Building Faculty Buy-In Through a Virtual GTA Practicum

Margaret Weaver and Leslie Seawright

What It's Like Now

Back to "Normal"
There was an incredible desire to get “back to normal” on university campuses beginning in Fall 2021, post vaccine. Administrators wanted seated classes back on the schedule; our Department Head wanted a seated ENG 703 back on the schedule. We, too, craved live face-to-face interaction with faculty and GTAs, but we had trepidation about moving the composition practicum back into a physical place and giving it the title of “ENG 703.” After all, “normal” in our department had led to the near extinction of the composition practicum.


We knew that one of the motivations for reinstating the composition practicum as ENG 703 was to increase credit hour production. For the 2020-2021 academic year, the Department Head had funded the 2-week training required of GTAs before the Fall semester began. Each GTA was given a modest stipend for the first week and the second week was considered part of the GTA’s 2020-2021 contract. For the 2021-2022 academic year, the 2-week training before the Fall semester was converted to an official course. Rather than paying the GTAs for attending the training, new GTAs received credit for a one-hour ENG 703 Fall intersession. In addition to enrolling in the composition theory course (ENG 720), the new GTAs also officially enrolled in a one-hour ENG 703 in Fall 2021 and a one-hour ENG 703 in Spring 2022. This reinstatement of ENG 703 added a robustly-enrolled three-hour graduate course to the department’s credit hour production for the academic year.


Another motivation for reinstating ENG 703 was the desire to provide a mechanism that would indicate to future employers that the graduate students had systematic teacher preparation, particularly if the graduate students sought future employment in a teaching position. By offering the composition practicum as an official class, this guaranteed that the faculty development was visible on the college transcript. As we mentioned in the What Happened section, informal data collection for our departmental self-study a few years ago revealed that from Fall 2009 to Fall 2018, 165 GTAs had completed graduate programs within our department. Of this number, 48 were currently employed as composition teachers, even though half had received degrees in program areas other than Composition/Rhetoric. What this data suggested was that having the composition practicum documented on a transcript, in addition to documenting teaching experience on a CV, made our graduate students more marketable as composition teachers.


Despite the rationale for reinstating the composition practicum as a credit-bearing course, institutional memory served as a nagging reminder of how ENG 703 had been perceived prior to its redesign. We worried that reinstituting ENG 703 could affect the relationships we had cultivated with faculty over the past year. The composition practicum was no longer perceived as an isolated course; rather, the composition practicum had become a forum for open pedagogical discussions within our department. Our worry extended to the perceptions of GTAs as well. Deborah Murray (2005) reflects on the notable shift that happened when Kansas State University moved its composition practicum from required staff meetings to a course. When the practicum consisted of staff meetings, GTAs perceived the practicum “as a job requirement” and the WPAs experienced “fairly good cooperation” from the GTAs. “Once the regular meetings became a course,” Murray explains, “the power dynamic changed. The meeting leaders became ‘teachers’ and the new teachers became ‘students’” (p. 308). Contrary to what might be expected, this hierarchical shift created less cooperation from the GTAs. The graduate students “seemed freer to cut class or fail to complete assignments” (pp. 308-309). Because the composition practicum was placed within the same mix as their other courses, it encouraged the graduate students, particularly those in other programs, to place the course last when determining priorities.


Murray’s observation gave us pause and reminded us yet again how the composition practicum is a delicate ecosystem. What would appear to be a small semantic shift (attaching an academic course code to the composition practicum) had the potential to alter perceptions of the space and how individuals interact within this space. However, our use of videoconferencing in the course seemed to encourage participation, not diminish it. Our online class periods were creating a sense of community perhaps stronger than that we had experienced before.


A Team Approach

In the beginning of the What Happened section, we discussed what Juan C. Guerra and Anis Bawarshi (2005) refer to as the “cult of personality” (p. 54). This is the perception that the composition program is “so and so’s program”—an understandable perception particularly in programs in which a single WPA oversees the program and teaches the composition practicum. Because our Department Head had the foresight to appoint faculty from two different program areas to coordinate the composition program, we hoped that we could maintain and continue to cultivate positive perceptions of the composition practicum as we transitioned back into a seated credit-bearing ENG 703.


