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Library and Information Access and the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies present: RWS Landmark Lecture Series: Assessing Adaptive Transfer in Community-Based Writing by Michael-John DePalma

Thursday, April 5 at 4 p.m.
SDSU Library Room LL430

This empirical study discusses the implications of using Michael-John DePalma and Jeffrey M. Ringer’s framework of adaptive transfer to assess students’ learning in community-based writing projects. Drawing from a series of interview-based case studies of students enrolled in my Technical and Professional Writing courses at Baylor University, this chapter describes how students both apply and reshape learned writing knowledge in order to negotiate new and unfamiliar community-based writing tasks. By assessing the kinds of transfer that students describe as they move between the activity systems of the classroom, their community sites, and beyond, this project provides the kind of empirical data on student learning that is currently lacking in community-based writing research. Moreover, it offers a rich framework for assessing how students adapt writing knowledge and experience to fit unfamiliar community-based writing tasks. By offering a framework and method for assessing the transfer of writing knowledge in community-based writing courses, this study contributes in significant ways to extant discussions of learning transfer in community-based writing scholarship.

Michael-John DePalma, Assistant Professor of English in the Professional Writing Program at Baylor University, received a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of New Hampshire and an M.A. in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from San Diego State University. 

Michael teaches courses in rhetoric, advanced composition, technical and professional writing, and composition theory and pedagogy. His work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service Learning, and Community Literacy, and the Journal of Second Language Writing. His most recent projects are forthcoming in edited collections Paving the Way for Literacy(ies):  Writing and Learning through Community Engagement and WAC and Second Language Writers: Research towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices.

Writing Placement Assessment (WPA) Information

All undergraduates must demonstrate competency in writing skills at the upper division level as a requirement for the baccalaureate degree within the California State University System. At San Diego State University, the Writing Placement Assessment (WPA) is used to assess that competency.

For more information, please visit their site: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~gwar/