Tag: undergraduate writing

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

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date August 27, 2015

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.

Tags Assignment Design, best practices, composition, education, in-class writing, undergraduate writing, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing in the Disciplines, writing pedagogy

Evaluating Writing Teaching Writing

Portfolios in Writing Classes: Instructor Goals v. Program Assessment

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date May 21, 2015

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.

Tags assessment, teaching writing, undergraduate writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing in the Disciplines, writing pedagogy, writing portfolios

Undergraduate Perspectives

Practice Makes Perfect: A Student Perspective on Mason’s Culture of Writing

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date May 14, 2015

by: Mikal Lambdin

Mikal is a senior studying English at George Mason. She previously worked with WAC to create disciplinary writing guides for student use. Mikal is graduating in May 2015! To reach her, please contact wac@gmu.edu.

When first asked to write a blog post about my experience with Mason’s “culture of writing,” I will admit that my first question was “What is a culture of writing?” In response, Dr. Michelle LaFrance, Director of Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, showed me the WAC program website. It reads:

At Mason, the WAC program upholds a campus-wide commitment to student writers, writing-rich coursework, and writing in the disciplines. . . Central to our program’s mission is the belief that when students are given frequent opportunities for writing across the university curriculum, they think more critically and creatively, engage more deeply in their learning, and are better able to transfer what they have learned from course to course, context to context.

Looking back at my own undergraduate experiences, I can clearly see that Mason’s culture of writing had an impact on both my overall education and my development as a writer in many ways.

Tags culture of writing, Mason WAC, rhetoric, student writing, undergraduate research, undergraduate writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing community, Writing in the Disciplines, writing practice

Undergraduate Perspectives

Writing For Real-World Audiences: What It’s Like to Get Published in The George Mason Review

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date April 23, 2015

By: Mikal Lambdin

Mikal is a senior studying English at George Mason. She previously worked with WAC to create disciplinary writing guides for student use. To reach her, please contact wac@gmu.edu.

Last month, I was excited to learn that my essay, “Someone Who Cares a Whole Awful Lot: The Rhetoric of Dr. Seuss’s Political Parable,” won the award for Best Submission in The George Mason Review, GMU’s student-run journal of exemplary undergraduate scholarly works. Like any writer, I have faced the overwhelming task of trying to be published, a feat that is at best elusive and at worst seems impossible. But when I got the news about my success through GMR, I began to reflect on how publishing my work is different from trying to publish other texts or writing for classes. Throughout the entire process – the writing of my essay, its submission to the journal, and its ultimate acceptance – I learned some valuable lessons about what it means to “re-vision” scholarship, and the significance of a journal like GMR as a starting place for students to think about how to write for readers other than their teachers.

Tags Assignment Design, audience, composition, george mason review, GMR, student publication, undergraduate research, undergraduate writing, writing for real audiences