The Comprehensive Assessment Proccess (CAP) Major Project is a revision/enhancement of an assignment that has already been completed for a class that meets the requirements of the Master of Arts in English, Concentration in Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) program.

Original Assignment

For my CAP Major Project, I chose to revisit the Mini-Portfolio for Transfer-Level English Assignments that I completed for ENGL 7960: Methods of Teaching English in the Two-Year College during Summer 2020. This document includes two assignments for students with a discussion of the research that inspired my decisions and desired learning outcomes.

The assignments I designed for my mini-portfolio were already heavily influenced by my TPC studies. For this major project, I want to return to the idea of teaching English in a two-year college in a way that teaches students to use TPC skills that will benefit them not only in their academic careers, but in their day-to-day lives as well.

Major Project:

Teaching Technical and Professional Communication in the Two-Year College

When I joined the Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) program in Fall 2016, I had what turned out to be only vague ideas about the scope of the field. To my delight, with each class I learned more about the scope of TPC and how deep the scholarship goes.

I did have a notion at the very beginning that I would like to try teaching college English. This idea solidified during the COVID-19 pandemic because so many classes were taught online by necessity. Combined with the fact that my entire master’s program is online, suddenly teaching college English sounded even more appealing because I could just teach online.

I considered what I’d been learning in my TPC classes and started to daydream about rolling some of those concepts into entry-level college English classes. I signed up for Dr. Sharer’s Teaching English in the Two-Year College in Summer 2020, and that was a pivotal class for me. Now I really started to daydream about what I would teach students at a two-year college. I learned that the demographics and goals of two-year college students vary widely – which I had not considered. The next class I took was Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL). I chose that class because I realized that many two-year college students are not native English-speakers. I wanted to learn as much as I can about how to help those students be successful.

Including concepts from TPC in early English classes sounds to me like a very good idea. Nearly all two-year college attendees have to take introductory-level English classes. I am well aware that students often complain about the requirement to take “core” classes like English 111 because they do not see how it would benefit them. They want to get to the classes about topics that interest them.

I am basing my teaching philosophy on the idea that TPC content is critical for student success – no matter their major. I want to design assignments that teach students how to wield the English language successfully during their academic career and beyond.

I designed two assignments for a mini-portfolio in Teaching English in the Two-Year College. Both assignments were inspired by my prior TPC classes. In the Spring 2021 revision of this mini-portfolio, I explain more of my reasoning behind why these two assignments encourage students to develop valuable, practical skills.

I have also dreamed up several more assignments in the meantime.

For a transfer-level English class, I think that an overview of how to write a research paper is very important. I had friends in my undergrad days that would nearly run out of the room screaming if they heard the words “research paper.” I would design an assignment – or perhaps a series of assignments – that leads students through the process of creating a research paper. The assignment(s) would be broken into several stages separated by deliverables. Students will learn to build a research paper from chunks of content designed to build confidence and develop skills with lots of opportunity for feedback from the instructor along the way.

Thinking about English itself in the TESOL class, I would add an assignment that examines different styles of English. Most of the class would be centered on Standard English, but a discussion of what isn’t Standard English and why sounds like a good idea to me. This would probably be the topic of the first lecture I present to the class. A potential assignment for this topic would be for students to read some brief documents and write a paragraph analyzing the document’s style. As with the two assignments in the mini-portfolio, I would give them lists of “priming questions” to get their thoughts going and serve as an example of the types of questions they should ask themselves while working on writing assignments beyond this class.

Another TPC topic that two-year college students would find beneficial is basic document design principles. I would discuss fonts, layout, white space, etc. I would also teach students how to make good use of Microsoft Word’s powerful formatting features. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Word’s features in my technical writing class, and I want to spread the word, so to speak. I think that most people would agree that learning how to use the Styles in Word is a game-changer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about inclusivity lately during my Public Interest Writing class. When I assign readings in a class, I will consider not only the topics of the readings, but also make sure that the readings represent a wide variety of voices. I worry that my personal knowledge is a bit lacking in this area, and I plan to do lots of extra-curricular reading! I am also watching for publications and webinars that explore how to design an inclusive classroom experience. Again with the varied demographics common to two-year colleges, I think it is imperative that all students feel included and represented by the works I ask them to read regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, etc.

I have learned so many fascinating things in the TPC program, and my mini-portfolio represents a few of my ideas for sharing TPC skills with other students. I will clarify during the lectures that precede the assignments that these aren’t just assignments for the sake of having an assignment. They are designed to teach skills and present a chance to practice them. Also, the products of both assignments may be useful to the student’s other interests.