Writing Matters
Writing and Technology
If you’re a faculty member with questions about how to use writing in your classes (or want advice about handling the paper load), take a cue from your students and look for help online. Your first stop?
The University Writing Center’s website: http://uwc.tamu.edu. There you’ll find not only general advice about writing, but also a wealth of suggestions for successfully incorporating writing into your classroom.
More specifically, if you access uwc.tamu.edu/faculty/ you’ll
discover pages of information aimed specifically at A&M faculty
members, including how to design a W course to meet the new university
requirements. There’s also a section on pedagogy, where you’ll find
perspectives on a wide-variety of classroom issues, such as how to:
d Incorporate more “low-stakes” writing practice, such as journals or mini-essays, into your courses;
d Handle writing in large-enrollment courses;
d Instruct your students to serve as peer reviewers for their classmates; and
d Teach the critical thinking skills that underlie all academic discourse.
Because
grading is such a thorny issue when it comes to writing assignments,
we’ve also included suggestions on how to respond more efficiently and
consistently to your students’ writing:
uwc.tamu.edu/faculty/pedagogy/respond/.
Also on the UWC’s
website are dozens of handouts
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Creating Effective Writing Assignments: 8 Tips
Writing helps students become actively engaged with course material—in other words, writing facilitates learning. But what should your students be writing? Creating effective writing assignments can be challenging, even for veteran instructors.
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Punish less, teach more
Better detection and stiffer punishments are often considered the best deterrents to student plagiarism. But a more effective long-term solution might be to change how we teach, according to Rebecca Moore Howard, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University and the author of Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators (1999).
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Faculty Spotlight
“It doesn’t matter if you’re in bioremediation, biochemistry, or Latin,” says Kenerley, “the ability to express yourself well in a written format carries tremendous weight.”
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From the Director
It is my pleasure to introduce you to the first issue of Writing Matters, a publication created to assist Texas A&M faculty members as they fulfill the University’s mission to improve writing instruction in all disciplines.
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The W’s are coming
A&M’s new writing courses debut this fall.
Dr. Robert Gates and Dr. Valerie Balester at the UWC.
Texas A&M President Dr. Robert [...]
