Report on Student Interest in Advanced Writing Courses
Students who have taken PWR 1 and PWR 2 often ask their instructors about the next step: what options are there for people who wish to pursue advanced work in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford?
To address this need, the Program in Writing and Rhetoric will offer four advanced courses in the 2011-12 academic year (learn more about these offerings on the PWR Advanced Courses page). In addition, PWR is developing a proposal for a Writing and Rhetoric track or designation in writing mastery, so that students will be recognized for the skills and knowledge they gain through their advanced course work.
To assess the potential demand for advanced courses in PWR and in order to make informed decisions about course offerings and the design of the proposed track or designation (the exact term to be used is still under discussion), PWR sent a survey to the 2703 students who took PWR 1 or PWR 2 in the 2010-11 academic year.
We had a very high response rate: 1254 students completed the survey, a response rate of 46% (the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that for over-surveyed undergraduates, "a response rate of 20% is decent"). This high response rate gives us confidence that our results are representative of Stanford undergraduates and not a reflection of a self-selecting minority.
Key Findings
How interested are Stanford undergraduates in advanced PWR courses? A majority (51%) of respondents expressed moderate or strong interest in advanced PWR courses.
One third of the respondents expressed low (21%) or no (12%) interest in advanced PWR courses. Another 15% described themselves as "unsure" of their level of interest. Full breakdown of responses is depicted below:
Although we were aware of some interest in advanced PWR courses, this result exceeded our expectations. We anticipated that a solid minority of students would be interested in advanced PWR courses, and were surprised that a majority reported interest.
Would the possibility of earning something like a designation or documentation of writing mastery affect a student's decision to enroll in an advanced PWR course? A large majority (74%) of respondents said that the possibility of such a designation would make it more likely (53%) or much more likely (21%) that they would enroll in an advanced PWR course, indicating that the possibility of earning a credential of this type is an important part of enrollment decision-making.
This result did not surprise us. We anticipated that Stanford students interested in advanced work in Writing and Rhetoric would prefer to follow a coherent course of study resulting in a designation.
What kinds of advanced PWR course would be most interesting or valuable for Stanford undergraduates? In two open-ended questions, we asked students to describe the kinds of courses they would like to see.
As predicted, the response rate was much lower when students were asked to type in answers to open-ended questions. Approximately 10% of respondents took the time to write descriptions, often detailed, of advanced PWR courses they would like to see offered.
These responses were diverse, reflecting the full range of intellectual interests of students at Stanford. Nonetheless, clear patterns emerged. Keywords associated with science, technology, and medicine were most common, followed closely by keywords associated with popular culture (particularly online media, film & tv, music, and sports). A large number of students indicated an interest in politics (including international relations), as well as in entrepreneurship, innovation, economics, and business. Many were interested in areas related to the humanities, from the arts to studies of diversity and identity.
Students also indicated interests in specific kinds of writing and communication. Although many students mentioned a desire to produce creative or reflective work, keywords related to academic research writing and analysis were most common: students expressed a desire to learn to write proposals, grants, journal articles, and advanced forms of academic discourse. Also prominent was a desire to communicate advanced ideas to the general public or a popular audience. Finally, students showed a strong awareness of the need to communicate in a global environment, and frequently used words such as "cross-cultural," "global," and "multilingual."
The "Wordle" below is a representation of the most commonly occurring keywords in the open-ended section of the PWR survey.
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