What We’re Writing Today
We conducted surveys and interviews to discover the culture of writing at UVA today.
We’re grateful to all who participated, sharing both their writing samples and their time. Thank you!
All students reviewed part of this material and wrote papers analyzing what they found. Material will continue to appear on this page as we finalize permissions with our generous contributors.
Interviews
In March 2021, our class members conducted a series of interviews. We selected a range of faculty, staff members, students, and community members whose work intersects with writing at UVA. The resulting interviews, together with the other material we collected in this unit, speak to the range of writing activities, experiences, and perceptions that take place in connection with our university.
*A note on media: We invited our interviewees to participate in a format that felt comfortable to them. Some of the interviews were captured in video, others in audio, and one only in the interviewer’s notes.
VIDEO COMING SOON
Highlights
Surveys
UVA’s Office of Institutional Research and Analytics partnered with our class to conduct a statistically sound survey of the undergraduate student body; our class also sent out 2 informal peer surveys to capture additional data.
Our official survey went out to 2000 current undergraduates (500 from each class). We received 186 responses (a 9.3% response rate). See the results here.
For our peer surveys, we sent out 2 versions. In our first release, we noticed that respondents seemed to need more clarity regarding what “counts” as writing, so we revised and send out a second version. Here, you’ll find the results, with questions 4-6 redacted. (Those questions invited writing samples, many of which you will be able to see below; we excluded them here because they include identifying information.)
Donated Student Writing
We invited survey participants to donate samples of their writing, with wide parameters. The submissions represent a wide range of writing activity, from social (sidewalk chalk, Instagram) to creative (poetry, journaling, song) to formal projects (class papers, a published journal article). This sample—in the context of our surveys, interviews, and the synthesis essays we wrote ourselves over the material—begins to show the energetic and varied writing of UVA students.
<GALLERY COMING SOON>
Informal Writing around Grounds
These are casual photos we’ve taken just as we’ve “been around” this semester.
Our Papers
After weeks of field and bibliographic research, students brought their observations together into papers synthesizing selected works. Recurring themes emerged, including concern with performance and appearance; the functions of writing in education; the functions of extracurricular writing; fragmentation across Grounds in both function and form; issues of student representation.
