This Pressbook presents instructors with “recipes” they can use to design, implement, and assess public-facing, multimodal projects in the writing classroom. This book was a collaboration by writing instructors and librarians who have drawn on their work teaching and supporting composition and creative writing classes. Across the chapters we continually reflect on questions about the ethics of open publication, the challenges and opportunities for guiding students through working in public, and ways to build student agency over their work.
In comparing this collection of teaching materials, reflections, and narratives to a cookbook, there are a number of associations we hope to signal. First and foremost, cooking is something that brings people together, nourishes, and promises abundance. Cooking together, we make slightly more than we might need so everyone can take something home. Cookbooks offer more meals than you could possibly cook in one afternoon and involve more ingredients than any one person likely has in their pantry. We envisioned this as a resource you could flip through and find something that can be the basis for your own improvisation.
Additionally, being a list of ingredients, recipes themselves are not protected by copyright law and may be shared freely. This is the reason there are often long narratives prefaces to online recipes — the narrative itself is protected by copyright law. Like many of the assignments, activities, and materials featured in our classrooms and libraries, we gave this book a CC-BY license to promote sharing, remixing, and experimentation.
Chapter Breakdown:
Chapter one: Matthew Hitchman reflects on utilizing Pressbooks in the community engaged composition classroom.
