Hi everyone,
I am writing to re-invite you to provide contact information if you are helping to organize a local ideation/sensemaking session here on this spreadsheet. Local organizers are being added to a discussion group so that we can share ideas and stay in contact.
Also if you are working to plan a local session, please take advantage of some resources to assist, found here in this sensemaking toolkit. If you would like to brainstorm about strategies for productive sensemaking activites, please feel free to reach out.
And, finally, a suggestion that smaller is likely easier to organize. There have been some massive groups attempting to organize; if you can pull it off, that is great. If you are finding it hard to plan and find time, please consider splitting up into "bite size" chunks–getting folks together in smaller local regions. Here in our area, for example, we found a spot between Dayton and Cincinnati and listed all the folks who could get to it in an hour or so and invited them. (That also influenced some of our sensemaking activities, including creating a google map with every institution of higher ed in that area on it so that we could ask together: "who is teaching writing here and under what conditions?"). We found it useful to ask questions like "what are writing teachers in this region doing?" instead of "what’s every writing teacher [in the US, the world etc] doing?" If all of us can share our answers to these questions from across local areas, that will be interesting.
As a reminder, if you have met or are about to meet, please upload your documents and notes to the WAC Clearinghouse Repository, following Chris Basgier’s instructions. I am working with some others to secure funding for a Phase II meeting where the local/group organizers can get together and look at what has been generated across the groups. This will only work if we know about all the groups that are meeting and can invite their organizers and are able to read what groups have generated.
Have a good long weekend!
Elizabeth Wardle
University Distinguished Professor
Howe Distinguished Professor of Written Communication
Director of Howe Center for Writing Excellence
Miami University (OH)
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