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 ...

Sometimes it is difficult to know how to best approach writing about television, film or web media. Much of this process begins with understanding your assignment: this will have an impact on your ...

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 ...

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.

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, ...

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 ...

Experts tend to complete writing tasks more quickly than novices by combining or skipping steps due to years of practice and mastery. Our students often come to us as novices who are still learning ...

An essay should express continued thought and/or research on a particular subject. It is harder to collect and research information when it is all done at the last minute. Time management is integral ...

Constructing an assignment that elicits good writing may be as difficult for teachers as writing the essays is for students, a forthcoming study suggests. Teachers must strike a delicate balance ...