The 2025 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing

Session I, Monday, January 6, 10 am - 12 pm: Low-Stakes Writing Assignments, Brainstorming, and AI
Session II, Wednesday, January 8, 10 am - 12 pm: Drafting and Editing: Strategies to teach your students.

Session I: Monday, January 6.

10:00 am Writing to Learn: Short informal writing assignments to promote student learning. 
Nina Morrison, Academic Advising Center, Iowa Link

10:40 am Brainstorming and Idea Generation: Strategies to teach your students (including ethical use of AI).
Tamar Bernfeld, Center for Teaching 

11:20 am Student Attitudes to AI Writing Tools: Examples from Biology.
Krista Osadchuk, Department of Biology

 

Session II: Wednesday, January 8.

10 am Writing First Drafts: Scaffolding the early stages of the writing process. 
Kath Shaughnessy, Hanson Center for Technical Communication.

10:40 am Beyond the First Draft: Teaching students revision strategies which might occasionally involve AI.
Anne Sands, Department of Rhetoric and James Ankrum, College of Engineering

11:20 am The Final Stages of the Writing Process: Teaching students to edit their work with and without help from AI. 
Elizabeth Crawford, Department of Rhetoric and Carol Severino, The Writing Center

How it started

The first Institute for Teaching with Writing took place during the 2020-2021 winter break. A series of four virtual two-hour workshops, it brought together fourteen faculty and two graduate students from fields as diverse as nursing, education, philosophy, international relations, and sociology to talk about how to incorporate more writing into their courses. Motivated by a collective love of language and desire to support the development of student writing skills, participants designed and workshopped formal and informal writing assignments, engaged in discussions about multimodal writing assignments, and heard about successful writing assignments from a panel of faculty from History, the College of Business, and Psychology. The Institute included a keynote talk by Brad Hughes, emeritus Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Institute was supported by the Department of Rhetoric, the Obermann Center and the UI Center for Teaching.

Previous Events

2024 Fall Institute for Teaching with Writing

Monday, August 5 & Wednesday August 7
10 am to 12 pm in the Hanson Center for Communication.

Session I: Monday, August 5, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Low-Stakes Writing Assignments and Writing Rubrics that Work

10:00 am: Low-Stakes Writing 
Low-Stakes Writing: In-Class Writing to Generate Engagement. 
Anne Sands, Department of Rhetoric
Using Targeted Writing to Build Student Skills and Confidence. 
Justin Cosner, Department of Rhetoric
11 am: Writing Rubrics
Align and Refine: Designing Rubrics Aligned with Course and Assignment Goals. Tamar Bernfeld, Center for Teaching.
Customizing Your Rubrics: Options and Implications. Carol Severino, UI Writing Center.

Session II: Wednesday, August 7, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm.
Teaching with Writing using Models, Examples and AI

10 am Using Models and Examples to Teach with Writing 
Large- and Small-Group Workshopping Strategies for Teaching Writing. 
Christine Blaumueller, Scientific Editing and Research Communication Core, College of Medicine. 
Capitalizing on the Upside and Minimizing the Downside of Using Models to Teach Writing. 
Dawn Anderson, College of Law

AI Roundtable, 11 am - 12 pm
Student Perceptions of AI Effectiveness in Drafting and Editing Business Communication Writing Assignments. 
Pamela Bourjaily, Tippie College of Business.
Course Planning and Assignment Design with AI. 
Carl Follmer, Tippie College of Business. 
Using AI as a Writing Coach. 
Deirdre Egan, UI Writing Center.

Sponsored by the Writing Center, the Hanson Center for Communication, the Frank Business Communication Center, the Center for Teaching, the Scientific Editing and Research Communication Core, the College of Law Writing Center, the Department of Rhetoric, and the Obermann Center.


2024 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing
2023 Fall Institute for Teaching with Writing
2023 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing
2022 Fall Institute for Teaching with Writing
2022 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing
2021 Fall Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing

Events

Parenting Teens: Cultivating Connections with Teens in a Digital Age

Sunday, May 18, 2025 1:00pm to 4:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Join other caregivers of teens for an afternoon of learning and discussion about evidence-based strategies for communicating and connecting with teens in a digital age. Led by Dr. Rachel McLaren and Dr. Rachel Young, experts in parent-adolescent communication and digital media. Leave feeling more confident and equipped.
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