On the first day of class, I involved the students by explaining to them that this would be a writing–intensive course and suggested that they consider dropping if that was not what they wanted. I told them straight up that they would need to write, talk, and be prepared for each class. Ten of the students dropped the class. Of those who gave reasons for dropping, they said that they hated to write, that they wouldn't be able to give the class enough time, and that it was too much work for their expectations.
We used the entire second class period to again discuss the writing portion of the class. I asked them to help decide what the goals for writing should be, what the writing should look like, what the grading scale would be, and what the outcome from the writing should be.
All agreed that they needed help on being concise. They decided that they didn't care about spelling, which I readily agreed to, as I'm a poor speller. We discussed the value of content versus conventions. Also, I explained a priori what I was looking for in the writing, such as what I mean by "vague" writing.
We decided together on the priorities, which I thought was very important. I was open about what I was trying to do, and these weren't didactic sessions with me as the authority figure that they had to listen to.
We spent another half day discussing the plans that we had made, which included the rubric we'd created with Michele Eodice, director of the Writing Center. This means that they had two and a half days of purposeful discussions of the writing aspect of the course, and they were included in the decisions regarding it.
On the first paper, I did not issue a grade, a surprise, as I had not told them ahead that it wouldn't be graded. I suggested instead what level their writing was at. On that paper, I did extensive grading where I fixed every single sentence.
Although we started with a rubric, we found it was too limiting for the number and variety of writing assignments. The students and I together decided on a simple grading plan. Each assignment gets a possible ten points: four for answering the question fully, three for the factual correctness of the answer content, and three for clear, concrete, and concise writing style (or one point for each of these qualities).
