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Writing Assignments and Instruction
at Ontario’s Publicly Funded Universities:
A View from Three Disciplines
Jordana Garbati, Kelly McDonald,
Lindsay Meaning, Boba Samuels, Cory Scurr
Wilfrid Laurier University
�Published by
The Higher Education Quality
Council of Ontario
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Toronto, ON Canada, M5E 1E5
Phone:
Fax:
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Cite this publication in the following format:
Garbati, J., McDonald, K., Meaning, L., Samuels, B., & Scurr, C.* (2015). Writing Assignments
and Instruction at Ontario’s Publicly Funded Universities: A View from Three Disciplines.
Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.
*Authors listed in alphabetic order
*
The opinions expressed in this research document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or official policies of the
Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario or other agencies or organizations that may have provided support, financial or otherwise, for this
project. © Queens Printer for Ontario, 2015
�Writing Assignments and Instruction at Ontario’s Publicly Funded Universities: A View from Three Disciplines
Acknowledgements
The authors extend appreciation and thanks to the faculty and staff at Ontario universities who generously
engaged in this research project. We also thank HEQCO for its support and the funding that enabled us to
carry out this research. We are grateful as well to the reviewers of this manuscript who helped us clarify and
adapt this work for publication.
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Executive Summary
The ability of postsecondary students to write and communicate proficiently is an expectation identified by
many, including not only organizations such as the OECD but also other public and employer groups. There is
concern, however, that students and thus employees often fail to meet expectations in these areas. To
address this concern, it is necessary to understand more about the writing skills that students learn during
their postsecondary education. This research project was designed to examine whether and how students
are taught to write at university.
This study used both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the writing opportunities afforded to
students at five Ontario universities in their first and second years. We analyzed course syllabi (n=215),
distributed online surveys to university instructors (n=31), and held focus groups (n=3) of faculty (n=8) to
identify the assignments and instruction that students received. We chose one representative department
within each of three disciplines (arts/humanities, sciences and applied fields) to study: history, kinesiology
and business.
The research questions that guided this research were:
What types of writing assignments do students receive in first- and second-year courses in the
humanities, sciences and applied fields (e.g., history, kinesiology and business)?
What are instructors’ perceptions about the in-class writing instruction they provide to address
these assignments?
Our findings indicate that university students write an average of 2.5 assignments per course. This finding is
consistent with the results of other research in Canadian and US universities. Based on these values and
assuming a course load of 5, students would write an average of about 12 assignments over the course of a
year, suggesting that university students do, in fact, have opportunities to learn advanced academic writing
in their courses. We also found, however, that there were significant differences between the number of
assignments expected across disciplines, with students in history writing almost twice as many assignments
as those in kinesiology or business. So while many students are receiving opportunities to learn and practice
writing in their first- and second-year courses, many others are doing little or no writing.
One instructional strategy that has been suggested to promote writing skill development is to use low-stakes
writing assignments. These can be incorporated into courses as nested assignments so students have an
opportunity to submit component parts of an assignment and receive feedback about their writing as they
work toward a final product. Our syllabi analysis shows that almost one-quarter of assignments were
categorized as nested assignments. There is therefore an opportunity for professors to increase the use of
the nested assignment model and to incorporate more low-stakes writing opportunities in first- and secondyear courses. We found that only about 5% of syllabi indicated an opportunity for students to receive any
form of in-process feedback on their writing assignments. Using a nested assignment approach increases the
amount of feedback that students receive from professors.
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Our faculty survey and focus group interviews elaborated on the syllabi data. Findings from these additional
data sources indicated that professors in all three departments at one institution relied on their own
undergraduate and graduate writing experiences to inform their current writing instruction. Kinesiology
professors appeared to feel the most competent to provide writing instruction to their first- and secondyear students. Professors did not indicate that they received any ongoing professional development
opportunities on writing instruction, so this might be worth considering when planning for departmental
development.
There were several differences between departments and among individual professors’ perceptions and
approaches to writing instruction. Unlike history and kinesiology professors, for example, business faculty
did not include a lot of writing instruction or assignments in their first- and second-year courses. History and
kinesiology professors indicated that they considered disciplinary goals when they planned writing
instruction and assignments, but business professors did not. Professors in the three departments reported
using both in-class and online instructional strategies but emphasized different topics in their classes (e.g.,
grammar in history, APA style in kinesiology).
Finally, professors in all departments perceived students as lacking in writing ability or engagement, and
while they recognized the writing centre as a reliable resource for students, they often spoke of it with a
remedial purpose in mind.
In conclusion, this study shows that student writing at university is poorly addressed in any systematic,
coherent way. Further, writing across the disciplines includes diverse experiences and instructional
approaches. Professors in some disciplines may be more focused on sharing subject content than providing
writing instruction. The barriers to university writing instruction identified in this study (i.e., lack of
institutional resources, low level of student abilities and engagement, inconsistent departmental support),
need to be addressed so that professors and institutions in general will be in a better position to support
writing development in the early years of undergraduate education.
Future study should extend this research to include examination of writing assignments and instruction in
other disciplines and with other student groups such as graduate students or international students. Also
suggested are studies that include larger numbers of instructors in the focus groups so that a more
comprehensive view of the departments from multiple perspectives is available. Finally, inclusion of
students in a similar study would be of value so that their perceptions of the instruction and assignments
they receive are considered.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.............................................................................................................................................. 3
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
Literature Review ................................................................................................................................................. 7
Research Questions ............................................................................................................................................. 9
Methods ............................................................................................................................................................. 10
Findings .............................................................................................................................................................. 12
Quantitative Results: Syllabi Analysis ........................................................................................................ 12
Quantitative Results: Faculty Survey ......................................................................................................... 16
Qualitative Analysis: Faculty Surveys and Focus Group Interviews .......................................................... 18
Theme 1: Faculty Writing Qualifications .............................................................................................. 18
Theme 2: Writing Assignment Variety ................................................................................................. 20
Theme 3: Teaching Strategies and Types of Writing Instruction ......................................................... 22
Theme 4: Assessment, Feedback and Goals ........................................................................................ 23
Theme 5: Department-wide Goals and Guidelines .............................................................................. 24
Theme 6: Expectations and View of Student Abilities/Engagement ................................................... 25
Theme 7: Challenges: Class Size, Lack of Time, TAs and Resources..................................................... 26
Theme 8: Institutional Resources Available ......................................................................................... 28
Summary of Qualitative Findings ......................................................................................................... 28
Discussion........................................................................................................................................................... 29
Assignment and Instruction Descriptions .................................................................................................. 30
Three Barriers to Improving Student Writing ............................................................................................ 31
(1) Lack of Resources............................................................................................................................ 31
(2) Low Level of Student Abilities and Engagement............................................................................. 31
(3) Lack of Departmental Support........................................................................................................ 32
Limitations ......................................................................................................................................................... 32
Conclusion and Avenues for Further Investigation............................................................................................ 33
References ......................................................................................................................................................... 35
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List of Tables
Table 1: Number of Course Syllabi and Writing Assignments Coded for each Department ............................ 12
at each University
Table 2: Summary of Key Findings from the Syllabi Analysis ............................................................................ 13
Table 3: Record of Survey and Focus Group Interview Participants................................................................. 18
Table 4: Summary of Key Findings from the Interview and Survey Data Analysis ........................................... 28
List of Figures
Figure 1: Graph Depicting the Average Number of Assignments Given to Students in Each Discipline .......... 14
Across Institutions
Figure 2: Types and Frequency of Supplemental Materials Faculty Members Give to Students ..................... 16
Figure 3: Types and Frequency of Feedback Provided to Students by Professors ........................................... 17
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Introduction
The writing ability of university students receives considerable attention and is often criticized, not only in
the media (see Holland, 2013; MacQueen, 2013) but also from within the academy (see Goldberger, 2014;
Graves, 2013, 2014). Major reports on educational attainment, such as the OECD’s Education at a Glance
(2013), draw attention to the expectation that students at the postsecondary level be able to write well by
the time they graduate. In articles about employability and the skills needed to succeed beyond university,
communication skills factor highly in business fields and elsewhere (see Bloom & Kitagawa, 1999; Career
Builder, 2015; The Conference Board of Canada, 2014). At the university level, in policy documents such as
the 2007 Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents’ Undergraduate Degree Level Expectations (UDLEs),
the ability of undergraduate students to communicate – orally and in writing – is prominently recognized as
an important learning outcome. These UDLEs are reinforced in the similar but more recent policies for
graduate students (see Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance, 2010). Given this attention to
students’ communication and writing abilities, it is reasonable to ask what instruction students receive in
university to develop their ability to write.
This project provides an analysis of writing/communication instruction in first and second year at publicly
funded universities in Ontario. We describe writing assignments given to students in three disciplines,
explore professors’ expectations for student writing, and identify the kinds of curricular instruction available
to first- and second-year undergraduate students. In the first phase, data were collected through syllabi
analysis and an online survey of professors. In the second phase, we conducted focus group interviews with
professors in three departments (business, history and kinesiology) at one institution. This project enables a
discussion of how current university writing instruction aligns with expectations for student outcomes,
public expectations about writing and best practices identified by writing researchers.
