Category Archives: Winter 2018

Winter 2018

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Pre/Views: Counting What Counts

By Vicki Tolar Burton, WIC Director

“Not everything that counts can be counted.” Sociologist William Bruce Cameron’s quotation is one Vicki Tolar Burton uses frequently. In this issue of Teaching with Writing, we present some WIC-related numbers that, in fact, do count. Read more…

 

Microbiology Writing Guide’s Greatest Hits

By Ruth Sylvester, WIC Intern

We were surprised when Google Analytics on the WIC website revealed that an astonishing 53% of all traffic to our website is directed to the Microbiology Writing Guide. It gets hits that far exceed the number of Microbiology students at OSU! Ruth is on a mission to find out more. Read more…

 

WIC by the Numbers

By Mohana Das, WIC GTA

What is the optimum number of students in a WIC course that requires students to write at least 5000 words and instructors to offer copious feedback on drafts? With greater access to technology, modes of delivery of instruction are becoming more diverse. How many WIC courses are making the leap from traditional lectures to online classrooms? Mohana walks you through data on class sizes in WIC classes and modes of delivery in WIC courses by colleges. Read more… 

WIC Spring Lunch Series 2018

By WIC Team

We are happy to announce our Spring Lunch Series schedule for 2018. This year’s topics range from ethics to data analytics to a teaching showcase. We look forward to the stimulating conversations that will occur. All lunches will be held on Fridays in Milam 215 from 12 to 1 pm. As always, delicious American Dream pizza and beverages will be provided. Read more.

Nominate Your Best Student Writer for the WIC Culture of Writing Award in Your Discipline

By WIC Team 

As spring term arrives, please remember to nominate outstanding undergraduate writers for WIC Culture of Writing Awards. Recognizing exceptional student writing communicates to our students and the university that good writing matters in every discipline. To nominate outstanding undergraduate writers, interested units (schools, departments) seek nominations from the faculty and select the best paper from the major. Read more.

One-Day Conference: Open Resources for Writing-Intensive Courses

Announcement

Join Open Oregon Educational Resources, in partnership with Open Oregon State, on April 23 in Corvallis for a statewide, discipline-specific conversation about open composition resources. OSU faculty and graduate students who teach writing-intensive courses are invited. Read more. 

OOER Presents One-Day Conference

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OOER Presents One-Day Conference on Open Resources for Writing-Intensive Courses

Register for a one-day statewide conference and join a discipline-specific conversation about open composition resources. Faculty and graduate students who teach writing-intensive courses at Oregon’s 2-year, 4-year, public, and private institutions are invited. We will focus on open resources as a means to more equitable and inclusive instruction.

Please note that this event is not sponsored by the OSU WIC program. We were asked by the statewide Open Resources group to publicize it in our newsletter.

Open Resources for Writing-Intensive Courses Conference

April 23, 2018, 8:00 am – 4:00 pm
Oregon State University, Horizon Room, Memorial Union
2501 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97331

Nominate Your Best Student Writer for the WIC Culture of Writing Award in Your Discipline

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As spring term arrives, please remember to nominate outstanding undergraduate writers for WIC Culture of Writing Awards. Recognizing exceptional student writing communicates to our students and the university that good writing matters in every discipline. To nominate outstanding undergraduate writers, interested units (schools, departments) seek nominations from the faculty and select the best paper from the major. For each writing prize winner, WIC awards $50, matched by $50 from the unit, for a total of $100. What an excellent way to acknowledge the hard work and talent of our undergraduate writers! If a unit nominates a student, that student receives an award. There is no competition between units.

Once your department or unit has chosen a paper to nominate, fill out the nomination formand submit it via email to Mohana Das by 5:00 p.m. PST, June 1, 2018. The complete policy and submission instructions are on the WIC website. Here are a few tips and models for the award nomination process:

  • Model 1: the academic unit might use the department or school awards committee, who asks faculty to nominate and submit their best undergraduate paper for the year. The committee chooses the awardee.
  • Model 2: the academic unit wants the awardee to be from a WIC course, so one or more WIC instructors select the best paper.
  • Model 3: the top academic writing occurs in a capstone course with a team project. The unit selects the team with the best-written capstone project for the award. When the award goes to a team of four, some units divide the $100 award 4 ways, while other units contribute more than $50 so that individuals will receive a more substantial award.

Because the only way a student at OSU can receive a monetary award is through a deposit in the student’s account, the award is typically given to a student who is currently enrolled. If a student winner has graduated prior to June 2018, additional paperwork and processing time will be required. If possible, submit those nominations as early as possible. In addition, if units would like to receive the award certificate in time for an awards event, include that information and the date of the event with the nomination form. Units with special considerations regarding the due date should contact Vicki Tolar Burton, copying Mohana Das (dasmo@oregonstate.edu).

Student awardees are invited to submit their winning paper to the WIC section of the ScholarsArchive@OSU.

