Informal Writing Survey

Informal Writing Survey
1. What do you, as a history faculty member, see as the biggest and most frequently observed problem with student writing?

2. Are there any specific resources, print or online, to which you often refer students experiencing difficulty with their writing or those who have questions about writing?

3. Do you think that an introductory class for history majors, like English 199 for that major, would be helpful in solving writing problems? Why or why not?

4. Have you noticed significant changes in the field of historical writing during your career? If so, what were they?

5. What do you regard as the central tenets of historical writing?

6. Do you think that student writing in this field has increased or declined in quality during your career? Why?

7. In the future, do you anticipate the incorporation of more technology, through newsgroups, graphics, and the like, into the teaching of historical writing? In what way? Do you feel such a change would be beneficial?

8. Do you think that teaching in a multimedia classroom, such as Ryland 215, would affect how you discuss the role of writing? If so, how so?

9. Finally, if you have any other comments that you'd like to make, please do so here.

Note: The above survey questions were distributed to all UR history faculty in November, 1998.

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