University Seminars pick up where First Seminars leave off: your students should have a background in general academic argumentation, but they may be less familiar with academic research skills, and many will continue to need support refining and developing their primary claims. For your most advanced writers, critical reflection and argumentative sophistication may be skills that, even though strong, deserve further attention. We appreciate your efforts on behalf of CWRU student writers, and we offer these suggestions and resources to support your work.
Suggestions for Fostering a Productive Academic Writing Environment:
- Identify students’ writing strengths and weaknesses: Plan an assessment in the first week of the semester (e.g., an in-class prompt related to your course theme, a homework reflection, or student’s prior essays).
- Adjust your course activities and assignments based on your assessment of your students’ writing. (See also: Working with Multilingual Writers and Working with Novice Writers)
- Consider using a writing rubric to focus on key writing skills. More Information.
- Highlight your students’ writing and give them a chance to present it to the community at the Celebration of Student Writing & Research.