The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at the College of General Studies, Boston University (www.bu.edu/cgs/citl).In this issue, podcasts are looked at as a pedagogical game changer. Using the award-wining podcast Serial as their catalyst, this issue's essayists look at podcast's emerging role in higher education, how multimodal learning can help students find their voices, the podcast's place in the curriculum at a criminal justice college, and how podcasts can inspire students to reflectively assess their own writing. Our reviewers take a critical look at the podcasts Welcome to Night Vale and Revisionist History

“Transfer Talk” in Talk about Writing in Progress: Two Propositions about Transfer of Learning

This article tracks the emergence of the concept of “transfer talk”—a concept distinct from transfer of learning—and teases out the implications of transfer talk for theories of transfer of learning. The concept of transfer talk was developed through a systematic examination of 30 writing center transcripts and is defined as “the talk through which individuals make visible their prior learning (in this case, about writing) or try to access the prior learning of someone else.” In addition to including a taxonomy of transfer talk and analysis of which types occur most often in this set of conferences, this article advances two propositions about the nature of transfer of learning: (1) transfer of learning may have an important social, even collaborative, component and (2) although meta-awareness about writing has long been recognized as valuable for transfer of learning, more automatized knowledge may play an important role as well

Navigating Research Waters: The Research Mentor Program at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester

This essay uses a journal format to describe the research mentor program at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester (UNHM). Librarians, Learning Center staff, and writing instructors at UNHM have collaborated to train class-linked tutors to present basic library instruction in the classroom and to provide one-on-one research assistance to students in freshman-level composition classes. This information literacy initiative has expanded our students\u27 community of learning by providing them with point-of-need research assistance from knowledgeable peers

Why Inquiry Matters: An Argument and Model for Inquiry-Based Writing Courses

This article considers the value and implications of inquiry-driven learning for secondary and postsecondary education. In response to ongoing interest in and the need to foster inquiry in English education, we share the course model of “Ethnography of the University.” This writing-intensive course asks students to become authors of their own educations; to identify problems facing the campus community; to conduct semester-long, original research projects; and to make proposals for change. Through conducting inquiry projects, students come to see themselves as writers with real audiences, to personalize an often-impersonal education, and to connect academic with everyday concerns. Two undergraduate researchers describe their projects on student life—projects that emerged from and have continued beyond the course. By describing “Ethnography of the University” and sharing undergraduate research projects, we argue that inquiry helps students see themselves as agents over their own writing and learning. When students become agents, they can more easily write their way beyond a semester, course, or educational experience—and into the stance of writers

Name It and Claim It: Cross-Campus Collaborations for Community-Based Learning

This article describes the value of cross-campus collaborations for community-based learning. We argue that community-based learning both provides unique opportunities for breaking academic silos and invites campus partnerships to make ambitious projects possible. To illustrate, we describe a course Writing for Social Justice that involved created videos for our local YWCA\u27s Racial Justice Program. We begin by discussing the shared value of collaboration across writing studies and librarianship (our disciplinary orientations). We identify four forms of cross-campus collaboration, which engaged us in working with each other, with our community partner, and with other partners across campus. From there, we visualize a timeline, turning from the why of cross-campus collaborations to the how. Finally, we underscore the need to name and claim--to value and cultivate--cross-campus collaborations for community-based learning

The Promise of Faculty Inquiry for Teaching and Learning Basic Skills

Shares insights from the Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges project on how teachers' systematic and collaborative analyses of new approaches and practices foster innovation and improvement in basic English and math instruction

Co-Constructing Writing Knowledge: Students’ Collaborative Talk Across Contexts

Although compositionists recognize that student talk plays an important role in learning to write, there is limited understanding of how students use conversational moves to collaboratively build knowledge about writing across contexts. This article reports on a study of focus group conversations involving first-year students in a cohort program. Our analysis identified two patterns of group conversation among students: “co-telling” and “co-constructing,” with the latter leading to more complex writing knowledge. We also used Beaufort’s domains of writing knowledge to examine how co-constructing conversations supported students in abstracting knowledge beyond a single classroom context and in negotiating local constraints. Our findings suggest that co-constructing is a valuable process that invites students to do the necessary work of remaking their knowledge for local use. Ultimately, our analysis of the role of student conversation in the construction of writing knowledge contributes to our understanding of the myriad activities that surround transfer of learning

Write Free or Die: Vol. 03, No. 02

Writing & Reading, Page 1-2 Upcoming Events, Page 1 Writing Committee Members, Page 2 Dangling Modifier, Page 3-4 Ask Matt, Page 5 Student Profile, Page 6 Grammar Box, Page 7 Past Perfect, Page