Pedagogical Approaches With Canvas

Writing-To-Learn (WTL)

How to Use Writing-To-Learn
Impact on Learning
Assessment Strategies
Writing-To-Learn in Canvas
Relevant Technologies
Things to Consider
Bibliography

Writing-to-learn (WTL) activities are typically short, informal writing assignments that are informational and often assigned at the spur of the moment as an impromptu task. Generally, these are intended to assist students to critically think about important concepts or ideas that are a part of the course content. These writing tasks are frequently limited to less than five minutes of class time or assigned as brief homework assignments. They can be implemented as occasional one-off activities or as regular activities that occur throughout the course.

Depending on your students and discipline, WTL activities might work best as individual-focused: Learners write primarily for themselves to recall, reflect on, and reinforce learning of new information (Boser, 2020). But WTL activities can also be extended by prompting learners to complete a variety of writing tasks in different formats and for different audiences (WAC Clearinghouse, n.d.).

AI writing tools present an interesting gray area for the future of WTL. While tools like automatic spelling and grammar checkers have been accepted as commonplace features of most software that involves any kind of writing, generative AI tools, like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, continue to be used in classroom settings in various and controversial ways (D’Agostino, 2022). Some educators advocate for embracing AI tools as writing aids—particularly if the technology will be part of professional life in students’ chosen disciplines (Stapleton-Corcoran & Horton, 2023).

How to Use Writing-To-Learn

Some of the ways this teaching approach is used to engage students include:

  • free writes
  • one-minute paper
  • journals
  • one-sentence summaries
  • learning logs
  • dialectical notes
  • directed paraphrasing
  • letters, memos, notes
  • mock tests
  • drafts for peer feedback
  • reading journal
  • annotations
  • response papers
  • synthesis papers
  • discussion starter
  • analyzing the process
  • problem statement
  • solving real problems
  • pretest warm-ups
  • using cases
  • analysis of events
  • project notebooks

Impact on Learning

WTL can impact learning through:

  • helping students learn better and retain information longer
  • having students think actively about the material they are learning
  • prompting students to think at the appropriate cognitive level for the level of learning that is to be accomplished through the course
  • encouraging students to define an audience other than the instructor
  • developing students’ sensitivity to the interests, backgrounds, and vocabularies of different readers
  • giving students the chance to learn about themselves including their emotions, values, cognitive processes, and learning strengths and weaknesses
  • showing students what they already know about a topic
  • giving students a chance to organize, consolidate, and develop their ideas about a topic
  • making clearer to students what they don’t know about a topic, or where they can further improve

Assessment Strategies

WTL activities usually are not graded. Instead, they are quickly read by the instructor or by peers and reviewed for basic understanding of the content being covered.

Suggestions for reviewing WTL activities:

  • Use an occasional WTL warm-up at the beginning of class as a “quiz.” Share the correct response and allow students to self-assess their writing.
  • Collect completed WTL activities from half a dozen to a dozen students every class or every other class. Briefly review to determine concepts students might need help with.
  • In online tools, use stars, “likes,” “praise,” and other positive reinforcement tools to encourage correct responses.
  • Ask students to select their best WTL writing for you to review.
  • Ask students to share WTL activities with one or two classmates.
  • Ask students to post provocative questions or summary/analysis of readings on an electronic bulletin board or web forum for class comment.

Writing-To-Learn in Canvas

In Canvas, the following tools can be used for writing-to-learn activities:

Discussions: Canvas provides an integrated system for asynchronous online class discussions. Instructors and students can start and contribute to discussions. You can learn more about using Discussions in Canvas from the Canvas Community.

Wiki pages: In Canvas, students can complete WTL assignments by creating a page as a wiki and allowing it to be edited by anyone. Students could work on pages individually or in groups, but only one student can edit a page at a time. Instructions for creating a page are available from Canvas.

Relevant Technologies

The following technologies can be used for writing assignments.

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace: Both sets of online applications include document creation tools that can work offline or online and that allow for collaborative writing and editing as well as sharing with others.

Sites at Penn State: Penn State provides website building and management services to all members of the University community through CampusPress. A site could be created as a shared class blog, or students could create their own sites to use as blogs, journals, galleries, or portfolios.

