Faculty: Are your students reading?
A host of recent publications laments the latest literacy crisis in higher education: college students are NOT reading!! Often framed as a consequence of pandemic learning loss and exacerbated by the rise of generative artificial intelligence that can summarize long and complex readings in seconds, this concern has been highlighted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Psychology Today, Slate, and The Atlantic. Many of the authors linked here argue that middle and high school education no longer adequately prepares students for long-form reading. At the Writing Center, we know that reading is essential to writing well, and writing is one of the best ways to develop a grasp of a complex text. The TU Writing Center will host a January pedagogy workshop for faculty interested in providing additional support and scaffolding for students who struggle with difficult reading assignments.
January Workshop: Reading to Write
Tuesday, Jan 21, 2025
11:00am-1:30pm
Cook Library Room 340-342
This hands-on workshop will explore the need for scaffolding the reading process in writing-intensive courses across the university and offer faculty participants strategies for helping students navigate and write about complex texts. Contextualized in recent surveys that indicate students lack experience reading complicated material, and alongside the emergence of ever more sophisticated GenAI tools, the Writing Center will provide classroom activities and strategies for supporting student reading. Participating faculty will hear from student workers at the WC about the struggles they and other students tend to have with difficult reading assignments. Then, we will offer feedback and suggestions about how to engage students in reading, discussion, and writing about texts. After an overview of options, participating faculty will tailor a strategy to their specific course with the advice and support of writing center tutors. Lunch will be provided.
Tags: faculty workshop, writing across the curriculum, Writing Center, writing pedagogy
Categorised in: General
This post was written by Barney, E. Mairin