JAC Volume 3, Issue 1/2

In order to be effective, a cross disciplinary writing program must influence students, teachers, and the collegiate curriculum. Changing what the teachers do is the primary step in changing curriculum to improve student writing. And the obvious goal is to improve student writing. In one sense the change is simple; students must write purposefully and write frequently if they are to become effective writers. The trend towards total reliance on objective tests in place of writing must be reversed. Some part of at least some courses in every major should require writing either of papers, essays, or reports. Bringing about such changes is not easy, but it is also not impossible when the faculty is concerned and an English faculty is willing to propose a consistent and comprehensive view of what is required. The Managing Student Writing Program has successfully affected faculty, students, and curriculum.

To influence these areas we designed a comprehensive program consisting of three major parts. 1) workshops for faculty on managing student writing, 2) three new writing courses for upperdivision students, and 3) a writing hotline. Each feature of the program influences the teaching of writing and student writing differently.

Faculty Workshops

Faculty training involves two, 3-hour workshops developed to assist faculty in other disciplines with the management of student writing. Each workshop is specifically tailored to the needs of the faculty requesting help with using writing in classes. We meet with that faculty prior to the workshop, review, and evaluate assignments given and read sample student pages.

Workshop I concentrates on "consciousness raising," reinforcing the need for writing as an instructional tool, reassuring teachers that they can manage student writing, and informing them of resources available from the writing professionals on campus. We acquaint them with possibilities for both long term and short term help for both faculty and students.

Consciousness raising (intervention at the teacher level) involves activities as:

1) soliciting and interpreting anecdotes to show that teachers who avoid having students write, inhibit learning;

2) providing examples which illustrate that unclear writing may indicate faulty learning/thinking;

3) reviewing several writing theories and relating them to learning, leading teachers to the awareness that good learning and good writing are both process oriented activities; and

4) presenting a problem solving process, together with a model of what makes a good problem, and one or more management systems suitable to the discipline for constructing and managing writing assignments.

We discuss the cognitive processes involved in various types of assignments in order to emphasize the seriousness and complexity of good assignment making and to illustrate places at which journals and other explanatory tools and even data gathering techniques may be employed to generate better learning. At a workshop with the sociology/anthropology faculty we presented and elaborated on the following series of steps a student must go through to produce an adequate solution to a problem:

When the steps were understood, we led the faculty to discuss both what they needed to know in order to grade assignments constructively and the kinds of error most likely to occur at the different stages. At the close of this first workshop we suggested our willingness to work further in a future workshop on items of their choosing.

Workshop II emphasizes ways in which faculty can enhance the actual production of writing in their disciplines, concentrating on the management of writing in the discipline. Here we spend time developing the potential uses of a journal or other exploratory/reaction devices staff may use in order to help students become aware of problems worth writing about. For example, we might suggest to the industrial arts faculty that they ask students to keep project journals in which they record progress of a project as well as problems encountered and the means used to resolve them. The journal might also include suggestions for avoiding or lessening the problems the next time they occur. Such a journal could be a useful trouble shooting tool for potential teachers and managers. We also talk about the qualities of a good assignment (Figure 1) and explain the reasons why instructors need to carefully monitor the students' progress through the assignment.

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Figure 1

Characteristics of a Good Assignment

Characteristic	Example
States the AIM or PURPOSE of the assignment	to explore continued criminal behavior on the part of convicted felons
State the method by which the aim or purpose is to be accomplished	by giving reasons
State the audience	for the instructor
Other relevant conditions	in a brief report with an abstract. Use the MLA Style Manual.

(At times, the assignment cannot be this fully specified until the time when the student narrows his topic/chooses his problem.)

Questions:

1. What are some other appropriate AIM words?

2. What are some other appropriate methods?

3. What are some possible audiences?

4. What are some further relevant conditions?

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We discuss the distinguishing features of drafts and finished papers using Linda Flower's "Writer Based Prose" as a primary resource,¹ but referring also to important understandings of writing for readers developed in the works of James Moffett, James Kinneavy, and James Britton et al. ² We may construct hypothetical assignments based on actual ones made available to us and ask the workshop group to evaluate or improve these. We may help the participating faculty develop means and a schedule for monitoring various longer term assignments (Figure 2) and discuss the relationship of the assignment to the writing produced. Some assignments are for reiterating things learned (testing memory), others for integrating things learned (interpretive essays, for example), still others for going beyond things learned (research essays perhaps or reports evaluating one or more theories or reports discussing implementation of materials learned).

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Figure 2

Sample Management Schedule for a Long Paper

Week 1: Give a clear assignment.

