What defines high quality undergraduate research mentoring? We asked participants in the Center’s research seminar on Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research and other scholars focused on undergraduate research to share key characteristics of high quality mentoring. httpvh://youtu.be/u8c4wMdRc08 As their responses highlight, high…

by Jessie L. Moore Writing-Intensive Courses – one of the high-impact practices identified by George Kuh (2008; see also AAC&U’s High-Impact Educational Practices) – can and should be attentive to the evolving nature of writing. Writing in the 21st Century…

How do international teacher-scholars define undergraduate research and inquiry? We asked participants in the Center’s research seminar on Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research to share their definitions: httpvh://youtu.be/XTx6G_M-z5k Many of our seminar scholars begin with the Council on Undergraduate Research…

In Writing in the 21st Century, Kathleen Blake Yancey writes: “Today, in the 21st century, people write as never before – in print and online. We thus face three challenges that are also opportunities: developing new models of writing; designing…

According to the most recent statistics, nearly 300,000 U. S. students now study abroad, while close to one million students from other nations are studying abroad in the U. S. In an upcoming Center for Engaged Learning (CEL) seminar on…

This post is adapted from chapter 5 of A. Cook-Sather, C. Bovill, and P. Felten, Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2014). Decades of research indicates that close interaction between faculty and students is one of the…

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education includes Dan Berrett’s story, “Students Can Transfer Knowledge if Taught How” (subscription required), which features research from participants in the Center’s 2011-2013 Elon Research Seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer. To learn…

As described in last week’s post, the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer highlights teaching practices that promote writing transfer. These include: Constructing writing curricula and classes that focus on the study of and practice with concepts that enable students to analyze expectations…

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.

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 the past forty…