This article shares results from a multi-institutional study of the role of writing in college students' lives. Using case studies built from a larger population survey along with interviews, diaries, and a daily SMS texting protocol, we found that students report SMS texting, lecture notes, and emails to be the most frequent writing practices in college student experience and that these writing practices are often highly valued by students as well. Our data suggest that college students position these pervasive and important writing practices as coordinative acts that create social alignment. Writing to coordinate people and things is more than an instrumental practice: through this activity, college students not only operate within established social collectives that shape literacy but also actively participate in building relationships that support them. In this regard, our study of writing as it functions in everyday use helps us understand contemporary forms of social interaction.

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These transfer and learning theories inform the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer, excerpted here, and the chapters in this collection. ERS participants brainstormed extensive lists of principles and enabling practices about writing trans-ERS participants have investigated both "Teaching for Transfer" and "Writing about Writing" curricula in multi-institutional studies. Because these types of curricular approaches forefront rhetorical knowledge, terms, and concepts that students will need to apply in future contexts, they equip students with tools and strategies for successful boundary crossing. These approaches typically also build in reiterative opportunities for developing metacognitive awareness. Although these curricula often are implemented in first-year writing contexts, courses university-wide can include reflection activities about both generalizable and discipline-specific writing strategies. recognizing and studying transfer: sites and MethodsCross-institutional, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural collaboration enriches the discussion about writing transfer and allows new perspectives to become visible. Even if multi-institutional research is not feasible for a specific writing transfer study, scholars should pursue both new and replication studies in varied contexts and routinely revisit how new inquiries intersect with prior and concurrent studies (across global contexts, as Donahue's chapter emphasizes).Both in case studies of individuals or contexts and in larger data samples, writing transfer studies use a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods to identify evidence of and measure transfer, including surveys, focus groups, interviews, classroom observations, text analysis, discourse analysis, Anson, C. M. (2016). The Pop Warner chronicles: A case study in contextual adaptation and the transfer of writing ability.

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