Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments
10 articlesJuly 2024
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Abstract
Fully anonymous peer review enhances students’ writing and feedback abilities, encourages professionalism and kindness, and transforms the teaching dynamic. This essay describes the use of the Peerceptiv platform for fully anonymous peer review assignments in law school courses. This platform is uniquely helpful in fostering professional identity formation while helping students improve their analytical writing skills. However, implementing this peer review platform comes with challenges such as student reluctance and discomfort. With strategic communication and investment of time, these challenges can be overcome to realize the potential of this innovative approach and provide formative assessment, regardless of class size. Ultimately, scalable peer review helps students strengthen skills while developing collaborative professional identities throughout the law school curriculum.
July 2023
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Abstract
In this paper, we present a science writing assignment in which students focus on targeting specific audiences when writing about a socioscientific issue as well as participate in a peer review process. This assignment helps students consider inclusive science communication in their writing, focusing on engaging unique audiences about the intersections of science and social justice. Students are introduced to evidence-based tools for formulating communication for unique audiences as well as for assessment of writing quality. This assignment is novel in that it helps students think about inclusion issues in STEM, science writing, and peer review, all of which are key disciplinary skills that are not always included in STEM courses. While this assignment was piloted in chemistry and environmental engineering courses, this assignment could easily be modified for other disciplines.
February 2023
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Abstract
The Field Guide to Lost Futures is a collaborative digital humanities assignment created for an upper-year English and cultural studies seminar. The course engaged with the expansive and complex topic of the Anthropocene, from a humanities and specifically cultural studies perspective. To focus student’s engagements with the many catastrophes associated with the Anthropocene, the assignment asked them to profile a single, concrete example of loss related to ongoing environmental crises in a brief contribution to the Field Guide website. Designed with the isolation and dispersal of students due to COVID-19 virtual learning, the Field Guide assignment brought students together in a collective project without the pressures of group work. The assignment was organized as a portfolio of four low-stakes activities that led to the final Field Guide entry. The scaffolded design and experiential nature of the assignment emphasized the multi-stage nature of writing and revision, as well as editorial considerations unique to writing for an online audience.
August 2022
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Abstract
This assignment aims to help nascent scholars break into print and develop scholarly connections between their own areas of interest and the subfield of rhetoric, composition, and writing studies (RC&WS). Drawing on advice from Ballif et al. (2008), students in my graduate seminar write a publication quality book review of a recently published monograph in RC&WS. After a series of priming activities, students engage in a structured peer review that follows guidelines I developed as book review editor at Composition Studies.
January 2022
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Abstract
Students are often told that social justice is both the ideal and the reality to which they should be striving, and contributing to, as scholars and as citizens. However, they are often not given the space-and the challenge-to grapple with what social justice means to, and for, them. This paper shares the design of an upper level sociological theory assignment, Socialization as an Investigation of Social Justice Response Papers, that aims to do just that. The course units and theoretical texts are detailed, along with the response paper scaffold assignments, with special emphasis on a structured peer review process aligned with the assignment rubric. Now, having taught the course eight times to date, memorable student contributions to the course, along with an excerpt from the most memorable student response paper, are shared with the aim of inspiring faculty modification, particularly in the Social Sciences.
September 2020
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Abstract
This essay reflects on a three-part assignment in which students plan, design, and reflect on a text-based videogame. Created originally for a composition course focused on rhetoric and videogames, the assignment lends itself to teaching about the writing process, especially invention and revision, teaching procedural rhetorics, and teaching technical communication concepts such as iterative design and usability. This essay is coauthored by the instructor with two students who took the course in different semesters, highlighting the collaborative nature of even solo-authored game design, as well as how making games can help students take up rhetorical concerns in other genres.
August 2019
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Abstract
Mathematical induction has some notoriety as a difficult mathematical proof technique, especially for beginning students. In this note, I describe a writing assignment in which students are asked to develop, describe in detail, critique, defend, and finally extend their own analogies for mathematical induction. By putting the work of explanation into the students' hands, this assignment requires them to engage in detail with the necessary parts of an inductive proof. Students select their subject for the analogy, allowing them to connect abstract mathematics to their lived experiences. The process of peer review helps students recognize and remedy several of the most common errors in writing an inductive proof. All of this takes place in the context of a creative assignment, outside the work of writing formal inductive proofs.
June 2018
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Abstract
This client project is a culminating assignment in an upper-level professional writing course designed to help students understand the nature of audience-based writing in an unfamiliar writing context. The specific task is for students to revise a substantial section of the university *Faculty Policies and Procedures Manual*. Students researched their audience, analyzed samples of university manuals at other higher education institutions, exercised document design strategies, and practiced syntax revision during the project, ultimately presenting a sample of their work to faculty for feedback. Employing design workshop strategies, this assignment requires students to interview faculty in order to understand multiple users' experiences of the university Faculty Policies and Procedures Manual. In addition, an essential component for student learning in this course is reflection. This reflection is centered on the rhetorical situation of using and revising genres (Devitt, 2009) in the context of a professional environment (Clark, 2005; Kain & Wardle, 2005) in order that students avoid perceiving the class as a march through memos, reports, and emails as static formats (Miller, 1984). This project engages students independently, as they are responsible for their own revisions of 30 pages, while class time is used collaboratively on learning new ways of viewing the document's potential and the genre's function.
February 2018
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Abstract
In teaching technical writing for nearly 20 years, I have recognized the importance of including writing assignments focused on improving students' clarity and effectiveness at the sentence level. I present a writing assignment for STEM students ranging from freshman to graduate-level. Students first find a published abstract in their discipline and then use readability tools to analyze the abstract's style. They revise the abstract for better readability while maintaining professional tone. This assignment reinforces research skills, audience awareness, and reflection on sentence-level stylistic choices.
December 2016
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Abstract
While students learn valuable skills by composing multimodal works, these assignments can also help students master traditional writing genres by defamiliarizing some of the "design choices" they make when writing. Requiring students to revise a traditional written essay into a video accomplishes two key goals in both lower level and advanced writing classes. It updates writing curricula to provide students experience with the kind of writing they will do in other classes. Furthermore, reflecting on the revision process enhances student appreciation for the importance of clear prose, careful exposition, and logical organization.