Episode 161 Innovative Approaches to Rhetoric and Composition Courses at Appalachian State University Part 1

Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations. I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll. In this episode, you'll hear part one of my conversation with Bill Torgerson, a lecturer in Rhetoric and Composition at Appalachian State University. My conversation with Bill took place before Hurricane Helene, which has had devastating effects on the campus and surrounding communities.

We have included donation information in the show notes for the App State Disaster Relief Fund and the restoration of the treasured Valle Crucis Park in Bill's neighborhood. More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.

I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll, and I'm so excited today to introduce you to Bill Torgerson. Bill is a lecturer in Rhetoric and Composition at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Welcome, Bill. Thanks, I'm very impressed that you nailed the Appalachian pronunciation. Oh, well, I've been corrected before. When I came, I was in New York before I came, uh, to Boone, and they let me know right away that I was saying it wrong, so. Yeah. Well done. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

I, I tend to kind of go back and forth because even though I grew up not far away up in Stanton, Virginia, we say it a little differently there. So I, I got corrected right away. I think actually on a prior podcast with one of your colleagues. So it's all fun. It's all fun. Um, so I know Bill, you've been using Digication for quite a long time. And I, I look forward to hearing about how you got started with that and how you're using it today.

But before we start talking about technology, um, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you find your, how you found your way to App State. Yeah, well, one thing I, I like to say that I live in Boone on purpose. Um, So we, you know, made some sacrifices and some drastic moves to get, uh, to the Boone area. I think, um, if I back up, um, I went to graduate school in Georgia and was really bent and focused on being a Creative Writer. Um, so I have an MFA in Creative Writing.

And I, and all I really wanted to do is become a better Writer and didn't have career aspirations. Like I want to be a professor. Um, but then as I worked on the MFA, I realized, Oh, there could be some college Teaching jobs. Uh, I applied for jobs all over the country, probably like 75 jobs had something like four interviews and the job I ended up accepting was at St. John's university.

Um, and so we had a lot of academic freedom, but one of the kind of direct orders we had was you will use Digication. Um, and you will have a portfolio. Um, so that was just sort of thrust upon me.

Um, and it wasn't long until I really began to value, um, just writing in digital spaces. I thought as a teacher of writing, if we're not working in digital spaces, what are we doing? Um, so that was exciting and that engaged the students. And so with that little nugget I'll be like, being made to do something that really grew into the other tool that I've used ever since. Oh, thank you so much for sharing that.

I was just kind of curious with the teaching that you're doing now, and the kind of students that you're working with. Do you have a lot of students that are coming in to, just you know, for their love and appreciation of the, the craft of writing and a similar kind of mindset that, that you were in, or do you have a lot of people that are already kind of thinking about what am I going to do after college?

Well, so at App State, um, we have something called the Vertical Writing Curriculum, which is one of the exciting things about being here in that the students have four required writing classes. Throughout their time as an undergraduate. So I teach in that program. And so people are taking a class that they have to take. Um, so no, most of my students walk into the classroom saying. I thought I tested out of this. Why do I have to take this in my major?

Um, and so one of the early goals for me is just to kind of shift that attitude a little bit more towards the positive and help them experience writing as something that's pleasurable. And I tend to not have a very difficult time of doing that. They have a lot of choices about their work. Um, and one of the things that's really guided me. for decades is the idea that it's fun to make stuff. And so, and so, uh, a ...port, a digital portfolio is something that you're making.

And so once students start engaging in that, uh, they start to forget that they're doing work and because they're working on something they've chosen to work on. Um, Enthusiasm starts to grow. So it's been a really useful, uh, tool for me to kind of engage students and get them excited about writing. Oh, that's wonderful. And, you know, it's always been our kind of hope that Instructors and students will approach it as its own kind of space for creation.

You know, certainly people can upload documents and, and files, but we're always hoping that they really use it as that kind of opportunity for creating and building and exploring. So when you're introducing students to this kind of digital space, how do you describe it to them? What are some of the early conversations that you have with them about how it's going to be used? I've heard you talk before just about like process portfolios or more polished portfolios.

So we, we, for example, use Google docs as a place to draft. And we talk about, uh, we call them "aPortfolios". We brand everything with an A at App State, so, Mm-Hmm. . So we, no, I still, I have to remind them that, you know, these are electronic portfolios. No one else is gonna call this an aPort when you leave here. Um, but we, we think about, uh, publishing to the aPort.

