Most online instructors fall back on tried-and-true writing assignments and the LMS discussion forum to facilitate student engagement with material. But papers do not provide the opportunity for students to engage with other students on their ideas, and discussion forums track the conversation into pre-established
Sometimes it isn’t all that easy to see that you’ve learned something or are in the process of doing so. I have sat with many students, handed them something written early in the course and asked them to look it in light of something they’ve
How good are your students at looking over their work and assessing the quality? Can they identify its strengths and say where it needs more work? Being able to make accurate judgments about one’s work is an important professional skill. I keep worrying that there
We often think of writing as a reflection of finished thinking, whether it be via a term paper, final exam, or other culminating project. However, writing is also a powerful tool for thinking, to help students construct meaning and to deepen their understandings of complex
As a longstanding psychology faculty member at my institution, I routinely teach junior-level classes on research methods in the social sciences. Successful completion of an undergraduate course in research methods is vital not only in my field but in many others where, if not expected
Do your writing assignment focus on the product or the process? How about your students? Where do you think their focus is?
At the end of the day, our students aren’t going to take from our courses the products they developed and use them in
I teach online at an open enrollment institution, which means I get students at all levels of writing ability. Many of them are solid writers with a good understanding of the different steps of the writing process. But I also have students who are just
A faculty member once told me that experience does not teach; only reflection on experience teaches. We become better teachers by reflecting on what went right or wrong after each class to learn what we should change in the future. This is why I try
Not everything we do in our courses works as well as we’d like. Sometimes it’s a new assignment that falls flat, other times it’s something that consistently disappoints. For example, let’s take a written assignment that routinely delivers work that is well below our expectations.
Thanks to the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum movement we are having our students write more and we’re using a wider range of writing assignments. Right?
If that’s what you’re doing, it’s consistent with the actions of faculty teaching undergraduate sociology courses; as documented by an analysis of 405
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