My social media news feeds are abuzz with thoughts of back-to-school today. For many teachers around the US, students have already returned. Here in Michigan and at points north in my home and native land, K-12 students will return on September 2. At Michigan State University, our fall semester officially kicks off on August 27th. It seems I have only nine days to get that syllabus in shape?! Yikes!<\/p>\n
In my role as the Director of Graduate Certificate Programs in Educational Technology and Online Teaching and Learning at MSU, I’ve been thinking, with colleagues, about effective ways to support our students’ development as writers. Many students who come to our programs tell us that they haven’t written anything substantive for a long time. Others tell us that they did very little academic writing as undergraduates. Certainly most of our students tell us that they have little experience with multimodal composition. And yet, as a program we expect our students to communicate their thoughts clearly, for many purposes, audiences, and using a range of digital tools.<\/p>\n
Though it’s not quite as scintillating as the trending Top 10 lists on Buzzfeed, I’ve put together a list of ten things every student in our Graduate Certificate and Master’s degree programs should know about writing. I’ve prefaced the list with a little context for why the list is important. I follow up on the list with a set of exemplars and two critical questions to help students develop essential metacognitive skills as writers.<\/p>\n
Here’s the link to the full document<\/a>\u00a0with preface and exemplars, but I’ve copied the Top 10 List here so that \u00a0those of you who genuinely think this list IS<\/em> as scintillating as Buzzfeed don’t have to wait \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n 1) \u00a0\u00a0Writing is thinking.<\/b> Evidence of critical and sophisticated thinking is communicated to others through clear and concise expression of those ideas in written and multimodal formats.<\/p>\n 2) \u00a0\u00a0Know your purpose and let it guide you.<\/b> Ask yourself whether your purpose is to persuade, inform, entertain, question, tell a story? As you write, ask yourself how each paragraph contributes to that purpose.<\/p>\n 3) \u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Think about the Gestalt.<\/b> When using multiple modes to express your ideas (e.g., images and words) think about the affordances of each mode and the Gestalt<\/i> of the elements you\u2019ve chosen.<\/i> When images and words come together, their combination should, in fact, communicate more meaning than each of the components would communicate as individual elements. That\u2019s what Gestalt is.<\/p>\n So, as you compose, ask yourself \u2013 what ideas can I communicate effectively with this image? How can my words connect with, expand or enhance the meaning in this image? How can I create something that communicates layers of meaning effectively through the combination of the image and words? Remember that there are lots of ways to communicate meaning \u2013 through shape, color, position on the page, structure of words, video, mathematics, graphs, maps\u2026etc.<\/p>\n 4) \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Writing and multi-modal composition take time.<\/b> Do not expect to do your best work at the last minute. Life, of course, has its own struggles \u2013 and we recognize the constraints that many students face. That said, when you give yourself time to iterate, you will usually be happier with the end result.<\/p>\n 5) \u00a0\u00a0Own your status.<\/b> As a graduate student, you are a member of the academic community. You have a voice and others in this community can benefit from hearing it. As you examine research, synthesize it, and communicate your understanding of a topic, you are actively engaging in a conversation with OTHER members of the academic community who have thought about the same issue. As Dr. Anne Curzan recently opined, academic writing and citation should be thought of as the enactment of this human conversation. Please read her blog post for additional perspective on what we mean by this idea: http:\/\/chronicle.com\/blogs\/linguafranca\/2014\/08\/08\/humanizing-academic-citation\/<\/a><\/p>\n Also, please watch this short video, created by MSU graduate student Ha Nguyen, which focuses on the idea of academic integrity and citation within the academic community: http:\/\/youtu.be\/JTvVVYpC1CE<\/a><\/p>\nThe Top 10 List<\/h1>\n