| Writing in the disciplines
assignments
and bank Creating innovative writing assignments that are staged and sequenced is the heart of WIP course design. In some cases, the assignments are already in place; all that needs doing is to break them into phases that permit faculty and teaching assistants to provide guidance and feedback. Along with using writing to engage students in course content and thinking processes, teaching the writing process and teaching the writing conventions of a discipline are important and intersecting assignment goals. After all, making a course "writing intensive" does not mean assigning an overwhelming amount of writing but giving students a more intense engagement with the writing process and the kinds of writing that a discipline requires. A sampling of writing intensive assignments is available in the WIP assignment bank. According to a recent survey (Thomas Hilger et al "Doing More . . ." 79-80) three main considerations figure into the design of writing intensive assignments in the disciplines: First, "Students want more explicit discussion of the issues related to the functions [uses and kinds] and methods [processes and formats] of writing." They want to understand what they are being asked to do, how specifically to do it, and why. Next, writing in the disciplines assignments should be relevant to the course so that they are not perceived as "busy work" or "exercises" added on to the more important task of learning the facts. Integrating writing assignments means that students can get full learning benefits from them. Finally, writing assignments that are related to students' professional or career objectives are perceived by writing intensive students as being "more important" and "more satisfying." Below are features of effective writing intensive assignments. Though these assignments very a great deal, in general, they _____ Are inventive, adaptive,
and strategic. The key questions to ask from the start: What are my learning
goals in this course? How can I use staged and sequenced writing assignments
to achieve them? What are the kinds and forms of writing that are essential
in my discipline?
_____Recognize the different purposes of different kinds of writing tasks: writing to learn and writing to present learning; "low stakes" and "high stakes" writing. The simple distinction that Peter Elbow makes between "high and low sakes writing" asks instructors to think about "how much a piece of writing matters or counts" in a particular situation and how it contributes to the learning process ("High Stakes and Low Stakes in Assigning and Responding to Writing" 5). Low stakes writing assignments aim "to get students to think, learn, and understand more of the course material" without penalizing them for making errors that would count in high stakes writing situations. Often informal, "low stakes" assignments are described and judged differently than high stakes writing, which is the end result of the writing process. High stakes writing, which presents learning more formally, is evaluated more formally and helps us to assign "trustworthy final grades." However, students need both kinds. Writing process pedagogy says that students' high stakes writing will improve 1) if we assign low stakes writing and allow it to be revised before demanding high stakes writing and 2) if we are involved in the process of helping students produce high stakes writing. Effective WIP assignments provide opportunities for writing to discover, capture, record, or respond informally and opportunities to elaborate, revise, and refine work into a more formal product. _____Make purposes and benefits of assignments clear to students. _____Are staged to engage the writing process and help students apply it to their tasks. Staged assignments give students opportunities for guidance, feedback, and revision. _____Help students see where to focus their energies, to put more effort into planning and revising, for instance, the phases that inexperienced students often skip because they believe that writing is a miraculous gift rather than a set of processes that can be learned. Effective assignments also help students distinguish between Revising, when global issues should be addressed, and Editing, the stage in which to fruitfully address sentence-level concerns. _____Teach the conventions and kinds of writing that are relevant in a discipline. Students report that this feature of writing intensive courses gives them an advantage in their other courses and in preparation for graduate school and their careers. |