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Show , Spring/Summer 2003 page 5 What kind of writing to assign? Many of us created or inherited courses that fulfill the upper division communication/ writing course requirement, necessary for completion of a bachelor's degree. Whether enthusiastic about using writing as a learning tool, or as conscript, a brief and practical review of options and uses for writing may be helpful. First, consider the goal. If you want to teach the disciplinary norms for writing, assign the type of writing respected by the discipline (e.g., abstracts in the sciences, short plays in theater, articles in journalism, arguments in political science). Expect students to require a fair amount of coaching from you, as discipline-specific writing can be quite formulaic, so plan lots of drafts and rewrites. Students may need examples, and will need detailed criteria as guides to a successful product. These exercises tend to be graded, and lead to lots of student anxiety. Not that any of that's a bad thing, if you plan ahead. If you want the student to focus on the material, apply it, and make connections between new and old material. You might consider the use of less formal assignments. Examples that cross disciplines: • Thought papers, where students cogitate about the assigned reading • Guided journal entries, where students informally address ideas or questions you have provided • Free writing in class, where you stop the lecture or discussion or lab long enough for students to put in their own words what they have just seen or heard or done • Table construction, useful for comparing and contrasting I recommend that these exercises be graded very loosely, in the sense that they are given a points value for completion, and lots of evaluative feedback from you, but are not given a graduated number of points. The idea is to go for maximum independent thought and minimum self-consciousness, and no attempts to write what they think you'll like to read. If the goal is to learn about one's values and philosophy, as in some of our ethics and leadership courses, and in all of our diversity requirement courses, you have many options. They include: • Unconstructed journals, which may or may not be shared for a grade • Written debate, contrasting two opposing positions • Letter-writing to a real or imagined recipient • Speech-writing to a real or imagined audience • Creative writing, including free verse • The ever-popular thought paper Again, be aware that you may meet resistance from some students not ready or willing to engage in introspection. We all handle these students differently; for me, it works to have another option ready. Sometimes, just formalizing the assignment into the familiar three-page formal paper with five references in APA format is sufficient. At other times, they wish to focus on others' thoughts, and a write-up of a series of interviews will work. Enough about them, what about me? It's only fair to consider your abilities and your workload. Specifically: • How much time do you have? This will influence the length of the assignment, the number of drafts you assign, and the promises you make regarding when you'll return papers. • How bored are you with reading a certain type of writing assignment? If you think you cannot possibly read another abstract, or another formal treatment, consider trying something different, or at least less structured. • What level is the course? The closer to graduation, the more practice students need in formal writing to their disciplines. • How comfortable are you with risk-taking and uncertainty? Trying a new thing can be very rewarding, particularly if you've based the change on a solid assessment of a pedagogical need. Go ahead. You'll know soon enough if the risk was successful, and if it was not, you will have learned something. The hassle and rewards of grading writing. The first tenet of assessment in writing is to assign enough drafts so you can give formative feedback. That way, no one, especially you, is surprised by a bad paper during finals week. Also, drafts minimize plagiarism. Second, provide very clear criteria for both content (depth and level of argument or analysis) and process (due dates, margins, references, length) from the very first day of class. Third, make the grade weight of the assignment worth the effort the students will give it. And finally, consider having another instructor assess the assignment, but only for those papers where you and the student are very divergent on assessing its worth. There are many instructors on campus who like to use writing as a learning tool, who enjoy reading what students have to write, and who have pretty much mastered the whole grading thing. These instructors cross disciplines and are, by and large, eager to share their enthusiasm for writing. I count myself among these happy individuals. I urge you to consult with us if you are contemplating incorporating some or more writing into your teaching portfolio. After all, we may not be able to change, but we can learn. stephanie.richardson@nurs.utah.edu |
