 You're doing well to be here. I know I have the conference head going on. I'm an English professor at the University of South Florida. And that's in, it's actually not in South Florida. That's another story. It's in Tampa. And I have a project that's about 11 years in the making here. So I'm excited to show it to those of you who are here. I have a few kind of overview slides just to give you a sense of it. And then I'm going to show you the resource. If you want, a lot of you have your computer. It's at writingcomments.org. So this is a very comprehensive rhetoric. So I direct the undergraduate writing program. It's a kind of standard program for a lot of universities. Probably some of you took it. You know, 1101, 1102, 101, 102, that kind of thing. It's a large program. And what I've tried to do now working with colleagues is develop a resource for that audience at this point. So the writing site we're kind of hoping will become a community. Right now in a sense it's, you know, there are resources there. But ideally it'll be a place where people come because I think the idea that a textbook is in a PDF is to me a little outdated at this point. So we wanted to be an online space and we wanted to be a creative place. The way it is right now, I'm going to show it to you. It's really a big rhetoric. But it's a core, the content that we have there right now is appropriate for composition, which in itself is a good start. But my hope is that it will be good for courses in creative addiction and poetry and technical writing. I mean, my hope is that we're going to be able to grow it. It's somewhat interactive right now in the sense that, you know, there's the ability to talk back and have dialogue and chat and sort of some features that are a little bit interactive there. But we hope to grow that even a little bit more. We wanted to be very comprehensive and right now it's basically the content that I wrote a while ago. But the idea is that it's going to be updated with video. We have some video in the site that's been developed. Podcasts, video cats, interactive kinds of quizzes, that kind of thing. But also it's kind of nice to have a resource. Every institution has its own resource. At my school it's fyc.usf.edu. So that's kind of common, but it's kind of nice to... I think one of the things that these new tools are doing is to kind of break down the barriers that typically have defined equity. General Grapp talked about the problem in the humanities being professors on talk with one another. There's kind of an isolation, close to classroom door. Well, we're feeling like writing commons in a sense there's an opportunity for people at different universities to talk with one another. So I'm going to grow that a little bit. One of the things I kind of added at this particular conference is this idea of enhancing retention. Something I haven't really thought about. We definitely have a retention problem at my university, but that's one of the takeaways I'm taking from here. I never really thought that, you know, I never made that association that... I mean, I never made this sense that, oh, well, one of the things holding people back, congratulations, I can't make a textbook. Who is that, Brianna? Well, you know, sir, certainly learning and teaching are part of it. So I took these notes this morning from Cable Green. I don't really know that those are... I'm kind of curious where he gets that, but he said this morning that there are 55,000 students in the composition. At my school, we essentially have, like, a unique seat count of 5,000, but we have about between 10,000 run through our program. We have 88 teachers. We're a big program. We're probably in the top 10 in terms of size. So probably 55,000 is reasonable. So if the whole country uses writing comments, we save people, well, $5.5 million. I like that, I guess. I mean, you know, I guess that's my mom talking to me there. You know, she always said, you know, be very careful of your mom. All right. So in terms of our goals, I like the idea of peer production. I'm very interested in that. If you look at FYC.usf.edu, we peer-produced our curriculum. You know, there's an argument that you can have a standardized curriculum, but you can't. If, you know, you have the holomassian idea of a public square, where the best argument wins. So I think that, you know, it's very possible to create a space where we really provide a resource that's up to date and very good, you know, very, very high quality. I think that's definitely one of our goals. Constructing this pedagogy, you know, with my 88 teachers every year, what do they love to do? Do they want to work on writing comments? Yeah, they're pretty supportive. They're good people. But they would rather write their own stuff. And this idea of constructing this pedagogy, I think it's very important. The idea that, you know, we engage our students as learners interactively, positively. So kind of hoping that writing comments will fit into that. You know that whole thing about the wisdom of crowds and, you know, I think that you go back to teacher researcher movement and the notion that, you know, there are technicians that can be involved and they're very teaching and engaged. So, you know, I mean, hopefully we'll tap into that energy. I feel like we have done that in our writing program. If you look at FYC, it's really, really good. I don't want to jump ahead in my comments, but you develop communal agency, which is something that is very important. So, okay, I wanted to be more than just a textbook. I wanted to be interactive. I wanted to be entertaining, you know. So, we're getting into the peer review part here. Aren't you guys probably already