An Old-School Notion: Writing Required - College, Reinvented - The Chronicle of Higher Education | Metaglossia: The Translation World | Scoop.it
From chronicle.com - October 16, 2012 1:27 PM
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.

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."

"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."