In response to faculty concerns about student writing, a push-in writing support model was piloted in a bioethics class for two semesters (one face-to-face and one fully online). Faculty received instructional design support and students received feedback on assignment drafts, as one part of a writing-across-the-curriculum initiative.
Supporting the Fragile Writer: Push-In Support in a Graduate Level Bioethics Course
Across multiple programs, nursing faculty at the University of Rochester have voiced concerns about student writing. Common issues include problems with writing clarity, coherence, and synthesis of ideas as well as recurring issues with paragraph organization, sentence mechanics, and correct use of APA style.
Consistent with the School of Nursing mission and vision, the goal of our writing task force was to empower our students to become agents of change as nursing leaders, educators, researchers, and practitioners. This focus aligns well with the Writing Across the Curriculum approach, which emphasizes the ability of good writing instruction to promote critical thinking, teach effective communication, and support deep learning of complex concepts. This approach required writing to be embedded within a curriculum with planned assessment, consistent design of assignments, opportunities for revision, formative feedback, and integrated writing supports.
The task force recommended the school-wide adoption of the following goals for teaching and supporting writing development. However, adoption needed to be tailored to each program. Each program needed to:
1. Develop an explicit program learning outcome (PLO) for written communication.
2. Create a comprehensive plan for assessing achievement of this PLO for written communication with standardized rubrics and opportunities for meaningful feedback.
3. Design meaningful assignments to progressively build writing skills over time, with multiple opportunities to use the writing process, and revise their work based on formative feedback.
4. Develop a plan to provide integrated writing supports to help all students master expected writing and thinking skills within the discipline.
5. Implement a faculty development program that provides faculty with the training and support needed to design effective writing assignments, provide feedback using evidence-based practices, and evaluate student progress over time.
The task force recommended the school-wide adoption of the Writing Integration Plan (WIP) using the following strategies for teaching and supporting student mastery of program-specific writing and thinking skills. Writing across the curriculum requires an integrated approach to teaching writing and critical thinking with multiple elements coordinated and aligned. These elements include curriculum design, course design, assessment planning (portfolios, rubrics), faculty development, and student support.
1. Writing Assessment: Develop an assessment program to align writing milestones with course and program outcomes to support the development of requisite knowledge, skills, and scholarly engagement through increasingly complex writing tasks, using the formal writing rubric and a portfolio assessment system to track mastery over time.
2. Writing Resource Bundle: Institute the standard use of assignment guidance sheets, the formal writing rubric, the hierarchy of writing concerns (see addendum below) to provide formative feedback, and multiple opportunities for revision.
3. Writing Integration Team (WIT):
a. An instructional designer to guide nursing faculty with curriculum, course, and assignment design; coordinate the writing coach program; and maintain an online writing lab.
b. Writing specialists to collaborate with faculty in writing-intensive courses, providing formative feedback for major writing assignments.
c. Writing specialists to provide academic support for student self-referrals, faculty referrals, and communicating student progress with faculty.
d. Online writing lab with resources and a portal for writing coach referrals.
School-Level Implementation
Each program will create a sub-committee to organize the details of implementation specific to the needs of their program, faculty, and students. This plan will include a list of prioritized goals and strategies with a timeline for instituting these changes and a method of evaluation. The director of the Writing Integration Team will work with program directors and these sub-committees to implement the strategic plan for writing.
Course Implementation Plan: Bioethics Course Pilot
Preparation for the course: the subject matter expert, instructional designer and learning met to:
1. Review course objectives and determine how the assignment, learning activities, and rubric aligned to help students successfully meet expectations.
2. Revised writing assignments to create Assignment Guidance Sheets according to best-practice.
3. Customized formal writing rubric to integrate evaluation of writing skills with course-specific student learning outcomes.
4. Selected students who would receive an invitation to work with writing specialist based on performance in prior writing intensive courses (e.g., The Writing Workshop).
5. Decided that these students would be asked to submit a rough draft to writing specialist two weeks before assignment due date to receive feedback for revision.
6. Updated everything in Blackboard (prep work took 8-10 hours in total)
Preparation for the grading process:
1. Faculty read through all 49 papers, took the most challenging ones, and gave the rest to two teaching assistants to grade.
2. We evaluated interrater reliability for each dimension of the adapted rubric. All graders were within a point or two of each other (2 hours).
Debrief on grading process:
1. Graders thought the nongraded critical thinking dimension was helpful in describing students’ approach to making an ethical decision.
