Tools for Transformation

Funded Proposals

Interdisciplinary Writing Program

Department of English, Interdisciplinary Writing Program
College of Arts and Sciences Curriculum Development Awards
(A competition jointly sponsored by the College and Tools for Transformation)

Planning is underway for a curriculum development project in the Interdisciplinary Writing Program (IWP), supported by a Tools for Transformation grant. The project will focus on uses of technology to enhance teaching and learning in IWP courses, that is, in writing courses linked with lecture courses in a variety of disciplines. Laura Kuske, an Acting Instructor who has much experience with computer-integrated writing instruction and also two years' experience teaching in the IWP will lead September training sessions for IWP faculty preparing to use the Mary Gates Hall Computing Information Center (CIC) facilities; she will then continue as the technical support person for program teachers through fall and winter quarters. Kuske is collaborating with the new CIC director, Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges, to design the fall training, which will run from September 8 to 15, 2000.

That initial training will be organized as a series of topic-based workshops where strategies will be discussed, methods will be modeled, and faculty will work on applications suited to particular courses they will teach during the 2000-2001 academic year. Some sessions will deal with strategies appropriate to all IWP courses, such as the use of technology to strengthen students' work as reviewers of each other's drafts. Other sessions will focus on strategies important for certain types of courses or assignments, e.g. those requiring students to find and evaluate a variety of sources, perhaps in geography or psychology, vs. those calling for detailed analysis of demanding texts, perhaps in political theory or philosophy.

We anticipate that at least three IWP courses will be offered in CIC classrooms fall quarter, including links with GEOG 100, SIS 200, and PHIL 100. Development of technology-enhanced courses will continue through the year, so that we hope to have files reflecting our experiments with twelve courses by the end of spring. Teachers involved in this course development will have follow-up meetings with their trainer in the middle and at the end of fall term, and also at the end of winter. A major purpose of these meetings will be to work out more fully assessment ideas discussed in the initial training period, and to consider the implications of early assessment results.

A final, comprehensive feature of the project will be creation of an IWP/CIC web site. Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges will create this site, linking it with the existing administrative site for the program (which may be revised for compatibility). The new site will have several purposes, but we are most eager to see it function as a more efficient, better consolidated version of IWP course files. We need to create a database that allows us to "file" a given class activity design both under the discipline and specific writing course context to which it is relevant, and under the type of activity it represents. It looks as if technology will make our rich resource files more manageable, and more widely useful, than they have ever been.

PROGRESS REPORT, May 2001

Summary of Progress on IWP Curriculum Development Grant Project

In its original proposal for Curriculum Development Grant funding, the IWP pledged to integrate technology tools available in Mary Gates into at least twelve courses over the 2000-2001 academic year. We have exceeded our original goals, integrating technology into the teaching of the following twenty courses this academic year:

Autumn 2000

Winter 2001

Spring 2001

In addition to increasing the number of courses transformed by the grant project, IWP increased the number of faculty involved in the project. The technical support person hired through grant funds offered individual training for IWP Acting Instructors and Teaching Assistants who expressed interest in teaching technology-integrated courses during the winter and spring quarters. The training offered to core faculty members benefited not only the IWP, but the English Department as well. IWP core faculty members Robert McNamara and Norman Wacker moved their creative writing and modern poetry courses into the computer lab this spring.

Throughout the academic year, IWP faculty have used the Mary Gates computer lab and wired seminar rooms to facilitate critical research, critical reading, writing, and peer response. Our use of technology has varied according to instructors’ pedagogical goals. Some faculty members have collaborated with library discipline specialists, using the Web for in-class research workshops. Others have used Word and the shared network drive to create electronic thesis development, source evaluation, or reading annotation exercises for students to work with in class. Several instructors have incorporated the commenting program CommonSpace into the peer response component of their courses. Others have created Web pages for their courses and have assigned Web projects. In May of 2001, faculty members Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges, Laura Kuske and Elizabeth Simmons-O’Neill showcased the IWP’s work at the Computers & Writing Online Conference. Their presentation, which focused on training and on integrating technology into a film and a geography writing link, is at http://faculty.washington.edu/kgb/cwonline.

To evaluate the success of our project, we have compared student performance in computer-integrated versus non computer-integrated sections of geography and history writing links taught by the same instructor. We have also devised student evaluations questioning the effectiveness of our courses’ uses of technology. At this point, evaluations suggest that regardless of the success of working at computers individually and in small groups, students still find the basic IWP model to be at the heart of their learning. However, computer-integration in some courses has increased students’ sense of their own agency as writers, researchers, and members of a research and revising team of peers. Our final report will offer a detailed analysis of evaluations in all computer-integrated IWP courses.

Tools for Transformation Funded Proposals

The Provost's Office
provost@u.washington.edu
Modified: May 25, 2001