Writing Across the Curriculum

New testing rationale -- in line with QEP.

You need a plan. Just because you build doesn't mean in online communities they will come. Rather you need to understand who your audience is and why you are together. You also need to have a common language about what a community is and what it isn't.

At one level we all know what "critical thinking" means - it means good thinking, almost the opposite of illogical, irrational, thinking. But when we test our understanding further, we run into questions. For example, is critical thinking the same as creative thinking, are they different, or is one part of the other? How do critical thinking and native intelligence or scholastic aptitude relate? Does critical thinking focus on the subject matter or content that you know or on the process you use when you reason about that content?

Critical thinking can occur whenever one judges, decides, or solves a problem; in general, whenever one must figure out what to believe or what to do, and do so in a reasonable and reflective way. Reading, writing, speaking, and listening can all be done critically or uncritically. Critical thinking is crucial to becoming a close reader and a substantive writer. Expressed most generally, critical thinking is "a way of taking up the problems of life."

This study found that problem-based learning was significantly better than lecture at enhancing students' critical thinking.

Tips for assessing critical thinking.

An examination of college students' dispositions toward critical thinking.

concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism. Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students - who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking - understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

Successful online community building is connecting a group of people online and making them feel a part of something special. This 'something special' element is the overlooked bit.

New students… bring with them literacy experiences from other classrooms, from their homes, and from their communities. The challenge is to figure out what they know and connect to that prior knowledge and experience as soon as possible. … Here are five strategies:

Laurie Halse Anderson… invites readers to spend 15 minutes writing every day during the month. She provides writing prompts, advice, and encouragement. All readers have to do is set aside 15 uninterrupted minutes and write.

How do you take a group of individual, unrelated people and connect them in a supportive community quickly? … Here are some answers.

Online or off, getting students to talk to each other is a tricky task. … The FeverBee Primer About Successful Online Communities can help. While meant more for corporate and public community building, the lessons apply to the classroom just as well.

Students are all too often on a quest for the Correct Answers, which has little to do with critical-thinking development. Our schools are about competition, merits, awards, and how to earn the Golden Ticket -- giving the right answers. And this focus often starts as early as kindergarten.  … Studies show that getting answers wrong actually helps students learn.

I recently put together a workshop on using visual thinking techniques in the classroom for a group of graduate students at my teaching center.

students are apt to just click that top link when searching for information online, with minimal assessment of the quality of information they're going to find there.

In that spirit of collaboration, the Teaching Carnival is back. … Each month, a new writer will collect and sort teaching-related links and will post them here. (If you are interested in writing one of these posts or contributing links to the roundup, see the info at the bottom of this page.) This is a great source for connecting to college profs who are writing about teaching in college.

Recent studies show that literacy practices "are changing so rapidly that educators, students, and parents are unsure about how school literacy learning experiences and out-of-school literacy practices connect." However, "a majority of more than 900 educator-respondents to the NCTE poll indicate that … out-of-school literacy practices are as critical to students' development as what occurs in the classroom."

Each CramCast is a three- to four-minute overview of a classic work of literature and gives you background on the author, a brief summary of the book or play, and ends with the top three things you should know about the work.