Posts Tagged ‘writing assignments’
August 31 - Giving Feedback on Student Writing: An Innovative Approach
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
I ran across an interesting idea in the British journal, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education involving the use of something called interactive cover sheets. First-year students in an outdoor studies degree program took a two-semester, six module course which required preparation of a number of written assignments. After preparing their papers, students attached an interactive cover sheet on which they raised questions about the paper they had just completed, thereby identifying the specific areas for feedback.
June 29 - Alternative Writing Assignments: The Integrated Paper
By: Genevieve Pinto Zipp in Teaching and Learning
As faculty working with students to explore topics of interests we frequently request that they review the literature to gain an understanding of what is known and unknown about a topic and then present their findings in an integrated manner. While many students are familiar with developing papers termed “literature reviews” or “reviews of the literature,” these types of papers frequently do not afford the students the opportunity to integrate what has been found. Thus faculty have begun to require that students present their findings and thoughts via what is known as an “integrated paper format.”
March 30 - Time Management Strategies for Student Writers
By: Lauren Shapiro in Teaching and Learning
Is it me or do students often seem surprised by just how long the writing process takes? When I first started teaching, I never thought to address the issue of time management with my students. Over the course of my next several classes, however, I started to notice a pattern in students’ comments, such as: The work in this class is really, really time consuming; I’ve never spent this much time writing before; and I didn’t realize it would take SO much time but I am really happy with the end results.
November 9 - Writing Promotes Learning
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning, Teaching Professor Blog
Once again I’m trying to clean out my collection of articles on teaching and learning. I’ve been collecting for years and have hundreds … yes, hundreds. Now that everything is available online there is no reason to keep the many stacks and boxes that have filled my office to overflowing. The problem, of course, is
November 4 - Feedback Techniques that Improve Student Writing
By: Brian E. Harper, PhD and William Beasley, EdD in Teaching and Learning
Yvonne is frustrated. She wants to do well in her language arts class, but each essay she completes fails to earn her the grade she believes she deserves. Although her teacher thoughtfully writes out corrective comments on her essays, to Yvonne these seem to run together, forming a nonsensical sea of red ink. With each assignment, she feels less capable and grows more resentful of her instructor.
September 21 - Writing Comments That Lead to Learning
By: Susan M. Taylor in Effective Teaching Strategies
Instructors who require papers spend a good deal of time emphasizing the importance of audience and purpose in writing. Writers who remember their readers and their writing objectives are much more likely to use good judgment about the decisions that go into creating an effective piece of writing. This is equally true of the comments instructors write on students’ papers. I’d like to share some suggestions, some of which I learned the hard way.
August 26 - Encouraging Substantive Discussion of Course Content by Getting Personal
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies
“Why are teachers afraid of sentences that begin with ‘I feel’ or that draw on personal experience?” Margaret Mott asks, repeating a question she read in an essay early in her career.
January 25 - Meta-Collaboration: Writing with Students to Engage Learning
By: Dan Kulmala, Ph.D. in Effective Teaching Strategies
In one of my favorite A Midsummer Night’s Dream passages by William Shakespeare, Theseus comments on the creation of poetry. Informing us that the “poet’s eye” in a “fine frenzy rolling” glances from “heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,” we learn about the process of making sense of the world and composing something about it.
January 11 - Five Questions that Improve Student Writing
By: Christopher Baker, PhD. in Effective Teaching Strategies
Before embarking on a writing assignment, I challenge my students to imagine a skeptical reader who expects them to answer five important questions. Answering these questions demands critical writing and thinking, and helps the students develop thoughtful content, efficient structure, and clear sentences.
December 9 - Six Tips for Effective Writing Groups
By: Kathryn Linder, M.A. in Effective Teaching Strategies
By offering students a supportive group for writing assignments and research projects, students can form strong learning communities and feel less isolated when they see others around them struggling to generate ideas, craft thesis statements, or write creative transitions. Allowing students to develop friendships around writing is one way to help them to see writing—often
