Author: Michelle LaFrance

From Writing “Intensive” to Writing “Integrated”: Keeping Student Writing at the Center of Your Class

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date August 28, 2014

By Michelle LaFrance

In WI courses, achieving a balance between crucial content, key learning goals, and explicit writing instruction is never an easy task. Because this balance is so delicate, “traditional” classes have often posed writing assignments as supplemental to the other work of the course—a paper or project completed outside class.

To kick off our new program blog, The Writing Campus, I wanted to ask faculty who teach WI courses to think about the ways they manage this important balance: What do you do to overcome this divide between simply assigning writing and the need to teach writing?

Tags College Composition, higher education, pedagogy, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing education, Writing in the Disciplines, writing pedagogy

Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing

A 21st-C Attendance Policy

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date July 15, 2014

Evaluating Writing Graduate Students Teaching Writing

Assessing Student Writing across the Curriculum: A literature review of assignment and rubric design for writing-intensive courses

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date May 23, 2014

By Dr. Steven J. Corbett

What do we know about assessing student writing across the disciplines? In terms of designing effective writing assignments and scoring guides—from the cross-curricular research and practice of teacher-scholars across the country—we know quite a bit. And we are learning more every day . . .

Tags Rubrics, Writing-Intensive

Evaluating Writing Reviews Teaching Writing

New Bibliography on Teaching Grammar-In-Context

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date April 21, 2014

Evaluating Writing Faculty Writing Graduate Students Teaching Writing

Rethinking the Research Paper

Post author By Michelle LaFrance
Post date April 21, 2014

By Michelle LaFrance

Rebecca Schuman whipped up an educational furor in December of 2013, writing on Slate.com: “We need to admit that the required-course college essay is a failure.” Schuman’s rationale: “Students Hate Writing Papers. Professors Hate Grading Papers.” Since Schuman’s post went viral, any number of online responses have cropped up—defending the typical college essay, suggesting new approaches to this central writing activity, and critiquing the sorts of characterizations of education that arise from “click bait” traffic on sites like Salon.com. But Schuman’s post echoes with a lively, ongoing conversation in the field of Writing Studies. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to question the traditional research-based essay in college courses.