Dr Lisa Emerson - Tertiary Teaching Excellence Teaching Profile

School of English & Media Studies, Massey University

Lisa has been engaged in tertiary education for 19 years and has an exceptional track record of teaching both within her own discipline and in communications to science and technology students. She opens her portfolio by stating, “It is my great privilege and joy to be a teacher of writers”. Lisa focuses her teaching philosophy on each student as an individual, developing learning communities for all classes, whether faceto- face or extramural, “where each student can share their work in a safe, dynamic environment”. The variety and breadth of teaching and assessment Lisa uses are impressive, with her commitment evident in all she does. Many people have benefited from Lisa’s “Interactive Grammar!” e-learning tool and the open website for creative writers called “The Writery” which won the “People’s Choice” web award in 2004: just one of the many prestigious awards and grants Lisa has received during her career. Colleagues and peers comment on Lisa’s sustained leadership and professionalism, “Her efforts and successes are outstanding”. Students recognise a teacher of excellence, “This paper was perfect … Lisa Emerson deserves accolades!”

Some things you never forget. One of those moments in my life was, as a first year student, receiving the mark for my first essay: a C. The marker had written “You need to work on your writing skills. Your writing is poor – too descriptive, more analysis needed”. I was totally bewildered: my writing was poor? – but hadn’t I received prizes for English at school? For a year, I tried to find an answer. No-one could tell me what was wrong with my writing (except in terms I didn’t understand) or how to put it right. Academic writing, it seemed, was a mystery, a sort of holy of holies – something that couldn’t be revealed but only discovered. That year of bewilderment set the path for my career as a teacher of writing. Over my 19 years as a writing teacher, I have recognised that same look of bewilderment on the faces of many students, ranging from struggling first years to ambitious PhD students. For me, teaching writing means understanding that sense of confusion, unravelling the mystery for my students, sitting alongside them as a cipher, a code-breaker, and a guide.

Paying attention

The first step is paying attention. I have this firm belief that we can all fly higher than we think we can – and all it takes is one teacher to pay enough attention and to support us on the journey. Paying attention means that when an uncomfortable third year student sits in my office mumbling “I’ve never been able to write”, I know how to ask the right questions that will unlock his anxieties. Paying attention means that I notice the tears in the eyes of the PhD student who says “I’ve always been a good writer – why can’t I do this?” and I spend time telling horror-PhD-writing stories to make her laugh before we get down to work.

Availability

Closely linked with paying attention is being available. You can put in the best learning systems in the world, but if your students don’t think you care about them, or aren’t interested in their achievements, then they will not achieve to their full potential, and their confidence and capability will be limited. By being available – by email, by phone, in an office, by being a constant presence on a website – and being interested, I say to my students “in this big university, you matter”.

Asking questions

Another aspect of paying attention is that I research my own practice. I am very fortunate that my research field and teaching overlap exactly, but even if they didn’t, I would want to research my students’ understanding. For example, when a problem with using secondary sources emerged in a class, I conducted an informal research project to investigate whether my students had an accurate understanding of how to balance their own voice with that of others in their writing. The data showed me that they didn’t: so I included a module on using secondary sources effectively in my class. I also looked critically at my assignments and rewrote the assessment to include this skills set. The result was that we had no further problems with using secondary sources – and my students gained understanding and skills that would be relevant to all their work in the University.

Student autonomy

Student autonomy is a core value in my classroom. Because my students are individuals, each one learns in different ways and with different learning preferences. Part of my role as a teacher is to present material in a variety of ways to meet the needs of each student – and to allow students choice in how they access the learning material. So, for example, when I am teaching punctuation and grammar, I provide a range of opportunities for students to access learning:

• small group workshops (online and/or face-to face)
• study guide material including quiz questions
• sample sheets, with diagnostic marking and discussion with a tutor
• self-directed online tutorials

Students are free to choose which learning opportunities will best suit their needs and learning styles.

Students before technology

I use web-based teaching tools in all my classrooms because I believe they have the capability to give students control over the learning experience. But I start with my students. What do they need? How can I best meet those needs? Then I look at the technology. If the tool I need does not exist in a form that satisfies the needs of my students, I find a way to design it. The e-learning strategies I design give students learning opportunities they couldn’t achieve in any other way: more access to me as

their teacher, the opportunity to be part of a community of learners, and custom-designed tools which allow them to develop mastery of specific skills through an individualised learning path.

