DOI: 10.37514/WAC-J.2022.33.1.05 111
Writing Assignment Prompts Across
the Curriculum: Using the DAPOE
Framework for Improved Teaching
and Aggregable Research
BRIAN GOGAN, LISA SINGLETERRY, SUSAN
CAULFIELD, MOLINE MALLAMO
is article advances the DAPOE (directions, audience, purpose, objec-
tives, and evaluation) framework to describe the genre of the formal writ-
ing assignment prompt and to assist genre uptake by students and teachers
alike. To support our endorsement of this framework, we (1) ground our
discussion of the writing assignment prompt in rhetorical genre theory; (2)
dene the ve core components of the DAPOE framework; (3) synthesize
the extant research on the formal writing assignment prompt; (4) demon-
strate how this research-derived framework might be used as a research lens
to analyze the eectiveness of writing assignment prompts across the curric-
ulum; and, (5) discuss the implications of our framework and our research
on writing across the curriculum initiatives.
T
he formal writing assignment prompt—or, what some instructors call an
assignment sheet—has long been viewed as a site of confusing expectations
and frustrated intentions. Across disciplinary elds and curricula, educators
have acknowledged that the eectiveness of their inputs, including the eectiveness
of their assignment prompting, inuences the quality of learner outputs, especially
the quality of students’ writing (Cavdar & Doe, 2012; Cox et al., 2018; Hanson &
Williams, 2008; Nevid et al., 2012; Robison, 1983; Soliday, 2011). When the educa-
tor input is “well-intentioned but potentially confusing,” the “conventional wisdom
among writing instructors” is that the writing assignment produced by students will
be “less-than-successful” (Formo & Neary, 2020, p. 335). Put more strongly, the
“haphazard, slapdash, ill-conceived, or ill-worded assignment invites bad writing,
virtually assures capricious grading, and vitiates eective teaching,” while the “well-
planned assignment, by contrast, evokes the best from the students” (rockmorton,
1980, p. 56). For over four decades, the impact of the formal writing assignment
112 e WAC Journal
prompt on student writing has attracted the attention of scholars interested in
improving the quality of student writing across the curriculum. Behind the research
into formal writing assignment prompts resides the sense, perhaps best articulated
by Jenkins (1980), that “[t]oo often, in the wording and expectations of our assign-
ments, we are placing all kinds of obstacles before our students” (p. 66).
Seeking ways to remove these obstacles and promote successfully crafted writing
assignment prompts, some writing researchers have posed questions targeting the
educator’s input—that is, the writing assignment prompt—in order to improve the
writing output by the student. As part of their online introduction to writing across
the curriculum (2000-2021), Kiefer and co-authors ask: What makes a good writing
assignment? rockmorton (1980, p. 56) aims a more functional question directly at
readers, inquiring: “Do your writing assignments work?” More recently, Formo and
Neary (2020, p. 335) seek a collective improved practice, wondering: “How might
we interrupt this cycle of unsuccessful assignment prompts and ineective essays to
develop stronger writers and, consequently, more successful writing?” ese ques-
tions echo the questions of many writing instructors across the curriculum, who seek
workable answers and practical strategies for developing eective writing assignment
prompts that will promote strong student writing.
In response to such questions, researchers suggest care and clarity as two
approaches that might improve the formal writing assignment prompt. Walvoord
and McCarthy (1990) encourage writing teachers to “craft the assignment sheet with
care” on account of the way students tend to approach formal writing assignment
prompts (p. 240). Hobson (1998) echoes this approach, encouraging educators to
ensure that each writing assignment “is carefully constructed” (p. 52). Kiefer and
co-authors (2000–2021) advise that “a well-designed assignment will make the ele-
ments of the task clear to students,” explaining that such clarity will help students
“better understand the scope and challenge of the assignment” and will most likely
“produce better learning and performance.” Clarity in writing assignment prompt-
ing also receives endorsement in work by Jenkins (1980), Mitchell (1987), Anderson
et al. (2015), Blaich et al. (2016), Gere et al. (2018), and Aull (2020). To make
approaching the formal writing assignment prompt with care and clarity more prac-
tical, research on writing assignments regularly includes lists of principles, practices,
or other heuristics designed to guide educators in the creation of better assignments
(Bean & Melzer, 2021; Beene, 1987; Formo & Neary, 2020; Gardner, 2008; Jen-
kins, 1980; Kiefer, et al, 2000-2021; Lindemann, 2001; rockmorton, 1980).
Viewed independent of one another, the current principles, practices, and heuris-
tics that guide educators across the curriculum in crafting formal writing assignment
prompts are valuable; however, when viewed in aggregate, three problems emerge
with the existing guidance on formal writing assignment prompts. First, the existing
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 113
guidance varies widely in the number and type of essential components ascribed to
the formal writing assignment prompt, leaving educators across the curriculum with-
out an integrative, holistic approach to creating writing assignment prompts. Second,
and as a result of the variance in essential prompt components, much of the existing
guidance maintains a tenuous relationship with research, obfuscating the potential
for large-scale and small-scale studies of writing assignment prompts. In turn, this
tenuous relationship confuses educators across the curriculum as to whether subtly
dierent approaches to writing assignments change the learning outcomes or writing
outputs. ird, the existing guidance underemphasizes the importance of concep-
tualizing the formal writing assignment prompt as its own genre. As a result of this
third problem, educators across the curriculum must work to implicitly detect the
relationship between the structural and rhetorical elements of an eective writing
assignment prompt.
To address these three problems, we propose a new holistic framework by which
educators across the curriculum and within the disciplines can approach writ-
ing assignment development and also writing research. Our framework is called
DAPOE, and it uses a mnemonic to convey the ve core components—directions,
audience, purpose, objectives, and evaluation—that are essential to the formal writ-
ing assignment prompt genre and ought to be included in any writing assignment
across the curriculum. e DAPOE framework describes the genre of the formal
writing assignment prompt and assists genre uptake by both students and teachers.
In the remainder of this article, we support our endorsement of this framework by
(1) grounding our discussion of the writing assignment prompt in rhetorical genre
theory; (2) dening the ve core components of the DAPOE framework; (3) syn-
thesizing the extant research on the formal writing assignment prompt; (4) dem-
onstrating how this research-derived framework might be used as a research lens to
analyze the eectiveness of writing assignment prompts across the curriculum; and,
(5) discussing the implications of our framework and our research on writing across
the curriculum initiatives.
