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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In order to effectively share our research findings with others, we must be able to deliver presentations clearly and impactfully. These resources include tips about oral and visual communication as well as visual design principles that will help engage and inform your audience.
Materials designed by Colby Axelberd, Christopher Basgier, Katharine H. Brown, Amy Cicchino, Carly Cummings, Megan Haskins, Layli Miron, Annie Small, Heather Stuart, and Parker Wade
This brief handout outlines elements of oral communication
Once you have a draft of your oral presentation, this peer review worksheet can help you self-assess or get feedback
This handout will help you decide the best way to visually represent your data
This handout introduces you to four principles for visual design: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity
This worksheet is meant to help you put together a presentation. It has been designed for students in aerospace engineering
Designing Presentations in Aerospace Engineering Worksheet Word Document
Designing Presentations in Aerospace Engineering Worksheet PDF
This handout will introduce you to scientific posters and analyze example posters
This worksheet will help you self-assess a draft of your scientific poster or gather feedback from a peer
This worksheet is designed to help you articulate how you “see” visible materials and what you expect students to do with visible materials in your courses
This document outlines ways of managing nonverbal mechanics, including the upper and lower body, with attention to accessibility for speakers with disabilities
Whether they’re high stakes or low stakes, writing assignments are more effective when faculty articulate clear expectations, explain necessary steps, detail the rhetorical situation (i.e., audience, purpose, and genre), and name criteria for evaluation. Such assignments set students up for success by leaving the guesswork out of assignment basics so they can focus on more substantive matters such as analysis, evidence, and working with sources. Use the resources below to design writing assignments with these features in mind. After you’ve designed your writing assignment, check out our section on scaffolding assignments and writing-to-learn assignments
Materials designed by Christopher Basgier, Amy Cicchino, and Amber Simpson
Faculty who want to integrate writing into their courses can use high stakes assignments, low stakes assignments, or some combination of each. This handout defines each kind of writing and explains how you might integrate it into your course
This handout introduces you to effective writing assignment design using principles from transparent assignment design and The Meaningful Writing Project
Once you have a draft of your assignment sheet, you can use this self-assessment worksheet to reflect on how well your assignment is achieving the principles in the handout above
Once you have a draft of your assignment sheet, you can work with a colleague in your department or institution and use this peer assignment worksheet to get feedback on how well your assignment is achieving the principles in the handout above
Refresh your writing assignment by asking students to address a new audience, purpose, genre, or medium of communication as they explain their knowledge of content. This handout will explain what it means to create a new rhetorical situation for your assignment
Revising Assignments for New Rhetorical Situations Handout Word Document
Revising Assignments for New Rhetorical Situations Handout PDF
This worksheet will help you compare the existing and redesigned assignment across elements of the rhetorical situation, like audience, purpose, genre, language, organization, and content. While not every rhetorical element needs to change in your redesign process, you should reflect on how changes need to influence scaffolding activities and evaluation criteria
Revising Assignments for New Rhetorical Situation Worksheet Word Document
Revising Assignments for New Rhetorical Situation Worksheet PDF
This handout will help you think through the process of converting an online multiple choice test into a writing assignment
Ditching Multiple Choice: Reasons to Design Writing-Base Assessments Handout Word Document
Ditching Multiple Choice: Reasons to Design Writing-Base Assessments Handout PDF
This handout provides an overview of different kinds of rubrics you might want to use, as well as ways of describing performance levels. It also includes advice for developing a successful rubric
Emails can be tricky to write because they are a professional form of communication that demand concise, careful wording. The resources below will help you learn about emails, gain tips for writing effective professional emails, and avoid common email pitfalls.
Materials designed by Amy Cicchino, Tricia Dozier, Megan Haskins, Layli Miron, Annie Small, and Heather Stuart
This brief handout offers tips for considering your audience as you craft professional emails
This quick checklist is an easy reference as you are preparing professional emails
This worksheet guides you in analyzing example emails written in challenging contexts
This worksheet contains two sample emails that are effective and professional
This worksheet will help you consider the rhetorical situation as you draft a mock professional email
This worksheet will help you rewrite three example thank you letters
Before you publish, use these resources to review and revise your ePortfolio.
Materials designed by Amy Cicchino, Heather Stuart, and Savannah Harrison
Once you have completed a draft of your ePortfolio, this worksheet can help you get feedback from professors, mentors, supervisors, family members, or peers
This worksheet can guide students in a peer review activity as they offer each other feedback on their ePortfolios
This checklist will help you self-assess whether additional changes need to be made to your ePortfolio before it is published
This checklist helps you evaluate the accessibility of your ePortfolio site by reviewing your content and digital design.
To conduct human-based research, you need approval from Auburn’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). These resources will help you learn about IRB applications and offer tips for creating clear, effective IRB materials.
Materials designed by Lucus Adelino, Christopher Basgier, Amy Cicchino, and Niki Johnson
This handout will define terms that appear in the IRB application form.