Week 3: 10-minute conference to narrow and state subject area in terms of a problem if possible. Student comes to conference with bibliography, and some reading notes.

Week 4: Problem restated and formally presented on paper. Method of research and hypotheses for outcome should be stated clearly on paper.

Week 5: Student submits a one-sentence statement of what he has found out (his resolution) and 5 reasons (bits of evidence) why the statement is credible.

Week 6: Draft of paper is due (1 sentence statement and reasons are re- submitted). Draft is read with student in a conference of 10- 1 5 minutes.

Week 8: Reread drafts as needed.

Week 9: Paper due in final form. (Look at form first and hand back immediately any that lack seriously in this respect.)

Week 10: Return papers with written feedback.

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Finally, we talk about evaluation. For this, we use all or portions of several papers drawn from those submitted to us as typical papers written by students in the discipline. Most of our time is spent reframing what appear to be writing problems such as poor sentence structure or faulty organization to show they may be discipline related problems of incomplete or unclear thinking or incomplete understanding—failures to realize the paper rather than failing to write "good" papers. If the vagaries, ambiguities, over-generalizations are seen as aspects of a paper still in the draft (learning) stage, then it makes sense to ask questions, to confer with the student, to aid the student to get peer reaction, either verbal or written. If also, the problems are discipline-related, the teacher is competent to manage them, again proving writing integral to the discipline.

Professional Writing Courses

The Professional Writing courses are designed to intervene on the student level and provide necessary followup for the other-discipline teacher who can refer students into them. These courses (3 one-credit courses in a prescribed sequence) are open to upperdivision and graduate students. Each one-credit course lasts three weeks and addresses problems common to one stage of the composing process. The courses are taught regularly every quarter to no more than 10 students, allowing them to be heavily conference-oriented. All courses may be repeated for credit. However, the courses must be taken in prescribed order the first time, but not necessarily during the same quarter. After that, the student may retake only the course(s) most needed. Preferably, the student has a paper already assigned for a course or a thesis or major paper in progress when registering. Preferably, also, the student has been referred into the courses by an advisor or major professor who has agreed to work in concert with the teacher in the courses. The Professional Writing courses, then, provide the student with a means to get both long term and short term assistance with a major paper and provide the referring instructor with long term and short term involvement in the work the student is doing. Thus, the other-discipline professor works with the student's learning and we relate that to learning to write.

A brief description of the three courses makes the rationale clearer. Course 1, "The Problem," centers on finding and stating a problem. Many students will have done much of this before entering the class. They all benefit, however, from having what they have done or what the major professor has done for them called to their attention. The problem is readdressed in such a way that it leads them to focus on the stage reached in processing the data they have gathered or on what it is that they have found out and want to say. These are both problem-statement stages of the composing process. Several activities, many of them oral, dominate this stage. Students are encouraged to talk about their projects and they are bombarded with questions. In fact, each student is assigned a time to talk to the group and must prepare a succinct presentation. Discussion follows to clarify definitions, where the answers may be found, and what questions still remain. A second activity asks students to brainstorm and then to sort and rank the results of the brainstorming, working up from the most specific to the most conceptually general statement and finding the connections among the set of statements. The student brainstorms one or more lines of thought the paper may exploit and "tries each one on for size." This initial course forces the students to manipulate what has been found in new ways and encourages them to play with the data and the ideas it generates so they can look at possibilities while withholding judgement.

Early in Course 2, "Writing," the teacher brings in a paper-in-progress for the students to look through and read. One that we use often comes in ten different versions. Students frequently realize for the first time that writing well, in one sense, always gets more difficult. Course 2 attempts to lead the student to a completed rough draft. The student formally states his/her hypotheses, expectations, and assumptions. These will be challenged by the class and the student is encouraged to refine them with help of his/her committee or major professor. More sorting activities further the student's analysis of the data and lead to a synthesis which must be expressed in one sentence. Ultimately, the student begins to construct a draft. If the student is working on a short paper, the draft will be completed and refined in time for submission at the end of the quarter. If the student is working on a major paper or a thesis, he/she decides what will be completed by the end of the quarter and works toward a full draft of that portion of the paper, perhaps a research proposal or a review of the literature. All students participate in several teacher- student conferences, often several hours' worth, and some class- time will be devoted to work on the writing-in-progress.

Course 3, "Revising," is concerned with the final paper. Thus, it attends to matters of form, mechanics, style, readability, and audience. Because we usually begin revising in terms of form and audience, the other matters fall into place. Some classtime is spent reviewing notes, references, and matters of style. Most of the time has seemed best spent on work with sentences, using a sentence-combining model.³ Again, conference time and time for writing are provided each student.

