According to one national survey of 31,048 students conducted in 2020 by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU), “35% of undergraduates screened positive for major depressive disorder and 39% screened positive for generalized anxiety disorder” (Soria, Horgu, and Luu, 2020). The profound effects of Covid-19 on student mental health will likely continue during… Read more »
Implementing Successful Peer Review Practices
Peer review—the process of engaging students in providing feedback on each other’s work—is one of the most productive practices for courses that integrate any form of writing. While receiving useful feedback from their peers, students discover how others approach writing tasks. In doing so, students learn how to give, receive, and integrate feedback—skills that are… Read more »
Instructor Feedback as Communication
As Grant Wiggins asserts in Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, “Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).” But what kinds of feedback are effective in prompting students to learn?… Read more »
Problems with and Alternatives to Traditional Approaches to Grading Writing
As John Warner notes in Why They Can’t Write, “there’s little dispute that grades do more harm than good in helping students learn writing” (2018, p. 213). Grades are both a disincentive for students to learn and an imprecise measure of what they have learned. Students in classrooms with traditional grading practices—that is, those that… Read more »
How Writing Tutorial Services’ New Online Scheduler Can Help Your Students
Did you know that Writing Tutorial Services (WTS) is one of the few writing centers in the country offering subject-specific tutoring? This service allows your students to get tutoring that best matches their needs for your courses and assignments. And did you know that students can now schedule appointments online through the WTS website? Students… Read more »
Writing is a Process! Responding to Writing by International and Multilingual Students
We can best support all of our students’ writing development by integrating the writing process into our courses. The writing process consists of several carefully staged steps including brainstorming, drafting, peer review, revision, and editing. Students should be taught multiple strategies for accomplishing each of these steps. The writing process provides lots of opportunities for… Read more »