Our 2025 book, Making Writing Meaningful: A Guide for Higher Education, Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed Series at The University of Oklahoma Press.
It seems obvious: students will have more meaningful writing experiences if we offer more opportunities for their writing to be meaningful for them. But what does that mean? What makes writing meaningful for students? What, really, makes students want to write? The authors of this book asked precisely that, and the answers they gathered from students across disciplines, majors, and institutions over several years inform their advice in Making Writing Meaningful: A Guide for Higher Education. This book invites students and teachers alike to take advantage of the guidance offered here to foster connections that will serve students—and the world—well beyond academia.
Read an article from this study, “The Power of Personal Connection for Undergraduate Student Writers,” in Research in the Teaching of English (V53 n4 May 2019).
Also, an article from this study is available online in the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) magazine Peer Review. “What Meaningful Writing Means for Students” appears in a 2017 issue on New Frontiers in Writing. Read the article and see the infographic here.
Our first book, The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher Education, is available for purchase from Utah State University Press.
Several trends 
emerged from the research: The majority of students noted that meaningful writing projects were something they had never done before but that they felt would be connected to the writing they would do as professionals. Also meaningful were writing projects that were connected to students’ lives and interests beyond school, as well as writing projects that helped them learn or explore course content more deeply. Finally, a key implication for teaching is that meaningful writing projects frequently had requirements but also offered students considerable choice in topic or approach.
Read a review of the book from The Chronicle of Higher Education — “Will They Remember Writing It?”