2. Faculty felt that the rubric made it clearer where students were struggling and it differentiated content knowledge from writing style or issues with APA.
3. Despite the IRR session, there was variability on how actual items were scored. This brings to light the importance of having a deep understanding of Hierarchy of Writing Concerns and the difference between using the rubric as a summative evaluation versus a tool to enhance teacher instruction and student growth.
4. Might need to provide more mentorship of TAs, do more co-grading and diagnosis of drafts together.
This process was repeated for the next two assignments. This pilot is being repeated with an online version of the course this semester.
Results from Bioethics Course Pilot
This process was piloted in two course sections of a graduate level bioethics course, using a team-teaching approach with the subject matter expert, instructional designer, and writing specialists. Faculty worked with an instructional designer to refine course objectives, write assignment guidance sheets, and create rubrics for writing assignments. The writing specialist developed and implemented a system to identify students who required additional writing support based on performance in a writing course. For these students, the writing specialist interacted with students via video conference to provide feedback on student drafts. Of 49 students, ten were identified as needing additional support. Six students accepted the option of receiving feedback from the writing specialist on the first assignment. These students scored between 87 and 93 on their final drafts. The four students who did not turn in a draft for feedback scored between 70 and 94 on their final drafts. Four more students were added to the writing specialist group and one was taken out after the faculty assessed the first paper. Six students out of the thirteen submitted a draft for the second paper, scoring 83.5 to 95 on their final drafts. The students who did not submit a draft scored between 70 - 90. Three students out of the thirteen submitted a draft for the third paper (a continuation of the second paper), scoring 95.5 – 100 on their final drafts. The students who did not submit a draft for the third paper scored between 82 – 98 on their final drafts.
The course instructor noticed significant improvement in student writing and critical thinking after receiving writing specialist support. The students expressed appreciation for the opportunity to submit drafts for feedback. The instructor also noted that the entire class benefited from the use of the revised assignment guidance sheets and rubrics that revised with the writing specialist at the beginning of the course. Student satisfaction data reveal that all students were very satisfied with online writing support using this model. The only negative comment related to some conflicting feedback between the writing specialist and course instructor. Students specifically noted that the push-in writing support improved their writing, including how to be more precise in writing and how to organize their thinking.
Addendum: THE HIERARCHY OF WRITING CONCERNS
1) Thesis/Focus: the topic is narrow enough for the constraints of the assignment; a thesis statement presents the author’s position including what s/he would like to persuade the audience to think, feel, or do after reading the paper; the urgent problem, context, and background is thoroughly presented by building upon existing scholarly conversation; and, the target audience is identified or easily inferred.
2) Development of Ideas: the main ideas of the paper are clearly stated, the author provides sufficient support for the thesis using a chain of logical reasoning, statistics, a summary of relevant research, examples, definitions, details, analysis, sufficient explanation of the evidence provided, and how it connects to and supports the author’s position.
3) Organization or Rhetorical Format: the paper is organized using a specific rhetorical format (problem/solution, cause/effect, classical argument, compare/contrast, narrative, etc.), the main ideas are presented in a way that logically flows (least to most important, chronological, general to specific, use of logical syllogisms, etc.), attending to the format preferred by the profession (APA style, literature review, policy paper, ethical decision making, SOAP note, etc.).
4) Internal Paragraph Organization and Transitions: Each paragraph contains only one idea, generally stated in the topic sentence, the main idea is supported with evidence and reasoning, the sentences are organized in service of the topic sentence, and transitions between paragraphs are used to move the argument forward.
5) Sentence Mechanics and Style: the writing is free of grammatical and spelling errors, the writing uses the appropriate citation style (APA, etc.), line editing has been used to improve clarity, concision, active voice, and style.
Teaching with the Hierarchy of Concerns
Hierarchy refers to the chronological order in which each of these elements should be addressed when helping writers revise, not the weight or degree of importance of each element.
To respond to the author, select one or two of these concerns, and respond to them in the order in which they are presented here as the essay requires. For example, if the essay presents 1) a solid thesis or focus, then respond to 2) development and 3) organization; however, if the essay does not present 1) a solid thesis or focus, then respond to 1) thesis or focus first.
This approach keeps your feedback focused without overwhelming the author. It helps the author understand where s/he is in the writing process and how much revision work remains ahead. It is efficient for the reader and the author because neither is spending time on lower level concerns like line editing before the main ideas are fully developed, organized, and revised.