Writing a successful IRB protocol is more than just filling out the form; it requires dutiful attention to your audience and your purpose. This handout has tips to help you write your IRB protocols more effectively
These practice worksheets help you review and give feedback on a sample IRB scenario. By analyzing these samples, we hope you learn strategies for writing and revising your own application and protocols
2018 Responding to a Practice IRB Application Scenario Word Document
2021 Responding to a Practice IRB Application Scenario Word Document
This worksheet will help you give feedback to someone else’s IRB protocol
Learn more about Auburn’s IRB by visiting their website, which contains guidelines, application forms, sample information letters and consent documents, and more.
Peer review can be an effective means for engaging students in writing projects. In peer review, students give one another feedback on a draft of a writing project, or a portion of a writing project, using a set of clear criteria as a guide.
Materials designed by Christopher Basgier, Amy Cicchino, and Amber Simpson
This handout will introduce you to peer review and help you learn how to develop a successful peer review for your course
This handout will help you articulate the role of peer review in your course, both for yourself and for your students. This page includes a set of questions about the role of peer review in your course, and the reverse describes the elements of effective peer feedback
This resource will help you facilitate a successful peer review across four modalities: online (asynchronous), online (synchronous), hyflex, and in-person with safety protocols in place
This brief handout can communicate peer review guidelines to your students
Dr. Djibo Zanzot developed this writing-to-learn prompt and peer review protocol for his Honors Organismal Biology course
Your personal brand is a representation of your work that tells your professional story. Taking time to reflect on and develop your personal brand can help employers, review committees, and graduate schools know who you are, what you do, and what you value. The resources below will introduce you to personal brand and help you begin to develop a personal brand statement.
Materials designed by Amy Cicchino, Layli Miron, Megan Haskins, and Lauren Schlosser
This handout explains what personal brand is and why it matters
Once you’ve reviewed the Personal Brand Handout above, use this worksheet to help you begin drafting your personal brand statement
This handout moves to a larger scale, aiding in the creation of mission and vision statements focused towards student organizations
This worksheet helps faculty and staff consider their professional brand and develop a brand statement
Scaffolding is a means of breaking down assignments or tasks into manageable chunks in order to promote student learning and success. A well-scaffolded writing assignment should help students understand your expectations, learn course content, communicate with audiences, and write with a purpose in mind. These resources will help you develop scaffolding writing assignments in your course.
Materials designed by Travis Adams, Christopher Basgier, Margaret Marshall, Alyssa Pratt, and Djibo Zanzot
This handout details three approaches to scaffolding you might use in your course: checkpoints, parts of the whole, and upping the ante
This handout presents two example assignments aimed at evaluating students’ prior knowledge in a particular area. By determining prior knowledge, you can get a better idea of the support students will need as they complete future assignments related to content knowledge and writing in your course
This worksheet will help you identify and define a difficult concept, and then map different levels of understanding for that concept. You can use these definitions as a basis for crafting your effective assignments
This handout presents two activities that would help students in scaffolding a research paper. The first one focuses on breaking down the big goal in a series of small tasks so as to provide students with direction. The second one will help you map the syllabus timeline according to the learning required for assignment completion
This handout includes a range of writing assignments and activities you can ask students to complete in your course in order to promote their learning. Many of these assignments can have high stakes or low stakes versions
Writing-to-learn prompts can help you design writing prompts to reinforce content learning in your course. Be sure to check out our section on writing-to-learn.
Scientific posters communicate research in a visually engaging way and can be paired with an oral presentation or audience discussion. Posters can be designed for other experts in your field or for interdisciplinary or general audiences who are outside of your field. In either case, it’s important to critically consider your audience, purpose, content, and layout. Use the resources below to plan, draft, and assess your scientific poster.
Materials designed by Katharine H. Brown, Amy Cicchino, and Carly Cummings
This handout will introduce you to scientific posters and analyze example posters
This worksheet will help you self-assess a draft of your scientific poster or gather feedback from a peer
This section contains resources for getting started on your writing and revising your writing over time for effective organization, flow, transitions, and editing and proofreading.
Materials designed by Christopher Basgier, Jordan Beckum, Katharine Brown, Amy Cicchino, Souji Gopalakrishna Pillai, and James Truman
This worksheet helps you apply reading like a writer to your work by inviting you to examine written artifacts from a writerly perspective by paying attention to features like structure, key terms, signposting, and verb use
This handout offers strategies and techniques for generating and organizing writing ideas
This handout breaks down the writing concept of “flow” at the whole text, paragraph, and sentence level
This handout provides an overview of strategies that different writers have found helpful as they make global changes to their writing
This handout provides an overview of useful strategies for making global revisions to a manuscript and an action plan
This handout invites readers to compare an excerpt from a dissertation to an excerpt of the same material, rewritten for nonspecialist or "general" audiences
This worksheet invites writers to plan a piece of writing for a general audience by leading them through the elements of the rhetorical situation.
