In response to a charge from the University Senate, a task force examined the influence of class size on student success in first-year composition courses that satisfy general education composition requirements. Using pre-existing data on first-time, first-year students with the entry cohort ranging from 2004 to 2015, a random forest analysis…

Community colleges have transitioned from traditional developmental course sequences to accelerated corequisite remediation models to provide students with an expedited pathway to college-level courses. This study was designed to compare the mean percentage of passes for participants enrolled in 4 and 6-contact hour corequisite English courses.…

This dissertation compares the impact of instructor screencast feedback and instructor written feedback on the writing of college students in freshman composition courses. A mixed methods study was used to assess the level of improvement between drafts of essays, the final scores of essays, and the level of improvement over time for both types of…

This study assessed student research papers using a rubric to determine the information literacy skills of students in introductory composition classes. Librarians taught a pilot composition course that infused information literacy (IL) into the traditional English curriculum. The students' IL skills were compared to those of undergraduates…

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…

Institutions of higher education in the United States continue to witness a dramatic shift in the spectrum of diversity in their student populations. Multiple variables of difference that mixed student demographics bring to university campuses make internationalization work necessary both inside and outside the classroom. Internationalization of…

Wikipedia's gender gaps are both well-established and well-challenged, and while Wikipedia-based assignments have become more common in composition, teacher-scholars have not fully explored the opportunities for feminist pedagogy offered by the encyclopedia. This article reports on a teacher research study designed to examine the efficacy of the…

This study explores the effects of community engagement on college writers years after completing first-year composition courses with service-learning partnerships. Since the 1990's, scholarship has connected service-learning pedagogy and the gains that student writers stand to enjoy when writing for audiences beyond the classroom and purposes…

There is minimal research which makes the connection between mobile technology and improved student achievement. This study addressed the gap in the literature and considered the dynamic and fluid engagement mobile technology brings to the teaching and learning environment to improve student essay scores in the composition classroom. Freshman…

This qualitative study explored the experience of five first-time college students enrolled in and two faculty members who taught the first semester of college composition with embedded writing intervention tools. Student participants were all first-time college students enrolled in the first semester of college composition; research was conducted…

Students' successes in first-year writing courses at the university level are critical to academic success and degree completion. Fostering students' engagement in first-year writing courses has proved challenging for institutions of higher education (IHE). Utility value interventions (UV) employing social psychological intervention (SPI) methods…

Peer and self-assessment methods have strong theoretical underpinnings in the literature in supporting writing from adolescents through adults and across the curriculum, but empirical research assessing the impact of each method on writing achievement outcomes is lacking, particularly for different learner achievement levels. This…

The relationship between prosody and comprehension, previously demonstrated in K--12 students, was examined in university students enrolled in first-year writing classes. Students completed the Gray Oral Reading Test-5 both before and after an expressive reading intervention (ER) or no oral reading instruction (NI). Throughout the semester, the ER…

This article presents the results of a 2016 classroom research study assessing the impact of open pedagogy on student skills mastery in English 101, a first-year undergraduate composition course at a two-year community college in North America. Ninety-two students in five sections used the same free OER course materials, but two sections were…

This study evaluated the effect of employing reading-to-write strategies and joining college composition and reading courses for provisionally admitted, first-year-writing students in the United States. The article discusses a mixed methods study of an experimental course-design model involving 47 students in the experimental group, 47 students in…