The Genre of the Formal Writing Assignment Prompt
Potentially the most confounding problem with current guidance on formal writing
assignment prompt development is its treatment of genre. e guidance primarily
focuses on discussing genre in terms of the student writing output, rather than dis-
cussing the genre of the formal writing assignment prompt in terms of the educator
input. By associating genre with student writing output, the existing work leaves
the conceptualization of the educator input underdeveloped. Following Bawarshi
(2003), Clark (2005), Aull (2020), and Formo and Neary (2020), we contend that
formal writing assignment prompts should be conceptualized as a genre in and of
114 e WAC Journal
themselves. We further hold that when genre is associated with the educator input,
the nominal, archetypal, motivational, structural, rhetorical, and ideological charac-
teristics of the formal writing assignment prompt might be more fully understood
and taken up in a way that might well lead to more authentically transactional stu-
dent writing. Indeed, formal writing assignment prompts possess the following six
kinds of characteristics that allow for discrete pieces of writing to be understood, in
aggregate, as a genre (e.g., Devitt, 2004; Harrell & Linkugel, 1978; Miller, 1984).
. Nominal Characteristics
First, members of the genre possess nominal characteristics that oer a somewhat
obvious and perceptible indicator of their membership to the genre. Whether called
a formal writing assignment prompt, an assignment sheet, a writing prompt, or some
other close name, these documents can all be perceived by teachers and students,
experts and novices as a similar type of writing—an educator input that constructs a
task to which students must respond in writing. In fact, the ease with which the for-
mal writing assignment prompt genre can be named and perceived leads to another
shared characteristic associated with the ease by which members of this writing
assignment genre can be compared to relatively familiar images and artifacts.
. Archetypal Characteristics
Second, members of the formal writing assignment prompt genre possess arche-
typal characteristics that allow them to be compared to other more familiar texts and
images. Across existing work, writing assignment prompts receive repeated liken-
ing to recipes (Nelson, 1995; Walvoord & McCarthy, 1990). ese connected and
familiar comparisons bind the members of the formal writing assignment prompt
genre together. Drawing comparisons between a genre that can be dicult to under-
stand (i.e., the formal writing assignment prompt) and a genre that is much more
widely understood (i.e., the recipe) expands access to the more dicult genre. is
expanded access depends upon familiar, if not archetypal, artifacts and images. In this
way, Clark (2005) expands access to the writing assignment prompt genre by oering
an extended comparison to stage directions and, with reference to work by Devitt,
Bawarshi, and Rei (2003), an analogous comparison to jury instructions, tax forms,
or voting ballots. ese archetypal references allow Clark to rene understanding of
the formal writing assignment prompt genre, emphasizing how the members of this
genre “are created by specialists for the purpose of generating an appropriate response
from novices” (2005). By enabling comparison between a familiar genre and the less
familiar genre of the formal writing assignment prompt, archetypal characteristics
render the prompt genre more accessible for teachers and for students.
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 115
. Motivational Characteristics
ird, members of this genre share a characteristic motivation. e educators who
created these assignment sheets were motivated to do so in order to provide students
with an assignment that would advance students’ learning. e task was constructed
as prompt or assignment in order to deliberately solicit a written response from stu-
dents, which might then be evaluated by the educators in order to assess the degree to
which a learning objective was achieved. Here, we return to the connection between
the educator input and the student output: Educators are motivated to craft formal
writing assignment prompts not only to elicit written responses from their students
but also to increase the quality of their students’ work and, at the same time, to
reduce student confusion over the assignment. is connection between motivation
and genre is one emphasized by Aull (2020), who argues that, once the nature of
the genre is understood to be motivated by an educator’s eorts to shape students’
responses, then the “genre of writing assignments” is a “key consideration for postsec-
ondary writing” (p. 33). As a deliberately constructed response task, formal writing
assignment prompts dier from prompts motivated dierently and less deliberately.
. Structural Characteristics
Fourth, members of the formal writing assignment prompt genre possess structural
characteristics or organizational patterns that repeat with regular frequency and regu-
larity. Here, a review of eight pieces of recent scholarship that oer insight into the
components of a formal writing assignment prompt sketches the general contour of a
formal writing assignment prompt. e structural characteristics emerging from this
review are represented in Table 1 and include components such as task instructions,
target audience, evaluative criteria, learning objectives, formative feedback, and genre
specications.
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Table 1. Comparison of structural characteristics described in writing assignment
prompt research.
Table 1. Comparison of structural characteristics described in writing assignment prompt research.
STUDY DIRECTIONS AUDIENCE PURPOSE OBJECTIVES EVALUATION OTHER ITEMS
Aull (2020) “Assignment
descriptions that
indicate both what
students are expected
to do and what they
are not expected to do
can help guide
students’
understanding of genre
and assignment
expectations” (p. 149).
Assignments
summarized according
to “macrolevel
purposes” (pp. 60-61).
• genre
• genre families
• student discourse patterns
• student level (first-year or
upper-level)
Bean &
Melzer
(2021)
“The task itself sets
forth the subject
matter dimensions of
the assignment” (p.
66).
“When specifying an
audience, the instructor
needs to help students
visualize the audience’s
initial stance toward the
writer’s subject” (p. 67).
“The ‘role’ or
‘purpose’ helps
students understand
the kind of change
they hope to bring
about in their
audience’s view of the
subject matter” (p. 67).
“Teachers can build
more learning power
into their writing
assignments and other
critical thinking tasks if
they focus first on their
learning goals for
students” (p. 62).
“This section
explains how the
instructor will
grade students’
work” (p. 68).
• task sequence
• interactive components
• disciplinary problem
• genre
• implied discourse
community
BrckaLorenz
(2018)
“Provide clear
instructions describing
what you wanted
students to do” (p. 5).
“Address a real or
imagined audience such
as their classmates, a
politician, non-experts,
etc.” (p. 5).
“Explain in advance
what you wanted
students to learn” (p. 5).
“Explain in
advance the
criteria you would
use to grade the
assignment”
(p. 5).
• inventional talk
• receive feedback
• give feedback
• summarize material
• describe methods
• argue position
• explain data
• field-specific style
Formo &
Neary
(2020)
“Names a specific
audience” and
“[p]rovides details about
audience” (p. 340)
“Articulates learning
outcomes” (p. 340)
“Includes
assessment
criteria/rubric”
(p. 340)
• provides formatting
requirements
• references course texts
• give options
• asks questions
• references in-class
discussions
• sequences tasks
• states revision tasks
• includes peer review
Hagemann
(2002)
“What am I being
asked to do?” and
“[w]hat skills or
procedures do I need
to produce my text?”
Also, “[h]ow long
should the text be?”
and “[w]hat are the
deadlines for writing”
(p. 6).
