Kefaya Diab
Pedagogy |
Courses tAught |
Driven by my research agenda and commitment to social justice I promote real-life projects in the classroom using rhetoric, writing and multimedia composition as tools for activism. These projects support student-centered learning and students’ sense of agency to motivate them to act critically and to contribute social and political change in the classroom and beyond. Thus, in constructing any course curriculum [1] I adopt a critical pedagogy that poses problems in the world and invites students to respond, [2] I introduce rhetoric and composition as collaborative methods to understand and reconstruct the world through the lenses of rhetorical agency theories, and [3] I engage students in modifying the curriculum by conducting collaborative inquiry projects centered on student learning challenges.
In responding to problems in the world, I promote inquiry and careful planning as strategies to lead the composition process and the call for action. In addition to conducting secondary research, I invite students to examine their assumptions, by conducting qualitative and quantitative research. I guide students to draft research questions and hypotheses to lead their research processes where they draft interview questions, design questionnaires and conduct systematic observations. To give students feedback on their selected research methods and designed data collection instruments, I ask students to provide a rationale that explains the connection between these methods and instruments and their research questions and hypotheses. This approach helps students to realize the importance of careful planning of research, to practice systematic data collection, and to evaluate credibility of secondary resources that might read throughout their education. In putting their research results in use and to call for actions, I ask students to propose a campaign plan to suggest four main components; [1] the argument and the purpose that they wish to achieve, [2] the audiences that they wish to reach, [3] the genres that they will compose, and [4] the mediums through which they will circulate their artifacts to the targeted audiences. This proposal makes students recognize essential connections between the argument purposes, audiences, genres and mediums rather than learning how to compose in specific genres. It also extends the composition process beyond creating a particular artifact to experiencing the artifact’s effect in the real world. Past student projects tackled issues of domestic abuse, child abuse, student challenges in higher education, and college students drink abuse among others. Students created and published public service announcements (PSAs) on social media to educate their peers about the importance of reporting domestic abuse. They generated web content of blogs, petitions, Facebook and Twitter posts to advocate for changing child abuse laws in New Mexico. They wrote memos and reports to their school administrators to address concerns about safety, energy consumption, and tuition raise on campus. And they also wrote news stories to reach out to and educate students about consequences of alcohol abuse. These projects and others, I continue to observe, [1] make students more aware of problems around them, [2] demonstrate to students the power of rhetoric and composition in creating change through motivating dialogues, and [3] prove to students their own capability of effecting change as active educated citizens. While these projects encourage students to contribute change, students can often consider that a successful effort or action is one that results in immediate change. In composition, they can come to expect a perfect draft after a first revision. In advocating for a cause, they can assume that one project should change the targeted audiences’ minds and hearts and succeed in its call for actions. When students do not see immediate results, they often step back and lose the motivation for more work. Responding to this obstacle, I introduce students to theories of rhetorical agency that account for the collaboration between human and non-human actions that result in public change over space and time. With that, I draw students’ attention to the importance of every effort, every group member, and every tool that was involved in conducting their projects to effect change. Moreover, I invite students to analyze other efforts that responded to the same problems of their concerns to recognize that social and political change occur through accumulation of actions. When students observe their artifacts come alive as they circulate and create dialogues online for instance, they start to recognize change as it occurs in steps, to make an ultimate goal of change possible only through collaborations of efforts spread over space and time. Continuing to create a student-centered learning environment, students contribute to the development of the class curriculum through a collaborative class inquiry project. To demonstrate my appreciation and consideration of all my students, in every class, I design an inquiry project that all students and I contribute to. This project always relates to a learning/teaching challenge that we encounter in the learning environment. My students and I investigated: [1] anxieties students experience in reading, annotating, and comprehending class material, [2] challenges that students deal with in distributing tasks and responsibilities in group work, [3] disruptions that teachers and students encounter when someone arrives late to class, uses phone for personal issues, or interrupts others among other behaviors. While I usually propose the topics as matters of my concern, students contribute their skills, points of view and experiences throughout the research and composition processes. As a group, we conduct secondary research to understand the broader context of each challenge. We design primary research methodologies of surveys, interviews, and focus groups to collect data from students within our class, then we analyze the results and put an action plan accordingly. Although such in-class projects do not require IRB approval, students study ethical considerations in collecting data, and use consent forms to acquire their classmates’ approval of participation as an ethical practice. We use rhetoric and composition in multiple genres to target college students as a primary audience. For example, we responded to the teaching/ learning challenges by adopting meta cognitive & rhetorical reading approaches that required students’ constant reflection on their reading strategies. We created new team work procedures to promote team building strategies. We made a comedy PSA to inform students why some of their behaviors can be disruptive to others in class. The collective inquiry approach serves several objectives. It models inquiry projects to help students work on their group projects. It proves to students that their voices and contributions matter, and it helps them recognize their responsibilities toward themselves and toward each other as active learners. That inquiry project also enhances the course curriculum to better serve students’ learning not only in any given semester but in future semesters as well. By scaffolding my classes’ assignments around real-life projects, I help students to enhance their composition skills and rhetorical practices through doing and critical making. Contributing real change in the world, I argue, strengthens students’ self-confidence, sense of responsibility, and sense of agency, which I hope, will all travel with them to other classes and beyond. |
