Conducted through a collaboration between the Council of Writing Program Administrators(CWPA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study identified andtested new variables for examining writing’s relationship to learning and development. EightyCWPA members helped to establish a consensus model of 27 effective writing practices. EightyUS baccalaureate institutions appended questions to the NSSE instrument based on these 27practices, yielding responses from 29,634 first-year students and 41,802 seniors. Confirmatoryfactor analysis identified three constructs: Interactive Writing Processes, Meaning-Making WritingTasks, and Clear Writing Expectations. Regression analyses indicated that the constructs werepositively associated with two sets of established constructs in the regular NSSE instrument “DeepApproaches to Learning (Higher-Order Learning, Integrative Learning, and Reflective Learning)and Perceived Gains in Learning and Development as defined by the institution’s contributionsto growth in Practical Competence, Personal and Social Development, and General EducationLearning” with effect sizes that were consistently greater than those for the number of pageswritten. These were net results after controlling for institutional and student characteristics, aswell as other factors that might contribute to enhanced learning. The study adds three empiricallyestablished constructs to research on writing and learning. It extends the positive impact of writing beyond learning course material to include Personal and Social Development. Although correlational, it can provide guidance to instructors, institutions, accreditors, and other stakeholders because of the nature of the questions associated with the effective writing constructs.

Abstract Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

American intellectuals and educators are dismayed by crisis in public discourse. With Jurgen Habermas and others, they worry over of public sphere and a degeneration in rational-critical debate. Cultural critics often contrast contemporary public discourse with what seems to be America's golden age of public discussion: nineteenth-century America, before culture industry or late capitalism, before professionalism, before TV, before mass media or multimedia.1 The usual suspect is modern communications technologies, specifically TV. According to Neil Postman, we should deeply lament the decline of Age of Typography and ascendancy of Age of Television (8). Televisual media, he argues, has eroded public's span and shriveled its capacity for rational thought. Looking to Lincoln-Douglas debates, he maintains that Americans' verbal facility and attention span would obviously have been extraordinary by current standards (45). The citizenry has declined, he argues, because citizens watch TV and no longer read: almost every scholar . . . has concluded that process [of reading] encourages rationality, while televisual logic short-circuits rational thought in favor of slogans, images, mere stories-in short, entertainment.2 The late Christopher Lasch, in The Revolt of Elites, blames not only television for making argument a lost art but also undemocratic leanings of intellectuals and academics. How far we have fallen, he argues, from Golden Years of nineteenth century, when serious public argument was practiced by both citizenry and media. In those days newspapers (Lasch singles out Horace Greeley's New York Tribune) were journals of opinion in which reader expected to find a definite point of view, together with unrelenting criticism of opposing points of view (163). The beginning of decline (the nadir of which he hopes we are presently experiencing) began in progressive era, when intellectual leaders preached 'scientific management' of public affairs.... They forged links between government and university so as to assure a steady supply of experts and expert knowledge. But they had little use for public debate (167). Academics and

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