Writing Across The Curriculum Programs Research Articles

SHOWCASE: Mason Instructor Resources Roadshow and Resource Fair (90 mins)

SHOWCASE: Mason Instructor Resources Roadshow and Resource Fair (90 mins)

A Writing Retreat at the Intersection of WAC and Civic Engagement

Partnerships between writing across the curriculum (WAC) and civic engagement (CE) programs are not given much attention but these partnerships improve each program significantly. CE programs can borrow models from WAC for professional development and obtain support for specific kinds of writing assignments; WAC programs can find among CE instructors a willing audience for critiquing the structural oppression inherent in literacy and for valuing dialectical, linguistic, and genre diversity. This snapshot focuses on a faculty writing retreat that emerged out of a WAC/ CE partnership and demonstrates how such partnerships can open the door for critical WAC pedagogy.

음악분석, 그리고 분석을 위한 글쓰기 - 음악분석을 논술중심전공교과(WAC)의 시각에서 바라보기 -

음악분석, 그리고 분석을 위한 글쓰기 - 음악분석을 논술중심전공교과(WAC)의 시각에서 바라보기 -

A Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Faculty Development Program: An Experience Report

This case study reports on the experiences of designing and assessing the effectiveness of a faculty development program on writing across the curriculum (WAC). The report focuses on the question: What are the key components of an effective faculty development program to integrate WAC into engineering and scientific courses taught by faculty in those disciplines? Situating the case: Two main models of WAC implementation exist: direct instruction, which uses writing specialists to deliver instruction to engineering and science students, and the department-centered model, which instructs faculty in engineering and scientific disciplines to teach writing as part of technical courses. How the case was studied: A report of the experiences of the authors and the feedback from the participants. About the case: The workshop was aimed at teachers in various disciplines and covered these main topics: fundamentals of writing theory and pedagogy, writing assignment design and assessment, and situating writing assignments in courses across the disciplinary curriculum. It took place over 10 weeks during a 15-week semester and included large- and small-group meetings, consultations with the members of the university WAC program, and peer review of writing assignment drafts. Conclusions, limitations, and suggestions for future research: Key challenges in developing the workshop included designing ways to bridge the conceptual gap between the participants’ and WAC instructors’ understanding of the role of writing in disciplinary courses, limited time available to the participants, and scheduling challenges. The workshop was given seven times. Most of the faculty participants (90%) generally found it to be very effective or effective. Studies of workshops with larger populations of trainees are suggested.

A Writing Retreat at the Intersection of WAC and Civic Engagement

Partnerships between writing across the curriculum (WAC) and civic engagement (CE) programs are not given much attention but these partnerships improve each program significantly. CE programs can borrow models from WAC for professional development and obtain support for specific kinds of writing assignments; WAC programs can find among CE instructors a willing audience for critiquing the structural oppression inherent in literacy and for valuing dialectical, linguistic, and genre diversity. This snapshot focuses on a faculty writing retreat that emerged out of a WAC/CE partnership and demonstrates how such partnerships can open the door for critical WAC pedagogy.

Supporting Faculty Writers and Teachers of Writing with Writing Across the Curriculum

George Mason University's award-winning Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program supports faculty writers, mentors of writers, and teachers of writing in all disciplines across campus. From Faculty Write-Ins to syllabus and assignment consultations, the WAC Program offers a variety of resources to faculty at Mason. This poster session will display new opportunities and resources that the WAC program will be offering during the 2015-2016 academic year, as well as take suggestions for workshops and events that faculty might find useful.This poster session will also offer images and video from wac.gmu.edu website and our program's scholarly blog, The Writing Campus. The Writing Campus has become a nationally recognized professional development resource amongst scholars of writing. This session will solicit submissions from faculty at Mason who teach writing, specifically in the form of successful assignments, activities used to teach writing, or approaches to mentoring writers of all levels of skill.

Laying the Foundation, Targeting the Institutional: The Trajectory of a WAC Program in the Sciences at a Jamaican University

This paper outlines the contextual implications and experiences of a team of practitioners attempting to establish a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)/ Communication Across the Curriculum (CAC) Program in the Sciences. Largely reflective in nature, it seeks to contextualize the progress and outcomes of this initiative by employing the Anson (2006) and Condon and Rutz (2012) framework for evaluating the positioning of WAC in relation to administration, staff, and students. This framework also helped identify the required steps for the full integration of WAC within the institution. The use of the aforementioned analytical tools revealed an appreciable gap between the current status of WAC / CAC at our institution and full institutional endorsement. A discussion of current initiatives being taken to move the program further ahead is undertaken. It is anticipated that the issues highlighted in this paper will serve to inform similar initiatives, while communicating the potential of WAC/CAC programmes to enable students to develop to their full potential via a student-centred, interactive environment that promotes effective teaching and exchange of ideas.

