Learning Goals

Program Learning Goals for First-Year Writing

The FYW Program seeks to contextualize students’ rhetorical acts of inquiry, discovery, and communication by way of the three primary rhetorical conditions articulated in the FYW Program Learning Goals: purpose, process, and culture.

Inquiry: a recursive process of posing, following, and pursuing answers to questions.
Discovery: making new knowledge by way of processes of inquiry.
Communication: purposeful engagement of one’s self and others by way of the processes and products of inquiry and discovery.

Purpose: personal, practical, and culturally implicated motivations/goals for pursuing acts of inquiry, discovery, and communication
Process: the means by which students pursue acts of inquiry, discovery, and communication
Culture: social/communal forces that affect how we produce and assess the effectiveness of acts of inquiry, discovery, and communication

As such, the First-Year Writing (FYW) Program at MSU puts learners at the center of learning. Our mission is to help learners acquire the moves, strategies, and dispositions that will allow them to continue to develop as writers and producers of knowledge beyond FYW. This goal is realized through new understandings of production, effects, and ethics of knowledge produced through writing, and through the acquisition of new practices for its production. The FYW curriculum invites students to put their prior knowledge in relation to new understandings of rhetoric, literacy, and culture. Inquiry, Discovery, and Communication–actions: ways of doing–are central to the curriculum, which moves students from reflection on experience to analysis of cultural and institutional values and discourses to inquiry into rhetorical production and to informed goal setting. In short, the grid of learning outcomes below articulates a host of things that FYW aims to help students come to know by ways of doing. Whether or not it is named as an explicit topic in writing classes, culture is an idea that is surfaced, named, and referenced through writing and learning to write.

The following principles are foundational to our learning goals for First-Year Writing:

For writers, inquiry, discovery, and communication are related and recursive acts. These acts help writers track how they create and convey knowledge both to others and to themselves.
When writing students care about what they write, it is easier for them to become better readers of their own writing and to find opportunities for further development and revision in what they have written.
Learners of writing have useful prior knowledge and capacities. In fact, experience is central in learning to write: it is both a source of knowledge and a subject for inquiry.
Writing students each learn on the fringe of what they know. Consequently, surfacing what they know can help them mark progress and project goals.
Inquiry into students experiences enables them to discover new things about things they already know by way of the stories they write about their experiences.
Risk taking is critical to writing development. When writing students are encouraged to reach beyond what they know, they will often make mistakes.
Effective writing development depends not only on making mistakes, but on learning to make the most of those mistakes. Making the most of making mistakes is one expression of finding opportunities for further development and revision in what they have written.
Writers benefit from working with other writers.
Helping others find opportunities for further development and revision in what they have written can be as productive and instructive for reviewers as for writers.
The practices, values, and effects of writing are variously situated in individuals and in communities and cultures.
Purpose, Process, and Culture are important both in learning to write, and in assessing how writing works in the world.
Because writers develop over a lifetime, informed self-reflection on both the processes and products of writing experiences is critical for assessing strengths and setting goals for continuing development.

We believe that the work of learning about writing is necessarily unfinished when First-Year Writing is completed, and that students will leave with transferable knowledge that will deliver continued learning throughout their college careers and beyond. The aim to develop students’ capacities to understand and adapt to new writing situations. The aim of developing transferable knowledge of rhetoric and writing practices shifts the emphasis from assessing generic products of writing (e.g., “the research paper”) or specific content knowledge to building and assessing capacities for continued growth and production: i.e., to evaluating student learning. The learning goals we have developed address this aim.

The following grids of FYW Program Learning Goals are designed to

help FYW instructors understand the work of teaching this course
communicate FYW Program values
identify and name individualized learning goals appropriate for each student
help students identify and name their own individualized learning goals
invite pedagogical conversations
show the program’s distinctiveness and communicate its priorities

How to read and use the FYW Program Learning Goals

Below we articulate a variety of means for pursuing the primary goal of the FYW curriculum: to help students develop transferable knowledge about writing – about concepts, processes, strategies, and practices. Since transferable knowledge about writing is specific to each and every FYW student, the following learning goals should be seen to offer a host of possibilities rather than a comprehensive list of outcomes for each and every FYW student.

The FYW Program Learning Goals are distributed across three color-coded grids, each corresponding to the three primary actions articulated of the FYW Program: Inquiry, Discovery, and Communication.
Each of the three color-coded actions is organized by way of the three primary rhetorical conditions articulated in the FYW Program Learning Goals: Purpose, Process, and Culture.
In each grid, the center Know column articulates types of transferable knowledge specific to the action and the rhetorical condition specified in the grid.
In each grid, the right-hand Do column articulates learning goals associated with various types of writing activities.

In each grid, the action and three conditions filter what the FYW Program aims to help students come to know by way of doing.

Click here for .pdf and .docx versions of the grids for download.

Inquiry
	Upon completion of a First-Year Writing course, students should *KNOW* the following:	Upon completion of a First-Year Writing course, students should be able to DO the following:
Purpose	That writing operates as a form and process of inquiry.	Use writing to direct, as well as to report, inquiry.
Process	That inquiry continues throughout the writing process. That inquiry is an active process of assessing and reassessing goals. That information is subject to inquiry, and that new information participates in the inquiry process. That inquiry generates new knowledge from beginning to end.	Use inquiry at each stage of the writing process. Read/view/listen to assess and reassess rhetorical purposes and strategies. Formulate research questions from both prior experience and new encounters with texts. Design inquiry processes appropriate for research goals. Reassess research questions as inquiry progresses.
Culture	That motives for, and uses of, inquiry are situated in cultures and communities. That disciplines and professional communities function as cultures. That inquiry strategies are situated in the needs and values of cultures and communities, both academic and nonacademic.	Assesses the value and uses of knowledge products in communities. Assess the value and uses of knowledge writing in disciplinary cultures. Situate or position themselves as writers within a disciplinary conversation. Use ethical processes of inquiry to demonstrate learning of and respect for others’ cultural values and practices.

Discovery
	Upon completion of a First-Year Writing course, students should *KNOW* the following:	Upon completion of a First-Year Writing course, students should be able to DO the following:
Purpose	That writing can lead to many forms of discovery—of self, of others, of communities, of ideas—and that this discovery is ongoing.	Approach writing as a vehicle not only for reporting or documenting, but for discovery and rediscovery of purposes.
Process	That writing can be goal-directed, but that the goals can change through revision. That writing in new genres, modes, or media can lead to discovery. That collaboration can lead to self-discovery. That engaging an audience can lead to new discoveries. That discovery requires (new) resources. That discovery can be facilitated by interaction with primary and secondary sources. That discovery is both enabled and produced by conversation and collaboration. That engaging an audience can lead to new discoveries.	Use revision to find new purposes and meanings. Situate emerging understandings in relation to encounters with texts and conversations to build new theories. Engage in purposeful collaborations. Recalibrate purposes in relation to evolving understandings of audience. Find and engage resources to lead to discovery. Approach primary and secondary sources as tools as means for discovery. Consider feedback from others to discover new purposes decisions about writing.
Culture	That original ideas are situated in histories and traditions. That methods of knowledge making extend established ideas. That diverse knowledge making practices are central to developing new ideas.	Identify the origin of ideas in disciplines. Think carefully and responsibly about the effects of knowledge production on readers and audience. See the affordances and seek out rich understandings of audience. Explore (in writing and conversation) other positions in relationship to one’s own.

Communication
	Upon completion of a First-Year Writing course, students should *KNOW* the following:	Upon completion of a First-Year Writing course, students should be able to DO the following:
Purpose	That writing creates new knowledge and is a form of reflection and action. That purposes for writing direct other decisions. That writing is an act with ethical implications. That writing can be a form of action.	Approach writing as a productive, purposeful, and ethical act that is contingent on scenes and (material and human) contexts. Assess rhetorical situations in order to act within them. Use writing to make things happen in the world.
Process	That knowledge of rhetoric is essential for making good decisions about writing. That writing is often goal-driven, but that goals can change in the writing process. That decisions about language use, genre, and medium follow purpose. That writing is responsive to an audience. That research is motivated by rhetorical purposes. That writing is one resource within a wider rhetorical repertoire (e.g., sound, image, body language). That acts of communication are situated in communities.	Apply diagnostic strategies to rhetorical situations. Evaluate resources to achieve communicative purposes. Choose language and make writing decisions in relation to rhetorical purposes. Adjust rhetorical purposes in response to new knowledge. Use human and material resources to achieve communicative goals. Discover appropriate reasons and purposes for writing from attention to context. Communicate with other writers about goals and purposes. Use sources to situate, elaborate, and authorize. Use writing technologies as resources to achieve communicative purposes.