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Grants for the Study of Writing in the Disciplines

Persistent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11299/253474

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Browsing Grants for the Study of Writing in the Disciplines by Type "Book"

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    Decision Cases For Writing Across the Curriculum
    (University of Minnesota, 1996-06) Duin, Ann Hill; Simmons, Steve; Lammers, Elizabeth
    While 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.
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    Writing in the Design Disciplines
    (University of Minnesota, 1995) Martin, Roger; Damon, Paul; Spraker, Jean; Malek, Joyce
    Writing 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.
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    Writing Style Differences in Newspaper, Radio, and Television News
    (University of Minnesota, 1991) Fang, Irving
    Students 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.