Yeah. And we do that, um, as we go, which I think is, it's not even like convincing them, it's, we've got this draft of this piece we've been working on, and now we're gonna publish it. To this space, which, you know, it was kind of like your own personal website. Um, and so we decide to do that together in class. And so they leave the class, you know, one third started, or, or they've at least sort of had an introduction to it because we've all worked on that together. So, and then it's.

I think a good sign is that, um, it's a space where the students do way more than that's required. So, you know, I lay out, uh, you know, a grading guide. Here's the expectations for what you're going to do in this space. You know, two images, there's captions, embed video, use some links, whatever it is. Uh, and they always go overboard. There's always more, more of everything that I asked for. So that's always a good sign when students work far beyond the expectations of the assignment Yeah.

And so how do you Kind of prepare them for what the expectations will be. You mentioned that there's some kind of requirements in the beginning about what kind of content that they might upload, but how, how are they actually graded or assessed as part of your course? Cause that's a question that we often get, you know, are there specific kinds of rubrics that you used? Are peers involved in looking at each other's materials? How do you kind of let them know what those expectations are?

So it would be yes to all of those things. Um, and then to start to break it down a little bit. Um, it's a little bit more, I think, of a labor based approach. Uh, probably not purely that, but all that means is, um, I'm asking for these, things to be part of the composition of your text. And if they're there, you get the credit. And if they're not there, you don't get the credit. Um, you can always revise what you've done for a better grade as long as the course is still going.

Um, so it's, it's almost like you get a temporary score. So it's things like word count and number of images, um, use of space, use of color, um, captions on the images. So that's kind of what we talk about. Um, and then we use, um, something called as you learn, which is a Moodle, whatever, it's a Learning Management System and you can create custom grading guides.

Um, and so it's always just like, you know, three to five categories, like I just said, images, use of, uh, internal citations, use of space, use of color, design is a big category, is one of the categories. So I score that and I write them a note at the bottom. Which sort of engages with their ideas and content, but also says, Hey, you lost three points because you forgot your captions or you just threw your three images on the bottom.

If you want to move those back, integrate those into the text, then, you know, this can be a better grade. So that's, that's sort of the grading, grading assessment part.

Um, and then, you know, the challenge, whether it's an online class, a hybrid class or solely face to face class, um, you know, one of the things I take pride in is creating community. I used to have this professor that always said, Sam Watson at UNC Charlotte, he would always say, Writing floats on a sea of conversation. And so I'm trying to shift students out of error finding. Let's just talk to each other. Let's be a thoughtful, engaged audience for each other.

And that will take, you know, we don't, we don't need to point out mistakes. It's just like, Hey Kelly, I'm Bill. You're getting to know me. I'm listening to you. I have questions about what you're doing. And so that kind of interaction among the students, um, it motivates them. It gives them a sense of audience. It helps them write more effectively. Because they can imagine what they need to say to each other. Um, and so we have forums in our learning management system.

Where we comment in the forum about each other's portfolios. Nice. Nice. And how often are they kind of looking at each other's work? Are they looking at some of the early drafts? Do you have them focus more on some of the final versions? How do you kind of get the work on building that community as part of sharing their work?

We, I mean, I think one of the first things we do, which takes a little bit of time, but seems worth it to me, um, is that we write an academic profile to start, uh, the course. So, um, you know, if you were, if you're writing a profile for a dating website, which I've never done, um, cause I'm old and happily married for a long time. Um, you know, that would be a different audience. Like what you would say in that profile would be different.

But here we are at App State and you have a major and you have professors and you have classmates. Um, so that profile is different, so that automatically gets us thinking about audience. Um, so we do some pre writing, we keep a, a digital journal that I call a day book after somebody like Donald Murray. Um, so we do that in a doc, so we have pre writing, we write drafts, we comment on each other's drafts. Um, we publish to Digication, and then I do take what usually is two full class periods.

For students to give like a five minute about me presentation, um, where it's like, Oh, you live in Raleigh. I went to high school in Raleigh. Where did you go? So, so just automatically there's all this conversation that sparks up. Oh, you're an EMT. I'm an EMT. Oh, you're, you work at the Ski School. I w... i, you know, whatever it is that's going on. So all these connections are built within the first couple of weeks.

