Research Guides: Faculty Resources: Teaching Topics

What's Here?

A variety of instructional resources are available to faculty from all disciplines. These resources include: activities, videos, handouts, slideshow presentations, and other multimedia resources.

Peer Review

Docs
Videos/Slides

Using Thinking Maps (Gallagher)
Margie Lee Gallagher briefly summarizes thinking maps, and explains their usefulness in impacting undergraduate writing. With a visual aid for students to look at while writing, their writing can become more concise and have better fluency.
Introducing Students to Peer Review
Richard M. Chisholm describes the way he introduces peer review to his students across a variety of subjects. By having students critique his own work, he is opening them up to the idea of peer review as a whole.
Improving Student Peer Feedback
Linda Nilson offers criticism on standard peer review, and how it can be a detriment on student writing. She offers slight modifications that can mean a world of difference for student's writing post peer review.

Guidelines for Peer Review
Bless, Address, Or Press: Responding to Writing
This handout can help address ways in which an instructor might address a student's writing when they have specific concerns.

Dr. Debra Anderson discusses her successes, areas of improvement, and approaches regarding peer review with foreign language students.

Writing As a Process

Coding & Analyzing Information (Prezi)

This presentation can show students the strategies for analyzing and interpreting the data they collect from their various research topics.

Literature Review & Synthesis (Prezi)

This presentation can breakdown how students can appraise a literature review and how they can apply this into an academic synthesis.

Literature Review: Making Academic Synthesis Happen
This presentation walks you through the process of academic synthesis.

Cognitive Coaching
Based on Metacognition - coaching models self-appraisal and self-management of cognition.

Debriefing the Thinking Process
Mapping an Essay
Tips on how to create a map to organize an essay.
Metacognitive Strategies
This link provides instructors with different metacognitive strategies, and how an instructor can use them in a classroom setting.
Plan of Action
How to create a plan of action for your writing.

Guide to Reflection
This handout provides eight helpful tips for writing to reflect that can help outline strong elements of a personal reflection.

Memo - Cover Memo
Cover memo activity.
Memo - Writer's Memo/Reflection

Help for reading, understanding conventions, and tools for productive research and research writing.

4 Strategies for Conventions
This handout offers multiple strategies for understanding conventions through an in-class exercise.
7 Steps for Conducting Research
This handout details the seven basic steps for researching and outlines the best methods for conducting each step.
Active Reading
Tips for active reading.
The Annotated Bibliography - The Breakdown
This handout is a quick guide to making an annotated bibliography.

Coding & Analyzing Information (Prezi)

Coding can help students better analyze and group data from a text into a form they may easier understand. This Prezi outlines the best methods and practices for coding.

On Text Complexity
An important aspect of being able to read complex text is to have effective literacy skills. This handout outlines how to break codes of written text, and shows how to critically analyze what has been read.
How to Read Like a Writer
This reading helps a reader better engage with text as the writer would, including things to look for: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.
From Research to Writing
This handout offers questions writers should ask themselves shortly after researching, and prior to writing. The aspects a writer should be aware of include audience, topic, and purpose.

Encouraging Productive Revision
This handout provides instructors with a number of tools for conducting revision for student writing, offering up tools such as peer review, cover memos, and open-ended questions.

Expanding Descriptive Writing - "Explode a Moment"
This handout offers students a chance to expand their descriptive writing, by showing examples of both strong and weak descriptions. This handout also offers students a chance to expand their own writing in class with a grading rubric attached.

Flash Revision
This presentation gives students insight into the revision process, asking them to recognize and adapt to new revision strategies.

Revision with Radar Strategy
This handout offers student the RADAR revision process: Replace, Add, Delete, and Reorder.

Minimal Marking

This video explains a strategy that instructors can use to reduce the amount of red ink being used to revise students' papers.

5 Tools for Active Revision
Laura Harper details her experience using a revision toolbox, having her students use techniques such as questions, snapshots, exploding a moment, thoughshots, and making a scene.

Mapping an Essay
Tips on how to create a map to organize an essay.

Paragraph Sandwich

This presentation can be used to teach students the metaphor of the paragraph sandwich.

