Participants in the Summer Faculty Writing Institute share how
they now use writing in the courses.
Rome 2007
Frank Cantelmo,
Biological Sciences, St. John's College
In his Discover Bermuda class, Dr.
Cantelmo has incorporated student reflections. "Each day,
students wrote reflections on what they were studying and, for
their final project, wrote op-ed pieces about relevant social
issues that intrigued them."
Click
here for an article published in the St. John's University Magazine
for Alumni and Friends of the University (Fall 2012)
Rome 2008
Jeffrey Nevid,
Psychology, St. John's College
During the week in Rome Jeff
experimented with Blackboard, which he had never used in his
teaching, and he explored the idea of using writing assignments in
his large introductory class, which he had also never tried.
He presented preliminary data from, and reflections on, this work
on-campus at a WAC lunch in fall 2009. Jeff has now published
"Writing-to-Learn Assignments in Introductory Psychology: Is
There a Learning Benefit?"
Abstract: Students completed
brief, ungraded writing assignments in several introductory
psychology classes across two semesters. The assignments
varied across classes with respect to type of assignment
(reflective vs. generic writing) and choice of topics (student
selected from specified list vs. assigned topics from list).
Students performed significantly better on exam questions relating
to the content of the writing assignments than to unrelated
content. Writing benefits extended across both type of
writing assignment and choice of topics. The results suggest
that writing-to-learn assignments can bolster learning effects
without adding undue burdens on instructors seeking to integrate
writing-across-the-curriculum objectives, even in larger
introductory psychology courses.
Link to study