Research on Writing Conducted in PSY 3001W

[Mark Stellmack]

Since 2005, in our PSY 3001W Intro to Research Methods course, my collaborators and I have developed grading rubrics for student writing, assessed the reliability and validity of those rubrics, and conducted research on various strategies for teaching writing.  Some of the research has been published but some of it has yielded non-significant results and remains unpublished.  I am making the research available because many of the strategies may seem like obvious techniques for improving student writing but, in many cases, we failed to show significant effects.

A summary of our writing research is available at the web site shown below.  Early pages of the document contain a brief overview of all of the research and more detailed descriptions can be found in later pages to accommodate the interest levels of different readers.

I would be happy to discuss any of these materials and/or provide more details.

The research summary is available near the bottom of the following web page:

http://www.psych.umn.edu/psylabs/acoustic/rubrics.htm