Campus Alberta Writing Studies Colloquium Edmonton, Alberta, Canada September 29, 2011

1. Writing Assignments
Across the Disciplines
Fifth Campus Alberta Writing Colloquium
September 30, 2011
Susan Chaudoir
PhD Student, Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Alberta
chaudoir@ualberta.ca
www.ualberta.ca/~graves1

2. Writing Assignment Research
at University of Alberta
 Consult/support faculty and curriculum administrators
 Disciplinary contexts: writing in the disciplines (WID)
 Conduct research with
 faculty initiative (Light, 2001, p. 223)
 scholarly consistency (Graves, Hyland, & Samuels, 2010)
 Describes the kinds of assignments undergraduates are asked to
write in various disciplines (Anson &Dannels, 2009)
 inform discussions of how to direct or improve disciplinary writing for learning

3. Our Series of Studies
 Writing ‘inventory’
 Five (5) disciplines University of Alberta:
 Faculty of Nursing
 Faculty of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences
 Faculty of Physical Education & Recreation
 Department of Political Science
 Service-Learning Program
 One (1) discipline from another Canadian institution:
 Department of Geography
 1,232 assignments and 350 courses

4. Today’s Presentation
 Summary:
 Five (5) completed studies:
 Faculty of Nursing
 Faculty of Physical Education & Recreation (PER)
 Department of Geography
 Department of Political Science
 Community Service-Learning Program (CSL)
 In process: Pharmacy

5. Our Research Questions
 What assignments are students asked to write?
 How often are they asked to write?
 Do writing assignments differ by discipline?
 How do instructors structure writing assignments
within a course (e.g., scaffold, link, sequence)?

6. What We Found
 Students write:
a lot in these disciplines (77 to 100%)
 in every course of Political Science and CSL
 more often beyond second year
a variety of genres
 almost exclusively for an academic audience

7. What We Found
What are students asked to write?
Political
PER CSL Geography Nursing
(instructor’s label) Science
Paper 16 32 22 25 18
Report 30 12
Essay 21 12
Teaching
22
Demonstration
Self-evaluation 24
Handouts 11
Presentation 15 17 13
Journal 10 8
Note: numbers are reported in percent of all assignments.

8. What We Learned
How often are students asked to write?
Discipline Number of writing Percent of courses
assignments with writing
assignments
PER 266 82%
Political Science 198 100%
CSL 163 100%
Geography 186 77%
Nursing 157 86%

9. What We Learned
How often are students asked to write?
PER Political CSL Geography Nursing
Science
Year 1 66 / 2.5 7 / 1.4 42 / 10 15 / 3.8 17 / 3.4
Year 2 46 / 3.2 39 / 2.3 12 / 4 40 / 2.2 33 / 5.5
Year 3 67 / 2.6 40 / 2.4 35 / 6 24 / 1.85 50 / 4.2
Year 4 87 / 4.6 112 / 4.2 74 / 6.7 107 / 3.5 57 / 4.4
Note: first number = total assignments; second number = average number of assignments per course.

10. What We Learned
Do writing assignments differ by discipline?
Length in PER Political CSL Geography Nursing
pages Science
under 2 17 5 16 18 0
2-4 45 27 39 34 74
5-6 15 15 14 19 2
7 - 10 13 23 14 18 18
11 - 12 1 11 6 5 0
13 + 9 19 11 6 6
Note: numbers are reported in percent of all assignments.

11. What We Learned
Do writing assignments differ by discipline?
PER Political CSL Geography Nursing
Science
FEEDBACK 7 21 41 12 96
RUBRIC 27 25 13 20 60
AUDIENCE 97 92 91 100 99
Note: numbers are reported in percent of all assignments.

12. What We Learned
How often do instructors scaffold/nest writing
assignments within a course?
80 71
68
70
percentage of all assignments
60
50
50
40
37
30
30
20
10
0
PER Political CSL Geography Nursing
Science
Note: numbers are reported in percent of all assignments.

13. Most Surprising
 Pronounced disciplinary differences
(dominant genres, nesting-linking)
 Course terms vary
 Nursing study:
 feedback (96%)
 scaffolding (71%)
 short assignments (74%)
 academic audience (99%)

14. Future Projects
 Meta-analysis: patterns within each discipline as well as
across the disciplines
 SSHRC grant: national research program to document writing
assignments given to students in a wide variety of disciplines
 PhD research project: small-scale qualitative inquiry to
understand how students learn what they are asked to write
 Theoretical frameworks
 Curricular & pedagogical focus

15. My Research Topic
 How do students learn the genres they are asked to write?
 Theoretical framework: Genre as social action (Miller, 1984/1994)
 Analysis: Genre flexibility (Schryer, 2002)
 students are ‘genred’ into the discipline
 Methodology/method: Case study
 My quandary:which to pursue?
1. across disciplines: comparative study
2. within one discipline: descriptive study

16. My Research Topic
 How do students learn the genres they are asked to write?
 Nursing:
 Highest ratio of nesting (75%)
 Highest ratio of feedback (96%)
 Highest ratio of short assignments (74%)
 Near-exclusive academic audience (99%)
 Emphasis: writing “scholarly” (not expository, creative, provocative)
 Emphasis: reading “research” (secondary not primary)
 genres: Dominant and periphery
 Perspectives:student - instructor – tutor

17. My Research Topic
 Firstquestion: what assignments are students asked to write?
 My research question: how do students learn the genres they are
asked to write?
 What are your questions?
 Discussion

18. References
Anson, C. A., &Dannels, D. (2009, December 3). Profiling programs: Formative uses of
departmental consultations in the assessment of communication across the curriculum
[Special issue on Writing Across the Curriculum and Assessment.] Across the Disciplines, 6.
Retrieved May 30, 2011 from
http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/assessment/anson_dannels.cfm
Graves, R., Hyland, T., & Samuels, B. (2010). Undergraduate writing assignments: An analysis
of syllabi at one Canadian university. Written Communication, 27(3), 293-317.
Light, R. L. (2001). Making the most out of college: Students speak their minds.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Miller, C. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 72, 151-167.
Miller, C. (1994). Rhetorical community: The cultural basis of genre. In A. Freedman & P.
Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric (pp. 67-78). London: Taylor & Francis.
Schryer, C. (2002). Genre and power: A chronotopic analysis. In R. Coe, L. Lingard& T.
Teslenko (Eds.), The rhetoric and ideology of genre (pp. 73-102). Creskill, NJ: Hampton.