Writing Intensive Courses
A major goal for many universities today is to shift the culture from traditional teaching to integrating contemporary research evidence on active teaching and learning. There are and have been many learner-centric aligned ways to offer appropriate active learning associated with timely, formative authentic assessments. I would strongly encourage any faculty who are interested in enhancing their teaching while offering writing intensive opportunities, that they visit our CTL for a discussion. Here are just a few of the research citations that align active learning with effective teaching...
Deslauriers, L., Logan S., McCarty, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201821936.
Burnett J., & Krause, K. (2012). Teaching large classes: Challenges and strategies. GIHE Good Practice Guide on Teaching Large Classes.
Padgett, R. D., Keup, J. R., & Pascarella, E. T. (2013). The impact of first-year seminars on college students' life-long learning orientations. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 50(2), 133.
Singer-Freeman, K., & Bastone, L. (2016). Pedagogical Choices Make Large Classes Feel Small. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.
Chen, P. (2019). In-class and after-class lecture note-taking strategies. Active Learning in Higher Ed, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787419893490
Chen, P. H., Teo, T. & Zhou, M. (2017) Effects of guided notes on enhancing college students' lecture note-taking quality and learning performance. Current Psychology 36(4): 719 32.
Kobayashi, K. (2006) Combined effects of note-taking/reviewing on learning and the enhancement through interventions: A meta-analytic review. Educational Psychology 26(3): 459.
Rodriguez, R. & Koubek, E. (2019) Unpacking High-Impact Instructional Practices and student engagement in a teacher preparation program, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130311
Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers. (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 39(7), 3-7.
Chickering, A.W., & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as a lever, AAHE Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
Davis, B. (2009). Tools for teaching. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Uttl, B., White, C., & Gonzalez, D. (2016). Meta-analysis of faculty’s teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related, Studies in Educational Evaluation. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.08.007
Tomasek, T. (2009). Critical Reading: Using reading prompts to promote active engagement with text. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 21(1), 127-132, http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe. ISSN 1812-9129.
Myers, C., & Jones, T.B. (1993). Promoting active learning: Strategies for the college classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ericksen, K. & Williamson-Ashe, S. (2021). High-Impact Educational Practices’ (HIIPs) Influence on the Emerging Values Model: Group Work Impact. Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education, 3(2), 47–75.
Melzer, D., Quinn, D., Sperber, L. & Faye, S. (2019). So Your Teacher is Using Contract Grading… UC Davis Writing Commons.
Bean, J. (2001). Engaging ideas : the professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bernstein, D. A. (2018). Does active learning work? A good question, but not the right one. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4(4), 290–307. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000124
A major category of active learning is the concept High-Impact Instructional Practices (HIIP) as recently described by Rodriguez & Koubek, 2019 in their article, Unpacking High-Impact Instructional Practices and Student Engagement. The authors examine the relationship between HIIPs as adopted by the AAC&U, student engagement, and learning outcomes as measured on the National Survey of Student Engagement. Major themes included the importance of applied learning, collaborative assignments, understanding diverse points of view and constructive feedback ." This research cites Kuh et al., (2017) work detailing 8 “key features'' of HIIP that could account for improved student learning outcomes.
Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels;
Significant investment of concentrated effort by students over an extended period of time;
Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters;
Experiences with diversity, wherein students engage in ideas that differ from their own;
Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback;
Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications;
Public demonstration of competence; and
Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning.
The common debate on integrating HIIPs, especially writing intensive assignments, is the time required for teachers to "grade" the student work. If we only substitute a portion of our pedagogy with a sparse sampling of updated methods without the associated methods to engage and authentically assess, the approach will simply appear as an "add-on" and provide minimal empowerment to the learner and more "work" for teachers. However, if we integrate a well aligned suite of teaching approaches, we can capitalize on efficiency models that both align with current practices on pedagogy AND provide students with active, authentic learning environments.
One key research-based example of how we can efficiently approach writing-intensive courses while integrating active learning and authentic, timely assessment includes the meta-study by the University of Central Michigan, entitled “Writing Intensive Resources: Handling the Paper Load and Responding to Student Writing.” From this document, I will summarize several myths below.
Myth: Conscientious teaching requires marking all grammar and language errors.
Students can catch more than 60% of their own errors if they are taught to proofread and held to appropriate standards of correctness. By marking every error, we actually train our students to rely on us as copy-editors. Teachers may instead
mark errors on the first page only.
mark representative errors.
place checks in the margins where errors occur.
quickly scan papers and return error-laden essays for proofreading and correction.
use software to scan student writing for error.
create peer editing groups in their classes.
Myth: Teachers need to read everything that students write.
Students write for brief periods at the beginning or end of a class helps them focus or achieve closure. When discussion lags or reaches an impasse, students can be asked to write out a response to share. Students can bring to class written questions to stimulate discussion or definitions of key terms to debate. This kind of informal writing need not even be collected. Its purpose is to stimulate discussion and encourage active engagement with the material.
Myth: Teachers need to evaluate every piece of writing they collect.
Non-evaluated assignments can work well and even be the most frequent type of writing used in a WI class. For example, journals and informal writings, if collected, can be evaluated using a "minimal marking" scheme (i.e., points for completing the assignment plus extra points or a "+" for an insightful response). Or students can be awarded credit for the number of entries submitted, and they can single out a limited number of these for closer scrutiny, grading, and response.
Myth: "Writing intensive" means that students should do 3-5 separate, unrelated assignments.
Students often benefit when the work of the semester can be conceived as one project, phased in logical sequences or in stages. Moving through a logical sequence of assignments is one way to increase the level of conceptual difficulty gradually and to ensure that students build on material they have studied in earlier portions of the syllabus. It is more cost-effective for instructors as well, since in some cases they will have seen and responded to smaller components of a project before the cumulative work comes in.
Additional writing intensive research resources:
Killi, S. & Morrison, A. (2015). Just-in-time Teaching, Just-in-need Learning: Designing towards Optimized Pedagogical Outcomes. Universal Journal of Educational Research 3(10): 742-750.
Guberman, D. (2021). Student perceptions of an Ungraded Course. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 9(1).
Martin, T., et al.(2021). Ungrading Across the Disciplines: Reflections of a Professional Learning Community. Pedagogicon Conference Proceedings.