And then we just repeat that kind of cycle through all of our projects for the course of a semester, where it's like pre-writing, stop and talk to each other, check in on drafts, publish, look at each other's publications. And then I always, you know, I'm not going to copy everything you do, Kelly. But when I look at your portfolio, I get ideas for myself, like, Oh, I see what she did and this is what I want to do. Um, and that's that kind of writing floats on a sea of conversation piece.

Nice. Nice. Yeah. Do you find that students often get inspired by some of the design elements of the content that they're creating at that time? Sure, it's both. I mean, it's, it's, there are some students that are just self motivated and excited to experiment and can't wait to learn from each other. And then there's other people, and maybe sometimes you can be each of these people, you're like, oh, I need to step up my game because I just saw Kelly's portfolio. It's incredible.

I just copied and pasted a bunch of text into one box. Um, I need to do better than this. So, so it works both ways. I mean, I'm not trying to shame people into working harder, but, um, they just do it themselves, they see it and they get motivated, uh, because of the work, uh, of their classmates sometimes. So it works in all kinds of ways. That's great. Yeah. So healthy... Healthy, pure motivation.

And really when we were creating Digication, uh, a lot of it came out of, Both, uh, my experience and the experience of Digication's co founder, Jeff Yan. Uh, because when we were in college, we were at a design school where we're always working in this kind of studio environment.

So from the very beginning of receiving a kind of prompt from an instructor, you know, other people were walking around viewing what you were creating and, you It was kind of impossible to not get inspired by other people that were in the room and instructors would kind of wander through and give little desk crits and feedback as you were building things, um, classmates would come by and, you know, sometimes give you props or ideas.

And it was a very, um, wonderful kind of experience and so different from what we had done, you know, coming up through K-12. So it was really eye opening and exciting. And so when we were creating this kind of environment for students, we really wanted. There to be that kind of opportunity, but now in a, in a digital space. So, it's wonderful to hear that your students are doing that.

When you were a freshman in college, when you were heading off to college, um, and we both have, I think, 18 year olds. We do. What did you think the arc of your life was going to be then? Did you know? Did you think you know? I would imagine it shifted. I wouldn't think you thought you were going to be the co founder of Digication when you were 18, but maybe you didn't. Absolutely not! Absolutely not. And this is something that we talked to the kids about a lot here.

You know, I do have a senior and, uh, two sophomores and also some little guys. And we talk a lot about how, you know, you may have some ideas in mind about your future trajectory, but you know, the people you meet and the places you go and the different experiences that you have will certainly kind of shift things and, um, carry you on different paths.

And yeah, when I started college, uh, I actually majored in textile design and, um, had just kind of fallen in love with, uh, painting on fabric, uh, in my little corner of the basement in the home that I grew up in. And so when I got into this, That's where I went, but, um, uh, the, um, kind of foundation year at Rhode Island School of Design was just, like, so transformative.

So even though I stayed in that path of textile design, my, like, whole vision of art making and drawing and painting and, I mean, it just opened up a totally different world to me. I had no intention at all of even taking computer classes, but I happened to fall into one that, um, yeah, just shifted my path and, um, also didn't plan to become any kind of, uh, teacher and then started teaching at the school that I went to after graduation. And from there started building tools for my students.

So you just. You just don't know where things are gonna are gonna take you and I'm sure as an educator you love working with students kind of for that reason right you're kind of catching them at this kind of moment in time where they've got ideas and you can kind of I remember I think when you know when I I think first knew about Digication and met Jeff, I don't know, 15 or 20 years ago.

It seemed like there was a sense of you saying to yourselves, we need something better than what we have here. And so then you started to work on creating a space that would be better for, uh, you know, art, creative minded students to have a space to, um, put what they were making.

Yeah, yeah, and it really did start as something I was teaching in the education program at the time that we started building this and it was called the Digital Media Design Studio, but it was for you know people that were preparing to become future art educators And many of my students had, you know, ideas about what that meant and may or may not have used, um, computers to make art or, um, create lesson plans and curriculum maps.

So there's kind of a combination of, you know, tools that we were using and the portfolio at the time was something that, you know, was definitely used for kind of creating that showcase of art.

But within that education program was really about capturing their experience throughout their time at the program and the program was using it to give them feedback and Kind of track progress toward those professional practice, teaching standards, and really also wanted it to be something that they could take with them to use after graduation for their own career advancement.

