Workshops - Writing Center Consortium for Graduate-level Professional Military Education
Faculty Workshop Series
By faculty and for faculty, this annual multi-week series of hands-on workshops hosted by the WCCG offers an opportunity to share practices that improve student writing outcomes.
See "Current Workshops" for the latest information on the WCCG Faculty Workshop Series, and view our archive for workshop descriptions and materials from past seasons.
Current Workshops
The 2024 Faculty Workshop Series has concluded; check back in winter for the 2025 lineup!
Past Sessions
2024
Presenter
Jeffrey Turner, formerly with National Defense University
Slides and Handout
Workshop Description
While writing pedagogy often emphasizes writing as a social event and military writing most often occurs as part of a staff effort, there is very little discussion on collaborative writing best practices. This workshop will discuss and engage in team and collaborative writing practices for research and analytic writing, providing tools and handouts for faculty members working with student and faculty writers.
There is no preparatory or prerequisite work. All attendees should be prepared to engage in small group discussion and production of research writing as part of a small writing team. Participants will take away ways of thinking and engaging in collaborative writing, but attendees will also have specific tools to modify for their own classroom purposes.
Presenter
Dr. Lucie Moussu, Royal Military College, lucie.moussu@rmc-cmr.ca
Slides / Diapositives and Video
- Slides (English)
- Diapositives (Français)
- For a link to this workshop's video, please contact the workshop instructor directly or email writingcenter@nps.edu.
Workshop Description
Post-secondary institutions are entering a deeply transformative era with the advent of Generative AI (GenAI). This workshop will delve into the possible uses of GenAI in reshaping course development processes, including the design of syllabi, assignments, activities, and assessments.
This workshop will explore how this technology can simplify course creation, foster innovative teaching approaches, enhance student engagement, and encourage ethical and effective uses of GenAI. Participants will gain hands-on experience with AI tools and learn strategies to prepare students for a future where AI will be an integral part of their lives.
Related Resources
- Tips and ideas for writing GenAI prompts (OpenAI)
- Guidance on GenAI attribution and transparency (NPS)
Slides: PDF
Presenter
Chloe Woida (contractor), Naval Postgraduate School, writingcenter@nps.edu
Workshop Description
In the aftermath of ChatGPT's launch, AI literacy has emerged as a desired learning outcome for students and a critical capability for educators. It is widely accepted that AI will become critical for maintaining military advantage—but what continuities exist between interactions with mass-accessible AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT and Bing) and anticipated military AI applications in the near future? How can faculty and learning communities foster development of essential AI capabilities among technical and non-technical personnel alike?
This workshop will explore existing frameworks defining AI literacy in military and higher education contexts and map where they connect and diverge. Participants will further consider and discuss how course policies, activities, and assignments can foster students' AI literacy and prepare them for the challenges of the future.
Presenter
Rachelle Kamrath, Marine Corps University, rachelle.kamrath@usmcu.edu
Slides: PPT
Workshop Description
Effective oral communication is a prioritized skill in military leadership. Faculty stress the importance of oral communication proficiency and students are eager to improve. However, assignments to sharpen oral communication skills are often poorly designed with misguided expectations, complicated assessment rubrics, and scarce instruction on best practices. Consequently, students show little improvement in this area. Leadership may look to communication centers to develop oral communication assignments beyond simply requiring a presentation in lieu of a paper.
This workshop will unpack how PME can meet its oral communication objectives through an intentional assignment design suited for improving oral communication skills. It will offer well-practiced methods of oral communication instruction and discuss the overall benefits for students, the PME curriculum, and communication support centers in PME.
Slides: PPT
Presenter
Colette O'Connor (contractor), Naval Postgraduate School, writingcenter@nps.edu
Workshop Description
Often mistaken for what it is not—a preface, an introduction—the executive summary is an art unto itself: it's a mini-me version of a project or study that includes all of its elements, from research question to recommendations. From a project's summary to its findings, methods to conclusions, executive summaries should make research shine in a way that is clear, brief, and bold.
This interactive workshop will introduce participants to the unique character of executive summaries and explore how executive summaries can be written in a way that best represents authors' work to their community of practice. Faculty participants will come away with strategies on how they can craft effective executive summaries and teach their students to do the same.