Literature Review
Identifying and describing the writing assignments that students are required to complete at university
provides one approach to understanding how students learn to write. Course writing assignments may be
designed to test students’ knowledge of content as well as to enable students to develop, refine and
practice necessary writing skills and to receive assessment on how well they are demonstrating those skills.
Under this view, it is assumed that students not only receive the assignment but also instruction on how to
complete it, along with clear and constructive feedback to guide them. Students’ poor writing may thus
reflect a variety of causes, including a paucity of writing instruction and feedback, in spite of the opportunity
or requirement to write for class. While the omission of instruction is not likely to happen in specifically
labeled “writing courses” with experienced writing instructors, it is possible in other courses, especially in
large first-year classes in which course content may be emphasized at the expense of writing development.
Despite its limitations, the identification and analysis of writing assignments given to university students is a
reasonable starting point for an exploration and improved understanding of student writing development.
One established method for identifying writing assignments is to analyze course syllabi. The benefits of
conducting a syllabi analysis to determine the number and types of writing assignments in any given course
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have been documented in the literature (Graves, Hyland & Samuels, 2010; Graves et al., 2014; Meltzer,
2003, 2009). Notably, course syllabi readily serve as a consistent component for examination across courses
and institutions because they are required for all courses and are usually publicly available. Syllabi are
understood to function as a contract between professor and student that outlines the expectations and
structure of a course. As such, syllabi are likely to reasonably reflect the work that students are required to
complete. Conducting a systematic analysis of course syllabi requires little reliance on professors or students
to provide their recollections about assignments within a course, across a discipline, or across an institution.
Stanny, Gonzales and McGowen (2014) summarize findings of four reviews of syllabi that occurred over a
five-year period at the University of South Florida and suggest that this research approach can produce a
rich data set that can address multiple focused questions about the nature of teaching and learning.
Previous research using syllabi analysis at a Canadian university indicates that students write on average 2.5
assignments of about four pages each in most of their classes, though this varies by program and faculty
(Graves, Hyland & Samuels, 2010). The types of assignments (e.g., essays and research reports) required in
students’ degree programs suggest that professors design assignments to teach students how to meet
traditional disciplinary and professional demands and expectations. Mathematics programs, for instance,
may include no writing requirements (Graves et al., 2014).
Research on writing tasks at the university level has often focused on science and engineering (for example,
Braine, 1995; Graves, Parker & Marcynuk, 2013), and relatively little attention has been directed to fields
such as business. In engineering, Graves, Parker and Marcynuk (2013) suggested that a lack of genre
identification or a misidentification of the required genre is a contributing factor to poor student writing. In
other words, it is not clear to students what it is that they need to write as an assignment. A variety of
undergraduate and graduate levels of study have also been examined to a limited extent. Recently, Samuels
and McDonald (2015) conducted a syllabi study in a faculty of science and observed an increase in the
number of assignments in third- and fourth-year undergraduate courses compared to first- and second-year
courses while the number of courses offered actually decreased. Their findings showed a significant
difference in the number of assignments in first- and second-year versus third- and fourth-year courses. In
the case of biology, for example, none of the first-year courses (n=2) required writing assignments and only
9% of the second-year courses (n=11) included such assignments. Together, these studies provide some
indication of the writing instruction students in the sciences may receive.
Although some recent research has focused on students’ development of communication skills in business,
systematic analyses of the writing tasks required in business courses remain rare (Zhu, 2004). In one early
study on business writing, Canesco and Byrd (1989) analyzed 55 graduate course syllabi and found a lack of
clarity regarding writing assignments. For instance, it was unclear from the syllabi how a “project” differed
from a “report.” Moreover, assignments often required teamwork and were controlled by the instructors.
Bogert and Butt (1996) also completed a syllabi analysis to determine the types of writing assignments
expected of students in MBA courses; the researchers found that MBA courses were designed to include
both writing and oral skill development. Zhu’s (2004) analysis of 95 course syllabi and handouts on writing
assignments in undergraduate and graduate business courses revealed that students were expected to take
on two roles: (a) an institutional role (writer as learner) and (b) a professional role (writer as business
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person). More recently, O’Day Nicolas and Annous (2013) conducted a syllabi analysis using the model
proposed by Graves, Hyland and Samuels (2010) in a Lebanese faculty of business. The researchers found
that 70% of syllabi in their data set made no reference to writing, and in the remaining 30% of syllabi that
did include a writing component, the function of the writing component was not made explicit. As these
studies indicate, a variety of conclusions can be drawn based on the type of data extracted from syllabi.
Many studies, like Zhu’s (2004), relied upon analysis of assignments from only one institution. As a result,
Zhu recommended that future research be conducted to analyze writing assignments from different types of
institutions and business programs.
The concern that writing assignments vary not only by course and program but also potentially by institution
is not well studied, though some differences are established. Writing instruction in Canadian universities
generally differs from that in the US, which has a strong history of first-year composition courses (ClaryLemon, 2009; Russell, 2002). Some Canadian universities do have introductory writing courses, writing
courses in the disciplines, or even whole writing departments, but these are not universally present. Adding
to the complexity, over the past few decades writing instruction in many school environments has adopted a
writing-across-the-curriculum model (i.e., all teachers are writing teachers) and/or a writing-in-thedisciplines model (i.e., writing is best learned in disciplinary contexts), with much overlap between these and
other approaches (Bazerman et al., 2005). As a result, writing instruction for university students is currently
addressed in a variety of ways and locations. Little is known about how structured or comprehensive such
writing instruction is in universities across Canada and what role assignments play in this instruction.
Research Questions
In this study, we sought to describe university writing assignments and instruction for students in the early
years of their undergraduate programs at Ontario’s publicly funded universities. The goal of the project was
to create a case study of three disciplines, focusing on their provision of writing instruction and writing
assignment design in first- and second-year courses. This study enables us to consider whether students are
being given sufficient opportunities to develop their abilities to write/communicate at advanced levels and
how this development is being addressed across the three fields of study.
Two research questions guided this project:
What types of assignments do students receive in first- and second-year courses in the humanities,
sciences and applied fields (e.g., history, kinesiology and business)?
What are instructors’ perceptions about the in-class writing instruction they provide to address
these assignments?
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Methods
Our mixed-methods investigation used document analysis and case study methods to explore the current
state of writing at Ontario universities. We analyzed course syllabi, distributed online faculty surveys and
conducted faculty focus group interviews to create a description of writing instruction across three
disciplines. Although our initial goal was to have three universities serve as institutional “cases” for this
project, difficulties in acquiring sufficient numbers of participants from each university and in data collection
within the appropriate time span resulted in a revised approach. To capture potential differences between
fields, we chose one department to represent each of the humanities, sciences and applied fields at any
participating institutions. The departmental “cases” chosen to represent disciplinary differences were
history, kinesiology and business. We also chose to focus on first- and second-year courses to limit the
amount of data and analysis to a reasonable level given the constraints of this project. This focus enables us
to separate the writing experiences of students in their early years of university study from those of upperyear students.
Procedure
Approval from the research ethics board was received to approach Ontario universities to recruit
participants for this study. We sent a recruitment letter (see Appendix A) inviting each of the three
departments at eight universities to participate by sharing the syllabi for their first- and second-year courses
with us. These eight universities were identified because each of them had the targeted disciplines and
departments. The departments were chosen primarily because of their popularity with students and the lack
of existing research about writing within these disciplines. Following approval of each department, all
professors (part-time and full-time) within the department were emailed an invitation to participate in an
online survey about student writing and writing instruction and, if they wished, to participate in a focus
group to discuss writing. We later emailed respondents interested in the focus groups to coordinate a
meeting time. Two members of the research team conducted each focus group interview (n=3). The focus
groups followed a semi-structured format; each focus group was about one hour in length. Each group’s
discussion was audiotaped and transcribed for analysis.
Participants
Five Ontario universities that offered programs in the targeted departments or disciplines participated in the
first phase of this project, the syllabi analysis. They ranged in size from medium (17,000 students) to large
(30,000 students). A total of 31 instructors at five universities participated in the online survey, which was
distributed to all full and part-time faculty in the targeted departments. Faculty focus group interviews were
carried out at one institution and each group included faculty from one of the three departments: business
and economics (n=4), history (n=1) and kinesiology (n=3). By conducting departmental focus groups, faculty
members had an opportunity to respond to and comment on their colleagues’ responses. In addition, it was
ideal to conduct focus groups rather than individual interviews because of the time limitation of this project.
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Insufficient numbers of volunteers from other institutions made conducting focus groups at these
institutions not feasible in the timespan of the study.
