NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
ERIC Number: ED266476
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1985-Dec-27
Pages: 15
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Research Connections: Writing in the Disciplines.
Young, Art
The writing across the curriculum program at Michigan Technological University was designed to change teacher and student attitudes about course-assigned writing as well as to change writing practices by means of a series of faculty workshops. After four years, a team of seven faculty members from rhetoric and composition, literature, psychology, and linguistics--with the help of faculty from several other fields--designed a research and evaluation program to determine the success of the writing across the curriculum project. The evaluation proved that many students and instructors came to view writing as a complex and central activity, integral to learning and understanding in all disciplines. A total of 20 individual studies was conducted for the evaluation, including the following: (1) two studies of student laboratory reports, in biology and engineering, which showed the success of the faculty workshops; (2) a writing assessment of engineering students, which showed that the evaluation design had not been integrated to program goals as well as it might have been, and that the program itself was not quite as effective with engineering students as the faculty had hoped; and (3) two studies of student journals in mathematics and civil engineering, which showed that speculative writing plays an important role in student learning in content area courses. Among other things learned by this evaluation was the value of the multiple measures approach. (HTH)
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A