Presenter
Carolyn Stoermer (contractor), Air Force Institute of Technology
Slides: PPT
Workshop Description
As generative AI enters more and more spaces, legitimate concerns hover, including how overreliance on this authoritative-sounding technology may diminish students’ capacity to think critically about what they read and write. In this workshop, participants will learn how strategic incorporation of AI into classroom writing activities can, in fact, provide new and effective ways to teach critical thinking. By enlisting the power of AI, we can simultaneously help students become better thinkers and more informed, thoughtful users of technologies like ChatGPT and Google Bard.
This workshop will provide collaborative review of a case study activity from a technical communication course at AFIT, discuss lessons learned, and identify best practices for employing AI to teach students how to use AI more critically and authentically. Participants will explore how they might build upon this case to experiment with generative AI use in their own teaching.
2023
Presenter
Jeffrey Turner, National Defense University
Workshop Description
Rubrics are critical for measuring student achievement, particularly as the new era of JPME Outcomes-Based Military Education unfolds, yet writing as a product and process requires nuance, whether it is for scaffolded assignments or assignments with multiple deliverables. Well-thought-out rubrics facilitate student learning by aligning the writing content with the assignment design and delineate a clear path of progress for students. Clarity and consistency of rubrics within a curriculum focuses faculty expectations and improves faculty feedback.
This workshop examines three facets of writing-rubric development: criteria, scaling, and process. It uses models of rubrics to highlight key features of each facet. Faculty will apply those lessons to their own rubrics, sharing and revising their rubrics within the workshop group.
Slides
Presenter
Dr. Abram Trosky, Army War College, abram.trosky@armywarcollege.edu
Workshop Description
The U.S. Army War College (USAWC)'s "Carlisle Experience" is characterized by a team-taught, dialogue-driven seminar learning environment that promotes strategic thinking and communication through critical reading, listening, and evidence-based argumentation. Typically, seminar norms build the requisite trust, respect, and rapport to not only challenge classmates' arguments and assumptions but to give and seek candid critique and feedback on their positions or products.
This workshop explores (sub)cultural, institutional, and cognitive sources of resistance to these positive group-learning behaviors and offers resources and strategies to help overcome them. Participants receive products developed by USAWC's Applied Communication & Learning Laboratory that facilitate faculty development in Socratic dialogue and student-led seminar norming and structure both self-editing and peer feedback on written and oral communication. The workshop concludes with participants sharing challenges to collaboration or critique, approaches they've discussed or attempted, and how these might be adapted at peer institutions.
Slides and Handouts
Presenters
Nicole Cox, National Defense University, nicole.d.cox.ctr@ndu.edu
Andrea Hamlen, Marine Corps University, andrea.hamlen@usmcu.edu
Workshop Description
Students are aware that the work they produce in academic institutions is meant to exhibit analytical thought—their course objectives and assignment prompts tell them so. However, they often struggle to move from summary to analysis, even after receiving faculty feedback.
This workshop takes a two-pronged approach to exploring how we can help our students improve their analytical abilities both inside and outside of the classroom. First, we'll share feedback strategies to help faculty elicit stronger analysis from students during the drafting and revision process. Then, we'll discuss how analytical awareness offers transferable skills for students' professional lives.
The workshop includes recent scholarship on types of feedback that foster analytical thinking and shares examples of feedback that participants will critique. Participants are encouraged to bring samples of their own feedback to discuss.
Presenters
Dr. Sandra Leavitt, Naval Postgraduate School, srleavit@nps.edu
Ali Rodgers, Naval Postgraduate School, arodgers@nps.edu
Workshop Description
Instructors tend to mistakenly expect their students to intuitively understand and articulate the significance of the topics they're studying and to relate new knowledge to their personal and professional experiences. Students often struggle with these tasks, which must be taught and practiced. Leveraging the science of learning and cognition, faculty can guide students to deeper levels of thought and understanding by helping them write about meaningful connections between their military experiences and academic knowledge.
