Grants for the Study of Writing in the Disciplines
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Item Writing and the Visual Arts: An Analysis of Critical Writing and Its Impact on the Student of Visual Arts(University of Minnesota, 1990) Rose, ThomasWriting and comprehension of written texts on the visual arts is necessary to the understanding of the concepts upon which visual art is based. This study conducted three surveys of students in a variety of intermediate and advanced undergraduate classes in Studio Arts to collect information about their understanding of the relationship between an ability to write and the development of ideas in a visual discipline. A fourth survey was given to faculty members to assess their attitudes toward the relationship between critical studies and the visual arts, as well as how important a role critical studies should play in the department's curriculum. The first survey asked students about what distinguishes the visual arts as a discipline, their beliefs as to the relative importance of writing in relation to the visual arts as a discipline, and what sources the students use in attempting to delineate their visual work. The second survey was more concerned with the students' own activities and beliefs in their ability to function within specific theoretical realms. Survey three asked a number of questions about the students' own beliefs in their writing abilities, their educational backgrounds in writing, and their responses to the type of writing that they are required to do as University students and as studio arts students. Analysis of the returned surveys suggests four main categories of student response: the "writing involved" group; the "moderately involved" group; the "somewhat writing involved" group; and the "writing resistant" group. The "writing involved" is a small but vocal group of students who strongly believe in the necessity of writing and criticism in allowing for the on-going development and contextual positioning of their work. These students feel that the department should ask students to write more and place greater emphasis on critical analysis. A sizable majority of students make up the "moderately" and "somewhat involved" groups. These students tend to see writing as important for clarifying already existing visual ideas. These students gave a wide variety of responses ranging from those who do self-directed writing in relation to their own work, to those who seem to have a vague belief that writing and reading is important in an academic sense, but seem to lack most of the skills or habits to actually make this part of their art-making activity. The fourth group, the "writing resistant" students, represent the smallest number of respondents, but is strong in its belief that writing and even oral expression have little or nothing to do with any type of visual arts activity. The most extreme members of this group feel that writing is harmful in the sense of limiting visual art-making. Few faculty returned their surveys, which could suggest their relative lack of interest in this topic.Item Writing Style Differences in Newspaper, Radio, and Television News(University of Minnesota, 1991) Fang, IrvingStudents who begin the study of broadcast news have complained of the difficulty of writing in an unaccustomed style, a difficulty compounded when the student is concurrently taking a broadcast news course and a news editorial skills course. The confusion which results from writing in a separate style for each course in order to produce news copy presents the novice journalist with the type of trouble found in learning a new language dialect. Many students leave with an imperfect understanding of any news writing style. No magical way exists to learn a foreign language without practice, and none exists for developing facility in more than one writing style without experience. Nevertheless, it may be possible to ease the burden of writing in more than one style by systematically examining the styles to determine what sets them apart. That different news writing styles have evolved in newspapers, radio, and television is due to the unique nature of each medium and to the manner in which each medium is consumed by its audience. This study set out to consider the reasons for these differences and to examine in a systematic manner what the differences actually are. As many textbooks as could be found that dealt with newspaper, radio, and television news writing were examined to glean writing style recommendations. Additionally, the author called on his own years of experience in writing for newspapers and television newscast. Finally, seven working journalists in the three media under consideration were interviewed at length about various points of current practice, and a draft of the study's conclusions was shown to them for their comments. Where replies to questions seemed significant, these were noted in the written report. The elements of style examined were leads, story structure, sentence structure, word choice, and the conventions of naming, quotation, and attribution. In the final report, shared approaches to each element are identified first, followed by instances where some differences exist among the three media, with examples of those differences. Where possible, explanations are offered for why approaches were shared or different. The report is also innovative in that it presents side-by-side comparisons across the three media. The final report has already been distributed to one group of broadcast journalism students as a guide to their own development of writing style, accompanied by the admonition