Teaching Lower-Division Writing and Rhetoric Across the Disciplines at UH Mānoa

This talk was presented as part of Breakout Session A | Panel 1: Writing and Rhetoric Across the Disciplines. This is the full PDF of Dr. Yancura's powerpoint presentation slides.Lower-division rhetoric and composition is taught to students at UH Mānoa largely through General Education courses that carry an FW or WI designation. Courses designed for first-year students present particular challenges because students' levels of college writing readiness and disciplinary interests are so varied. This roundtable brings together faculty who teach writing in several institutional contexts. Loriena Yancura teaches writing-intensive sections of Honors 101 (Introduction to research and creative work at Mānoa) and HDFS 334 (online; Adulthood and Aging). Both Darin Payne (Associate Chair of English) and Daphne Desser have served (or are serving) as the Director of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department, and have published widely in the field. Christine Beaule, the Director of the General Education Office, has taught WI courses at different levels. The intent behind bringing together faculty from these different contexts is to foster discussion of pedagogical strategies for teaching composition and rhetoric to students from different fields and backgrounds. We aim to explore overlap in pedagogies in these varied classroom contexts, and to generate ideas about how to tailor instruction and assignment design to students with different levels of academic preparedness and interests