Though Margaret was listed in the course schedule as the “instructor of record” for ENG 703, we maintained our team approach to the composition practicum, both attending all practicum sessions. Even so, we were still concerned that offering the composition practicum as an official face-to-face course might change the power dynamic perceived by the graduate students and/or affect attendance. Practicum attendance had been strong on Zoom during 2020-2021, and GTAs had been diligent with the associated requirements (i.e., readings, observations, reflective journaling, and student reports of learning), with one exception—the second-year GTAs. The weekly “staff meetings” had only been required for first-year GTAs, not second-year GTAs. Without the explicit requirement built into their contracts, the majority of second-year GTAs chose not to attend. We recognize the gains “when teaching assistants teach teaching assistants to teach” (Weiser, 2002), and so we made an important addition to the 2021-2022 practicum schedule: the inclusion of monthly lesson planning sessions with second-year GTA mentors. Our hope was to encourage more direct interaction between the second-year GTAs and the first-year GTAs.


While the redesign of the practicum had increased and improved interaction between first-year GTAs and faculty, it had not increased and improved interaction between first-year GTAs and second-year GTAs. That important peer mentoring was not happening in an explicit way, and we wanted to facilitate that mentoring through the composition practicum. Therefore, we assigned most second-year GTAs as mentors to groups of 3-4 first-year GTAs. (Even though our department awards approximately an equal number of first-year and second-year graduate teaching assistantships, we did not institute one-to-one mentoring because several second-year GTAs were teaching other courses based on departmental need. We chose to assign as mentors only those second-year GTAs who were teaching Writing I, the course that the first-year GTAs were teaching.) Each month, we built into the practicum schedule one session dedicated to “Lesson planning with mentors.” This time was dedicated to small group work and peer mentoring.


Aside from the addition of these sessions dedicated to peer mentoring (which we did not invite faculty to attend), we continued to approach the composition practicum as a forum for faculty-GTA collaboration. Just as we had during the previous year, we sent weekly emails to faculty, inviting them to come and join the GTAs for informal conversations about particular pedagogical issues. The format remained unscripted. The Fall 2021 practicum schedule included topics that had yielded the largest number of faculty attendees during Fall 2020 as well as topics that the second-year GTAs found most helpful (as indicated on an end-of-the-year questionnaire).


Transitioning to a Hybrid Model

The biggest challenge we faced was the transferability of this open discussion format as we transitioned back to an in-person composition practicum. Despite the university’s adherence to a strict mask policy and social distancing within academic buildings, many faculty remained understandably apprehensive about meeting in person, especially given the recent surge within our city due to the Omicron variant. Our Department Head even committed to holding all department meetings on Zoom and encouraged departmental committees to do the same. If the composition practicum had remained as “staff meetings,” we could have stayed exclusively on Zoom. However, the composition practicum’s new designation as a course complicated the decision. Administrators wanted seated classes back on the schedule. Given that the department had moved all Writing I classes back to a seated format, it seemed at odds to keep ENG 703 on Zoom. Yet, if we held the composition practicum within the confines of the designated physical classroom we were assigned, we risked isolating the practicum again.


In an attempt to accommodate both the administration’s desire for “back to normal” classes and the faculty’s desire for safer remote access, we chose to offer the practicum in a hybrid space (seated and Zoom). This decision to offer a hybrid composition practicum created challenges, some expected and some unexpected. Navigating these challenges has provided new insight into what is gained and lost through the use of collaborative technology.


