Introduction
Purpose and Outcomes
Why become more informed about active learning strategies for writing across the curriculum? Sorcinelli and Elbow (1997) suggest that “writing not only makes learning more visible, it makes teaching more visible and brings existing practices into the foreground? The result is often a movement toward a more reflective, active, and collaborative teaching as well as learning" (p.1). Source: Sorcinelli, M. D., and Elbow, P. (Eds.). (1997). Writing to learn: Strategies for assigning and responding to writing across the disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning No. 69. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
By completing this online tutorial, you will gain information about strategies to help students learn and retain more in your field or discipline through both individual and small-group writing activities. You will also find information that contributes to your ability to develop writing assignments and writing assessments standards for use in and out of classrooms in order to initiate, facilitate, and finish discussions, lectures, and experiments, and to encourage critical thinking.
You will also have the opportunity to construct writing assessment standards to share with students in order to help them to effectively gauge their achievement.
Overview
Key Concepts: This section will introduce you to the concepts of Writing to Learn and Writing Across the Curriculum. It will also introduce you to high stakes and low stakes writing assignments.
Writing Assignments and Rubrics: This section will help you develop and effectively assess writing assignments.
Activity: The activities in this section allow you to practically apply what you've learned in the tutorial.
Quiz: This short quiz will help re-enforce your learning.
Additional Resources: This section contains an extensive bibliography and links to some useful websites.
Preliminary Questions
Start an electronic or written journal and respond to the following prompts:
What is your Teaching Approach?
1. Start by describing yourself and your teaching approach.
* How long have you been teaching? Do you still find joy, challenge, and excitement in your teaching or ????
* Are you looking for new and innovative strategies for teaching or for new techniques to update and/or strengthen what you are already doing?
* What is your preferred teaching style and teaching strategies?
* Why do you teach?
How do you use Writing in your Teaching?
2. Next think about how you use writing in your courses and/or curriculum.
* Describe one of your classes or perhaps a ‘typical’ class that you teach? What is the level of the course/content (i.e. intro, advanced content)?
* What is your typical ‘student’ like? How prepared are students for writing in your course(s)/curriculum?
* Describe how you currently integrate active learning strategies and/or writing in your efforts to encourage writing into your course/curriculum. Are you satisfied with the ways in which you use active learning and/or writing in your course(s)/curriculum? Why or why not?
* If you have used active learning strategies in the past to encourage more writing in your course(s)/curriculum strategies to encourage writing, what worked and/or what did not work? Why do you think that is?
Develop a Vision
3. Finally, describe your 'vision' for the ideal use of writing in your classroom environment, campus environment, and/or student, etc.
* What barriers are you experiencing in achieving this ‘ideal’ environment?
* What resources do you need to achieve this ‘ideal’ environment?
* What do you think you will have to be prepared to do differently to achieve this ‘vision’?
* What do you hope to learn through completing this online tutorial that will help you approach and/or achieve this ‘vision’?
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