When I talk with faculty about integrating writing into their courses, there is a shared concern about the labor-intensive process associated with evaluating student writing: I don’t have time to grade more papers. As a writing instructor, I get it! The grading load is real, and the though of adding another stack of student papers to the already teetering tower is enough to make anyone hesitant.

But here’s the thing: not all writing needs to be graded. In fact, some of the most powerful writing students do is the writing we throw away.

Peter Elbow (1997) puts it this way: the goal of low-stakes writing is to “get students to think, learn, and understand more of the course material.” Then, we get to throw away the writing itself, because the neural changes it produces in students’ heads is the primary goal. The emphasis isn’t on polished prose or correct answers—its on the process of reaching understanding through writing, not on performative acts of knowledge regurgitation (Bean, 1996; Emig, 1977).

This is the core of write-to-learn (WTL): brief, informal writing tasks that ask students to process course material in real time. And the research suggests that it works!

Write-to-Learn in Practice

WTL activities are short prompts that make student thinking visible—to students themselves and to us as their instructors. Prompts may ask students to explain a concept in their own words, reflect on what’s confusing, or connect new material to something they already know or have experienced.

Gingerich et al. (2014)—a study conducted right here at CSU—evaluated WTL assignments in large introductory psychology courses. Students performed better on exam questions about concepts they had actively written about compared to concepts they had simply copied from slides. Even more striking was that on a retention test approximately 8.5 weeks after the course ended, students continued to perform better on the WTL concepts.The findings suggest that WTL facilitated active processing of course material, yielding benefits for retention well beyond the semester.

To Assess or Not to Assess?

So we know that writing is a tool for learning, but what about all of the student writing that is produced from these WTL assignments? Here’s the good news: WTL assignments are not evaluated for correctness. They’re graded for completion and engagement—or sometimes not graded at all.

Some instructors collect completed WTL assignments every other week and skim through them. Others pick up just a single response after introducing a key concept. These occasional snapshots of student comprehension help you quickly gauge understanding and tailor future instruction—clarifying and elaborating where students need it most. You’re not marking every sentence. You’re gathering information that lets you teach more responsively.

The learning happened when they wrote it, not when you graded it.

Writing as Vigor, Not Rigor

There’s a tendency in higher education to equate rigor with suffering—as though learning only counts if it hurts. But Eileen Camfield (2025) offers a different frame: “Joy-centered pedagogy promotes intellectual vigor and disrupts those aspects of traditional notions of rigor that suggest learning should hurt.”

Writing doesn’t have to be a burden. When we position writing as a tool for thinking—rather than a performance to be judged—we open space for curiosity, risk-taking, and deeper engagement with course material. That’s vigor, not rigor.

Writing is a High-Impact Practice

According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, writing-intensive courses are among the teaching and learning approaches shown to produce meaningful educational benefits, especially for students from demographic groups historically underserved by higher education. Even small writing assignments can make a significant difference in how students engage with and understand course content.

WTL assignments can also support Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP), which centers and sustains “the cultural and linguistic identities, experiences, and ways of knowing of students” (Paris & Alim, 2014). When designed intentionally, WTL assignments leverage writing as a tool not just for reflecting on course material, but for connecting that material to students’ lived experiences and identities (González, 2024). This approach invites students to see themselves as knowledge-holders whose perspectives enrich the classroom.

Consider prompts like:

How does today’s topic connect to something you’ve experienced or observed in your own life or community?

What perspectives or voices do you think are missing from this discussion? What would they add?

How might someone from a different background or culture interpret this concept differently?

What knowledge or experience do you bring to this topic that others in the class might not have?

Does today’s material challenge or affirm something you previously believed? How so?

These kinds of prompts encourage students to draw on their full range of experiences as resources for learning, while also building a classroom culture where diverse perspectives are valued.