Teaching Writing in College

In this second of two episodes about artificial intelligence and teaching writing, I continue exploring an important concept in cognitive psychology about learning--that the mind must focus on what we want it to learn. The same is true of teaching--if we want students to learn something, we have to decide what we want the focus of our teaching to be. This episode provides a discussion of choices a...

In this first of two episodes about artificial intelligence and teaching writing, I explore an important concept in cognitive psychology about learning. This episode provides some brief  implications that could manifest as we consider encouraging students to use AI as a tool for learning or studying. The Teaching Writing in College podcast is available on Google or Apple Podcasts:Apple P...

In this episode, I share a lesson plan that helps students to use all three "dimensions" I see in the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer: Conceptual knowledge, practice, and metacognitive reflection. The lesson plan is about using PARC--proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast from The Non-designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. PARC is a very useful tool for helping learners with visual d...

In this episode, I review "Enabling Practice #1" in the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer. Enabling Practice 1 emphasizes conceptual knowledge about writing, as well as practice with that conceptual knowledge. This episode covers conceptual knowledge and how it can help learners gain expertise in writing. Enabling Practice #1 from the Elon Statement reads: "Constructing writing curricula and clas...

This episode covers one of the field's most important guiding documents: the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer. Tom provides a brief overview, along with brief thoughts about the Statement's main points. Additional episodes will break down parts of the Elon Statement, and Tom will likely refer to it often when sharing lesson plans in future episodes. The Elon Statement on Writing Transfer has bee...

In this episode on praxis, Tom shares a classroom activity that he calls a "Transfer Inventory": Students rehearse what they have learned in a writing course and then where they might apply it in their other classes. Watch Teaching Writing in College on YouTube: https://youtu.be/C8erj-r8BTk

Tom discusses "desirable difficulties," their benefits for students, and how ChatGPT responded to an assignment with desirable difficulties factored in. Desirable difficulties, as scholar Robert Bjork calls them, are forms of interference that teachers build into their teaching as a way to enhance student performance. They can be as simple as scrambling an outline or withholding feedback to allow...

Tom offers one path forward in the face of new developments in artificial intelligence: they can prompt us to hone our teaching practices, which could benefit all our students.

In this episode, Tom introduces himself, the podcast, and the direction he hopes it will take over time.