COURSES TAUGHT (INSTRUCTOR)
Indiana University/ English Department 2019-2021 Advanced Expository Writing (25 students/ 4 courses fully online), 2019-21 2018-2019 Advanced Expository Writing for Multi-Lingual Students (25 students/ 2 courses), 2019 Themed and constructed the course around digital and public rhetorics. Students to created three digital artifacts of web-text, audio, and video to advocate for social and political issues of their concerns. Writing, Reading, and Research for Multi-Lingual Students (25 students/ 2 courses), 2019 Designed the course curriculum for students to produce an analytical essay concerning their experience with language as a marker of the writer’s identity, and an academic paper based on primary and secondary research. Students practice source evaluation and analytical reading and writing by studying three frameworks that view rhetoric and composition as social and cultural interactions, recursive complex processes, and political tools. Professional Writing Skills (25 students/ 2 courses) Designed the course curriculum to facilitate students’ professional interaction with local organizations and student clubs, and acquire real-life experience by applying to real jobs. Students composed proposals, conducted primary and secondary research and reported research-based solutions to the organizations which they worked with. They also wrote resumes and CVs to apply to specific jobs of their interest. COURSES TAUGHT (INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD) NMSU/ English Department 2015-17 Technical and Scientific Communication (25 students/ 3 semesters) I did scaffold the class assignments and activities to mock real professional environment tasks. Students created imaginary organizations, built websites to represent their missions, and created technical, professional and scientific documents to promote their organizations’ projects. 2016 Advanced Composition: Filmmaking as Composition (15 students/ 1 semester) I taught composition using filmmaking as pedagogy and inquiry method to convey messages and reach audiences in academic, professional, social and political spheres. Students made short video essays, public service announcements (PSAs), and documentaries and promoted them on social media. 2015-16 Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences (26 students/ 2 semesters) I used a theme in each class to govern the class learning activities; multicultural education in the first, and urban planning in the second. I did scaffold inquiry assignments that included document analysis and primary and secondary research. Students promoted their inquiry projects’ results through composing in multi genres from their fields in humanities and social sciences. 2014 Rhetoric and Composition for Engineers (27 students/ 1 semester) I did scaffold the class learning activities to encourage students to investigate the various majors within the College of Engineering at NMSU, with focus on the potential impact that each major has on their communities. Students interviewed their teachers, peers and the public, and advocated for academic and environmental topics to serve their local communities from engineering stand points. 2013-14 Rhetoric & Composition (27 & 27 student/ 2 semesters) I designed the class learning activities around navigating first year students’ academic and socio-economic life challenges. These activities helped students to explore support services on campus, and to promote these to their peers by using rhetoric and compositions as methods to appeal to their audiences. They also created PSAs that promoted solutions for social challenges that face first year students. NMSU/ Center for English Language Programs/ Summer Sessions 2014 Academic Writing for English as Second Language (ESL) Students (6 students/ 1 semester) I designed the class learning activities around intercultural communication issues to help Ecuadorian Teachers to make essential connections between culture and language in teaching ESL to their students in Ecuador. Students written papers around cultural differences and similarities between Las Cruces and their local communities. They also practiced writing as a recursive process which helped them acquire teaching strategies to apply to their own teaching of ESL. 2014 Advanced Listening and Speaking for ESL Students (22 student/ 1 semester) I implemented filmmaking as pedagogy to encourage students to practice listening and speaking in English. Colombian students filmed interviews with American and international students at NMSU. They practiced script writing, listening and speaking through creating short documentaries, fictional videos and personal video narratives. NMSU/ Languages and Linguistics Department 2010-13 Arabic as Second Language –Intermediate (10-15 student/ 6 semesters) I taught Arabic language through teaching Arab culture, social issues, geography and politics. Students conducted research about these areas and used multimedia composition in presenting their findings to their classmates. NMSU/ Curriculum and Instruction/ Chaparral Elementary After School Program 2009-10 Introduction to Filmmaking (8 & 10 students/ 2 semesters) I taught elementary school children basics of filmmaking, through short activities of preparing for and conducting interviews, filming, acting, and video and audio editing. University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP)/ Summer Sessions 2015 Extensive English as Second Language (13 students/ 1 semester) I taught ESL to higher education students from Mexico through real life field trips, listening, observations and interaction with students at UTEP and community members in El Paso/ TX. |