This book presents student and faculty voices and experiences from a three-year study of writing teachers and writing students at Northeastern University, St. Johns University, and the University of Oklahoma. The results of surveys and interviews with seniors and their teachers shed light on the importance of meaningful writing assignments that facilitate student agency, engagement with course material, and transfer of writing skills across disciplines. The book includes about 20 pages of appendixes offering the original survey and interview questions. It will be of interest to teachers, directors of writing centers, composition scholars, and other educators and researchers. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
In the face of the continuing discourse of crisis in US education, The Meaningful Writing Project offers readers an affirming story of writing in higher education that shares students’ experiences in their own voices. In presenting the results of a three-year study consisting of surveys and interviews of university seniors and their faculty across three diverse institutions, authors Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner consider students’ perceptions of their meaningful writing experiences, the qualities of those experiences, and instructors’ perspectives on assignment design and delivery.
This study confirms that meaningful assignments offer students opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and texts and are relevant to past experiences and passions as well as to future aspirations and identities. Meaningful writing occurs across majors, in both required and elective courses, and beyond students’ years at college. Additionally, the study makes clear that faculty across the curriculum devote significant care and attention to creating writing assignments that support student learning, as they understand writing performance to be a developmental process connected to overall cognitive and social development, student engagement with learning, and success in a wide variety of disciplines and professions.
The Meaningful Writing Project provides writing center directors, WPAs, other composition scholars, and all faculty interested in teaching and learning with writing an unprecedented look into the writing projects students find meaningful.
