ABSTRACT
In 2011, the research team developed the Writing Transfer Project, a multi-institutional, mixed-methods research study that investigated students development and transfer-of-writing-related knowledge in first-year writing and the following year. Writing transfer entails substantial complexity as students move across contexts and is thus unlikely to be smooth or perfect; the goal of the research is to enable students to make that transition as successfully as possible. Nowacek, writing specifically about the transfer of writing skills, also emphasized the importance of cueing students genre knowledge from earlier contexts to encourage transfer into new contexts. Cueing can take place within a course-a reminder to reflect on and assess whether to draw on skills learned in earlier assignments-or in later courses, as professors cue students to draw on and adapt prior knowledge or to recognize the need to incorporate new writing knowledge and skills.