Data Collection and Analysis
We collected syllabi from all first- and second-year courses offered in the Winter 2014 and Fall 2014 terms in
the selected departments at the participating universities. The appropriate program assistant provided us
with electronic copies of all syllabi. We coded and analyzed syllabi for characteristics of the writing
assignments given to students (e.g., number of assignments, length of assignments, marks allocated, type of
assignments, etc.), following the model used by Graves, Hyland and Samuels (2010). Appendix B provides an
explanation of the coding categories. We organized the data into a shared Excel spreadsheet. Frequent team
meetings were held in order to discuss the coding process and ensure that each researcher was interpreting
syllabi and coding in a manner consistent with the others; differences in interpretation were resolved
through group consensus. We then analyzed these data using SPSS software to determine frequencies and
significant differences between departments.
Next, we distributed an online survey to professors to collect data on their perceptions of student writing
and writing instruction. The purpose of this survey was to augment information collected from the syllabi
with comments and elaboration from professors about their approaches to writing instruction in their
discipline. The survey contained a mix of open-ended and Likert scale questions (see Appendix C). Finally, we
conducted three semi-structured focus group interviews with a total of eight professors to explore their
perceptions concerning: (a) the volume of student writing required, (b) the barriers faculty face when
assigning writing, (c) the quality of student writing submitted, and (d) faculty awareness and use of
instructional resources such as the writing centre and library. See Appendix D for the questions asked in
these focus groups.
While ideally qualitative analysis would be conducted through lengthy immersion in the field and interaction
with the data, the timeline of this project necessitated the adoption of a more efficient method. As a result,
we interviewed each professor only one time and we limited our recruitment methods to what was
manageable in the time frame. We used the coding program QDA Miner Lite (2015) as our tool to facilitate
analysis of the survey’s open-ended responses and focus group transcriptions. We created a series of codes
that represented a range of possible topics concerning writing instruction; codes were added as new topics
emerged out of the data. Each mention of these topics in the transcripts was flagged with the relevant code,
and the program allowed us to evaluate and compare the coded instances in detail. The analysis of the
coded transcripts allowed us to consider faculty comments on identified topics and their perceived
importance. The survey and focus group analyses complement the syllabi analysis and allow us to comment
on faculty members’ current pedagogical approaches towards writing.
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Findings
Quantitative Results: Syllabi Analysis
We collected a total of 215 first- and second-year course syllabi from the targeted three disciplines. These
syllabi yielded 544 separate records of writing assignments. Table 1 summarizes the number of course
syllabi and writing assignments for each department at each university.
To answer our first research question about the types of assignments given, we analyzed characteristics of
writing assignments given to students across the three disciplines of interest. An overview of the key
findings is listed in Table 2.
Table 1: Number of Course Syllabi and Writing Assignments Coded for each Department at each University
Discipline
Department
Institution A
Applied
Business
13
25
Humanities
History
15
27
Science
Kinesiology
30
67
Applied
Business
9
15
Humanities
History
23
77
Science
Kinesiology
11
6
Humanities
History
49
219
Science
Kinesiology
12
21
Institution D
Applied
Business
44
77
Institution E
Science
Biology*
9
10
215
544
Institution B
Institution C
Total
No. of Syllabi
No. of Assignment
Records
Institution
* This institution did not provide kinesiology department syllabi but did volunteer to contribute their syllabi from a related science
department to our research project.
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Table 2: Summary of Key Findings from the Syllabi Analysis
Characteristic of Assignment
Key Finding
Frequency of Assignments
The average number of assignments given to students per course was
2.5.
Types of Assignments
The most common genre of writing assigned to students was labelled
an “assignment” (e.g., tutorial assignment, written assignment,
personal assignment, etc.)
Length of Assignments
On average, writing assignments were 5 pages in length.
Value of Assignments
The average assignment accounted for 12% of a student’s final grade.
Nested Assignments
21% of the assignments coded were nested assignments (i.e., broken
down into separate components).
Learning Goals
Learning goals (i.e., explicit statements of the objective of an
assignment) were specified in 56.4% of assignments.
Rubric
Only 7.4% of assignment records contained rubrics.
Feedback
Only 4.8% of assignment records provided the opportunity for
students to receive feedback (e.g., peer review, comments on an
unmarked first draft).
Audience Specified
Very few assignments (1.8%) specified an audience for student
writing other than the TA or the professor
Frequency of Assignments. Across all of the disciplines and institutions, the average number of assignments
given to students per course was 2.52 (SD = 3.04). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted
to determine if the average number of assignments per course differed by discipline. Results revealed a
significant difference between disciplines, F(2, 212) = 12.25, p < .001. More specifically, students in
humanities courses (M = 3.71, SD = 3.80) were asked to write significantly more than students in science (M
= 1.68, SD = 1.78) and applied courses (M = 1.77, SD = 2.28). This finding is represented in Figure 1.
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�Writing Assignments and Instruction at Ontario’s Publicly Funded Universities: A View from Three Disciplines
Figure 1: Graph Depicting the Average Number of Assignments Given to Students in Each Discipline Across
Institutions
Average Number of Assignments Given
to Students
5
4.5
3.71
4
3.5
3
2.5
1.68
1.77
Science
Applied
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Humanities
Discipline
Types of Assignments. Of the 544 assignment records, 20% were identified by the professor as
“assignments.” Included in this category was a wide variety of instructor-labeled terms such as “tutorial
assignment,” “website assignment,” “written assignment” and “personal assignment.” The second most
common category (encompassing about 11% of all records) was “essay” and the third most common
category (accounting for 9% of all records) was “paper.” The remainder of the records identified a wide
range of assignments, ranging from lab reports to online discussions. Exploration of the distribution of types
of assignments across the different disciplines did not reveal any meaningful differences between
disciplines. Overall, the labels given by professors to the most common assignments were general and
provided little information about the specific elements or genre characteristics required in these
assignments (e.g., essay).
Length and Value of Assignments. Instructors specified the assignment length in only 39% of assignment
records (n=212). Of these, 20.3% were short assignments of one page or less. Assignments of two to four
pages comprised 34.6% of all assignment records. Together, assignments of four pages or less made up 55%
of assignments for which length was specified. Moderate length assignments (between five and 10 pages)
comprised 36.7% of assignment records, while long assignments (greater than 10 pages) made up 8.4%. The
average number of words per assignment was 1,307 words (approximately five pages), with a median of
1,000 words. Not surprisingly, the length of assignment significantly correlated with the value of the
assignment towards the students’ final grade, r(206) = .56, p < .001. Therefore, assignments that were
longer in length were also worth more towards students’ final grades. Correspondingly, individual shorter
assignments had less impact on students’ final grades.
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Nested Assignments. We also examined the extent to which assignments were “nested” within each other.
A nested assignment is one that can be broken down into separate components and handed in separately
over the course of a term (e.g., an annotated bibliography, proposal, first draft and final report). Students
are thought to benefit from these sequential assignments as they introduce different genres of writing using
a scaffold strategy. Overall, we found that nested assignments were not common. More specifically, 21%
(n=115) of the assignments coded were nested. The number of nested assignments did not differ
significantly across disciplines; however, there was a slightly higher percentage of nested assignments found
in the applied courses (24%) than in the science (21%) or humanities (18%) courses. This suggests that
applied courses may provide more structure for students as they learn the genres of the discipline.
Learning Goals. A learning goal is defined as an explicit statement of the learning objective(s) targeted by
the assignment. In our data, learning goals were fairly common and were specified in 56.4% of assignments.
The greatest proportion of assignments with learning goals was found in applied courses, with 87% of all
assignments in this discipline identifying a learning goal. Approximately 51% of assignments coded from
humanities courses contained a learning goal, and 40% of assignments coded from science courses
contained a learning goal.
Rubric. We examined how many course syllabi contained a grading rubric for writing assignments. An
assignment was coded as containing a rubric if it had a description of what the instructor would look for
when grading the assignment. This information could be presented in tabular form, lists, or as a written
comment, with or without numerical grades included. Our data indicated that rubrics were relatively rare,
only occurring in 7.4% (n=40) of assignment records. Of the assignments that did contain rubrics, the
majority of them (n=35) were in the format of written statements, with an average of four evaluation
criteria per rubric. Approximately half of the rubrics (48%; n=19) were found in assignments from the
applied courses, 33% (n=13) were found in assignments from humanities courses and 20% (n=8) were found
in assignments from science courses.
Feedback. We coded how many writing assignments gave students an opportunity to receive feedback
before the assignment was handed in for grading. Some examples of possible feedback include written
comments by a faculty member or TA on a draft, peer review in or out of class, or scheduled office hours
with a professor or TA. We found that only 4.8% (n=26) of assignment records indicated that students were
provided with an opportunity to receive feedback. Almost all (96%) of the assignments that did offer
feedback were found in the humanities.
Audience Specified. An audience for an assignment (other than a professor or TA) may be specified by the
professor and may be hypothetical or authentic. Our data showed that the audience was specified in less
than 2% of assignment records (n=10). Therefore, students almost always wrote assignments with the
professor or TA as the sole reader in mind. Examples of other audiences that were specified included a
potential investor, the History Channel, a high school class and camp counselors.
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Quantitative Results: Faculty Survey
To answer our second research question regarding faculty members’ perceptions of student writing and
writing instruction, we analyzed responses to our faculty survey. A total of 31 professors across five
institutions completed the online survey. The majority of survey respondents identified themselves as being
from an applied discipline (68.8%) and having tenured status at their institutions (80%). The distribution of
survey respondents is outlined in Table 3.