“What is the purpose
of the assignment?
Why am I asked to do
it?” (p. 6).
“What are the
grading criteria for
this assignment?”
(p. 6).
• course materials
• genre models
• feedback
• provides formatting
requirements
• references course
Kiefer et al.
(2000-2021)
“Break down the task
into manageable
steps” and “[m]ake all
elements of the task
clear”
“Note rhetorical aspects
of the task, i.e., audience,
purpose, writing
situation”
“Note rhetorical
aspects of the task, i.e.,
audience, purpose,
writing situation”
“Tie the writing task to
specific pedagogical
goals, particularly those
articulated in the overall
course goals”
“Include grading
criteria on the
assignment sheet”
Melzer
(2014)
“What audiences are
students asked to
address?” (p. 14).
“What purposes are
students asked to write
for in different
disciplines?” (p. 14).
• genre
• discourse communities
• institutional type
• course type
• WAC presence
Singleterry
& Caulfield
(2021)
“Directions are the
guidance system of the
assignment” (p. 123).
“The purpose is an
opportunity
for the faculty member
to explain how and
why the knowledge,
skills, or attitudes
gained from the
assignment are
important in
practice” (p. 122).
“The objectives should
reflect what the faculty
member wants the
student to achieve or
do” (pp. 122-123).
“[C]ommunicate
the intent of
grading and
communicate the
type of data that
will be used
for evaluation”
(p. 123).
Across
All
Studies
6 5 6 4 6
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 117
Looking more closely at the structure that emerges from this review, we argue that
the directions, audience, purpose, objectives, and evaluation are the ve essential
components that structure the formal writing assignment prompt genre. If a piece
of writing were to include these ve elements, that document would most likely
participate in the genre. From our perspective, formative feedback is not an essen-
tial structural characteristic of the formal writing assignment prompt genre. Rather,
formative feedback is a process that is regularly built into writing assignments but
that actually relies upon other genres (e.g., peer review or writing center talk) and
dierent genre knowledge than does the formal writing assignment prompt that it
supports (e.g., see Reid, 2014; Mackiewicz, 2016). Similarly, and perhaps more con-
troversially, we would argue that genre specications do not emerge as a consistent
component that is essential to the structure of the formal writing assignment prompt
genre. On the contrary, genre is represented inconsistently across existing work on
writing prompts. In some instances, genre specications are reduced to instructions
about format or form; in other instances, genre specications are merely tied to the
presentation of models (Formo & Neary, 2020; Hagemann, 2002). Both of these
presentations of genre specications erode the rhetorical understanding of genre that
is widely endorsed in writing studies, and this rhetorical theory of genre leads directly
to the next characteristic of the formal writing assignment genre.
. Rhetorical Characteristics
Fifth, members of the formal writing assignment genre hold a set of rhetorical charac-
teristics, or characteristics that allow the writing prompt to navigate the dynamics of
typied rhetorical situations (Miller, 1984), including similar exigences, audiences,
and constraints (Bitzer, 1968). Bazerman and co-authors (2005) oer an extended
discussion of how the rhetorical characteristics of the “the sheet of paper handed
out by the teacher” facilitates social activity (p. 93). According to Bazerman and
co-authors, “the assignment genre” shapes the rhetorical situation in a classroom:
“the situation is temporarily initiated by the assignment” (p. 94). e “assignment
situation,” as Bazerman and co-authors call it, requires action—that is, a written
response—on the part of the student; however, Bazerman and coauthors note that
students have “limited range to reframe the situation to allow novel responses only
insofar as the teacher accepts those reframings” (pp. 93–94). us, the writing assign-
ment prompt genre creates the situation in which student responses are viewed as
tting or appropriate. As Clark (2005) explains, the rhetorical characteristics of genre
extend beyond structural characteristics, recasting “the form and textual conventions
of a text, elements which students often view as primary concerns” as emerging from
“the rhetorical purpose of the text.” Foregrounding the rhetorical characteristics of the
writing assignment prompt, we contend that the essential structural elements of the
118 e WAC Journal
genre—directions, audience, purpose, objectives, and evaluation—are conventional
among members of the genre because these components minimally allow students
(i.e., the audience) to respond to the constructed writing task (i.e., the exigence) and
to navigate educator expectations (i.e., the constraints) for the learning output. ese
ve components create a situation that oers the student-as-assignment-reader the
opportunity to ttingly respond to the task as the student-as-assignment-writer. e
reader-writer shift inaugurated by the formal writing assignment genre leads to the
sixth characteristic of the genre.
. Ideological Characteristics
Sixth and nally, members of the formal writing assignment prompt genre share
ideological characteristics in that they socialize writers and readers, interpellating
individuals into typied roles and, also, transforming these roles. Bawarshi (2003)
cautions educators against overlooking “the extent to which the prompt situates stu-
dent writers within a genred site of action in which students acquire and negoti-
ate desires, subjectivities, commitments, and relations before they begin to write”
(p.127). As Bawarshi notes, writing assignment prompts powerfully determine stu-
dent agency through a “socializing function” (p. 129): the “prompt not only moves
the student writer to action; it also cues the student writer to enact a certain kind
of action” (p.127). By coordinating, moving, and cueing students, the formal writ-
ing assignment prompt genre “functions to transform its writer (the teacher) and
its readers (the students) into a reader (the teacher) and writers (the students)” and,
thus, “positions the students and teacher into two simultaneous roles: the students as
readers and writers, the teacher as writer and reader” (pp. 130–131). Put dierently,
the genre of the formal writing assignment prompt shifts agency from the writing
teacher, who was the writer of the prompt and who will be a reader of the assign-
ment, to the student writers, who were the readers of the prompt and who will be the
writers of the assignment.
Having outlined the six characteristics—nominal, archetypal, motivational, struc-
tural, rhetorical, and ideological—that bind members of the formal writing assign-
ment prompt genre together, we see potential that an increased awareness of these
characteristics might be rhetorically mobilized in a way that could well lead to more
authentically transactional student writing. Here, we invoke Petraglia’s view that “the
move toward WAC holds the most promise for those teachers wishing to ensure that
their students are given an authentic rhetorical exigence and are being held account-
able to genuine transaction” (1995, p. 28). Petraglia’s point is that writing assign-
ments constructed for classroom learning are, to a degree, necessarily inauthentic and
arhetorical; they are more or less pseudotransactional as Britton et al. (1975) might
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 119
say, or invented, as Bawarshi (2003) might argue. e promise of writing across
the curriculum to which Petraglia refers necessarily depends upon the genre of the
formal writing assignment prompt. If the characteristics of the assignment prompt
genre are overly diminished or overly amplied, authenticity might be diminished.
