[Ohiogift] Writing is Old School

[Will Fitzhugh]

(if they had only understood all this at Oxford and Cambridge back in the day....!!)


“Seeking to improve learning by making better use of writing is decidedly old school.”


Chronicle of Higher Education

October 15, 2012

An Old-School Notion: Writing Required

By Dan Berrett


Too many students aren't learning enough.

That alarm was sounded by the book Academically Adrift two years ago and has been the theme of numerous articles and conferences since. It also underlies the frustrations of employers who find recent graduates ill-prepared for the workplace.

What if colleges, in their search to more clearly demonstrate how much students are learning, insisted on an old-fashioned requirement: writing?

Writing works exceedingly well as both a way to assess learning and a means of deepening that learning, according to experts who study its effects on students.

Even faculty members whose disciplines are not commonly associated with writing think so.

"There are very few test methodologies that are as effective as having you sit down and write your thoughts and have someone read it carefully and come back with comments and say, 'You have to rewrite this,'" says Daniel D. Warner, a professor of mathematical sciences at Clemson University.

That's because writing is uniquely able to "make thinking visible," says Julie A. Reynolds, associate director of undergraduate studies at Duke University. It lays bare students' thinking, showing how well they grasp the subject matter in ways that a multiple-choice or short-answer test—or even a discussion section—simply can't.

"Anywhere we can make their thought process visible is where faculty can have the greatest impact in their teaching," Ms. Reynolds says.

That view is not fully embraced in other disciplines, says Christopher Thaiss, chair of the writing program at the University of California at Davis. Some faculty members may not see writing as their expertise, he says, and many are concerned that time spent on students' writing assignments will take away precious time needed for covering material.

That doesn't need to be the case. Short, frequent assignments to which faculty respond can have a profound effect, he says. "There are so many ways to do it, most of which don't take a lot of time."

Seeking to improve learning by making better use of writing is decidedly old school. It runs against the grain of sexy new ideas about how to change higher education, like massive open online courses. Assigning and evaluating writing are also labor-intensive tasks that are not easily done in large classes. And they are uneasy fits for an economic model increasingly reliant on contingent faculty members, who often have little time or are not paid for grading.

But if academe and its critics want students to leave college with sharper thinking skills, writing ought to gain a higher priority, says Paul V. Anderson, a professor of English at Elon University.

He likens writing's effect on students to the recently observed subatomic particle the Higgs boson. Just as particles gain mass as they move through the Higgs boson field, he says, "student learning gains heft as students interact through writing with the subjects they are studying."

Mr. Anderson bases such conclusions on research he and several colleagues began in 2007. Their project, the Partnership for the Study of Writing in College, has administered a 27-question supplement to the National Survey of Student Engagement, known as Nessie, that focuses on writing practices.

The researchers found that clearly explained assignments in which freshmen and seniors had to construct meaning through their writing—summarize something they had read, explain in writing the meaning of numerical or statistical data, argue a position using evidence and reasoning—had a noticeable effect on deep and sustained learning.

Most of the students in the study were not asked to carry out those kinds of exercises, the research revealed, in results that were corroborated by a similar survey of faculty members.

Writing opportunities should be created throughout a student's time in college, in both general-education courses and in classes for their major, says Chris M. Anson, director of the writing-and-speaking program at North Carolina State University and a co-author of the research report.

"We know you can't get it right in 15 or 16 weeks," he says. "It's so highly developmental that we can't assume students will somehow learn it once and apply it brilliantly in the upper levels of the curriculum."

That's why Ms. Reynolds, of Duke, uses writing to teach biology students at both ends of their college experience. She guides seniors in their theses and, this year, began a new course for freshmen. She asks them to interview life-sciences researchers about their projects and evaluate their claims to be on the cutting edge of the discipline. The students have to weigh the researchers' work in the context of the scholarly literature and write a paper explaining their conclusions. "They have to construct an argument," she says. "This is persuasive writing."

Rather than line-editing their students' final work, she reviews early drafts and responds to the larger ideas. Peer reviews supplement students' efforts to reshape their papers along the way. The approach is less time-consuming for her and ultimately has a more profound impact on students, says Ms. Reynolds.

Such experiments suggest that the length of the final product is not the chief concern, says Charles H. Paine, director of rhetoric and writing at the University of New Mexico and another co-author of the study based on Nessie data.

"You need not assign the big old 25-page term paper," he says. "The kind of writing they do is more important than the amount."








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