Newkirk on Freshman English at UNH (circa 1981 and 1989)

This description of ENGL 401 comes from Newkirk's article "Barriers To Revision":

Unlike the traditional writing course where students usually receive only written responses to their work, in this course students met once a week with the instructor to discuss problems and possible revisions. Students wrote a three to five page paper each week and were allowed to choose their own topics. A major revision of a piece was counted as a new paper, and students were graded on their best two papers at the end of the course. Thus, the course structure encouraged revision in a way that traditional courses, which often make revision into extra work, do not. (50)

This description of the practice of the writing conference at UNH is taken from Newkirk's chapter "The First Five Minutes":

The conferences were held as part of the freshman English course at the University of New Hampshire and occurred in the third week of the course (in most cases they were the second student-teacher conference). In virtually all sections of freshman English, students are not graded until mid-semester and then only on work that both student and instructor feel is the best produced to that point. For that reason, instructors in these early conferences are not under pressure to give or justify grades.