Conversely, if the characteristics of the assignment prompt genre are understood,
increased authenticity might be encouraged. According to Wilner (2005b), “pur-
poseful assignment design can play an essential role in evoking complex transactions
with texts” and, consequently, “students benet when instructors are more attentive
to this essential aspect of pedagogy” (p. 35). With the aim of increasing instructor
attention to the development of formal writing assignment prompts across disci-
plines and also increasing the transactional nature of writing assignments across the
curriculum, we outline our DAPOE framework in the next section.
The DAPOE Framework
To address the three problems with the existing guidance on the formal writing
assignment prompts genre—namely, a lack of consistent components, an unclear
relationship between guidance and research, and an incomplete theorization of
prompt as genre—and to seize the opportunity to provide students with more
authentically transactional writing assignments, we advance the DAPOE frame-
work. e DAPOE framework holistically approaches formal writing assignment
prompting. is synthetic and integrative framework can assist writing instructors
in remembering key aspects of formal writing assignment design as they aim to pro-
duce assignment prompts for their students, and it can also serve as a useful lens to
researchers who want to assess the strength of assignment prompts.
e DAPOE framework updates and expands upon two prior attempts to develop
a framework to guide writing assignment prompt design. First, the DAPOE frame-
work updates eorts by Robison (1983), as described by Walvoord and McCarty
(1990, pp. 150-152), to develop a mnemonic that captures the essential parts of a
formal writing assignment prompt. According to Walvoord and McCarthy, Robi-
son’s CRAFT mnemonic helped to make the cognitive psychologist’s expectations
explicit to the student writers enrolled in a human sexuality course (p. 150). In the
mnemonic, C detailed assignment criteria, R described the writer’s role, A articulated
the writer’s audience, F detailed the form of writing, and T set forth a theme for the
assignment (p. 151). Walvoord and McCarthy explain that, in addition to explicitly
outlining writing assignment expectations, the CRAFT mnemonic functioned as a
“formula” that could be used as “a guide for teachers in constructing assignments”
(p. 151). Second, the DAPOE framework expands upon prior work by Singleterry
and Cauleld (2021) that explicitly links four components of writing assignment
design —purpose, objectives, directions, and evaluation—to create “an instructional
120 e WAC Journal
design tool and quality improvement method” that is both “interprofessional and
versatile” (p. 123). Emerging from Singleterry and Cauleld’s involvement in a fac-
ulty development program that spanned four years, the four-element design tool was
introduced and practiced by a group of seventeen faculty members across various
health and human services disciplines in order to generate stronger writing assign-
ment prompts and improve writing across the curriculum (pp.122–123). Singleterry
and Cauleld report that “faculty from multiple disciplines” found the tool “useful
to improve development, assessment, and revision of student assignments” (p.122).
Further, the DAPOE framework joins together theoretical elements from estab-
lished lines of research in rhetoric and backward design, combining them with the
directional component that serves as the basis for any assignment instructions.
Rhetoric has been theorized both as a critical aspect of crafting successful writing
assignment prompts (Fishman & Rei, 2011; Oliver, 1995), as well as an under-
appreciated dimension of writing assignment prompt design across the curriculum
(Melzer, 2014). Lindemann (2001) explains that “[e]ective writing assignments
encourage students to dene progressively more complex rhetorical problems” and
the educator’s “responsibility is to control and vary the rhetorical demands of writing
tasks” (p. 215). Mitchell (1987) refers to the rhetorical dimensions of the writing
assignment prompt as “most important; since the writing experience arises from the
rhetorical situation” (p. 6). Consideration of an assignment’s rhetorical situation—its
exigence, audience, and constraints—reveals a range of assignment options for writ-
ing instructors and establishes a foundation upon which students can engage with a
writing assignment (Bean & Melzer, 2021; Melzer, 2014). Further, an assignment’s
rhetorical situation necessarily leads to a consideration of its genre and the discourse
communities within which that genre will function (Bean & Melzer, 2021; Melzer,
2014; Anderson & Gonyea, 2009). On account of engaging with a rhetorical situ-
ation and its component parts, student writers can ascertain “a social context” and
can, therefore, locate an “appropriate stance” with respect to their readers and their
writing (Soliday, 2011, p. 55). e rhetorical components of an eective writing
assignment prompt also require alignment (Gere et al., 2018). When rhetorical the-
ory does not inform assignment design, teaching ineciencies result and impossible
pedagogical goals follow (Burnett & Kastman, 1997; Downs & Wardle, 2007). We
follow existing work on assignment design (Bean & Melzer, 2021; Downs & Wardle,
2007; Melzer, 2014) in our assertion that rhetorical theory is a critical component
of assignment prompt design, as it emphasizes a realistic, situated, and necessarily
complex notion of writing.
Backward design has been theorized by numerous scholars to be a promising
solution to the instructional problems faced by faculty in post-secondary education
(Childre et al. 2009; Fox & Doherty, 2012; Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Backward
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 121
design theory holds that learning objectives and desired outcomes should drive the
curriculum design process. By identifying desired outcomes rst, backward design
focuses on identifying evidence of achieving these outcomes (Wiggins & McTighe,
2005). In this way, instructors are encouraged to focus their attention not on their
personal teaching processes, but on the outcomes of their students’ learning (Driscoll
& Wood, 2007). Backward design might be thought of as prioritizing a writing
course’s “last assignment rst” and then designing earlier writing assignments in such
a way that they lead students into that last assignment (Bean & Melzer, 2021, p. 63).
Similarly, if writing instructors plan their end-of-course goals rst, they can then
plan student learning objectives in such a way that leads to meeting those goals and,
also, writing assignments that allow students to accomplish those objectives. us,
writing assignment design should be inextricably linked to a writing course’s goals,
as learning outcomes are heavily dependent upon the types of prompts provided to
students by their instructors. Real-world, complex problems, for example, have been
observed by numerous scholars to encourage greater synthesis of information for the
student, which in turn leads to more satisfactory student learning outcomes (Bean,
2011; Childre, et al. 2009; Demetriadis et al. 2008; Fox & Doherty, 2012; Shah, et
al. 2018; Wilner, 2005b).
In sum, the DAPOE framework fuses directional instruction, rhetorical theory,
and backward design theory to promote better understanding of the formal writ-
ing assignment prompt genre. e framework makes explicit ve critical elements
in writing assignment prompt design: directions, audience, purpose, objectives,
and evaluation.