Phyllis Silverman (1964), writing decades before the introduction of videoconferencing, observed that “listening is not only affected by your mind set and mood, but also by the physical environment in which you find yourself.” She raised a litany of questions to consider: “Is the room equipped with adequate lighting and ventilation? Is the speaker seen by each person? Is he being heard by each one present? Are there any other physical distractions to prevent one from listening completely—too much noise from the outside? too many pictures and displays in the room?” (p. 40). The relevance of her questions to today’s Zoom platform is profound, especially given that she posed these questions almost 60 years ago. Her questions capture well the challenges of using videoconferencing technology. We have all been part of Zoom sessions where the faces of speakers are indistinguishable due to strong backlighting or where speakers are difficult to hear due to faulty microphones, background noise or loud air-conditioners; we have all participated in sessions where individuals turn off their cameras so that they cannot be seen; and we have watched, uncomfortably at times, as physical distractions on screen garner our attention (e.g., cats, questionable home décor, interrupting family members). All of these environmental factors influence our ability to listen during a Zoom session. What we did not anticipate was how these distractions would affect those who were present in the physical classroom when a Zoom session was being conducted concurrently.


Videoconferencing allows for individuals in diverse locations to interact together, but this does not mean they are all perceived as “present” in the same space. One of the first hiccups happened on the first hybrid session in Fall 2021. The topic (“Facilitating Class Discussion”) was one that had generated strong faculty attendance during the previous Fall semester. We were delighted to welcome an even larger faculty turn-out in our first hybrid session in Fall 2021; we had five faculty join us in person and three on Zoom.


The physical classroom was Zoom compatible, but only at an elementary level. Zoom software had been installed on the mediacart, and a small Logitech webcam had been clipped to the top of the monitor on the mediacart. A large projection screen was at the front of the class. Because this larger classroom is considered one of our college’s collaborative spaces, the room is outfitted with six collaborative work spaces (each with 5-6 chairs and a large flatscreen monitor). This setup allows the instructor to project images both on the overhead screen and on the six flatscreen monitors to improve visibility. Despite being one of the college’s collaborative spaces, the classroom had not yet been upgraded with a tracking camera and ceiling microphones.


When the five faculty arrived in person, it became clear that the place of the practicum mattered greatly. All five selected seats at the front of the classroom rather than choosing seats interspersed among the GTAs. The faculty reverted to the model of interaction with which they were most familiar in this physical place: teachers at the front speaking to graduate students. Margaret unintentionally facilitated this perception by manually rotating the monitor (with camera) to face the front of the classroom at the beginning of the Zoom session. This gesture made it clear that the classroom did not have a tracking camera and the practicum would be confined to the stationary camera clipped to the monitor. Almost as an automatic response, the faculty rolled their chairs closer together so that all five were visible on the screen in a panel format.


The faculty who joined via Zoom were also visible to everyone present, their images projected on the overhead screen and on the six flatscreen monitors. Unfortunately, where the in-person faculty had chosen to sit in the physical classroom prevented them from being able to see the faculty on zoom. The overhead screen was behind them and the angle of the monitors (almost perpendicular) prevented easy viewing. This setup created an inequitable distribution of interaction. The in-person faculty dominated the practicum discussion and the classroom space became yet another rendition of the “sages on stage.” Graduate students listened and took notes while the five faculty shared their insights.


The Challenges of our Hybrid Space

What was striking was how the place from which faculty spoke guaranteed who was given precedence. Because video-conferencing technology has yet to overcome the slight delay in response time, this technology placed those on Zoom at a disadvantage when interacting with those who were physically present. Turn-taking, as we note in What We Did, follows clearly established rules in face-to-face conversation. These rules trumped the implicit rules that had guided the practicum previously when everyone was online. Rene Riedl (2021) reminds us, “people are not predisposed to communicate via electronic channels, even if a communication mode resembles F2F, as is the case with videoconferencing” (p. 6). People are predisposed to synchrony and they rely on “precisely timed vocalizations, gestures, and movements to communicate” (Wiederhold, 2020, p. 437).


