Writing prof gives candid advice

Dr. Palmquist's presentation gave faculty historical context about the technology that has revolutionized teaching. One of the important parts, he says, is defining goals for technology use.

When it comes to giving advice on how to teach a writing intensive course, Mike Palmquist doesn’t mince words.

“I think it’s a waste of time to just add a research paper at the end of a course and call it a W course,” Palmquist says bluntly.

Palmquist, a professor of English and a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University, is the author of several widely used writing textbooks and the co-director of the Center for Research on Writing and Communication Technology. He visited Texas A&M recently to present a workshop on his leading academic interest: the interplay between writing and technology. He also met with the UWC staff to share ideas about using technology both to improve student writing and to ease instructors’ workloads.

During his trip to College Station, Palmquist sat down for an interview with Writing Matters, during which we asked what kind of advice he’d share with instructors who find themselves teaching their first writing-intensive course. It was then that he expressed his disdain for the term-end research paper. He objects to that time-honored writing assignment on several grounds.

“For one thing, [the research paper] is a lot of work for you, because you’ve got a lot of pages to grade,” Palmquist observes. “For another thing, if it just comes at the end of the course, it’s not necessarily going to be effective at helping students learn things. It’s going to be more of a demonstration project for them.”

Palmquist instead encourages instructors to think not about how to integrate writing into their courses, but rather how to get students more deeply engaged with the subject matter. In that way, writing becomes simply a useful vehicle for achieving a larger goal: fostering critical thinking.

Over time Palmquist has come to think of writing “as a way of engaging with the conversations of the discipline.” And that’s where he sees a pivotal role for technology.

For instance, in an upper division course, Palmquist might find out what topic within the discipline the students find especially interesting. Then, rather than have them simply read about that topic, he might ask them to join a listserv or a discussion forum where they can become part of the community and see ideas unfold.

“Then you’ve got students talking to each other about ideas,” Palmquist says, and the result is “they push themselves to higher levels.”

Palmquist also has surprising ideas about how to succeed with a writing-in-the-disciplines program, such as Texas A&M’s W course initiative. He encourages W course instructors to “avoid the idea that you’re doing this solely for the good of your students.”

Rather, he believes instructors need to remember they are teaching courses to “achieve certain goals that are set up by the university as a whole,” so it’s important for instructors to be clear on the reasons behind the initiative.

A university writing initiative “isn’t just about making students better at grammar, or better at being clear writers,” claims Palmquist, “it’s about trying to reach the goals that you’ve set up as a community.”

For some universities the goal behind a writing program is creating a well-rounded student, while other universities want to improve writing instruction in order to help students communicate effectively in their chosen field, whether those students are entering the work force or staying in academia. Those goals are quite different and may result in very different choices in terms of curriculum.

Palmquist says it’s also important for instructors to reflect on their own pedagogical goals. For him, fostering critical thinking is always the top priority.

“I want my students—regardless of what class I’m teaching—to think critically about the course,” he states, adding that it’s not enough for students to know the material. “I want them to question it.”

Then, Palmquist contends, as students begin to write about a topic, they find “they’re forced to articulate their knowledge. If you can’t write about a subject, you don’t really know it very well. You might know it well enough to identify the appropriate response on a multiple choice exam, but you might not know it well enough to explain it to somebody else or to develop a plan for dealing with a problem.”

When asked if he has advice for instructors using new technologies in teaching, Palmquist quotes the familiar advice that an instructor should always put pedagogical goals first and employ technology only to support those aims.

Then he promptly announces, “I don’t believe that anymore.”

The reason for his change of heart is his growing awareness of how “new technologies open up new possibilities.” As an example, he points to the increased use of collaborative work in the classroom, noting that new technologies make that much easier to accomplish.

Likewise, he says that some instructors may now feel less need to do traditional peer response exercises, because they can let students create a blog and get feedback from an even wider audience.

Of course, with the rapid pace of technological advances, it’s hard for instructors to stay even one step ahead of their students, but that doesn’t concern him.

“I don’t worry that my students might know more about things than I do,” Palmquist says without hesitation. He points to the example of a course he taught recently about writing for the Web. Many of his students in the course worked in corporate settings where they were exposed to ideas new to Palmquist, who says he was happy to embrace the idea of learning alongside his students.

“If you’re a teacher, you know the content and you know what you want to accomplish,” he explains. “If your students can add to the richness of how you accomplish it, that’s great.”