Two books by Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer participants recently earned recognition at the 2016 conference of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing, written by Kathleen Blake Yancey, Liane Robertson,…

This month we’re taking a look back at some of the Center for Engaged Learning’s most watched videos in 2014 and pairing them with some you might have missed. Created for ISSOTL Online 2013 for the Studying and Designing for…

The 2011-2013 Elon University Research Seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer supported multi-institutional research by 45 scholars and resulted in an impressive (and still growing) list of conference presentations and publications. Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and…

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 happens everywhere – offline…

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…

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.

What happens when you ask three scholars to explore learning spaces from their unique individual and institutional perspectives? Audience members are challenged to reconsider their understandings of physical, program-level, and online learning spaces, along with their expectations for conference plenaries. The Friday, October 4, 2013, Plenary at ISSOTL 2013 featured TED-style talks by Thomas Horejes (Gallaudet University), anthony lising antonio (Stanford University), and Siân Bayne (University of Edinburgh). More information about the speakers and their talks is provided below the video.

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.