The ability of undergraduate students to write for scholarly audiences is contingent upon their capacity to recognize that scholarship is a kind of conversation. For a student, writing an academic book review is a near ideal yet generally underutilized opportunity to learn this lesson. Through analysis of previously published book reviews…

The difficult nature of reporting accurately and objectively on religion, coupled with world events and discrimination against Muslims, motivated a pilot course called "Reporting on Islam." The activity detailed in this article addressed two issues--improving the coverage of religion, specifically Islam, in the news media and using communication…

Whenever the author teaches English 102, a research-focused, second-semester composition course, at least one student asks her whether or not she "allows" Wikipedia. She then redesigned her course to leverage Wikipedia as a source of inquiry. In other words, she "allows" Wikipedia, but through the Wikipedia project, which is designed to address…

Twitter, Google Docs and their cousins shrink the spaces between cultures even as they expand the reach of a typical classroom. How can a teacher use them to promote social justice? In Sarah Brown Wessling's English class, students are about to give Little Red Riding Hood a makeover. For weeks, her students at Johnston High School in Johnston,…

The seven Favorite Assignments featured in this article were originally presented at the 2010 ABC Annual Convention, Chicago, Illinois. The reader can consider a variety of learning objectives from team building to persuasion, application of electronic media to face-to-face communication, and much more. Some Favorite Assignments take a full…

Many history professors have been reluctant to authorize students to use Wikipedia in their classwork because they do not fully trust the open source encyclopedia. But as increasing numbers of scholars and teachers work with Wikipedia, its influence becomes undeniable. In this article, the author describes how Wikipedia works and how she made…