Viva Engage: A social networking service similar to Facebook but made available as a private tool for Penn State users, Viva Engage can be used for discussions where students can also share files, take polls, give praise, and comment on each other’s posts.

AI writing tools: The Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois Chicago describes these tools as “…one type of generative AI that can support writing tasks by creating human-like text. These systems work by continually predicting the word most likely to come next in each sentence” (Stapleton-Corcoran & Horton, 2023). Examples include ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Bard as well as many others. Some AI writing tools are trained on specific sets of data to perform specialized tasks: For example, scite was created to assist researchers in discovering and evaluating scientific articles. Penn State has collected a list of AI authoring tools and descriptions.

Things to Consider

For successful implementation of WTL, you should consider the following strategies:

  • WTL activities can easily provide a brief classroom assessment to quickly determine what your class is learning while still focusing on the topic. Through this informal formative assessment, instructors can easily diagnose and clarify points of confusion before giving students the next exam and moving on to other topics.
  • Reading short, informal writing assignments is no more time-consuming than any other type of class preparation.

While AI writing tools can be incorporated into most WTL activities, for best results, students will need some guidance on how to use AI effectively and ethically. The SPACE framework for writing with AI tools, developed by Glenn Kleiman (2023), and copied below, is one example of how you might approach designing a writing assignment with AI in mind.

Set directions for the goals, content and audience that can be communicated to the AI system. This may, for example, involve writing introductory materials for the overall text and for each section. It could also involve writing much of the text and leaving some sections for AI to complete.

Prompt the AI to produce the specific outputs needed. A prompt gives the AI its specific task, and often there will be separate prompts for each section of text. An AI tool can also be prompted to suggest sentences or paragraphs to be embedded in text that is mostly written by the human author.

Assess the AI output to validate the information for accuracy, completeness, bias, and writing quality. The results of assessing the generated text will often lead to revising the directions and prompts and having the AI tool generate alternative versions of the text to be used in the next step.

Curate the AI-generated text to select what to use and organize it coherently, often working from multiple alternative versions generated by AI along with human written materials.

Edit the combined human and AI contributions to the text to produce a well-written document. (Kleiman, 2023)

Bibliography

Boser, U. (2020, June 25). Writing to learn and why it matters. The Learning Curve. https://the-learning-agency-lab.com/the-learning-curve/learn-better-through-writing

Center for Teaching Excellence. (n.d.). Writing to learn. Duquesne University. https://www.duq.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/teaching-and-learning/writing-to-learn

D’Agostino, S. (2022, October 25). Machines can craft essays. How should writing be taught now? Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/10/26/machines-can-craft-essays-how-should-writing-be-taught-now

East Carolina University. (n.d.). Writing to learn activities. https://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/writing/wac/upload/Writing-to-Learn-Activities.pdf

Kleiman, G. (2023, January 5). Teaching students to write with AI: The SPACE framework. Medium. https://medium.com/the-generator/teaching-students-to-write-with-ai-the-space-framework-f10003ec48bc

Kopp, B. (n.d.). Informal writing assignments (writing to learn). University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. http://www.uwlax.edu/catl/writing/assignments/writingtolearn.htm

McKenna, C. (2019, June 28). Writing for learning. LSE Higher Education Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducation/2019/06/28/writing-for-learning/

Nilson, L. B. (2010). Writing-to-learn activities and assignments. In Teaching at its best: A research­-based resource for college instructors (3rd ed., pp. 167–172). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. https://wp.stolaf.edu/cila/files/2020/09/Teaching-at-Its-Best.pdf

Stapleton-Corcoran, E., & Horton, P. (2023, May 22). AI writing tools. Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence, University of Illinois Chicago. https://teaching.uic.edu/ai-writing-tools/

Sweetland Center for Writing. (n.d.). Integrating low-stakes writing in large college classrooms – Supplement 2: Twitter assignments. University of Michigan. https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/sweetland-assets/sweetland-documents/teachingresources/IntegratingLowStakesWritingIntoLargeClasses/Supplement2_TwitterAssignments.pdf

WAC Clearinghouse. (n.d.). What is writing to learn? Colorado State University. https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/teaching/intro/wtl/

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