This just in: most students either don’t have an opinion on, or like writing.
Reviewing the data retrieved from the surveys completed, (n=40), I was ultimately surprised to find very few negative responses. In general, people responded as they did above, reporting that they either felt positively or neutral about writing and HIP’s.
A more interesting comparison is found when contrasting the skews of reported attitudes towards Peer tutors, writing fellows, professional tutors, learning specialists, and peer review sessions:
As seen above, the most positive attitudes were reported being felt towards peer tutors, and peer-review sessions. The most neutral feelings were reported towards learning specialists, and writing fellows and professional tutors functioned similarly as equally neutral and positive feelings were reported. If I were to make a hypothesis about why the neutral feelings reported, I would state that when students have less experience with or information about a specific resource they report fewer definitive feelings and instead report neutral attitudes towards the resources.
Interestingly, stronger attitudes in both directions were reported when considering the content of assignment an one’s own willingness to write.
The data above demonstrates a variety of attitudes felt towards different qualities of prompts/writing assignments. Overall, the widest variety of attitudes were felt towards Major-related assignments. The most narrow attitudes reported were towards prompts related towards prior to knowledge- where most of the responses reported positive attitudes. The most neutral attitudes were felt towards assignments regarding new information. Interestingly, a fairly equal distribution can be noted when contrasting open-ended and specific prompts, where similar percentages feel positively and negatively towards either one. This demonstrates a potential divide (though overlap would need to be analyzed) of students who prefer open ended and specific prompts.
Finally, 64% of students reported feeling positively towards online guides/resources. Deducing from my sample informs me that the majority of ENG110 students would likely find the resources I’m creating useful.
