an old-school notion: writing required...write your thoughts and have someone read it carefully and...

Home News Special Reports College, Reinvented

College, Reinvented

October 15, 2012

An Old-School Notion: WritingRequiredBy Dan Berrett

oo many students aren't learningenough.

That alarm was sounded by the bookAcademically Adrift two years ago and hasbeen the theme of numerous articles andconferences since. It also underlies thefrustrations of employers who find recentgraduates ill-prepared for the workplace.

What if colleges, in their search to moreclearly demonstrate how much students arelearning, insisted on an old-fashionedrequirement: writing?

Writing works exceedingly well as both away to assess learning and a means ofdeepening that learning, according toexperts who study its effects on students.

Even faculty members whose disciplines arenot commonly associated with writing thinkso.

Just as particles gain

mass as they move

through the Higgs

boson field, he says,

ʺstudent learning

gains heĞas students

interact through

writing with the

subjects they are

studying.ʺ

"There are very few test methodologies thatare as effective as having you sit down andwrite your thoughts and have someone readit carefully and come back with commentsand say, 'You have to rewrite this,'" saysDaniel D. Warner, a professor ofmathematical sciences at ClemsonUniversity.

That's because writing is uniquely able to"make thinking visible," says Julie A.

An Old-School Notion: Writing Required - College, Reinvented - The Chr... http://chronicle.com/article/An-Old-School-Notion-Writing/135106/

1 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

Reynolds, associate director ofundergraduate studies at Duke University.It lays bare students' thinking, showing howwell they grasp the subject matter in waysthat a multiple-choice or short-answertest—or even a discussion section—simplycan't.

"Anywhere we can make their thoughtprocess visible is where faculty can have thegreatest impact in their teaching," Ms.Reynolds says.

That view is not fully embraced in otherdisciplines, says Christopher Thaiss, chairof the writing program at the University ofCalifornia at Davis. Some faculty membersmay not see writing as their expertise, hesays, and many are concerned that timespent on students' writing assignments willtake away precious time needed for coveringmaterial.

That doesn't need to be the case. Short,frequent assignments to which facultyrespond can have a profound effect, he says."There are so many ways to do it, most ofwhich don't take a lot of time."

Seeking to improve learning by makingbetter use of writing is decidedly old school.It runs against the grain of sexy new ideasabout how to change higher education, likemassive open online courses. Assigning andevaluating writing are also labor-intensivetasks that are not easily done in largeclasses. And they are uneasy fits for aneconomic model increasingly reliant oncontingent faculty members, who oftenhave little time or are not paid for grading.

But if academe and its critics want studentsto leave college with sharper thinking skills,writing ought to gain a higher priority, saysPaul V. Anderson, a professor of English atElon University.

He likens writing's effect on students to therecently observed subatomic particle theHiggs boson. Just as particles gain mass asthey move through the Higgs boson field, hesays, "student learning gains heft asstudents interact through writing with the


2 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

subjects they are studying."

Mr. Anderson bases such conclusions onresearch he and several colleagues began in2007. Their project, the Partnership for theStudy of Writing in College, hasadministered a 27-question supplement tothe National Survey of StudentEngagement, known as Nessie, that focuseson writing practices.

The researchers found that clearlyexplained assignments in which freshmenand seniors had to construct meaningthrough their writing—summarizesomething they had read, explain in writingthe meaning of numerical or statistical data,argue a position using evidence andreasoning—had a noticeable effect on deepand sustained learning.

Most of the students in the study were notasked to carry out those kinds of exercises,the research revealed, in results that werecorroborated by a similar survey of facultymembers.

Writing opportunities should be createdthroughout a student's time in college, inboth general-education courses and inclasses for their major, says Chris M. Anson,director of the writing-and-speakingprogram at North Carolina State Universityand a co-author of the research report.

"We know you can't get it right in 15 or 16weeks," he says. "It's so highlydevelopmental that we can't assumestudents will somehow learn it once andapply it brilliantly in the upper levels of thecurriculum."