Writing Instruction. Almost all faculty members who completed the survey (97%; n=30) indicated that they
required students to write in their classes. They were also asked to identify the types of writing that they
assigned to students in their classes, and the most common types were “analyses,” “assignment” and
“paper.” Of the faculty members who required students to write in their classes, 80% (n=24) reported that
they provided supplemental materials and information to students about the writing assignments given in
their courses. The most common types of supplemental materials and information provided were out-ofclass written explanations (e.g., answers to email requests) and in-class oral explanations (e.g., answers to
questions). Figure 2 provides a breakdown of the types and frequency of supplemental materials and
instruction faculty members reported providing to their students.
Figure 2: Types and Frequency of Supplemental Materials Faculty Members Give to Students
30
25
23
23
In class, oral
explanations
Out of class,
written
explanations
20
Frequency
20
17
18
15
15
10
5
0
Marking
grids/rubrics
In class, written
instructions
Web-based
instructions
Out-of-class,
oral
explanations
Type of Supplemental Material
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Feedback. Faculty members were also asked whether they provided feedback or required students to seek
feedback on assignments before they were handed in for grading. Approximately half (51.6%; n=16)
indicated that they provided feedback to students on their work prior to handing in writing assignments.
This result was quite surprising given the findings from our syllabi analysis, in which very few writing
assignments were found to include an opportunity for feedback. The most common type of feedback that
faculty members reported providing was voluntary office-hour consultations. See Figure 3 for a breakdown
of the types and frequency of feedback that faculty members reported providing to their students. Faculty
members were also asked whether they provided written comments on writing assignments after they were
marked. A total of four faculty members (13%) indicated that they provided this type of feedback.
Support from Department. We were also interested in whether or not faculty members perceived that they
received support from their department about writing assignments and instruction. Approximately onequarter of faculty members (26.7%; n=8) reported that their department had either formal or informal
discussions about writing assignments and instruction, and 35.5% (n=11) of faculty members were unsure if
such discussions took place in their departments. A total of six faculty members (19.4%) reported that their
departments provided instruction for grading assignments, and four faculty members (12.9%) reported that
their departments had guidelines or recommendations about expectations for undergraduate student
writing. Taken together, these results suggest that faculty members perceived their departments as
providing relatively little support regarding writing instruction, grading and expectations of student writing.
Figure 3: Types and Frequency of Feedback Provided to Students by Professors
30
25
Frequency
20
17
15
10
6
5
1
1
Out-of-class,
oral peer
review
In-class,
written peer
review
2
2
In-class, oral
peer review
Required
office-hour
consulations
3
0
Type of Feedback
Out-of-class,
Written
Voluntary
written peer comments on office-hour
review
unmarked first consultations
draft
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Qualitative Analysis: Faculty Surveys and Focus Group Interviews
As indicated above, a total of 31 faculty surveys from five institutions were collected and coded. Our
invitation to faculty to participate in focus groups received few responses, so three focus group interviews
were conducted with eight professors, all from one institution, though all targeted departments were
represented (see Table 3). One focus group was held for each department. Eight themes emerged from the
coding and analysis of the surveys and interviews; these are described in detail below and summarized in
Table 4.
Table 3: Record of Survey and Focus Group Interview Participants
No. of Survey
Respondents
No. of Faculty in
Focus Group
Institution
Discipline
Department
Institution A
Applied
Business
14
4
Humanities
History
5
1
Science
Kinesiology
3
3
Institution B
Applied
Business
2
-
Institution C
Science
Kinesiology
1
-
Institution D
Applied
Business
5
-
Institution E
Science
Biology
1
-
31
8
Total
Theme 1: Faculty Writing Qualifications
Although all professors indicated that they felt competent in their own writing proficiency, their perceptions
of their ability to teach writing to first- and second-year undergraduates were varied, both within and across
departments. While many indicated that they were able to correctly identify grammar and syntax mistakes,
some felt inadequate or lacked the tools to explain the various errors using correct terminology. None of the
instructors indicated receiving any recent training to teach writing and dated most of their formal writing
development to their own graduate and undergraduate careers, or even earlier.
Business faculty reported different levels of ability to teach writing and a range of competencies to teach
specific elements of writing. Sophia1 stated:
1
Pseudonyms have been used to protect participants’ anonymity.
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I don’t feel I’m an expert on teaching writing. I think I’m much better at trying to give a succinct small
number of feedback [on] items than I used to be. […] But I don’t think I’d be able to teach a writing
course. No, let somebody else do that.
Luca felt
competent to teach writing at the level of structuring an argument, which is where I focus most of my
energy. I know bad grammar when I see it, but I can’t always label it correctly, so I don’t get into that
too much […] I used to know it better, 25 years ago. I’ve forgotten most of it.
Some faculty, like Mindy, noted “that [the business programs] have some [teachers] who enjoy and are
experts in [writing], but others who go, whoa.”
When asked about how they developed knowledge of writing pedagogy, business faculty referred back to
their own undergraduate and graduate experiences (and sometimes even high school). They spoke about
drawing on their own experiences in learning to write to inform their teaching practices. Luca said, “[My
teaching] would just go back to high school and college courses… what little I can remember. […] Yeah, I
took a number of courses as an undergrad and in high school, grammar and basic writing.”
Similarly, Emma stated:
I didn’t really get any formal grammatical training. I think in school, I think I was in the generation that
was not taught formal grammar, I did a bit of Latin roots and stuff, but that was it. […] Oh, and in my
undergrad we didn’t have formal writing training, but there were more writing assignments than you
would get here normally I think.
Mindy indicated that she took two courses in professional writing that were geared more toward creative
writing as a way to learn to write. Sophia stated that she had taken writing courses, “but not in the last ten
years. I took one in grad school and I took one after I was on contract here.” In sum, these business
professors did not identify any specific programs or experiences where they learned how to teach writing.
Instead, they drew on their own experiences as students.
Similar to business professors, history professors admitted a range of abilities in teaching first- and secondyear students to write. They indicated that they felt proficient in their ability to identify errors in students’
writing and they felt competent to tell students what mistakes to avoid. Most history professors indicated
that they felt competent to teach writing, in part because of their expertise in other languages. Despite this
general feeling of competency, at least one professor indicated a sense of inadequacy. Edgar, a professor of
history of 40 years, said, “I could stand at a blackboard and explain things if I can’t even remember the
terms, but there's things I know that I can't even (long pause) I know that I can't explain them.” Edgar had
never taken a writing course nor had he ever participated in professional development related to writing
instruction.
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Kinesiology professors indicated that they felt competent in their ability to teach writing to first- and
second-year students. When asked about their ability to provide writing instruction, most participants
attributed their ability to write and give clear writing instruction to their graduate degrees. “I had my
supervisor beat it into me,” revealed Natalia. Zoe affirmed this idea:
It’s the training you get as a graduate student, because you get so much feedback back and forth with
multiple drafts, and depending on your program and depending on the courses you had to take – I’m
thinking of some we did, it was very much about writing and evaluating each others’ work.
One professor was required to take a writing course during the fourth year of her undergraduate degree
because she was registered for a thesis. Similar to the business professors, kinesiology faculty relied upon
their own experiences as students to learn how to teach writing. Unlike business professors, however, they
more consistently reported feeling competent to teach their students to write.
Theme 2: Writing Assignment Variety
Within their departments, faculty noted that the amount and type of writing assignments varied, and
definite distinctions existed between departments. Business faculty indicated that first- and second-year
business students do little writing, a perception borne out when comparing their comments to those of their
counterparts in both history and kinesiology. In addition, they indicated that assignments in business focus
more on content than on writing development, whereas history and kinesiology assignments appeared to be
both content and writing-development driven.
Most business professors claimed that first-year students received no writing assignments, and second-year
students had limited writing requirements. One interviewee said:
We have a variety of courses at the second year level, some more textbook based and those lend
themselves much more to multiple choice exams, in part because they often have test banks
associated with them. […] Then – so that’s probably about half of our courses at second year level –
the other half have writing and or major data analysis work, which often involves some writing as
well.
Emma suggested that the focus for assignments is “more on the content than on the writing […] at that
point I actually don’t care about the grammatical side of things at all, and it’s just one sentence, two
sentence answers, if that. Dot [bullet] point answers even.”
Reflecting on the business curriculum as a whole, from first to fourth year, Sophia admitted that “third and
fourth year students have to do quite a bit of writing. Which, I guess now that we’re talking about it, I realize
must come as a bit of a jolt to them.” She also described the typical assignments in the program:
A lot of times they [write] on teams, the teams’ reports… so there’s a lot of team business reports,
some individual case analysis report type assignments – this would be in third and fourth year –
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some industry report-type assignments, and they also do their fair share of straight-on exam writing
short answer questions, that kind of thing.
Business professors emphasized writing for assessment purposes (e.g., point-form test responses) in the
early years and suggested that more business-focused writing tasks occur in third- or fourth-year
undergraduate courses.
