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…

This dissertation examines the integral role of identity in first-year composition, a crucial site of writing instruction predominantly taught by contingent, often inexperienced faculty. It explores how identity is manifested in composition textbooks, which are pivotal in transmitting knowledge about writing and pedagogy across various programs…

Despite a rapid growth in student interest, the Rhetoric and Composition minor at the College of the Holy Cross faces staffing challenges due to its placement in an interdisciplinary center but reliance on faculty lines in English. In an attempt to address these challenges, we sought to develop a new gateway course to the minor that was deeply…

Topics and resources from honors education are used to teach argumentation in writing composition. The author discusses efficacies for increasing student awareness of, and reflection on, issues in honors education while engaging first-year students in honors issues that directly affect their lives.

For first year writing instructors, the teaching practicum is vital for navigating both the writing classroom and the institutions in which the classroom is embedded. The composition teaching practicum, or the often-required training course for new writing instructors, is where new instructors are typically first introduced to their institutional…

The purpose of the study was to validate a writing motivation questionnaire that consists of four scales for first-year college writers--students with low writing skills in basic writing classes and students in typical first-year composition (FYC)--to investigate differences between these two groups and to examine the relationship of motivational…

In this dissertation, I present two studies on transnational, multilingual undergraduate students which focus on students' rich, complex communication patterns across contexts. First, I examine the linguistic, literate, rhetorical, and cultural resources they deploy to make meaning across non-academic contexts as they take care of everyday tasks,…

To teach composition in this era means to engage students with technology; it is all but an unspoken requirement at the majority of universities. This dissertation theorizes, however, that the imbricated use of technology in first-year writing (FYW) classrooms places rural students at an inherent disadvantage, with issues of inadequate…

The Accessibility Working Group (AWG) aims to create a collaborative culture of access within our group, our composition program, and our larger professional and pedagogical communities. To create a culture of access, participants need to be collaborative members of a community to continuously negotiate access needs that change over time. The AWG…

Despite decades of increasing assessment activity in higher education, the literature provides few examples of assessment leading to improved student learning (Banta & Blaich, 2011). The simple model for learning improvement provides an avenue for linking assessment efforts with faculty development and pedagogical changes in order to increase…

This dissertation has a couple of purposes: (1) to examine what writing knowledge and digital experiences are transferred/fail to be transferred to digital writing in a first-year writing class, and (2) to explore how writing knowledge, digital literacy, and students' prior writing experiences impact students' transfer between different activity…

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…

Dual-credit programs, also known in the state of Ohio as the College-Credit-Plus program, is an initiative across the United States to provide another method for high school students--and sometimes even younger students--to earn postsecondary credit before graduating from high school. This project investigates the experience of dual-credit…

The purpose of this study was to measure to what extent an experimental method of teaching argument incorporating elements from both Toulmin's (2004) structural approach and Walton's (2013) dialectical approach effects first-year college students' ability to write strong arguments. This experimental instruction used critical questioning as a…

As labor-based grading contracts gain momentum in first-year writing classrooms, new kinds of response to writing take center stage. We explore how session notes composed by embedded peer tutors and students become rich tools in a writing process and create a gateway to the writing center for first-year students. By reading session notes in…