Presentation given to the College of Arts & Sciences Fall Retreat, August 2013 University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

1. Blugold Seminar
in Critical Reading &
Writing
Revision of the First-Year Writing Program
College of Arts & Science Fall Retreat
August 2013
Shevaun Watson: Director, University Writing Program
Carmen Manning: Chair, English Department

2. Comprehensive Revision of
First-year Writing Program
• New University Writing Requirement
• New Prefix & Array of Courses
• New Placement System
• New Curriculum based on current best
practices
• Ongoing Professional Development

3. Blugold Seminar Course Array
• WRIT 114, 116, 118, & 120
• Not sequential
• Each fulfills proposed University Writing Requirement
• Fundamentally similar in terms of curriculum
• Outcomes for all courses are the same
• Each course specifically designed to meet needs of
particular population
• Different pace, level of depth necessary, and types of
support built in to foster student success
• Different methods, based on best practices, used to achieve
goals based on needs of specific student population

4. Blugold Seminar Course Array
• WRIT 114: Intensive Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading and
Writing
• Students who score low(< 405) on the English Placement Exam (UWENGL) and
need more support to meet the writing program outcomes in one semester.
• 5 credits
• WRIT 116: Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading and Writing
• Most students will place in this course (405-594 UWENGL)
• 5 credits

5. Blugold Seminar Course Array
• WRIT 118: Accelerated Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading
and Writing
• Students who do not need 5 credits to meet the writing program outcomes
• High UWENGL (>595); or
• High English AP (4 or 5); or
• Appropriate score on University Writing Program Portfolio; or
• Honors Program student
• 2 credits
• WRIT 120: Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading and Writing
for Transfer Students
• For transfer students with approved partial composition credit from another
college/university
• 2 credits

6. Themes to Model
“Conversations”
Nursing Dilemmas
Our Stuff and Where It Comes From
Home Sweet Home
Technology and Communication
The World According to Television
Immigration & the Idea of Homeland Security
Globalization and the World (Dis)Order
Race in the 21st Century
You Are What You Meat

7. BGS Pilot and Assessment
• DATA COLLECTION
• Baseline student survey, spring 2010
• BGS student surveys, Fall 2011-Spring 2013
• BGS focus groups, Fall 2011-Spring 2013
• BGS E-Portfolio blind reviews, Summer 2012 & 2013
• BGS student self-assessments, Fall 2011-Spring 2013
• “Pre” and “post” writing samples, Fall 2011-Spring 2013
• Longitudinal study of former BGS students, including annual interviews
and collection of written work across courses; Cohort 1 (2012), Cohort 2
(2013), Cohort 3 (2014)
• National information literacy assessment project with Library, 2013-2015
• Three double-blind experiments pertaining to writing pedagogies, 2013-
2014
• Tracking WRIT grades, UWENGL scores, e-portfolio outcomes

8. Student Self Perceptions—
Beginning to End of Semester
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Writer Reader Rhetoric Research Self-assessment Revision Digital Literacy
MeanSelf-PerceptionScore
Time 1 Perceptions
Time 2 Perceptions

9. Key Trends
• Relevance of curriculum to Writing in the Disciplines
• “I’m a biology major. I learned that writing in bio is about ethos. You need
to tell readers where your ideas and information are coming from so that
you have credibility.”
• “I’m a political science major. I’ve already used what I learned about
rhetoric in my poli sci class, and I’ve seen a huge jump in how I’m doing in
that class.”
• “I’m a music major. You have to analyze a lot of different kinds of texts. All
of the rhetoric terms helped me do that better. I can see the rhetoric of
music.”
• Rigorous
• “Definitely more challenging than my high school course.”
• “If you wanted a good grade, you had to really work at it. You couldn’t just
sit down the night before and crank the work out.”
• “I thought it was a good challenge.”

10. Key Trends
• Gains in information literacy/inquiry & research skills
• “I’m better at finding credible sources.”
• “I learned about all of the different databases. Wow! I don’t start with
Google anymore.”
• “I can see now why you need different kinds of sources for different
kinds of papers.”
• “Now I’ll go to the Library when I’m researching something.”
• Opportunities for transfer
• “I can write lots of different kinds of papers now.”
• “I’m better at reading. Not just faster, but I know what to focus on.”
• “Even though other professors don’t say it, I can hear them talking
about rhetoric, audience, context.”

11. Student Performance – Year 2
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Segment 2 Project Final Portfolio
Project Performance
Project Performance

12. Transfer: Like a Bridge
• Not just reapplication, but recontextualization
• Needs to be prompted—explicitly and often
• Involves affective dimensions
• Involves metacognition (conscious, mindful abstraction)
• For writing, students begin the process of transfer by
relying on “antecedent genres”
• Same terms, different meanings (disciplinary inflections)
• Students as “Agents of Integration”: they actively work to
perceive—and to effectively convey to others—
connections, applications, reconstructions

13. Writing in the Disciplines
“Writing is a complex and continuously
developing response to a specialized
discourse community, highly embedded in
the specific rhetorical practices of that
community, rather than a set of
generalizable, mechanical skills that are
independent of disciplinary knowledge.”

14. Picking up Where the BGS Leaves Off
• Rhetorical situations (audience, purpose, context)
• Academic discourse as rhetorical moves
• “Conversation”
• Rhetorical differences between source types, kinds of
evidence
• Course- or discipline-specific reading strategies
• Rules as disciplinary conventions
• Expectations model disciplinary conventions
• Define terms used in assignments
• Explore students’ antecedent genre knowledge
• Opportunities for reflection (“first-person selling”)
• Opportunities for practice

15. We welcome
your questions and
comments.