In the history department, professors identified a limited number of discipline-specific assignments given to
first- and second-year students (e.g., essays based on a book of documents, research papers analyzing a
historical figure). Faculty responses, however, are contradicted by the findings of our syllabi analysis, which
showed history courses as requiring the highest number of writing assignments – almost double that of
business or science courses. Unfortunately, the limited number of surveys we received back from history
faculty, and even greater limitation in focus group interviews, mean that the conclusions we can draw are
tentative at best.
Similar to history, kinesiology professors indicated that writing assignments for first- and second-year
students were planned with disciplinary goals in mind. Zoe explained:
In first year, [students] have an individual writing assignment that we've changed a lot over the
years – there's usually three or sometimes four different instructors that teach the first year class.
We separate it into different sections, but we co-ordinate very much on the kinds of assignments
they do. So there may be some slight differences depending on the section and the instructor, but
we do have a writing assignment. It used to be purely individual, where they would – they would do
a paper that they would hand in, sort of like a one-time-only, hand-it-in-at-the-end-of-the-term
[paper].
Zoe claimed that this assignment was ineffective and concluded that for students “during first year, the
writing has been notoriously horrendous.” As a department, faculty decided to change the assignment to
better scaffold instruction and expectations:
[Students] do it in pieces. So it's a little bit at a time. And that has proved to be much better for the
student, much better from a grading perspective. So they just do little pieces of the writing
assignment, to the culmination at the end, but they get feedback at least three different points
across the term.
Second-year kinesiology students are required to complete a group assignment, “sort of a more term-paper
type of thing, [in] which they have to incorporate good writing as well as the incorporation of research into
that assignment” (Natalia). One participant explained the disciplinarily linked expectations of an assignment
that required students to summarize an article:
to summarize an article in a certain length of time, to a certain word length or space, in terms of
taking, you know, what are the key elements in terms of what's the thesis, what's the objectives in
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the study, what is the methodology, what did they find, and […] so it's more trying to read literature
and trying to synthesize that into a written document of some sort.
In sum, the kinesiology professors described a cooperative and coherent approach to the re-design of
writing assignments for students in their department.
Theme 3: Teaching Strategies and Types of Writing Instruction
Survey and interview data reveal the use of many teaching strategies and types of writing instruction across
departments. Professors in all three departments used several teaching techniques, both in-class and online,
for writing instruction. Some professors also indicated that writing instruction was provided in the syllabus
and outside of class.
In her approach to writing instruction in business, Emma claimed that she:
takes one class, about an hour, to get [the students] to read one of the articles on the reading list,
then go through in groups answering the questions [on our class website] and then trying to use the
class responses from that to come up with an annotated bibliography. I'm not sure I'm doing it very
successfully. […] I also use that lecture – because it's one and a half hours […] to try and teach them
what a journal article is, and how to break them down a little bit. Although that's also perhaps not as
successful as it could be.
While unsure of its effectiveness, Emma’s approach is one example of an in-class teaching strategy. Other
strategies included inviting a librarian as a guest lecturer, using podcasts, grading rubrics, and lists of
common mistakes in their writing instruction. Writing instruction was thus delivered via the syllabi, in-class,
and through the online course management system. Business professors reported instructing students on
topics such as formatting, assignment structure, expectations, referencing style and data presentation.
Similar to business, the history professors mentioned using a variety of teaching strategies and writing
instruction. Edgar explained that he:
made a slideshow on how to write, which, you know, it's advice like “start now,” “don't wait until the
end,” “do this” […] what is a comma splice, click on this link and go to websites that explain comma
splices, I can see who downloads it, right, who looks at it, and very few students bother.
History professors posted information about writing to the course management system online and on the
syllabus. They also reported providing weekly workshops and examples of previous students’ work to guide
their students.
Kinesiology professors reported using similar strategies as their colleagues in business and history. In
comparison to business and history faculty, however, they commented more frequently on formatting style
(e.g., APA). They reported that they incorporate online workshops and provide instructions about
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assignment structure online and on handouts. Zoe organized additional tutorial time outside of class time to
help students with their writing development. She said:
We did an extra tutorial outside of class time that was voluntary, if people wanted to show up, and
one of my grad students ran the tutorial. We ended up doing two, and it was to help them with their
writing and their APA and all that, and it was extremely well attended. So that was nice, because it
was outside of class time. Totally up to them if they wanted to go. That went really well.
Tammy felt that it is punitive to tell students “don’t do this” or “don’t plagiarize.” Rather, she showed
students
examples of what [those things] mean […] so we do try to teach them, here's what it would look like,
here's what you're trying to move towards with paraphrasing, initially – usually in first year they tend
to just direct quote, direct quote, and I'm a little lenient with them in first year, I tell them that I
understand you're probably going to over quote, but that's better at this point than under quoting.
Theme 4: Assessment, Feedback and Goals
Goals for student writing and assessment practices were varied. While participants indicated that they give
students feedback on their writing, there were notable differences in the type and timing of the feedback.
This suggests that departmental agendas are not necessarily involved when it comes to the type and amount
of feedback given to students; rather, feedback is contingent on the individual instructor. There was also
evidence to suggest that these individuals do set specific goals for their first- and second-year students.
In general, business professors recognized the importance of providing feedback to students about their
writing and identified a variety of feedback strategies including quality scales (e.g., unsatisfactory to
exceptional), posting of model writing and identifying grammar errors. These strategies were not always
seen as ideal: “I always mark run-on sentences and dangling modifiers, punctuation, and sentence fragments
[…] usually I end up writing all over what they've written, which is not popular” (Mindy).
In contrast, at least one professor did not provide students with detailed feedback on their writing “unless
it's […] if there are language issues I'll say there's language and grammar issues in this paragraph” (Sophia).
Referring to her perception of the departmental goals for students, Sophia explained:
I think one thing that makes us a little different from other faculties and departments is that we are
emphasizing business writing much more so than your average kind of thesis writing or even a formal
report. We tell [students]: short sentences, short paragraphs, put the punchline first, don't, you know,
work through to the end of your argument, tell us right up front what your recommendation is and
then lay out your sections. We like them to use headings and subheadings, and so in a way, it's clear
what we're after is clarity, readability, “skimability,” maybe.
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While it appears that the departmental goals in business may be similar, the amount of feedback provided
varies among individuals.
In history, the one professor interviewed believed that the purpose of his first-year writing assignment is to
get students to understand primary sources and how to formulate an argument. In contrast, in his secondyear class, he claimed to write comments on students’ work and make note of students’ use of grammar by
using a form “where I check what’s wrong, like comma splices, and then it explains what comma splices are
and how to avoid it.” For this professor, feedback appears to come only at the end of the writing process.
Similar to professors of business and history, kinesiology professors reported that they provide feedback to
students through written comments on assignments, though some reported taking this one step further.
Tammy explained that:
each individual's going to have their individual feedback, and then collectively I'll look across the
group and say, what are sort of the common things that I'm seeing, and then I present that to the
whole class. Yeah. So that hopefully helps. And then the [students] that come in – the rare ones that
actually come in to review their feedback – then they can get even more.
Zoe explained that “we want [students] to be able to come out of this degree being articulate enough to get
jobs in various kinds of careers, and they aren't going to be writing 20 page papers in most careers, or a lab
report, in most careers.” At the same time that professors reported these broad goals for students’ writing
development, the kinesiology professors who were interviewed referred several times to teaching first- and
second-year students about citation using American Psychological Association (APA) style. While not
acknowledged as a goal, it is clear that accurate use and reporting of sources was a high priority for some
faculty members.
Theme 5: Department-wide Goals and Guidelines
Departmental goals and support for writing pedagogy were not universally reported. Faculty members from
both the business and history departments stated that their departments identified no clear departmental
goals. Professors in kinesiology reported ongoing discussions in the department about writing instruction
and systematic efforts to plan curricula to better prepare students as they progress from first to fourth year.
Business professors reported that they were not aware of any departmental guidelines regarding the
expectations of first- and second-year students’ writing development. Luca claimed:
With over 110 faculty, we never get together to talk about teaching, or best practices, or invite people
in to give us advice or professional guidance. And the only talking we do about writing is me generally
complaining at the pub with other colleagues about how bad it is.
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Conversely, faculty teaching economics courses reported that:
in economics we have a weekly internal seminar series, which one week, every second week is
alternate between research and teaching, and so we've actually had sessions where we've discussed
what we do to teach writing, […] We have had the writing centre in, on occasion, into particular
classes. […] And of course there's quite a bit of informal discussion on what sort of writing
assignments we do, so – and other assignments as well. (Emma)
Edgar stated that the history department had not “had any formal discussions” pertaining to departmentwide goals for students. In surveys, however, faculty indicated that the department did adopt a new style
manual, but many colleagues did not follow through and use it. This suggests that there is a gap between
what faculty perceive as a departmental plan for writing and what actions appropriately constitute and
support that plan. It also suggests that history faculty members may exert a fair degree of autonomy over
curriculum planning rather than act as a collective group.
