Professor of English, Indiana University Kokomo
Over the last few months, I've had the extraordinary experience of developing and leading two online webinars with the employees of the Fishers, Indiana-based company Emplify and the NYC-based startup Button. Back in grad school, when I was reading a steady diet of Marx and Marc Bousquet on the corporatization of higher ed, I never… Continue reading My Webinars with Emplify and Button
I still remember my first encounter with WiFi in the classroom. It must have been 2003 or 2004. A guy in the front row of one of my composition classes googled something on his laptop one day in the middle of a discussion. ("To google" had not yet become a recognizable infinitive.) We were debating… Continue reading Active Learning Meets Social Distancing
If you're contemplating the switch to online writing instruction (OWI) for Fall 2020--or if this important pedagogical and curricular decision has been made on your behalf--the following short list of starting-point resources on OWI may be of some use: Applied Pedagogies: Strategies for Online Writing Instruction, eds. Daniel Ruefman and Abigail Scheg. Utah State UP,… Continue reading OWI: Useful points of entry
Mind over Chatter: Essential Skills for Navigating the Post-Truth Era is a series of five interactive, Canvas-based learning modules designed specifically for first-year college students and aimed at curbing the spread of problematic information in our time. Made possible by a generous grant from the Rita Allen Foundation and RTI International, these modules can be… Continue reading Mind over Chatter: Essential Skills for Navigating the Post-Truth Era
"The professor's role in this new digital learning environment is not to play the role of the master of content; it is to be the master of resourcefulness. In this role, the teacher models how to think in the face of an endless torrent of information." Richard E. Miller, "On Digital Reading," Pedagogy, 2016, vol.… Continue reading Digital Info Literacy & Online Learning in a Pandemic
This graduate-level special topics course in rhetoric and composition studies focuses on the intersections of mindfulness, misinformation, and media in recent scholarly discussions.
This fully-online, graduate-level course is an introduction to—and a history of—the field of writing studies, which goes by various names, including “composition studies,” “rhetoric and composition studies,” “composition-rhetoric,” and sometimes “rhet-comp.” This course historicizes approaches to writing instruction in the West going back as far as classical antiquity, it surveys writing studies' major movements and moments in the mid- to late 20th century in the US, and it speculates about the teaching of writing well into the 21st century. Together we study the major concepts, themes, debates, and politics of the discipline; investigate the theoretical assumptions and historical foundations that underpin the various movements within writing studies (e.g., expressivism, Writing Across the Curriculum, critical pedagogy, social constructivism, post-process, etc.); and explore the impact of digital technologies on the teaching of writing.
As we are often reminded, we now inhabit an increasingly complex and confusing hyper-fast media landscape, where traditional forms of journalism and reporting have been radically reshaped and even supplanted by emerging forms of digital media. This course will give you the tools to engage intelligently in the major issues of our time; to analyze media of all kinds; to parse out the subtle distinctions between various kinds of problematic information; and to find credible, carefully-researched, and accurate journalism, news, and opinion on a variety of topics.
My diverse research interests and background in rhetoric and composition studies have given me the tools to research and publish in a variety of academic areas, from articles on Writing across the Disciplines/Writing in the Disciplines issues and writing pedagogy to analyses of neoliberal economic rationality and academic labor.
Paul Cook 