Using the handbook in class: Reading assignments and peer groups

My classes, including a section of Comp 1, start on August 31. This semester I’ll be doing something I never have before: I’ll be giving no whole-chapter reading assignments in the handbook. I’m doing that because I’ve had to acknowledge over the past several years that most of my students simply aren’t reading these assignments, and if they are, they’re not understanding or retaining much. I will be making handbook assignments, though. I’ll be dividing... [Read more]

Ten principles of teaching with a handbook

This week I have the distinct pleasure of talking with four groups of instructors who have adopted Writing Matters and will be using it this fall. We’ve talked about the Citation Project: how that research has developed concurrently with the handbook and how Writing Matters responds to the pedagogical concerns raised by the research. We’re also talking about how a handbook can best be woven into the syllabus (rather than just being a putative reference work for the students). To anchor... [Read more]

The labor of knowing

In the July 19 Wired, Jonah Lehrer alludes to the joys of fieldwork versus the “drudgery of the lab.” After several years’ work on the Citation Project, I have a much better sense of what he means. We set off on the Citation Project with the objective of having a broad data-based portrait of what students do when they work with sources. As teachers we had some pretty concrete ideas, drawn from our work with the student writers in our own courses; as scholars we had some glimpses... [Read more]

The recycled news story, yet again. Nauseatingly.

On July 5, the New York Times offered “To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery.” Exactly one week later, it was “Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name).” Thus does the Times publish two stories that, while they have been circulated widely among educators, actually set back the cause of good teaching. Like most media coverage of issues of plagiarism, cheating, and academic integrity, these pieces go for simplistic, sensational claims. And the Times replicates... [Read more]

Why use a handbook?

College instructors are justly concerned about textbook costs for students who may be financially struggling. We’re all trying to teach as well as possible, with as little financial burden to our students. That’s only right. One thing I’m hearing is debates about the value of *not* adopting a handbook in writing courses, on the premise that students can find answers to questions about grammar and documentation online. That’s a great idea. But it’s a great idea, I believe,... [Read more]

Hidden challenges in source selection

At the beginning of fall term I presented some of the Citation Project research to Writing teachers in my own department, and as the semester has unfolded, I’ve had a number of opportunites to work through those same materials in webinar conversations with teachers at other institutions. The research I’ve shared in these presentations illustrates how students’ desire to use condensed, factual sources creates an array of problems as they try to write from those sources: Stylistically,... [Read more]

About those videos

The McGraw team has put a couple sets of videos online. Some of these were taken in a studio, using a script I had written in which I talk about Writing Matters. Some were taken during a keynote speech I made at Bridgewater State College for the Massachusetts CONNECT conference last spring; those are on the video link on this blog. It was a neat experience, doing the studio shoot. Made me feel like a movie star for a day; it was just fun. Seeing the film online is another matter: I’m just not... [Read more]

The best endorsement

I’m sitting on pins and needles, waiting to receive the published copy of Writing Matters. I can’t wait! Meanwhile, I am beta-testing select chapters in my own first-year writing course. We’ve worked with the chapters on avoiding plagiarism and organizing an essay, for example, and those class sessions have gone well. I also devoted part of a class session to using hyphens. I explained to the class that hyphen use is not an issue that most faculty mark up a paper for, but that correct... [Read more]

Citation project website!

After two days’ hard work, Sandra Jamieson and I have published a website for the Citation Project. We’ll work with design over the weeks to come, but all the basic pages are up. We’re hoping that the site offers reasonably succinct explanations of what the research is, why we’re doing it, who’s involved, and so forth. As the site explains, we have a report of the preliminary research that will be published in Writing and Pedagogy. Yet the website feels even more of... [Read more]

Researching the researcher

Yesterday was the Syracuse Writing Program’s annual Fall Teaching Conference, which might well be called “old faculty reorientation.” Every year we get together and talk about pressing issues in pedagogy and curriculum. This year our topic was our second required writing course, a sophomore-level course focused on research. We convened to consider ways to increase and enhance students’ engagement in researched writing, and we also attended to what instructional needs students... [Read more]

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