Unlike their counterparts in business and history, interview data in kinesiology revealed that the department
is taking clear strides to improve overall coherence of their program. For instance, Tammy explained that:
right now the department is trying to sit down and talk about how can we best, which are the best
writing courses, what kinds of writing material can
we get in there, and different formats. […]
So we're in the throes of trying to decide what those types of assignments would look like for first
year.
Zoe elaborated further:
We're making a much more conscious effort to have those [assignments] in our first- and second-year
courses right now, so that it's known across the department. In the past it's probably been one or two
people knew what one or two people were doing, but what we're attempting to do is make it so it's
kind of department policy or departmentally known that this is what we're going to do, this is what
whoever teaches 141 or 161 or 181, they're going to have – you can do whatever you want at one
level, but you're going to have these kinds of writing pieces, […] That's what we're attempting to do.
While the business and history departments show little departmental cohesion in setting program writing
goals and guidelines, faculty responses indicated that the economics program and kinesiology departments
were trying to implement clear goals and guidelines for their professors and students. In addition to the
planning of a coherent curriculum that includes writing, it was notable that kinesiology faculty were
passionate and excited as they spoke about these developments.
Theme 6: Expectations and View of Student Abilities/Engagement
In terms of professors’ expectations and views of student abilities or engagement, there was general
consensus among participants in all departments. Overall, professors believed that first- and second-year
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students’ writing abilities are weak and student engagement is low. Professors indicated that they held low
expectations of first- and second-year students’ ability to write, and there was clear frustration related to
their perceptions of students.
In business, for example, Luca reported that he had no expectations of students’ ability to write in first- and
second-year courses. Mindy also stated flatly, “Very few of our students can write well, very few.” Survey
data corroborate the attitudes of the interviewees; participants reported that students “don’t read or
listen,” are “incapable of following instructions” and “have poor attitudes.”
In addition to the conviction that students have limited writing and academic skills, faculty responses
indicated frustration with the state of affairs. Emma rhetorically asked, “What is the economic cost to
society of having all these graduates who can't write? It's got to be enormous.”
Faculty responses from the history department indicated similar disillusionment to that of their business
colleagues: “Just generally, we all agree [student] writing is abominable” (Edgar). Regarding student
engagement, Edgar complained that “the fact is the majority of students, and this is one of my biggest
complaints, don’t bother to pick up their essays. […] I've seen students pick it up, look at the mark, and as
they're walking out just drop the paper in a wastebasket.” Concern was also raised about students’ related
skills such as reading, which, in Edgar’s words, would give students “a feel for what makes sense.” In other
words, some faculty linked limitations in student writing with limitations in clear and logical thinking.
Like their colleagues, kinesiology professors reported that students’ engagement was low and professor
frustration high. Zoe, for instance, said:
It is frustrating when we've taken the time […] to spend writing all that feedback, and then you don't
see that they've made any attempt to correct it. That's frustrating for us, but it's also, it's like, but
then [the students are] not getting out of this what [they] need to. That's unfortunate.
When asked to identify what she would like to see in student writing, Tammy lamented that “proofreading
would be nice.” Summarizing the perceptions of many faculty, she claimed, “We still struggle with our
students and their writing. We have good students, [but] the writing is not good.”
Theme 7: Challenges: Class Size, Lack of Time, TAs and Resources
Faculty responses indicated numerous challenges regarding writing instruction and professors’ ability to
include writing assignments in first- and second-year courses. Class size and the lack of time, availability of
teaching assistants (TAs) and relevant resources were identified as the most prominent challenges.
Class size and a lack of TAs were identified as significant concerns for business faculty members. Emma
stated:
We have 1700 students in the course altogether, with multiple sections of instructors, so that makes
marking writing assignments consistently more difficult. And we have limited TA resources. Very, very
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limited TA resources, so it's really out of necessity more than anything [that business and economics
has limited writing assignments].
Luca explained further:
If you set an assignment for one section, the assignments for the other sections have to be at the
same time [according to departmental regulations], and then you've got 150 things to mark at once.
And just that volume of things coming in at the same time, especially for writing assignments, makes
it quite difficult to manage the marking. Just logistically, right? We've got the hours [for TAs], yes, but
the hours at that specific point in time? Maybe not.
History professors noted that lack of time posed a significant challenge for the inclusion of writing
instruction in class. Edgar reported difficulty in removing course content as a way to make room for writing
instruction:
I mean the thing is I've got so much… we have a twelve week term, I teach a course that has to cover
you know, War and Society, I start back with prehistoric man and I end with terrorism. So I've got all
this material to cover, in twelve weeks, and then to take out […] 50 minute lectures – what do I take
out to give them?
In addition to the perceived lack of time for in-class writing instruction, a survey respondent noted that
there was limited time to grade assignments.
Professors in kinesiology identified the main challenges to be a lack of TAs and time for writing instruction.
Zoe claimed:
It's manpower, person power issues. I find myself trying to go to the shortest, quickest, easiest, which
isn't necessarily the best, because it's just there's not enough hours to mark, especially when there's
no writing support in terms of grad student support or TA support or IA [instructional assistant]
support.
Furthermore, the lack of TA support was felt to discourage professors from including writing assignments in
their first- and second-year courses. Zoe reported adjusting her teaching approach because of a lack of TA
support. She said that she had “to be really careful about what I'm doing, I've redesigned courses where I've
taken out writing because I don't have time to mark it. So I think the biggest thing is the resource, the
people resource – TA support.” Tammy concurred and explained that even if a professor were allocated TA
resources, the quality of the TA may not be very good (i.e., the TA may have little writing expertise).
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Theme 8: Institutional Resources Available
Professors in the three departments mostly claimed some knowledge of the institutional resources available
for writing instruction, including the writing centre and the library. In particular, they reported that they
promote the writing centre as a resource for students.
Business faculty members especially identified the writing centre as a helpful resource, though it was clear
that their perceptions of the support available was largely remedial. Mindy, for instance, reported that when
she “can hardly make heads or tails of [a student’s writing],” she would suggest, “you need to go to the
writing centre.” Similarly, Emma indicated that she recommends the writing centre to her students: “I will
often say to people, look this is really, this really needs some work, you need to go and talk to the writing
centre.”
Like his colleagues in business, Edgar reported recommending that his students visit the writing centre. He
said, “I send lots […] I mean I send, I often write, I would say, 15-20% of the students I write, you know, ‘you
might find it useful to consult the writing centre.’ How many of them follow up on it [is unclear].”
Professors from kinesiology also indicated that they promoted the writing centre as a support tool for
students. Like those in history, however, they noted that such promotion was no guarantee that students
actually used the service. Zoe explained:
We let them know about the resources, we sometimes give them the links to all the learning services
and encourage them, I sometimes talk about oh hey, you know there's an upcoming study skills or
writing centre whatever, and I tell them about it, and my understanding is that that is under-utilized
by our students, yes.
Summary of Qualitative Findings
Table 4: Summary of Key Findings from the Interview and Survey Data Analysis
Theme
1: Faculty writing qualifications
2: Writing assignment variety
3: Teaching strategies and types of
writing instruction
Key Finding
Professors in all three departments indicated their reliance on their
own undergraduate and graduate writing experiences in order to
increase their competencies to teach writing to first- and second-year
students.
Business does not include much writing instruction or assignments in
first- and second-year courses.
History and kinesiology professors considered disciplinary goals when
planning writing instruction.
A variety of instructional strategies – both in-class and online – were
reported.
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�Writing Assignments and Instruction at Ontario’s Publicly Funded Universities: A View from Three Disciplines
Theme
Key Finding
5: Department-wide goals and
guidelines
Writing instruction emphasized topics such as grammar (e.g., in
history) and APA style (e.g., in kinesiology).
Variety exists among interviewees and survey respondents across
departments.
Types of feedback provided to students include comments on written
assignments, an overview for the whole class, and online comments
and discussions.
Kinesiology seemed to have department goals about writing
development that were supported by professors.
6: Expectations and view of student
abilities/engagement
Professors in all departments viewed students as having a lack of
ability or engagement.
7: Challenges
Class size, lack of time and lack of TA support are challenges
identified by professors across all three departments.
All three departments note the writing centre as one resource for
students outside of class.
4: Assessment, feedback and goals
8: Institutional resources available
Discussion
This study began by asking two questions: what assignments are university students in their early years
required to write, and what instruction do students receive in their programs to help them learn to write
these assignments. We found that students in the first and second years of their programs in science
(kinesiology, biology), history and business (including economics) write an average of 2.5 assignments in
each of their courses. This number of assignments is consistent with earlier data that indicated that
university students write about 2.5 assignments per course in a Canadian liberal arts college (Graves, Hyland
& Samuels, 2010). Over a typical academic year in which five courses are taken, this would mean that
students are writing about 12 assignments per year. Students, therefore, are writing, and given that our data
focus on students in the first two years of university, we can say that novice students in particular are being
given opportunities to learn to write.
