New outcomes from CEL’s Writing Transfer Research Seminar 

The Center for Engaged Learning’s 2011-13 Elon University Research Seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer facilitated multi-institutional research. Forty participants collaborated on the study of writing transfer at critical transitions and continue to produce new outcomes.

Two participant publications have been recognized with national awards:

• Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies was the winner of the 2016 Council of Writing Program Administrators Special Award for Outstanding Scholarship. This book was edited by seminar participants Linda Adler-Kassner of University of California, Santa Barbara and Elizabeth Wardle of University of Central Florida along with thirty-one other contributors, 3 of whom were also seminar participants. “I recommend this book to librarians as well as to faculty right across the disciplines. It packs a lot of knowledge about writing into a small but rich package. It also might provide librarians with a model for how to talk to our non-librarian colleagues about the big ideas we all hope students will grasp without reducing them to a checklist to be covered in library sessions.” – Inside Higher Ed​
• Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing won both the 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication Research Impact Award and the 2016 CWPA Best Book Award. This book was authored by seminar participants Kathleen Blake Yancey of Florida State University, Liane Robertson of William Paterson University, and Kara Taczak of University of Denver. 

In addition to these books, Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer, edited by Jessie L. Moore (Elon University) and Chris Anson (N.C. State University) and featuring work from the seminar, was published in an open-access version this summer, with a print version coming in January from the University Press of Colorado. Further, this January an additional collection edited by Moore and Randy Bass (Georgetown University) will be released: Understanding Writing Transfer: Implications for Transformative Student Learning in Higher Education. The seminar’s project showcase lists other updates on participants’ publications and presentations related to their seminar projects.

The research seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer is one example of the Center for Engaged Learning’s efforts to bring together international leaders in higher education to develop and to synthesize rigorous research on central questions about student learning. The Center fosters investigations of engaged learning and high-impact educational practices; hosts multi-institutional research and practice-based initiatives, conferences, and seminars; and shares related resources for faculty and faculty developers on high-impact practices for engaged learning.

Requests for more information and any questions about the Center for Engaged Learning should be directed to Jessie L. Moore at centerforengagedlearning@elon.edu.