that merely reading about writing serves no purpose except perhaps to provide students with the awareness that radio news and television news writing styles have logical foundation and are, to say the least, as difficult to learn and as worthy of learning as standard American newspaper style.Item Students of Color in the Writing Classroom: An Annotated Bibliography(University of Minnesota, 1992) Evans, Carolyn; Miller, CarolItem What Students Can Tell Us about the Multicultural Classroom(University of Minnesota, 1992) Miller, Carol; Evans, CarolynThis interview project examined the experiences and perceptions of African American, Native American, and Hispanic students in composition classes at the University of Minnesota. Our objective was to collect primary and secondary data which provides clearer information about the performance of students of color as learning writers. This data should subsequently suggest accommodations by which, as individuals and as members of distinct minority cultures, students of color might be better served by University writing programs. The project was undertaken in two complementary stages. The first stage, which built upon the principal investigator's previously completed review of research pertaining to minority student achievement in general, sought areas of overlap between that body of research and current writing theory more specifically focused on the performance of students of color. This phase of the project—identification of mutualities by which these two bodies of research might inform one another—flagged circumstances relevant to "minority" student writers and created a context of inquiry enabling development of interview instruments to learn more about these problems and to identify potential solutions. The second stage of the project involved a series of progressive interviews of native-speaking students of color drawn from composition classes in the College of Liberal Arts. To refine the interview instrument of twenty-four items (with additional follow-up questions), an initial set of interviews was conducted with a pilot group of students of color who had already completed the two-course composition sequence in the General College. The instrument itself included questions which asked for 1) self-awareness assessment of students' writing histories, processes, and overall competencies; 2) consideration of the activities and character of their completed composition classes; and 3) speculation about the nature and demands of academic writing and about any impact on students as learning writers resulting from contentions of cultural experience and the dialectics of the academic community. The project generated thirty-one interviews and an annotated bibliography of selected literature on minority student performance and composition. Analysis of the data shows that students do not receive significant writing practice in high school. In addition, several areas of mystification for students surfaced. For example, students had misconceptions about what made writing good and how they could become good writers. They overemphasized surface writing features, such as grammar and punctuation. Also, students were often confused about course objectives and assignments. Overall, however, students found writing practice, feedback from instructors, and response from their conference group members to be beneficial and useful. We must continue to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research in how diverse populations learn. We also need to re-examine our pedagogical objectives and instruction strategies. What multicultural classrooms need ultimately are new paradigms that negotiate cultural transactions rather than cultural assimilation.Item Interdisciplinary Writing through Multidisciplinary Writing(University of Minnesota, 1993) Prell, Riv-Ellen; Farrell, Amy; Kilde, HalgrenThis study proposed to restructure the course, American Everyday Life, by integrating writing assignments with course content and encouraging students to write in a variety of genres which would directly imitate the ones under study. Students were asked to use reflective as well as critical and theoretical approaches to the writing assignments. Writing was tied to a variety of research designs: historical, ethnographic, and cultural and media criticism. The class was designed to teach students how to integrate theory with ordinary experience with the hope of deepening their ability to read critically and to reason. One of the more striking findings of the research occurred within the first week of the course. Seventy-five students had enrolled with five on a waiting list. After receiving the course syllabus which outlined the writing requirements, students began a mass exodus from the classroom. By the second week of the term, fewer than thirty students remained in the class. Approximately sixty students who had expressed interest in the class left when they learned they would have to write papers, none of which were major research papers, all of which were topical and lively. We learned that writing is not a good way to attract students if one seeks high enrollments. Students were less concerned about what they had to produce than by the number of pages required. Short papers were tolerated; papers of ten pages were extremely upsetting. Throughout the term, students frequently questioned the need for writing in a course that was not about composition. We attempted to integrate writing into the class by devoting one of every four class sessions to peer conferencing. Students resisted showing others their drafts and expressed discomfort with critiquing