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 »
Remote Tutoring Support for Students
This post is part of our Keep Teaching blog series meant to help IU instructors move their classes online quickly due to COVID-19. For more detailed resources, see the Keep Teaching website. At the CITL, we’ve heard from many instructors about support resources for students during the move to virtual instruction. Beginning on Monday, March… 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 »
Why Can’t College Students Write?
As a college English teacher with over twenty years of experience, John Warner is often asked why recent graduates can’t write. Warner typically responds, “They’re doing exactly what we’ve trained them to do; that’s the problem” (2018, p. 2). As the subtitle to Warner’s Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities… Read more »
Writing to Learn: Activities that Foster Engagement and Understanding
Do your students struggle to learn difficult concepts in your courses? Do they often fail to meet your expectations on final writing products? Do they seem to dislike writing in general? Writing-to-learn assignments are short, informal tasks that help students understand course concepts and generate their own ideas for future exploration. Students complete these assignments… Read more »