Experiential Learning in Professional Writing and the Humanities
Since 2020, I have worked with colleagues to develop and implement experiential learning in the Professional Writing program, pairing student editors with fiction and non-fiction writers. In 2022, Dr. Kelsey Blair and I surveyed and interviewed former students, and asked them to reflect on the experiential learning project. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and it is our intention not only to continue the project in the Professional Writing editing courses, but also to explore how experiential learning might be incorporated in other aspects of the Professional Writing program. Based on our survey and interviews, Dr. Blair presented a co-authored paper on the project at the 2023 STLHE Conference.
I am now exploring how to incorporate more experiential learning into Humanities classrooms through the lens of authentic assessment.
Teaching in Higher Education
My doctoral research was focused on teacher identity and development in higher education. I continue to be passionate about this facet of my research. As well as a new chapter on effective feedback in the online learning environment, I recently coauthored a paper on how faculty across Canada dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our profession.
I am interested in researching peer mentorship in higher education teaching; as the Coordinator of the composition program in the Concordia English department, I have worked to implement mentorship for part-time instructors and graduate students. My past research, and personal experience, suggests that peer mentorship is an invaluable aspect of professional development, and I intend to continue exploring this rich area.
Pedagogy of Professional Writing Programs
Along a similar line, much of my work since 2019 has been dedicated to understanding, reviewing, and developing the minor in Professional Writing at Concordia. There exists research on pedagogy for writing, but this body of work tends to focus on elementary and secondary writing, second-language writing, or undergraduate composition. I feel that there remains an untapped vein of research on teaching for professional writing, and in particular, that collaboration with my colleagues in Creative Writing will result in excellent learning opportunities for our students as well as valuable scholarly work.
Teacher Identity & Deliberate Practice
Even with formal teacher training, new teachers must grapple with transition shock and learn to recognize and overcome default practice from years of observation from the student perspective. In post-secondary education, navigating this threshold, from one who teaches to one who is a teacher, is arguably more difficult, in the absence of sustained formal training in pedagogy. I am interested in exploring this development of professional identity, and how engagement in reflexive, deliberate practice can ease the transition and sustain a life-long practice.
Assessment & Feedback
Assessment and feedback in effective teaching and learning is an essential but often maligned aspect of education. I explored inconsistencies in teacher feedback on student writing as my Masters’ project, discovering along the way that even when grades align, teachers often provide remarkably different feedback to students. More recently, I have looked into ways to engage students in low-stakes writing in order to establish trust in feedback, and I believe this is an avenue worth exploring further. My doctoral research focused on how the development of teacher identity in higher education influences teachers’ approaches to and attitudes toward assessment practices.