others' papers or asking others to comment on their work. However, students were greatly appreciative of any feedback they received on their drafts. Students wanted drafts required, but they found the process of writing, reading, and showing drafts to their peers very distressing. We had also developed a questionnaire designed to elicit information about students' perceptions of writing and themselves as writers. We concluded that writing and attitudes about writing were closely linked to how writing is presented and the frequency with which it is required, that student authority is very much involved in the process of self-evaluation about writing, that students are more inclined to use passive than active strategies in their writing processes, and that students have difficulty seeing themselves as central to the writing process. The first lesson that we learned from this challenging, exciting, depressing, and thoroughly interesting project is that we will never teach without assigning writing. However, we have also learned that we must consider the nature of our assignments more carefully for them to be effective. We concluded that it is better to require a few papers and to incorporate more informal writing, particularly short in-class papers and journals. We have also concluded that to integrate theory and experience, writing and reasoning, requires assigning less reading and using that reading more carefully, covering less material to deepen understanding and engagement.Item Multicultural Nests: Finding a Writing Voice about Literature by Women of Color(University of Minnesota, 1993) McNaron, Toni A. H.; Olano, Pamela J.This project was predicated on the belief that writing about literature written by nonwhite writers must entail a radically different approach. We know by now that it is insufficient and indeed mischievous merely to alter syllabi slightly to include literary works by women and/or ethnic writers. We must design innovative assignments that encourage students to build contexts into which such fictive creations may be placed with less danger of expropriation or simple misreading. Multicultural Nests, an honors course in Women's Studies, provided us an opportunity to design a unique multicultural literature course with an innovative writing component. Students read four fictive works, each by a woman from a different culture: Night-Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker (Native American), The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (Asian American), Beloved by Toni Morrison (African American), and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Hispanic). In the first unit, cultural information was provided to students through lecture. For the remaining three, we organized students into four "families," each responsible for reporting to the class on one area of culture (visual arts; mythology, religion, and spirituality; music; and family and state structure/governance). The assumption behind all our writing assignments was that white students interacting with literature written by nonwhite authors require new critical criteria and modes for analyzing and discussing texts. Writing assignments were designed to empower students to find their voices, particularly by connecting the texts with their personal experience, and to deepen understanding of the texts by connecting them to their cultural contexts. We particularly wanted to block routine literary analysis and cultural expropriation ("they're just like us"). Our desire to propel students into the texts in unambiguous and respectful ways led us to design several fresh writing assignments. We first asked students to respond to an open-ended questionnaire about their attitudes, background, and self-concept. Students kept journals, reflecting on course material and on their own attitudes and experiences in relation to issues of diversity/multiculturalism. Students were also asked to write personal narratives, recount family legends, compare women's ways of knowing, select journal entries as examples of their best writing, and freewrite on provocative passages, characters, or thematic ideas in the novels. One writing assignment asked students to follow threads of their own experiences/perceptions in the personal narratives and weave a tapestry between/among the perceptions expressed by the texts they encountered in the class. At the end of the quarter, students were again asked to respond to the questionnaire. Based on student feedback and our own perceptions, this course was very successful. The combination of contextual nests and innovative writing allowed a class of mainly white students to discover fresh and non-appropriational modes for expressing their responses to the multicultural literature. For future offerings of this kind, we would focus on two cultures instead of four, allowing greater immersion in the culture and the opportunity to study several works from each, and we would spend more time building in mechanisms to foster trust and comfort among students.Item Writing to Learn Mathematics: An Annotated Bibliography(University of Minnesota, 1994) Ganguli, Aparna; Henry, RichardItem Writing in Service-Learning Courses(University of Minnesota, 1994) Kassner, Linda Adler; Collins, TerenceItem Outside the Lines but on the Page: Perspectives on Writing in an Individualized, WritingIntensive Baccalaureate Degree Program(University of Minnesota, 1994) Nereson, Sally; Leyasmeyer, Archibald; Warren, KentItem Writing Theory and Practice in the Second Language Classroom: A Selected Annotated Bibliography(University of Minnesota, 1994) Homstad, Torild; Thorson, Helga; Grimstad, Karen; Wakefield, RayItem