So, you know, I was really trying to model a lot of things for the students at the time and the way that I was using technology in the classroom and the, the learning management systems weren't going to cut it because it wasn't something that I just. for an individual course. It was really something that was going to be, you know, something that they were going to touch throughout their time at the program and then continue to have access to.

And so, yeah, Jeff and I were just like, well, let's just build something for our students. You know, we're not finding the right kind of. environment. And, you know, we innocently embarked on that thinking we were going to be working on it for a weekend or so. And, you know, over 20 years later, now here we are.

But you really were, you know, using it in a, in some of the early stages of the platform and you've seen it kind of evolve over the last, you know, 10-plus years, um, what are, have there been any shifts? You know, you mentioned that it was just kind of thrust upon you when you joined App. State. Have, have there, has there been some evolution in kind of how you use it or maybe some of the, you know, changes in the platform that may have, you know, given you other opportunities.

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is going all the way back to St. John's, St. John's is the spot in Queens where it was thrust upon me. Um, you know, the guy, the guy who was directing the program then, his name is Derek Owens, you probably know him or remember him. So, you know, when I hear you talk about um, your life as an artist, I can see why You and Jeff appealed to Derek. I mean, it would make a lot of sense. I mean, he has that same, I think, kind of perspective.

Um, so the, the platform has just gotten much, much more intuitive to use. Um, where, you know, I think the learning curve to like popping on there and making stuff is, you know, much more simple than it was, of course, 15 or 20 years ago. Um, and so, uh, I think just the only thing that's sort of been evolving It's just the constant change of technology, right? Um, Yeah. Whereas, I mean, I like, we talk about discourses, groups of, with common goals and specialized language and so forth.

Um, and sometimes the students, like, don't get how discourses change. But, you know, I started teaching in 1995. I didn't have an email account. There was no internet. No one had a cell phone. So, of course, like, the ways that teaching has changed. Writing has changed since the mid 90s.

Um, so that's sort of what I think of, but, um, just the, and then maybe the students tend to be, um, they're, they very willingly engage and they're thoughtful and they ask me questions of things that I haven't thought of. Um, so, you know, we continue to have really good experiences around. The digital space and Digication is where we do most of that. That's wonderful.

Do you know, as your students are kind of publishing their writing, do you find that they have Um, already comfort in that kind of process of sharing, or do you have students that, you know, maybe feel comfortable sharing things with you and their peers, but may not want to open it up beyond that particular course or share it with audiences outside of the school, what, what's your kind of feeling from the students that you're working with today? Yeah, I think what I think of.

You know, if I ask myself, why Digication? Um, I mean, I think the, the ability to toggle the privacy settings and to create and do some of that work and not feel like it's out on Google immediately, at least, or out on a social media platform. Um, that's certainly one of the values. But then I think, Totally guessing, you know, 85, 90 percent of my students are totally fine and immediately eager.

And in fact, um, make themselves really vulnerable really quickly to the point where I'm like, Ooh, you got, you really brought it. Um, but, and then there are others who, um, and I always introduce, you know, you can make this private, private to me, sort of go over the settings. There are usually, you know. One to four students in a group of 80 who, who prefer to keep it much more private or, and then there's always like, You know, I do require images, but I don't require an image of you.

You know, it can be your dog, it can be a flower, it can be the clouds, it can be the view, whatever. So, students, there is a variety of what they choose as far as making things public or private. Yeah, yeah.

And we do find more and more, and this is something that, you know, certainly in the earlier days of Digication we hadn't planned for, but you mentioned that there's this importance of building community within your classroom and among the students that you're working with and that you're finding that sometimes students are kind of using this space within Digication to You know talk about things that are maybe more kind of personal in nature You know

information about themselves or their experiences how that's impacted them Um, and I think, you know, a big driver behind that seems to be students really valuing the opportunity to share in order to find connection and find community within the institutions that they're in.

And I was curious if you've seen You know, throughout the time that you've been using that is that something that you feel has kind of grown over time um, I know sometimes if The spaces are just used as kind of a showcase of final works. We see some of that less often, but if it is used as that kind of creation space, the kind of human behind the content starts to emerge and why they're You know, creating the things that they are starts to emerge.

So I was just kind of curious from your perspective, if that seems like something that has been kind of evolving along with the, with the times. Yeah. I like your phrase human behind the content. Um, so, you know, if, if we're interacting with just a learning management system and it's just like your name in black and white.