Developing communities of writers

Writers grow in a writing community: so I design my course websites to develop a fun, nurturing community. Features of the websites which develop the social side of the community include:

•  a Writer’s Café, where students can discuss anything from the joys and trials of study to the best use of punctuation in a particular line of poetry.
• a private messaging system, so students can develop friendships.
• “just for fun” competitions, where students write 50-word stories or humorous villanelles and rate each other’s work

I am an active part of this community. I contribute to the sites every day by answering queries, posing problems, writing reviews, and encouraging my fellow writers.

Evaluation

I engage in multiple ways of assessing my teaching. I use formal and informal forms of student feedback, and communicate regularly with stakeholders (e.g. employers, degree management committees). My tutoring team meet with me once a week during semester to assess our teaching strategies, and I write a learning journal as a form of self-review. When I design a new learning tool, I invite both peer and student review, and engage in research driven empirical assessment.  I value positive formal and informal evaluations since they confirm the value and effectiveness of my teaching from a student perspective. But I value negative feedback even more because it shows me a way towards revision and excellence. Engaging in ongoing, thoughtful evaluation of my teaching, using multiple methods based on sound research strategies, is an integral part both of honouring my students as individuals and of my commitment to teaching excellence.

Adding something extra

My writing courses are designed to have an impact on students’ lives: their careers, their confidence, their development as writers. But I also want to support them beyond the classroom. To this end, I have written five handbooks for students, The Writing Guidelines series, and I run an open online community of writers. I have edited two books of students’ work, Hot Ink 1 and 2, published by Steele Roberts. Adding something extra makes such a difference to students; it helps to support them as life long learners, and to integrate the new skills they’ve learned into their lives. I will always continue to look for new ways to add this extra ingredient to the student experience because – as a bottom line – I want to make a difference.

Being a pioneer

I’m passionate about teaching students to write at advanced levels, but I’m just as passionate about promoting the teaching of writing in New Zealand tertiary institutions. I was one of the initiators of the Tertiary Writing Network, an organisation of tertiary writing teachers in New Zealand, and I give workshops at various tertiary institutions on writing and related topics, for both students and staff. At the same time, I represent a New Zealand perspective on teaching writing in an international arena, and have won recognition for my work in this area.

Where to now?

It is my great joy and privilege to be a teacher of writers. I know I will never tire of this work, because the role of the university writing teacher is so varied. Students I work with have ambitions to be (amongst other things) surgeons, poets, agricultural consultant, sports therapists, research physicists, teachers and financial advisors. They want to write farm reports, lyrics, medical reports, academic papers, short stories, business plans, PhD theses, and life stories for their grandchildren. Some have had a burning ambition to be a writer since childhood; some simply see that they need to learn a professional skill; others fear writing, are sure it is a skill they cannot learn. How could I be anything but fascinated in a role so rich and varied? As I look back on my career I could tell so many stories of student change and growth. I have guided an elderly war veteran writing the stories of being a bomber pilot during the Second World War. I have sat with a young science student who was convinced his struggles with ADHD meant he could not write anything as sophisticated as a scientific article, and heard his astonished whisper “I am a writer!” My students write to me about the changes in their lives, about books and poems published, about professional successes. There is no better job than this.

Peer and Student Comments

I hope that one day I will be able to empower a student, just as you have empowered me, to take risks within a subject that I was uncomfortable and unfamiliar with….In the future, I hope that I will teach with the same passion, compassion, patience [and] flexibility.

 Student letter, 2007

Lisa Emerson has been an inspiration to many lecturers. Her work is widely known and widely quoted and her textbooks on teaching writing are the cornerstones for many writing courses, nationwide.

 Susan O’Rourke, AUT

 Dr Emerson gave me the confidence and tools not only to be a good tutor but a good writer. She combined [being] a good teacher with the compassion of a friend.

 Student evaluation, 2007

Lisa quietly demonstrated how both novice and experienced teachers could take initiatives to integrate writing in subject-intensive courses… her tact, capacity to listen, and enthusiasm for composition studies was infectious and made us all better teachers.

 Martha Vicinus, Director, Sweetland Writing Center

 Dr Emerson’s tenure as a staff member at Massey has been continually characterised by hercommitment to improving both her own teaching and the teaching processes of others within theinstitution. In this endeavour, her efforts and successes are outstanding.

 Dr Warwick Slinn, Massey University

 Of this enormous class of disparate people, she managed to create a family.

 Fiona Dalzell, Student