Teaching and Assessing Writing Ankur Desai UW-Madison

What’s the issue?  Writing is key skill for all college graduates  But assignments can be time consuming to write and grade  Undergrads hate papers  And referencing papers  And love whining about the margins and spacing and citation format  And they don’t read all the comments you write  And you have to beat out the 5-paragraph essay out of them, which takes time away from content  Plagarism can be a concern

Writing is hard

Types of writing prompts  Reading response papers  In-class free writing  Term/research paper  Literature review / annotated bibliography  Group projects  Debates  Online discussions  Journals and blogs  Gallery walks  “Career mimicry”  Others?

Styles of essays  Expository  Descriptive  Narrative  Persuasive

Things that help  The Library is your friend  The campus Writing Center is your friend  Rubrics are your friend  Teaching assistants are your friend  Revision and peer-reviewing are your friends  Make assignments that students care about  Focus assessment on argument, content, readability  Discuss in class how important writing is to your field and careers  Show examples of your own writing, peer reviews

Assessments and rubrics  Focus on readability and norms  Some learning management systems provide ability to give audio feedback, which is shown to more likely be viewed than written  Use cover sheets for self assessment  A number of rubrics exist

Evidence based practice  Explicit instruction in strategies, summarizing, reviewing  Give structure to cooperative writing assignments  Process writing – routine extended time in class to work on writing  Prewriting – various methods  Models – Share examples, templates  Frequent short-prompt writing

That one student…  A few students will struggle mightily and may take up a large percentage of your out of classroom time  Writing Center can be helpful   There may be undiagnosed learning disabilities – Consider disability center referral  Be consistent on how much help you provide to any student. Not every problem can be solved in a single class  Mix up writing styles – visual, oral, research, persuasive based writing

Plagiarism  This is partly institution dependent  Tools exist (turnitin), but dangerous to rely solely on them  Make a strong statement in syllabus, and stick to it. See what writing center recommends  Generally can be proved by in-person meetings  Make your assignments plagiarism proof

Other discussion thoughts…  Graduate level classes  Large classes  Online classes  Working with a TA  Non-native speakers  Your advisees and their theses

Assignment  You are teaching an intro level class in your broad discipline  You are required by your department to provide one writing assignment of a 5-6 page paper  Sketch out the guts of the prompt. Be creative.