Engaging in Writing

This workshop builds faculty knowledge about course design factors that in turn build student self-efficacy and increase the promotion of academic integrity. Assignment and Assessment Design to Promote Academic Integrity reviews evidence-based teaching strategies for designing or revising course assignments to enhance students' learning, critical thinking, and reflection practices. The workshop includes support for creating activities and assignments that meet desired course learning outcomes, increase intrinsic motivation, and promote students' honest engagement with learning processes. In this workshop, participants will: 

• Review and reflect on current course assignments and assessments 
• Map course assignment scaffolding and arc
• Design "low stakes" formative activities and assignments to mediate single "high stakes" summative assessments
• Create materials to build class community and deepen critical engagement
• Participate in peer-review of assignment designs with other participants
• Design assessment rubrics for instructor reflection and transparent teaching, as well as efficient and consistent grading

Find out more on the Assignment and Assessment Design to Promote Academic Integrity webpage.

Writing in the Disciplines

This workshop is offered in partnership with the Office of Writing and Learning Initiatives and is designed to create space for faculty to explore how writing operates within their disciplines and to develop writing learning outcomes for their courses.  

Whether or not you currently embed writing into your curriculum, this workshop invites you to consider the following:  

• Writing in the discipline as a high impact practice 
• Genres associated with your discipline that may help prepare students for professional success 
• Nationally recognized practices in writing instruction 
• Characteristics of effective writing assignment design, including the benefits of "low stakes" and "high stakes" writing activities 
• The use of peer review to build community and deepen critical engagement 
• Strategies for incorporating revision and reflection into the writing process 

This workshop aligns with campus efforts to expand Graduation Writing Requirement (GWR) courses across the curriculum and includes information on the GWR course proposal process.

Find out more on the Writing in the Disciplines webpage. 

Look for these sessions in the CTLT newsletter throughout the academic year. Join CTLT Writing Instruction Specialist Dianna Winslow for one or more of these informal lunchtime Zoom conversations to pick up some handy ideas for using writing in any class you teach. Lunching while meeting is encouraged.

Topics for past sessions have included: 

• “Use Rubrics. Trust me.” (Session handout on using rubrics)
• “Focused Peer Review? Yes, Please!” (Session handout on peer review)
• "Giving Helpful Formative Feedback to Students’ Writing." (Sessions handout on responding to student writing)

These discussions are grounded in written communication scholarship, which confirms writing as an excellent tool for students to learn, reflect on, and apply course concepts, understand how specific disciplinary writing conventions work, develop the ability to transfer their knowledge from one learning context to another, and communicate disciplinary knowledge with non-disciplinary audiences.