Writing-Intensive Courses and Insights from Writing Transfer Research

George Kuh (2008) identifies Writing-Intensive Courses as a high-impact educational practice – a practice that facilitates both student retention and engagement. The Association of American Colleges and Universities describes Writing-Intensive Courses as “emphasiz[ing] writing at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum, including final-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different disciplines.”
Yet what do higher education stakeholders know about supporting student writing across the curriculum? How can universities best prepare students to write “for different audiences in different disciplines”? How can general education courses equip students with knowledge and strategies for writing in their majors and beyond? Writing transfer research tackles these questions.

Understanding how students change in higher education

by Peter Felten This post is adapted from C. Johansson and P. Felten, Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), pages 5 and 13-15. Transformative learning has been the subject of considerable scholarship over…