Closing Out 2011 and Into the New Year

The Writing Center at PCCC on the Paterson campus will be closed starting Friday, December 16th.

Passaic County Community College will be closed for Winter Break from December 23 through January 2nd.

Classes for the spring semester begin on Wednesday, January 18 and the Writing Center will reopen on Monday, January 23rd.

The Writing Initiative team wishes all of you a happy holiday break and a healthy new year!

Writing Initiative Faculty Institute - January 2012

The Writing Initiative will be holding the 13th Faculty Institute for faculty developing new writing intensive course sections or taking on a WI section for the first time on January 4 and 5, 2012.

This is a collaborative seminar-style event where we will be discussing overall Initiative goals, sharing existing WI materials and best practices, creating new assignments and materials and looking at the pedagogy, tools and resources available for writing intensive courses.

Following the Writing Initiative Handbook, our topics of discussion include:

• Writing Initiative goals and requirements
• Formal and informal writing
• A review of existing course materials (syllabus and assignment samples) both for regular sections and for any existing WI sections.
• Creating new WI assignments - examples & using templates
• Student portfolios: objectives, hands-on use of the eFolio product, sample student portfolios, grading strategies
• Critical thinking assignments – template, rubrics
• Information literacy assignments – template, rubrics
• Responding to and grading student writing - for content and for writing
• Using the Writing Center
• Using eTutoring
• Online resources for online & face-to-face course sections
• Initiative assessment of WI Courses
• Hands-on session using LibGuides as an editor and adding links, resources, media objects etc.

Writing Across Disciplines Day

This full day event is for faculty who want to incorporate writing into their courses. 

The writing across the disciplines approach is designed to give students additional academic writing experiences, but also to have them practice with the language conventions and specific formats typical of that discipline. For example, the lab report differs in content, format and style from literary criticism or the annual business report.

Based on the best practices that have emerged during the four years of the PCCC Writing Initiative, we will be discussing how to use, assign and evaluate writing that occurs in different disciplines.

There will be a series of topics discussed including:

• A brief overview of the goals of the Initiative and our writing intensive courses 
• What do you do with writing in your classes now?
• Using formal and informal writing
• Creating effective writing assignments
• Incorporating information literacy and critical thinking
• Responding to and grading student writing - for content and for writing
• Writing Resources available to you and your students at PCCC

January 6, 2012  8:30am - 3:30 pm  The Writing Center at PCCC (Paterson Campus)  A113

Space is limited, so if you’re interested in participating, please respond to writingcenter@pccc.edu by December 23rd. Please include your department and the courses you will be teaching in the spring. For more information, go to http://pccc.libguides.com/writing/.