Writing-Intensive Courses: Possible Criteria, National Patterns, and Resources(University of Minnesota, 1994) Bridwell-Bowles, Lillian; Kuhne, Michael; Cullen, Elaine; Lynch, Kimberly; Olson, MarkItem Writing in the Design Disciplines(University of Minnesota, 1995) Martin, Roger; Damon, Paul; Spraker, Jean; Malek, JoyceWriting in the context of the design process has not often been reinforced within the traditional design studio in Landscape Architecture. The focus of this study was to determine to what degree specific writing techniques could enhance some of the basic design skills. A separate research segment was organized to study the impact of writing on each of three design skills: building design observation, design idea-making, and design communication. The research was conducted in the context of a typical design project assigned within basic design studios at the University of Minnesota. Each research segment was organized around an interactive workshop between the researchers and students in basic design. In the workshops, writing skill techniques using group interaction explored applications of writing to the specific design skill. Specific writing exercises were selected from a review of both recent composition and design process literature. Each exercise attempted to explore writing within the context of drawing, sketching, and diagramming. Students used design journals to record workshop exercises and subsequent design-writing assignments. At project reviews, outside evaluators assessed students' improvement and instructors compared students' work with that from previous years' students. Students' journal reflections were also evaluated. In general, the evaluators saw improvement in the quality of the design projects completed following the workshop. Although some students felt some techniques introduced in the workshop were more useful than other techniques, most felt the strategies were worthwhile and said they would continue to use them in design. Results of the three explorations reinforced the value of writing to expand students' skills in design observation, idea-making, and design communication.Item Using Writing-to-Learn Activities in the Foreign Language Classroom(University of Minnesota, 1996) Homstad, Torild; Thorson, HelgaItem Incorporating Expressive Writing into the Classroom(University of Minnesota, 1996) Hoover, Emily; Foulk, DougThe goal of the project is to follow up the original research we conducted on expressive writing (see abstract in 1992-93 grants) by authoring and testing a "how-to" manual designed to facilitate instructor application of this effective learning strategy. We have written a prototype manual and distributed it to faculty in the Department of Horticultural Science for review. Based on the feedback we have received, we are revising the manual for submission to the Center of Interdisciplinary Studies of Writing. To further disseminate the information, we are scheduling seminars in departments within the College of Agriculture.Item Writing as a Way of Knowing in a Cross-Disciplinary Classroom(University of Minnesota, 1996) Magee, P. T.; Miller, Carol; Hockin, JanineThe three-quarter Continuing Education course, "Ways of Knowing," serves as the site of this project and offers a unique laboratory for analyzing how students understand and acquire abilities to make use of distinctive features and conventions of academic writing across the six disciplines which constitute the subject matters of the course. Concrete comparative information about discrete features, processes, and objectives of disciplinary writing, and how the information is transmitted to students, is being gathered throughout the course. To accomplish collection of information, we are using three techniques: 1) Informal journal writing that is completed and collected in class, collated, and reported upon by a different student volunteer in each segment; 2) Formal journal questions answered by students outside of class and summarized by the project research assistant; and 3) Interviews with faculty and students concerning each specific discipline, including comparisons to the others. Informal journaling, formal journal questions, and the interviews are focused on discovering the characteristics of writing in a discipline, student responses to the writing and acquisition of discipline-specific features of writing, and possible connections between writing and learning in a field of study. Thus far, the informal in-class journal writing (completed in the third week of each five-week segment) serves as a forum for students to express initial impressions of the discipline, student concerns about class interactions, and individual responses to grasping new course material. Formal journal writing questions reveal that students can clearly identify several writing characteristics of each discipline and understand organizational patterns and themes. Though most students do not believe their writing reflects the writing of professionals in the field, they are attempting to imitate professionals in the disciplines and find value in that process (it helps in understanding how a scholar thinks). Students unanimously affirm through the formal journal writing that their understanding of the subject matter in each discipline increases through writing. They attest that writing organizes thinking, forces contemplation, adds to growth and understanding, and develops thoughts. The two faculty interviews conducted thus far have been very fruitful, revealing the faculty members' opinions on characteristics of writing in their disciplines, recent