Skip navigation | Text-only | Español
Support the Writing Process

From the time that students begin to understand the type of document they will be writing, through researching, organizing, writing a first draft, obtaining feedback, revising, editing, and proofreading, they are engaged in a writing process (link to student page). To help students understand how to produce the best writing they can, carefully consider how your class schedule and resources support them as they gather ideas, plan, and create their finished products.

Finding and selecting appropriate resources

The internet has made finding "information" relatively easy for everyone, but faculty know that students struggle to screen good sources from poor when doing research. Students seem to Google everything and know nothing of books, journals, or newspapers. The disconnect between the types of sources students know how to find (and read) and the types of sources instructors often want them to use in their written projects means that successful research-based writing requires instructor guidance.

What can you do?

First, be clear about what types of sources are desirable. Try to avoid a mathematical approach (3 web pages or less, 2 or more peer-reviewed articles) because students may see these numbers as capricious demands. Instead, discuss the way people in your field do research, or discuss what kinds of source material people writing—and reading—will expect in the kind of paper students are working on.

Next, have challenging but realistic expectations. Freshmen in an introductory course may not be able to understand the professional jargon of specialists in your field well enough to understand 10 peer-reviewed journal articles to include in a paper. They may, however, be able to contextualize one article from a peer-reviewed journal to suggest changes to their daily lives or to their communities. Seniors in your field may need to be able to read and build an argument on 10 or more peer-reviewed sources; graduate students almost definitely will need this skill. Consider working within your department to develop a series of writing assignments that will help your majors build skills gradually as they progress through their required field coursework. In the meantime, try to develop assignments appropriate to students’ reading level, while still achieving your course goals.

When you’ve decided how much and what kinds of resources are appropriate, consider asking a reference librarian to build a class powerpoint and develop a presentation specific to your course. You can take your students to the library for that class day, or, if you have a Smart classroom or computer lab available, the reference librarian might meet you there.

Take time to review the Chesnutt Library’s online Reference Shelf and research guides that have been developed for your discipline. Would you like specific resources, techniques, or links for your specific courses to be added to either? Give the librarians feedback to improve our campus resources by emailing the reference librarian who created the page. Then, teach students how to use these valuable pages to improve their research skills. Make sure you include this information on your assignment sheet.

You can also create your own hands-on workshop to teach such skills as keyword and subject searching, and to introduce students to the types of resources they’ll find in databases and reference materials specific to your discipline. Consider requesting a Smart classroom or computer lab to enable you to do this. Give students time in class, or time to research instead of homework. Provide office hours when students who are struggling to find sources can meet with you individually or in groups for more advice.

Keyword & Subject searching in the databases (Video Coming Soon)

Providing feedback for revision

There’s no doubt that responding to writing to promote revision and growth is a time-consuming process. Done well, it can promote great development in critical thinking and writing.  

Often, instructors respond only to a last draft, but students improve much more when they are able to apply comments to a revision and then submit. You can utilize campus resources [link] like Smarthinking and the Writing Lab to allow tutors to respond to your students’ drafts. You can also respond to drafts yourself. If you do so, you may want to limit your comments on the final paper to your use of your rubric, to save time. Or you may want to respond to two versions of the same paper in full.

Listed here are three tips for responding effectively to student drafts to promote revision and greater critical thinking:

  1. Comments should be specific. When commenting in the margins or at the end of a student’s paper, avoid generic comments like "needs work," or "disorganized," or "good." None of these comments help students understand how to get things right the next time. Use questions and comments on specific, higher-order issues, and limit yourself to about 3 substantive comments: Think, what should the student do first to improve this paper? Chances are, changing the spelling of a word isn’t going to improve the paper significantly.
  2. Resist the editorial imperative. Studies repeatedly suggest that students do not learn from a vast quantity of "corrections" to spelling and punctuation, nor do they use comments like "awk" (for awkward) to improve. If a student's work contains consistent and distracting errors, note what type of mistake is made, and refer them to a writing tutor or appropriate website or handbook to help them figure out how to proofread for that error by themselves in future.
  3. If you are grading a final paper, and cannot focus on the student's ideas because of the degree of error, refer the student to a writing tutor to work on the issues you have identified, then ask the student to resubmit a proofread paper, possibly for a reduced grade. If you cannot resist writing something about grammar, consider limiting your proofreading to a single paragraph.
  4. Use rubrics that students understand in advance. Students will want to know how they will be assessed. There are many types of rubrics that can show students what criteria you will use to assess them, and to streamline grading somewhat. You may want to provide 1-3 sample papers and allow students to use the rubric to assess those papers. Allow students to read the papers and use the rubrics outside of class, if desired, to spend less class time on writing; or provide a discussion board, blog, or other online tool that students can participate in to use even less class time.