The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching and Writing in Higher Education

In the face of the continuing discourse of crisis in US education, The Meaningful Writing Project offers readers an affirming story of writing in higher education that shares students’ experiences in their own voices. In presenting the results of a three-year study consisting of surveys and interviews of university seniors and their faculty across three diverse institutions, authors Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner consider students’ perceptions of their meaningful writing experiences, the qualities of those experiences, and instructors’ perspectives on assignment design and delivery.

This study confirms that meaningful assignments offer students opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and texts and are relevant to past experiences and passions as well as to future aspirations and identities. Meaningful writing occurs across majors, in both required and elective courses, and beyond students’ years at college. Additionally, the study makes clear that faculty across the curriculum devote significant care and attention to creating writing assignments that support student learning, as they understand writing performance to be a developmental process connected to overall cognitive and social development, student engagement with learning, and success in a wide variety of disciplines and professions.

The Meaningful Writing Project provides writing center directors, WPAs, other composition scholars, and all faculty interested in teaching and learning with writing an unprecedented look into the writing projects students find meaningful.

Michele Eodice is Senior Writing Fellow in the Center for Faculty Excellence at University of Oklahoma and editor of the open access journal Writers: Craft & Context. She is a coauthor of Working with Faculty Writers, The Everyday Writing Center, and (First Person)².

Anne Ellen Geller is professor of English and director of Writing Across Communities at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. She is a coauthor of Working with Faculty Writers and The Everyday Writing Center.

Neal Lerner is professor of English and writing program director at Northeastern University. He is the author of The Idea of a Writing Laboratory, winner of the 2011 NCTE David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English, and a coauthor of Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering, winner of the 2012 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award.