Using Thinking Maps (Gallagher)
Margie Lee Gallagher briefly summarizes thinking maps, and explains their usefulness in impacting undergraduate writing. With a visual aid for students to look at while writing, their writing can become more concise and have better fluency.
Expressive to Transactional Writing: A "Walk-Through" Exercise
Randall Martoccia offers insight into the "data dump" structure of student writing, or placing data by source rather than subject. He outlines an in-class exercise that students can do to see examples of this.

Backwards Outlining
This handout for students tells them the when, why, and how of backwards outlining.

CRAFT & MMAPs

CRAFT & MMAPs are acronyms for the concepts students should consider when working on a writing a writing assignment. CRAFT being: Context, Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. MMAPs being: Mode, Media, Audience, Purpose, and Situation.

Read Like A Writer
This handout provides information on the aspects to search for when reading like a writer, such as: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions.
Rhetorical Stance
This handout provides students with a visual representation of the rhetorical triangle.
Ethos, Pathos, Logos
This handout gives students an overview to the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos.

Effective Arguments (Prezi)

This presentation can show students how to create an effective argument by utilizing the acronym AUDIENCE: Analysis, Understanding, Demographics, Interest, Environment, Needs, Customization, and Expectations.

WPA Statement on Plagiarism
Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices"
Avoiding Plagiarism
This handout outlines the different ways that a writer may unintentionally, or intentionally, plagiarize while writing. The document includes tips to avoid plagiarism before it arises.
APA Sample Paper
Sample APA format paper.

Response, Evaluation & Feedback

Articles on Effective Feedback
This handout provides blurbs for different articles on offering feedback.
Bless, Address, Or Press: Responding to Writing
This handout can help address ways in which an instructor might address a student's writing when they have specific concerns.

Breaking Down Classroom Writing
This article breaks down the complexities to evaluating student work, covering areas like grading, assessing, and having one-on-one student conferences to offer feedback.

Cognitive Coaching
Based on Metacognition - coaching models self-appraisal and self-management of cognition.
Getting Textual: Teaching Students to Proofread
This handout provides students with different effective strategies for proofreading their work.

Hierarchy of Writing Concerns
This handout can show students the level of concern they they should have for different writing aspects during the writing process.
Minimal Marking
Richard H. Haswell writes about providing his students with minimal feedback when it comes to editing for mechanics in his students papers. By only providing clues to where errors are, he finds that students are able to correct a large number of their own mistakes.

Responding to Student Writing Reflection
This handout provides a free writing space, and outlined questions that can hone in on a writing topic.

Tech Tools for Responding to Student Writing

This Prezi presents different ways an instructor can provide student feedback through digital inquiry.

Rubric for Rubrics
This handout acts a rubric for creating a rubric, outlining what makes for a strong and weak rubric.
Creating A Writing Rubric
This handout outlines the necessary components of a strong writing assignment rubric.

Brainstorming, Planning, & Pre-write

Docs
Videos/Slides

Percolating for Effective Writing & Teaching
Components of A Strong Paper
This handout outlines the components that are found in a scientific paper, such as the abstract, hypothesis, and methods section.
Establishing a Stance for an Argument
This in-class activity gives students the opportunity to work in groups to better understand different stances on an argument.
Plan of Action
How to create a plan of action for your writing.

Teaching Grammar & Mechanics

Active v. Passive Voice
Recognizing and correctly using the active and passive voice in writing to enhance flow.
Fragments and Run-ons
How to correct fragments and run-on sentences in your writing.
Quick Guide to Commas
Learn the basic rules of comma usage in writing.
Using Colons
How and when to use colons in your writing.
Using Semicolons
Using semicolons properly in your writing.
Verb Tenses
Spelling & Grammar in MS Word
Guide to using Spell Check and grammar check in MS Word.
Writing Style
Developing writing style.
Basic Rules of Punctuation
Use these tips to guide you through basic punctuation.
Parellel Structure
Sentence Patterns
Transitions
How to use transitions in your writing.
Grammar Cheat Sheet
Varying Sentence Types & Starters
Overview on different types of sentences and how to use them in your writing.