Teaching with Writing Blog

This semester, the Teaching With Writing program is placing a particular emphasis on the connections between reading and writing. Promoting effective reading practices can help students understand relationships between scholarly sources and how academic writing is produced, which, in turn, can assist their own writing processes and practices.

Faculty and instructors tend to be divided over the use of rubrics and scoring sheets to assess writing. Some instructors appreciate the sense of consistency that rubrics provide and how they simplify grading. Others find scoring rubrics artificial and confining, and worry that splitting hairs between categories increases assessment challenges. In this blog post, we’ll look at the question of scoring rubrics from the perspective of student performance and recent research on how scoring rubrics can help students learn.

As we prepare for the beginning of the Spring Semester of 2022, the Teaching With Writing program is placing a particular emphasis on the connections between reading and writing and how assignments and assessments can invite students to use multiple modes for presenting information and persuading audiences. This tip will identify three valuable strategies for working with library resources to enhance students’ writing and research processes.

After Thanksgiving Break, the semester takes on added urgency. Students complete—and instructors assess—final projects and exams, and everyone scrambles to wind down the term, gear up for the next, and make arrangements for the holiday break. With time scarce, it can be challenging to take stock and reflect on teaching and learning. But looking back now can provide valuable insights for looking ahead.

Don’t let this mild fall weather fool you. Winter is coming, and so is the end of the semester. Students are likely beginning or are already in the midst of their final projects—research essays, presentations, multimodal productions, group projects, etc.—and perhaps voicing concerns about timelines, criteria, and logistical matters. It’s a fine time to take stock with students on their works in progress and to support their writing efforts.

One month into the Fall Semester with a round of exams, essay cycles, lab reports, problem sets and other core assignments completed, students may be experiencing fatigue and dips in their engagement. Whether you teach in person, a blended course, or fully online, the discussion forum available through Canvas can be an effective space to (re)engage students in their learning and to support them as they transition into new units of study. This post offers five suggestions for how to use the online discussion forums effectively.

We’ve completed the first week of classes, and campus is vibrant once more. Amidst the bustle of finding classrooms, following safe indoor practices, securing course materials, and navigating the various Canvas sites for their courses, students are apt to feel excited and nervous.

In the Fall semester, the University of Minnesota will resume its on-campus activities, guided by ongoing recommendations from the CDC.

Students often receive specific guidelines on the number and type of materials they are expected to use in research writing or how they should offer attribution and citation. In many courses, these guidelines include explicit instruction on search strategies and information literacy, whether from instructors or librarians. Yet even when students know how to find good sources and can manage the details of citation practice, it can still be challenging to help students see how to synthesize information from multiple sources into a document that advances its own claim.