Episode 16: Dr. Shane Wood - Director of First-Year Composition and Host of Pedagogue

Transcript Episode 16

Have you ever found assessment work interesting? If not, then you’ve never met Dr. Shane Wood, the current Writing Program Administrator and Director of First-Year Composition here at UCF, who’s here to break down why teacher responses are so crucial to students’ development, and give a riveting dissection of the reductive history/application of the letter-based grading system. Also discussed is the origin of Dr. Wood’s award-winning podcast Pedagogue, which aims to bridge institutional gaps in writing education, and how it inspired his recent book, Teachers Talking Writing: Perspectives on Place, Pedagogies, and Programs.

How students receive feedback is the backbone to promoting learning, so join us in discussing how assessment can be made as productive as possible!

Time Stamps:

• Introduction - 00:07

• The Origin of Pedagogue - 01:42

• The Importance of Academic Institutional Podcasts - 12:02

• UCF’s Writing Department vs. Others - 17:16

• Why Writing Program Administration? - 22:21

• What’s Interesting about Assessment? - 26:12

• Subverting Assessment as Punishment/Reward - 32:53

• How Enthusiasm for Writing is Squashed - 39:37

• A-F Grading Scale - 43:17

• Collaborative Efforts - 48:26

• Inspiration for Teachers Talking Writing - 52:00

• Valuing Diverse Writing Voices/Identities - 58:20

• Closing Thoughts - 1:02:55

Rhetorical Concepts:

• Teacher Response to Student Writing - 26:55

• Exclusionary Methods of Assessment - 34:44

• Punished by Rewards - 42:59

• Writing Tied to Identity - 58:47