Works in Progress
Writing and Composing: A Classical Approach for a Contemporary
Age. 800pp Manuscript. A rhetoric textbook for first-year writing
courses. Also,
developing or have completed a series of multimedia ancillaries for
an integrated system for teaching thinking and writing. The multimedia
ancillaries
include:
· World Wide Web Page-http://www.bsu.edu/classes/ranieri/eng103
· "An Electronic Companion for Composing and Writing: A
Classical Approach for a Contemporary Age." "Process-oriented"
companion for textbook, featuring an interactive analysis of the composing
of the Declaration of Independence and a portfolio workspace for students'
own writing.
· Collection of video sequences and animations illustrating key
processes and concepts from the textbook. Taken from nine years of video
when this course was taught as part of the Indiana Partnership for Statewide
Education.
Modeling Long-Term Faculty Development: Sustaining
Learning and Retention Efforts. (Tentative title)
Article stemming from our successes with the project of the same name
funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education. The jointly written article
would be directed toward a journal that features the Scholarship of
Teaching (e.g., The Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, The Journal
of General Education).
Freshman Connections: A Case Study on Building a University-Wide
Living/Learning Community. (Tentative title)
Ball State's Freshman Connections program is now in its seventh year.
Our success (e.g., our role in raising the second-year retention rate
from 68.3% to 80.1%) in building a program meant for all first-year
students will provide other institutions with guidance both in what
to imitate and in what to avoid. Seven years of documents are now being
organized even as we plan a comprehensive assessment project.
Dancing the Sacred Dance.
Collection of essays in the planning stage on the state of the humanities
and the current human condition, to be used initially with Honors program
courses. I hope to include passages written by former and current honors
students.