Cait's Goals for Student Development

Based on our in-class exercise, here’s a compilation of my initial thoughts on the values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills I would like to impart to students in a freshman level writing course. At this point, I feel that developing new, more productive attitudes towards writing will be the key to achieving the rest of the goals.

Values

• Value every piece of writing as an opportunity to address a particular audience.
• Value any digital environment as a potential mode of reaching a chosen audience.
• Value collaboration as a part of the writing process.
• Value yourself as a writer and the role writing will play in your future career(s), regardless of your field of study.
  
  

Attitudes

• View the writing process as producing projects for an actual purpose in addressing a real-world audience rather than producing assignments for a teacher.
• View all writing environments (including those normally associated with “out-of-school” activities) as legitimate writing tools.
• View a piece of writing as a work in process rather than a finished product in the classroom, particularly when utilizing new technologies. Feel free to experiment and play.
• View the writing process as a collaborative relationship between all members of the class, whether working on group projects or receiving feedback on individual projects.

Knowledge

• Know how to evaluate any writing artifact and determine its intended audience and its effectiveness in reaching that audience.
• Know how to identify your desired audience.
• Know your purpose behind addressing your chosen audience (are you teaching, convincing, explaining, etc.)
• Know how to identify which available technologies or mediums will afford the best opportunity to reach your audience.
  

Skills

• Apply analyses mentioned above regarding addressing a real audience and reaching that audience to your own writing.Be able to introduce yourself to new technologies as needed.
• Be able to look at a new technology and determine what it affords and projects/audiences for which those affordances could prove useful.
• Collaborate with other writers to create collective projects and/or learn from your collaborators proficiencies in order to develop your own skills.
• Determine what identity you want to present as the author of a given piece of writing.