Directions
Directions serve as the overarching component of the DAPOE framework, as they
are the basis upon which any assignment is built. rough directions, the instruc-
tor is able to communicate expectations for the work to the student (Dunham et
al. 2020; Herrington, 1997; Nelson, 1990, 1995). Directions encompass assign-
ment specications, which allows them to enable meaning-making via communica-
tion from instructor to student; this component, therefore, holds primacy of place.
Furthermore, directions entail the actual giving of the assignment, as they direct the
student to perform an action that will then produce a result. In the case of the for-
mal writing assignment, the result is the nished piece of writing. Clear assignment
directions have been identied as an area in need of improvement in post-secondary
classrooms (Blaich et al., 2016). Without clear directions detailing expectations, stu-
dent learning outcomes can suer greatly (Minnich et al., 2018). In fact, writing
assignment instructions and their relative clarity form the basis of one item included
on two widely adopted national assessment instruments—the National Survey of
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Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE)
Experiences with Writing Topical Module (BrckaLorenz, 2018). Our DAPOE
framework, thus, begins where all eective writing assignments begin—using direc-
tions to instruct students on the assigned writing task. Highlighting the importance
of “[i]nstructional specications,” Mitchell (1987) connects directions with eec-
tively meeting expectations, observing that “[s]tudents need to know date due, page
length minimum, and so on in order to meet expectations” (p. 6).
Audience
Audience describes the intended readership of the materials that are produced from
the assigned writing prompts (Beene, 1987; Ede & Lunsford, 1984; Gallagher, 2017;
Lunsford & Ede, 1996; McDermott & Kuhn, 2011; Mitchell, 1987; rockmorton,
1980; Weiser et al., 2009; Wilner, 2005a, 2005b).Eective writing assignment
prompts, as Formo and Neary emphasize, “help students understand for whom they
are writing” (2020, p. 347; cf. Lindemann, 2001, Bawarshi, 2003). e DAPOE
framework realizes the possibility that the intended audience for a formal writing
assignment may not be a writing instructor and, therefore, asks writing instructors to
identify the assignment’s intended audience. As Bean and Melzer note, identifying
a formal writing assignment’s audience helps “set the rhetorical context” and allows
students to “visualize the audience’s initial stance toward the writer’s subject” (2021,
p. 67). Here, stance refers to a perspective that relates writer and reader to each other
through writing (cf. Soliday, 2011). By naming an exact audience, a formal writing
assignment prompt can help student writers “get better acquainted with an audience”
(Soliday, 2011, p.78) and, thereby, allow them to craft writing that addresses this key
relationship. Naming a specic audience on a writing prompt also avoids a scenario
in which the student writer addresses the writing prompt directly or assumes they
are addressing a teacher-as-audience (Clark, 2005). When a formal writing assign-
ment tasks students with addressing an actual reader outside of the classroom—that
is, as opposed to a hypothetical one—specifying the audience for a writing assign-
ment assists students in dening the role of the writer vis-à-vis the identity of the
reader (Lindemann, 2001). e audience component of the DAPOE framework
nds reinforcement in the Experiences with Writing Topical Module included on
both the NSSE and FSSE, as these survey instruments ask respondents to gauge the
number of writing assignments that encouraged students to address a real or imag-
ined audience (BrckaLorenz, 2018). In short, eective formal writing assignments
use prompts that specify the audience for the assignment.
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 123
Purpose
Purpose asks the students to consider why the writing is being performed. In other
words, purpose explores the rationale behind the writing assignment (Beene, 1987;
Fletcher, 2015; Lindemann, 2001; Sommers & Saltz, 2004; Troia, 2014; Wiggins &
McTighe, 2005) or the occasion that conditions the writing task, whether that occa-
sion is a pseudotransactional academic exercise or a transactional real-world experi-
ence (Gogan, 2014; Mitchell, 1987; Petraglia, 1995). e DAPOE framework con-
ceptualizes purpose as the purpose of the writing that will be produced by the student
who completes a formal writing assignment. Put dierently, the DAPOE framework
conceptualizes purpose as what the writing does. In this way, the purpose used in
the DAPOE framework approximates Bean and Melzer’s (2021) discussion of an
“implied discourse community” that is present and at work in every formal writing
assignment (p. 68). By clearly articulating the purpose for a writing assignment, a
writing instructor can explain “to students how an assignment does the work of the
broader disciplinary or professional community” and thereby can “make the writing
assignment more relevant for students” (Bean & Melzer, 2021, p. 69). As such, pur-
pose promotes awareness of discourse communities and the genres that coordinate
the social action within these communities. Relatedly, purpose might also be associ-
ated with motive. e social context of a discourse community reinforces the rhetori-
cal dimensions of writing and often helps student writers locate an appropriate stance
(Soliday, 2011). When “rhetorical purpose” is not established and writing tasks are
“isolated from the social worlds that produce and sustain them,” writing assignments
are reduced to what Soliday (2011) describes as a “somewhat lonely process: stu-
dents read a prompt, nd their evidence, and write a text” (p. 84). Purpose thus
becomes a critical term in promoting complex discursive awareness among students
(Clark, 2005).
Objectives
Objectives present the actionable steps that lead to the attainment of the goals of
the assignment (Anderson, 2005; Mitchell, 1987; Ramirez, 2016; Winkelmes et al.,
2015). e focus on discrete learning objectives and the ability to tie these objectives
to course goals allows writing instructorsto “build more learning power into their
writing assignments” (Bean & Melzer, 2021, p. 62). Further, including objectives on
a writing assignment prompt has been understood as providing “students the oppor-
tunity to practice metacognition” (Formo & Neary, 2020, p. 346). e DAPOE
framework emphasizes the inclusion of learning objectives in formal writing assign-
ment prompts. is emphasis is further reected in a NSSE and FSSE Experiences
with Writing Topical Module question, asking respondents to gauge the amount of
124 e WAC Journal
writing assignments that detail the learning that should result because of the assign-
ment (BrckaLorenz, 2018). Eective writing assignments unambiguously declare the
objectives of a particular assignment, tying these objectives into even larger course
goals, and our DAPOE framework stresses this important component of formal
writing assignment design.
