Here’s a report of a report on plagiarism given at a recent American Chemical Society meeting.  One scientist quoted blames “not enough writing” at the undergraduate level for problems with graduate students plagiarizing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090322154413.htm

This long article is the result of an investigation into an essay mill, from the point of view of a student/customer. Interesting!

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=cKgdcqSn8JnwjYnY8vYk5mq9sg5fNpff

The first story linked here has a local (Western Pa.) slant, but it also provides a quick overview of Kathleen Yancey’s new report on “Writing in the 21st Century.”  The second link is to an editorial that takes a kind of “old school” skeptical stance toward the report.  The third is to a .pdf version of the report.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09054/951056-298.stm

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/1225472.html

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf

An English professor and an English major are quoted in this story.  Is there an angle that’s not represented here?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html?emc=eta1

A working group from the Modern Language Association has issued a white paper in response to a query from the Teagle Foundation about the place of English in a liberal arts education.  As may be expected, the report stresses literary study.  While writing is mentioned several times, rhetoric is not.

http://www.mla.org/pdf/2008_mla_whitepaper.pdf

This article reports comments on assessment in higher education made at the recent AAC&U Conference in Seattle.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/23/assess

Today NSSE released its annual report, which reports some interesting and positive findings about the effectiveness of “extensive, intellectually challenging writing activities.”

The 2008 NSSE Annual Report includes summaries of analyses that affirm that writing makes a significant positive difference on student engagement and learning. On pages 21 and 22, you’ll find a section titled “Selected Results: Writing Matters, which ends with this summary: “Results affirmed that when institutions provided students with extensive, intellectually challenging writing activities, the students engaged in more deep learning activities such as analysis, synthesis, integration of ideas from various sources, and grappled more with course ideas both in and out of the classroom. In turn, students whose faculty assigned projects with these same characteristics reported greater personal, social, practical, and academic learning and development. Taken together, these findings provide further support for the movement to infuse quality writing experiences throughout the curriculum.”

Download the complete report.

Download a press release that mentions the writing results in one of its bullets.

NSSE’s focus on writing is also discussed in this *USA Today* article online.

For more information on the WPA / NSSE partnership, see http://comppile.org/wpa+nsse

This unfortunate article, Laurie Fendrich’s ill-informed jeremiad in today’s “Brainstorm” section of the Chronicle, is another reminder of why the WPA / NMA initiative is so important.  We need similar forums to counter this ongoing narrative.

Imagine one of us writing a similar piece, with similar visibility, about our students “artistic” skills?

Sigh.

Check the bottom of this WSJ online piece for the credit tag — wonder who Mr. Becker is working for … ?

His argument that Turnitin is not a gotcha service but a means of engendering community in the classroom is a novel one.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/prevent-plagiarism-classroom/story.aspx?guid=%7B59791173-5804-4BA9-BBBA-8C485D71E154%7D&dist=hppr