http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 28 May 2009 17:58:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Center for Writing Excellence offers students the opportunity to exempt themselves from first year and junior composition course requirements through an exemption exam. Both exams are two-hour timed essays based on a provided text. Exams are offered once each quarter, typically the first Saturday after the first ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/events/quarterly-freshman-and-junior-composition-exemption-exams/ Facilitated by Melanie Lee Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Time: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Place: Friends of the Libraries Room This interdisciplinary graduate student discussion panel will discuss strategies for starting the dissertation and thesis writing process. Topics will include choosing ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/events/%e2%80%9cgetting-started-graduate-students-talk-about-starting-the-dissertation-thesis%e2%80%9d/ Facilitated by Sherrie Gradin and Melanie Lee Date: Friday, April 17, 2009 Time: Noon – 1 p.m. Place: Faculty Commons Conference Room 301U This hour will begin with a brief overview of informal, writing to learn strategies that facilitate active student participation and that can be ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/events/%e2%80%9cacademic-learning-through-informal-participatory-writing%e2%80%9d/ Facilitated by Sherrie Gradin, Paul Shovlin, Melanie Lee Date: Friday, May 1, 2009 Time: 10 a.m. – Noon Place: Faculty Commons Conference Room 301U What do we expect of incoming students’ writing? What in reality are they able to do? ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/events/%e2%80%9cstudent-writing-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly%e2%80%9d/ Facilitated by Paul Shovlin Date: Friday, April 24, 2009 Time: 10:00 a. m. – Noon Place: Faculty Commons Conference Room 301U Our special emphasis in this seminar will be on developing and integrating wikis into our courses. Faculty will exchange their views regarding wikis ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/events/%e2%80%9cmeeting-students-where-they-write-part-2-integrating-course-wikis%e2%80%9d/ Guiding Assumptions That enriched writing is a philosophy, not a technique. Amounts and types of writing will necessarily differ from discipline to discipline, but what unites these courses across the curriculum is the idea that writing will enhance learning in any discipline if it is a basic teaching strategy. That writing will ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/empty/writing-enriched-courses-guidelines-and-recommendations/ John Bean in Engaging Ideas offers great ideas for using writing in large lecture courses. Here are a few of his ideas: Guided-Journal Tasks Keyed to Your Lectures For this approach the instructor creates guided-journal tasks that encourage students to use information from the lectures. For example, these tasks ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/teaching/teaching-writing-in-large-classes/ It is helpful to respond through a hierarchy of concerns from higher to lower order. Global Re-vision: To engage a writer in deep revision, in actually re-thinking or re-seeing their work, we need to invite them to work at the macro level. Our comments should be aimed at ideas, whether ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/process/three-levels-of-revision-2/ It's OK for you and your students to have fun. They don’t have to hate their assignments and you don’t have to hate reading them. Integrating writing-to-learn assignments into your course is crucial.  Otherwise, students are given the message that it is just busy work that doesn’t really matter. You want these ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/assignments/designing-writing-to-learn-ideas-2/ Design good assignments Assign exploratory writing; consider using microthemes. Create assignment handouts specifying task, purpose, audience, criteria, desired manuscript form. Clarify your grading criteria Create a scoring guide or peer review checksheet. Hold an in-class norming session. ... http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/teaching/time-saving-strategies/