Elon University is pleased to announce the 2011-2013 Elon University Research Seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer, a two-year research seminar that will facilitate multi-institutional research. 40 participants will collaborate on the study of writing transfer at critical transitions. 

From first-year composition through advanced professional and technical communication, writing curricula are constructed under a foundational premise that writing can be taught – and that writing knowledge can be “transferred” across critical transitions. First-year composition is often a required course for all students with the assumption that what is learned there will transfer to other coursework and throughout students’ educational careers. Senior capstone courses often integrate writing instruction that is intended to transfer to post-graduation writing in new workplaces or graduate or professional programs. Arguably, all of modern education is based on the broader assumption that what one learns here can transfer over there – across critical transitions. But what do we really know about transfer, in general, and writing transfer, in particular? Is “transfer,” and all of the assumptions that tag along with it, the best term to use to understand, enhance, and found writing education?

Program Overview
The Elon Research Seminar will support multi-institutional research addressing and surrounding this theme over a two year period, with two one-week summer meetings on the Elon University campus, as well as a third culminating meeting of a yet determined form.

  • June 12-17, 2011: Working with multi-institutional teams formed by ERS and focused on the same critical transition, participants will meet on Elon’s campus to develop and plan research projects to be conducted throughout the following year at the participants’ own institutions.
  • June 17-22, 2012: Participants will meet to share their initial results, and to plan a more sharply focused research agenda for the research cohort for year two. These research cohorts will afford inter-institutional collaborations that enable larger scale studies and explorations of the impact of different institutional contexts.
  • June 23-28, 2013: Participants will reconvene to share their year two results, to plan continuations of their work, and to host a conference on writing transfer (June 25-26, 2013).

Use the navigation options to the left to learn more about the Elon Research Seminar.

Email questions to Dr. Jessie L. Moore at centerforengagedlearning@elon.edu