This average number of assignments, of course, masks differences between courses and programs, some of
which contain little or no writing in first year and some of which require students to systematically write
three or more assignments as steps towards completing a larger project. We found, for instance, that history
courses contained significantly more writing assignments than did courses in business, which in turn
required more writing than did science courses. Our data thus support the perception that students in some
programs, such as those in the arts and humanities, have more opportunities to write than do other
students, such as those in the sciences or business. So students are writing, but not all students are writing
the same amount.
Professors were accurate in their assessment of how much writing was required in their departments,
responding insightfully when asked to describe the amount of writing that students in their programs were
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�Writing Assignments and Instruction at Ontario’s Publicly Funded Universities: A View from Three Disciplines
required to undertake. Their comments suggest that established disciplinary expectations regarding what is
taught to entering students may be quite influential. Business faculty indicated that their priority was to
present a large number of students with large amounts of subject-matter content, so writing expectations
were not prioritized. In history and science, on the other hand, faculty members’ comments identified an
expectation that students in their fields should begin learning discipline-specific writing and communication.
As a result, history students wrote many assignments and science students were facing increasing numbers
of writing assignments.
This simple indicator of assignment frequency within courses leads to many other explorations, including
comparisons of assignment characteristics between disciplines, consideration of why these characteristics
are seen (or not), what they signify and how assignments might be improved. In addition to describing the
types of assignments and instruction currently available, this case study identified three barriers to
improving student writing in university settings. We describe each below.
Assignment and Instruction Descriptions
Research in academic writing has identified a number of characteristics associated with effective writing
pedagogy (see Bean, 2011), including short, low-stakes assignments (see Elbow, 1997), providing formative
feedback, supplying a rubric, identifying a learning goal, and specifying a relevant audience (e.g., Ashbaugh,
Johnstone & Warfield, 2002). Our data indicate that, in addition to a moderate average number of
assignments (with the caveat of significantly different numbers of assignments between disciplines), the
length of assignments we found across the three disciplines is consistent with previous research (Graves,
Hyland & Samuels, 2010). When specified in the syllabus, the majority of assignments were four pages or
less in length, and the average length of assignment was about five pages. The value of assignments tended
to go up as the length increased, meaning that many students did have an opportunity to complete short,
low-stakes assignments. In addition, some nested assignments were observed, and learning goals were
commonly identified, particularly in business. Unfortunately, many assignments (60%) did not contain
guidance on how long a completed assignment should be, almost half had uninformative general labels
(“paper” or “assignment”), few (less than 8%) included rubrics, even fewer (less than 5%) provided for inprocess feedback – these were almost all in history – and almost no assignments (less than 2%) specified any
audience other than the professor or TA. In short, the assignments given to first- and second-year students
demonstrated an uneven mixture of effective pedagogical elements along with a greater proportion of
missed opportunities for student instruction.
Professors indicated in their surveys and interviews that they used a wide variety of instructional strategies
to teach writing, in contrast to the relatively conventional assignment design we found through syllabi
analysis. Professors used online resources and distributed handouts, provided in-class and extracurricular
workshops as well as extra tutorials on writing, used models of exemplary texts, and discussed expectations
and rubrics with students. They indicated awareness of campus resources such as the library and the writing
centre and claimed to use these resources. Their commitment to writing instruction was counterbalanced,
however, by limitations in their knowledge of effective writing pedagogy. For instance feedback, when
provided, was often focused on error identification and checklists rather than interaction with student
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authors. Similarly, resources and handouts were sometimes identified as generic “tip sheets” rather than
genre-specific guides. Finally, half of all instructors claimed to provide feedback or instruction on student
writing, despite the finding from our syllabi analysis that indicated such feedback was rarely incorporated.
The explanation for this anomaly is that professors viewed office hours, responding to emails and students’
in-class questions as the primary means by which writing instruction was given. Whether this view of
instruction is reasonable or productive is debatable. Also notable in professors’ comments was their low
assessment of students’ writing abilities and engagement with academic work, as well as their frustration. In
contrast, professors in departments that actively promoted collaborative planning of program curricula to
include writing appeared to be moving beyond identifying concerns about student abilities to addressing
them.
Three Barriers to Improving Student Writing
(1) Lack of Resources
Professors identified large class sizes, limited numbers of teaching assistants (TAs) and rigid departmental
rules on the use of available resources as impediments to more effective writing instruction in their
disciplines. In high-enrolment disciplines like business, the existence of large first-year classes with few TAs
was cited as a barrier to including writing instruction because marking large numbers of assignments would
be prohibitive. In smaller classes like history, the barrier was one of time, i.e., how to include sufficient
content instruction and writing instruction in a short, 13-week period. Other considerations mentioned were
the lack of time for marking student assignments and the uneven ability level of TAs to support writing
instruction. Professors, in other words, identified writing instruction as a labour-intensive and time-intensive
activity and indicated that they felt their institutions did not provide them with adequate resources to
support this activity.
(2) Low Level of Student Abilities and Engagement
A consistent theme across professors’ responses was a criticism of students’ level of preparedness to write,
as well as their engagement in academic activities. Although teacher criticism of students may be easily
dismissed as long-existing complaints, it is important to recognize that faculty members’ perceptions of
students are an important element in the university context of teaching and learning. Concerns regarding
students’ failure to follow instructions, ignorance of basic language features and poor reading skills are not
simply items of academic skills deficits but the identification of student characteristics felt to be beyond
professors’ ability to “fix.” Some faculty linked these concerns with access issues, i.e., the lowering of
entrance standards. Across all disciplines, faculty voiced low or no expectations about students’ ability to
write or communicate, most often in tones of resignation and frustration.
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(3) Lack of Departmental Support
Two elements regarding departmental supports are notable in their omission. First, many faculty noted that
while they themselves felt competent as writers, they felt poorly prepared to teach writing. Few faculty had
taken any courses in writing instruction or identified this as an option in their own professional
development. Most relied on their own experiences as graduate students for insight into how students learn
to write in their discipline. Interestingly, faculty from the history department identified their knowledge of a
second language as an important factor in being able to teach students to write. Overall, faculty
acknowledged that they lacked formal knowledge of writing pedagogy, identified no opportunities within
their departments for such professional improvement, and instead relied on informal experience to guide
their instruction.
Second, faculty were asked about departmental goals for writing instruction and whether these were
articulated and addressed in their program’s curriculum. Business and history faculty provided mixed
responses, suggesting that clear departmental goals were not in place. This lack of coherent program
planning to include writing instruction suggests that the resources that might support such programming are
also unavailable. While some attempts were made to specifying departmental writing expectations – such as
through the adoption of a common style guide in history – professors did not consistently follow these
initiatives, indicating that individuals rather than departments hold the balance of power in curriculum
planning. Such imbalances result in an undermining of the ability of departments to plan and support writing
instruction. In science, a collaborative effort involving many professors was directed towards designing a
systematic progression of writing assignments to develop identified disciplinary writing skills. It is not clear
why this kinesiology department is successfully progressing towards coherent and systematic writing
instruction when similar-sized departments falter. It is notable, however, that the largest number of
volunteers for our faculty focus group came from this department.
Limitations
We acknowledge that there are certain limitations regarding our methods of data collection. As discussed
earlier, the process of syllabi analysis has been criticized in the past because syllabi may not accurately
represent the amount of writing actually performed by students, and descriptions of assignments may be
missing or incomplete in the syllabus. Syllabi analysis has been used successfully in past studies, however,
and we believe that any shortcomings in the resulting data can be supplemented through additional sources
of information, such as surveys or focus groups, both of which we used.
The issue of whether the group of professors who responded to our online survey and participated in focus
groups was a truly representative sample of undergraduate instructors is also noted, especially given the
small sample sizes from each university. Since responding to the survey was entirely voluntary, those who
did respond may have been more likely to already be interested in the issue of writing instruction and have
strong views on writing. Whether these professors would be more likely to view writing positively or
negatively is not clear. Similarly, participants in the focus groups were selected because they indicated on
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their returned surveys that they would be willing to participate. Those who were interviewed were
therefore likely to be more interested in issues concerning writing instruction than other faculty. While
greater participation from faculty across all departments would have been preferable, we believe the data
collected do provide some indication of what faculty members in general perceive about writing.
In addition, because we had a relatively small number of professors who completed the online survey and
the focus group interview, we cannot claim that the data are representative of any department nor are we
able to draw valid comparisons between disciplines or institutions because the number of participants was
too small. Ideally, we would have conducted focus groups at all of the institutions where we gathered syllabi
data.
While we did not set out to gather data about students’ perceptions of writing instruction, this might be a
productive addition for future research. Collecting and analyzing data from first- and second-year students,
as well as graduate students or English language learners, would provide insight about their perceptions
about writing instruction and skill development and would allow for possible comparisons between student
and professor perceptions.
Conclusion and Avenues for Further Investigation
Findings from this study provide evidence that student writing at university is poorly addressed in any
structured, coherent way. The picture of writing across a variety of disciplines is one of diverse experiences,
with some students introduced early and often to opportunities for relevant writing practice, and other
students facing few opportunities to improve their writing and communication skills. The instruction that
students receive is likely to be based on professors’ idiosyncratic academic experiences rather than any
formal training in writing instruction. Finally, the barriers to more effective instruction that we identified
appear to be systemic and result in a good deal of faculty frustration.
