063A WRITING TO LEARN IN THE PLANT SCIENCES

Abstract

Writing is a powerful tool for thinking and for clarifying complex subjects. It's a much more physical activity than reading. It compels students to organize their thoughts and present them clearly and logically. They must continually reassess whether what they've written is really what they want to say. The focus of this presentation is on the impediments to implementing this approach in our teaching. Our objective is to seek methods for reducing the work load of instructors while maintaining the quality of learning that can occur in a writing-intensive course. Results of workshops conducted during the 1993 North Central Regional Teaching Symposium entitled “Writing to Learn in Science” will be discussed. The workshops were active, participatory sessions designed to elicit as many responses as possible to the question “How can we utilize writing, intensively, in our courses?” Five obstacles or barriers to implementation of writing were identified. These include (1) instructor anxiety, (2) students requiring individualized instruction, (3) time-consuming evaluation of student writing, (4) in-class time needed for writing instruction, and (5) lack of student motivation. A focused-discussion format was utilized in these sessions, and groups of participants were given responsibility to devise creative actions or strategies that could be utilized to meet the challenges noted above. More than forty “actions” were identified which could help to make this approach feasible in both graduate and undergraduate. courses. These are summarized within five broad strategic approaches.