UGA Writing Intensive Program

Task # 1:
Designing assignments that use writing to engage, explore, discover, learn

Defining "writing to learn"
Because universities present formal knowledge as a product for students to learn, students do not often see that "knowledge" results from a process, or that professionals use preliminary and often informal strategies to explore, elaborate, and test that knowledge in writing before it is communicated to larger audiences. Unless faculty make special efforts, students are unlikely to see that scholars and all kinds of professionals use writing as a way to develop their writing and their thinking. Writing to learn activities have this goal at heart.

In fact, "the phrase 'Writing to Learn' has replaced 'Writing Across the Curriculum' in interpretations of writing in the disciplines "because it suggests the powerful role language plays in the production, as well as the presentation of knowledge":

'Writing to Learn' is less about formal uses of writing to display memory and test mastery than it is about informal writing, about language that is forming meaning; about writing that is done regularly in and out of class to help students acquire personal ownership of ideas conveyed in lectures and textbooks." (Paul Connolly, "Writing and the Ecology of Learning" p. 2-3)

Examples: Logs, field notes, brief responses to issues written in class or as responses to readings, "microthemes," email postings, timelines, agendas, sets of questions, problem solving plans, work at earlier stages of writing process.

Cues like these may help you to develop an informal writing to discover or respond activity that you currently use or that you would like to use in a course that you teach:

Writing to learn activity/name:

Purpose/goal/benefits to students:

Best way to respond to the activity, if at all:

How might you involve a WIP teaching assistant:

Why will a student do the activity/Will credit be given:

How many activities such as this one would be feasible during a semester: