Intellectual Creativity in First-Year Composition Classes

Download or read book Intellectual Creativity in First-Year Composition Classes written by Heidi Wall Burns and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-12 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s first year composition classrooms are largely reflective of the writing pedagogy that has been used for the last 200 years. Unfortunately, this methodology does not meet the research or writing needs of today’s college and university students. Burns and MacBride were determined to make their first year composition courses more relevant to their students and sought a way to revolutionize their syllabus to do so. Building on the work of Tom Romono, Nancy Mack, Camille Allen, Sirpa Grierson, Melinda Putz (and others), Burns and MacBride set out to determine if a multigenre research project could better teach their students research, writing, and critical thinking skills than a traditional research-based essay. The findings of their semester-long study indicated that not only does a MGRP teach these skills, but it far surpasses a traditional essay in teaching engagement, intellectual creativity, and transferable writing skills. Burns and MacBride demonstrate two different ways to integrate a multigenre research project into the college composition classroom.