Most students come to their graduate programs with academic writing skills insufficient to excel in their studies. A lack of academic writing skills among graduate students has been a problem in a college of education at a large southeastern public research university where the project described in this article was implemented. To address this…

We assessed the benefits of employing microthemes--short in-class writing assignments designed to facilitate active learning--as pedagogical tools in psychology courses. Students in target course sections completed 10 in-class microthemes during a semester. We designed the microthemes to serve as active learning assignments that would enhance…

In a College Composition II (ENG 112) class offered during the spring of 2005 at John Tyler Community College (JTCC), the author implemented an information-literacy curriculum whose salient features include: students collaborated on a semester-long, original-research project. The Metro Richmond Supermarket Price Comparison provided a focused,…

The purpose of this study was to express in procedural terms one approach in the development of a technique to discover the rating strategies of essay graders. Sets of rater scores obtained from a reading of 256 high school essays by 32 experienced English teachers were submitted to a factor analysis which yielded four meaningful rater clusters.…

Involving graduate teaching assistants (GAs) in the development and implementation of rubrics has many benefits. GA involvement increases their sense of ownership of the rubrics and makes it more likely that they will regard the rubrics in a positive light. GAs have insights about the students whose work will be evaluated by the rubrics; and, as…

Discusses what is known about cognitive skills writing. Reports results of an experiment in which 288 youth in grades 7, 8, and 9 were given writing assignments relating to planning, translating, reviewing, and revising their papers. Discusses gender differences in cognitive writing processes and reviews literature on interventions for cognitive…