This study explores the effectiveness of video demonstrations compared to live classroom visits for promoting writing center services to students in first-year writing courses. Using a randomized cluster experimental design, the researchers implemented either an in-person demonstration, a video demonstration, or no intervention (control). Pre- and…

Instructors of first-year composition (FYC) face the challenge of crafting rhetorically diverse opportunities for student writers within a classroom setting. As a result, many have embraced service-learning or community-engaged pedagogy. Oral history projects may be incorporated into curricula by faculty who embrace this approach to teaching, but…

Mindful breathing has been linked to changes in physiology, but we took the practice further by examining whether a mindfulness breathing intervention, a three-minute breathing exercise marked by focused attention on the sensations of breath, affected writing anxiety, and writing performance measures. In addition, we examined mindful breathing as…

Institutional assessment initiatives can provide opportunities to make the intellectual work of teaching and learning in composition studies more visible. Reciprocally, the scholarship of teaching and learning's situatedness within disciplinary norms and values can enhance institutional assessments, providing a check on the tendency to rely…

Although teacher feedback is vital in teaching students to write, and is a topic of interest and debate in L1 (native or first-language) and L2 (second language) composition theory, there are virtually no studies that analyze teacher commentary conducted in a linguistically diverse setting of L1 and L2 first-year composition students. This study,…

In summer 1990, the English Department of the Metropolitan Community College District (MCCD) in Missouri conducted a self-study to determine whether the English program's subject matter, academic standards, and methods of instruction were consistent with objectives. An Evaluation Committee, consisting of three English instructors representing each…