That's why Ms. Reynolds, of Duke, useswriting to teach biology students at bothends of their college experience. She guidesseniors in their theses and, this year, begana new course for freshmen. She asks themto interview life-sciences researchers abouttheir projects and evaluate their claims tobe on the cutting edge of the discipline. Thestudents have to weigh the researchers'work in the context of the scholarlyliterature and write a paper explaining theirconclusions. "They have to construct anargument," she says. "This is persuasivewriting."

Rather than line-editing their students' finalwork, she reviews early drafts and respondsto the larger ideas. Peer reviews supplementstudents' efforts to reshape their papersalong the way. The approach is lesstime-consuming for her and ultimately hasa more profound impact on students, saysMs. Reynolds.


3 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

Writing required—in

every course

2 presidents for every

institution

The end of grades

Degrees with a price

tag

Community colleges

for real students

An NCAA that puts

students first

High-tech college

counseling

School at age 3; no

more 12th grade

Truly global campuses

No more monographs

The new for-profit: a

low-profit

Want space? Pay for it

Crowd-financed

research

Faculty trained to

teach

A tax for higher

education

Such experiments suggest that the length ofthe final product is not the chief concern,says Charles H. Paine, director of rhetoricand writing at the University of New Mexicoand another co-author of the study based onNessie data.

"You need not assign the big old 25-pageterm paper," he says. "The kind of writingthey do is more important than theamount."

How tooverhaulacademe

Read more | Send us your

ideas

CommentsPowered by DISQUS

Add a comment

akshanks

0 comments 0 likes received

Type your comment here.


4 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

Totally agree with this.

12 people liked this.

Less writing is the last thing Higher Education needs. It might be a stretch - but maybe students

aren't learning anything because the type of writing assigned isn't intellectually stimulating, not

because the process of writing itself isn't beneficial. The type of writing Ms. Reynolds assigns to

her students would be more effective in helping students learn to stand on their own two feet as

thinkers. But Instead, students are repeatedly asked to regurgitate research in the same format

they have since they were taught to write. I hate to play the boredom card, but...


I agree. The personal narrative as given to most undergrads is probably the least effective

writing assignment for stimulating critical thinking because it requires no problem solving,

no research, and no use of evidence. It's premise is inherently in arguable so it doesn't

stimulate discourse. Good creative non-fiction is another story - it requires a lot of creative,

intellectual work - but that's not the kind of narrative assignment most students get.


My weekly writing assignments require the students to explain to me what they learned in

class. If they don't give adequate explanations, they get points docked. This forces them to

do the critical thinking and application necessary to understand the material, which is the

point of the exercise.

Also, the weekly writing assignments constitute 30% of their overall course grade; they

cannot pass the class with a C or better unless they do them.

1 person liked this.

"writing required -- in every course"

Let's run some numbers for a typical state university:

10 pages of writing per course per student

times 5 courses per term = 50 pages of writing per term per student

times 30,000 students = 1.5 million pages of writing per term

times 5 minutes reading/grading/feedback time per page = 7.5 million minutes per term

divided by 1500 faculty members (including instructors) = 5000 minutes per term per faculty

member

divided by 15 weeks per term = 333 minutes per week per faculty member

divided by 60 minutes per hour = 5.5 hours per week per faculty member

Thus for every minute you need to read, grade, and provide feedback for each page of student

Showing 40 of 87 comments

Sort by Follow comments: by e-mail by RSS

Real-time updating is paused. (Resume)

aloofbooks 3 days ago

robinsonmw 3 days ago

Sarah Adams 2 days ago

teachergriff 16 hours ago

fortysomethingprof 3 days ago


5 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

writing, you are spending a little more than one hour per week. Maybe you find that reasonable,

but one needs to be realistic about how long these things really take if there is going to be

quality on both sides of the assessment. The problem with some of these grand ideas is that

nobody ever runs the numbers, or worse, they fudge the numbers.


Grading writing is more work but the time can be shortened. Assign one-three paragraph

answers and grade them with a simple rubric. The students learn more from doing the

writing than they do from reading your comments. Small weekly writing assignments have

huge benefits to students. And they are why we have jobs, right?


I didn't say it wasn't time well spent, I just thought it important to recognize how

much time was involved, and that administrators don't always do this.

