Building on Strengths

While measuring the University of Georgia against its peers can be useful, UGA has features that make it unique:  the situation that we face with regard to writing is quite different from that at comparable universities. When our Task Force began work, we looked at a number of universities to determine what were the best practices across America. Some universities used a writing initiative to shore up weak writing programs at the introductory level. Others used a writing initiative to help a school of education instigate changes in writing programs for secondary education schools. Still others had an initiative to train faculty and students in new communication technologies. None of these programs seems appropriate to the needs of UGA.  We have strengths at this university that other public research universities lack, so it makes sense to work on developing an initiative resting on those strengths:  a increasingly qualified student body and a flexible curricular structure that allows students freedom to design their own educations through majors and certificate programs. 

Therefore, we choose to focus on present strengths that can, with a small investment of resources and an administrative commitment, become a nationally significant plan. In doing our work we learned about a range of UGA initiatives that work well, but that are not well coordinated across the campus. The Franklin College Writing Intensive Program (WIP), the Department of English, the Department of Language and Literacy Education, the Division of Academic Enhancement, and the Center for Undergraduate Research can collaborate on projects that will increase writing instruction.

Finally, many of our recommendations parallel those made by the 2005 Undergraduate Education Task Force.  In other words, the Writing Task Force is not requesting a huge new investment:  we want to build on an existing institutional commitment of resources. 

Increasingly Qualified Student Body
Our students are better each year, and they arrive well-prepared.  As a result, more students place out of First-year Composition each year.  Many transfer students, attracted to UGA, arrive with uneven preparation in writing.  Since students may not write in many upper-division classes, their ability to write atrophies, and they receive little training in how to write for an audience in their discipline. 

UGA’s First-year Composition program is exemplary, for the way in which it trains graduate assistants, the way it incorporates technology and academic honesty in its classes, and for the way it trains and assesses students’ work. Small wonder that UGA has always led all University system schools in the number of students who pass the Regents’ Essay Exam. Yet because those skills are not often reinforced in upper-division courses or within the training of a student’s major, our students lack the writing skills that they need by graduation.  Most universities concentrate on strengthening writing in lower-division or even developmental courses: we are unusual in needing to strengthen writing in upper-division courses so that our students excel in their chosen fields. Our weakness is not in the usual place: UGA needs to push its students harder when it comes to writing within their upper-division courses so that after graduation they can excel on the national and, increasingly, the international scene.

Flexible Curricular Structure
The University is in the process of strengthening our general education program by instituting the changes recommended by the 2005 Undergraduate Task Force through the University Council’s Curriculum Committee.  UGA is also redesigning the course application process. Finally, UGA’s students can supplement traditional majors with ancillary work on a variety of certificates.  We propose a number of changes that will continue the development of curricular flexibility and a strong general education.

The first proposal is to allow Academic Enhancement to develop an “add-on” writing course that could be offered in conjunction with the university’s courses for one or two hours of credit.  Staff from Academic Enhancement and from the libraries would work with a professor to craft writing assignments suitable to the main course’s content, to coach students through various research and writing activities, and to assess the final writing assignment.  While Academic Enhancement offers its regular courses in the lower-division, we recommend permitting an exception in this instance because it will assist faculty who want to use writing in their courses, allow students to receive writing instruction from those who are trained in the field, and generate additional credit hours. An essential partner in the development and instruction of these “add-on” courses and in the fostering of critical thinking and academic inquiry is the University of Georgia Libraries.  The Association of Research Libraries ranks the UGA Libraries thirty-first among the 113 major U.S. and Canadian research libraries and sixth in the size of its government documents collection.

Already, Libraries staff have co-taught Academic Enhancement courses, including UNIV 1109: Resources for Research and UNIV 1120: Computer/Information Literacy.  In addition to these collaborations, the Libraries’ twenty-eight teaching staff and subject specialists regularly collaborate with other teaching faculty to bring information literacy instruction into classrooms across campus.  In 2006, the staff reached 9,122 undergraduates and 1,584 graduate students, through classes in a wide variety of disciplines.  All of these efforts improved student and faculty skills in using GIL, GALILEO databases, bibliographic management tools like EndNote and RefWords, in finding primary resources, and in assessing information on the Web.  Beginning in spring 2007, the Libraries will offer “seven awards for CURO students which will provide cash prizes for excellence in research and academic inquiry” (http://www.libs.uga.edu/researchaward/).  The UGA Libraries’ participation in a writing initiative such as the one proposed here will bolster students’ knowledge about and responsible use of information resources, thereby promoting critical thinking and intellectual curiosity.  We endorse the Libraries’ continuing involvement in cross-curricular teaching activities and recommend that it provide necessary support for staff members who co-teach the Academic Enhancement add-on course sections.

