What do lab reports, grants, and infographics have in common? For one thing, they are all genres of writing that our students frequently come across in the STEM classroom! But how do we teach students to become more familiar with these genres? In this 2-hour workshop, we will explore how developing a critical genre awareness can improve the writing assignments we design and the writing that students produce by examining how writing is bound by social, cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts. At the end of the workshop, participants will create a map of a genre in their discipline they would like to teach, including its unique features and how they would assess their students’ learning. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify the role that communities and genres play in the types of writing we assign
• Compare and contrast features of writing in similar genres across disciplines
• Recognize how your prior experiences and biases shape your understanding of genre
• Create a map of a genre in your discipline and its features

This workshop is part of CIRTL’s fall programming on science communication.

Instructors

Kristin Winet, University of Arizona
Emily Jo Schwaller, University of Arizona

Workshop Schedule

This workshop meets in Zoom on Wednesday, October 4 at 3-5PM AT / 2-4PM ET / 1-3PM CT / 12-2PM MT / 11AM-1PM PT.

Audience

This workshop is designed first and foremost for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in STEM/SBE disciplines, but generally relevant to anyone looking to get an introduction into different types of scientific writing assignments at the college level.

Registration & Enrollment

Cap: 35. Registration opens Monday, August 14 and closes when capacity is reached (note: registration is closed as of Monday, August 28). Enrollment is processed on a first-come, first-served basis; registrants who are from CIRTL member institutions or CIRTL alumni receive priority.

Accessibility

If you have a disability, please let us know your learning needs. Contact Kate Diamond (kdiamond3@wisc.edu), who is supporting this workshop, to let us know how we can help you have a successful experience. In addition to meeting individualized needs, we will also take measures throughout the workshop to support accessibility for all our students:

• Using alt-text on images in reading materials
• Sending pre-session reminders with upcoming assignments to all students
• Sharing materials for synchronous sessions with students (slides, activity instructions, etc.)
• Enabling live captioning in synchronous sessions
• Incorporating multiple modes of interaction into synchronous sessions

Learning Outcomes

All CIRTL Network programming is designed to help participants achieve familiarity with our Core Ideas. This workshop is designed around the following learning outcomes.

Associate: Evidence-based teaching

• Describe several known high-impact, evidence-based effective instructional practices and materials and recognize their alignment with particular types of learning goals

Associate: Learning-through-diversity

• Describe how an instructor’s beliefs and biases can influence student learning