The Meaningful Writing Project

The University Writing Program is excited to host another important book group discussion for faculty, staff, and administrators. Our book originally hosted in Fall 2023 focuses on how students perceive the writing they do in college and how we might rethink our assignment designs to more effectively engage with undergraduate learners. We invite you to participate in our ONLINE discussion group focused on the book The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher Education (Utah State UP, 2017). 

 

 

Cover of The Meaningful Writing Project

From the publisher’s website: “In the face of the continuing discourse of crisis in US education, The Meaningful Writing Project offers readers an affirming story of writing in higher education that shares students’ experiences in their own voices. In presenting the results of a three-year study consisting of surveys and interviews of university seniors and their faculty across three diverse institutions, authors Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner consider students’ perceptions of their meaningful writing experiences, the qualities of those experiences, and instructors’ perspectives on assignment design and delivery. This study confirms that meaningful assignments offer students opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and texts and are relevant to past experiences and passions as well as to future aspirations and identities. Meaningful writing occurs across majors, in both required and elective courses, and beyond students’ years at college.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewers Write:

“By focusing all members of the university writing community on connection and transfer, the authors encourage a full, holistic approach to develop not just meaningful writing projects, but meaningful writing experiences.”
– Mary Hedengren, The WAC Journal
“The authors’ years of study has resulted in a useful work for anyone who wishes to connect an assignment to the greater scope of their students’ lives and provide a college experience that resonates beyond the classroom.”
– Jeannine Williams, Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research
“The results have tantalizing implications for those of us who design writing assignments — whatever the discipline, and whether they are for a first-year writing course or a senior seminar. After all, if we can identify the common attributes of a meaningful writing assignment, we can presumably translate those findings into concrete ways to make all of our assessments more meaningful.”
– James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education

 

Book website here: https://meaningfulwritingproject.net/