WHAT: A new installment of the Valley Writing Workshop
"Writing Intensively":
Developing Assignments for Writing-Intensive and Upper-Level Undergraduate Courses*
Minnesota State University, Mankato's Valley Writing Project will hold its twenty-eighth writing workshop later this fall. We will be convening the workshop just after the December "grading day," from December 18 through the 20th, from Tuesday through Thursday of that week. The key here is that most of your responsibilities from Fall Semester will be over then and you'll be able to relax with us and prepare for the Spring Semester.
More than some of you may be thinking that a workshop sounds like more work. But keep reading. As we always do, those of us on the presentation team intend to have fun, will be sure that those who join us will laugh a lot, and will be offering something very practical. With the experience of Fall Semester teaching fresh in your minds, we want to help you (and us) develop and assess your writing assignments in ways that might be useful in planning for your Spring Semester writing-intensive and upper-level classes. Most of us will need to perform this exercise with or without VWP's assistance, so why not get paid for it? If all goes well, you'll emerge from the workshop with some important preparation for spring classes done, with a keener sense about how your current assignments are fulfilling your course objectives, and with some time for reflecting on what you might change in order to assist your students in their struggles with writing.
The theme of our fall workshop is consistent with the mission that has driven us from our inception: to bring together faculty from across the disciplines to discuss common teaching goals, revisit some of our old writing assignments and develop new ones, and foster the continuing professional writing of our faculty. Our mission is both pedagogical and social—this is one of the greatest opportunities for MSU faculty to meet, laugh, and share how they use and respond to writing assignments in their classes.
That pedagogical element of our mission is particularly important as many of us struggle to generate and support writing-intensive classes for the General Education program. When any of us assign writing in our classes, we immediately don the "writing instructor" cap, and we do the best we can. But teaching writing is a labor-intensive enterprise, particularly in large classes, and many of us feel ill-prepared to teach writing, even in our own discipline. We'll be addressing those issues head-on and mean to better prepare all of you for the "writing-intensive" task.
The final report from the GECCIG assessment group responsible for Category 1c this past spring (Writing Intensive) states unequivocally that many of MSU's instructors have felt under-prepared and over-burdened while teaching writing-intensive courses. That report also notes that students performed considerably worse than they did five years ago in organization skills, writing with evidence (a mean of 2.01 out of a possible 4.0), and basic writing skills. Clearly, more than just a fine-tuning of the "writing-intensive" requirement is needed in order for it to work better.
This fall's VWP workshop intends, as the 2002, 2003, and 2004 editions did, to focus directly on these issues. As we do, we'll be opening up discussions about how faculty can make upper-level courses in their major more writing-intensive. Those of us who will be teaching these upper-level courses, like teachers of Gen. Ed. writing-intensive courses, will profit from some interactive and hands-on work on writing assignment design and evaluation in the workshop.
In any event, as of the fall of 2007 the university will be requiring every student to take two writing-intensive courses. Our 2004 participants were pleased to be able to work directly on writing-intensive courses that they would soon be teaching and to leave the workshop with at least one major assignment and a supporting "tool box" of materials that would help their students address it successfully.
Before we disband in late afternoon Thursday, December 20th, participants and team members will share (1) what we've managed to accomplish thus far and (2) where, specifically, we expect to be by the end of Spring Semester with our respective writing-intensive assignment designs, "tool boxes," and assessment activities. We'll ask participants to prepare brief progress reports to be submitted to the team when we gather for our afternoon "reunion" on Friday, April 4th.
Three full days in late December (18, 19, and 20), all to occur in CSU 253-254-255 from 8:30-4:30. An afternoon "Presentation Day" for faculty in spring semester, on Friday, April 4, from 1-3pm, to occur in CSU 253-254-255.
All Minnesota State University, Mankato faculty may apply. Any faculty person can participate, but, since we're repeating the theme that drove the 2003 and 2004 workshops, we'll be giving first preference to faculty who haven't attended in the last couple of years. Faculty are urged to apply regardless of how many other VWP workshops they may have attended before 2003. The workshop will be limited to 25 participants, with representation from each of the colleges in the university. We particularly want to encourage new faculty to apply.
Completed applications are due by Monday, October 22nd. Notification of selection will follow immediately thereafter.
Name ______________________________ College ______________________________
Department ______________________________ Box # ___________________________
Office Phone ______________________________
E-mail Address ______________________________
How many years have you taught at MSU? ______________________________
