It Takes an Island: A Survey of Writing across the Curriculum at the University of The Bahamas

Abstract

This study presents the findings of a survey of faculty across the disciplines at the University of The Bahamas (UB) regarding the types of writing they assign students in their classes and the value they place on certain aspects of students’ writing when assessing student work. A major goal of the study is to build background knowledge about the state of writing instruction across the disciplines at UB to support the growth of a possible Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiative. In the current study, UB faculty in the hard sciences reported assigning a smaller range of writing tasks to students than their colleagues in the humanities and social sciences. Furthermore, despite disciplinary differences, UB faculty reported broadly similar areas of concern when assessing student writing.