University Writing

Resources || University Writing

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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Tagged Entries: Multimodal Communication

Accessibility and Writing

As you write and communicate with others, it is important that you consider accessibility, or the ability for diverse audiences to engage with your writing. The commitment to accessible and inclusive practice is ongoing and demands recursive critical reflection, education, and feedback, but we hope these resources get you beginning to think about diverse readers and audiences for your work. 

Materials designed by Christopher Basgier, Katharine Brown, Amy Cicchino, and Layli Miron. 

This guide articulates University Writing's practices for accessibility and inclusivity. We use this guide for internal training within our program

This handout guides discussion facilitators in enacting inclusive practices like inclusive introductions, rapport building, and strategies for encouraging conversation

This handout helps mentors learn how to build mentor-mentee relationships that take account of meaningful differences across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual identity, and academic major 

 

This handout helps writers create accessible Word and PDF documents with an emphasis on visibility, audibility, and mobility  

 

This checklist helps you evaluate the accessibility of a specific form of digital writing, ePortfolio websites, by reviewing the accessibility of your content and digital design.

Delivering Oral Presentations and Visual Design

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 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 

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 

ePortfolios: Using ePortfolios in your Course

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 

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  

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