Yu Sheng (2021) provides a superb example of this as it pertains to turn-taking on Zoom. When a speaker pauses, there are no functions or buttons for them to use to indicate that they are deliberately pausing to consider the next point and want to maintain the speaker role. If 3-5 seconds pass before the speaker attempts a vocalization or gesture (a span of time significantly longer than in face-to-face communication), listeners may mistakenly assume the speaking turn is finished and coopt the role of speaker through self-selection (p. 214). We discovered that coopting of the speaker role was amplified not just by the slight time delay, but also by in-person speakers ignoring attempts of the faculty on Zoom to enact self-selection.


Zoom technology provides a mechanism for a user to indicate a desire to speak. The “blue hand” button mimics how a student requests permission to speak in a face-to-face classroom and indicates a clear recognition of the rule that only one person can speak at a given time (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974, p. 706). Because the teacher directs speakership, the “teacher” must explicitly recognize the student before the person is permitted to speak (McHoul, 1978). The “blue hand” can be effective if the Zoom session is used for a traditional classroom or formal meeting; it is not very effective, however, if the space does not resemble a traditional classroom.


As we have emphasized throughout this webtext, our composition practicum does not resemble the traditional classroom. We have remained committed to a team-approach, and Margaret has resisted the urge to insert herself as the practicum’s designated “instructor.” During the Zoom practicum last year, rarely did anyone raise a blue hand. The unspoken assumption was that at any point, anyone could turn on their microphone and contribute to the discussion. Practicum participants became more intentional listeners (both with their eyes and ears) and enacted their own implicit rules for turn-taking and speaker self-selection. They had not needed a “teacher” to direct the discussion through formal recognition of speakers. The hybrid practicum, though, created an unexpected challenge. The environment of the physical classroom had encouraged in-person faculty to don the role of “teachers” more so than fellow collaborators during the first session. As self-appointed speakers, they had physically set up what closely resembled a scholarly panel—a scholarly panel that did not include the three faculty on Zoom.


The technology within the classroom undoubtably contributed to this uncomfortable set up. With the webcam attached to the top of the computer monitor, it was not possible to reverse the direction of the lens so that it was not facing the person monitoring the media cart, aside from completely removing the webcam. This necessitated rotating the entire monitor to face other speakers. By rotating the monitor, Margaret was no longer able to see those on zoom via the mediacart monitor. Therefore, she took a seat at one of the collaborative pods so that she could see the faculty on Zoom, and more importantly, the online Chat space on Zoom. The Chat function had been actively used last year during the practicum.


Even with closed captioning, it was difficult for those faculty on Zoom to follow the conversation. Everyone who was physically present had a mask on which altered the sound quality, particularly on an inexpensive webcam with tiny speakers. The online faculty did attempt to contribute by typing comments into the Chat function. We and the GTAs could see these comments as they appeared, but the in-person faculty could not. The effect was that the conversation at times felt like watching an episode of CrossFire with one person talking over another. The temptation was great to interrupt the in-person speakers to acknowledge a comment that had been offered in the Chat, but this could have potentially sent a message to GTAs that the “instructor” of the practicum controls turn-taking and determines who speaks. Also, choosing to interrupt would have violated the first established rule for turn-taking within face-to-face interaction: 1) The current speaker selects the next speaker (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974, p. 704).


Our desire to honor the team approach, coupled with the challenges posed by the technology, created an uncomfortable first hybrid session—a bit ironic given the topic was “Facilitating Classroom Discussion.” We had neglected to consider how the physical place would affect those faculty who were present. Our missteps showed in reduced faculty attendance at the next two practicum sessions. Even though the topics for the next two sessions ("Peer response groups" and "Collaborating with emerging bilinguals") had generated the highest faculty attendance in Fall 2020, faculty attendance was incredibly low at these sessions in Fall 2021. Both sessions had only one faculty member attend in person and 1-2 faculty via Zoom. We had clearly disrupted the equilibrium of the practicum by transitioning to a hybrid model.


Luckily, we discovered that ecosystems are dynamic entities. Wikipedia provides a useful definition of how ecosystems maintain balance: “They are subject to periodic disruptions and are always in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. The tendency of an ecosystem to remain close to its equilibrium state, despite that disturbance, is termed its resistance. The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks is terms its ecological resilience” (Ecosystem).


