Using Visualization Techniques for Showing Students How their Communication Stands Out and Fits In
Wetzel, D. & Werner, N.
A best practice for teaching students to write a new genre is to show a variety of samples so that learners notice different writing decisions and their combined effects for prompting a reader's action. We report on a set of visualization techniques that we use in the First-Year Writing and Professional & Technical Communication courses for showing students the key decisions for particular genres and then how their writerly choices compare with others. These techniques range from simple polling through a google form to a visualization produced by DocuScope, a computer assisted rhetorical analysis tool. We have learned these techniques boost student engagement and community, and we have also learned that this approach promotes reasoning through decision, which can sometimes productively frustrate our students. We share these visualizations for other faculty to use as a springboard for their their own courses and disciplines.
Danielle Wetzel, English DC
Necia Werner, English DC
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