This presentation was delivered as part of the CHSS Dean's Lecture Series, Kennesaw State University, February 25, 2016. It describes a history of democratic learning and a case study tht assessed students' attitudes towards democratic, digital writing assignments in a first year composition classroom. Tweet at #demoped

1. Assessing Ourselves: What do
Students Think about About
Democratic Pedagogy

2. A Naturalist View of Epistemology
Dewey
Peirce James
Morris

3. William James & Radical Empiricism
Teaching students not WHAT to think but HOW to think
We have something to learn from
diversities of perspectives
Shared experiences create greater impacts than intellect alone
Truths are relational and situated observation
Pragmatism is a mediator and reconciler
Understanding wholes by their parts

4. James and Democratic Teaching
• From A Pluralistic Universe:
– Learning is a dialogic ACT that requires interactive
PRACTICE
– “ I must deafen you to the importance of talk by
showing you” (129-132).
• Learning without consciousness of learning is
an act of growth

5. Dewey’s Epistemology
We interact with the world
through self-guided activities.
We learn best in hybrid environments
that include both realized content and
shared experiences
We learn best through negotiation
of community practice, both
successes and failures.

6. The Crux of the Matter
Democratic learning is contingent on
awareness of a diversity of points of common
interest as well as the change that occurs
through “meeting the new situations produced
by varied intercourse.” ✔

7. Dewey’s Pedagogy (1897)
“If education is life, all life has, from the outset,
a scientific aspect, an aspect of art and culture,
and an aspect of communication.”
Language
CultureScience
Networked connections
cultivate shared meaning-
making
“do-ing” NOT “be-ing”

8. A Dewey Word Cloud?

9. Applications of Dewey

10. Kolb’s Experiential Learning (1984)
Concrete Experience
Reflective
Observation
Abstract
Conceptualization
Active
Experimentation

11. Critical-Democratic Teaching
• Freire-Shor (1970s-80s)
• Feminist (1980-90s)
• Transformative (hooks, 1990s)
• Dialogic (Searle, 1990s)
• Service-Learning (1990s-2000s)
• Constructionist (Papert/Turkle, 2000s)

12. 21st Applications of #Demoped
 Crowd-Sourcing elements of learning
 Interactive Lectures
 Flipped Teaching
 Dialogics
 Transparency
 Digital Literacies

13. Summary of #demoped
• Networked learning
• Community-driven (aligned)
– Assignments AND Assessments
• Students are Stakeholders
• Reflective
• Experiential
• Rhizomatic

14. Stories from the Field
Selfe (2004): “range of literacies that students bring to the
classroom: literacies practiced in the home, the community,
the church, & online; literacies dependent on oral, visual, &
aural performances; literacies based on multiple languages,
cultures, & contexts” (Writing New Media).
• Strategy: Flipped Script; shared authority
• Texts: Interactive lectures (PPT/Prezi/PowToon)
• Outcomes: Application, Analysis, Synthesis

15. Stories from the Field
Lunsford (2005): students want their work to
have value…something others might want to
borrow, share, cite, or even steal!
• Strategy: crowd-sourced, public assignments
that re/mix content
• Texts: blogs, wikis, pod-vlogcasts
• Outcomes: synthesis/creation, evaluation

16. Stories from the Field
Wysocki (2012): digital writing is social writing.
Creating agency through experiential learning:
– Observe experience
– Record it succinctly
– Organize it rhetorically
– Present it creatively
• Strategy: collaborative, group writing
• Texts: Wikis, G-docs, info-graphics, videos
• Outcomes: application, evaluation, creation

17. FYW Reflective Project
• Context: Case Study. FYW course
• Purpose: Measuring students’ attitudes toward
democratic, multimodal writing assignments
• Participants: 15 FY students; STEM majors; 18-19 yrs
old; 14 self-ID’ed male; 1 self-ID’ed female; digital
natives
• Instrument: mixed method survey, follow-up
conversations

18. FYW Project
• A Note (caveat, proviso!)
– LO’s were explicit and transparent
– Student voices were included in LO’s
– Post-Final Grades
• Survey
– Six overarching Qs about their learning
experiences in this course, using #demoped as
frame
– Likert Scale and Open-Response

19. FYW Project
• Crowd-sourced, Vlog-cast
100 93
87

20. FYW Project
• 14 students: My writing improved in this course.
– (1 neutral)
• 100%: I learned new ways of writing from the
multimodal assignments.
• 14 students: Discussion engendered participation
– (1 neutral)
• 14 students: I increased my digital literacy.
– (1 neutral)

21. FYW Qualitative Results
• The vlog-cast helped me realize that writing
comes in different forms.
• The MM writing assignments helped me
internalize the learning outcomes
• I now prefer writing with multimodalities
• Learning in this class will benefit me in future
courses.

22. STEM Writing
A. Autonomous Learning
How each student is given responsibility which provides
collaborative control over the class discussions and topics
learned.

23. STEM Writing
B. Experimental Learning and
How it Transfers to Engineering
courses
Students are given the opportunity to
learn in ways that are specific to them.
It eliminates complacency in learning
and caters to individualism when a
student is in control of what they take
away from a lesson.

24. STEM Writing
C. Success of this class model is based on equal
contribution from each participant.
Though my experience was a pleasant one, not all will be
due to reliance on students to lead and take charge of the
learning environment. Not all students are going to want to
be in control of their own learning experience. Some may
just be too accustomed to being told how and what to learn

25. STEM Writing
• Recovering Women in STEM
(special topics class)
– A Wiki created by student-
scholars to remember
influential women in STEM.
– The objective of this
research project was to be
a resource for students and
teachers to promoting
STEM.

26. STEM Writing
Wiki: collaborative
– Edited (Google Doc)
– Roles of students
– Presentations at Women’s
History Month
• Used the wiki to coordinate
the banquet
• Panel presentation

27. Failing Forward
• What happens when not everyone
participates in democratic
learning?
– Helping others along
– Good and bad experiences
(learning from it)
– Service learning (adding value)
• How do students negotiate with
each other in choosing writing
assignments?

28. DWMA Pilot
• Ongoing Case Study (two courses)
• Strategies:
– Crowd-sourced midterms
– Micro-studies designed by community
– Multimodal text constructions
– Co-authoring opportunities
• Democratic/Digital/Aligned
• Measuring Students’ Attitudes

29. Upper Division Writing
• 75% positive about writing in digital spaces
• 50% prefer MM writing to print writing
• 25% think likely MM writing will not be valued
as a skill in their job.

30. DWMA Pilot
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Blogging Twitter Other
Social
Media
Vlog-casts Podcasts YouTube

31. Pilot Qualitative Results
• MM is all about re/mixing content
• MM is a recognized trend, like it or not
• MM is in addition to text (digital comm)
• MM is revolutionary way to communicate

32. What’s Next
• Digital, Democratic Community of teacher-
student scholars – Rhizomatic 
• Leave us your information for updates on the
development of the community!
• www.demoped.rhetoricmatters.org

33. Wrapping it Up
Let’s make our own Word Cloud.

34. Q&A
• #demoped
• Workgroup
• Peer-to-Peer
• demoped./rhetoricmatters.org

35. Resources
• Dewey, John (1897) ‘My pedagogic creed’, The
School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3
(January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.
http://infed.org/mobi/john-dewey-my-
pedagogical-creed/.