On October 29th, 2008 we met with the supervisors of the Facilities staff to talk about the UR Touchdown project. The UR Touchdown project is the staff writing program at the University of Richmond started by the department to help employees strive for higher goals. These goals include acquiring a General Education Degree (G.E.D), nursing assistant certificates and taking advantage of the free class policy available to staff and faculty member who work at the University of Richmond.
The role of the University of Richmond Composition Theory and Pedagogy Fall Class of 2008 will be to help the program take flight by assisting the members of the faculty with their writing skills. We first started off with the Wiki website will be used as a drawing board for ideas and documents posted. And will hopefully transition to a real website where they will be able to easily assess and navigate the materials properly.
Transcript of Meeting:
Question ONE: How well known is Touchdown?
Answer: Very well known, after we introduced the program we met with each employee individually and asked then what they each wanted out of the program and what they thought about it.
Question TWO: What is Touchdown?
Answer TWO: It started to give employees the opportunity to expand on what they really want in life. Some want to go back to school and get their GED and nursing assistant certificates. Some just want to get something pleasurable out of it, learning wise. There are a lot of avid readers on our staff; they’re very excited about the program.
Question THREE: When is writing a significant issue?
Answer THREE: right now the employees write work order forms, emails, performance review, disciplinary forms, log books and accident reports. There is no major writing yet because most of the staff are now getting familiarized with computers. We teach them how to do basic things with them such as use an email account.
Question FOUR: What were employees interested in?
Answer FOUR: Getting their GEDs and Nursing assistant certificates.
After this meeting I was very concerned for several reasons: 1) Most of the staff are not familiar enough with computers to feel comfortable accessing the wiki we created; a hard copy of the site should be prepared as a back up. The site needs to be something that they want to read and not too complicated. It needs to feel like it’s really for them.
2) This project is a little too focused on us, writing articles for the collegian about it etc. What ever we decide to do we need to make sure that it is really about the staff members and not us. I like the idea of having an employee writer of the week and questions of their fellow workers.
3) Another thing that concerns me is the homework help page, that sounds like a good idea and I can see why and I don’t want to sound negative but something about it rubs me the wrong way. I can see how that may be an insult. I don’t know, maybe it’s not best to bring people’s
children into this.
The role of the University of Richmond Composition Theory and Pedagogy Fall Class of 2008 will be to help the program take flight by assisting the members of the faculty with their writing skills. We first started off with the Wiki website will be used as a drawing board for ideas and documents posted. And will hopefully transition to a real website where they will be able to easily assess and navigate the materials properly.
Transcript of Meeting:
Question ONE: How well known is Touchdown?
Answer: Very well known, after we introduced the program we met with each employee individually and asked then what they each wanted out of the program and what they thought about it.
Question TWO: What is Touchdown?
Answer TWO: It started to give employees the opportunity to expand on what they really want in life. Some want to go back to school and get their GED and nursing assistant certificates. Some just want to get something pleasurable out of it, learning wise. There are a lot of avid readers on our staff; they’re very excited about the program.
Question THREE: When is writing a significant issue?
Answer THREE: right now the employees write work order forms, emails, performance review, disciplinary forms, log books and accident reports. There is no major writing yet because most of the staff are now getting familiarized with computers. We teach them how to do basic things with them such as use an email account.
Question FOUR: What were employees interested in?
Answer FOUR: Getting their GEDs and Nursing assistant certificates.
After this meeting I was very concerned for several reasons: 1) Most of the staff are not familiar enough with computers to feel comfortable accessing the wiki we created; a hard copy of the site should be prepared as a back up. The site needs to be something that they want to read and not too complicated. It needs to feel like it’s really for them.
2) This project is a little too focused on us, writing articles for the collegian about it etc. What ever we decide to do we need to make sure that it is really about the staff members and not us. I like the idea of having an employee writer of the week and questions of their fellow workers.
3) Another thing that concerns me is the homework help page, that sounds like a good idea and I can see why and I don’t want to sound negative but something about it rubs me the wrong way. I can see how that may be an insult. I don’t know, maybe it’s not best to bring people’s
children into this.
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