Education/Archive/Case Studies/milestones

Milestones

Robert Cummings

Director, Center for Writing and Rhetoric
Associate Professor of English

University of Mississippi
USA

Course name
Writing 101

Course level (undergraduate/graduate)
First-year undergraduates

Learning objectives
Writing Skills Development    
Media and Information Literacy    
Critical Thinking and Research Skills    
Collaboration   
Wiki Technical and Communication Skills   

Discipline of course
Composition

Class size
23

Individual or group assignment
Both

Resources
Assignment

Grading

The purpose of the assignment was to further student progress toward the composition course outcomes of learning a writing process, building skills in intellectual exploration and argumentation, understanding rhetorical purposes and diverse audiences, engaging in effective research practices, and producing prose with acceptable conventions and mechanics.

Student work was evaluated both in terms of participation in each stage of the assignment process, and also in terms of a reflective essay. At each of the seven assignment stages students were asked to conduct some type of research and then to prepare a brief report for that day’s assignment. And within the reflective essay students were asked to evaluate the project in terms of its usefulness of helping them reach the course outcomes. This strategy of creating small, incremental writing to learn assignments each day provided manageable tasks on a daily basis which did not detract from the research process.

(CC-BY-SA 3.0) by Kevin Bain