Developing Students’ Writing Skills With the IDEAL Framework

Although written communication is a foundational skill, especially for careers in management, faculty can be reluctant to utilize writing assignments for a number of reasons including the subjective nature of and time involved in grading. In this article, we present the IDEAL framework—an andragogical tool developed in an effort to address these problems, while teaching students to produce more coherent and logical writing. We then share an in-class exercise to introduce students to the IDEAL framework and apply it to writing samples through a peer-feedback activity. Throughout the article, we highlight the benefits, to both educators and students, of incorporating the IDEAL framework as a meta-model for writing in management courses