Okay, since we're discussing, you said three one-paragraph answers (presumably

about one page total), graded against a rubric, grade entered in the courseware, etc..

How many minutes does each one take, honestly, if you read ever word?


I take one to two minutes for a one-page or less assignment. It is true that it does

add up when I have 300 or more students but the pay-off is worth it for me.


I have to wonder at what level of complexity the student is writing and how

carefully and deeply you read the student's response to be able to complete

the process in 1-2 minutes. In my opinion, a rubric (which I always use)

rarely captures the nuances of the student's thought processes. True

feedback is like a short tutoring session ... figuring out where the student is

and pointing the way to where she needs to be.

I completely agree that writing assignments lead to deeper learning,

providing the student does not find some way to cheat. Unfortunately,

technology has amplified the students' ability to cheat. And 'archman'

(below) is correct; students don't like writing, which leads many of them to

look for ways to cheat. Too many of students want the credential of a

diploma with a minimum of work (learning is not often part of their

agenda). If student evaluations play a heavy role in faculty evaluation,

faculty are likely to find a way to accommodate students (especially if they

are adjunct or contingent faculty ... I'm tenured full, so I feel that pressure

less than most).

But say that you have students write their response in front of you (not

possible in most online classes). In my opinion, good feedback takes

significant faculty time. Meanwhile, administrators move to increase class

size as well as accreditation and service work, and research work.

Administrators naturally want to get more productivity out of their faculty

and fewer student complaints. Faculty, not being dummies, do what they

are rewarded to do. If they give students their nights and weekends to

provide the feedback and are able to counter or ignore student complaints

in evaluations, they are virtually guaranteeing burnout.

Without structural change to open up time and reward for feedback, writing

assignments are more likely to shrink as a feature of higher ed coursework.

That structural change will not happen unless society (parents, employers,

Jean Stuntz 3 days ago



laurelin 3 days ago


6 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

taxpayers, etc.) demands it, applying pressure to administrators.


I read quickly and the rubric has checkboxes for feedback,

I simply check the ones that are appropriate instead of writing out the

message. I agree students do not like to write but when I

am transparent about why they are writing then they do it. I am not

worried about plagiarism as the assignments do not lend themselves to

anything that can be found on the internet.

I do not waste in-class time with activities they can do out of class. :-)


I should imagine that students would gain more writing experience by

creating study-groups for their classes (minimum three members,

maximum five members), groups in which the students write papers

for the study group which are distributed in multiple copies to the

group to read and analyze. (My model is the system of study groups

seen in the film and TV series "The Paper Chase".) I certainly wish

there had been such groups when I was in graduate school at

UT-Austin and the Univ. of Pennsylvania. The students could have

given each other moral and knowledge support prior to their classes,

and the classes themselves could have really sizzled with student

responses to the professors. Trying to learn as a lonely academic

monad bombinating in the void is not a productive use of a student's

time. --E.A.C.

Well no, this isn't really a complete solution. It helps for sure, but the sad reality is

that grading writing is inherently time-consuming and it can be tedious work, and I

say this as a comp/rhet teacher who this semester is probably going to end up reading

and grading about 200 student essays in three different writing classes-- freshmen,

juniors/seniors, and grad students. There are "short cuts" and I can finish

commenting on a stack of essays a lot faster now than I could when I started this 20

some-odd years ago, but it still takes a lot of time, especially if the comments are

going to be at all meaningful and if the writing assignments are going to beyond

something the length of a thank you note.

And it is also worth mentioning that this is why this hype over MOOCs is so bizarre to

me: you can't have meaningful writing assignments in those classes, and yet we're

being told simultaneously that the "solution" to the education crisis is online classes

with tens of thousands of students. Really?


This is so quaint and charming. As soon as I return from the General Store and milk

the goats, I'll get right on it. Seriously, back in the 70s we helped lead the revival of

writing. Today, I don't even have my grad students write. Fortunately, there never ever

ever is a call for that today in the workplace. Instead, I make sure every study gets

mentored on a research project and makes a powerpoint presentation that I and the

class evaluates. Mentoring, lengthy projects, formal oral presentations (and ability to

evaluate them) are far, far, far more essential learning outcomes than writing (or test

taking).