Our findings suggest that action at multiple levels may improve the quality of writing instruction for students
and lead to more effective student writing. These levels include the institutional, the departmental, as well
as the individual level. Program administrators may use our findings to address gaps in writing instruction
within their departments and to plan for an improved incorporation of writing-focused learning outcomes
across designated university units. In particular, the three barriers to improving writing instruction need to
be recognized by upper administration and policy makers as prominent components to address when
considering what is desirable in terms of students’ experiences and learning outcomes. Departments may
recognize the need to study in more detail their own practices in comparison to other departments and with
larger sample sizes of faculty members. Such studies may improve the ability to draw conclusions about
university-wide and department-wide practices and effective strategies for implementing curricular change.
At the individual level, faculty may recognize the benefits of collaborative approaches to the planning of
writing instruction rather than relying primarily on their own experiences. Such approaches may also
influence the levels of frustration felt by individual faculty.
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Finally, this research moves the conversation about writing away from a critique of skills deficits to a more
productive discussion about integrating writing expectations and instruction across Ontario’s universities.
Such a discussion will be necessary if meeting expectations regarding students’ writing abilities is a priority.
Future studies exploring the successes and challenges of current departmental and institutional supports
may not only provide valuable information about the state of writing instruction, but also enable the
identification of potential benchmarks for effective writing instruction at the university level.
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Canadian Chamber of Commerce (2012). Canada’s skill crisis: What we heard. Ottawa: Canadian Chamber of
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Career Builder (2015, April 23). Majority of companies plan to hire recent college graduates, according to
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Clary-Lemon, J. (2009). Shifting tradition: Writing research in Canada. American Review of Canadian Studies,
39(2), 94-111.
Elbow, P. (1997). High stakes and low stakes in assigning and responding to writing. New directions for
teaching and learning, 69, 5-13.
Goldberger, E. (2014, April 24). Everyone should teach writing. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/04/24/essay-why-all-faculty-need-consider-teachingwriting-their-responsibility
Graves, R. (2013, September). Why students struggle with writing. University Affairs. Retrieved from
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Graves, R., Hyland, T., & Samuels, B. M. (2010). Undergraduate writing assignments: An analysis of syllabi at
one Canadian college. Written Communication, 27(3), 293-317. Retrieved from
http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/27/3/293.full.pdf
Graves, R., Parker, A., & Marcynuk, K. (2013). Undergraduate writing assignments in engineering: Some
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Graves, R., Williams, A., Hyland, T., Jewinski, J., Parker, A., Samuels, B., McKeown, M., Borrows, G., Shaw, G.,
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PDF Text
Text
The Participation Log: Assessing Students’
Classroom Participation
Tony Docan-Morgan
L
ike many instructors in higher
education, I expect my students to
participate actively in the classroom—namely, to contribute meaningfully to discussion questions posed to the
entire class and to work through applied
problems and activities in small groups.
The benefits of classroom participation
are clear: “students who actively participate in the learning process learn more
than those who do not” (Weaver and
Qi 2005, 570). Further, many college
instructors perceive student classroom
participation as a factor in learning (Carini, Kuh, and Klein 2006) and assign
students participation grades (Bean and
Peterson 1998; Rogers 2013). However,
classroom participation is difficult to
assess, in part because it is difficult to
track in a reliable manner (Armstrong
and Boud 1983; Rogers 2013). My
own experiences confirm many of these
findings.
During my first ten years of college
teaching, I advocated that my students
participate regularly in class, delineated
specific expectations for classroom participation in course syllabi, and recorded
the quality and quantity of students’ participation after each class session. However, I came to realize the difficulty of
assessing students’ participation while
they worked in small groups. Although I
could listen in on groups’ conversations,
it was simply impossible to observe
and assess the quality of each student’s
contribution to the group. Further, I began teaching larger classes, sometimes
6�
totaling 125 students or more, making
it unmanageable for me to assess each
student’s classroom participation. In
response, I developed a “participation
log,” which students use to record their
participation, reflect on improving their
participation, and demonstrate to me
that they are participating meaningfully
in class. In short, the log allows students
to record, self-assess, and work toward
improving their participation in class,
and aids me in assessing student participation, how students are processing
course material, and how I can improve
my teaching.
group-mates questions, and brainstorm additional ideas. Do not
shortchange discussions or activities by finishing early.
I also inform students that they will
keep a log of their participation. We discuss the log’s purpose for the student—
to demonstrate an accurate record of the
quality and quantity of participation,
and to assess and work toward improving one’s classroom participation. I also
highlight the utility of the log from my
perspective—it allows me to assess student participation and understanding of
course material, as well as how I can
Reading and reflecting on students’ self-assessments has also improved
my skill as a facilitator of classroom discussions and activities.
On the first day of class, we discuss
participation expectations outlined in
the syllabus. Some of these expectations include:
• Making a substantive oral contribution during class lecture or
large-class discussion at least once
a week (e.g., answering questions
posed by the instructor, bringing
up related and relevant information, linking classroom discussions to assigned readings).
• Staying on task in dyads, small
groups, and activities. When given
a task or question to discuss, work
to make meaningful and course
content-driven contributions, ask
improve instruction. I provide students
with a template of the log as a Word
document and recommend that students
update their logs once or twice a week
(see Table 1).
I require students to submit their logs
at mid-semester and at the end of the
semester. Both submissions are graded.
The logs are useful for gauging the
quality and quantity of each student’s
participation and their perception of
how their participation aids classroom
discussions. I find that many students’
self-assessments at mid-semester focus
on how they need to improve (i.e., I
need to participate more frequently and
consistently; I should link discussion
Assessment Update • March–April 2015 • Volume 27, Number 2 • © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. • doi:10.1002/au
�Table 1. Log Template
1. Participation during lecture or large class discussion. Note that this type
of participation refers to making comments heard by the entire class. Students
should log approximately 10 specific examples and ensure that they are spread
out over the course of the semester.
Date
What did you contribute to lecture or large class discussion? Report what you shared specifically and
your perception of how, if at all, your contribution
aided the flow of the lecture or discussion, as well as
the comment’s relevance to the lecture or large class
discussion.
2. Participation in dyads, small groups, and activities. Log at least 10 specific
examples and ensure that they are spread out over the course of the semester.
Date
What did you contribute to the dyad, small group,
and/or activity? Summarize how you participated,
and your perception of how, if at all, your participation aided the interaction.
3. Self-assessment, reflection, and improvement. Log two self-assessments of
your performance as a participant in the class, focusing on your strengths and
how you can improve. Reflect on participation expectations outlined in the syllabus, as well as the quality and quantity of your participation in class. The first
self-assessment should be completed between weeks 3 and 7, and the second
should be completed between weeks 8 and 12. Each self-assessment should be at
least five sentences in length.
Date
Reflection
responses directly to class readings),
and often need little elaboration from
me. I provide individual, written feedback to students, which frequently corroborates their self-assessment and/or
offers additional recommendations for
successful participation (i.e., since your
group sometimes finishes the activity
and discussion early, work to ask group
members to elaborate on their points;
push the discussion by considering so-
lutions that have not been considered).
I rarely am confronted with a “fudged”
participation log, in part because I remind students that I also monitor and
record their contributions.
Having reviewed hundreds of students’ participation logs for the past
two years, I am more aware of their
experiences as active (and sometimes
inactive) classroom participants, and
as a result have improved my teach-
ing practice. The mid-semester and
end-of-semester logs provide useful,
albeit indirect, assessment data regarding student learning. Some students,
for example, articulate confusion about
course concepts in their logs. I am able
to revisit and clarify course material
at mid-semester and revise classroom
discussion questions and activities for
the future. Reading and reflecting on
students’ self-assessments has also
improved my skill as a facilitator of
classroom discussions and activities. I
am more sensitive to and aware of students’ voices in my classes, and better
equipped to respond to and synthesize
student contributions. ■
References
Armstrong, M., and Boud, D. 1983.
“Assessing Participation in Discussion: An Assessment of the Issues.”
Studies in Higher Education 8 (1):
33–44.
Bean, J. C., and Peterson, D. 1998.
“Grading Classroom Participation.”
New Directions for Teaching and
Learning 74 (Summer): 33–40.
Carini, R. M., Kuh, G. D., and Klein,
S. P. 2006. “Student Engagement and
Student Learning: Testing the Linkages.” Research in Higher Education
47 (1): 1–32.
Rogers, S. L. 2013. “Calling the Question: Do College Instructors Actually
Grade Participation?” College Teaching 61: 11–22.
Weaver, R. R., & Qi, J. 2005. “Classroom Organization and Participation:
College Students’ Perceptions.” The
Journal of Higher Education 76 (5):
570–601.
Tony Docan-Morgan is an associate
professor at the University of Wisconsin–
La Crosse.
Assessment Update • March–April 2015 • Volume 27, Number 2 • © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. • doi:10.1002/au
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External Links and Documents
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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The Participation Log: Assessing Students’
Classroom Participation
Article
Class Participation
Rubrics