looked at it now? All right. So, you know, in terms of some of the theories that inform us, you know, for teachers, you know, are you letting McGraw-Hill or Pearson or are you writing curriculum? So, in a way, you're kind of modeling the behavior of a writer when you're engaging in a construction of a textbook with your class and your students. Which is, that's a good guy, right? How many of you are English people? Do I have any? Okay, okay. That's good. So, we're trying to make it interactive and creative and something that's going to be... I mean, I think that idea about OER shouldn't just be free. It should be better. I'm not saying it's better, okay? But I think it has a potential to get better, do you know what I'm saying? I like that idea. So, okay. So, what's the history? I mean, there's a set of work on this for 2001. It's kind of crazy. I was in that earlier sessions on textbooks and I mean, I don't think it's necessarily correct to make the argument that professors are paid to write textbooks because we're paid to do research and theory and scholarship. And that's, you know, we're not going to get... at a research university, you're not going to get anything for writing textbooks. So, you're probably doing that on your own time. So, you want some kind of benefit from it. And I, you know, I did this book in 2001. I published in 2003. Got the Distinguished Book Award. I was very happy, 2004. But they didn't sell it. And so, I'm trying to get my own motivation. I would go to the conference and I'd say, they have all their books out. And I was like, well, where's Randy Gammons? I got one that's called Gammons Writing. You know, I said, where's Gammons Writing? But, and they'd come and they'd try to sell books to me. And they'd go, hey, Joe, you know, look at this great book. I ended up on a search. Got a new version. It's based on World's For Writers, da, da, da, da, da. It's like, where's Gammons Writing? Because what I ran into, then, they said I was ahead of my time. That was, you know, that was their comment. But anyway, it didn't work. And so, like, it didn't do anything. You know, it was behind a lock. So, like, I came out, somebody told me at lunch that I had Stockholm Syndrome, which I thought was hysterical, because I was defending the publishers in the earlier thing. Because I felt that the, you know, I felt, I think it's a misrepresentation to say faculty should be writing textbooks and then we're funding, then all these textbooks are funded by, and I don't think that publishers are bad people. I think they're lovely people. And they're very engaged in general. In trying to make a university that applies to students. I mean, they're not, like, just about the block. They're the publisher that I work with. But in any case, so, like, okay, okay. So, I got this product. It didn't do that great. But I got copyright back. And slowly I put it back up on the web. And now, now the goal is to sort of peer-review it a little bit. And to grow it a little bit. So, we're working on that. Oh, I should know what it looks like. So, this is actually kind of the third version of it. And we're still kind of playing around with it. Before when people came into the site, they would just come right to the textbook and we thought that they were overwhelmed. So, what we've done, I don't know, you know, a lot of this is what's nice about it being digital is you can change and try to make it better. But now you're going to click open text to get to it. And then about us is one of the things, in our writing program, we do these custom textbooks. And we do that for a good reason. You know, we pick up the special curriculum. And I've been a little upset though because they end up being 45 to the bookstore even though we've exported the models. We have paid 15 to 20,000 per book. And we've got the tech fee funds to pay for that. And students can download them from SharePoint or Blackboard or wherever even if we have that behind a net ID. But it's still the book's too expensive, in my opinion. So, I don't know. But anyway, one of the ways we're going to grow the book in the future is we're going to use this book and now we're going to bring in the past three years of custom textbooks, some of the best stuff after we kind of take it through a peer review. You know, I'm still trying to figure out the best model for this. And I think, I mean, I've tried to set up a very distinguished editorial board. I mean, I was really pleased to see what Howard Rungold said. Yes, it's kind of fun to do that. And I think I need the inputter of good people to make it viable, right? I mean, I'm not saying an assistant professor can get too much out of publication. But on the other hand, if we demonstrate usage and it's, at least it's peer-reviewed. You know, we're not going to have anything there. So, we're going to rub things through a staff, assistant volunteers, and some of my doctoral students and some of my colleagues that are kind of left. So, we're going to have a staff and then have an editorial board. And we're going to try to do it. Oh, in terms of what's there, I should show you that. It's a lot of stuff. It's a ridiculous amount of stuff. It's just ridiculous. You know, like in the writing process, it's got pretty much anything you would, you know, expect, here I took, you know, I was trying to deal with the menu structure and I took Elbow's idea of believing versus doubting. And it's kind of arbitrary, but I was trying to chunk it and make it look good. But, you know, there's basically everything you would expect in a, you know, everything that's in everyday writer, St. Martin's Guide, all that kind of stuff. But I kind of embedded some videos. One of the things