Welcome to Joyce Johnston's Home Page
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· My twenty-two years of teaching English at GMU have included courses linked with Public Affairs/Government and with Psychology, English 101 and 251, and most notably all four types of English 302--Humanities, Social Sciences, Business and Natural Sciences/Technology. Although much of my graduate work was in Medieval literature, my current areas of specialization reflect my experience at Mason: computer assisted instruction and intellectual property, especially copyright and plagiarism in electronic environments.
For Fall 2008, I am teaching two sections of English 302 (Advanced Composition) for the humanities. Both Section H26 and Section H27 are hybrid sections; that is, they meet in the same classroom at the same time on alternate weeks.
Students use Blackboard CE 6.0 as their course
software; after a university pilot in Spring 2008, it has now become university-wide for Fall 2008. The course
description and syllabus, which appear on this site,
can also be found there. All assignments are submitted and graded work
returned online, which further provides both a synchronous chat room
for virtual office
hours and an asynchronous chat for students to participate in writing
and
editing groups.
Participation in class discussions and presentations is vital to understanding writing concepts not available on the Web. Students who regularly miss classes or who do not participate when present usually struggle much more, receive lower grades and learn less from the course than those who actively attend. Also, electronic formats are explored at some length throughout the course.
Both sections will involve considerable reading on the Web while researching and preparing an analysis and then application materials for professional opportunities. Since academic disciplines stress primary research and sophisticated researched writing, both sections will include an assignment designed to discover all possible research support offered within the GMU community.
For more information about my classes for Fall 2008, please see the following links:
- For English 302-H26, consult the Course Description and Grading Scale as well as the Syllabus
- For English 302-H27, consult the Course Description and Grading Scale and the Syllabus
Named to Who’s Who Among
America’s Teachers, 2003-2007, I am also a National Board Certified
Teacher in Adolescence and Young Adulthood English Language Arts since 2001.
For the past two summers, I have participated in a grant obtained
by Shelley Reid, GMU's Director of Composition ,
· An opportunity to present GMU's composition program to college educators nationwide was the keynote of the 2004-2005 academic year. Held in sunny Santa Barbara, CA, in February, "Writing Research in the Making" brought together writing instructors across the country to share programs, techniques and tips. Presentations on using technology to enable research went well at the Virginia Association of Teachers of English and Virginia Society for Technology in Education annual conferences. Summer brought service on the host committee for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' annual meeting. Fall 2005 included a return to VATE and two presentations at the Virginia Educational Technology Leadership Conference held in Roanoke in December, as well as mentoring 5-7 candidates for National Board certification in Manassas City Public Schools.
A highlight of the summer of 2004 was an opportunity to train teachers from American schools abroad and also from international schools in current technologies at the Jefferson Overseas Technology Institute, sponsored by the State Department. In the spring, I had shared a version of this training at the annual VSTE conference along with a session on preparing for online instruction that I later repeated as part of GMU's Faculty Showcase series.
Last fall, I spoke at the annual conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as well as the Prince George's County annual Powering up with Technology conference. At the NBPTS conference, I joined two others to conduct a workshop on creating a National Board presence in underfunded districts. That summer, I trained the in-school technologists for Fairfax County Public Schools on current issues in electronic intellectual property.
During the Spring 2003 semester, I gave a workshop, "Winning the Copyright Wars," for the Virginia Society for Technology in Education at its annual conference. Shortly thereafter, I joined three faculty members at Pace College to conduct a session entitled "Writing in the Margins: Diversity and Inclusion in the Composition Classroom" at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in New York. I was also a keynote speaker at the Region II National Board Conference in Virginia in early February. In the summer of 2002, I participated in intellectual property training for Loudoun County librarians and Arlington County Faculty and staff, as well as teachers in the City of Manassas. November brought papers given in Prince George's County, MD, and at the annual conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in San Diego. In the last two years, I have had the opportunity to train teachers in Arlington County, Hanover County, Manassas and at the state-wide Virginia Society for Technology in Education conference. In February 2001, I presented at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Conference in Hershey, PA.
Areas of special interest to me include intellectual property, copyright, plagiarism and fair use, especially as they are affected by such copyright-busting innovations as Napster and its successors (such as AudioGalaxy, KaZaA and Morpheus) and DivX. With collaborators at Ohio State and Penn State University, I was also part of a panel at the Conference on College Communication and Composition in Denver in March 2001. In October, I was part of another panel at the Virginia Association of English Teachers annual conference in Virginia Beach.
In 2000, I had a paper accepted into ERIC, the national education database sponsored by Syracuse University. "Weaving Your Syllaweb" was originally presented at an online conference, Teaching in the Community Colleges, in 1997. "Value Added: A Communications Assignment that Teaches Ethics" came out in the December issue of Business Communication Quarterly. After presenting at the conferences for the Virginia Society for Technology in Education and the Association for Business Communications last spring, I conducted workshops for the Northern Virginia Technology Consortium and the City of Manassas last fall. I also became a National Board Certified Teacher in the area of Adolescent and Young Adult English Language Arts.
To learn more about the English Department or George Mason, or to search the Internet, see