Letters with text and you're turning in assignments, um, the human behind the text, it's more difficult for that person to emerge whereas when I'm, when I'm clicking on, um, one thing I really like about the electronic portfolios is when I'm looking at a student's piece, um, all their other pieces are right there too. So that, that academic profile that we mentioned, you know, I, if I'm, if I'm teaching 3 online classes and that's 70-ish students.

Um, I'm able to pop over to that about me and just quickly remind myself, who is this? Um, in a way that I can't do if I'm looking at one assignment in a Learning Management System. I think something I've noticed about the students, maybe in the last five years or so, is just a new level of thoughtfulness about... Digital spaces. More so in, in fact, you know, more critical of that space, a little bit more reluctant to go there.

Not necessarily reluctant to use Digication, but more likely to say, you know, I don't have any social media accounts, which I would have seen maybe seven or eight years ago. And also maybe, you know, I have two teenagers at home, probably more thoughtful. Then they are also. So I think just something about whether it's apps, you know, leaving your house and showing up in Boone and going to App.

State, um, just being a little bit more thoughtful about what online spaces they engage in and more likely to say, um, you know, I limit my social media to this and this and this time, and I'm making sure I'm hiking and I'm going out on the parkway. And so I do see like, almost like a new generation of. of more thoughtful, less reluctant users of, um, just social media, for example. Mm hmm.

Yeah. I mean, they've really just grown up so immersed in, you know, well, many of them having a phone right in front of them from the very beginning. And I think you're right that, um, you know, they're Making more choices about, you know, the amount of time that they spend on certain platforms and what the, um, the value add is for them and their experience and everything else that they want to be able to spend their time doing.

And, um, You know, I think in the beginning as these, uh, new tech, the new technologies were kind of coming into play in education context, that there, there was kind of a, a newness and a, a freshness and. Um, the way that people may have been posting things, um, and there's a lot of competition for our attention now.

So it has to be kind of deliberate in where they're choosing to spend their time and, and what they're sharing and who they're sharing it with. And you mentioned earlier, there are conversations with them a little bit about audience and Are you talking to them at all about, um, how this is something that they could use after graduation, um, with their alumni access, ways that they could share it with people outside of the school? Sure. So they're usually sophomores.

Um, so they're a little ways down the road. We definitely just talk about the idea of a portfolio in the history of a portfolio. Uh, even if it was physical, um, and what they might potentially use. We also talk a lot about, um, known audiences and unknown audiences. And that often, you know, if you're, if you're posting something on TikTok, um, or you're posting something on your, um, portfolio, you know, there are people, you know, are going to look at it.

But there's also people who are going to read it and never thought about it. So we, we, we talk about that. Um, and then we, and of course, I mean, for example, that you said you taught in the education department, they're all really conscious of the fact that they're going to be creating a portfolio, um, to be used later. Others.

And, and I guess another thing that comes up and a reason that I list as 'Why Digication?' Um, it's because we're, my students are almost all using Digication. If you ask me for a letter of recommendation two years, three years, four years after I've had you, it's so easy for me just to search for your name and, and immediately be immersed in your work as opposed to like looking all, you know, do you still have that link to that portfolio made on this platform that no one else used?

So it really reduces like, um, kind of the work, the work involved in conjuring all that stuff up. So that's something that, um, I find useful about it. Oh, good. Good. Yeah. I don't know if I've had someone mentioned that before, but that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure as soon as you see that portfolio, you can kind of remember the, um, the person and you have that immediate access to the work that they created within your course.

Um, and you mentioned that most of them are sophomores in the, um, in Rhetoric and Composition at App State. Are there other courses where the students may be utilizing this technology again? Yeah, so that's, um, certainly within, um, the Vertical Writing Curriculum, um, so they could easily use it in their required 1000 level class. Mine's called 2001 Writing Across the Curriculum. So they, they, there are students come to my class. Some of them having used Digication.

Um, it's a little bit more of an unknown once they, once they leave the Vertical Writing Curriculum and go out. into whatever their majors are. I really, it's hard for me to say. I, you know, I don't know. Here's a preview of what's coming up next in part two of my conversation with Bill Torgerson, a lecturer in Rhetoric and Composition at Appalachian State University.

You know, the ability to learn content, the ability to present the content in an engaging way that makes it easily digestible to the audience, whether it's a player or a student. Um, those are really important in both of those spaces and probably strengths of mine.