I'm really struggled with is the coffee, really. And, you know, really, you know, because Joey would like to fit a little bit. But, on the other hand, I had that experience with Pearson. So, this was my, this was where I came down on it. I could go with Bedford. I like Bedford. They're good people. But I was so afraid that if I did that, we'd get locked behind a password. It was with Pearson forever and it just never got out there. Do you know what I mean? So, now I'm just putting out there. And, you know, I figure I'm a tenured full-progressor. You know, I need to worry too much about things like that. Do you know what I'm saying? But that's still kind of a struggle, you know, but that's kind of where I'm at on the project. I mean, you could flip through it yourself. So, that's probably the big ol' timeline. It's a big project. It's been taken forever to get to this point. But, you know, next year we'll use it in our writing program. And I suspect other places will eventually use it. Do you know what I mean? And if they do, that's great. There's a lot to talk about distribution. Frankly, you know, if my school being so big, I'm busy enough with that. But if other people want to use it, I'm happy about that. Do you know what I mean? I did keep with the non-commercial because, I mean, you know, you spend money. I mean, I took a lot. If you drill down in there, it's a big book. And I didn't want to just give it away to somebody who would suck it into some kind of, like, EPUB format and sell it on iTunes. But, you know, that said, I mean, I've been at this conference. I'm in learning. And, you know, maybe I should try to work out some kind of print-on-demand kind of feature. There you go. Yeah. And thank you for coming, because I thought there'd be nobody here. No one's coming. It's only been, like, 11 years to get here. Yeah. So it's going to use it on Southern Florida University, right? Yeah, Southern Florida University. Yeah, Southern Florida University. So what is it like? How do you think it's going to spread, just, like, for now? What are your ideas on that? Well, I have a really good, you know, I have Mike Conquest, who's president of NCTB, an editorial board. I have, you know, I'm president of the Florida Life Program Administrator. So I meet with, you know, Florida, BCF. We're all really big schools, you know. I don't need it to be very big. But I guess, forwarded my thought, I'm going to, like, you know, I kind of use this conference to try that, you know, get it ready. And so, you know, I'm always doing a lot, I'm doing a lot of those things, like, you know, you know what I mean. But we're going to push it out there. We're going to, like, do a press release. I'm going to try to, I'm going to put it on the WPA Journal of the Serve, you know, who's writing program, be sure the service is huge. It's my kind of people. So, and then, you know, I look at Google Analytics, and, you know, I've had, like, in the past year, about any kind of marketing like that, I've had 18,000 views and a lot of that spam bots. But even if, like, half of it is, and you get 9,000 viewers, it's been three minutes on average on this slide. And I'm great, but that's not bad. And I think once I push it out there, I think I might get a little bit more. Yeah, but maybe not. I mean, you know, like, coming here, you know, coming, coming, you know, just by looking at the contents, I'm not real clear what level course is this thing, which is a question. Right now, this is targeted toward composition, which is 1101, 1102, or, I don't know why, but this thing is on. The genres that we have are the ones that are in the standard, like everyday writer and that kind of thing. So, you know, you've got your, you know, you've got your standard things, you know, argument, analysis of... So it's a freshman comp. Right now it's a freshman comp. But like, you know, as I started working on this, I was like, Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you've done the freshman comp and you want to peer-produce it. Why can't it be for poetry classes or for journalism writing courses? Why can't it become, and I, you know, I was lucky to get writing commons URL because I didn't, I had Joe Montza. I had a college writing.org and I had the .com and I felt like I needed the .com to be able to work. But I mean, if people contribute and we see, I think what I have to do, and we have to work out the details, but the peer review has to be good. That has to be serious. Or it, to me, it's not going to work like this. Now, there's another project, Charlie Love, Great Guy, who's working with Parler Press on writing spaces, which is really cool and it's like the download PDF sort of thing. And they've had good success within composition, but I would like it to be something more than that. Will it become something like that? I don't know, you know what I mean? It's like an experiment, right? It's an experience. We're really not there yet. I mean, we just, you know, it's been development. It's been kind of quiet. It's taken a long time. I haven't told anybody like this. We have added a discussion for every article. Okay. So I suppose that they could go on and say, this is BS, or they could go, you know, you know, that kind of thing. And we're, in our writing program, we do, you know, a mid-semester program evaluation where you get their feedback on the textbook. So we'll be getting it then, too. But right now, I don't really get it. I sometimes I get some nice emails, you know. So like, it's really interesting, like, but I kind of, you're talking the same tension that I, I kind of get the sense, like, Wikipedia, for instance, having the early days, like, you know, all these layers of peer