changes in the writing of scholars in each field, the kinds of writing assignments given to students in classes, and faculty concerns relating to inadequate time spent in nurturing discipline-specific writing. Both faculty members interviewed discussed their own personal writing techniques, including thoughts on whether immediately committing ideas to writing forecloses new ideas or serves as a technique for further developing them. Winter and spring quarter research will continue with informal and formal journal writing, faculty interviews, and will include end-of-the-year interviews with students.Item Evaluating Students' Ability to Integrate Written and Visual Communication(University of Minnesota, 1996) Gersmehl, Philip J.; Lockwood, Catherine M.We are developing criteria for assessing writing skills of students and the applicability of written assignments in an introductory level geography course (US & Canada). This course usually has an enrollment of 175 to 250 students per quarter. Our proposal has two elements of research: 1) to determine ways to present instructions so that students clearly understand how to meld spatial ideas and graphical methods into their written arguments; and 2) to measure the degree to which students are able to integrate written and graphic text. Graphics are a powerful means of communicating ideas that text alone may not adequately convey. Graphics, in the context of geography, are more than simple illustrations. Geography combines written text with graphic text to explain spatial relationships. One of the most effective ways to portray spatial data is with maps (a graphic language with its own conventional symbols, grammatical rules, and semantic overtones). Several alternative instructions that build upon three previous projects were prepared and tested winter quarter 1993. These course projects are intended to develop an understanding of graphic text, along with the ability to read, analyze, and then explain map patterns through clear, concise written language. The instructions for the first project were a two-page handout. No formal explanation of the instructions was given, but examples and references to project elements were given in several lectures. The second project also included a two-page handout, supplemented by a poster exhibit. The display showed examples of effective integration of text and writing, proper use of color and cartographic techniques, and acceptable ways to calculate and adjust data sets. Students were given a two-page set of written instructions plus a thirty-minute formal classroom explanation for the third project. We developed forms to assess student performance in five specific areas: research, writing style, selection and description of analytical tools, integration of maps and other graphic texts, and bibliographic skills. Because of class size, a set of criteria and standards for uniform grading by teaching assistants was developed and tested. We are now evaluating the effectiveness of these criteria and student response to these projects. Preliminary evaluation of student work and method of instructions suggest that written instructions should be reinforced with some formal classroom explanation. The visual presentation enhanced student performance. Additional graphic displays would benefit students as well as aid the professor and teaching assistants with visual examples of project components. Based on the original objectives and preliminary findings of our research, we expect two outcomes: 1) students will develop a graphic vocabulary and a set of skills that can be used in other courses or applied fields; and 2) students will gain an alternative perspective on writing techniques (i.e. integration of graphic text and written text).Item Decision Cases For Writing Across the Curriculum(University of Minnesota, 1996-06) Duin, Ann Hill; Simmons, Steve; Lammers, ElizabethWhile case studies have existed in formal business education since the early 20th century, the case method has seen little application to writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) efforts. The goal of this project was to provide a detailed process for developing and implementing decision cases for WAC efforts as well as data on their effectiveness in a scientific course. College students read decision cases, developed written arguments in support of their decisions, and discussed the cases with high school students via a desktop video-conferencing system. During fall quarter 1992 we studied the decision-case development process by collaborating to complete two new decision cases for use in university and secondary classrooms. We kept detailed notes regarding our design process, and we compared our process to Stolovitch and Keeps' (1991) process. During winter quarter1993, we investigated the use of four decision cases with 25 students in AnPl 3010: Environment and World Food Production. For two of the cases, we did a content analysis of students' concept maps and case responses. For the other two cases, we videotaped the conferences and analyzed them according to Daft and Lengel's (1986) framework for studying media richness theory. We also collected questionnaire data regarding the students' understanding and attitude toward writing, the environment, and decision cases in general as well as the students' attitudes toward discussing the cases with high school students. We learned that constructing decision cases is a complex process involving multiple audiences and disciplines. Students indicated that their knowledge about the environment and agro-ecosystems increased significantly as a result of the course, although