"Using MyWritingLab in Composition Classes."

Recorded by Cheryl Hogue-Smith
NADE Conference on February 23, 2012


Cheryl Hogue-Smith teaches at Kingsbourgh Community College, City College of New York. Her podcast is about her use of MyWritingLab in her composition classes. In a twelve-week semester, she assigns her students ten modules covering the common issues in writing, including subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, comma splices, commas, etc. She uses this in both her developmental and degree-level composition courses. She also uses the modules dealing with writing summaries, conducting research, and other non-grammar topics. Students must complete one module per week. She uses the students' scores on the modules as five percent of the total course grade.

In the upcoming semester, she is making a slight adjustment. In addition to the required modules, she is also requiring students who have specific identified problems in their writing to complete the appropriate module. For example, if a student struggles with apostrophes, that student will complete the apostrophes module in MyWritingLab, complete and print the mastery assessment for the module, identify the area of concern in their writing, and then submit all of that work with their final draft. She hopes that this will make students more accountable for actual mastery. The student must show mastery not only in MyWritingLab but in the actual work being submitted for the course. She will also make use of MyArtsLab because her composition course is linked to an art history course. The same population of students will access MyWritingLab and MyArtsLab during the same semester.

The great benefit she finds in using MyWritingLab is because she feels it works. In just twelve weeks, she does not find that she has much time to focus on grammar. MyWritingLab usage among her students has led to a significantly lower number of grammatical errors in her students' writing. She can also use the program as supplemental instruction beyond what she does in the class. She cannot point to a specific reason why MyWritingLab works for her students, but she is quite pleased at how well it does work.