Metacognition
Spotlight Archive 04: Generative AI (July 2023)
The public release of ChatGPT-3 in November 2022 opened a new chapter in the long history of writing and technology. We now live and teach in a world where generative AI tools are widely available, and it’s up to us to learn how to orient our students to this new environment and to develop approaches […]
Teaching Writing for Critical Language Awareness
The resources on this page, inspired by a critical language awareness (CLA) framework, teach students to examine language as a social practice and to reflect on the ideologies and power dynamics embedded within language use. Thank you to the Writing Program’s Curriculum Committee, who worked intensively on these resources in 2022-2024.
Reflective Writing Activities
All WR courses should offer students regular and varied opportunities for reflection, including personal, metacognitive, and social/systemic reflections that instructors assign as in-class activities and/or for homework throughout the term. Each semester, WR students will choose three of these reflections for inclusion in their cumulative portfolios. Below you will find ideas and examples that can […]
Effective Collaboration with Writing Centers
How can we as faculty make the best use of the Writing Center for our students? This guide offers some suggestions for how to introduce the Writing Center at the beginning of the semester, how to discuss tutoring with individual students before they make an appointment, and how to encourage students to respond critically to […]
Providing Feedback
One of our expectations in the CAS Writing Program is that faculty will provide students with “timely and substantive” feedback on their writing, both on drafts and on final versions of papers/projects. In general, all faculty will meet with students individually at least twice in the semester to discuss their writing in formal writing conferences, scheduled […]
WR 111 Language Presentations
In this activity, WR 111 students work in teams to review a language topic at the intersection of language and power, share it with the class, and practice their oral presentation skills at the same time. Instructors should make sure they have read the Faculty Guide to WR 111. Objective To work together to review […]
Composing a Multimodal Reflection
Prior to this activity, students need to have some form of written reflections, perhaps looking back at prior writing instruction, looking ahead and setting personal goals for themselves for this course, or otherwise considering their strengths and needs as writers. For this activity, they practice the act of remediation by translating their reflections into the […]
Cumulative Portfolios in the Writing Program
Since Fall 2023, all WR students create a portfolio in their first WR course and continue to add to it throughout subsequent WR courses. This cumulative portfolio assignment will create a shared experience for WR students, offering them a space to reflect on their growth and their developing identities as college writers and communicators over […]
WR 111 Mid-Semester Self-Evaluation
For this activity, students in WR 111 reflect on the assignments and experiences of the first half of the course. Instructors should plan on reading students’ written reflections and also on sharing them when requested. WR 112 instructors may adapt the questions to WR 112 skills and topics. Objective to think back over the last […]
Video Presentation and Reflections
For this assignment, students work in small groups to create and edit short video presentations (flexible in genre) to recast their research for a new audience. Students then reflect on their presentations. Guide to Oral/Signed Communication in Writing Classrooms Objective To remediate the findings of a research project into a different genre; to work […]