I adopted my dog, Biko, last summer and he has become a well-adjusted pandemic puppy pal. He loves the snow, other dogs, and rolling over to demand belly rubs. Biko knows when I'm in a Zoom meeting and you will often see him respectfully napping in my background. Going on daily long walks together as I listen to a podcast has become one of the highlights of my day. Our favorite place to go is the Greensboro Arboretum!

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If you would like to have your pet featured in the Storm Report, please send a photo and any text you want included to Nathanael_Gough@davidsondavie.edu.

Will YOU be Davidson-Davie's next Fulbright Scholar? The 2023-24 awards catalog is open. You can search the catalog by discipline, country, or degree requirement. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational and cultural exchange program, creating connections in a complex and changing world. Led by the U.S. government in partnership with 160 countries worldwide, Fulbright builds lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries—building mutual understanding between nations, advancing knowledge across communities, and improving lives around the world. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program is the largest program of its kind in the United States, awarding more than 800 fellowships annually. Whether you are higher education faculty and administrators, or professionals, artists, journalists, scientists, and independent scholars outside of the academy, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program has international opportunities to fit your needs and further your goals. Check out the catalog to find YOUR Fulbright. Contact Suzanne LaVenture for more information.

In January, the English faculty read and discussed The Meaningful Writing Process: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher Education by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner. The funds for the purchase of this text was made available by a grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning. The book offered unique insights into what makes writing meaningful for today’s college students. Here are a few snippets from our conversation we thought would be useful for any faculty member assigning writing projects:

“Reading The Meaningful Writing Project was an enlightening experience in the teaching of writing in higher education today. There were turns in the book that confirmed the value of writing assignments in my class, and other times forced me to question certain assignments and how they might be changed to be more meaningful to my students. I learned that students need a sense of agency and ownership over their writing. It helps if they can develop a personal connection to their writing and see why the assignment matters. As the book's authors so eloquently said, students need to see their "writing as applicable, relevant, real world, and connected to their future selves" (Eodice et al. p. 108). These were the key takeaways for me and I will continue to reflect on them moving forward.”

“Reading The Meaningful Wiring Project was both affirming and challenging. I am affirmed in my practice of assigning term-long writing projects. Indeed, students find more meaningful the writing projects that span terms and semester, a fact of particular interest to our campus as we work on emphasizing undergraduate research projects that will certainly require longer commitments from students and their faculty. I felt challenged in encouraging students to do more of the metacognitive work in considering their own writing and research process, why it works for them or why it needs to be adjusted, and why they are drawn to the subjects they chose to write about. One particular metacognitive method I learned about is the Vision Statement – where students craft a vision statement for their writing projects, answering questions like what vision they have for their writing project for the term, and what impact it might have on their future academic/professional career, and for their community at large.”

“The Meaningful Writing Project reminds us how writing is not something that is done in just English courses specifically or even the Humanities more generally. In fact, most students believe their most meaningful writing projects were from their discipline-specific and vocational courses. This puts community colleges in a unique position to meet students where they are, with their interests before they begin their careers, and well before they are seniors at a university (when many of the students interviewed say they finally had a writing assignment that was meaningful for them).

"Providing students with an opportunity to write in courses necessary for certain careers can encourage individual research, give students an opportunity to participate in relevant and current conversations related to their field, and even encourage retention. However, it is also important to realize that the instructor plays a major role for these writing projects to be an experience rather than another assignment simply for a grade. We must remember to reach out to students, to provide them with resources, and speak to them in or outside of class to see how their writing is progressing, how their thinking is changing, and how their writing is meaningful.”

“After reading and discussing The Meaningful Writing Project, I feel more confident about the writing assignments in my classes. The study put forth by the authors found that students respond positively to writing that encourages ownership, has a personal connection (to their past, current, and future selves), and has real world value. While reflecting on my own writing assignments, I was excited to discover that they seem to align with these criteria. Moving forward, I will continue working to ensure that future assignments, as well as my teaching materials and strategies, are framed with these criteria in mind to help encourage student retention and success.”

If your interest is piqued, please come talk to any English faculty about incorporating these practices into your class writing projects. A copy of The Meaningful Writing Project is also available for checkout in the CTL Library.

One strategy for providing helpful feedback while saving time is using audio feedback. In short, providing a voice recording with your feedback in the place of writing out a paragraph of text. Did you know that Moodle’s text editor now offers a simple and convenient way to provide audio feedback? 

*Note*: While audio feedback can be a time-saving tool, instructors are encouraged to be mindful of students who may be hard of hearing or deaf. It may be beneficial to poll students or use other means to discern whether audio feedback is best for you and your students.

If you’d like assistance with anything related to instructional design, don’t hesitate to contact us at learning_design@davidsondavie.edu.

Need to import an old course into a new one? See the steps below.

Are you encountering problems or error messages when creating Zoom meetings in your Moodle course sites? A good step to avoid this problem is to first make sure that you have created your Davidson-Davie Zoom account by logging into the Davidson-Davie Zoom account page . Doing this helps signal to the system that you are connected to the Davidson-Davie Zoom account.

Nathanael Gough (Nathanael_Gough@davidsondavie.edu)

Phil Tietjen (Philip_Tietjen@davidsondavie.edu)

Dori Lloyd (Dori_Lloyd@davidsondavie.edu)

Amy Holmes (Amy_Holmes@davidsondavie.edu)

Image by USA-Reiseblogger on Pixabay