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Since we are still feeling inspired by the Stearns Center’s fantastic conference and its theme of “Small Changes, Big Impact,” we thought that we’d share a few more ways to support reading in the writing classroom. This week, however, we are offering a more complete resource with a series of useful reading strategies that we can teach to our students. Continue reading
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In our last post, we highlighted the need for faculty to think more intentionally about the ways in which they support student reading, particularly in college writing courses. This might sound like it requires large-scale changes in teaching, but it doesn’t have to: we can start small. In fact, the theme of this year’s Innovations in Teaching and Learning (ITL) Conference should help us realize that: “Small Changes, Big Impact.” With that theme in mind and the conference just two days away(!), we thought that we would share a small change that can help us better support our students’ engagement with reading. Continue reading
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As writing instructors, we talk a lot about writing and how to teach writing. The fact is that WAC programs emphasize the value of teaching writing for both the learning and professionalization of our students. But this emphasis can often overshadow the value of reading, much to our and our students’ detriments. Continue reading
While writing specialists broadly understand that writing helps students learn, we also advocate for writing assignments that prompt students to think rhetorically: how writers use texts to convey meaning appropriate to an audience in a given context. As a part of this conversation, writing specialists talk about the importance of audience, but research in writing studies, including here at Mason, reveals that college writing assignments do not commonly address an audience beyond the instructor, who typically is addressed as an evaluator. Continue reading
It recently occurred to us that, while we have been sharing resources about designing assignments this semester, we haven’t actually shared any samples of designs. These resources are helpful when considering how to design our assignments, but they don’t show us how to communicate that assignment through a prompt sheet. So, they compel us to ask: what does a good assignment sheet actually look like? Continue reading
A big challenge for faculty is finding time to write; especially during a busy semester, we can easily find a distraction that will slow down progress on any number of projects that we have just started, gained some momentum on, or almost finished. To (re)claim time, faculty on Mason’s campus meet every Friday morning to write. Our Friday faculty write-ins are popular with attendees who report a number of benefits, including progress on projects. Continue reading
This semester, WAC Mason has been thinking about and studying the ways in which faculty design writing assignments. While it seems common for instructors to think about the content of writing assignments, we sometimes forget to talk about the process of writing assignments: how do we develop them? What should we consider as we develop them? Continue reading
As many instructors know, it can be difficult to know how well-developed a writing assignment is, how clearly the prompt is written, and how students will respond to the project, especially when the assignment is brand new. Soliciting feedback from colleagues, writing specialists, or students can be an effective method of developing prompts, but instructors aren’t always able to take advantage of that opportunity. Continue reading
Developing good writing assignments is a complicated task, one not simplified by the multiple ways in which students sometimes interpret them. Instructors often find themselves asking: Are my instructions clear? Do they align with the course’s learning objectives? And perhaps most important, will my students find this project engaging? Michelle Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner can’t provide the answers to all of these questions, but their research is helping us to understand what a “meaningful” writing assignment might be for students. Continue reading
