How to Use this Page
Below are resources that University Writing has developed to support students and instructors across the disciplines in their writing and writing instruction. We define writing broadly, so you will find resources on ePortfolios, visual design, professional communication, and presentations in addition to traditional writing tasks like reflective writing, literature reviews, peer review, and editing and proofing.
Please use the keywords on the right-hand side of the page or the search bar above to navigate these resources. If you would like to use these resources in your course, please follow the Creative Commons information located at the bottom of each resource. If you plan to use the source in its original format, we ask that you leave the University Writing branding intact.
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A literature review is an evaluation of the available literature on a given subject. In literature reviews, you are synthesizing and analyzing research to tell a story about the work done about a topic and how it relates to present and future research. Use the resources below for guidance as your write your literature review.
Materials designed by Katharine Brown, Autumn Frederick, and Layli Miron
This worksheet helps you begin identifying scholarly conversations by analyzing an example literature review
This worksheet helps you analyze an example literature review to identify the storytelling elements being used
This worksheet parallels the moves a writer makes when creating a literature review with Freytag’s pyramid. It guides writers in outlining their own literature reviews by answering a series of brainstorming questions
Many styles of academic writing require synthesis, or the process of representing relationships among multiple sources, including patterns of similarity and contrast. These materials introduce synthesis, provide select examples, and offer strategies for identifying opportunities for synthesis in your current research project.
Materials designed by Christopher Basgier and Heather Stuart
This handout offers tools and examples for identifying synthesis strategies that writers use in different academic disciplines.
This worksheet is a synthesis matrix, designed to help you create and see connections across sources
As writers, we often draw on existing research and writing to support our arguments and frame our research. Citation styles help students, faculty, and scholars attribute and discuss existing research in a specific discipline. The resources below will introduce you to ethical source use and citation styles, including APA and MLA (two of the more common citation styles).
Materials designed by G. Travis Adams, Christopher Basgier, Amy Cicchino, Carly Cummings, Megan Haskins, Heather Stuart, and James Truman
This brief handout gives strategies and resources for two common citation styles, MLA and APA
This worksheet introduces you to the Chicago Style standard of writing and helps you practice paraphrasing and summarizing in Chicago
This handout explains how graduate student writing uses sources
This handout introduces you to research, summary, paraphrase, quotation, attribution, citation, and citation systems
This worksheet gets writers considering how to paraphrase and summarize a source
This worksheet will help you write an annotation for a source for an annotated bibliography
This resource provides detailed information on how to cite and write in APA style. Writers will learn how to organize their work and develop in-text and formal reference lists according to APA.
This handout introduces the idea of plagiarism and its various types. Further, it recommends strategies to faculty on how plagiarism can be avoided by using techniques such as timely peer review, feedback, and effective paraphrasing
This activity asks you to consider whether or not something is plagiarized
