Writing in STEM Classes

1. Steve Bernhardt Kirkpatrick Chair in Writing, University of Delaware June 2014 Writing in STEM Classes

2. What do we know? • Writing is the one skill students most want to improve • Writing increases the amount of time students spend on courses, their intellectual challenge, and their level of interest (Light) • Short, frequent writing activities (and oral discussion) improve content learning, course satisfaction, and persistence (various research)

3. What’s new from NSSE? • Meaning-constructing writing significantly improves all important measures of engagement: • increased higher-order thinking, • integrative learning, and • reflective learning

4. When do your students write?

5. What do your students write?

6. Informal or Formal? Polished published delivered (WID) Exploratory questioning tentative (WAC) Free writes, learning issues, notes, questions and confusions, brainstorming, clustering, exit tickets Plans, progress reports, task maps, mini-themes, learning logs, discussion, Q/A, reporting out Written exams, lab reports, solutions, summary/response, cases Reports, presentations, posters, publications, proposals, research studies

7. WAC or WID? WAC = Writing to learn Emphasis on the ways writing improves instruction, enhances learning, engages students WID = Learning to write Emphasis on professional skills, language of the discipline, thinking and communicating (like a nutritionist or accountant)

8. At your table: WAC or WID? WAC = Writing to learn • Identify several writing activities • How would you (do you) stage and use? • (Math example) WID = Learning to write • Identify several specific genres you might use in your classroom. • How would you assign, provide feedback, and evaluate?

9. What do (go0d) writers think about? • What’s my purpose? What do I want to do? • Who is my audience? What do they want? • What’s the situation? • What’s the genre? • What’s the medium? • Can I find a model?

10. Good WID assignments • Require students to construct meaning • Suggest a purpose, audience, situation • Vary in genre, length, formality • Stress process as well as product • Provide good models • Offer multiple opportunities for success

11. Create real/realistic assignments • Problem-based learning • Field studies • Case studies • Project-based learning • Service learning • Active learning • Team-based learning

12. Professionals-in-Training (WID) Students consistently had difficulty, across all disciplines: • gathering sufficient specific information • constructing the audience and the self • stating a position (taking a stance) • using appropriate discipline-based methods • managing complexity & organizing information Walvoord & McCarthy: Thinking and Writing in College

13. Make writing public • Take time to talk through assignments • Use rubrics so standards are shared • Describe your writing process—have students discuss theirs • Use peer review • Use forums or other posting apps • Share models

14. Where do we go wrong? • Not providing a rhetorical context • Spending time on post mortems • Editing instead of responding • Loading on big papers at end of term

15. Help! WAC Clearinghouse http://wac.colostate.edu/ Steve Bernhardt Writershelp.com sab@udel.edu