Welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
This week:
- Beth explains how a writing instructor gets her students to see the value of good writing in their careers.
- Beckie shares readers’ tips for helping students see how a course is relevant to their lives.
- We pass along the names of a few good books and podcasts on teaching.
- We point you toward some recent articles about teaching.
Envisioning the Future With a Writing Assignment
Professors know that the ability to write well and communicate clearly are important skills for all students to have, no matter what their intended profession. But how do you get that message across to college students in a required class in writing? After all, many are there only because they have to be. And they may not yet know what kind of career they want to have.
For Shawna M. Lesseur, the answer is simple: Show them the future. A first-year writing instructor at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Lesseur has developed an assignment that resonates with her students. She asks everyone to interview four people, including a professor in their intended major and an alumnus in a related profession, to explore what role writing plays in their careers. Do they write reports? Proposals? Long papers? Presentations? In what ways has writing factored into their professional development, and at what points in their career has writing mattered the most?
The answers, she says, often surprise students. Lesseur recalls an international student, majoring in statistics, who told her, quite confidently, that he’d never need to write once he started working. After all, he was going to be a number cruncher. “He really thought that if he made it through this class,” she says, “he’d be done and not have to write in English again.”
Instead he returned from his interviews chastened. He learned that “he had to be an exceptional communicator,” she says. Not only would he need to write well, a professor and a professional statistician told him, but he would also need to be able to communicate his ideas and his work to a wide variety of people, including clients. “He was shocked,” says Lesseur. “He realized he really needed to focus on his ability to communicate effectively. Numbers weren’t enough. He was going to have to tell a story with them.”
As a former assistant director of First Year Programs and Learning Communities at Connecticut, Lesseur knows that fear often prevents students from attending faculty office hours or visiting the career center before senior year. This assignment helps break that barrier.
“I don’t think academic rigor and career preparation are at odds,” she says. “If you get them to think critically, they will eventually be strong supervisors, someone who their boss wants to promote and who will contribute to society.”
Surveys back this up. According to the Association of American Colleges & Universities, 82 percent of employers put a high priority on written communication.
Lesseur helps her students work up to their one-on-one interviews by staging a mock interview in her classroom. She brings in an academic colleague with experience in the business world, and then asks him questions that students provide in advance. The process serves two purposes, she says: It shows students how to conduct an interview, and it tests out the effectiveness of their questions.
Lesseur also breaks down other steps for students. She shows them how to craft an email to a faculty member — “a lot of first-year students struggle with that” — and how to connect with career-services staff members and alumni.
For students who aren’t sure what they’ll major in, Lesseur asks them to pick a professor and an alumnus who work in their areas of interest. The other two interviews can be with professors, graduate students, or others.
Never, says Lesseur, has a student heard that writing doesn’t matter. It could be in the form of well-crafted emails, professionally done annual reports, or concise presentations. Even humanities majors benefit from the project, Lesseur says, because they learn that the demands on them will only get tougher, meaning that it’s important to lay a strong foundation for good writing in her class.
Once the four interviews are completed, students synthesize what they’ve learned and write a five-page paper in which they critique and expand upon the ideas in their textbook, The Academic Writer, on how writing expectations vary across disciplines.
“To help them think through, what does the end look like,” says Lesseur, “is really one of the best things you can do for them.”
One study of students’ experiences with writing assignments echoes Lesseur’s work. The Meaningful Writing Project, which surveyed 700 students across three institutions, found that seniors defined a meaningful writing experience to include one that is interactive — such as interviewing sources — and that helps them develop skills they will need in the future.
