Business Writing 302 – Global, regional and local communities (2013)
Course Description: To introduce students to various ways of composing, research methods, strategies and problem solving approaches within local, national and international professional and business discourse communities and contexts. I designed this course emphasizing the Problem & Solution Sequence of Scenario assignment that I had been developing over the years. The assignments were sequenced to encourage collaboration between students in writing, researching and presenting.
Workplace Writing 3355 – Globally networked communities (2011 & 2012)
Course Description: Helen Foster’s (2007) text Networked processes: Dissolving boundaries of process and post-process inspired this course. I incorporated Internet programs, such as wikis (PBworks), web-building programs (Wix) and social networking sites (Google + & Drive, Facebook) to emphasize how writing is a connective act. Using an assignment sequence that addressed real-life academic and professional scenarios, students explored from a critical perspective how individuals and communities physically and linguistically connect and use the languages, discourses, pieces of information, images and symbols and ideas, which helps to create new pathways and networks between individuals and their communities, ultimately re-designing and re-shaping the linguistic and discoursal landscapes in which they exist.
English 1311 – Service-learning, community, volunteerism and technologies (2010)
Course Description: I designed this course based on Isabel Baca (the University of Texas at El Paso) and Susan Garza’s (Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi) incorporation of service-learning in their writing classrooms. The focus of this course was to introduce students to the concepts of service-learning, community and volunteerism through reading scholarship on each of these topics, participation within various community-based programs sponsored by service-learning center on campus and to how they can use technologies, such as wikis, blogs and survey-generating tools to write with and collect and analyze data. This course design resulted in a publication.
English 1311 – Career and professionalism (2009)
Course Description: This course was a product of three years development at two major universities (TAMU-CC & UTEP) in which I required students to engage in writing and research activities and assignments that emphasized a career and professional focus. I collaborated with composition instructors and seminar leaders in the First-year Learning Communities Program at TAMU-CC during the three years I was developing this assignment sequence and approach. The assignments required students recognizing the importance of a resume, conducting semi-formal interviews with individuals within discipline and/or profession in order to learn more about their discipline and/or profession, creating a website and a formal presentation over their research.
English 1301 variations – New media literacy writing (2006-2012)
Course Description: I have been teaching writing courses that use technologies such as wikis (PBworks), websites & blogs (Wix & Weebly) and social networking sites (currently Google + & Drive, Facebook, Twitter & Reddit) since 2006. By teaching writing this way, I have been able to introduce my students to new technologies and their various writing and researching purposes, as well as how to effectively and efficiently create and organize their writing and research in a digital environment. I have also been teaching students how to use web 2.0 tools such as Prezi to present their writing and research.