Faculty in the majors are integral to ensuring that students grow as writers across their four years at Hopkins. The benefits of integrating writing instruction across the curriculum are two-fold. First, students need the help of faculty within a discipline to understand what it means to write effectively in a particular field, since what counts as “good writing”—including even the meaning of seemingly transparent terms like evidence and analysis—is context dependent.

Second, writing sparks critical thinking and is one of the most effective ways to encourage deep engagement with course content. Thoughtfully designed, ungraded writing exercises can improve student performance on exams; enhance critical thinking; and reduce achievement disparities between first-generation students and their economically advantaged peers.

The UWP offers several forms of support for faculty teaching writing in the majors:

• One-on-one pedagogy consultations with UWP faculty to discuss topics such as assignment or course design, feedback strategies for large and small classes, using writing to support content goals, or other concerns.
• Customized workshops for members of a department or teaching team to discuss curriculum, align grading standards, or other issues of interest to the group.
• General workshops on designated topics, open to all faculty, postdoc, and graduate student instructors. [link to upcoming workshops?]
• The Teaching Writing Toolkit, an online resource highlighting best practices for teaching writing and sample materials from across the disciplines.

Please consider giving us feedback on the kinds of writing support you would like to see by filling out this short survey. If you’d like to have a conversation about writing in your course or program of study, send a message to [email protected]. 

The Toolkit

To support faculty who want to enhance the use of writing in their classes, we developed the Teaching Writing Toolkit. The Toolkit distills best practices for teaching writing and provides models for doing so.

We hope that the toolkit will energize the culture of writing and writing pedagogy at Hopkins by creating a platform for faculty to share successful and creative approaches to teaching writing.