How can I avoid getting lousy student writing?

One of the most common complaints we hear from faculty across campus is that they cannot assign formal writing in their classes because students turn in such badly flawed drafts. When we begin asking questions about the assignments, however, we usually discover that faculty have missed three key opportunities to ensure that they get better writing from students.

• Spell out key criteria
• Give out models of good documents
• Require peer review
• Teacher commentary