How can I get my students to pay attention to style in their writing?

The MLA and APA have recently revised their style manuals, and it’s a good opportunity to talk with your students about the stylistic conventions that scholars in your field follow. On the one hand, these conventions are formal–citations of different kinds must be written in a specific format, and rules for specialized cases of usage must be obeyed. On the other, style can also be taught as a tool of writing that helps student develop their individual writing voices while they also learn how style embodies particular ways of thinking within a discipline. Because style often embodies scholarly and disciplinary values, it is important for students to understand its significance and feel comfortable making appropriate stylistic choices within their writing. Here are some approaches to addressing style with your students: (more…)

Question: How might I fix the kinks in my writing assignments this quarter? What has worked for my colleagues?

Activity Idea: Take some time at the end of this quarter to think about what writing assignments worked well and reflect on some of the challenges you faced teaching writing. Your colleague in the office down the hall might be your best resource for this, and you might be hers as well. In our work in WAC, we have the privilege of talking to Ohio State’s most creative and resourceful teachers every day. For this tip email, we’ve collected a few approaches from three instructors we’ve worked with this quarter that have really inspired us: (more…)

How can I find out more about what exactly my students are learning throughout the quarter?

Evaluating student responses to formal assignments alone only tells us so much about what students are learning, and usually tells us very little about how they are learning. Informal, reflective writing can give you a window into student learning: how they go about tackling a problem or question, what challenges they face in an assignment, and what about their work sparks their personal interests and passions. (more…)

As we are planning ahead for a busy Autumn Quarter, how can we provide students opportunities to get perspectives on writing from outside the classroom?

Writing for the classroom is very different from writing for the workplace or other public forums in context, expectations, and effect, and students can have a hard time adapting what they learn in the classroom to other settings. Student writers can benefit from hearing outside guests such as workplace professionals or scholars talk about their writing in the field. (more…)

How can we use end-of-the-quarter grading to help our students continue the learning process even after they’ve left our classrooms?

We often talk about grading solely as a form of evaluation and judgment without considering the various ways it can help students learn. As we near the end of the quarter, consider using grading as a tool to increase students’ critical awareness of their own learning process. (more…)