Evaluation
Evaluation enables assessment of the assignment to ensure that objectives are met
(Banta & Blaich, 2011; Blaich & Wise, 2011). Simply put, a writing assignment
prompt that contains this component of the DAPOE framework tells students how
their writing assignment will be graded (Bean & Melzer, 2021). e presence of this
particular component in a formal writing assignment prompt works to demystify the
grading of writing for students, who often view writing assessment as an opaquely
and perhaps unfairly “subjective” process (Anson & Dannels, 2002, p. 387). By
enumerating the evaluative criteria that will guide grading, the writing assignment
prompt promotes fairness and aligns student expectations with the expectations of
the grader. In fact, Formo and Neary (2020) contend that including evaluation cri-
teria on a writing assignment prompt “provide[s] a shared language for writer and
evaluator” and this shared language not only enables a discussion between teachers
and students “about the strengths and weaknesses of an assignment” but also empow-
ers student writers, giving them “tools for evaluating their own work” (p. 351). If
the assignment is used in a classroom that has moved away from conventional grad-
ing, then this evaluation element would explain to students the mechanism that
would provide them formal feedback on their writing assignment (Blum, 2021).
e DAPOE framework reinforces Mitchell’s (1987) view that the evaluative cri-
teria “are [a] particularly important” component of the writing assignment prompt
(p. 6). e evaluation component of the DAPOE framework nds reinforcement
in the Experiences with Writing Topical Module included on both the NSSE and
FSSE, as the module queries both students and faculty about the amount of writing
assignments that provide advanced criteria about assignment grading (BrckaLorenz,
2018). Our DAPOE framework features the evaluation component as its fth and
nal element.
In our own work, we have found this ve-part framework to be particularly use-
ful for the way it structures our thinking about writing assignment prompt design.
Whether informing the development of a new assignment within one of our courses
or informing the professional development of faculty attending a workshop at our
institution, the DAPOE framework assists us in thinking about the components of
eective writing assignments. In brief, the framework helps us improve our teaching
of writing. But beyond helping us teach writing and assign more thorough writing
tasks to our students, the framework has also helped us research the eectiveness of
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 125
writing assignment prompts at our university. Indeed, we argue that the DAPOE
framework can be used as an analytic lens that can applied to research on formal
writing assignment prompts. e next section reviews recent research on the formal
writing assignment genre, while the nal section of the article presents an example of
how the DAPOE framework can inform research.
Research on Formal Writing Assignment Prompts across the Curriculum
Over the past four decades, research on developing eective writing assignments has
grown from a local endeavor largely undertaken by teachers preparing for work with
students in one particular post-secondary course or at one particular institution to
a national undertaking informed by research on writing across the curriculum. e
denition of writing-intensive courses as a high-impact practice in post-secondary
educational settings (Hendrickson, 2016; Hughes, 2020; Kuh, 2008) increased focus
on the genre of the formal writing assignment prompt and its ability to foster broad
student engagement and active learning across the curriculum and within writing-
intensive courses (Eodice et al. 2016; Kuh, 2008). Eective writing assignments sup-
port the eectiveness of this high-impact practice, and the national attention paid to
high impact practices has been accompanied by an interest in formal writing assign-
ment prompts that is likewise national in scope. Our DAPOE framework reects
these locally grown and nationally emergent studies.
e NSSE and the FSSE, and particularly their Experiences with Writing Topi-
cal Module, include self-report survey items that query respondents about their
experiences with writing (Anderson et al. 2015; BrckaLorenz, 2018; Paine et al.,
2015). Designed through a collaboration between NSSE and the Council of Writ-
ing Program Administrators that was named the Consortium for the Study of Writ-
ing in College, these survey items solicit robust information about formal writing
assignment prompts from students and from faculty. Analysis of data obtained from
these survey items oers important insight into formal writing assignment prompts,
especially as these prompts work to set clear writing expectations and facilitate mean-
ing making. e data reveal that “students who reported that more of their writing
assignments involved clearly explained expectations were more likely to report greater
experience with Higher-Order Learning in the classroom” (Anderson et al., 2015, p.
222). e ndings from these results suggest a relationship, wherein student reports
of more positive behaviors and perceptions result from instructors actively working
to provide clearer explanation of writing assignments. Further, the outcomes of FSSE
data (BrckaLorenz, 2018) reveal that 82.7 percent of faculty report providing direc-
tions, while only 25.2 percent report addressing the idea of audience to their students
on their formal writing assignment prompts.
e formal writing assignment prompts that are given by instructors to their stu-
dents prove the focus of two additional national-level studies (Formo & Neary, 2020;
126 e WAC Journal
Melzer, 2014). Rather than soliciting self-report data that detail behaviors and per-
ceptions as the NSSE and FSSE did, the rst study conducted by Melzer analyzed
2,101 writing assignment prompts from one hundred institutions in an attempt to
detect patterns about the writing that was assigned across various curricula within the
United States. is study revealed that, overall, writing assignments were limited in
the purposes and audiences to which students were asked to respond (Melzer, 2014).
Importantly, this rst study served as a design model for the second study conducted
by Formo and Neary (2020). Although limited to assignment prompts in rst-year
writing courses, this second study examined seventy-ve formal writing assignment
prompts from a range of post-secondary institutions, coding them for the presence of
themes. e coding scheme relied upon a threshold concept framework, but yielded
ndings that included the need for writing assignment prompts to articulate learn-
ing objectives, name specic audiences, and clarify evaluation criteria (Formo &
Neary, 2020).
Taken together and represented in Table 2 as viewed through our DAPOE frame-
work, these empirical studies point to a number of necessary improvements that are
needed in the formal writing assignment prompts that writing teachers across the
curriculum distribute to their students. Although the writing assignment prompt
constitutes a “fundamental classroom artifact” (Melzer, 2014, p. 5) and “plays a
critical role in constituting the teacher and student positions that shape and enable
student writing” (Bawarshi, 2003, p. 126), the research on formal writing assign-
ment prompts across the curriculum suggests a need for more eective assignment
prompts. We return to these national research studies later in this article, after we
present ndings of our own research that used the DAPOE framework to analyze
formal writing assignment prompts distributed to students at our own institution.
Table 2. Comparison of DAPOE elements identied in previous assignment
prompt research
DIRECTIONS AUDIENCE PURPOSE OBJECTIVES EVALUATION
Formo &
Neary (2020)
93% 45% NA 39% 36%
BrckaLorenz
(2018)
82.7% 25.2% NA 68.5% 74.2%
Melzer (2014) NA ~60%* ~100%** NA NA
*= Implied by write-up of ndings
**= Interpreted according to methodology
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 127
Using the DAPOE Framework as an Analytical Lens
To demonstrate the way in which the DAPOE framework can serve as a useful lens
through which researchers might view formal writing assignment prompts, we con-
ducted a study of formal writing assignment prompts at our institution. Our study,
approved by our institutional review board, used the DAPOE framework as a lens to
code ninety-ve writing assignment prompts as they were used with students across
four colleges at our home institution. is part of our article oers a research applica-
tion of the DAPOE framework and, in doing so, provides a glimpse of contemporary
writing assignment prompt design across the curricula of one institution.
