Tag: Higher Ed

New Series: Supporting Faculty Writers – “The Weekend Retreat”

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date January 22, 2015

Erica Jacobs teaches English at Oakton High School and writing at George Mason University. She had a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia University and has published numerous articles in local newspapers, newsletters, and magazines. This article is a reprint from her 1997 publication, “The Weekend Retreat.” Be on the look-out for her follow-up piece this February on her most recent participation in the WAC-sponsored Winter Faculty Writing Retreat that took place on January 7-8, 2015.

As a non-tenure track teacher at George Mason University, I was pleased to discover I was eligible to participate in a “Writing Retreat” sponsored by the English department and the Northern Virginia Writing Project in the fall of 1978. Don Gallehr had completed the first two summers of the Writing Institute with local high school teachers, and their success on the secondary level seemed to promise equal success on the University level.

Tags education, faculty, faculty retreat, faculty writing, faculty writing support, Higher Ed, higher education, Mason WAC, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing education, writing feedback, Writing in the Disciplines

Teaching Writing

Against “The Library Scavenger Hunt”: Better Library Research Assignments

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date January 15, 2015

Jen Stevens is the Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian at George Mason University and a consultant for Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum Faculty Senate Committee. She has extensive experience assisting undergraduate and graduate student writers discover new resources and information in their research process. For her information and current InfoGuides, click here!

In my work as a Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian at George Mason University, I work with faculty members and their students to help the students learn how to do better research, which in turn leads to better writing.

Last week, I found the strangest thing in the Fenwick Library Reference area. . .

Tags College Composition, composition, education, Higher Ed, higher education, libraries, Online writing, pedagogy, research, Teaching, Teaching Strategies, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing pedagogy

Modules

VIDEO: Principles for Assignment Design

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date December 5, 2014

Interviews Modules

How to Be a Better Writer – 6 Tips from Harvard’s Steven Pinker

Post author By caitedungan
Post date November 17, 2014

Though writing is certainly one of the most complex acts humans engage in, sometimes it helps to boil the crafting of writing down to its most basic elements. When it comes to good writing, the essentials go beyond process and repetition and into the realm of psychology. Time’s Eric Barker interviewed Steven Pinker, of Harvard’s Department of Psychology, on what he considers to be the best tips for better writing. These helpful strategies are deceptively simple: things like “Don’t assume your reader knows what you already know.”

“…another bit of cognitive science that is highly relevant is a phenomenon called ‘the curse of knowledge.’ Namely, the inability that we all have in imagining what it’s like not to know something that we do know. And that has been studied in various guises in the psychological literature. People assume that the words that they know are common knowledge. That the facts that they know are universally known… the writer doesn’t stop to think what the reader doesn’t know.”

How to Be a Better Writer: 6 Tips from Harvard’s Steven Pinker

Tags College Composition, composition, education, Higher Ed, higher education, interesting articles, Mason WAC

Modules

Feedback and Revision – A Module from Eli Review

Post author By caitedungan
Post date November 10, 2014

Today we are highlighting a helpful module from Eli Review on how to understand, use, and teach informative feedback strategies and in-depth revision. Timely and explicit feedback from both teachers and peers leads not only to improved drafts, but to improved writing skills overall. Giving students the instruction they need to learn reflective skills for analyzing both their own writing and their peers’ is critical to fostering the confidence of emerging writers.

“Teaching and learning don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen within specific schools, classrooms, and cultural contexts. This is true for feedback as well.

Effective feedback requires a context in which learners have both the ability and opportunity to hear, understand, and act on that feedback. We might think about feedback rich classrooms as “safe and smart” learning contexts, or classroom communities in which students feel comfortable enough to risk engaging and learning with each other.”

Feedback and Revision: The Key Components of Powerful Writing Pedagogy

Tags College Composition, composition, digital writing, education, Feedback, Higher Ed, higher education, Mason WAC, pedagogy, Peer Review, Revision