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.

Chapter 1 be especially important to undergraduate science students, whose confidence in their own abilities as writers may have been damaged by experiences with writing in the classroom during their schooling (Choi et al., 2010;Shanahan, 2004).Several of the scientists and mathematicians in this study discuss damaging experiences with school and English teachers in particular.The anxious mathematics student, sitting in a writing class, who reads this comment by a successful applied mathematician, What's interesting is I did mathematics, I think, because I found English so difficult . . .I failed . . . on English and I was fine on mathematics.I was top in maths but I was desperate in English.I can remember the essay.The title was "Your House."Now as a mathematician . . .I've got to write about my house.What is my house?And I went to numbers straight away.It's got five windows, it's got one door-this is age 10 or 11.I knew it was a disaster when I wrote it.But I was incapable of doing anything better-Timothy, Chapter 3. may recognise a similar incident of their own, and may never have realised that the successful science or mathematics professor in their writing classroom may have experienced this kind of setback.Reading of

Tinkering is a longstanding material practice that has gained popularity in recent years as a learning strategy at numerous schools, camps, and makerspaces. This article seeks to establish in composition pedagogy tinkering’s playful, exploratory ethos by introducing a practice called critical-creative tinkering . In critical-creative tinkering, a writer dwells inside a source text by reading and rewriting it, generating an alternative text. Building on the itinerant status of traditional tinkers, this article promotes critical-creative tinkering as a pedagogy that moves or travels across the curriculum. Toward that end, it presents tinkering assignments and student responses to them from two different writing-intensive courses: an introductory literature course and a professional writing course.

Applied Pedagogies: Strategies for Online Writing Instruction, edited by Daniel Ruefman and Abigail G. Scheg. Boulder: UP of Colorado for Utah State UP, 2016. Print. Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction, edited by Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew. Fort Collins: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2015. Print. A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI) by the CCCC Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction. Conference on College Composition and Communication. Mar. 2013. Web.

This article discusses five trends in research on writing as a learning activity. Firstly, earlier decades were marked by conflicting views about the effects of writing on learning; in the past decade, the use of meta-analysis has shown that the effects of writing on learning are reliable, and that several variables mediate and moderate these effects. Secondly, in earlier decades, it was thought that text as a medium inherently elicited thinking and learning. Research during the past decade has indicated that writing to learn is a self-regulated activity, dependent on the goals and strategies of the writer. Thirdly, the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement emphasized domain-general approaches to WTL. Much recent research is consistent with the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) movement, incorporating genres that embody forms of reasoning specific to a given discipline. Fourthly, WTL as a classroom practice was always partially social, but the theoretical conceptualization of it was largely individual. During the past two decades, WTL has broadened to include theories and research that integrate social and psychological processes. Fifthly, WTL research has traditionally focused on epistemic learning in schools; more recently, it has been extended to include reflective learning in the professions and additional kinds of outcomes.

Globalization, most sociologists agree, is not a new phenomenon. Its phase in the late 20 th century and early 21 st century, however, is recognized now as one of the more transformative periods in human history-what Anthony Giddens (2011) has characterized as a "runaway world." In the last few decades, there has scarcely been a domain of human activity untouched by these forces-economic systems, mass media and communication, cultural flows, the movement of people. A global site as intensive as any has of course been our universities; indeed, it is these "runaway" forces that have been responsible for so many of the changes witnessed on our campuses in recent decades. They are evident, for example, in the considerably more diverse student cohorts who now participate in university education, along with the rich variety of languages and cultures they bring to their studies. Dramatic changes have also been seen in what is taught on programs, including the push within many disciplines to systematically "internationalize curricula." Along with new content are radically new ways of delivering programs, as digital communications become more and more sophisticated at replicating-and also reconfiguring-the learning experiences of the traditional classroom. Finally, these forces have also brought about new types of collegial relationships as institutions and academics reach out across borders to connect and collaborate on a great variety of educational and research enterprises. Versions of these changes have been experienced in many parts of the world. In my home country, Australia, for example, such has been the scale of these developments that international education has emerged in recent times as one the nation's largest export industries.

Situated in the literature on threshold concepts and transfer of prior knowledge in WAC/WID and composition studies, with particular emphasis on the scholarship of writing across difference, our article explores the possibility of re-envisioning the role of the composition classroom within the broader literacy ecology of colleges and universities largely comprised of students from socioeconomically and ethno- linguistically underrepresented communities. We recount the pilot of a composi- tion course prompting students to examine their own prior and other literacy values and practices, then transfer that growing meta-awareness to the critical acquisition of academic discourse. Our analysis of students’ self-assessment memos reveals that students apply certain threshold concepts to acquire critical agency as academic writ- ers, and in a manner consistent with Guerra’s concept of transcultural repositioning. We further consider the role collective rubric development plays as a critical incident facilitating transcultural repositioning.

