Course: Writing as Inquiry (WAI II)
Instructor: Amy Reed Goldman, Senior Lecturer, Writing Program
Students Enrolled: 43
Technology used: NYU Zoom, VoiceThread, NYU Classes, Google+ Communities, Shared Google Docs, StoryMaps
Amy Goldman is currently working from India. She is teaching Writing as Inquiry II (WAI II), a first-year writing workshop that is mandatory for all NYU Shanghai students. In this class, which emphasizes university-level critical inquiry and rhetorical strategies, students write essays focused on works of non-fiction typically addressing contemporary issues across a variety of disciplines. WAI stands in contrast to NYU Shanghai’s required sophomore series Perspectives on the Humanities (PoH), content-based writing seminars that emphasize engagement with the questions and methods of the humanities’ disciplines. In her three-section WAI course, Goldman is currently teaching 43 students spread across 16 time zones, from Asia though the Near East, Europe and the Americas.
Depending on time zone, students are grouped into three different color-coded Google+ communities that act as virtual classroom spaces: Blue (Americas UTC-8 to -4) Green (Europe UTC +0 to +2) and Purple (Asia UTC +4 to +8). In these communities, students analyze course texts, think critically about the issues they raise, consider responses to study questions, query and respond to one another, and debrief in small group discussions.
