Ed Tech Vignette: First Year Writing Program

Instructor: Grace Talusan

Department: English – A&S

Course: First Year Writing Program

Technology Used: WordPress (sites.tufts.edu)

How ETS supported this: Helped the instructor identify an appropriate WordPress theme, information architecture and workflow for publishing the students’ work.

Tags: WordPress, English

What were the learning goals?

The main goal of the First-Year Writing Program is to prepare students for the writing they will do in other courses at Tufts. In addition to that, I wanted students to practice every step of the writing process, from idea stage to final draft.    

In what way did using WordPress support these goals?

I thought the WordPress site, which includes all the students who wanted to participate from across the three courses that I taught, would be a great way to showcase a finished work. They had to make choices about what they wanted to share with a public online audience.

What did you feel worked well/not so well?

I like that students can read each other’s writing and that they can share the link to their piece easily. Some students had trouble using the site and I ended up uploading their work. I need to build in more class time to help those students upload their writing themselves, unless they want to be uncredited or anonymous.    

Next Steps/Refinements

I will continue to use the website and I will use it earlier. I didn’t take advantage of the editing possibilities, but used the site to post finished work–although there are still some typos here and there.