Institutions of postsecondary education, and the field of writing across the curriculum and in the disciplines (WAC/WID) in particular, need to do more to trouble learning paradigms that employ writing only in service to particular disciplines, only in traditional learning environments, and only in particular languages, or in service to an overly narrow or generalized idea of who students are, where they're going, and what they need to get there. In relating a cross-section of a larger effort to study and support writing as a high-impact practice in a student chapter of an international nonprofit humanitarian engineering student organization, I will demonstrate that WAC/WID can and should empower students to use writing in student organizations, especially those that align with the four learning outcomes deemed essential by the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America's Promise, as a means of integrating into and interrogating their social and political realities, and reshaping postsecondary education to better meet their needs and goals as individual learners and as citizens in a deliberative democracy.

This article considers how professional writing courses can prepare students in various disciplines for the workforce. Specifically, I argue for Writing in the Disciplines (WID) internships where students learn to write documents relevant for their careers while participating in practical work experiences. In the WID internships I describe, instructors collaborate with coordinators across campus to establish writing-intensive internships that focus on the needs of students and the community partner. This article illustrates the collaborative endeavors of three internships, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned from WID internships.

Examination of the perspectives and experiences of faculty, graduate student instructors, and undergraduates participating in a WAC/WID program shows how discipline-focused WAC/WID principles are often resisted, interrogated, and subverted by all three groups of stakeholders. New disciplinarity, especially its concepts of borderlands and elasticity, offers a promising focus for WAC/WID.

Conducted through a collaboration between the Council of Writing Program Administrators(CWPA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study identified andtested new variables for examining writing’s relationship to learning and development. EightyCWPA members helped to establish a consensus model of 27 effective writing practices. EightyUS baccalaureate institutions appended questions to the NSSE instrument based on these 27practices, yielding responses from 29,634 first-year students and 41,802 seniors. Confirmatoryfactor analysis identified three constructs: Interactive Writing Processes, Meaning-Making WritingTasks, and Clear Writing Expectations. Regression analyses indicated that the constructs werepositively associated with two sets of established constructs in the regular NSSE instrument “DeepApproaches to Learning (Higher-Order Learning, Integrative Learning, and Reflective Learning)and Perceived Gains in Learning and Development as defined by the institution’s contributionsto growth in Practical Competence, Personal and Social Development, and General EducationLearning” with effect sizes that were consistently greater than those for the number of pageswritten. These were net results after controlling for institutional and student characteristics, aswell as other factors that might contribute to enhanced learning. The study adds three empiricallyestablished constructs to research on writing and learning. It extends the positive impact of writing beyond learning course material to include Personal and Social Development. Although correlational, it can provide guidance to instructors, institutions, accreditors, and other stakeholders because of the nature of the questions associated with the effective writing constructs.

This article examines how the Computers in Writing-Intensive Classrooms (CIWIC)/Digital Media and Composition (DMAC) Institute has realized founding director Cynthia L. Selfe's commitment to prioritizing people first, then teaching, then technology. I analyze how institute curricula introduce and model pedagogies for teaching digital composing, foster networking among participants, articulate a critical stance toward technology, and encourage newcomers to enter the field as administrators and scholars (as well as teachers). I also draw on participant documents (social media posts, publications, and CVs) to investigate the uptake of these ideas. Moving forward, I suggest that in light of the institute's growing emphasis on digital composing, 1) knowledge-making should be seen as the larger frame for CIWIC/DMAC work, and 2) research should be added to the institute's existing articulation of the field in terms of people→teaching→technology.

We in composition studies have countered the suspicion that what we do is “simplistic in method and impoverished in content” by insisting on our own disciplinary expertise, an insistence that has gained us administrative support and, arguably, better working conditions. Yet this article explores a problem that arose for the author as a result of her own insistence on disciplinary expertise: she had great difficulty recruiting faculty from other disciplines to teach first-year writing classes. This article suggests a solution to this problem, a strategic disingenuousness derived from the strategy developed by popular sentimental women authors of nineteenth-century America to counter the disciplinary expertise of professional male orators and rhetoricians, who looked down on the untrained speaker. The stance of strategic disingenuousness that this article advocates is more radical than the denial of expertise touted by recent scholarship in WAC and WID: it requires WPAs to withhold their expertise in the absence of any assurancethat the faculty they are training already have within themselves the knowledge they need to teach writing. An admittedly inefficient and often exasperating stance, it nonetheless represents a way for WPAs to entice faculty to teach writing and build a strong community with them.

