American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt, Nov. 12.

– The Center for Learning and

Teaching held the final event of The Teaching and Learning for Transfer Workshop, which
has been going on for a year now, and discussed their progress and plans for the future.

Since this was the last event, it consisted of an introductory presentation and then an open
discussion about what was learned through the course of the workshop.

The workshop was led by Professor Doris Jones, a faculty member in The Department of
Rhetoric and Composition at AUC. She gave the introductory presentation, which discussed
the main problem that the workshop targeted. The problem being that a large number of
students are disinterested in writing and do not benefit from the writing courses that are given
in the beginning of their college career, mainly by the Rhetoric and Composition Department.
This is usually more apparent with students whose majors are less concerned with writing.
However, according to what some of the attendees mentioned in the talk, this poses a
problem because when students do on occasion have to write something they have a hard
time because they do not know how to go about doing the assignment.

According to Professor Jones, data gathered from other AUC professors led to two main
points. The first is that some professors believe that students should already have the needed
writing skills prior to enrolling in a class. The second is that, while some professors agree that
writing skills should be taught for certain assignments, they are not willing to deviate from
their curriculum in order to teach them. These problems are examples of why this workshop
was created, so that faculty members from various departments could work together and
figure out a better way to handle this.

In an interview conducted with Professor Jones, she talked about what inspired this workshop
“I am always looking for ways and opportunities, not only to improve our teaching but also to
improve … the learning experience for our students.” She also believes “Teaching and
learning is fluid, it’s not static” and that there is always room for improvement, a point she
mentioned in the discussion as well.

“We are doing some sorts of introductory writing courses, and this is not where writing
courses actually end, because students later on, take their other writing courses in the writing
department. So the point is ‘Shall we stop here?’ No, we still need more.” said one of the
attendees, Layla Sedky, an English Language Instruction faculty member.

This workshop was the first step towards changing the misconception about writing, and
helping students transfer their writing skills to their different fields of study. Discussions are
underway for more workshops and projects in the future.