review, whatever. Right. And eventually, the Wikipedia model, for them, being what they ended up doing. The wisdom of the chaperones. Exactly. We're just like, anyone can contribute, and there's like, kind of, it's not like that. It's not like that at all. Well, they do have editors who can take control of things and guide things. But I mean, any one of us with a laptop could log in and change, essentially, any Wikipedia agent. You know, you know, there's people who are responsible for pages, but it's true. Exactly. But like, we can still change it even though, like, you're reverted. So, I'm just kind of curious, so especially when this is supposed to be, like, academic output, you know. Well, that's why I didn't get the Wikipedia model. Like, that's why I'm doing the peer review model. Okay. I mean, I don't think it'll have legs at all, I mean, the loser of that particular development. But it's a different kind of project. It is a different kind of project. It's a different kind of project. And I think if I did that, you know, because this is written in Jumla, and you could, you could edit on every page and people could go in and they could, you know. But, I think it, I think if I'm really going to be able to be successful to grow it, you know, I, yeah. So, I was just like, thanks for that question. Yeah, we just can't believe you're like a logic. Like, who are the people who you think would care the most? Like, all this is a peer review, this isn't like legitimate. Oh, well, I'm hoping that assistant professors and doctoral students will be my chief authors and probably be engaged in the peer review. So, you know, doctoral students are trying to work on a digital footprint. There's really no mystery about whether or not social media is important to a doctoral student. And, so, you know, I need to work with, with other writing program administrators and get their doctoral students involved and assistant professors and that kind of thing. I mean, you know, this is like hubby, you know, I'm hoping it'll work. It's kind of like I'll put it out there and we'll see. Well, it's going to be University for sure. Well, yeah, and that's going to be big for us next year. I think that's going to be really big. And we have partnered with Bedford and they've done a good job customizing the books. We have so much content, but now I have to make sure it goes to a review or I can't, you know, I lose credibility. And I really, I really, really want to do that. So, if any of you are interested and you can shoot me an email, joemoxlate.gov. And I will, I mean, I'd like to have some involvement in that thing. But, you know, I was excited when Casey Green was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was excited by that. You know, did you notice that way? You didn't notice it, but I did. So, you spoke about peer review of the actual student writings, but, and maybe I just missed it, but I wanted to know what are your plans on evaluating the actual tool. So, the actual, is it really for, does it really foster creativity? So, I think it's really for, does it really foster creativity? Does it really help? Oh, well, there's a, there's a whole community, there's a whole community tab. And it's, I don't know how that it's loaded here. We're, we're just making a shift from, we had a different version where, but we have, we have a blog engine and then we have this job social, which is like, it looks exactly like Facebook and they can create their own blog sites, teachers can create their blog sites and their class sites and discussion forums. I, I don't have a great server, in case that happens, that could be a problem, but it's there. And, I don't know, you know, we've been arguing about whether or not that should be there or not. You know, though, you know, we get different advice about whether or not it should be there. But we have this community tab and you click it and you can log on, create your own blog, your own webpage and, I guess, I didn't ask. And that's part of making something different. Like, I don't think students really want a PDF like they used to. I guess what I was asking more is, when the new instructional design tools, especially technological tools are introduced, there is usually some kind of new or old adapted way to evaluate them, so that was my question, because how are you evaluating your tools of the, and, I don't have any more time, by the way, so what are your plans on evaluating the actual platform, the actual website, how, if it is helpful. Are we just going to be, oh, the students gave positive comments. It's wonderful. Are we going to see if their writing improved compared to somebody else? Oh, well, I actually, I'm actually building a rubric portfolio tool in another project that does that. This doesn't do that. And I would like, you know, ultimately, that's proprietary and I don't have USF tech fee funds, so I can't really use it there, but we aren't developing such tools, but I would sort of like to develop that in a more open way, but right now, we are building a tool like that, but that's something different. This is just, at this point, we're just trying to make a really incredible resource for students. You know, I hadn't seen it since I came here. I had no idea about it. I know, but I think they make you give away, I think they make you give away that I was commercial. And still, it would be very difficult because then somebody goes and I, you know, and I don't think it's right. I think it's mistaken, you know what I mean? I think both. It's like ETB, so I try to piece these literations. You know, students shouldn't lock it behind the door. You should be free. You should be out there and open. Yes. Thank you. All is done.