College of Science and Humanities

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Becoming a Scholar: Genre Knowledge, Self-Regulation, and a Graduate Student’s Transition from MA to PhD
(2020) Roderick, Ryan; Moreau, Craig
This study takes a close look at how prompted self-reflection on writing intervenes in a graduate student’s development of self-regulation and genre knowledge as he transitions from MA to PhD program in rhetoric. We present the case of one graduate student, ‘Eric,’ who was explicitly taught conventions and strategies for writing and prompted to reflect on writing projects over several semesters using an in-process protocol. Aligning data from in-process protocols, interviews, and drafts of Eric’s writing, we construct a fine-grained narrative that shows a complex and recursive relationship among Eric’s development of knowledge about academic genres, self-regulation practices, and sense of scholarly identity. This narrative raises questions about how genre knowledge and self-regulation inform each other in graduate-level writing, and it offers an example of a self-regulation intervention that may help graduate students develop specialized ways of writing.
BEYOND CHEATING: CULTIVATING AI LITERACY THROUGH WRITING AND ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORKS
(2025-04-17) Roderick, Ryan
As generative AI technologies become increasingly integrated into educational environments, it is essential to consider how they shape human learning, creativity, and decision-making. While generative AI presents significant opportunities for augmenting knowledge creation, it also introduces challenges around ethical use, assessment, and pedagogy. To address these complexities, this poster presentation focuses on the evolving concept of AI Literacy—a broad and multifaceted skill set that includes prompt engineering, human-AI co-creation, ethical AI engagement, and AI-augmented higher order thinking. Drawing on frameworks from rhetoric and composition studies, I define AI Literacy as a social and rhetorical competency: the ability to critically interact with AI systems, understand their embedded biases, and navigate their use within specific contexts. Rather than treating AI as a replacement for human cognition, I consider how it can supplement and extend it by building on Bloom’s Taxonomy. A widely adopted framework in educational assessment, Bloom’s Taxonomy offers a starting point for exploring how learners collaborate with AI through iterative prompting, evaluation, and adaptation. By examining these interactions, we uncover strategies for recognizing and cultivating AI Literacy in educational settings. This work aims to support educators in designing learning experiences that promote critical, ethical, and effective engagement with generative AI.
Constructing Adult Literacies at a Local Literacy Tutor-Training Program
(2013) Roderick, Ryan
This study investigates how literacy was constructed at an adult literacy organization’s volunteer tutor-training program. By drawing on qualitative analysis of training texts used during training, such as training evaluations, and data gathered from interviews with experienced tutors, it is possible to identify the assumptions about literacy constructed by the training program and tutors’ training practices. Tutors seemed to present mixed assumptions about literacy: students simultaneously were given authority over their own literacy practices and literacy goals, while a sentiment of universally valued reading and writing skills was also present in terms of achieving fluency.
Improving Instructor Ethos through Document Design
(2019) Wolfe, Joanna; Roderick, Ryan; Francioni-Rooney, Andrea
Despite much attention given to visual rhetoric in Composition, there is evidence that most first-year writing instructors overlook document design, both in their instruction and in the documents they produce for their students. These instructors may be underestimating the role that visually informative prose (that uses document design features such as chunking and visual hierarchy) can play both in helping students understand assignment objectives and in establishing a student-centered ethos in their classrooms. To illustrate how visually informative prose helps shape student perceptions of instructors, 166 first-year undergraduates responded to two assignment prompts: a visually informative and a minimally designed prompt. Students perceived the instructor who wrote the visually informative prompt as more experienced, enthusiastic, and caring than the instructor who wrote the minimally designed prompt, and they found the task more interesting when it was presented in the visually informative prompt. These findings suggest that creating visually informative classroom materials is a relatively low-cost/high-payoff strategy that can positively shape students' perceptions of the instructor and assignments.
Self-Regulation and Rhetorical Problem Solving: How Graduate Students Adapt to an Unfamiliar Writing Project
(2019-07) Roderick, Ryan
Research on writing and transfer has shown that writers who have sophisticated rhetorical knowledge are well equipped to adapt to new situations, yet less attention has been paid to how a writer’s adaptability is influenced by their writing processes. Drawing on Zimmerman’s socio-cognitive theory of self regulation, this study compared the writing processes taken up by graduate student writers composing a research proposal for their final project in a tutor-training practicum. Findings from process logs, interviews, and drafts differentiated self-regulation strategies associated with varying degrees of success. The more successful writers framed problems in terms of potential solutions, used problems to set goals, and reacted to problems by creating a narrative of progress; in contrast, less successful writers avoided problems or framed them as dead-ends. Compared to the less successful writers, the more successful writers concluded the project with robust knowledge about research proposal writing. These findings suggest that self-regulation strategies may be linked to an ability to develop rhetorical knowledge and practices in the face of challenging writing situations.
Using Signs of Student Engagement to Revise a First-year Writing Curricula
(2021-08) Roderick, Ryan; Crowley, Adam; Talty, Morgan
This article shares the development of a first-year writing curricula developed for Husson University and based on a Writing about Writing approach. We drew on data across sections and semesters to look broadly at how students engaged with a course website and more narrowly at individual students writing. From these sources, we piece together a limited but useful sense of student engagement and describe how such observations can inform curricular revision of an undergraduate writing course.
Writing about Writing Processes: Self-regulation and Process Logs
(2020-10-01) Roderick, Ryan
In this blog post, I consider how WAW pedagogies might benefit from research on self-regulation of writing. Self-regulation refers to an ability to monitor and control knowledge and practices in pursuit of a goal. Drawing on self-regulation research, I present a prompt I call the “process log” that encourages students to self-regulate their writing. Then, I analyze some of the process logs I’ve collected as part of IRB-approved studies, to offer some examples of what researchers might learn when using process logs as an artifact of analysis. Ultimately, I suggest that WAW courses might use the process log as a way to encourage students to write about writing processes.

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