Enculturation in STEM

Over the last seven years, I have spent time across three continents talking to scientists and mathematicians about their beliefs and attitudes and experiences related to writing in their respective disciplines. I have been impressed by the passion and insight with which most have talked about writing and its relationship to critical thinking, and I have often been surprised by how they engage in these practices. For example, rather than working from an a priori hypothesis, many researchers in the STEM disciplines compose backwards, from the results to the introduction. And when reading, many seem to move from the middle of a paper outwards, beginning with the results and method, using an extremely critical eye, and then perhaps scanning out to the introduction and the discussion, or dispensing with these sections altogether. Over and over again, I heard this same story from different scientists, as if it were a secret each alone had stumbled upon. In addition, collaboration, conversation and peer review are very much part of the language of composition that takes place in the sciences (co-authorship, the hierarchies of disciplinary or interdisciplinary teams, the drafting process and the use of technology), but we who work in WID (writing in the disciplines) and WAC (writing across the curriculum) programs are constantly challenged: “How do we teach process in ways that are disciplinarily appropriate?” Historically, we haven’t done this well. As Burton and Morgan observed on the training of mathematicians as writers,

Organizational Response to a University Writing Initiative: Writing in the Disciplines (WID) in an Interdisciplinary Department

Effective communication skills, both written and verbal, along with other “soft” skills, consistently top the list of surveys of employers regarding the skills they seek in new hires and the skills they often find lacking in new graduates (Selingo, 2012). In 2003, a national report was released indicating that content classes outside of English composition were providing a neartotal neglect of writing (National Commission on Writing in American Schools and Colleges, 2003). Although the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and closely associated Writing in the Disciplines (WID) movements had been spreading across campuses in the U.S. since the 1970s (Russell, 2012), at the time of the report it does not appear that the incorporation of writing in specific disciplines or majors outside of the English department had taken off in the U.S., despite the success of WAC and WID programs on campuses across the country and wellattended WAC conferences. Their recommendations included a call for support not just from educators but also from federal and state policymakers to make resources available to support a real, fundamental reformulation of society’s view of learning through writing and communication and not just another educational fad imposed upon overworked educators.

Making It Your Own: Writing Fellows Re-evaluate Faculty "Resistance"

Faculty to Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is an issue that has been recognized by WAC program directors and practitioners for decades, yet it remains unresolved. Perhaps the problem is not per se, but how we interpret and react to it. Faculty is typically viewed as an impediment to the pedagogical change WAC programs hope to achieve. Moreover, the label of resistance is often used without further examination of the underlying causes. Based on research and experience as doctoral Writing Fellows in the Borough of Manhattan Community College WAC Program, we argue that so-called resistances are often justified concerns in regard to implementing WAC under given institutional, disciplinary, departmental, and personal constraints. We also suggest that if we listen and respond to these concerns, they become means to facilitate faculty engagement with WAC. By working through their concerns and adapting WAC to their context, faculty can take ownership of WAC and further develop the practice. Thus, what at first appears to be an impediment to deep-rooted pedagogical change—resistance—can be used to encourage faculty to make WAC their own.

Assessing writing in cross-curricular programs: Determining the locus of activity

Writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs had their genesis in grass-roots efforts to promote attention to writing in all disciplinary areas. At first based on generic faculty-development activities with little regard to systemic and institutional concerns, WAC programs are now more often engaged in assessment and research of writing, especially to measure the effects of the program on student learning and development. Yet little scholarship in WAC has analyzed assessment efforts in light of locations and types of WAC activities. This essay first describes two axes, one representing the “space” or location of WAC activity, and the other representing levels of assessment and other research on writing. When brought together, these axes create a matrix of possible types and centers of WAC activity. A case is made for the department or academic program as a locus of activity for WAC implementation and assessment that has not been fully explored in program development.

A brief history of computer support for writing centers and writing-across-the-curriculum programs

I trace the evolution of computer support for writing centers and writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) programs. Calling attention to differences in the rate of adoption and in the type of technology favored by scholars in each area, I discuss their adoption of technology within the context of their varying instructional goals. I consider early work, beginning in the 1970s, in computer-aided instruction (CAI), the development of computer-based management tools, the growing importance of style- and grammar-analysis software, word-processing programs, electronic networks through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, and the rise of interest in using the World Wide Web to support the missions of writing centers and WAC programs. I conclude by speculating briefly on future directions for technological support for writing centers and WAC programs.

