Perspective: Thoughts on the First-Year Writing Program at Eastern Michigan University

My perspective on the FYWP at Eastern Michigan is shaped by contrast--the contrast between my own teaching context at a community college in Texas and the Writing Program at EMU. I teach within a two-course traditional Freshman Composition I and II sequence where the first semester is based on non-fiction texts and the second semester is literature based. We also have a two course Developmental English sequence for remediation. Although my department has a common set of learning objectives, most faculty can do what they like within the broad parameter of the number of essays required. Faculty rarely work together on curriculum or share strategies for how to teach more effectively. Using Adler-Kassner's term for the FYWP, we have no common "ball park." As Jeffrey Klausman described of his own community college English Department, we have a "collection of writing classes, not a program" (239). Out of this context, there are two dominant perspectives I have come to think are most significant about the FYWP at Eastern Michigan University that my program and others might learn from.

Redefining Writing and the Work of the Freshman Writing Course
Shifting the understanding of writing to inquiry rather than expression or transmission provides the basis for making the curriculum in the FYWP to be more about the development of strategies than the acquisitions of skills. This shift is made prominent within the first statement of the Course Outcomes for ENGL 120 and 121: "ENGL 120 and 121 are inquiry-based writing courses." Almost everything about the FYWP aligns with this declaration.

In terms of ENG 121, the required General Education course, framing the course as inquiry-based positions the course to be about research and using writing to learn, rather than argumentation or literary analysis. Many similar Freshman Composition courses (such as Freshman Composition II at The University of Texas) are courses in rhetorical argumentation and research. The difference has to do with how the course envisions "academic writing"--as argumentation or as inquiry. Even Freshman Composition II courses that are literature-based (like at my institution) focus on argumentative writing and the writing of the "critical essay" (an essay where you take a position and support it with evidence from the text). For the most part, ENGL 121 avoids the traditional point-support paradigm based on modernist notions that written persuasion depends upon scientistic proof in the form of concrete evidence from the text and logical arguments (although ENGL 121 students have the option of writing this kind of argumentative researched paper if they choose). The work of the Freshman Writing course, then, becomes not about learning a traditionally-defined genre of academic writing or a set of researching skills (that students are presumed to possess and then be able to carry with them into other courses) but about "learning how to learn" with writing. Inquiry. Positioning the mission of the First Year Writing Program as inquiry-based has had positive resonances across the EMU academic community. In fact, the emphasis on developing strategies and academic inquiry significantly impacted the formation of the General Education learning outcomes and curriculum for the entire university. This emphasis is evident in the lead learning outcome for upper-level Writing Intensive courses in a student's major: "Develop and employ successful, flexible writing and reading strategies that support sustained inquiry in a discipline." The FYWP has constructed its general education required course to begin students development toward learning outcomes supported by the entire university.

Another significant way in which this writing program redefines writing and writing instruction is how it handles less prepared students. The university offers no remedial classes, and had no mechanism for placing and forcing weaker students into remediation. Instead, it has created a for-credit elective writing course focused on the nature of writing and written communication that builds from students own experiences. Any students wishing additional writing development can benefit from this class; however, it seeks in particular to benefit students that arrive at EMU who have weaker writing backgrounds. Since these students are not labeled as "remedial" or "developmental" students, these students have a different perception of themselves as writers. As Linda Adler-Kassner said in her interview she believes everyone can write, and this class (as well as ENGL 121) is presented as a gift to the students where they can develop their ability to write in a supportive environment.

A Productive Balancing Act
I believe the FYWP at EMU exhibits a healthy balance as an "open" system that provides open possibilities within a defined framework. To explain what I mean by these terms, I am going to point to the work of Clay Spinuzzi. At the end of his book Tracing Genres Through Organizations, Spinuzzi describes what he calls "open systems" and "closed systems." Although he is discussing the function of software programs within the work of a company, I believe his definitions hold true for any organization or system, including a writing program. In his discussion defining closed systems, we might replace his use of the word "document" with "curriculum":

These closed systems are predicated on the assumptions "that document sets [or other design information] are centrally designed, officially produced, and authoritatively controlled sets of artifacts, and that improving user documentation ... involves consolidating a tight and rational control over these sets." (204)

In the closed system, approaches to work are rigid and constrained by these sanctioned designs, and innovations are consolidated and "centrally controlled and fine tuned" (202). The goal of the closed system is to "regulate workers' activities" (204). Spinuzzi's work shows how such a closed system inhibits work since the closed system is limited and does not fit complex contingencies and all situations. As a result, workers often work around or subvert the closed system.

The open system, in contrast, provides the ability for workers within the system to modify it and add to it. The open system is designed with the awareness of what he calls "compound mediation": "that human interactions with complex technologies are inevitably mediated by dynamic and unpredictable clusters of communication artifacts and activities" (204). He goes on to state: "an open system can consist of an officially designed core that provides the openings for worker's contributions. The point is not to rescue workers with a better designed system, but to provide the base for workers to build on" (204). Using the analogy of systems as ecologies, he compares an open system to an artificial starter reef: "An open system is a centrally designed artifact, of course, but it exists as a nexus for workers' innovations, just as an artificial reef functions as nexus for a developing underwater ecology" (205). The open system is a productive balance between structure and innovation.

When we look at the FYWP at EMU, we can identify a number of features of an "open system." What Adler-Kassner called "the big ball park" is her metaphor for the "centrally designed artifact" of the program--the course outcomes, the general course themes, and the progression of strategies development through stages in the course. Also, structuring the course around a final portfolio and assessing that portfolio with a common rubric provides productive bounds for the program. Within these broad parameters, instructors are given the freedom and support to be innovative with their own instruction and encouraged to share their assignments with the whole program. I think the fact that the FYWP course materials are posted and available in a wiki speak to the openness and collaboration implicit in this program. Likewise, the curriculum validates and encourages student choice in their own writing and learning. Most importantly, I believe it is the kind of principles that guide Aldler-Kassner's leadership of the FYWP that create this open system. In her 2008 book The Activist WPA: Changing Stories and Writing and Writers, she describes these principles that guide her work as a WPA:

a commitment to changing things for the better here and now through consensus-based, systematic, thoughtful processes that take into consideration the material contexts and concerns of all involved; a compulsion to be reflexive and self-questioning about this work so as to consider how all involved are taking into account those material conditions; and a constant commitment to ongoing, loud, sometimes messy dialogue among all participants in change-making work that ensures that everyone is heard and, hopefully, represented.

She realizes that one person alone cannot create or maintain a writing program, and she persistently seeks to create a collaborative environment that harnesses the energies of all participants in the program to make it better. The FYWP, in my mind, represents one excellent example of an "open system" Writing Program--one that serves as a good model for other programs.