P.S.: I've now been forced to lead committees that have drafted a number of course

and program "rubrics," a totally made up definition for an inapplicable word -- check

the dictionary (like the word "vetting" whose definition of check out applicant


eacowan 6 hours ago

stevendkrause 2 days ago

darccity 2 days ago


7 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

backgrounds does exist in dictionaries either).


"Today, I don't even have my grad students write. Fortunately, there never ever

ever is a call for that today in the workplace." Really? There is never ever ever a

call for writing in the workplace? I wonder what workplaces you've encountered

since your claim runs contrary to everything I, my students, and most of my

colleagues have experienced. Most of my non-academic writing has occurred on

the job, only rarely in an official writing capacity. Whether writing memos,

reports, performance reviews, materials for public consumption, web content,

help guides, or just basic "we're having a potluck" announcements, workers of

many stripes have to do extensive writing on the job.

You are doing your grad students, and their eventual employers, a gross

disservice by not requiring them to write. Also, your sneer at the word "rubric" is

laughable since the word's history stretches back to Middle English, Old French,

and Latin, and it appears in every dictionary in my possession.

To me, you sound like someone who just doesn't want to put in the time and

effort necessary for good and effective teaching of writing--thus, your use of

PowerPoint presentations. I feel sorry for your students.


Check your dictionary. Rubic is indeed an ancient word, and has evolved

from red brick to other uses, none having anything to do with what is now

the hottest "new" word at every university, just so none of the old timers

will have any idea they are discussing the same old concepts. I've been

through generations of changing lingo on learning outcome measurement

(which I'm sure you oppose).

And I'll pit my grads students against yours any day!


Okay, so we disagree about the validity of the word rubric as it applies

to evaluating student writing. As for rubric being the hottest "new"

word, I wonder how that is since

it's been part of my college vocabulary for over 20 years. What exactly

is your complaint about the word? Your comments aren't clear at all,

so I'm asking for clarification.

Also, I have no idea what it is you're sure I oppose: Is it the changing

lingo or learning outcome measurement that you think I oppose? And

upon what is your opinion based? I said nothing to indicate any

opposition to either, so...

Based on what you've written here, I'd happily pit my freshmen against

your grad students any day.


I would toss in my 16 year old cousins for that fight.


Paul M. Bennett 1 day ago

darccity 1 day ago


jeffJ1 1 day ago


8 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

"There never ever ever is a call for that today in the workplace." Until the kid's

first day on the job, where she has to write an email to her supervisor and it's so

ungrammatical that the supervisor has to call her to ask for clarification (before

mentally noting that now he will have to write all of the memos and reports he

was planning on assigning to her).

You're kidding, right? Not only to suggest that writing is no longer necessary but

that it's so unnecessary as to warrant a joke about living 100 years ago? Is this

comment coming through a time-hole from the year 2525 when human beings

no longer need to communicate lucidly with each other?


Never a call for writing in the workplace? When were you last in any workplace

outside your own department? Academe requires writing in order to advance in

the field. Business requires writing in order to communicate with superiors,

subordinates, salespeople, customers... I could go on, but if you honestly think

writing is never called for in the workplace, you are seriously out of touch.


One of my previous STEM courses was redesigned for the "Writing Across The Disciplines"

initiative. We had to basically gut one third of our course content in order to fit in what we

considered a decent and effective writing component. Faculty time spent grading went up

by over 3 times.

We were extremely satisfied with the quality of our writing assignments, but we also

lament the loss of science content taught. And of course, the faculty time spent grading the

writing assignments is extremely burdensome. Given the faculty workloads required to

maintain the writing component, I am not sanguine that this curricula will persist. The

students overwhelmingly hate the writing assignments in their course evaluations. This

negativity affects the faculty. Some instructors are beginning to shy away from teaching

this course.


You can use the writing assignment to teach the content. That does not cut down on

grading time, though.


Jean Stuntz knows what she's talking about.