Institutional Context
Our study occurred at our home institution, a doctoral-granting, regional, public
university in the Midwest that is classied by the Carnegie Foundation as both high
research and community engaged. At the time of the 2019–2020 study, our uni-
versity enrolled approximately 17,000 undergraduate students and 4,500 graduate
students. As part of their general education requirements, all undergraduate students
needed to successfully complete a baccalaureate writing course. ese courses had
been in place at our university since 1988 and were intended to “enhance” under-
graduate “writing prociency” through an upper-level writing-intensive course
that was most regularly oered in students’ major disciplines (Western Michigan
University, 1988). e requirement attempted to integrate writing across our uni-
versity’s various curricula and it persisted for decades, until a revision to our general
education requirements in fall 2020. Importantly, the new general education pro-
gram no longer requires students to complete such a course; rather, the new program
supports and endorses the continuation of university baccalaureate writing courses at
the level of individual major programs.
Study Methodology
Timed to occur just before the change to the baccalaureate writing requirement, our
study sought to measure the presence of the DAPOE framework in writing assign-
ment prompts that were used with undergraduate students in baccalaureate writ-
ing classes across our university in the three semesters prior to the change—spring
2019, fall 2019, and spring 2020. e aim of our study was descriptive. e central
question that guided our research was: To what extent do the ve elements of the
DAPOE framework appear in writing assignment prompts in upper-level writing-
intensive courses at our institution?
To suggest answers to this question, we recruited nearly three hundred faculty
members who taught a baccalaureate writing course at our institution in any one
128 e WAC Journal
of the three semesters under investigation to participate in our study. Recruitment
occurred via email and asked potential participants to submit formal writing assign-
ment documents used in their major writing course to a research assistant who
supported the study. Consent was considered tacit upon submission of the writ-
ing assignment prompts. Upon submission, the research assistant processed each
document, removing any identifying information such as the course title, instructor
name, or semester oering date.
Once the research assistant removed identifying information from the submitted
documents, writing assignment documents were shared with the study’s three inves-
tigators. Each investigator used the qualitative research software application NVivo®
version 12+ to code the assignment documents. e DAPOE framework guided our
coding scheme, in which the
• Directions Code indicated instructions for the assignment were provided
• Audience Code indicated that the intended reader of the assignment
was identied
• Purpose Code indicated that the reason behind or rationale for the assign-
ment was explained
• Objectives Code indicated that the learning outcomes that were supposed to
result from the assignment were recognized
• Evaluation Code indicated that the criteria against which the assignment
was to be assessed were described
Code presence was treated as a nominal, binary variable. Coded results were com-
pared and, in cases of coding discrepancies among the investigators, interrater agree-
ment was reached through collective analysis and discussion.
Results and Analysis
In total, ninety-ve writing assignment prompts were submitted by participants.
ese prompts appeared on a range of pedagogical documents (handouts, assign-
ment sheets, syllabi, rubrics, and even one image le of a handwritten prompt) from
a wide range of departments across our university (Table 3).
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 129
Table 3. Sampling of departments represented in data
Business and Information Systems Communication
Economics English
Environmental Studies Family and Consumer Sciences
Geography History
Nursing Psychology
Sociology Special Education and Literacy Studies
Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences World Languages and Literatures
Together the writing assignment prompts represented curricula oered by four of our
university’s seven academic undergraduate colleges:
• College of Arts and Sciences
• College of Education and Human Development
• College of Health and Human Services
• Haworth College of Business
Instructors in the College of Fine Arts, College of Aviation, and the College of
Engineering and Applied Sciences chose not to participate in the study and did not
submit any formal writing assignment prompts that could be coded.
e results of our coding (see Table 4) indicate that the most common code found
among submitted documents was directions, which was present in 85.3 percent of
the assignment prompts reviewed (81/95). Audience was named in 32.6 percent
(31/95) of the documents; purpose was identied in 53.7 percent (51/95) of the
documents; objectives were found in 73.7 percent of the documents (70/95); and
65.3 percent of the documents described the criteria for the evaluation (62/95).
Table 4. Coding results
DIRECTIONS AUDIENCE
PURPOSE OBJECTIVES EVALUATION
Frequency
81 31 51 70 62
Percentage
85.3% 32.6% 53.7% 73.7% 65.3%
N = 95
130 e WAC Journal
Discussion
e results from our study oer insight into the pedagogical use of formal writing
assignment prompts at our institution. Just as other national studies of formal writ-
ing assignment prompts found the directions component to appear with greater fre-
quency in their data sets (BrckaLorenz, 2018; Formo & Neary, 2020), so too did our
study. Directions were found to be present in 85.3 percent of the ninety-ve writing
assignment prompts that we coded. While the directions component of our DAPOE
framework appeared most frequently in the formal writing prompts we studied, 14.7
percent of these prompts were still missing this overarching component, leaving stu-
dents without instructions for their writing assignment.
e data further reveal that, beyond providing students with assignment direc-
tions, these formal writing assignment prompts from across curricula at our institu-
tion were more likely to include concepts borrowed from backward design (objec-
tives and evaluation) than from rhetorical theory (audience and purpose). On the
one hand, a decade worth of institutional context might help explain these results, as
our home institution has worked concertedly to cultivate outcomes-based assessment
practices that strongly align with backward design theory over the past ten years.
On the other hand, these results align with data reported by BrckaLorenz’s 2018
study of 4,722 responses to the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement. e frequen-
cies of faculty who report including the backward design components and rhetorical
components associated with the DAPOE framework on “all writing assignments” in
BrckaLorenz’s study (2018) approximate the frequencies detected by our own study.
Of the two DAPOE framework components associated with backward design,
objectives appeared most frequently and were stated as student learning goals or out-
comes in 73.7 percent of our sample. Evaluation criteria were oered to students
in 65.3 percent of the writing assignment prompts examined in our study. If the
benets of backward design include more eective student guidance and improved
learning outcomes, then at least one-third of the writing assignment prompts we
studied miss an opportunity to realize these benets. When a writing assignment
prompt does not include learning objectives or does not state evaluation criteria, stu-
dents may not understand nor fully engage with the learning that is associated with
the writing assignment. ese data suggest a need for a more consistent approach
to crafting formal writing assignment prompts across the curriculum that include
objectives and evaluation components and, thereby, provide students with advanced
notice as to what they are learning by completing a writing assignment and how their
learning and writing will be assessed.
