On the way to a W course

"Meaning is not what you start with but what you end up with....Think of writing then not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message." Peter Elbow.

"Write when it doesn't count, so it will when it does." Carmen Werder, WWU, 2002

Because W courses are centrally about learning, every course is potentially a W course, as is clear from the diversity of W courses at SFU. It is also possible to use a number of W elements in your course design, whether or not it is a designated W course. In a short conversation, we can help you develop such interventions to work for your purposes, within your course. For example:

For classroom management

Low stakes activities such as exit slips, one-minute papers, quickwrites, and teaching how to read a complex text take from 1-30 minutes of class time, yet stimulate student thinking, and give faculty a vivid snapshot of student understanding of lectures, key concepts, linkages between texts and lectures, etc. They can also freshen dull classroom dynamics, function to encourage attendance, and allow greater faculty time-management so that class time is used most effectively for key content areas.

For altering a major assignment

Often students grasp the intentions of assignments in limited and unintended ways, and so produce uneven final projects and papers. By developing low stakes activities to 'scaffold' student engagement for major assignments, students have a chance to identify topics of suitable scope, find high quality sources, select the strongest of various structures for presentation, and ultimately present more error-free, more articulate, and more original work.

For creating writing activities to link parts of the course

Faculty members who are designing new courses (or redesigning ones they know well) often have a sense where students will stumble in areas of conceptualization or critical thinking. Similarly, they may know that a key event during the course (a guest speaker, a field trip, a film, etc.) could catalyze understanding beyond the lectures and texts. Developing some low-stakes activities targeted to helping students synthesize these disparate elements can help minimize errors of emphasis and integration of content.