UMass Lowell's First Year Writing Program

When so much information is available for free on the web, why require a handbook in college writing courses?

Our custom handbook, A Writer’s Reference for UMass Lowell, provides

1. Information about our program. Our outcomes, our Writing Center, and our institutional culture are discussed in the first section. Students do not get this information at orientation, so the handbook is an important introduction to these resources.  Having the information in one place is also helpful for new faculty and for adjuncts who teach in many institutions
2. A physical representation and location for college writing.
   1. Students can save the book and use it as a mnemonic device for remembering what they learned. This can help them transfer their knowledge of citation, sentence style, and format to new contexts in other courses. It reinforces transfer of skills from class to class and discipline to discipline.
   2. Faculty in other disciplines use it to signal to students that their expectations are related to the material they learned in college writing. This signal allows instructors to expect excellence in writing from their students and alleviates the burden many feel of having to teach writing all over again to their students. History and Education use this handbook even at the graduate level in many classes.
3. Practice using a reference book. Part of our goal for CW I and CW II students is independent learning/reliance on self to “find the answers” when needed. This text is that reference, and it’s much more user friendly than Purdue OWL at times.
4. Support for the interdisciplinary nature of our course. Various genres, formats, and conventions are represented and equally valued in the book. [This initiative is something that the University community can see regarding what the First-Year Writing Program does, and how what we teach contributes to the University (and each discipline as a whole) beyond required CW I and CW II classes.