Scholar Project: Teaching Writing in Accounting

CIRTL Scholars add to community knowledge about teaching and learning, most often by presenting or publishing their work to university, regional, national, or international audiences. It is the highest achievement level CIRTL participants can earn. In this spotlight, Alex Whitecotton, Ph.D. student in Accounting and now a first-year Assistant Professor at Hope College, talks about his Scholar project, which meant turning a class project into a workshop he led for faculty in his department in May 2025.

“For my CIRTL Scholar Project, I led a workshop, Teaching Writing in Accounting, for accounting faculty at the University of Arizona in which I discussed the importance of assignment design, peer review, and reflective writing in the classroom. Accounting students have long been unprepared for the communication required of them upon joining the workforce, so my goal for this workshop was to encourage accounting faculty to embrace the teaching of writing in their classes.

This workshop was the direct result of my participation in the CIRTL course ‘Teaching Writing’ with Kristin Winet and Emily Jo Schwaller. Their support throughout the process allowed me to take what began as an in-class assignment and turn it into a legitimate instructional session for faculty that impacted the way they thought about teaching writing in Accounting.

During my workshop, I covered topics such as the RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, and Task) model of designing writing assignments, the RISE (Reflect, Inquire, Suggest, and Elevate) model of peer review, and the ALACT (Action, Looking Back, Awareness, Create Alternatives, and Trial) model of reflective writing that I first discovered within my CIRTL courses. Faculty members in attendance expressed apprehension toward teaching writing at the start of the workshop, but many were excited to implement these techniques in their own classes by the end of our time together.

As a bonus, I was later selected to present on my project at the annual University of Arizona’s GIDP Showcase, which helped me articulate how the workshop went, what I learned, and how I will approach my teaching differently when I am a faculty member.”