Honors and WP Collaborate on Workshop |
On Friday, January 31st, the Honors Program and the Writing Program at Syracuse University offered a special half-day workshop for honors faculty, to help them prepare innovative writing assignments and integrate them into their honors courses for the following fall and spring semesters. Specifically, this workshop surveyed the range of possible outcomes of college writing assignments: some assignments, for example, are designed to help students learn course content; others, to measure the extent of students' learning; others, to foster critical thinking; still others, to communicate disciplinary discourse conventions. When instructors have articulated their own goals for an assignment, they are better positioned to design assignments that produce successful student writing. The workshop began with a presentation by Katherine Gottschalk, Director of First-Year Writing Seminars at Cornell University. First-Year Writing Seminars at Cornell comprise some 100 courses offered by over 30 departments, ranging from Anthropology to Music to Theatre, Film & Dance. Dr. Gottschalk discussed the principles of assignment design and presented extensive examples. A panel discussion included several faculty who have had success with innovative assignments and several honors students who related the impact these writing assignments have had on their own learning. In a final, interactive session, workshop facilitators and honors faculty shared drafts of assignments and strategies for revising them to meet their course objectives.
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