Students and Qualitative Writing Projects
Blake Sanz

Facilitators: Carol Samson and Linda Tate
Panelists: Hava Gordon Sociology; Kate Willink Human Communication Studies; Emily Hull, Stephanie James, Sarah Lonowski, Haley Moore -- Students

Writing Program faculty members Carol Samson and Linda Tate headed a discussion of qualitative projects completed in research-based WRIT classes last spring, including WRIT 1133 (Research and Writing) and WRIT 1522 (Honors Writing). Accompanying Samson and Tate were assistant professors Hava Gordon, Department of Sociology, and Kate Willink, Department of Human Communications Studies. The stars of the panel were Stephanie James, Sarah Lonowski, and Haley Moore three students who, under the tutelage of Tate and Samson, had written qualitative projects.

The goal of the session was to shed light on the kinds of learning students experience in completing a commonly assigned paper in the Writing Programs research-based courses, a project in which students must conduct observations and/or interviews in order to come to their own conclusions about a subject. Students sometimes go on to write similar documents in courses like those taught in Sociology and Human Communications Studies, and the panel provided opportunities for attendees to see ways that skills students learned in research-based WRIT courses transfer to classes beyond the first year.

The panel began with the students descriptions of their qualitative projects. Haley Moore discussed her examination of the Brown Palaces afternoon tea ceremony, Stephanie James discussed her investigation into a bill banning lawsuits against the fast food industry, and Sarah Lonowski explained her exploration of the validity of a theory called the contact hypothesis, which postulates that contact between in-group and out-group members will increase positive perceptions from one group to the other. In each case, the students discussed the kinds of research they conducted observing a tea ceremony, interviewing a senator about a bill, conducting pre- and post-interviews with a student who volunteered at DUs Project Homeless Connect as well as the kinds of notes they took during their field experiences. They described the processes they undertook to take their projects from raw data toward finished, written reports that demonstrate not only what they had seen or experienced but also what findings they had discovered along the way.

Following students descriptions of their WRIT projects, Gordon and Willink described assignments they give to students in majors courses in Sociology and Human Communications Studies in which their students must use skills similar to those learned in their first-year WRIT classes. For example, Willink described a project in which her students must interview someone who has a stake in Columbus Day anyone from a representative of the Sons of Italy to a Native American. Later, each student must use the notes of another students interview with a different subject to see how a new perspective allows a wider view that their earlier, single interview could not provide.

The possible transfer from students experiences in WRIT 1133 and WRIT 1522 to classes with assignments such as these are clear. Given the theme of the transferability of writing skills from first-year writing courses to majors courses later in a student's college career, the session provided attendees plenty of opportunities to see other such links that might exist. When asked directly what skills seemed most transferable from her Honors course to later classes, Sarah Lonowski responded that it was helpful not only to conduct qualitative field research but that there seemed to be organizational similarities between the kinds of papers she wrote in WRIT 1522 and the kinds of papers she has been writing as a sophomore science major. Stephanie James, a clarinet performance major, said that she continues to use many of the secondary source skills she learned in WRIT 1133, as she often must write essays about the composers whose work she performs.

Interestingly, the students and professors seemed to agree about the nature of how such research projects might best develop. In response to an audience question regarding how one might go from gathering data to writing an actual report, Moore responded that it wasnt until after shed observed the Brown Palace tea ceremony that she began to see what particular questions her paper might attempt to address. Gordon and Willink agreed that, in fact, this kind of discovery is common not only for students writing such assignments but for them in their own research as well.

These kinds of connections permeated the discussion and left attendees with a sense of many of the intended and unintended kinds of writing transfer possible in a program of this sort.

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