Intellectual Creativity in First-Year Composition Classes

This book has helped me reconnect with what it means to go beyond the multigenre project and into a mindset where growing writers out of authentic experiences helps them find their best writing selves. It is a testament to what happens when we practice what we know is true: extending choice, authenticity, and purpose is extending a promise to our students that we care. -- Sarah Brown Wessling, National Teacher of the Year 2010
Michael MacBride and Heidi Burns have created a helpful book for college teachers who are interested in trying multigenre writing in an introductory course. The first chapter provides a rationale for multigenre that is a solid foundation for planning a unit or a whole course. As a useful teaching resource, Intellectual Creativity in First-Year Composition Classes offers readers flexible ideas for implementation rather than one lock-step method. My favorite parts of this book are the plug-in activities that help students learn about important concepts through participation and reflection. -- Nancy Mack, Professor of English, Wright State University
Intellectual Creativity in First-Year Composition will give you a solid start to your exploration of multigenre research writing as a way to teach students to think critically, research soundly, and write with intellect, imagination, and passion. Heidi Wall Burns and Michael MacBride write with insight and authority that come with solid research and plenty of experience teaching students to write in multiple genres. Their writing is clear, their teaching tips helpful, and their students’ voices illustrative. Based on my 28 years teaching high school and college students to write with multiple genres, I believe you’ll step back in amazement at the quality, range, and depth of your students’ multigenre research papers. Burns and MacBride will get you started. -- Tom Romano, author of Fearless Writing: Multigenre to Motivate and Inspire (2014) and Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers (2000)
Critical thinking and research aptitude: two necessary skills for the study of history, but whose ubiquitous absence inhibits college students’ ability to grasp and interpret complex historical materials. Given the current emphasis on outcome-based education, the multigenre research project offers a sensible mechanism for teaching and assessing these skills from matriculation forward. By demonstrating the project’s pedagogical savvy and explaining the practicalities of its implementation, Burns and MacBride’s Intellectual Creativity in First-Year Composition Classes offer a clear solution to a well-known problem that will benefit instructors and students in a variety of disciplines and settings. -- John D. Hosler, Associate Professor of History, Morgan State University