My more recent shift towards presentations regarding Basic Writing, Developmental Education, and Co-requisite courses is a direct outgrowth of my role as Coordinator of Developmental Writing in the Department of English. My deep involvement with course design, assignment innovation, and assessment means that I am constantly engaged with ideas and information that are current topics of discussion at conferences like the 2018 National Association of Developmental Education (NADE) conference, so proposing presentations to those venues has become almost second nature.
NADE is interdisciplinary, drawing participants from all subject areas that have developmental and co-requisite course components, including English, Reading, and Math. This three-day conference had about 140 panels, in addition to break-out and keynote sessions. I’ve included a copy of the abstract for the session:
When Writing Tutors become Reading and Writing Tutors in an IRW Course
Presenters: Lisa Bosley, Dominic Ashby, Russell Carpenter
This session will provide an overview of the collaborative course design of a developmental reading/writing and co-requisite first-year composition course at Eastern Kentucky University that includes an embedded peer tutor model.
The collaboration includes developmental and English faculty and leaders from EKU’s Noel Studio, a support service for writing, communication, and research. I will summarize implementation and outcomes of the course, piloted in 2013 and fully launched in 2016, as well as successes and challenges of the model.
The goals of the workshop are to:
- Explain the collaborative design and assessment outcomes of English 101R.
- Demonstrate reading/writing (IRW) training activities for peer tutors who support student success in English 101R.
- Share a workshop plan and materials for peer tutor development.
The session will focus on the development of peer tutors, an integral part of English 101R, by leading participants through activities that help tutors integrate reading and writing support for students in IRW courses. Traditionally, writing centers established processes for training peer tutors to support student writing, but may lack training models for peer tutoring in IRW. EKU faculty have made reading support an essential element of writing support by providing IRW workshops for peer tutors.
Training activities are based on the Reading Apprenticeship framework of literacy development through metacognitive conversations and informed by theories of rhetorical reading that teach students to read like writers.
Dominic J. Ashby, Ph.D. 