9.12.2006

Birgit Aschemann

Vorbereitung auf die Magisterarbeit

Im WS 2005/06 wurde am Zentrum für Soziale Kompetenz der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz eine inderdisziplinäre Lehrveranstaltung zur Vorbereitung auf die Diplom- bzw. Magisterarbeit abgehalten. Das Veranstaltungskonzept basierte auf aktuellen schreibdidaktischen Erkenntnissen und Methoden und erweiterte diese um a) einen ressourcenorientierten Ansatz und b) Methoden aus dem Projektmanagement. Erfahrungen mit diesem Konzept werden vorgestellt, und seine Nützlichkeit (vor dem Hintergrund der Anforderungen einer Massenuniversität) wird überprüft.

12.6.2006

Jan Zalewski

The Self and Contexts of Knowing in Writing

The paper discusses how the process of constructing conceptual meaning in writing arises from the interplay of different contexts of knowing involved in writing. The discussion leads to a consideration of the writer’s self (personal identity) in relation to the writing act.

9.6.2006

Margo Blythman & Susan Orr

Mrs Mop Does Magic

In this article we explore the relationship between study support teachers and those teaching on courses. Our focus is on the UK but we believe our findings to have wider relevance. Writing practitioners are part of the academy, not separate from it, and we need to understand and theorize the relationships between our own community and our course teacher colleagues. We regard the perceptions we have of each other as important because student learning is helped by a productive, co-operative and collaborative relationship between study support teachers and course teachers. The latter communicate with students both explicitly and implicitly their views on study support. Relationships between these groups of teachers are likely to be improved by an understanding of the views and prejudices we have of each other and their origins (Blythman and Orr 2003).

9.6.2006

Kate Chanock

How Can We Handle the Specificity of the Writing Challenges that Face Our Students?

While composition is not taught in Australian universities, students are required to write extensively for assessment, mainly addressing questions in their disciplines rather than questions of personal or public concern. The challenge for academic language and learning centers, therefore, is how to help students to understand the purposes, structures, and styles of assignments in a range of disciplines, and to discern the commonalities and differences among them. This paper discusses how a learning centre in a Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences mediates diverse discipline expectations through one-to-one tutoring with students; collaborations with lecturers in the disciplines; and the implementation of an «Introduction to Academic Discourse» as part of the curriculum of first-year subjects across the Faculty. In all these modes of teaching, the aim is to make explicit to students the ways in which particular literacy practices stem from the disciplines’ project of constructing knowledge

9.6.2006

Bruno Frischherz

Wie sag’ ich’s meinem Laien? Bericht über ein Schreibprojekt mit Studierenden der Wirtschaftsinformatik

Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt ein Schreibprojekt vor, bei dem Studierende der Wirtschaftsinformatik ausgewählte Fachinhalte schriftlich aufbereiten, so dass diese für interessierte Laien verständlich werden. Die Studierenden schreiben dabei einen Lexikonartikel zu einer XML-Anwendung, den sie anschliessend als Microsite umsetzen und auf dem Schulserver für andere Studierende publizieren. Das Lernszenario ist interdisziplinär angelegt und enthält für die Studierenden einen realen Schreibanlass. Anhand von Textbeispielen werden einige zentrale Probleme der technischen Experten-Laien-Kommunikation dargestellt und diskutiert. Zum Schluss werden drei Optimierungsvorschläge für eine weitere Durchführung des Projektes beschrieben.

9.6.2006

Jeanina Miskovic

Das Lernpotential von reflexivem Schreiben in der LehrerInnenausbildung

Im Selbstverständnis des aktuellen Lerndiskurses soll Bildung Selbstbildung sein. Dazu ist es nach Winter (2004) erforderlich, dass Reflexions- und Bewertungsprozesse kultiviert und erlernt werden (vgl. S. 10). Reflexives Schreiben kann hierzu einen wertvollen Beitrag leisten. Um dies deutlich zu machen, wird das reflexive Schreiben im Folgenden zuerst begrifflich gefasst und sein Potential hervorgehoben. Im Anschluss daran soll anhand der Portfolioarbeit an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Zürich (PHZH) gezeigt werden, welches die wichtigsten Voraussetzungen für eine erfolgreiche Umsetzung reflexiven Schreibens in der LehrerInnenausbildung sind.

9.6.2006

Wilhelm van Rensburg

Making Academia Transparent: Negotiating Academic Identities in the Writing Center

Graduate students often have to negotiate their academic identities because of the manner in which they are positioned in the academy, and because of the ‹discourse of transparency› that often surrounds their academic writing. I argue that the Writing Centre is the best place that these students can use as ‹rehearsal space› to develop an alternative ‘discourse of selfhood’ while negotiating their academic writing identities. This article reflects on a project researching how students negotiate academic identities in a faculty writing centre. It attempts to answer what processes are involved in the negotiation of an own identity within an academic discourse community. Nine multicultural and multilingual Masters in Education students were interviewed about their participation in the activities of the Writing Centre, and the written texts that they composed while attending the Centre have formed part of the data. Interview data have been subjected to a process of Narrative Analysis. Written work has been analyzed in terms of an Appraisal System, identifying the specific ways in which writers establish authority in, through and over their own writing. The narratives reveal that students identify in almost peripatetic mode with certain elements in grand narratives. Students do not model their narratives on archetypal ones, but rather ‹cut and paste› their own academic identities on to the general structure of a narrative. In terms of the appraisal system it was noticeable that student writing is a very significant indicator of the degree to which they students adopt a specific and powerful attitudinal stance, inviting or deflecting dialogue with the reader, as well as adopting or refuting intertextual positionings.

9.6.2006

Ralph Tench

Supporting Writing – The Role of Evaluation in VLE Design

Purpose: This paper critiques specific evaluation theories and practices which have been influential in developing a computer-mediated learning environment to support a vocational business discipline and one of its specialist skills (writing).
Methodology/Approach: The paper reviews evaluation models and principles firstly for computer-based learning and computer assisted learning (CBL/CAL) and then virtual learning environments (VLEs), which are more contemporary and applicable to the paper’s case study and contemporary higher education environments.
Findings: The models have been applied and utilised in the development of the PR Writing learning environment. The reviewed models have been influential in the learning environment’s design, philosophy, systems, structure and content.  Practical implications: The customised learning environment has been described in some detail although the purpose of this paper has been to describe the influence of evaluation models on its theoretical design and practical development and not on the evaluation process itself.Originality/Value: The paper is original in that it describes a new learning environment which has been designed specifically for a vocational course.