Research on writing to learn is conceptually rich and pedagogically important. This special issue contributes to our growing knowledge about the variables that mediate and moderate the effects of writing on learning. One group of studies addresses individual writing; it adds to the growing evidence for the effects of several moderators, including cognitive, metacognitive, and personal utility prompts in journal writing (Wäschle et al.); and discipline-specific prompts for argument writing (Van Drie et al.). The individual-level studies also suggest moderator roles for discipline-general strategies of argumentation (Smirnova); and open-ended informational writing assignments (Wilcox et al.). Additionally, the Wäschle et al. study provides the strongest evidence for a specific sequence of mediation: Prompted journal writing to comprehension to interest to critical reflection. The second set of articles focusses on collaborative writing (Corcelles & Castelló; Ortoleva and Bétrancourt). It suggests moderating roles for discipline-specific analytic strategies, and peer interaction; and suggests mediating roles for exploratory discourse and group regulation. Further experimental research on collaborative writing is needed to conclusively test hypotheses about specific mediator and moderator variables. The studies in this special issue, like many recent studies, are incommensurable with some influential theories of writing to learn. Rather, individual and collaborative studies converge to suggest that writing to learn may be conceptualized as a guided process of cognition and self-regulation.

This paper is a response to an invitation from the editors of the special issue to comment on the ingredients of effective writing to learn interventions as reflected in the contributions to the special issue. The six papers in the issue vary widely in approach and underlying theoretical frameworks but share the broad common theme of writing to learn. Within this, they vary along three main dimensions: (i) how learning is defined and assessed, and in particular whether they assess effects of the writing intervention on content knowledge; (ii) related to this, whether they are primarily focussed on discipline specific skills or on more general effects of writing; and (iii) whether they are designed to carry out a controlled evaluation of the writing intervention or rather are concerned with describing the design and purpose of a specific intervention. In what follows, I will first consider the general characteristics of the papers in relation to these three dimensions. I will then reflect on the findings of the individual papers, and then conclude by relating the papers to my personal understanding of writing to learn in terms of a dual-process model of writing.

This article describes the key features of the WAC program at the Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Cincinnati. the author won a Diana Hacker Award.

So I’ve been toying with the idea of just going with groups of four and then I would have all the groups in both sections being the same size. So is that better or is it better to do an experiment where I’ve got one set in groups of three and one set with groups of four? Then, would they somehow be unhappy if, you know, if you were in one section and you were in a group of three but you could have been in the other section and been in a group of four?\n—Food Science Professor\nThese questions were posed by a food science professor who incorporates group assignments and laboratories into her courses in order for students to learn disciplinary content and to prepare them for professional practice...

In 2010, Fairfield University, a Jesuit Carnegie Masters Level 1 University located in the Northeast, established its first doctoral -level program: the Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP). In a developing program such as the DNP, some of the most pressing concerns of current rhetoric and writing in the disciplines align and interact with the education of clinical nurse leaders — questions of transfer, ethical practice, reflection, assignment desi gn, and community engagement. Clearly, nursing scholar/practitioners and writing scholar/practitioners have much to offer and to learn from each other. In this article, we trace the initial action -research undertaken by the School of Nursing, the Writing C enter, and the Center for Academic Excellence to document, reflect upon, and support the reading and writing experiences of DNP graduate students as they negotiate the new curriculum.

In this profile we describe changes to the composition program at Missouri University of Science and Technology, prompted by the hiring of the university’s first writing program administrator (WPA). We describe our efforts to implement evidence-based best practices in undergraduate writing courses in a context where very little program specific evidence was available. We also describe how challenges of effecting change at a university largely composed of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students has meant that many of the changes have been framed by the spirit of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives. Several new methods of assessment have been introduced to the program, including instructor feedback, student surveys, and skills tests. Allowing assessment to drive standardization has begun a process of measuring the transfer of student knowledge we believe other departments will find interesting. We close by outlining unresolved issues and ongoing challenges as the program moves forward.

Reviewed are: Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters by Robert Pinsky; reviewed by Rob Wallace Basic Skills Education in Community Colleges: Inside and Outside of Classrooms by W. Norton Grubb with Robert Gabriner; reviewed by Keith Kroll Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines by Laura Wilder; reviewed by Abigail Montgomery

Review Article| October 01 2014 What We Value but Cannot Name The Centrality of Style. Edited by Duncan, Mike and Vanguri, Star Medzerian. Fort Collins, Colorado: WAC Clearinghouse/Parlor Press, 2013. Gretchen L. Dietz Gretchen L. Dietz Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2014) 14 (3): 569–575. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2716963 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Gretchen L. Dietz; What We Value but Cannot Name. Pedagogy 1 October 2014; 14 (3): 569–575. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2716963 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2014 by Duke University Press2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

This article discusses the design and evaluation of an intensive writing institute developed for students new to universities and colleges in the United States. In its first year, the program consisted of a hybrid (part online and part onsite) writing-intensive course which offered a brief but focused introduction to the writing and reading strategies necessary for success in U.S. universities and colleges, with an emphasis on reading complex texts like those which the students would encounter in content courses and on writing and revising completed compositions. Cultural differences and institutional expectations were also addressed in the course. Beyond the formal instruction, participating second language writers, all of whom were Chinese, were provided with extracurricular opportunities to interact with their professors in informal situations. Implications for preparing new international students for writing demands in university settings are discussed.

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,

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,

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,

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,

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,