Of the two DAPOE framework components associated with rhetoric, purpose
appeared most frequently in 53.7 percent of the prompts we analyzed. Not only does
purpose encompass choices about genre and discourse communities (Melzer, 2014),
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 131
but it also anticipates and answers crucial questions from our students, such as: Why
am I being assigned to write this particular piece? e results suggest an opportu-
nity to use the writing assignment prompt to better communicate the purpose of an
assignment to student writers. Nearly half of the prompts we studied did not contain
this extremely important piece of information and, therefore, did not communi-
cate the reason behind or the rationale for the writing assignment to students. Fur-
ther, audience—an essential consideration for any writer—was the least frequently
included element from our DAPOE framework in our study’s data. Audience was
identied in 32.6 percent of the writing assignment prompts that we examined from
writing-intensive courses at our university, which means that 67.4 percent of the
assignment prompts we examined did not provide students with information about
the audience for whom they were writing. Along with Melzer (2014), we recognize
that audience might often be presented implicitly in writing assignment prompts—
that is, in a way that faculty assume students will detect. However, this assumption
may not be shared by students and might leave a gap in student understanding or
connection to context-specic writing strategies. Because audience proves an essen-
tial rhetorical component of any authentically situated writing task, the indication
that some two-thirds of the assignments did not name an audience proves concerning
to educators who aim to cultivate rhetorical awareness among their student writers.
Implications for the DAPOE Framework
roughout this article we have followed rockmorton (1980) in understanding
the development of a writing assignment prompt as “an art” (p. 56)—just as we
might understand teaching as an art, writing as an art, and teaching writing across
the curriculum as an art. Our central argument has been that the DAPOE frame-
work helps to rene the art of crafting a formal writing assignment prompt and, as
a result, may assist us in the art of teaching writing across the curriculum. More spe-
cically, we see two signicant implications emerging from the use of the DAPOE
framework: e ability of the DAPOE framework to support explicit instruction and
the ability of the DAPOE framework to support replicable, aggregable, and data-
driven research. To conclude, we outline each implication below.
DAPOE Supports an Explicit Approach to Instruction
In viewing the development of a writing assignment prompt as an art, we enter
into the debate of whether or not writing—including the writing of an assignment
prompt—is a teachable art (Pender, 2011). With respect to the art of the formal writ-
ing assignment prompt, we embrace Fahnestock’s (1993) view that any art must also
include “an explication of its principles so that they can be applied across situations”
(p. 269). Our DAPOE framework works to explain the art of the formal writing
132 e WAC Journal
assignment prompt in a way that is explicit. We ground Fahnestock’s (1993) general
argument that the explicit teaching of genre is necessary, possible, and useful in the
specic instance of the formal writing assignment prompt. We echo Fahnestock’s
words—“One has to know the form to be able to perform” (1993, p. 267)—and
assert that one has to know the form of the writing assignment prompt genre in order
to be able to perform the art of the writing assignment prompt genre. is assertion
is one that we view as true for writing students across the curriculum and especially
so for writing teachers across the curriculum. Writing teachers across the curriculum
must know the form of the writing assignment prompt genre before they can know
how to perform that genre well in terms of their educational inputs. Our hope is
that the explicit approach taken by our DAPOE framework might nudge instruc-
tors toward clearer and less confusing assignment directions, but also toward more
authentic rhetorical transactions, more thorough genre uptake, and more carefully
designed writing experiences and outputs. To this end, we see promise in the use of
the DAPOE framework in faculty development workshops, where this framework
could serve as a heuristic that encourages faculty across university curricula to think
dierently about writing assignment prompts. Indeed, members of the Consortium
for the Study of Writing in College envisioned that data from the Experiences with
Writing Topical Module might be used in faculty development initiatives (Cole et al.,
2013). Our framework might be understood as one such outgrowth of this research.
Certainly, we would argue that the DAPOE framework lends itself to use with and
recall by diverse faculty groups across post-secondary curricula.
DAPOE Supports a RAD Approach to Research
In viewing the DAPOE framework as an analytical lens for research, we are suggest-
ing that the implications of this explicit framework can move beyond pedagogical
application and support ongoing research and assessment on writing across the cur-
riculum. We found comparison between our own study data and the recent national
studies on writing assignment prompt (Formo & Neary, 2020; Melzer, 2014) insuf-
cient insofar as we used dierent coding schemes with some overlapping constructs.
Due to the diering constructs, direct comparison across all studies was limited. We
found ourselves in want of grounding constructs for our study of the genre—ones
that might allow us to see how our institution’s formal writing assignment prompts
compared to those of other programs and at other institutions. In short, we sought
a framework that lends itself to replicable, aggregable, and data-driven research or
what Haswell (2005) calls a RAD approach to research. What we sought in our
analysis of the genre and what we hope to have produced in the DAPOE framework
is “a systematic scheme of analysis that others can apply to dierent texts and directly
compare” (Haswell, 2005, p. 208). While such an approach to research might buck
Writing Assignment Prompts Across the Curriculum 133
overall trends in scholarship in writing and in writing across the curriculum (see
Haswell, 2005), what we sought aligns with Haswell’s hope for a more productive
and inclusive approach to research, which is also echoed in the work on writing cen-
ter studies by Driscoll and Perdue (2014). e potential for the DAPOE framework
to be used in a way that supports a RAD approach to research further follows Melzer’s
(2014) own movement toward such an approach in writing across the curriculum
research. e advantages to such an approach would allow writing across the curricu-
lum researchers to navigate “reasonable contextual dierences” (Driscoll & Perdue,
2014, p. 133) that accompany the dierent institutional cultures and histories that
have shaped specic writing across the curriculum initiatives and to advance knowl-
edge about formal writing assignment prompts and their development. We would
add that such an approach might actually be more accessible to faculty colleagues in
elds outside of writing studies. ese colleagues might well hail from elds where
the RAD approach to research is the dominant mode of knowledge making.
In short—and, also, in archetypal terms—the DAPOE framework is a recipe (cf.
Nelson, 1995; Walvoord & McCarthy, 1990) that we oer to teachers and research-
ers of writing across the curriculum. By sharing this recipe, our hope is to clarify
the genre of the formal writing assignment prompt for our students, our colleagues,
and ourselves. Anecdotally, when we’ve shared this recipe with our own colleagues
at faculty development sessions and professional conferences, the results have been
met with approval and good reviews. Participants expressed gratitude for, as one per-
son stated, “providing me a roadmap for assignment development.” e framework
has, in our experience, oered faculty a best practice in writing assignment prompt
development by placing “emphasis on helping faculty establish better writing assign-
ments,” as the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College would have us do
(Cole et al., 2013, p. 5).
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