1. Citation:

Dobie, Ann, and Gail Poirrier. “When Nursing Students Write: Changing Attitudes.” Research in Teaching Writing Across the Diciplines, vol. 1, no. 3, p. 11.

2. Summary

In Dobie and Poirrier’s concise yet intellectually rich article, they discuss how academics evaluate (or struggle with evaluating) the success of writing-across-the curriculum programs. They table the dilemma writing-across-the curriculum (WAC)  faces concerning finding justification for, and verification of WAC courses. This article joins the search of “an entirely satisfactory method of determining the effectiveness” of WAC (24). The article teases out what “effectiveness means” or can mean whether that be helping students retain information through the practice of writing, or creating rapport between student and instructor.

Dobie and Poirrier look at a few studies done that search for the positive results of WAC courses. The article focuses on two: a series of interviews of college seniors done at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who had taken writing intensive courses, and a study of first year nursing students who took a course designed with WAC as a core value. The first study showed positive results, but is reluctant to make claims that there is direct evidence between writing intensive curriculum and student learning due to the qualitative anecdotal nature of the interview responses. The article then moves to search for other means in which to evaluate or validate WAC through the second study. The majority of the article is spent explaining in depth the research performed on the first year nursing student study.

The course was designed through collaborative work of the head of the nursing department and the WAC director at the university. The result was a syllabus that included free writes, lists, and other varieties of brainstorming activities linked to a nursing concept. Students in this study took a pre and post survey which asked them to evaluate their relationship with writing and this course. There was also post-interviews performed by a third party professor. The article lists all the questions posed during the interviews and surveys. The findings showed that students left the course with a more positive attitude towards writing, and felt that their relationship with their instructor was a meaningful one.

Dobie and Poirrier finish the article with a hopeful, if not fully satisfied, tone. They suggest that while these studies did not result in definitive quantitative proof of “the effectiveness” of WAC courses, there are other ways and viewpoints in which to evaluate writing-across-the curriculum. Students in both studies stated that their attitudes towards writing improved, and that they felt like active participants in learning. They call for further and more abundant studies of student’s responses to WAC courses because there are still unanswered questions.

 

Quotations:

“Practitioners talk of students saved and reformed, for example, but their enthusiasm is usually born more of hope and faith than of fact and reason” (23).

“The shortage of formal evaluation of WAC programs is not surprising. As Sarah Freedman points out in “Evaluating Writing,” an entirely satisfactory method of determining the effectiveness of instruction either by large-scale testing or classroom assessment is yet to be found” (23).

“Identifying the causes of improved student attitudes and performance is equally difficult. Identifying, isolating, and defining the reasons for attitudinal improvement is fraught with problems, and the degree to which they impact student work is even more resistant to measurement. The result is that teachers tend to use anecdotal rather than statistical evidence to verify the positive effects of using writing to assist learning. They often draw conclusions based on their own well honed sense of the situation” (23).

“This study, a culmination of three years of attempting to determine the effect of using writing-to-learn strategies in freshman nursing classes, did not replace all of the available lore. It did not even provide answers to all the questions the researchers set out to find. The quantification they sought about the impact of writing to learn on student mastery of course material, for example, remained elusive. Whether students thought more critically and analytically about their future profession after writing about its issues and concerns could not be verified” (24).

“The three-year study did, however, confirm several significant effects of using writing-to-learn techniques in the nursing classroom. Specifically, it provided evidence of three areas of positive impact: (1) improved student attitudes towards writing and learning, (2) strengthened student-teacher communication, and (3) increased student retention. As a result, the findings create a strong rationale for including writing to learn in the freshman nursing curriculum, and perhaps for instituting it throughout the entire nursing program” (24).

“The initial stages of the study were the result of a collaborative effort on the part of the instructor of Nursing 114, a required second semester freshman course, the head of the undergraduate nursing program, and the university’s WAC director. Working together, they chose and designed writing activities deemed likely to have a positive effect on students’ personal involvement in subject matter, data comprehension, and critical thinking” (24).

“For example, when studying community health, students were asked to respond to a hypothetical letter from a disadvantaged caregiver inquiring about wound care procedures that broke all rules of asepsis. To answer, students were called upon to present complex knowledge about practical application of wound care in simple lay terms. They had not only to use their technical knowledge, but also to exercise an understanding of members of the community” (25).

“At the time of the pre-test, thirty-six percent (36%) were uncertain as to whether impromptu focused writing in class helped them to solve problems or clarify concepts, whereas forty-three percent (43%) agreed by the post-test that it did. Forty-five percent (45%) of the students on the pre-test admitted having feelings of nervousness when asked to write as compared to thirty-six percent (36%) at post-test time” (26).

“Having demonstrated its validity in these ways, the WTLAS could be used by other researchers to compare levels of information about the writing attitudes of different groups, identify negative perceptions and attitudes, determine the effects of courses or training materials, and measure changes in attitudes over time” (26).

“In answer, the students indicated that they found writing to assist learning. They had positive feelings about the writing experiences in class and deemed writing skills to be necessary for success” (27).

“A third way of evaluating the impact of the writing activities on students’ attitudes and academic success was to make a comparison of the attrition rate of the experimental group and that of another section of the same course taught without the interventions. The comparison, like the WTLAS and the interviews, confirmed that writing had had a positive effect on student performance” (28).

 

Reflection:

I was immediately drawn to this article because I consider myself a strong advocate for writing across the curriculum. While I personally have seen the positive results of it, I can understand the opposing side asking “what’s so important about intensive writing? I am a mathematician–let me work with numbers!”. In our society there is this overarching belief that once we have clock in our hours for high school and our one freshmen writing course, we do not need to even think about writing ever again. Just like Dobie and Poirrier, I too am looking for the magic data that can finally validate and justify WAC. This article moves me to search for other studies done on WAC and writing intensive courses. I would like to further research the ways in which studies record their data, and if there is a way the gap between qualitative and quantitative data can be bridged.