Information about two procedure matters that distinguish these Professional Writing courses from others is needed to allow for a full understanding of their unique character. First, our courses are all tutorials if numbers will allow. Any student in the courses may remain in contact with Hoffman or Risdon after the term ends until the project is completed. Students may, for example, take Courses I and 2, then go off to work on their own, returning for advice as needed. When they are ready for Course 3, they enroll for Course 3. This flexibility better allows the courses to serve the students. Second, contact is maintained with the major professor. Usually, the student takes the initiative here, consulting with the professor at each major step. If needed, three-way conferences may be arranged among the student, Professional Writing teacher, and major professor.

The Professional Writing courses do meet real needs of both students and professors. Our major concerns are that we will not be able to meet the demand once the courses are better known on campus, or that current budget constraints may inflate course enrollments.

Writing Hotline

The most visible part of the cross-disciplinary writing program is the Writing Hotline. The Hotline serves three audiences: students, faculty, and community, providing immediate answers to questions about writing. The most frequent user is the business community, second the faculty, and third the students. The Hotline averages about 4-5 calls a day from among the three groups. Often the questions are simple: How do you punctuate the sentence? How do you spell gasohol? Some questions are simply impossible to answer over the phone: How do you design and lay out the front page of a newsletter? Such questions are partially answered over the phone and then a meeting set up with the caller, which is usually a faculty member. A question similar to the newsletter question led to two workshops on newsletters for the University of Minnesota-Duluth Sea Grant Program. Still other questions ask for information we don't readily have. In such cases we suggest the person call an appropriate source, such as a reference librarian, a government office, a lawyer (we have one on the faculty that helps us), or another subject matter expert.

The Hotline's secondary purpose is referral. Most referrals involve questions about a student's writing that a faculty member senses is not good, but is not sure what is wrong with it or how to help the student. The faculty member calls the Hotline to ask for advice and we ask the person to send us the paper for evaluation and analysis. We then usually meet with the faculty member and the student and plan a course of action to be followed. In some cases the plan is as simple as suggesting which writing course, Advanced Writing, Advanced Technical Writing, Business Writing, etc., the student should take. In other instances, it is as complex as having a student come in to write on an assigned topic and then setting up what amounts to a remedial course of instruction. Often students are asked to rewrite papers for classes after English faculty have read and commented on the paper written for a faculty member from another field. In some instances the student is referred to a Professional Writing course that is a part of the comprehensive plan.

The other important aspect of Hotline referral is that many faculty members use it for their own writing. We have read, and edited for revision, papers written by faculty members from different departments including social development, accounting, marketing, business administration, geology, chemistry, etc., before the papers were published or presented at professional meetings. We have suggested changes ranging from correcting the punctuation to a total reorganization of the paper. In a few cases it has been difficult to find a way to "rescue" the paper. Great diplomacy is necessary to insure that faculty feel confident about the advice rather than threatened by the commentator. If they are treated respectfully, they come back for more information.

The Hotline has an effect far beyond the amount of information handed out. The Hotline lets the community know that writing is important to the University at least to the extent that the writing faculty are willing to take time to answer questions. It is also a public symbol of genuine interest in writing problems. Some business people and faculty have called the Hotline just to say that they thought that it was a great idea. Occasional news releases over radio and TV remind people the Hotline is open to them.

While many faculty members do use the service, probably more important is that most faculty know about it. Wherever we go on campus, the Writing Hotline and writing problems enter the conversations. Because the Hotline is advertised, the faculty seem to feel free to admit that they have questions about writing. Further, the Hotline seems to have made open discussion of writing problems "permissible" and raised the faculty's confidence that they can improve their own writing and elicit better writing from their students. Overall, our Writing across the Disciplines Program has motivated teachers to learn to manage student writing and to require more writing. Important feedback suggests some teachers are better satisfied with their assignments and with students' response to them. Moreover, if they are not satisfied, we hear about it, and can work further with that teacher. Teachers are using the Hotline and referring students not only into Professional Writing but into writing classes at other levels. Advanced Writing and Technical Writing, it seems, cannot be offered frequently enough to meet demand. The Writing Lab, once the dreaded punishment chamber for illiterate freshman, is now populated by students at all levels, some referred from outside the English Department, and some self- referred. Perhaps the most important result of the Writing Across the Disciplines program is the feeling that admitting one has problems with writing is okay, because learning to write is a continuing process, and the learning is easier and more efficient with help. People with writing problems, it seems, have come out of the closet, and discovered there is life beyond the comma splice, the misspelled word and the quandary of finding something to say. Both faculty and students are writing better papers, papers they are proud of and want to share.