Military-based, academic learning communities housed in first-year-composition courses represent a fairly unexplored curricular model. This article discusses one university's creation of first-yearcomposition courses designed with a learning community or cohort approach for student veterans, service-members, and cadets. At this locale, neither Composition I nor II provided a military population with a common student community, customized readings based on members' interests, flexible attendance policies, and seamless communication with university veteran services. Yet, such factors could facilitate the transition to college for some student veterans. This program piloted linked composition courses for a service-member, veteran, and ROTC learning community, with the latter course also enrolling a general nontraditional-student population. In a year-long study, I investigated the impact of enrolling military-affiliated students in linked courses within a traditional classroom to interact under a continuing instructor, engage with military-based readings, and opt to write about their military backgrounds. In presenting emerging patterns, I argue that these experimental learning-community courses, contingent upon some local factors, supported many military-affiliated students' engagement with first-year composition, as well as facilitated their transition to academia, through a loosely-structured, cohort model promoting aspects of students' common but broadlydefined identities.

Having a higher level of digital literacy can contribute to students' better outcomes in first-year composition. However, some underprepared and financially disenfranchised students may not have digital literacy skills nor own a portable computing device, such as a tablet, to engage their coursework. This three-year, mixed methods study of 292 first-year composition students and 46 instructors at a research university suggests that implementing an institutional initiative to offer students tablets and a digitized curriculum for first-year composition can facilitate many positive outcomes. At the study's university, a "Tablet Initiative" raised some students' digital-literacy proficiency levels, enabled their digital composition practices, and improved their course outcomes as they spent additional time both inside and outside of the classroom in reading course texts; researching their topic; planning, drafting, and revising their work; and conducting peer reviews of one another's essays. Surveys, interviews, and course observations indicate that for many students, the Tablet Initiative generated a writing-intensive, student-centered, classroom experience, with many students from underprepared or lower socioeconomic backgrounds depending on their tablets. The study's results have implications for teaching and learning with mobile digital devices in first-year composition.

Recently, there have been many discussions about how to meet student veterans' needs according to curricular and course formats. While national studies indicate that many student veterans enroll in online classes, questions about the nature of their preferences and requisites, especially in some university environments, remain. For instance, how do on-ground and online course formats address different student veterans' needs and desires? This article discusses a three-year, case study of student veterans' course preferences at both a comprehensive research university and a regional university, involving 42 student veterans and 59 nonveterans. Based upon results from survey data and follow-up interviews of 30 student veterans, students describe their course format preferences. Many students in our sample have a low-socioeconomic status, live in a rural location, work full-time, and have children. Moreover, despite the large number of adult learners that participants included, the majority describe themselves as having the digital proficiency necessary for engaging in online courses. Nonetheless, in this study, most students, including those of all ages, preferred traditional classes, with the student veterans reporting that the on-ground format gave them a better connection with their teacher and peers, as well as accommodating their learning style. The study's results have implications for teachers and administrators seeking information about providing course format options for student veterans.

Tackling environmental and sustainability issues has grown in popularity in writing courses. Yet, for teachers designing professional and technical writing classes, what are the benefits and drawbacks in asking students to interact with place-based discourses in their digital compositions, including blogs? How does implementing an ecocomposition curriculum and sustainability topics in professional and technical writing courses affect students' research, digital writing, collaborative, and critical-thinking outcomes, along with influencing their personal and larger goals? This article discusses a four-year case study at a Southwestern university of an experimental course assignment's design, and it involves 252 students, including many Native Americans. Students engaged with environmental themes and ecocomposition methods in an upper-division class. This article includes a description of the class's major assignment, a blog site and reflective essay, and the blog's assessment criteria, with raters measuring the blog's writing outcomes. Overall, employing ecocomposition practices within the blog assignment unit provided students with a relevant curriculum, assisting them in conducting research for a blog space; writing digitally and thinking critically about diverse spaces related to their backgrounds, majors, and futures; and forging ties with classmates and potential outside audiences. The study's results have implications for implementing ecocomposition design in writing classes.

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