By Jack Prostko, Director, Faculty
Development Center
In order to assess what students know, most professors
require some form of writing -- essays, term papers, lab
reports, summaries, responses -- from undergraduates at some
point in their courses. Writing helps us see how students are
grappling with the ideas and content of a class, usually
forcing them to engage in higher levels of thinking about a
subject. Rather than simply memorizing information, students
are asked to analyze or synthesize facts and ideas to develop
their skills at thinking like a biologist or a historian or a
social worker.
Writing is central to the intellectual development of
undergraduates, and currently at UMBC there is a renewed
examination of the writing requirements students must fulfill
in order to graduate. A Writing Board, appointed by the
Provost at the request of the Undergraduate Council and
Faculty Senate, is examining the writing requirement and
considering adding a "Writing in the Disciplines" component to
the undergraduate curriculum.
Writing in the Disciplines (WID) programs at universities
have flourished in the last twenty years, in conjunction with
programs designed to engage students as active learners. The
success of such programs is based on the notion that what we
are attempting to do with students when they write isn't
simply to improve their composition skills, but to involve
them in the language and thinking of our disciplines.
According to John Bean, "a teacher's purpose in adding writing
components to a course is not to help English departments
teach writing. Rather teachers should see writing assignments
and other critical thinking activities as useful tools to help
students achieve the instructor's content and process goals
for a course" (Bean, p.xiv).
The writing emphasized in WID classes combines the use of
writing as a tool for learning as well as a tool for
communicating. As a tool for learning, writing involves what
Art Young calls "discovery thinking," an attempt to make sense
of information for the writer as he or she examines ideas and
tests out a discipline's language. Such writing is generally
informal--journals or rough drafts--and needs to be shaped in
order to communicate clearly to a reader. This means that
various forms of writing are involved in many WID classes,
from ungraded work that helps writers explore a subject, to
more formal and finished products. The process of writing and
working out ideas, revising and rethinking issues, plays a
more central role in WID instruction than it does in many
courses that simply require a long paper at the end of the
semester.
For professors interested in exploring ways of
experimenting with the use of writing in their courses,
several excellent resources exist, including Art Young's
Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (available
online) and John Bean's Engaging Ideas (available at
the Faculty Development Center). A key concern of some faculty
is that assigning more writing means taking more time to
grade--and that this additional time can make assigning extra
writing difficult if not impossible. It's true that students
will benefit most if they receive timely feedback on their
written work, but this feedback need not be given on every
informal writing assignment. And even with formal writing,
specific comments on the structure of the ideas and clarity of
the presentation are more significant that detailed attention
to grammar or "correctness." Indeed, one of the errors
beginning instructors often make is overmarking (or even
copyediting) students' papers rather than giving specific
comments on ideas and referring them to tutorial help to
improve their grammar. (At UMBC, the Learning Resources
Center provides excellent tutorial support for student
writers.) Both Young and Bean offer a variety of strategies
for providing concise, effective comments on papers.
For most students (and probably for most of us) writing is
never a simple and straightforward task. Getting students to
write more regularly and helping them develop the habit of
thinking through their ideas on paper in stages of composition
and revision can help them deepen their understanding of an
academic discipline and help them begin to adopt the language
necessary for successful professional work in that discipline.
Resources:
Davis, Barbara Gross, "Helping Students Write Better in All
Courses," from Tools for Teaching, San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass, 1993.
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/writebetter.html
Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse, with links and
publications
http://aw.colostate.edu/resource_list.htm
Young, Art. Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum,
Third Edition. 2002.
http://aw.colostate.edu/books/young_teaching/
Bean, John C., Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to
Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in
the Classroom, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
Fishman, Stephen M., and McCarthy, Lucille, Whose Goals?
Whose Aspirations? Learning to Teaching Underprepared Writers
Across the Curriculum, Logan, UT: Utah State University
Press, 2002.
Sorcinelli, Mary Deane, and Elbow, Peter, Writing to
Learn: Strategies for Assigning and Responding to Writing
Across the Disciplines, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,
1997.
For advice on improving professional writing:
Boice, Robert, Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide
to Productive Writing, Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press,
1990.
Rankin, Elizabeth, The Work of Writing: Insights and
Strategies for Academics and Professionals, San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
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