Exploration of an Abstract

Proposal Guidelines
Each proposal will be a 300-400 word abstract that clearly states the focus and purpose of the essay and briefly outlines the working structure of the piece. Furthermore, abstracts should indicate whether or not and how student voices and/or visuals will be included.

Discussion Points in our Abstract
Here are the moves I think we gotta make in this piece:

1) Situate WHO we are as teachers and students

2) Explain WHY we chose to conduct this type of research assignment
a) Why did we collaborate
b) Why did we choose a blog
c) Why did we model process writing as opposed to other approaches

3) Reveal WHAT questions we hoped to address through our research

4) Explore the implications of our research as it relates to the ways students can make sense and make use of our experiences with collaborative/mulitmodal process writing.

Our Abstract
This is an ugly draft. But it's a starting point.

We are doctoral candidates who have over six years' experience as first-year writing teachers. As teachers, we see how first-year writing students grow frustrated with the conventions of standard academic discourse—much in the same manner we felt the frustrations of learning new terminology, understanding the expectations and benefits, and navigating the terrain of doctoral-level discourse. As we attempted to cross the border from the familiar academic setting of our past into the unfamiliar setting of doctoral coursework, we felt a stronger connection to our first-year writer students. Because our pedagogies include collaborative and multimodal composing--and because our students already engage in networked writing--we decided to collaborate on a research project via a blog to see if this approach to composing facilitated our ways of negotiating space within academia--and if this negotiation could be transferable to our first-year writing students. In addition, we modeled the writing process our first-year writing students are likely to use as they compose academic texts. The data provided in this chapter represents this process, including our voices as students and as teacher-scholars (will we provided snapshots of the blog?)Ultimately, our findings suggest first-year writing students can use a blog in ways that allow them to explore:
1. Benefits of collaborative writing
2. WHY would you write collaboratively - connect to workforce
3. What can come out of writing collaboratively
4. How do you write collaboratively.
5. Benefits of using technology when writing collaboratively