Writing Across the Curriculum

The greatest technology growth of 2010 came with mobile devices, and thus, one of the biggest changes in workplace learning came via smartphones. Mobile phones have become an extension of the workplace and have made the world of work a 24/7 reality, but how have they changed learning?  

An IBM study, published in the January 2010 issue of T+D, highlighted two main purposes for mobile phone use: in-field performance support and access to current, just-in-time information that is relevant to a specific project or task. But an even more important reason to venture into the world of mobile learning is that newer workers in the workforce, the Millennials, are demanding it.  

The need to make social media and mobile learning a part of the workplace to attract, engage, and retain the younger generations is forcing learning professionals to explore new and innovative ways to deliver learning on these inexpensive devices, anytime and anywhere.  

Morgan Stanley estimates that by 2015, more users will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than by desktop PC. “Our world,” Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd wrote in a July T+D article, “will turn into three-minute learning vignettes.” GPS sensitivity, according to Meister and Willyerd, will help new hires find checkpoints so they can learn the company and its history, and could alert us when we are near an expert in a topic of our choice. “Perhaps the future role of learning is to find, organize, and enable the experts,” Meister and Willyerd wrote.   Learning is trending toward the user and the moment of need. Workplace learning and performance professionals need to redefine the role that mobile learning will play in their learning initiatives because if they don’t, they risk being left behind in this new workplace paradigm.  

Giving an unannounced writing assignment can work to salvage a class where discussion has sputtered and everyone is looking down at the table.

When students are given informal writing assignments with a very short deadline, they are forced to produce rough drafts.

About think-pieces:

Students understand and retain course material much better when they write copiously about it. We tend to think of learning as input and writing as output, but it also works the other way around. Learning is increased by "putting out"; writing causes input. Students won't take writing seriously till all faculty demand it. Writing needn't take any time away from course material. We can demand good writing without teaching it. The demand itself teaches much. Students won't write enough unless we assign more writing than we can comment on--or even read. There is no law against not reading what we make them write. Writing can have a powerful communal or social dimension; it doesn't have to feel solitary.

8 minutes of writing at the start of class to help students bring to mind their homework reading or lab work or previous lectures. 8minutes in mid class when things go dead--or to get students to think about an important question that has come up. 8 minutes at the end of class or lecture to get them to think about what's been discussed. 5 minutes at the end of class to write to us about what they learned that day: what was the main idea for them, what was going on for them during that class. Not only will this help them integrate and internalize the course material; it helps our teaching by showing us what's getting through and what isn't.

This is the name I give to writing that is a bit more thought out and worked over--but not yet an essay:

Think pieces are a productive and nonpunitive way to make students do the reading on time and come to class.

When students understand that they are being asked for two very different kinds of writing in the course, their essays get better because of their extensive practice with low stakes think pieces, and their low stakes writing gets more thoughtful when they experience it as practice for the high stakes essays (and relief from them too)

I find term papers involve maximum work and minimum learning.

Peer feedback or student response groups.

Help students focus on the core element that distinguishes a group from a team: The commitment to each other’s success.