Henry Adams


Thanks! :-)

jeffJ1 1 day ago

teachergriff 16 hours ago

archman 3 days ago


henry_adams 3 days ago



9 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM


In STEM we often find that lab courses are good for writing, whereas some

lecture courses really are not. In an advanced abstract algebra course, for

example, it's hard to see what kind of prose the students will write aside from the

little bits that go into their proofs. I concede that it might be possible to create

writing assignments around the problem sets that normally occupy most of a

student's effort in courses like statics or quantum mechanics, but they will be

obvious contrivances.


One approach I have seen in STEM is to have students write about

a scenario in which they might use the process they are working on. This

makes them think about why they are learning it and they learn it more

deeply.


Assignment: Write about a scenario in which you will use Galois

Theory to establish an impossibility proof for a classical geometric

construction problem.

Like that?

a bit "concrete" in the psychiatric sense. Back in the day, for math,

physics, etc, the equivalent to what is discussed here as writing

was to expect that we write out and complete well-reasoned

proofs that work, or calculate solutions to problems showing the

work along the way, etc. In relation to your post earlier on, yes,

that DOES take a good deal of time. But 6 hr per week per faculty

member in a teaching-intensive Univ, on top of say 10 hr/wk

contact time and 20 hr/wk preparation time probably seem to

most of the nation to leave enough time for scholarship /

research AND to be a reasonable expectation if most of one's

salary is to be covered by something other than the research

grants.


Making a writing assignment *relevant* to your course content is not so difficult.

Having a writing assignment *substitute* for course content is a significantly

more difficult proposition.

In my experience (STEM), writing assignments can supplement and reinforce

content knowledge, but they cannot replace it.





phonenear 1 day ago

archman 1 day ago

lowenstm 2 days ago


10 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

"...loss of science content taught." Science content LEARNED may be more

important, and the writing will help with that.


While I submit that students gain from the writing process -- their writing skills

do improve, and to some extent probably their critical thinking too -- I don't have

the experience that writing in STEM courses leads to superior content learning. I

think they gain the most from interesting, challenging homework. This too

requires a long time to grade properly.

You had to take out 1/3 of the course content? I find that troubling - I do writing

instruction in all my classes but it doesn't impede on course content that much. I

wonder if your WAD program needs to spend more time focused on how you can

teach content and writing simultaneously. How is it structured? Are you teaching

writing as a distinct unit within the class, because that could be the problem.


Yes Sarah, that's all fine. You didn't have to adjust your content to incorporate

writing. But what's that you teach? Medieval History? Is it impossible for you

to consider that it might not fit like a glove in something like Mechanical

Engineering?

We wanted to have a writing component that was very, very good. Sacrifices had

to be made. One quarter of our class time was transferred into teaching technical

writing (which our college does not offer as a standalone course). A big chunk of

other class time was rearranged to accomodate the experimental components of

the writing assignments (this is STEM).

The faculty pushed for this program early on. There was much wailing and crying

that "our upper division students don't know how to write", and "our upper

division students have not had any scientific writing experience". So now they get

that experience, and they get it well.

There have been some thoughts about scaling back the writing loads, in response

to both student and faculty complaints about workload for all involved. It will

probably be done in the near future. Strangely, most faculty don't seem to care a

whole lot about the lost content knowledge. The general view seems to be that

students will "make it up in their upper division courses". I really can't say that I

disagree with this, as our course is an introductory science one.

Choice 1: Teach students how to read and write

Choice 2: Teach students core content knowledge

I would have to say that if I was an upper division instructor, I would be far more

concerned about my incoming students' basic abilities to read and write. It is

usually much easier to dial back content knowledge to help bring students up to

speed, than it is to integrate basic technical writing into your course.



Sarah Adams 1 day ago

fortysomethingprof 1 day ago

archman 1 day ago


11 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

Welcome to high school teaching! If I actually read each paper carefully and give feedback,

it takes me 15 hours of my own time. Yet, colleges seem to expect high schools to teach

more writing.


The reason colleges are trying to teach writing in every class is the lack of writing

ability the students have after graduating high school. Unfortunately, far too many

students arrive on college campuses that cannot write complete sentences. "Welcome

to high school teaching"-- We are not high school teachers, but we are too often filling

the role of remedial high school teacher on college campuses.


