A Research Proposal To Evaluate The Merits Of Writing Across The Curriculum

Abstract

Students live in an information and knowledge management economy in which the dissemination and analysis of information requires intellectual, technical and interpersonal skills. As a direct response to higher education’s challenge to produce more engineers, scientists, and business professionals, universities have increased the numbers of departments and degrees and continue to focus on increasing the numbers of students in these areas. As recently as the 2011 State of the Union speech by President Obama, the United States is posed to increase federal and state grants which favor offering resources to these disciplines. However, despite this focus on the development of hard skills, research from the private and the public sector in both academics and workplaces indicates that the lack of soft skills among our college graduates is alarming. Both the public and private sectors seek and require these soft skills in their current employees and new hires, yet both find such skills to be lacking and that deficit costs them potential profits. Soft skills are thought of, for the most part, as communication skills, critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and written communication. One of the biggest misconceptions about many soft skills is that students can learn them in an English course and simply have them in their bank of knowledge. However, all of these skills are learned through practice over time. Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) is a long standing educational movement that seeks to improve students' critical thinking, analytical, and writing skills by integrating writing instruction throughout all disciplines and courses, and throughout a student’s entire college course work. This study completed at an online university will be undertaken to show that students improve their writing and communication skills by practicing them in their entire Associate or entire Bachelor program, and these skills can transfer into their professional lives.