they did not necessarily attribute this increase to their work with decision cases and writing. The instructor's expectation for good writing and his comments on students' case responses overlapped with results from Walvoord and McCarthy (1990). Last, the students viewed video-conferencing as a unique opportunity to share information and to learn from younger writers. The central implication from this study is that decision cases can be used as writing-intensive components in scientific courses. Decision cases engage students in an authentic dilemma with a writing task that involves problem solving and structuring coherent arguments.Item Tutoring via Telecommunications(University of Minnesota, 1997) Graves, Michael; Duin, Ann HillItem Using Intensive Writing-to-Learn as a Means of Reducing Limitations on Learning in Large Classes(University of Minnesota, 1997) Thomas, Ruth; Peterson, DebbieThis project seeks to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of shifting from teaching with a heavy reliance on dialogue toward emphasizing intensive writing-to-learn activities as class size increases. In order for learning that is deep and lasting to occur, students must have opportunities to be engaged in thinking about and with the concepts they are learning and to connect them to what is already familiar and to what is of personal interest and import. Dialogue is a medium through which this kind of processing of ideas can occur. Meaningful dialogue is more easily incorporated in smaller classes than in larger ones. Because writing-to-learn, like dialogue, provides the opportunity to be engaged in thinking about and with the concepts that are being learned and to connect students to what is already familiar and to what is of personal interest and import, and because writing can be done with varying degrees of independence, it has potential to serve functions in large classes similar to those which dialogue serves well in smaller classes. The purpose of this project is to explore the incorporation of intensive writing-to-learn in a course that is too large for in-class dialogue to be the central medium for thinking. More specifically, this project explores intensive writing-to-learn as a medium in a large class for making students' own thoughts front and center, for using content as hypotheses to be examined and critiqued, for actively involving students in the learning process, for confronting students with views that contradict their own, for ensuring deep processing of concepts, for personalizing learning in a way that can foster students' self-understanding and personal growth, and for getting students to accept responsibility for directing their own learning. Six writing-to-learn approaches were identified that were consistent with the above purpose. Guidelines for each approach were developed. The 72 students in an upper division child psychology course on relationships and development were given the opportunity to choose one approach that they would use throughout the course. The reason for asking students to continue to use the same approach was to facilitate comparison of the students' work across time. Seven writing assignments were required in addition to an essay final examination. Students were also given the opportunity to do an eighth assignment as extra credit, which most of them did. Students' writing was responded to each week in a style that was intended to reflect a teacher-as-collaborator role in which respectfulness, acceptance, understanding, empathy, invitations to elaborate, and requests for clarification characterized the responses. With the students' permission, their writing assignments were duplicated for later analysis. Analysis is designed to reveal the degree to which each of the following are reflected in the writing assignments: depth and insight, a questioning and critical stance toward content, a stance of being responsible for and directing one's own thinking and learning, confronting and wrestling with and coming to terms with views that are contradictory, deep processing of concepts, new understandings that reflect a revision of prior views in a synthesis of new information and prior knowledge, and reflection of feelings. Implications of this project concern the depth of learning that can be accomplished in large classes, relationships between the nature of various writing-to-learn approaches and learning outcomes, and practical concerns regarding the use of writing-to-learn in large enrollment classes.Item Direct vs. Translated Writing: What Students Do and the Strategies They Use(University of Minnesota, 2000) Cohen, Andrew DThis study explored an alternative approach to short essay writing on language assessment tasks. Thirty-nine intermediate learners of French performed two essay-writing tasks: writing directly into French as well as writing in L1 and then translating into French. Two-thirds of the students did better on the direct writing task across all rating scales; one-third, better on the translated task. While raters found no significant differences in the grammatical scales across the two types of writing, differences did emerge in the scales for expression, transitions, and clauses. Retrospective verbal report data from the students indicated that they were often thinking through English when writing in French, suggesting that the writing tasks were not necessarily distinct in nature. Since the study was intended to simulate writing situations that students encounter in typical classroom assessments, the findings suggest that direct writing may be the most effective choice for some learners when under time pressure.