Community of Practice: Increasing Student Success through Classroom Writing: Interrogating the Possibilities of Writing Engaged Classrooms and Writing-Across-the-Curriculum

At a time when Generative AI has many people questioning the purpose, value, and authorship of college writing, this Community of Practice invites faculty, postdocs, and graduate students to interrogate current and possible uses of class-time writing to enrich, deepen, and assess student learning across the curriculum. This Community of Practice will meet in a condensed, intensive 2-week format to discuss current scholarship that crosses disciplinary boundaries, that is grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and that pulls from localized (CSU-based) experiments with meaningful integration of writing across a variety of courses and learning outcomes. Outside reading will be expected over the period of the CoP.

In this Community of Practice, participants will work together to brainstorm, discuss, and analyze multiple ways of integrating writing into their courses, taking into account course objectives, lesson planning, implementation, and assessment. Additional opportunities to apply for funded classroom writing integration projects will follow the CoP.

Readings:
-“The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year” by Nancy Sommers and Laura Saltz
-“Learning through Writing: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in Writing Assignments” by Gamze Cavdar and Sue Doe
-“Writing as a Mode of Learning” by Janet Emig
-“Writing-to-Learn, Writing-to-Communicate, and Scientific Literacy” by Meena Balgopal and Alison Wallace
-“Valuing Process over Product: Using Writing to Teach History in the Undergraduate History Classroom” by Genesea Carter and David Korostyshevsky
-“Stories and Explanations in the Introductory Calculus Classroom” by Sue Doe, Mary E. Pilgrim, and Jessica Gehrtz
-“Active Processing via Write-to-Learn Assignments: Learning and Retention Benefits in Introductory Psychology” by Karla