Partnership for the Study of Writing in College
The Partnership for the Study of Writing in College invites
you to participate in its projects, which aim to do the following:
- Create a national portrait of the ways writing
is used in four-year colleges and universities in the United States.
- Explore the relationships between writing and
learning.
- Identify effective teaching strategies that can
be used in any college course in order to improve students’ writing abilities.
- Identify effective teaching strategies for using
writing in any college course to enhance students’ mastery of course content
and achievement of other important goals of higher education.
A central activity of the Partnership has been creation of
27 questions about writing that can be appended to the National Survey of
Student Engagement by institutions that choose to use them. The PSWC has also
prepared a parallel set of questions for use with the Faculty Survey of Student
Engagement.
As of Spring 2010, the NSSE questions have been used at 151 schools
and the FSSE questions at 46 schools, creating a substantial body of data with
responses from more than 60,000 students and almost 3,000 faculty.
There are several ways you might benefit from and participate
in the Partnership’s activities.
- Consider the ways you can use our analyses of
the national data to support writing initiatives at your college or university.
- Administer the special writing questions at your
own institution. You can do so as part of regular administrations of NSSE and
FSSE or, for no cost, you can use them independent of a NSSE or FSSE
administration.
- Suggest research question we could investigate
using the national data.
- Link data from administration of the writing
questions at your institution with other data it possesses (e.g., student
grades) to investigate topics that can’t be answered by responses to the
writing questions alone.
- Collaborate with researchers at other
institutions, for instance by pooling your data to answer questions of special
interest to you.
We welcome your ideas, requests, and suggestions.
Paul Anderson
Chris Anson
Chuck Paine
Bob Gonyea
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