Value Statement
First-Year Writing courses at UMass Lowell are designed to develop students’ abilities to use writing in their current and future work and lives. While in these courses, students learn about how writing functions within organizations and in people’s lives as citizens, employees, and human beings. Our courses are not just places to write essays to demonstrate proficiency so students can move on to their majors. Instead, our courses are places where students learn about themselves as writers and about writing itself. The goal is for each student to try new ways of writing (getting started, thinking of ideas, expressing their perspectives, and reaching audiences) and to develop their own approach to these challenges).
To meet these goals, students try new ways of writing. It is important to make mistakes and rewrite pieces that are already complete. It is also important to read critically, understanding where a piece of writing comes from, how it circulates, and what people or systems have published, shared, or archived it. Students learn to understand writing as a medium for getting work done in organizations, developing communities and relationships, and imagining new perspectives.
Writers’ tools are an important element of their work. Learning to tools and to choose the right tool for the moment is an important course outcome. Writing in the contemporary world involves moving across platforms and managing formats. Critical and informed writers also understand the systems that underwrite these tools: corporations, schools, communities.
Students who have completed College Writing I and II at UMass Lowell can explain their writing processes in detail, describing stages, decision points and outcomes. They can articulate the reasons for their choices among tools, including word processing programs, search engines, databases, Artificial Intelligence large language models, and devices.
Course Policies in College Writing courses are derived from the values stated above.
New generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Copilot have made academic integrity confusing for both faculty and students.
In College Writing Courses at UMass Lowell, these principles guide faculty and students.
- Instructors base grading decisions on their understanding of how students’ knowledge of writing has developed and deepened over the semester. To make these determinations, instructors need evidence about how each student began, developed, and completed each major course project. Homework assignments, early drafts, reading notes and reflective writing are crucial elements of course work and final papers are not meaningful without this context. Faculty may sanction students for academic dishonesty, following UMass Lowell policies, if students hand in work without meaningful context as specified in course syllabi and assignments.
- Instructors provide specific guidance about when and how to use (or not to use) AI tools such as Grammarly, Google Translate, ChatGPT, Bard and Copilot.