The Civil Discourse Pedagogy Learning Community for Expository Writing Preceptors drew over half of the Expos faculty (29/53 preceptors) to participate in monthly meetings, beginning in June 2024, led by Matthew Sohm, Assistant Director of Civil Discourse and Classroom Culture, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning (formerly Assistant Director of Pedagogy, Intellectual Vitality Initiatives). Approximately 1,100 students have been enrolled in the Learning Community participants’ sections during academic year 2024-2025.
The goal of the Learning Community is to help Preceptors define and develop best practices for integrating civil discourse approaches into first-year writing courses, as part of Intellectual Vitality Initiatives’ focus on “beginnings” with first-year students.
This group taps the collective expertise of a dedicated and skilled group of Expos preceptors in both the writing courses (Expos 10/20) and public speaking courses (Expos 40/45) of the College Writing Program. Topics of discussion included defining and deploying a teaching persona that helps foster open dialogue in the classroom; centering counterargument in assignment design; classroom norm-setting; adapting external resources (e.g. from the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics’ pedagogy database), to the needs of writing and speaking courses; argument mapping techniques; and developing syllabus language that helps set norms for open discussion.
February 2025