Writing Across the Digital Curriculum: Supporting Student Writing in Digital Learning Environments

Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo, Associate Director Writing Program, Online Writing, SBS/English

Description:

Faculty are charged with the responsibility of teaching course content while fostering effective writing skills that lead to academic, professional, and civic success. However, these writing skills are often overlooked in a content-heavy, deadline-driven grading environment.

Scaffolded assignments that provide support of product and process are one way to address this concern and have been shown to result in more robust educational outcomes (Herrington, 1981; Kirsher, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). The problem many faculty have with providing “extra” writing instruction and scaffolded assignments (i.e., several small assignments leading to a larger project) is that it potentially adds more work to their schedules.

To facilitate improved writing across the curriculum and in the disciplines, this workshop offers faculty digital technologies to help students scaffold writing projects. The support for both faculty and students are dependent on the strategy of scaffolding a major research and writing project into smaller, more manageable, low-stakes assignments. To help faculty assign and students complete a major research and writing assignment, this presentation will provide digitally mediated activity/assignment prompts for faculty and students that can be adapted to numerous assignments.

There will be a variety of activities for each the following scaffolded steps: 1) Identify Topic/Problem/Question; 2) Find & Track Secondary Resources; 3) Read & Evaluate Secondary Resources; 4) Synthesize Ideas & Resources; 5) Draft & (Peer) Review; 6) Present Final Project; and 7) Reflect.

Who Should Come:

Instructors who have online or hybrid courses that include writing assignments

For This Workshop:

Bring your laptop to this workshop, along with your syllabus and major writing assignment prompts.

If you do not have a UA Google Apps for Education account with your NetID, sign up at account.arizona.edu. Workshop materials will be shared with registered atttendees in a Google Drive.