Providing Pathways for Student Writers

With the start of the fall semester, campus sidewalks and bike lanes are flowing, once more, with humanity—welcome back! In these early weeks of the term, there is plenty to navigate, and not just physically. For students entering new courses and new fields of study, there will be plenty of questions about location, schedules, course policies and procedures. Amidst the effort to get oriented to new terrain, students might not be thinking yet about other questions they have about writing or about writing processes and practices that will support their learning. Instructors can anticipate and address some of these questions by providing pathways—think of them as trailheads for student writers—on their syllabi or Canvas site, and by navigating these pathways with students in class. Like a good trail marker, these pathways do not have to be large or lengthy, but they should be visible and timely.

Here are three pathways that will support student writers.

Pathway 1:

Briefly describe the role of writing in your course, the writing tools that will help students, and how the writing students will do relates to your field or profession. Along with describing the kinds of writing students will do, provide clear expectations for that writing.

In a few sentences on an Applied Economics syllabus, this professor provides such a pathway:

“In this course, we will use Microsoft Excel for data analysis and visualization, as well as Tableau [...] To go through Excel skills in class together, we will discuss the possibility of each of you bringing a laptop to class[...]

The Department of Applied Economics has identified the following as desired writing skills: (1) Present and discuss quantitative information clearly and accurately, (2) Apply economic concepts/ business principles in analysis of problems, (3) Organize material logically, (4) Communicate clearly and concisely, (5) Write persuasively, and (6) Engage in constructive writing practices. We will use peer response processes as an essential course activity.”

For instructors wishing to create a similar pathway, the Writing Across the Curriculum team encourages you to consider how syllabus clauses can orient students to writing in your discipline and how explicitly naming desired writing abilities and writing criteria can make writing assignments and activities more purposeful for students. If instructors teach in one of the many departments who participate in the Writing-Enriched Curriculum Program, these academic unit pages can be especially useful. The WAC team is also happy to consult with instructors on ways to present course- and discipline-based writing to students.

Pathway 2: 

Introduce students to writing resources on campus that will support their work in your course and beyond. Over the course of the fall semester, the Center for Writing’s Student Writing Support (SWS) will offer several thousand one-on-one appointments. You can provide students with a clear description of Student Writing Support with this statement on your syllabus:

Student Writing Support (SWS) offers collaborative one-to-one writing consultations to help student writers develop confidence and effective writing strategies. Writing consultants will listen to writers' goals and concerns, read and respond to their written work, pose questions that help them clarify and articulate their ideas, and affirm the experiences and abilities that they bring to their writing. SWS values writers' life experiences and languages, and SWS seeks to provide a supportive space for them to share and develop their voices. 

Consultants work with writers at any stage of the writing process, such as brainstorming and organizing ideas, developing a thesis statement or line of argument, creating cohesive paragraphs, revising sentences, and documenting sources. Writers can also get company or encouragement as they try to get their own writing done in accountabilibuddy consultations!) A consultation is often focused on a specific assignment or writing task, with the goal of supporting writers as they develop more effective and productive writing strategies to apply to future writing projects. 

For Fall 2024, consultations will be widely available by appointment at 216 Pillsbury Drive, room 15 (formerly Nicholson Hall), Zoom, and SWS-Chat, as well as walk-ins in Appleby Hall, room 9. For more information, go to Student Writing Support.

Additionally, you can introduce students to SWS by scheduling a five-minute class visit as early as week 3 of the semester. For courses involving research-based activities, consider taking a few minutes in class to introduce students to the Peer Research Consultants (PRC) program, hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries. Without pathways to these excellent resources, students may view writing as a solitary activity they must navigate by themselves when, in fact, the research underscores how writing, like all learning, has an important and vital social component.

Pathway 3:

Identify (or perhaps simply acknowledge) how generative Artificial Intelligence tools have begun to influence your field or profession, and communicate your views about their use in your class. For many instructors, this may be challenging to articulate as AI tools continue to emerge and evolve. But efforts to be transparent with students will do a great deal to foster an inclusive learning environment. To support your efforts, the Office of the Provost and the Faculty Senate Committee on Educational Policy has provided guidelines spanning the embrace of AI, the limiting of AI, and the prohibition of AI. The WAC program, with particular efforts from Dr. Daniel Emery, has also created three guides to support instructors with articulating a relevant course policy. 

• Guide 1: What is ChatGPT, and what does it mean for assigning writing?
• Guide 2: Incorporating ChatGPT into Classes with Writing Assignments: Policies, Syllabus Statements, and Recommendations
• Guide 3: Restricting ChatGPT Use in Classes with Writing Assignments: Policies, Syllabus Statements, and Recommendations

With generative AI, a pathway may actually mark a fork in the trail, one that would be useful to travel with students together in class. For instructors who have begun to use AI tools in class with students—whether to show their benefits, their limitations, or both—we invite you to share your experiences in the comments below. What have you done with your students in class? What kinds of discussions have you engaged in? How have these activities and discussions helped your students to navigate writing in the age of AI? 

For instructors who would like to engage in a community of practice around the use of AI tools in teaching, we invite you to consider the UMN AI Community of Practice, and we warmly invite you to participate in our fall book circle, which will use Mollick and Mollick’s (2023) Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students with Prompts as a trailhead for us to learn about teaching terrains that are new to us.