WR 111

Community Building in a Remote Environment

Creating a sense of community is important for any course and in any modality; however, instructors often find it more challenging to build a strong online community in remote courses. The resources below offer some practical tips and suggestions for building a stronger community in your online courses.

WR 111 Mid-Semester Self-Evaluation

For this activity, students in WR 111 reflect on the assignments and experiences of the first half of the course. Instructors should plan on reading students’ written reflections and also on sharing them when requested. WR 112 instructors may adapt the questions to WR 112 skills and topics. Objective to think back over the last […]

Individual in Community Assignment

This assignment asks students to participate in and reflect on an activity, outside of class time, to strengthen their engagement with the Individual in Community Hub unit (WR 111). Note that an alternate version of this activity, which does not ask students to work in groups and which is written to accommodate online/remote events if […]

Notes for Inclusive Syllabi: Diversity and Land Acknowledgment Statements

When trying to create a welcoming, inclusive classroom, instructors may want to include a diversity statement and a land acknowledgment statement on their syllabi. We provide examples of each here for your benefit. Instructors may also want to read more about universal design and accessible syllabi, and also about diversifying their reading lists. [/collapsible] Guide […]

Whose History Matters? The Importance of Co-Conspirators

In October 2019, Claudia Fox Tree spoke to over a hundred students from WR 111 and WR 112. The 111 students had read, or were about to read, Montana 1948, while many of the 112 students had read this essay by Justin Nobel. Her talk gave students new perspectives on First Nations/Native Americans and other […]

Planning Peer-to-Peer Work: Groups, Peer Review, & Workshops

Writing classes are interactive, with students talking, writing, and collaborating with each other, in various permutations of pairs, small groups, and larger groups, nearly constantly. But how do you decide what kind of peer-to-peer work to integrate into a given class? This page offers some tips for instructors. You may also be interested in the […]

Strategies for Conferences and Tutoring Appointments with English Language Learners

Note that some of these strategies are more applicable in tutoring contexts, but most of them are also effective in faculty-student individual–or group–conferences.

Class Participation Rubric

This activity is especially useful for those who grade their students’ class participation. Asking students to collaborate on participation criteria gives them a sense of agency and makes tangible a facet of their final grade which might otherwise seem subjective. Guide to Oral/Signed Communication in Writing Classrooms Objective To reflect on your participation in class […]

Creating and Presenting Posters

Each Flipped Learning Module (FLM) is a set of short videos and online activities that can be used (in whole or in part) to free up class time from content delivery for greater student interaction. At the end of the module, students are asked to fill out a brief survey, in which we adopt the […]