How can we define the scope, nature, and function of writing today, especially when "writing" now includes oral, visual, multimedia, and technology-enriched or even technology-driven components? What can students articulate about their own development as writers, and how is this development related to success in and perhaps beyond college? How do students' extracurricular writing practices inform their academic writing practices, and development? What kinds of writing instruction and support for that instruction can best enable the development of writing abilities in college?
Over the coming months and years, our research team will be investigating these and other questions, using the methods described above. As we do so, we will be paying careful attention to the ways in which technologies support and shape writing and communication, as well as to how what we think of as "writing" is changing. We also hope to understand how writing for broad and diverse audiences and engaging in group or mass collaboration affect and characterize the writing our participants are doing once they completed their college careers.