Beyond the Traditional Essay: Increasing Student Agency in a Diverse Classroom with Nondisposable Assignments

This volume offers a range of responses to the problem of “disposable assignments,” essays written just for a grade and then thrown away. The scholars collected here explore how renewable assignments can contribute to public knowledge, eliciting student work that is shared across networks of learning, that does something, that transcends the teacher’s grade. Although there is significant interest in such innovative teaching practices, particularly in this year of pedagogical experimentation, there are few resources for teachers that collect in one place both scholarly context and practical advice for implementing renewable assignments in the classroom. The essays in this volume range widely, from demonstrating how digital tools engage and empower reluctant learners, to raising theoretical questions around intellectual property, to measuring the success of renewable assignments through outcomes assessment.

List of Figures

Introduction
Kerry Kautzman
Alfred University
Melissa Ryan
Alfred University

Chapter 1
A Model of Relational Learning and Knowledge Production: Using Podcasts in a Writing Intensive Native American/Indigenous Literatures Course
Francisco D. Delgado
Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY

Chapter 2
Adding to Archives, Stories, and Conversations: Dramaturgy, Collaboration, and the Non-terminating Essay Assignment
Aoise Stratford
Southern New Hampshire University

Chapter 3
Comparative Reading by Students in the World: For Promoting Better Understanding of Literature and Peace in the World
Akiyoshi Suzuki
Nagasaki University, Japan

Chapter 4
DEI, NDAs, and the Value of Literature: Dismantling Educational Privilege with Nontraditional Assignments
Melissa Ryan
Alfred University

Chapter 5
Renewable Assignments, from Paper to Trees
Allison M. Cummings
Southern New Hampshire University

Chapter 6
Renewable Assignments and the Integrity of Intellectual Work
James M. Skidmore
University of Waterloo

Chapter 7
Learning Outcomes of Non-disposable Assignments: An Approach to Measuring the Results
Kerry Kautzman
Alfred University

Contributors

Index

Dr. Melissa Ryan is a Professor of English at Alfred University, specializing in American literature and Social Justice Studies. Her work has appeared in ‘African American Review’, ‘ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment’, ‘Studies in the Novel’, ‘ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance’, ‘ATQ: American Transcendental Quarterly’, ‘Studies in American Fiction’, and ‘American Literature’.

Dr. Kerry Kautzman completed her undergraduate studies at Gannon University, majoring in International Studies before earning her Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati in Spanish Literature. In her two decades at Alfred University, she has taught a wide range of courses in Spanish language and literatures, critical theory, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Social Justice Studies. Her current research and teaching interests focus on the literature of Equatorial Guinea.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL), open educational resources, open pedagogy, nondisposable assignments, diversity and inclusion