Another key suggestion is to institute a certificate program in writing (see the appendix that describes what such a program might be). By pursuing an ePortfolio-based undergraduate certificate in writing, students in every college can document and publish their ability to write effectively when they graduate. Such a program might ask students to build on their work in First-year Composition by taking a course dedicated to the writing process, as well as four more courses that are designated as writing intensive. Those courses would include a mixture of the following:

• classes offered through the Writing Intensive Program (WIP)
• classes that have an “add-on” writing course
• capstone courses that require a substantial essay, work on an honors thesis, or work on a CURO project
• individual courses approved by a coordinator and steering committee

Potential employers, admissions committees, accrediting agencies, and the public would find such a certificate heartening, especially if supported by an online ePortfolio of writing that demonstrated the student’s abilities. In the electronic markup and management application, or <emma>, already adopted across First-year Composition, and in LiveText, used in the College of Education, the university has in place the means to facilitate such electronic portfolios.

College of Education
While some institutions needed to help their schools of education effect change in secondary systems, UGA is unusual in its participation in the Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Program (GSTEP), a major initiative that has already helped College of Education faculty work with Arts and Sciences faculty to aid primary and secondary teachers and systems in strengthening their curriculums. Today, UGA’s Red Clay Writing Project reaches out to “K-12 teachers from Northeast Georgia who are interested in literacy teaching and learning for students with diverse needs.” The University of Georgia is a leader, not a follower in this area. The Task Force would like to build upon the work that GSTEP began, by asking the College of Education to collaborate in programs to train undergraduates in communication skills.

Specifically, the Department of Language and Literacy Education would be an excellent place for a Writing Center that would serve East Campus. The department has expressed interest in such a center, which would allow their students to get hands-on teaching experience.  Given the department’s strength and national reputation, such a center could provide much needed support for international students and for speakers of English as a second language, a focus that the department itself suggested.

Writing Centers
UGA is unusual in having two Writing Centers on campus: one run by the English Department in Park Hall and one run by Academic Enhancement in Milledge Hall. At present, both Writing Centers also provide drop-in tutoring in the Student Learning Center.  In the past, both have offered tutoring in the residence halls, but resources now permit only minimal tutoring hours in one residence hall. Both centers could expand to a satellite branch on South Campus, share resources or facilities, and collaborate in training and scheduling. Both centers would benefit from additional funds to purchase equipment such as computers to support their work, to develop scheduling software to make collaboration easier, and to expand the number of graduate assistant/instructor tutors. Such support services will be essential if the university wants its faculty to help students develop written and oral communication abilities in its classes. At the moment fewer than twenty Writing Center instructors (a mix of teaching assistants and staff) serve nearly 35,000 students.

The English Department and Academic Enhancement are collaborating with the University Libraries to establish a Writing Center at the Science Library to serve the South Campus, although funds for at least two units of tutoring are necessary to make this plan work, as both centers are stretched to their limits by serving students in the Student Learning Center; future plans include another center headquartered in the College of Education to serve East Campus. Funding will be essential for such expansion.

WIP
UGA has a remarkable writing program already in place within the College of Arts and Sciences. Since 1997, the Writing Intensive Program has worked with faculty who want to include writing in their courses. Offering a development program and a graduate assistant to each faculty member chosen, WIP “serves from 1000-1500 students in approximately 45 diverse courses across the college, ranging from art history, biology, classics, geology, mathematics, music, religion, sociology, and women’s studies. Most of these courses are regular-enrollment sections, but one or two courses each semester are large-enrollment classes.” Yet the program could reach far more undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty with its programs if the recommendations of both the NSSE Report and the Undergraduate Task Force were implemented. Specifically, we recommend that the program be doubled.  Since Franklin College funds WIP, its services are provided to Arts and Sciences faculty; additional funding could permit the program to operate campus-wide.