Findings and Conclusion

The various disruptions during the first hybrid composition practicum provided us with insight into what is gained and lost through the use of collaborative technology, particularly when it is used within the same space as face-to-face interaction. The most important insight that we gained was how an ecosystem has the potential to absorb disturbance and reorganize itself in an attempt to maintain equilibrium. About midway through the Fall 2021 semester, just after Fall Break, we sent out our usual weekly email invite to faculty. The topic was one that had generated strong attendance in the previous year (“Helping students find a thesis”), and the topic did so again. Six faculty joined the practicum, three faculty in person and three faculty via Zoom. Whether it was a function of the particular combination of faculty personalities, coming off a restful holiday break, or the topic of the discussion, there was a remarkably different feel to the hybrid space of the practicum. First, the in-person faculty did not assume positions in the classroom as “sages on stage.” This positioning, or lack of, generated significantly more interaction between the faculty and the GTAs. The technology, unfortunately, continued to pose difficulties for the online faculty (and online GTAs, due to COVID and/or quarantining). Margaret had taken on the role of videographer, manually rotating the monitor with the webcam to track whomever was speaking. After half a semester in the hybrid practicum, GTAs were also displaying resilience. Rather than lamenting the technological disturbances, they had reorganized and found work-arounds so that the composition practicum could retain its function, structure, and identity as an open forum for pedagogical discussions.


Several GTAs who were present in the physical classroom voluntarily logged into the zoom space with their own laptops so they could assist online attendees when the sound quality was too poor for them to understand what was being shared. These GTAs also served as mouthpieces for those online, literally voicing the comments that online participants posted in the Chat function. These simple acts also seemed to empower those who joined the practicum via Zoom. In this practicum session and the subsequent ones, those on Zoom begin to navigate away from the Chat function, preferring instead to turn on their microphones and boldly engage in self-selection as the next speaker. Too, Faculty and second-year GTA attendance has continued to increase.


What this demonstrates to us is that this composition practicum has ecological resilience. It has the potential to be sustained, not by us, but by the participants. Sidney Dobrin and Christian Weisser (2002a) attribute such sustainability to evolution. They offer a particularly insightful comparison: “as genetic evolution allows for organisms to develop new genotypes or characteristics over time in response to environmental conditions and express them phenotypically, so too do users of discourse react to environments and maintain the potential to alter ideologies” (p. 576). Indeed, the participants in our redesigned composition practicum are altering ideologies within the department. Although the fortuitous timing of stepping into our new roles at the beginning of the pandemic allowed us to initiate much needed change regarding the composition practicum, the practicum continues to evolve as the participants listen and learn from each other.


We find ourselves reaffirming Dobrin’s (2005) observation about the composition practicum from almost 20 years ago: “The cultural capital of composition studies is maintained and immortalized by way of the practicum” (p.4). Outgrowths of our composition practicum include a new Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of College Composition, awarded to all GTAs upon completion of their graduate degree, and a resurrection of the departmental Research Forum that highlights faculty and GTA scholarship. Faculty in other program areas are now electing to teach composition, “noncomposition specialists for whom the practicum is the sole defining mechanism for them” (Dobrin, 2005, p. 21).


It is still too early to tell if the two program areas within our department that discontinued ENG 703 in their program requirements will revisit this particular issue. We realize that recognizing the importance of the composition practicum within the department does not necessarily translate into awarding credit for the practicum (see Blackmon & Rose, 2005). However, we contend that it is a first step. The composition practicum is not an isolated space/place; it is a symbiotic system, an ecosystem, within a local department.


Discourse communities may operate a little like ecosystems. An ecosystem is a convenient ecological space defined by certain characteristics that set it off from abutting systems. But shift your perspective slightly and the borders of the original ecosystem break down, because ecosystems inevitably interact with systems abutting them….we need to remember that discourse communities…are locally constituted (Porter, 1992, p. 86).