The Prevalence of Writing Across the Curriculum in Collegiate Aviation Flight Education

The purpose of this paper is to report on the use of writing assignments and the prevalence of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) in collegiate aviation flight programs. Researchers report a variety of results with the incorporation of writing and speaking assignments in different fields, but similar study in aviation is not well reported. Of 115 University Aviation Association institutions surveyed, 37 responded to a battery of questions regarding the use of writing assignments in their aviation flight programs and WAC. While the majority of respondents indicate that their institution does not have an established WAC program, collegiate aviation flight programs do employ a variety of communicationfocused courses to address communication training and assignments to teach/practice communication skills. Additionally, the majority of responding institutions indicate that writing assignments are required.

You Write What You Know: Writing, Learning, and Student Construction of Knowledge

Still in the relatively early stages of our college’s Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiative, we have begun a study to assess its impact. As members of the WAC committee, full-time instructors in two of the college’s career programs (human services and early childhood respectively), and qualitative researchers, we were charged with the task of developing and implementing the study. In our urban community college we often conduct interdisciplinary work, and both the WAC program and committee reflect that. The WAC committee has enlisted support for WAC from the variety of career programs and liberal arts departments. Our role as assessors is to look at and learn from the way instructors are implementing WAC. Walvoord & Anderson (1998) state that assessors are not external imposers of something brand new but investigators, ethnographers, and facilitators. The assessor’s approach is not to get people to do assessment, but to examine how people teach and assess critical thinking, and to help them improve. (pp.150151) During the planning stages, we envisioned at least two purposes of

The Status of WAC in Secondary Public Schools: What Do We Know?

It’s a cloudy Thursday morning in November, and the university writing center is humming. A peer tutor sits at a table near the center of the room, listening to a sophomore explain her essay assignment for a recreational therapy class while a second tutor helps a freshman fine tune his thesis statement for a research paper. In the far corner, a third tutor works at a computer, responding to an on-line submission from a student in a local high school’s creative writing class. The director is conferring with a member of the mathematics department on ways to include meaningful writing activities in an advanced calculus class. It’s a typical day at a college-level writing center, but it raises a question for educators. Are similar scenes occurring in our public secondary schools? As an awareness of the importance of writing as a means of learning has grown, the writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) movement has gained momentum on college campuses. One response to this increased focus on the importance of writing in the learning process has been the establishment of writing centers at hundreds of colleges and universities. These centers are designed to serve the needs of both students and faculty and aim to support learning in all fields. While these programs have flourished in many post-secondary settings, formal WAC programs in general and writing centers in particular still seem to be something of an exception in secondary public schools; however, interest in these practices appears to be growing there as well. A number of publications show an increasing integration of WAC philosophy and strategies into secondary public school settings. Pamela Farrell’s The High School Writing Center: Establishing and Maintaining One not only provides practical information on designing and running writing labs in secondary schools, but also illustrates the variety of forms

Student Perceptions of the Value of WAC

Introduction Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs in colleges and universities are generally implemented because of faculty concerns about student writing (Young, 1994). Although the impetus for WAC programs may be concern about student writing, the programs themselves are frequently based on a faculty development model (Gorman, 1986; Russell, 1992; Walvoord, 1996), often through workshops that introduce faculty to the theory and practice of teaching with writing. This faculty development serves several purposes, the most basic of which is to have an impact on students by changing the attitudes and practices of their teachers (Young, 1994; Young & Fulwiler, 1986). The assumption behind these cross-curricular writing programs is that education is essentially delivered to students through faculty (Gorman, 1986; Walvoord, 1996). With the spread of WAC through increasing numbers of colleges and universities, there has been a corresponding increase in questions about WAC outcome. At the simplest possible level, WAC directors can count numbers of workshop participants in order to demonstrate campuswide impact. Somewhat more sophisticated evaluation efforts look at faculty satisfaction. Such studies typically show high participant satisfaction with WAC workshops (Hughes-Wiener & Jensen-Cekalla, 1991; Smithson & Sorrentino, 1987). Faculty often report an intention to make changes in their classrooms, and, in many cases, follow-up surveys indicate that these changes have been implemented (Bureau, 1993; Smithson & Sorrentino, 1987). Researchers find that it is possible to measure progress toward faculty development goals and that such goals, in fact, are apparently being met. It is comparatively easy to describe the impact of faculty development on faculty; it is much more difficult to examine how developing faculty affects their students (Walvoord, 1996). Furthermore, there are other complications common to any study of student outcome. For example, how do we isolate the impact of WAC from normal maturation? Student Perceptions of the Value of WAC

Writing across the curriculum: putting theory into practice in animal science courses.

