Research in feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2018; Molloy et al., 2020; Yu & Liu, 2021; Zhang & Mao, 2023) explores student use of written feedback and barriers to feedback uptake; the role of faculty in designing contextually appropriate feedback has been termed teacher feedback literacy (Carless & Winstone, 2020). When feedback…

In this article, the author describes the curriculum of a freshman composition class for socially marginalized students that uses an imaginative service-learning component to nurture agency and voice.

This article applies the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework to a particular disciplinary context: first-year writing (FYW). Students enrolled in online FYW courses across three institutions (n = 272) completed a version of the CoI survey that was slightly modified to fit the disciplinary context of writing studies. A factor analysis was…

This study explores how the construct of interest may influence first-year community college students' willingness to engage with academic text assignments. Research on interest theory as presented by Renninger (2009) suggests that students, even those with low self-efficacy or regulation, are more likely to make gains in engagement and/or…

What do writers do with the feedback they receive? While the answer will vary depending on the writer's experience and the rhetorical situation, understanding what writers do can provide important information for course redesign and professional development of tutors and instructors. In this first of two manuscripts, the authors examine how…

This article explores the connections between creating an equitable classroom and antiracist assessment. The article attempts to explain the impact of the equitable classroom on student apathy. Additionally, rigid concepts of "failing" under this equitable classroom model are interrogated. Finally, the article provides some insights into…

English 299 is a two-unit credit/no credit elective, capped at fifteen students per section, intended to help first year composition students become more effective editors of their own writing. The class provides a hands-on environment to help students with sentence-level editing since the writing center on campus traditionally focuses on more…

This article argues that rhetoric-focused first-year composition curricula may effectively use feminist revisions to rhetoric by employing a method the author calls "procedural feminism," or the distillation of feminist rhetorical practices and theory within curricular development that does not make feminism a topic students will…

This exploratory case study discusses how information literacy elements are presented in first-year composition assignments developed by teaching assistants. The study used content analysis of the instructions accompanying research assignments to understand research projects and their information literacy elements. The analysis found the library…

Set in a freshman composition course using Blackboard for all assessments, this study considered aggregate data to investigate associations among formative assessment variables with the development of college writing skills. The study population was linguistically diverse students enrolled in a metropolitan community college in the Northeast…

Drawing on a multiple-case, embedded design (Yin, 2018), I highlight the in-depth differences and similarities that exist across students' experiences in first-year composition (FYC), looking specifically at whether learners used genre and rhetorical situation as threshold concepts to transfer writing-related knowledge and skills across the…

Instructors often use text-based methods when giving feedback to students on their papers. With the development of audio recording technologies, audio feedback has become an increasingly popular alternative to written feedback. This study analyzed five instructors' commenting patterns of both written and audio feedback. The five instructors, who…

Based on Bowden's (1993) notion of containment, this study analyzes how containment--as well as other pedagogical restrictions and limitations--was manifested in the high-school-to-college transition of first year student writers. This study addresses the following questions of inquiry: "How do participants' experiences in high school affect…

Student writers labeled "underprepared" by colleges often have trouble imagining themselves as scholars. Challenges these students routinely encounter include difficulty forming original insights and translating ideas to the page. Although the usage of the term "underprepared" varies across institutional contexts, the…

Gateway courses are foundational, college-level courses that apply to a student's program of study or to a college's general education requirements. These courses are typically considered first-year or lower-division courses and serve as a basis for more advanced studies. Research has demonstrated that completing gateway courses in two key…