Undergraduate writing fellows play an important role in administering writing assignments in writing-intensive courses. At the University of Michigan, the MWrite program was designed to support the implementation of writing-to-learn (WTL) assignments in STEM courses. Within MWrite, writing fellows are a primary instructional resource for students…

Studies examining writing as a High-Impact Education Practice (HIP) have focused primarily on writing in terms of major project assignments, thus directing attention away from the promising high impacts that low-stakes writing (LSW) assignments have on student learning. This study piloted assigning LSW in two MBA classes to test the extent to…

This study examines the writing of 30 engineering students, faculty response, students' reading of the response, subsequent revision, and faculty evaluation to ask what factors contribute to constructive conversation about writing. It affirms previous research that suggests engineering faculty do not provide the facilitative commentary widely…

Starting from the premise that good writing requires sound thinking, this paper presents a workable process for developing and using writing assignments as thinking and learning tools within a historical and philosophical context. Though presented from the perspective of a chemist, this process is actually general in nature and links writing…

This essay presents results from a comprehensive study of writing in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Pittsburgh. It is in two sections. The first section reports on interviews with faculty from across the disciplines in the School of Arts and Sciences; the second reports finding from student focus groups and from an extensive…

Drawing on an activity theory analysis, Elizabeth A. Wardle considers whether cross-disciplinary FYC collaborations can help us achieve current FYC goals. Her analysis of learning community linked FYC courses at a large Midwestern university suggests that learning community teachers are faced with as many--if not more--challenges as traditional…

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to assess whether faculty writing workshops could facilitate writing in heterogeneous disciplines by linking specific, workaday writing activities (Tschudi, 1986) with Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (1974). Multi-disciplinary faculty participating in writing-across-the-curriculum workshops…