Writing in economics: An intro to micro experiment using writing experience
Bad writing skills are a generalized phenomenon in Higher Ed, and the issue has been captured by many professional publications. For example, WSJ, March 3, 2011, Students Struggle for Words: Business Schools Put More Emphasis on Writing amid Employer Complaints; or The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, February 10, 2012, No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can’t Write: Students don’t write well and professors don’t want to help them.
Good writing skills are crucial for obtaining a good and rewarding job or attending graduate school. We seem to be confronting a vicious cycle: employers and faculty members grumble about the lack of writing skills, but when asking undergraduates if their professors take the time to provide constructive criticism to improve their writing skills the answer, in general, is No! Faculty members, in general, list time and class size as their biggest impediments for not introducing writing assignments in their courses. As in many other areas, technology is ready to provide solutions to our problems. We should stand ready to at least understand the new opportunities available, if anything, because students in classes that use extensive technology tend to outperform those that use little technology (Sosin, Lecha, Agarwal, Barlett, and Daniels, 2004). [2]
Several platforms are emerging targeting writing within specific disciplines. Contrary to one-size fits all approaches, these platforms create an environment that facilitates the development of writing skills within a discipline. One such platform within the Economics discipline is Write Experience (WE). WE is an online writing platform targeting college level students with the goal of assessing their communication skills, while integrating the write-revise-write model. WE offers two features: 1- it accurately scores student writing in a short amount of time (timely feedback), and 2-it provides revisions goals and feedback to improve their writing skills (write-revise-write). This paper reports results from using WE in an Intro to Micro setting.