This handout provides an easy reference list of common transitional words and phrases
This handout explains the difference between proofing and revision processes
This worksheet will help you apply the paramedic method of editing to improve sentence-level clarity
This worksheet lets you practice applying editing and proofreading strategies to sample text through two activities
This handout suggests ways in which writers can practice critical thinking while using generative artificial intelligence
This worksheet invites users to plan the elements of a successful prompt for generative artificial intelligence
This worksheet allows you to consider how you will communicate your research in conference presentations and journal articles
This worksheet offers open-ended questions to identify ways to transform a conference presentation into a journal article. By using these questions, one can develop an editing plan and structure for the article
Writing an application for a Fulbright is a particular writing situation. To meet the expectations of this audience and context, you need to adjust your writing strategies based on the Fulbright organization and its mission. Written components include the Abstract, Host Country Engagement, Plans upon Return, Statement of Grant Purpose, and Personal Statement. If you would like additional information on the Fulbright process as an Auburn student, please contact the Honors College.
Materials designed by Amy Cicchino and Annie Small
Personal Statements
This handout provides an overview for the Fulbright personal statement
This brief handout has brainstorming questions to help you start your Fulbright personal statement draft
Brainstorming Questions: Fulbright Personal Statement Handout Word Document
Brainstorming Questions: Fulbright Personal Statement Handout PDF
This worksheet has open response questions that can help you consider your personal brand in your personal statement
Reflective Writing Prompts: Fulbright Personal Statement Handout Word Document
Reflective Writing Prompts: Fulbright Personal Statement Handout PDF
Once you have a draft, this worksheet will help you peer review or self-assess your personal statement to identify potential areas for revision
Statement of Grant Purpose
This handout provides an overview for the Fulbright Statement of Grant Purpose and includes prompts to help you begin your Statement of Grant Purpose draft
Once you have a draft, this worksheet will help you peer review or self-assess your Statement of Grant Purpose to identify potential areas for revision
Fulbright Statement of Grant Purpose Peer Review Worksheet Word Document
Fulbright Statement of Grant Purpose Peer Review Worksheet PDF
Open Responses
In addition to the formal written documents, Fulbright applicants have to complete three open response prompts: the abstract, host country engagement, and plans upon return. This handout provides an overview for these open responses and prompts to help you begin drafting them
Once you have a draft, this worksheet will help you peer review or self-assess your open response sections to identify potential areas for revision
Faculty interested in learning more about ePortfolios and learning should reach out to universitywriting@auburn.edu in addition to exploring the resources below. These resources can either be moved directly into your course as instructional material or will discuss teaching and feedback strategies for ePortfolios. In addition to these resources, we encourage you to visit AAEEBL’s Digital Ethics Principles for ePortfolios, which University Writing was active in creating.
Materials designed by Christopher Basgier, Amy Cicchino, Megan Haskins, Margaret Marshall, and Heather Stuart
This sample curriculum for a 15-week course introduces students to ePortfolios and Professional Brand. It includes a syllabus, course calendar, and ePortfolio assignment sheet
This handout will introduce your students to ePortfolios
This handout answers Frequently Asked Questions about ePortfolios your students might have
Use this quiz and analysis activity to help your students test and apply their growing knowledge of ePortfolios
Check Your Learning: ePortfolio Quiz and Analysis Activity Word Document
Check Your Learning: ePortfolio Quiz and Analysis Activity PDF
This handout has a list of low-stakes activities that can help you develop ePortfolio thinking in your courses
This worksheet will help you as a teacher reflect on what students are and are not doing in their ePortfolio reflective writing and identify appropriate next steps in adapting your pedagogy
Teaching Reflective Writing for the ePortfolio: Reflecting on your Pedagogy Activity Word Document
Teaching Reflective Writing for the ePortfolio: Reflecting on your Pedagogy Activity PDF
This scavenger hunt activity will take students through exploring an example ePortfolio and analyzing the choices the ePortfolio creator has made
This worksheet is designed to draw your students’ attention to the ways in which an ePortfolio is designed and arranged to tell a particular story to a specific audience
This worksheet can guide students in a peer review activity as they offer each other feedback on their ePortfolios
This checklist guides your students in evaluating the accessibility of their ePortfolio sites by reviewing content and digital design.
This worksheet helps ePortfolio creators move from peer review feedback to revision plans
This formative ePortfolio rubric can be used to help students self-assess where they are in the ePortfolio process as they create and refine their ePortfolios. You can also use this rubric to give them in-process feedback
This summative ePortfolio rubric can be used or adapted to evaluate student ePortfolios at the end of the ePortfolio creation process. We encourage you consider which competency level best fits your context for teaching and learning
We encourage you to respect your students as creators and authors by not using their ePortfolios in your teaching, marketing, or assessment procedures without their explicit permission. This is the form we’ve developed to retrieve and track student permission. This is not the same as IRB approval through your institution, which you will need to conduct research on students ePortfolios. This form can be personalized to include information about your department or program and completed by students for a record of ePortfolio permission
