Journals have become a popular format in recent years for courses that require some writing. In-class journal entries can spark discussions and reveal gaps in students' understanding of the material.

In February Howe Writing Across the Curriculum partnered with Howe Writing Center consultants to present a workshop series on Assignment Design, focusing on clarity, audience, and accessibility. Led ...

Writing is a valuable educational tool for learning. In the classroom, writing can help students grapple with and understand content more deeply and help students learn disciplinary ways of knowing ...

Effective course design begins with understanding the process of thinking and learning. These processes are commonly termed "metacognition." Metacognition includes a critical awareness of one’s ...

Assignments: Make Them Effective, Engaging, and Equitable. At their best, assignments are one of the most important learning experiences for students in a course. Students grapple with course content, ...

Travis Grandy is a PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Find him on Twitter @travisgrandy or at his website. I work with a lot of instructors who use ...

The Writing Center's consultants strive to help students understand and engage with writing assignments in productive ways. Unfortunately, we sometimes encounter assignment sheets that are difficult ...

The students’ assignment: Write an op-ed about lead poisoning in Lewiston-Auburn. Or write a caption for a photo, or text about a campus tree. Write about how strange quantum theory is, or write a ...

Higher-order thinking skills and the ability to integrate technical knowledge with practical applications are vital for employees, especially in today's challenging job market. Can reflective writing ...