Participants will learn how creating opportunities to explore relevance and practice application encourages motivation, fosters self-directed intentional learners, and develops better problem solvers. We'll explore strategies and activities where students can build skills to write cogent problem and purpose statements, powerful significance sections, and insightful conclusions—tasks they need to master for graduate work and leadership positions.
Presenters
Dr. May Chung, National Defense University, may.f.chung@ndu.edu
Lily Lewis, National Defense University, lily.k.lewis.ctr@ndu.edu
Rick Allen, National Defense University, richard.w.allen.ctr@ndu.edu
Workshop Description
Many foreign military students in PME programs are completing their first academic course in English, yet the faculty grading their written work may have limited experience teaching nonnative speakers. For these faculty, developing a working knowledge of applied linguistics can help by increasing their understanding of how language is used in different contexts and suggesting ways to capitalize on students' native languages in their research and writing.
In this workshop, participants will learn to assess international student writing using an applied linguistics approach. They will gain a better understanding of language and cultural patterns that influence student writing in academic English, which will help them hone their ability to distinguish linguistic transference from other communication mishaps. The session also presents insights and practical tips for responding to writers from a linguistics strengths-based approach.
Presenter
Stase Wells, Marine Corps University, stase.wells@usmcu.edu
Workshop Description
Interdisciplinary research suggests that relationship building is a key factor in students' academic achievement. Yet there is a gap in research on faculty assessment in joint professional military education institutions as it pertains to faculty-student interpersonal relationship building, or the "winning hearts and minds" approach to learning.
Through discussion, self-reflection, and problem-based case-method activities, participants will explore the impacts of interpersonal relationship building on students' academic achievement.
The instructor will share a progress update on a pilot course at Marine Corps University's Leadership Communication Skills Center designed to empower international military students to improve English language skills through relationship building. Participants will come away with strategies for fostering relationship building with their students.
Presenter
Jeffrey Turner, National Defense University
Workshop Description
This workshop introduces attendees to typified DOD executive writing forms and processes. Attendees will consider how knowledge and thinking processes in the academy transfer to executive writing forms. Attendees will engage in a writing exercise to understand the genres of both the classroom and the Esuite.
Slides and Handouts
Presenter
Meg Varney, Air University, megan.varney@au.af.edu
Workshop Description
In this interactive workshop, participants engaged with strategies to enhance student participation and critical thinking. Although the session focused on discussion-based applications, each strategy includes considerations for research and writing.
Handouts
2021
Presenter
Kate Egerton (contractor), Naval Postgraduate School, writingcenter@nps.edu
Workshop Description
Participants reflected on their goals for student writing and then paired those goals with effective and efficient feedback practices.
Slides and Handouts
Presenters
Jeffrey Turner, National Defense University
Andrea Hamlen, U.S. Marine Corps University, andrea.hamlen@usmcu.edu
Workshop Description
Participants revised and further developed their writing assignments in ways that lead to improved student response quality.
Presenter
Stase Wells, U.S. Marine Corps University, stase.wells@usmcu.edu
Workshop Description
Participants confronted previously held beliefs about the brain—neuromyths—and identified the impacts that neuromyths have on the ways in which we approach our work with international writers.
To request materials from this presentation or to request a similar workshop at your institution, please email stase.wells@usmcu.edu.
Presenter
Megan Varney, Air War College, megan.varney@au.af.edu
Workshop Description
Participants explored the ways that a writing-center approach for assessing international student writing can be implemented across disciplines to benefit students and faculty alike.
Presenter
Abram Trosky, Army War College, abram.trosky@armywarcollege.edu
Workshop Description
Participants discussed holistic strategies for feedback to facilitate a draft process that incorporates self and peer editing. They used checklists and activities as tools to implement changes.
Presenter
Sandra Leavitt, Naval Postgraduate School, srleavit@nps.edu
Workshop Description
Participants learned best practices for note-taking to share with their students and built a note-taking template for their students to use when reading for class or research.
Slides and Handouts
Presenter
Kevin Eubanks, Naval War College, kevin.eubanks@usnwc.edu
Workshop Description
Participants discovered how acquiring the language and discourse of research-based academic writing is not at all unlike learning one's way into a foreign language.
