The Semester Story was a three-day, multimodal activity (in preparation for the Final Exam) that I first created/deployed in a non-survey, non-major American Literature course (17 students) in Spring 2018. Its curation started with two writing process research studies (re)calibrated via posthumanism and has become just one concrete strategy/assignment in my toolbox that not only helps me more ethically and responsibly observe and assess the classroom as a whole but also offers students the chance to research and assess their own learning and growth–the story of their semester–using data they’ve been creating and curating for months. The Semester Story played a huge role in my dissertation and is, to my mind, a practical distillation of what teaching elsewhere can be. The below recording was my first time presenting on this assignment (March 2020) outside of my defense and offers a (very) brief introduction to the concept of it, particularly the two composition studies articles it started from.
The below images are from the original PowerPoint used in the presentation. Starting with the third slide, they’re captioned with what I say in the recording when I start referencing that slide.
Hosted by Collin College – McKinney, TX
The materiality of this classroom tells a humanist story: in here, you’re an any-one coming into an any-where to learn an any-thing. Responsible and purposeful observation with posthumanist theory can help us not only read/recognize those stories but disrupt them: to teach elsewhere and tell different stories with our students and each unique and unrepeatable classroom they create.
All work and student images used with student permission via a UTA-approved IRB.
Sarah A. Shelton, Ph.D. 