UDL English Composition

Composition, UDL, and Student Outcomes

Each writer is unique, and every writing situation will carry different expectations.  As writers, we continually choose how and when to apply past lessons from English courses to the present writing situation.  Sometimes, you have to break the "rules" you've been taught in order to meet the rules of the moment, and other times you have to carefully follow "traditional" rules that may seem confusing or even archaic.

I'm preparing this site as I teach my composition students at Heartland Community College. As a writing teacher, my goal is to help each student better understand the "rules" of classroom writing so that you can be more successful in your research papers, presentations, and other forms of academic communication.  My hope is to make the process of writing more accessible by showing not only the things you "should" do, but by also explaining the reasons and process behind producing a successful work of writing.

About the Site: Information about Composition, Universal Design for Learning, and Ryan Edel.

Teaching Tools: Resources for bringing together Technology and UDL Best Practices into your classroom.

Lesson Plans: Projects and Lesson plans to help students build their skills over the course of a semester.

My UDL Journey: Some notes about teaching and writing that might help better explain my progression as a teacher.

Writing Process (Coming Soon!): An in-depth guide the process of writing and composition, from research to the final paper.

Academic Integrity (In Progress!): Ensuring that our students are submitting original work is key to learning.

Genres of Writing (Coming Soon!): A discussion of the categories of communication and the conventions that define them.

Rhetoric (Coming Soon!): An overview of key concepts in rhetoric and the rhetorical modes.

Multimodal Tools (Coming Soon!): Technologies and tutorials for producing images, soundtracks, and videos in a variety of genres.

Grammar and Style (Coming Soon!): Information about the grammar, style, and formatting requirements for academic and professional writing.

This website is not intended to "fight bad habits" or to "make students study more."  Instead, I want to shift student perspectives to help individual writers better prioritize their time.  In reality, we all have "bad" habits when we write, and none of us actually spend "enough" time writing.  Even with a Ph.D. in English Studies and ten years of teaching experience, my own writing continues to fall short of what I "want" to communicate.  But by breaking down the steps needed to organize and then write a paper, anyone can learn to write a thoughtful and successful paper for a given course.

My goal is to help each student see the available resources, consider their individual strengths, and then choose how and when to best apply research and writing resources to meet their own skills and expectations.