Together, but Apart: Writing, Community and Zoom

This interactive workshop will feature contributions from instructors of a first-year undergraduate scholarly writing course in Land & Food Systems and Forestry. Participants will hear from panelists about their experiences of building a writing community online in order to mitigate social isolation and help meet student learning goals. The session will explore the practice of weekly free-writing over Zoom, the use of discussion boards for weekly writing assignments, the inclusion of non-scholarly activities such as synchronous cooking, and the creation of transformative writing communities through pedagogy that centers process and storytelling. Participants will be guided in a writing activity and invited to reflect on how they can incorporate some of these strategies into their own teaching practice.