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Assigning Revision Memos
When student writers are asked to reflect on their revisions-in-progress, they are more likely to make thoughtful choices and instructors are less likely to find themselves taking time to suggest revisions that students are already planning to make. Revision memos can be required between drafts, when students are turning a 2nd draft in to instructors for comments, or they can accompany final drafts.
Helping Students Write Better in All Courses
from Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis; Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco, 1993. Excerpt: "Few faculty would deny the importance of writing in their academic discipline or the role writing plays in mastering material, shaping ideas, and developing critical thinking skills. Writing helps students learn the subject matter: they understand and retain course material much better when they write about it. You don't have to be a writing specialist - or even an accomplished writer - to improve your students' writing skills, and you don't have to sacrifice hours of class time or grading time. The ideas that follow are designed to make writing more integral to your courses and less onerous to you and your students."
Responding to & Grading Writing
"Commenting upon and grading student writing are among the most direct (and therefore valuable) elements of writing instruction. These two activities are also chief among the concerns voiced by faculty members and other instructors, who may feel under-qualified to diagnose and evaluate written strengths and weaknesses. In this section, you'll find paradigms for effectively and efficiently responding to student writing, as well as multiple approaches to grading and evaluation. "
Reducing Faculty Workload While Improving Feedback to Students
"Most professors believe that clear and effective writing is important in all levels of psychology and in most of the professions for which we are training our students. And most professors give their students writing assignments because they believe that practice will improve students' writing. And as part of this process, most professors (and their teaching assistants) believe that their feedback will improve the quality of students' writing, so they spend countless hours providing written comments on these papers (after all, psychologists have long known that practice without feedback is futile, right?). Of these three assumptions, probably only the first one is true. "
Writing for Learning - Not Just for Demonstrating Learning
"It is helpful to distinguish between two very different goals for writing. The normal and conventional goal is writing to demonstrate learning: for this goal the writing should be good--it should be clear and, well . . . right. It is high stakes writing. " Author: Peter Elbow
Self-Assessment of Writing
"Self-assessment occurs when students assess their own work, either finished or in-progress. This process can benefit faculty by saving them time (since self-assessments are not graded), and it can benefit students as well. Through self-assessment, students improve editing, writing, and critical thinking skills."
Technology-based Writing Instruction
"Writing is linked with technology, plain and simple. Technologies exist which can aid your students in improving their writing, whether you’re concerned with content or with commas."
Responding to Writing: Sommers & Lindemann
"Before considering strategies for responding to student writing, it might be useful to think about some of the assumptions that inform grading and response in the specific context of your classroom."
Responding to Student Writing Tutorial
"If you can’t put off marking that batch of student writing any longer, read on for how you can respond to your students’ work without pain or suffering (and really help them with their writing)."
Student Writing: Three Response Models
"When assigned formal, graded writing, students need clear, written criteria for success. Once these criteria are clear, they form the basis for response and revision."
Writing Matters, Faculty Resource Newsletter
Contents: 1) Designing Writing Assignments; 2) Responding to Writing; 3) Writing & Research; 4) Overcoming Writing Errors; 5) Helping Students Make Connections; 6) Working with ESL Students' Writing; 7) Peer Review & Feedback Forms; 8) Teaching Forms of Writing; 9) On-Line Interaction; 10) Using Writing to Improve Reading; 11) Getting Student to Think
Creating Rubrics
"There are many rubric formats. In the grid format shown here, which is one of the possible ways to lay out a rubric, we illustrate a few common, frequently recommended, features of multiple trait rubrics."
Writing Assessment: A Position Statement
"Given the high stakes nature of many of these assessment purposes, it is crucial that assessment practices be guided by sound principles to insure that they are valid, fair, and appropriate to the context and purposes for which they designed. This position statement aims to provide that guidance."
eLectures on Writing
A collection of electronic lectures (mostly audio, some video) on teaching writing at the college level from Pearson Composition Professional Development
Designing Rubrics for Assessing Higher Order Thinking
"Professors who teach thinking skills such as arguing, analyzing, synthesizing, drawing conclusions, solving problems, making decisions, and evaluating need to know how well their students can use these skills. Using rubrics that describe several different levels of student performance helps professors evaluate consistently and efficiently, lets students know what their professor is looking for and how to meet the expectations, and provides feedback to students."
Sample Writing Rubric (pdf)
A writing rubric adapted from Barbara Walvoord, Winthrop Univ., Virginia Community College System, Univ. of Washington
Benefits of Low Stakes Writing
Overview of reasons to use informal writing in your classes; includes examples of in-class and out-of-class assignments
Writing Assignments and Rubrics
"Developing effective writing assignments can be one of the most challenging elements of teaching. There is a lot that needs to be considered as these assignments come together."
Online Word Processing
"More and more of my word processing is getting moved to the Web these days for a number of reasons. My writing is accessible from anywhere, is open to collaboration and sharing, is easy to import and export, and is just a better way to do work in this constantly connected world we increasingly live in."
Diagnosing and Responding to Student Writing
"Instructors who have a stack of papers in front of them may feel that a direct and critical response to "what's wrong with this paper" is the best strategy. This way of reading ignores a very important principle, however: that a paper is
written by someone, for someone. That's why we recommend that instructors try to read in three different ways..."
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