CURO
UGA's Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO), administered by the Honors Program, coordinates campus research opportunities. The undergraduate research courses and thesis course create an intensive research, reading, and discipline-specific writing capstone for undergraduates. The number of students completing a thesis since 1997, when CURO was established as a grant from the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education, has continued to increase from 19 in 1997 to 104 in 2006. In addition, the annual number of credit hours generated from undergraduate research has steadily increased. In 2006, an analysis of the written requirements of students showed that 70-80 percent of all assignments were written and that 100 percent were communication-intensive if not written. 

In addition to these course assignments, the CURO Symposium requires that students write discipline-specific abstracts for inclusion in the symposium. The number of UGA students who participated was 74 in 2000 and will exceed 200 in 2007. These students must also write and make oral presentations or poster presentations. CURO facilitates a best paper competition which provides a $100 prize from the UGA Alumni Association for best papers in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, as well as best papers with a civic responsibility and an international focus. Papers presented at the annual symposium may be considered for the Journal for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (JURO), which has published undergraduate scholarly and artistic work since 2001 in an annual electronic peer-reviewed journal (www.uga.edu/juro). The Writing Task Force would like to see CURO continue to grow and become a major component of the writing certificate program. 

ePortfolios
Some courses allow students to bring their writing to a final stage, a polished demonstration of writing skill present in a writing portfolio or a capstone experiences essay. Learning and writing are so closely involved in such courses as to become symbiotic: the ultimate product of these symbiotic processes, and possibly even the transparency of the processes themselves, should be archived in a writing portfolio showcasing the student's best work. Electronic portfolios allow students to create writing spaces that are both public (a demonstration of their writing accomplishments) and private (a record of learning). In-house, UGA has developed <emma>, the “electronic markup and management application” that allows students to maintain an ePortfolio, including all their revisions, and that manages access to that portfolio. At UGA, all students in English 1101 and 1102 produce an ePortfolio of writing for final assessment in each of these courses. (Wofford College has recently decided base its “quality enhancement plan” for SACS reaccreditation on an <emma>-based ePortfolio program.) In addition to <emma>, a similar electronic portfolio management system is LiveText, which is used extensively in the College of Education and has the virtue of full compatibility with WebCT.

As students move forward into their majors and towards the capstone course that defines their Writing Certificate experience, students can add to, trim, reflect on, and develop the artifacts in their writing portfolios. These ePortfolios can move with them into the world of work.  More important, perhaps, the ePortfolio can provide an important intellectual bridge between the student’s experience in First-year Composition and in classes across the curriculum and beyond. And even more important, the ePortfolios can provide the opportunity for peer communication and peer review both within and across disciplines, which could be a major rhetorical dynamic of the Writing Certificate. Finally, writing ePortfolios allow for the related operations of revision and reflection, demonstrate rhetorical and disciplinary growth, and at the same time publish the student’s best work.  Here again, the Writing Task Force wants to see such ePortfolios become a major component in the writing certificate program.

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Given these various institutional strengths—strong students, a flexible curriculum, and the various programs around campus—the Task Force thinks that UGA should build on them. To encourage more writing within a discipline, we would encourage every undergraduate major to make a statement about how its students will solidify their communication skills, through courses in the major or through courses taken in other units, such as Academic Enhancement, English, or Speech Communication. We would encourage the administration to fund such efforts: we offer too few seats in such courses now, and staffing problems will continue. Administrative priority should be given to hiring faculty who can help undergraduates with writing and other communication skills. Certainly further support is required for the Writing Centers, as well as more publicity: many faculty do not realize that they can use these services. Academic Enhancement and University Libraries staff are working to modify and condense two existing courses, “Resources for Research” and “Introduction to the Research Paper,” into a one- or two-hour “add-on” courses for upper-level courses, analogous to a lab section. This program deserves full administrative support.

Because ours is a unique situation, and because such an initiative would require substantial funding, UGA needs to apply for a major grant to help us create a writing initiative across campus. It would cover a Writing Certificate program, allow the Writing Centers to hire additional staff and purchase the computing tools they need, fund expansion of an online portfolio system for undergraduates, and train faculty to incorporate writing in their classrooms.