Success is in the topic- Research Writing in the Comp Class

The first few years I spent in front of the college classroom, I was a College Teaching Assistant.  In charge of the delivery, assignments, and grading of the class curriculum, I had little to no say as to what was taught.  We were given a book of academic papers, articles, all organized under a theme.  The concept of the classes was to read the thematically organized “research” compiled in the book, discuss, create original, innovative thesis and argue them successfully.  Although fun for my philosophical self, not so much fun for those more concrete-idea minded students.  

Fast forward a decade an innumerable college courses later, and I am still at the mercy of administrators when it comes to curriculum.  However,  I do have much more of a say and feel much more confident in the room within which I can move.  My favorite place to work has the research paper drive the entire third required writing class. The first two writing classes work up to this final class and project.

As stated by Tate et al concerning the research project within the composition classroom,  “more recently those research skills have connected with the larger imperative to teach information literacy skills, and the ‘ paper’  has expanded to include multimedia. despite concern over the form of the paper itself, over the model of research it represents, And over the transferability of the skills taught in the process, the research paper is still the major assignment in many FYW curricula” ( Tate et al, Guide to Composition Pedagogies 2014, 232).  My course brings in multimedia elements where the students are required to present the arguments in a mode outside of a paper- this forces the student to think of the argument as a single thought or intent while it helps me to recognize those students who do not fully grasp the concept of “argument”. Furthermore, to address the concerns presented by Tate concerning transferability.  Since my students participate in a flipped classroom setting, a lot of time is spent mentoring and “talking it out” with the students in identifying exactly what topic would serve the best in the future.  Many of my students choose research topics that connect to the chosen field of study or degree.  Once such student was able to conference with me as well as his Business professor in completing the semester long study (primary and secondary research) with the final product receiving a grade in both classes and a proposal submitted to a journal suggested by the Business professor.  As Bean points out, “the question we face, then, is how to transform students from writers of uninspired, pseudo academic research papers into engaged undergraduate researchers” (Bean, Engaging Ideas 2011, 224)

I believe it’s all in the topic and objective of the project.  

“Classroom activities allow students to practice the skills embedded within the IRS, including the development of keywords and decisions about which sources are appropriate” ( Tate et al, Guide to Composition Pedagogies 2014, 236).