And if colleges weren't so focused on increasing admissions every year they might

make admissions processes more truly rigorous and more careful in expectations.

High school teachers would demand more of elementary graduates, and elementary

teachers might demand and find ways that parents get involved in literacy

development. (If other countries with whom we claim to compete can do it, why can't

this country?) But then, attending to writing, at every level, requires that teachers at

every level be themselves truly literate. Perhaps that's one of the problems.


If you don't give formative feedback you've missed a major instructional opportunity

and defeated half the purpose of the writing assignment. Papers need to create and

further the scholarly conversation. May I suggest that you proof read less and focus

more on global issues in your comments? Keep your remarks to one paragraph and

give students 1-3 issues to work on at a time, never more than that. Doing that sped

up my grading a lot and I didn't see students' grammar decline. Actually writing "you

have problems with Subject Verb agreement - go through your paper and correct all of

them" gets better results than red penning every SV problem on every page.


"If I actually read each paper carefully and give feedback, it takes me

15 hours of my own time. Yet, colleges seem to expect high schools to

teach more writing." If you're complaining about spending your "own time" on

reading carefully and giving feedback, I think you're in the wrong profession. If you're

not willing to read each paper carefully and give feedback, change careers and stop

griping. Maybe if high-school teachers like you would actually spend that time, we

college teachers wouldn't have to spend even MORE of our own time responding to

and correcting the writing produced by your former students. Spending ONLY 15

hours of my own time would be a welcome relief from the 20-30 hours a week I often

spend, with a huge portion of that going to the basics--mechanics, structure, coherent

sentences....


segads1 2 days ago

chedie 2 days ago

grannysm 2 days ago

Sarah Adams 1 day ago


cdwickstrom 2 days ago


12 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

Its a nice arithmetic logic, but unfortunately it does contain one significant flaw. If one

checks the rubric carefully, you find "5 minute reading/grading/feedback per page..." From

my experience as a professor who assigned written work in every class, and gave essay

exams, 50 minutes to read and grade a 10 pages of written work is at least twice as much as

is needed to provide meaningful and full feedback on that amount of writing. If we cut that

time down to say 3 minutes per page (30 minutes of grading time for each student's 10

pages of written work), the number becomes a far less "troubling" 3.3 hours per week, for

all the assessment of writing associated with teaching all assigned classes (this assumes a

100 student total teaching load in all classes assigned).

This is hardly too much time to spend in a critical portion of one's responsibilities,

especially instructors, whose principal role is classroom teaching.


Of course there were a number of assumptions in my calculations, and the whole

reason I spelled it out line by line was so that anyone could make his or her own

adjustments. But I'm surprised you picked on this particular factor because I

specifically disclaimed it in the final paragraph of my post, wherein I said that each

minute per page cost the faculty member a little more than an hour.

Maybe you look upon 3.3 hours per week as trivial effort, but if someone walked up to

you and said, "From now on you've got to spend every Tuesday between 8:40 AM and

12:00 PM grading writing assignments in addition to everything else you are already

doing," if you're as busy as the average faculty member, you're going to wonder where

the slug in the gut came from. In an R1 model, usually about 40% of a faculty

member's "effort" is expected to be on instruction. Assuming a 55 hour work week

(more assumptions!!), then 40% of effort is 24 hours, of which 3.3 hours is 15%. Thus

even using your number for minutes per page, with my number for total faculty

(1500), the institution would need to hire 225 faculty members to ensure that there is

sufficient effort available to keep pace with the goal of assigning so much writing.

The exact accuracy of the numbers is not the point. The point is that as soon as you

start to put ANY kind of reasonable numbers to the problem of assigning and grading

student writing, the amount of additional labor required starts to add up to a lot more

than administrators are willing to admit.

There are only two places where most of us can find 3.3 hours per week. One is

research. The other is our families. Neither is acceptable.


The Chronicle of Higher Education 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.



13 of 13 10/18/2012 3:35 PM

an old-school notion: writing required...write your thoughts and have someone read it carefully and...

Documents