Faculty members and instructors have learned that moving from face-to-face classes to online and hybrid instruction requires careful consideration of how we communicate information and expectations to our students. Meeting students’ needs and building community requires that we present materials in ways that are clear, concrete, and easy to navigate. 

Circumstances have made many of us quick experts on preparing and delivering online and hybrid courses, but the semester’s start gives us a chance to retool and refine our practices. It can help to take a step back from the tools, technologies, and platforms for delivering course content online to consider the foundational learning goals for your course. This tip will provide suggestions for reviewing course and learning goals and thinking of ways that writing practice can support and reinforce those expectations.

At the end of the semester, especially one as trying as this, it may take all we have to just get through the next two weeks. Students are remotely navigating their labyrinths of final projects and exams, and instructors and TAs are working through their backlog of grading. It’s probably not a good time to implement a new strategy for teaching with writing. And yet, while “Old Time is still a-flying,” it is useful to think about gathering work from this semester to support your teaching in the spring.

As we enter the final weeks of the semester and approach the Thanksgiving Break, after which all classes at the University of Minnesota will be fully remote, the need to maintain supportive communication and instructional presence is vital. For many students, end-of-the-term, often high-stakes writing assignments may generate questions and concerns that are intensified in a remote learning environment and differences in time zones.

Despite so much uncertainty, here’s what we do know about this next semester: the university will begin and end classes remotely, and technology will factor heavily into how courses are organized and taught. For those courses that may eventually feature onsite instruction, measures to enforce social distancing will likely alter the familiar dynamic of physical learning spaces. Now more than ever, community and engagement—essential elements for successful teaching and learning across the disciplines—will be nurtured by attending carefully to our language and our modes of communication.

As the risks associated with COVID-19 become clearer, the University of Minnesota has announced that all course work will move to online venues starting on March 18, 2020 and extending to at least April 1, 2020. General resources on the transition to online teaching are available through UMN’s Keep Teaching Website.

Welcome back to the spring semester! As you prepare your courses, syllabi, and assignments, it may be valuable to think about three distinct ways that writing can help your students learn and use course content. While we often think of formal graded assignments as the cornerstone of “college-level writing,” shorter, less formal writing activities can help students to master complex course content, understand connections among course topics, and consider their own learning and development.

Before the hurly-burly of the academic year begins, it’s worth carving out time to fine-tune your syllabi and the key writing assignments in your courses. The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) team can support your efforts.

The Teaching With Writing series exists to help instructors use writing in their courses to support student learning, and we know that faculty members and instructors who assign and assess student work are the right people to help their students develop as writers in disciplines. At the same time, we hope that instructors will also encourage student writers to use all of the available resources on campus for support.

Last month’s TWW post offered three suggestions for assigning and supporting team-based writing. These suggestions emphasized a consensual, interdependent, and collaborative vision for team-based work. It’s a fine vision, but, at the end of the day, how do you assess it? Because our students often think of grades as individual, distinctive, and competitive markers of performance, team-based writing assignments can raise challenging questions when it comes to their evaluation. Should one grade be given equally to each student on a team?