Educators have long appreciated the power of writing to enhance learning. In the United States and Canada, this knowledge has underwritten the forty-year growth of writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) and writing-in-the-discipline (WID) programs. More recently, it has supported the expansion of writing-for-academic-purposes programs in Europe and elsewhere.

Results of a new study will reorient the focus of these programs and inspire new ways of using writing to advance the goals of higher education.

A lot has been written lately about the state of legal education, from applications to jobs and to what lies in between. By “between,” I mean the meaty center of the sandwich, the nature of the education itself. This post comments on that sandwich stuffing. In particular, what would happen if the proposed American Bar Association (ABA) Standard 302, Learning Outcomes, is adopted?
The current Standard is titled, “Curriculum,” and focuses on curricular content. The proposed standard provides a philosophical shift to revolve around learning outcomes. The new standard has the potential to be transformational.

Last month, we featured a few highlights from the Center for Engaged Learning’s research seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer. Multi-institutional research by seminar participants suggests that:

• In first-year writing courses, content matters;
• Students need reiterative opportunities for reflection throughout their education;
• When considering students’ ability to transfer or adapt writing strategies, personal identities matter; and
• Across the university, expectations for student writing often are misaligned.

The first three findings offer hope that it is possible to teach in support of transfer, reaffirming an underlying assumption in university curricula that students can transfer what they learn in one course to future university, workplace, and community contexts. The fourth finding reminds faculty and administrators not to take that underlying assumption for granted; as last month’s preview hinted, writing transfer is not guaranteed for every student at every critical transition point.

by Tim Peeples

Finding time, space, and resources to conduct and manage one’s own research, honing effective research questions and methodologies, and reporting results are all difficult enough. Why complicate this intellectual work by pursuing multi-institutional collaborations? And if one chooses to pursue such collaborations, how can they be best organized, managed, and resourced to succeed?

Multi-institutional research is not at all new. The numbers engaged in this kind of research grew after World War II, with the rise of “big science” and the support of national and international agencies and institutes, primarily in the sciences. The numbers have grown even more, increasingly crossing educational and cooperate lines, supported by enhanced computational and communications technologies.

Still, much remains to be learned about the benefits, costs, and best practices of multi-institutional research. And even today, very few are engaged in multi-institutional research outside of the sciences. What do we know, what do we need to know, how can we enhance this work, and is it worth pursuing, specifically in fields outside the sciences and around questions of engaged learning, broadly writ?