Online Initiative to Foster and Research Writing-Skills Transfer Across the Curriculum and Beyond

Abstract

Funding is sought to build, pilot, revise, implement, and assess an online pedagogical and data-collection instrument and instructional video for any writing program in the SUNY system, including Open SUNY. This tool promotes the transfer of skills and knowledge from required first-year writing (FYW) classes to courses across the curriculum and beyond graduation, which research shows neither typically nor sufficiently occurs. The proposed instrument employs freeware to offer locally-adaptable templates and a system of ongoing personalized alerts for fostering the key element to successful writing transfer, metacognition: awareness of one’s own knowledge and learning needs and styles. The online instrument also simultaneously provides host departments with rare and valuable information about effects of their curriculum. No such tool for encouraging and studying students’ writing transfer beyond FYW is known to exist, and this one sustains itself indefinitely without cost after its creation. The PI also proposes to present, run workshops, and publish about this initiative.