Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

2011-12 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

Emily Kelley
Department of Art

Writing plays a crucial role in how artists and graphic designers communicate about their work. Artists are asked to write documents called "artist statements" that should convey the ideas behind their work, their techniques, and how other artists have influenced their development. Similarly, graphic designers are asked to communicate the ideas behind their designs to potential employers and clients; their ability to do so clearly and effectively in writing is essential to securing employment.

In order to engage students in the process of applying what they have learned in ART 344 (a course covering the history of twentieth and twenty-first century art) to their own work as artists, the final assignment of the course is a three-part project that allows each student to explore a specific aspect of the course material that he or she finds most compelling. For the first part of the assignment, students are asked to create a work of art inspired by one (or more) of the artists or styles covered during the semester. The students then create two written products: a report explaining the style or artist who was influential on the work they created, and a 2-page statement explaining the significance of this artist or style in the work of art they produced.

This assignment encourages students to think and write critically about the ways in which the course material is relevant to their growth as professionals. Art students, who tend to take great care with the details of their artwork, learn to appreciate the importance of attention to detail when communicating their ideas with words.

2010-11 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

Rose M. Lange
Department of Nursing

SVSU has shown a very long history in valuing writing.  Students need to develop effective writing skills as a matter of course during their college careers.  Over the past ten years, my thoughts on writing in my nursing courses have changed from a fairly “traditional” approach to using technology that encourages a students’ development by enhancing their editing and writing abilities. In the nursing program, collaboration is a key aspect of the program. One way in which I accomplish this goal is through the development of a wiki writing assignment.

Nursing 460 is a didactic nursing course that explores health issues as they relate to communities. Students typically write a paper exploring community health issues. As I evaluated the student outcomes of the assignment, my thoughts on writing in this course changed to foster in-depth thought and reflection on the writing topics. I decided to move to a wiki format. Each student creates weekly or biweekly writing about different aspects of the topic, and the group is charged with the task of combining and editing the writing to create the group wiki document.

The wiki format has been a great success.  This innovative technology has opened many avenues to create new perspectives on writing for the students. Students have a more positive attitude about this approach to writing - even when this process requires a larger time commitment.  This innovative assignment integrates writing that is consistent with university and department goals and enhances learning of community health nursing course content.

2009-10 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

In Kinesiology, students experience writing as a real and important aspect of learning and professional contribution.  We want our students to contribute to the culture of academic excellence and community service at SVSU.

Kinesiology 464 is an avenue for students to do this.  As professionals, many of our students will need to give educational poster presentations at health or wellness fairs, so the course poster project prepares them for this, allowing them to take ownership of their learning in a way that is different from the other types of writing they do.  Students also write case studies, showing in writing how they applied written criteria (e.g, standards from the American College of Sports Medicine) to decision-making.  These writing tasks mimic what we hope our students will be able to do when counseling a client.  Our students also give presentations at scientific meetings and often go on to graduate school, so we prepare them for the kind of technical writing they will encounter.

The students are in a continuous process of writing or revising their writing in the poster and the case study during the entire semester.  They are engaged in the clinical exercise prescription content in both projects throughout the entire semester as well.  This approach incorporates technical writing so meaningfully into the exercise science major that I don't think students have yet figured out that they are learning so much about writing!

2008-09 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

2007-08 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

2006-07 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

Erik Trump
Department of Political Science

I believe that my responsibility is not just to assign written work but also to teach students how to write effectively. I have developed a system of assignments that both requires students to engage with the course content and gives them directed practice in writing.

I try to support students' development of effective writing skills. Specifically, I do three things. First, I offer general guidelines about effective thesis statements, organization strategies, and so forth. Second, I provide examples (drawn from students' homework) of "promising" first draft materials; I then revise and annotate that material to demonstrate how one can use the writing process to deepen and extend one's thinking. Finally, I create a model paragraph "template" that we use for in-class writing exercises and/or as a prompt for discussion.

This collection of assignments modifies the typical "draft and revise" model by having students practice the final assignment several times with different topics each time. I have them write about each ideology that we study. These short assignments require the students to take information from lecture and the textbook and apply that information to an ideological argument.

Each week students complete one of these short assignments, and we then use their responses as the basis for class discussion. The short writing assignments thus ensure that students stay focused on the course goals, reading (for example) Robert Bork with an eye to identifying his ideology rather than to simply find reasons to disagree with his argument. In the final assignment, students take one of the shorter responses and expand it. This exercise gives them practice in deepening and extending their critical.

2005-06 Innovative Writing in Teaching Award

Andrew M. Chubb
Department of Chemistry

Effective communication is a vital component of any discipline. This certainly is no less true in the sciences, where it is crucial for precise documentation and accurate transmission of data. However, the incorporation of writing exercises in science classes, which have a strong quantitative foundation, often can be a difficult task. To address this need and to enhance the students’ understanding of key concepts, I have changed to the structure of the Organic Laboratory courses to include a more formal writing component.

The traditional focus on purely quantitative results no longer is used to measure the quality of work and depth of understanding. Instead, the emphasis now is on the students’ own interpretation of both the data they collect and the experimental results they obtain. Formal typewritten lab reports, similar to those that might be required in post-graduate settings, provide a framework for the students to summarize and analyze their data and to provide an explanation for the results, whether or not the experiment was a numerical success. I am proud of how well the students in general have responded to these changes, which, in most cases, represent a complete shift from the way they have become accustomed to thinking and writing. I look forward to the continued success of these SVSU students as they pursue their careers in the sciences.