WIC Spring Lunch Series 2018

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By WIC Team

We are happy to announce our Spring Lunch Series schedule for 2018. This year’s topics range from ethics to data analytics to a teaching showcase. We look forward to the stimulating conversations that will occur. All lunches will be held on Fridays in Milam 215 from 12 to 1 pm. As always, delicious American Dream pizza and beverages will be provided. If you have any questions regarding the lunches, please contact the WIC GTA, Mohana Das, at dasmo@oregonstate.edu. Please register for each lunch you plan to attend by clicking here or the link below.

The topics for this year’s series are:

April 6 – Canvas Hacks and Tools for Responding to Student Writing

John Morris (Business) and Steve Shay (History) share ways they have found to use Canvas tools to improve online feedback to students on their writing.

April 13 – Ethics and Writing in the Disciplines

Vicki Tolar Burton (WIC/SWLF), Giovanna Rosenlicht (Animal Science), and Ted Paterson (Business) discuss ways to consider ethics within a Writing Intensive course.

May 4 – Teaching Showcase! WIC Instructors Share Ideas from their Classrooms

Natchee Barnd (Ethnic Studies), Nate Kirk (Integrative Biology), Deanna Lloyd (Sustainability), and Dana Reason (Music), all recent grads of the WIC Faculty Seminar, share ideas for course design and teaching using WIC pedagogies.

May 18 – Introduction to CORE Data for WIC Instructor

Chrysanthemum Hayes, Communications & Engagement Manager, Institutional Analytics and Reporting, provides an introduction to using CORE and institutional data as they relate to teaching and course improvement. Session will include important information about data security and access as well as a summary of the CORE reports that may be relevant to faculty teaching WIC courses.

To register for one or more of our lunches, please click here.

WIC by the Numbers

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WIC by the Numbers

By Mohana Das, WIC GTA (MFA Creative Writing)

Because every OSU student must take a Writing Intensive course in their major, the WIC program has a large impact on the university curriculum. 2445 students took a WIC Course in 2016-17. With CORE data now easily available, we thought it was time to take a look at WIC by the numbers. We are looking at classes capped at 25, classes in the 26-29 gray area, and classes over 29. These numbers are of interest because it is mandatory that WIC courses have no more than 25 students. This cap is congruent with national standards for class size in writing classes so that students can receive frequent, in-depth feedback on their writing from the instructor. Courses that exceed 29 students risk WIC decertification unless additional personnel are trained and assigned to the section to assist with responding to student writing.

In 2016-17, there were 366 sections of WIC courses taught at Oregon State University. The College of Liberal Arts offered 108 sections, which is 29.5% of the total WIC sections. One hundred of them were capped at less than 26 students. Actual enrollment in only 3 out of 100 sections exceeded 29 students.

College of Sciences had 51 WIC sections in 2016-17. Of 51 sections, 45 had actual enrollments below 25 students and 5 sections over 29.

College of Public Health and Human Sciences had 43 sections with 83.7% of those sections being in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Actual enrollment in 9 sections exceeded the 25-student limit but were limited to less than 29 students.

College of Business offered 33 WIC sections,  and College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences offered 16 WIC sections. Actual enrollment in all sections was below 25 students.

Actual enrollment in all 10 sections of WIC courses in the College of Forestry was less than 26 students but in the College of Education, all 3 sections had more than 29 students.

In 2016-17, College of Engineering offered 58 sections of WIC classes, with 65.5% of the sections capped at over 29 students and actual enrollment exceeding the 29 students maximum limit in 25 sections. In fact, class size in the College of Engineering was typically between 50 and 100. 

The College of Agriculture offered 44 sections of which 36 sections have less than 26 students, 4 sections have between 26 and 29 students, 4 sections have over 29 students.

Overall, most units are doing a good job of keeping WIC class sizes small in order to give students optimum opportunity to improve as writers in their major.

The following chart shows the modes of delivery of WIC classes. Most WIC classes are delivered as lectures or online. In 2016-17 and 2017-18, 219 classes are delivered as lectures and 69 classes are online. Together they comprise over 70% of all WIC classes. The next common mode of delivery is Thesis, followed by Recitation. In 2016-17, we also had 12 WIC classes that were designated as Seminars (66% of which were in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion) and 1 course in Wood Science and Engineering was taught as a Discussion.

Of the 69 online sections, 18 sections (25.4%) are in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion, and 11 sections (15.5%) are in the School of Public Policy.

The following charts show Online WIC Sections by unit. Please note that some units have a mode of delivery known as Streaming Media which means that the course uses video or other streaming media to facilitate the class, and access to broadband Internet is a must to complete course requirements. School of History, Philosophy, and Religion have the greatest number of online sections with 18 sections.

