aims.

David Hindley and Lisa Clughen will present on ‘Student perceptions and experiences of academic blogging: some reflections on the use of blogs as a way of fostering greater student engagement, collaboration, and ownership of learning’

This paper takes the standpoint that academic blogging offers precisely the type of inclusive writing genre and inclusive environment for writing development that Elbow (2014) advocates. It is informed by a mixed-method research project which analyses the use of blogs as a formative part of the assessment within a final year undergraduate module, Contemporary Issues in Sports Practice.

Finalised programme to follow soon, in the meantime, don’t forget to check out our other speaker here and the Call for Practice here (which is still open). Book your place here before it is too late!

reGenring conference 2 – who’ll be there

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April 3, 2017
Conferences
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Cover of Unflattening

I am happy to announce that Dr Nick Sousanis, author of the wonderful Unflattening, is going to be one of our invited speakers in the morning of the ReGenring conference at Nottingham Trent (see here for the Call for Practice). The title of his talk will be ‘Unflattening: reimagining scholarship through comics’ . Instead of an abstract, have a look at this page of Unflattening…

Page 64 of Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Also joining us will be Dr Fiona English, author of Student Writing and Genre, who will facilitate the end of day discussion. There have been some really interesting responses to the Call for Practice, and we can expect examples of genred and regenred work in form of comic books, radio plays, posters, poems, blogs, exhibitions, magazines and videos – don’t forget to let me know if you want to share some practice in the afternoon session yourself!

More info on our other speakers coming soon, don’t forget to book your (free) place here.

reGenring conference – Call for Practice

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March 3, 2017
Conferences
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After the successful workshop where we explored Genre as a Pedagogical Resource in November, I’m happy to be able to announce the follow-up event: a conference on reGenring Academic Writing and Assessment, hosted by the Trent Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT) at Nottingham Trent University in conjunction with Writing-PAD.

workshop participants making their own nametags in November

workshop participants making their own nametags in November

We will start the day with invited speakers in the morning (not quite finalised who yet, but I’ll keep you posted!) and give over the afternoon to a sharing session – and for this we need YOUR examples of practice! The idea is to have this fairly informal and give everybody who registers their interest some space to show off some artefacts or practice, that could be via posters or by bringing examples. We are also planning to put together a special issue of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (guest edited by myself and Dr Fiona English), so what you bring could be linked to an article you want to write for that (although it doesn’t have to be).

If you are playing with genre in your teaching or assessment practice (in any discipline) and you want to share some of this with us, please email Alke at tactileacademia@gmail.com with a brief description of what you are doing and what sort of artefacts you would like to bring to show. Please use ‘reGenring’ as the subject title of the email and indicate whether you would be interested in contributing to the special edition of the journal.

For more information on the conference and to book your place, please click here.