How can we encourage our students to engage with their peers when their attention has shifted toward their individual projects and final assignments at the end of the quarter?

Once students begin to work on final projects and look toward Spring Break activities, their attention often shifts from active engagement with their peers toward a focus on the instructor, or more specifically, course expectations and final grades. Students may also view you, the instructor, as the sole audience for their final writing projects, thus neglecting to take their colleagues into consideration. The following writing exercises encourage students to re-engage with their peers inside and outside of the classroom at the end of the quarter and help you maintain a strong learning community through finals week and beyond. (more…)

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…)