Department No. of Online Sections
Agricultural Education 4
Applied Economics 3
Business Administration 3
Environmental Sciences 3
Fisheries & Wildlife 5
Geosciences 2
Horticulture 2
Integrative Biology 1
Microbiology 1
School Social & Behavioral Sciences (SSBS) 6
School of Electrical & Computer Science (SECS) 3
School of History, Philosophy, and Religion (SHPR) 18
School of Language, Culture and Society (SLCS) 5
School of Psychological Sciences (SPS) 4
School of Public Policy (SPP) 11

 

Microbiology Writing Guide’s Greatest Hits

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Microbiology Writing Guide’s Greatest Hits

By Ruth Sylvester, WIC Intern (MA Rhetoric, Writing, and Cultures)
Among the countable aspects of the WIC program are hits on pages of the WIC website. We were delighted to learn that pages from various departmental writing guides are among out most viewed pages. Currently, the WIC Survival Guide provides students with access to departmental writing guides from 10 disciplines: Anthropology; Chemistry; Difference, Power, and Discrimination; Human Development and Family Sciences; Mathematics; Microbiology; Music; Philosophy; Political Science; and Sociology.

 

Google Analytics, looking at a period of about 18 months, reports notably high viewer engagement with individually accessible pages for the writing guides in Microbiology, Chemistry, and Music. We learned that writing guides with individually searchable pages are accessed much more often that guides that exist only as a PDF. Within the Microbiology Writing Guide, the most popular pages are “Presenting Data” (25,757 hits) “Lab Report Format” (16,652), “Scientific Style” (6,224), “Citing Sources” (2,508), “Understanding Journal Articles” (525), and “Ethics” (230). We plan to use this information to rename/reformat other writing guides to improve student access. We asked Microbiology Writing Guide co-author Linda Bruslind, who teaches WIC courses in that discipline, if she knew what might account for the dazzling popularity of the MB Writing Guide. She said she links to it on her syllabus, but she is not sure other OSU MB teachers are aware of the guide. The hits to the MB guide come from all over the world. If any readers can help us unpack this mystery, please let us know.

 

Other frequently accessed pages on the WIC website are “Find WIC Courses” (636), “Making Peer Review Work” (576), “The WIC Culture of Writing Awards” (535) and “Grammar Errors and Solutions” (506). But they can’t compete with the Microbiology  Writing Guide’s greatest hits.

Counting What Counts

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Counting What Counts

By Vicki Tolar Burton

Not everything that counts can be counted.
Not everything that can be counted counts.
-William Bruce Cameron

Higher education is in love with numbers, with data, with analytics. The prevailing view seems to be that
if we just look at the right numbers, view them as levers of a sort, we can improve the numbers that
“really count”: first year retention and six-year graduation rates. WIC’s relation to graduation rate: 100%
of OSU graduates complete a Writing Intensive Course in their major. Any numbers that interfere, like
too few seats in WIC courses, or too many students for robust writing feedback, need consideration.

Though WIC is a program about words and writing, there are certain numbers that count, and they have become more accessible with the advent of CORE, Google Analytics, and some other tools. Numbers matter in the essential WIC course requirements:

  • Class size: Originally limited to 20 (c. 1993), now limited to 25. Rationale: Limiting class size enables instructors to give copious, meaningful feedback on student writing before students revise and polish. Twenty-five students per section aligns with national standards for Writing Intensive classes. During Fall term 2017, 2445 students in Writing Intensive courses wrote approximately 12,225,000 words!
  • Word count: WIC courses require students to write at least one paper of 2000 words, which is revised after feedback. Rationale: Many OSU students are rarely asked to write a paper longer than three pages (NSSE 2010). Every college graduate should demonstrate the ability to compose and sustain an argument in their major in an 8 to 10 page paper, writing using the conventions of the field. Students also write 1000 words of informal, minimally-graded writing
    to learn content and critical thinking.

In this issue of Teaching with Writing, we look at numbers that help us understand and improve the WIC program. We see numbers of online WIC courses rising, for example. In “WIC by the Numbers” Mohana Das looks at class size and modes of delivery across colleges.

Using Google Analytics on the WIC website revealed some surprising numbers: The WIC website pages with the most hits are within the Microbiology Writing Guide! That guide gets hits that far exceed the number of Microbiology students at OSU. In “Microbiology Writing Guide’s Greatest Hits” Ruth Sylvester investigates this phenomenon. What can we learn from the MB guide to improve our other writing guides?

And don’t forget the WIC Culture of Writing Awards, with nominations opening at the start of spring term. See the article in this issue for details. In 2017, 22 units honored their top writer or capstone team of writers with a WIC award. Please consider recognizing a student writer in your major this spring! Information on the process is in this issue.

Even with interesting numbers to play with, we know that much of the benefit of the WIC program for students happens in classrooms, in collaboration, and in solitary writing—all things that resist simple counting. As sociologist William Bruce Cameron (and, later, songwriter Billy Bragg) said, “Not everything that counts can be counted.” Happy end of winter term! I think I can see spring is just over the horizon.

Now that counts.