Category: Evaluating Writing

Categories
Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing

Mini and Mighty: How the One-Minute Paper can Transform Your Teaching

sura index image

By: Tom Sura

Tom Sura is an assistant professor of English and the undergraduate writing coordinator at West Virginia University. Tom would love to know if you use one-minute papers in your courses and what discoveries they have led to. You can find him several ways: @tom_sura on Twitter, thomas.sura@mail.wvu.edu on email, and tomsura.tumblr.com online.

One of the most powerful tools in a teacher’s toolkit—regardless of the discipline—measures just three inches by five inches. That’s right. The standard-issue index card has a remarkable power for increasing student engagement, assessing pedagogy, and providing evidence of exceptional teaching.

Continue reading “Mini and Mighty: How the One-Minute Paper can Transform Your Teaching”
Categories
Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing

Portfolios in Writing Classes: Instructor Goals v. Program Assessment

alabaster_portfolio_1

Editor’s Note:

Writing Portfolio (n.) : Since the mid-1980’s, portfolios—collections of student writing that have been workshopped and revised during a term or over series of terms—have become a fixture in writing classes and programs across the US. These tools are useful for program assessment, but they may have a number of positive pedagogical effects as well, such as increasing students’ attention to the process of effective writing, attuning students to the importance of feedback and audience awareness, allowing students’ ideas (and so work) to mature over time, and presenting opportunities for metacognitive reflection.

For those interested, the following websites offer more information about the use of portfolios in support of undergraduate writing:

Washington State University, Junior Writing Portfolio

University of Massachusetts-Boston, Writing Proficiency Exam and Portfolio

University of Washington-Bothell, IAS Degree Portfolio

– Dr. Michelle LaFrance, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum
  Editor, The Writing Campus

Portfolios in the Classroom: A Reflection

By: Cat Mahaffey

Cat is the Associate Director of First-Year Writing in the University Writing Program at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.  She teaches various levels of Writing and Inquiry in Academic Contexts.  She is an avid blogger.  Visit her teaching blog at catmahaffey.wordpress.com, follow her on Twitter @CatMahaffey, or email her at chmahaff@uncc.edu.

Continue reading “Portfolios in Writing Classes: Instructor Goals v. Program Assessment”
Categories
Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing

“Teaching in Thin Air” – by Susan Schorn

Everest_kalapatthar_crop

Susan Schorn, writing as a guest on author John Warner’s blog Just Visiting, has written a compelling post on one of the many issues facing writing instruction in the age of the constant budget crisis. In “Teaching in Thin Air,” Susan illustrates the direct link between higher class caps in writing classes and student drop-out rates, negative evaluations, and teacher burnout. To diffuse a teacher’s attention in a writing classroom, she points out, is to guarantee minimal writing instruction for each student.

“Though I’ve never climbed Everest, I’ve spent considerable time in academia’s version of the death zone: the super-sized writing classroom. I’ve taught writing-intensive courses in “overflow” sections with 26 students or more; I’ve worked with instructors who regularly taught sections of 32, 40, or even 60 students. Of course, “teach” is probably the wrong verb—any instructor who has helmed one of these mega-classes knows it’s virtually impossible to teach the students much about writing. There simply isn’t enough instructional oxygen to sustain learning.”

“Teaching in Thin Air” –  by Susan Schorn 

Categories
Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing

Responding to Student Writing/Writers

Teaching and Learning in Higher Ed. highlights some of the best practices from Nancy Sommers’ new book, Responding to Student Writers. One of the most helpful insights is the ability to recognize that our comments to students may be contradictory, misleading, or vague, and that the real purpose of offering feedback to students is to “teach one lesson at a time.”

“We should ‘ask ourselves: What single lesson do I want to convey to students through comments? And how will I teach this lesson?'”

Categories
Evaluating Writing Faculty Writing Graduate Students Teaching Writing

Students as Teachers – Professor/Student Collaboration Improves a History Course

writing-history

In a recent post from Bryn Mawr’s Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, Professor Alejandro Quintana, Assistant Professor in the History Department at St. John’s University, and his student Writing Fellow, Morgan Zajkowski, have written an excellent blog post detailing their work together. Over the course of a semester, Quintana and Zajkowski collaborated on ways to improve student writing, retention, and participation in Quintana’s history course, guided by the principles of WAC. They offer helpful insights into fostering student engagement and making the classroom a dynamic place for collaborative discussion, while using low-risk writing assignments to build student confidence.

“I expected at some point to be forced to say no to any major suggestion to change my teaching practices. To my great surprise this never happened; our collaboration was progressive and smooth. Before I realized it, we were making significant changes to my teaching methodology. I learned so much from Morgan and my teaching practices were reshaped for the better. Today, a year after our collaboration, I have incorporated into all my current courses all the activities and assignments she helped me develop during the spring semester of 2013.”

“Students as Teachers Transforming a History Course”  – Alejandro Quintana and Morgan Zajkowski