Identify our desired learning outcomes
For example, a list of desired writing abilities developed by the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota
- Articulates a clear position in a central thesis
- Employs key disciplinary theories, concepts, and/or evidence in justifying analysis, conclusions, and recommendations
- Bases argument and conclusions on situational and/or organizational context
- Identifies an organization's key competencies using an analytical framework
- Recognizes and addresses counterarguments or alternatives
- Uses effective, valid data/evidence that is relevant to audience concerns
- Sequences most important arguments first
- Is designed for easy reading (skimming, headings, bullets)
- Avoids unnecessary words; is succinct/concise
- Uses direct, plain English
- Uses an engaging style, such that the reader’s attention is sustained
- Summarizes ideas, texts, or events appropriately
- Communicates information using graphics and/or visuals that are appropriate to the audience and content
- Integrates source information (whether textual or graphic)
- Uses correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation
- Uses correct citation formatting
Learning the relevant principles
- Harvard Assessment Seminars, Harvard University, summarizing what students and faculty say about learning
- What meaningful writing means for students, a perceptive discussion of student interest, interests, and motivations, by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller and Neal Lerner
- Writing description evolution showing how it might take three or more years for faculty to warm up to the idea and execute with precision
- Effective Composition Instruction: What Does the Research Show?, University of North Carolina (UNC), identifies a number of unwarranted myths getting in our way
Surveying current best practices
- Enhancing Student Learning: Seven Principles for Good Practice, University of Michigan, are likely principles we might rally around
- What Does Research Tell Us About the Teaching and Learning of Writing?, UNC, an excellent survey of the current normative assumptions in rewrites the above in terms of writing
- WEC workshop Bielefeld 2013, reviews how German and European writing professionals are thinking along these lines
Surveying recent institutional practices
- Writing Plan for the Carlson School of Management
- Why should I use writing assignments in my teaching?, or how we need to get this far before we worry about implementation
- Performing the Groundwork discusses how programs are built slowly as part of processes of institutional development
Writing in the disciplines
- Harvard Disciplinary Guides, Writing Economics, Harvard
- Defining evaluation rubrics and Rubric Use Guidelines
- The Craft of Research
- Other Writing Guides
Survey and assemble instructional materials
- Workshop Lesson Plans, Baruch College
- Teaching materials by learning outcomes, University of Washington, English
- Syllabus design guide, University of Washington, English
- Sample assignment sequences, UW