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Learning Goals for JYWP Courses

In September, 2000, the UMass Amherst Writing Across the Curriculum Writing Assessment Group published Establishing Learning Objectives: Applications for Course Planning and Assessment, which included the following “Statement of Learning Goals for JYWP Courses”:

Mastery of Basic Composing Skills

Most students enter your JYWP courses reasonably competent in these areas, but in some cases considerable review and reinforcement is needed.  A few students will need intensive, individualized work to develop this mastery.  Work on these skills can continue simultaneously with work on the more advanced composing and thinking skills that follow.

Basic composing skills include:

• To compose coherent sentences and logically developed paragraphs

• To draft, revise, and edit one’s own writing as well as give useful feedback to others

• To edit so that final drafts contain minimal, if any, grammatical errors

• To cite secondary sources correctly using conventions appropriate to a given discipline

Proficiency in More Advanced Composing and Thinking Skills

Most students enter your JYWP courses less competent in these areas and needing more focused instruction and practice.  To complete your courses successfully, they will have attained competence although not necessarily the facility that comes with full mastery.

• To evidence constructive thinking in one’s writing; that is, to go beyond recall and restatement to re-organize information and make one’s own sense of it.  Constructive thinking includes being able to

• represent accurately what one has read and to make sense of that reading through processes such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, interpretation, reflection, and problem-solving;

• gather, select, and organize information and evidence from multiple sources with an eye to patterns, points of difference, and overlap; and

• tolerate and work with ambiguity, indeterminacy, complexity.

• To compose a focused, coherent text

• that moves effectively between generalizations and details to achieve specific purposes.  (The kinds of generalizations and detail used will depend on the purpose of the text, e.g., to re-explain complex concepts, to explain and evaluate, to develop an argument, to recommend a specific course of action.); and

• that has a logical overall line of development.

• To be aware of rhetorical context, particularly within a given discipline or related profession, including being able to

• write with the authority or ethos of a professional in a given discipline or profession;

• write in at least one genre (in some cases more than one) valued in a discipline or related profession; and

• be conscious of audience and be able to adapt one’s writing – including language used – to accomplish a particular purpose with a particular audience.

How do these goals and objectives differ from course to course?

Common objectives for any program can only go so far.  Different courses and disciplines require different standards and give varying weight to the importance of one learning behavior over another.  While JYWP courses have the goal to improve writing and communication skills in upper level students, there are differences across these courses in:

• the weight given to certain goals and objectives,

• the kind of assignments posed, and

• specific teaching practices

Examples of areas of difference follow, taken from the work of the JYWP faculty involved in the yearlong analysis of JYWP courses across the disciplines.  You may find these examples helpful in thinking about your own goals and objectives and the importance you assign to each.  It is important to keep in mind, however, that these examples are drawn from the findings of specific JYWP classes only.  They are not used to generalize but to illustrate the different ways the common goals and objectives might play out within your own classroom.

Attention to audience, specifically the relation of writer to audience.
Most JYWP courses focus on students as writers cultivating an audience or audiences.  Students are asked to write to various audiences throughout the semester.  These audiences differ across courses and departments.  For example:

• In the Management, Chemistry and Physics classes, in particular, there is more focus on students learning to adapt their writing to various audiences.

• In the English literature class, the writer-audience relation for student essays is often not explicitly named, with the focus on cultivating students’ awareness of themselves as an audience.  

Particular ways of thinking and purposes for writing.
Critical thinking is often mentioned as a key skill for your undergraduates to acquire before graduation. Our review of JYWP courses yielded different interpretations of this term, with critical defined as either analytic and evaluative thinking or as something essential.  While all courses reviewed valued analytic thinking, there were also distinct ways to name other ways of thinking within specific disciplines and courses such as “constructive” thinking, “reflective” thinking, and “strategic” thinking.  This was also true for the value assigned to different purposes for writing:

• In English literature, for example, students are asked to formulate arguments about texts.

• In Physics, they are asked to comprehend and re-explain complex concepts.

Attention to career development.
Most JYWP courses touch on career development by asking students to write in one or more disciplinary context.  Some courses, however, give more attention to this than others:

• Chemistry and Management focus more on career development in general than Physics, English literature, and English teaching.

• In Chemistry and Management, developing a resumé is a course assignment.

Collaborative writing.
Collaborative writing is more valued in some disciplines than others. This is reflected in the focus it is given in JYWP courses across the departments.  For instance:

• In the Management course, a collaborative writing project is one of the major assignments.

• In the English teaching course, collaborative writing for a research project is only an option but not required.

Attention to language.
Developing an awareness of the role of language and writing is an important goal in all JYWP courses.  What differs are the ways in which this is accomplished in each course:

• In the English literature course, the emphasis is on an awareness of language as a plumb line to intuitive thinking about literature.

• In the Management course, there is more focus on pragmatic thinking and instrumental use of language, as well as on understanding cross-cultural differences in communication.

• In the Physics course, language is valued as a means of qualitative thinking about what are often quantitative subjects.

• In the English teaching course, the focus is on students developing self-awareness of their own ways of using language and writing, and on understanding the link between literacy practices and culture.

• In the Chemistry course, language and writing are represented as conversation, as a way of carrying on the dynamic process of creating knowledge within the discipline.

Examining the differences described above can help you understand why certain objectives are emphasized in one field and assigned less importance in another.  This allows you to re-consider the weight you assign to the goals and objectives you have identified as important.  Understanding areas of difference is a valuable assessment tool in identifying common objectives and applying common criteria for assessment. The value of assessing the extent to which students are meeting common goals in JYWP courses is clear within the mission and goals of the program.  However, the individual articulation of the objectives and the methods through which they are assessed may, and often do, vary for each course.  When you review these objectives , it is important to remember that the learning goals and objectives for student writing are very much context-specific.

Members of the UMass Amherst Writing Across the Curriculum Writing Assessment Group were Laura Doyle (English), Anne Herrington (English), Linda LaDuc (Management), William Mullin (Physics), Martha Stassen (Academic Planning and Assessment), Julian Tyson (Chemistry), Donna Zucker (Nursing), and Kathryn Doherty (Academic Planning and Assessment).

The full report is available here.

Updated September 3, 2008

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