PRINCIPLES OF ACCOUNTING I LOW-STAKES WRITING INITIATIVE
The Project took place during the Fall of 2013. The work connected two Principles of Accounting I classes through
ePortfolio. ePortfolio is fundamentally about connections: both between students and student to faculty. It is a
student-centered tool that allows them to direct and document their learning over time. “The ePortfolio helps
LaGuardia students make a direct and powerful connection between their classroom learning and the rest of their
changing lives” (Eynon, 2009). We created one ePortfolio where all students completed their work, reviewed each
other’s work, and built, strengthened, and developed a community. The use of one ePortfolio streamlined the
assignment completion and review process while facilitating the social pedagogy inherent in the Project. Randy Bass
and Heidi Elmendorf define social pedagogies as “design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students
with what we might call an ‘authentic audience’ (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for
an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course” (Bass & Elmendorf, n.d.).
In his article, “High Stakes and Low Stakes in Assigning and Responding to Writing,” Peter Elbow describes the
benefits of low-stakes writing assignments as being numerous. He suggests that, “when [students] do low-stakes
writing their prose is usually livelier, clearer, and more natural—often more interesting in spite of careless mistakes”
(Elbow, 1997).
Elbow suggests that low-stakes assignments help students “find their own language” to tackle key
course concepts, and since they tend to involve less stress, they allow students to write more freely (1997). Finally,
Elbow also asserts that low- stakes assignments not only improve the quality of high-stakes writing assignments, but
more practically, they force students to keep up with the reading.
The goal of the Project was to investigate the outcomes of an active effort to incorporate writing into a Principles of
Accounting I course. Thoughtful, careful and purposeful incorporation of writing assignments were coupled with
interventions that focused on students identifying the significant impact of sound business writing in the accounting
discipline.
The Project was structured as eight assignments and one workshop, which students completed over the course of a
semester. Each Principles of Accounting I class, consisting of approximately 36 students, was divided into two
groups, Group # 1 and Group # 2. The members of each group were then paired across classes. This structure
facilitated a student-centric approach, in which we developed and shared assignments but for the most part remained
in the background, with dialogue and peer mentoring occurring across and within the classrooms through the use of
ePortfolio. The objectives of the initiative were for students to:
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Explore and strengthen their written communication skills in the context of accounting and business
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