Literacies and Exigencies: Navigating the Landscape Now and in the Future
45th Annual Spring Conference on the Teaching of Writing
February 21 & 22, 2024
CALL FOR PROPOSALS (Extended!) – Deadline January 21, 2024
For over four decades, Old Dominion University’s annual Spring Conference on the Teaching of Writing has invited secondary and post-secondary teachers from the Hampton Roads area and beyond to come together on ODU’s Norfolk Campus during the spring semester. Last year, we gathered to discuss how we strategically address our students’ literacy needs and work to bridge the gap between high school and college. This year, we will continue this conversation by inviting literacy educators to share their perspectives, pedagogies, and ways of adapting literacy instruction to meet the needs of our students and communities now and in the years to come.
Literacy educators are working in an educational landscape that feels more fraught than ever before. Over the last year, we have faced new challenges such as pandemic learning loss, increased political polarization, and the accelerated mainstreaming of artificial intelligence tools. We also continue to navigate seemingly inescapable strains on learning, such as bureaucracy and inequality. To respond to these complex challenges, we need to consider the fundamental purposes of literacy instruction: What do our students need at this present moment? What do we value as literacy educators? Should those values change? If so, how?
Our keynote speaker will be Jonathan Alexander, Chancellor’s Professor of English and Informatics at the University of California Irvine. In his recent Inside Higher Ed article, he wrote, “While many instructors worry about students using these programs, such as ChatGPT, to generate ready-made essays, others are taking a longer view, asking themselves what they value most in the teaching of writing and how those values might best orient our understanding and use of text-generative AI.”
In addition to a keynote address by Jonathan Alexander, we have just confirmed that we will also feature an online workshop led by Kristen Hawley Turner and Troy Hicks, titled “Being and Becoming Writers in an Age of AI: Reconnecting with Our Values and Exploring the Intentional Integration of Digital Literacies.” Kristen Hawley Turner, PhD, is Professor and Director of Teacher Education at Drew University in New Jersey. She is the founder and director of the Drew Writing Project and Digital Literacies Collaborative and author of numerous books and articles on teaching and digital literacy. Dr. Troy Hicks is a professor of English and education at Central Michigan University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Teacher and Special Education and directs the Chippewa River Writing Project. Framed by NCTE’s Definition of Digital Literacy and four key questions that can be used for planning instruction they articulated in a recent article, Turner and Hicks will share examples of typical lessons and invite participants to engage in innovative versions of those lessons, where technologies play a role but where literacies are the heart of the instruction.
We encourage proposal submissions that engage this longer view. We invite you to contemplate how to grapple with AI in the writing classroom, focusing on the affordances and limitations of these technologies. How do we impart to our students the value of reading and writing in a world in which this work can be done for them with just a few keystrokes?
These are big questions, so we are calling on all literacy educators from various fields and institutions, including writing studies, reading instruction, creative writing, community writing, information literacy, student support, and others, to join us in responding to them. We look forward to discussing how to adapt based on changes in student preparedness and proficiencies while also highlighting new ways that students are engaging in reading, writing, and other literacies in a variety of platforms and genres.
We invite conference proposals that explore topics like:
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- What knowledge, values, or beliefs motivate your approach to writing or reading instruction?
- What changes in student literacy behaviors have you noticed and how do you think those changes should be addressed in literacy instruction?
- What do you imagine the future of writing and reading instruction will be?
- What aspects of literacy instruction are fundamental to a humanist education and why?
- How do you balance learning to write, writing to demonstrate, and writing to learn in your classes? What kinds of conversations do you have with your students about this?
- What are the affordances and limitations of AI in the classroom, and how can educators navigate these aspects to enhance student learning and literacy skills?
- Have you developed practical assignments that embrace the use of AI in your classroom?
- How should our ideas about intellectual property change in an era of AI?
- How can we engage students in critical conversations about the tools they are using and how and why they are using them? How do we teach them to ethically use these tools?
- What aspects of literacy instruction are most vital to student success? How have institutions guided literacy instruction or anticipated changing literacy trends over the past few years?
Conference Format
We will host the two-day conference on February 21 and 22, 2024, from 8:30 AM – 3:30 PM on ODU’s main campus, in the Webb Center. Registration, keynote address, and lunches will take place in the Hampton/Newport News Rooms, and breakout sessions will occur in the River Rooms. Light breakfast items and lunch will be offered on both days.
Registration: $45 general, $35 ODU Alumni, $35 K-12 teachers
Online Only Registration: $25
Registration is FREE for ODU graduate students and adjunct faculty members.
Proposal Types
We invite you to submit a 150-word proposal for presentations, interactive workshops, and teacher-to-teacher roundtable discussions or panels that connect with the conference’s theme. This year we have added online presentation options as well, including asynchronous videos walking us through an activity or tool you use in your classes. Sessions are typically assigned to 45 or 75 minute time slots. Shorter presentation proposals are welcome and can be combined with others thematically.There is no limit on the number of presenters in a given workshop, panel, or roundtable, but please realize that the time limit remains the same regardless of the number of speakers, so time should be allocated accordingly. The final 10-15 minutes should be open for audience Q&A.
Accessibility
We endeavor to make our conference more accessible every year, and we ask that you make your presentation as accessible as possible to a wide range of bodies and minds. Presenters may consider passing out access scripts of their talks, describing the images in their PowerPoint presentations aloud, and using common language throughout–such simple moves can powerfully expand the reach of our work to people who see, hear, and express in different ways. Visit our website for more information and guidance.
Sponsored by The Thistle Foundation and The Department of English
Visit the conference website for registration and proposal submission information. https://sites.wp.odu.edu/writingconference/
Sarah M. Lacy, PhD
pronouns: she/her/hers
Old Dominion University
Lecturer of English, Rhetoric and Composition
BAL 2008
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