Given the decentralized nature of graduate education and myriad demands of written communication for international students, current curricular frameworks and pedagogical approaches for supporting these students with writing skills are insufficient. To help these students engage in advanced reading, writing, and presentation of academic research, we used a SUNY IIT Grant to develop a platform called MASLOW (Module-based and Student-centered Learning of Writing) where students can improve graduate-level writing skills by increasing knowledge about it, practicing specific skills, collaborating with peers, and receiving writing instructors’ feedback. By selecting modules of their choice/need, creating and following their own timeline, and adapting what they learn to their own discipline-specific communicative contexts and genres of writing, students tackle a number of conundrums they face as advanced disciplinary writers often facing challenges at more basic levels, as well as challenges of finding the time and space required by traditional (teacher-determined, onsite, and full-credit) courses.
We will present the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks behind the MASLOW approach to writing education for graduate students, drawing on our scholarship at the intersections of graduate writing pedagogy, transition support for international students, and online writing education. We will then illustrate how an open, student-centered platform and approach can facilitate effective navigation and “hacking” through use of assignments that prompt exploration of resources on campus and by providing opportunities for synchronous and in-person meetings, small-group discussions, options to go deeper than basic requirements for course grades, multiple points of entry and exit, and explicit guidelines along the way.