Founded on the premise that "learning to write" and "writing to learn" are parallel processes, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs advocate the use of writing activities to enhance learning in subject matter courses across the university curriculum. Application of WAC theory to creating assignments and evaluating writing in undergraduate animal science courses is the primary focus of this paper. Although a variety of writing-to-learn activities are promoted by WAC programs, this discussion is confined to reader-based, applied or real-world assignments completed by students outside the classroom. Writing assignments of this type are effective learning tools because they guide students toward appropriate information, language, and organization, present writing as communication, not artifact, and allow students to see how classroom study of concepts can be applied to the real world. Additionally, they provide opportunity for feedback during the writing process. Although considerable effort is required to create such writing assignments and to design evaluation and grading strategies that will provide constructive feedback, animal science teachers have a responsibility to provide students with expanded opportunities for improving critical thinking and communication skills. Sharing writing assignments, like the ones included in this paper, is one way to accomplish these objectives while minimizing aggregate faculty effort.

Writing‐Across‐the‐Curriculum in an Engineering Program

AbstractThis article describes a Writing‐Across‐the‐Curriculum (WAC) approach to technical communication in the Civil and Environmental Engineering program at Utah State University. First, a brief survey of other WAC programs utilizing a general education approach, a multi‐year sequence approach, and an intensive single‐course approach are reviewed. Objectives, staffing, funding and continuity issues associated with starting and maintaining these WAC programs are examined. Then USU's WAC program is profiled. USU has a set of linked engineering and writing courses, taught over the course of two quarters, by permanent faculty in Engineering and English. The goals, course objectives, and procedures for the Professional Writing/Introduction to Environmental Engineering component and the Scientific Writing/Fluid Mechanics component are given in detail.

The Natural Connection: The WAC Program and the High School Writing Center

School writing centers are an excellent place for writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs to be located. Although such an arrangement may spur territorial, political, and theoretical conflicts...

Writing-Across-the-Curriculum in Mass Communication Courses

assignments may be the key to increased learning in most college courses, and the mass communication curriculum is no exception. In 1977, Shaughnessy argued that ought to be found to increase students' involvement with writing across the curriculum. This does not mean simply persuading more teachers in other subjects to require term papers but making writing a more integral part of the learning process in all (p. 87). During the last decade and a half, a growing awareness that writing and learning are interdependent has led many U.S. colleges and universities to adopt Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) programs. Based on the premise that learning is supported and strengthened through integrating writing in all areas of the curriculum, these WAC programs train faculty in effective ways of using varied writing assignments as part of the thinking process across disciplines. A 1985 Modern Language Association survey found that 46 percent of all Ph.D.-granting institutions, 48 percent of all BA/MA-granting institutions, and 28 percent of all two-year colleges had a WAC program (Kinneavy, 1987, p. 362). Perhaps McLeod (1992) best sums up the influence and growth of WAC programs: Writing across the curriculum has, in the space of a decade and a half, become a familiar part of the academic landscape (p. 1). WAC programs stress writing as a major component in all disciplines, not just in those that have traditionally included composition courses or just those that are a part of the general undergraduate core. Although no one WAC model has emerged, the typical WAC program suggests that writing courses be required as part of each academic major and sets parameters for how much writing and what varieties of writing assignments should be included in courses. Students commonly are taught that effective writing is a process that involves three elements: (a) prewriting, the conceptualizing and defining of key ideas and terms in an organized fashion such as an outline; (b) writing, the actual physical process of constructing paragraphs and themes; and (c) rewriting, editing one's own work and responding to the ideas of others about the work. Several theoretical assumptions form the basis of WAC programs. Sipple (1989) suggests that the theoretical assumptions should be endemic to each college or university, but some common WAC premises include: (a) promotes learning, and writing is a mode of learning itself; (b) writing is a complex developmental process; (c) the universe of writing includes a broad range of functions and audiences; (d) each academic discipline that shapes student writing should be driven by its own specialized procedures, conventions, and terminology; and (e) writers should develop and apply defined sets of problem solving and writing strategies to help them think more effectively about the subject matter of their disciplines. No matter the theoretical assumptions and premises that shape the WAC description, most WAC programs are not additive, but transformative--they aim not to add more papers and tests of writing ability, but to change the way both teachers and students use writing in the curriculum (McLeod, p. 3). There seems to be an obvious marriage between WAC programs and the journalism/mass communication discipline. Many have already called for a thorough examination of writing within the various mass communication disciplines. For instance, the AEJMC Broadcast Task Force argued in the 1989 Challenges and Opportunities in Journalism and Mass Communication Education publication that: ... broadcast production, writing, legal aspects, management, and ethics were, in that order, the areas listed as most important for broadcast majors upon graduation. Educators cited as the strongest skills their students had at graduation broadcast production, performance, and equipment operations; as the weakest, they cited writing. This point suggests that stronger and more consistent broadcast writing experiences should be expected . …