Resources for Faculty
*Please Note: Beginning in the Spring, 2017 semester, all YC students must complete one W-Intensive Course.
Criteria for a WI Course
Writing-Intensive Courses:
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Can be both Core courses and courses in majors
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Can be taught by faculty members from any discipline
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Can easily designate work you’re already doing
Each W Course Will Articulate:
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Role of writing in the course / How does writing help students learn, comprehend, remember, and synthesize course material?
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Role of writing in that discipline
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Expectations of Students: Assignments and Participation
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Approaches to Research and Use of Outside Sources (includes citation)
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Opportunities for Strengthening Writing (clarity, complexity, argument?)
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Opportunity(ies) for Revision
What Does Writing-Intensive Mean?
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Students should write at least one substantial assignment appropriate to the discipline.
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Faculty should spend the equivalent of at least one class period addressing students’ writing.
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Faculty should provide feedback on student writing, with the aim of helping students do better on future writing.
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Faculty will have the option to consult with Writing Program Director for guidance with syllabus development, assignment writing, grading strategies, and in-class writing activities.
What about Honors Sections?
In consultation with the Honors Director, faculty teaching Honors-designated WI courses might wish to require more writing.
Proposing a WI Course
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W-Intensive Course Proposal Form
Planning a WI Course
Critical Thinking
As all writers know, writing provides both a process and a product, each of which is essential in helping students develop critical thinking skills. To this end, we encourage all WI faculty to use writing as a means for exploration as well as communication. WI courses provide an opportunity for students to grapple with different problems, make important connections, unearth implications, and understand the larger context.
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Rhetorical Awareness
Precisely because no single course can teach students how to “write” for every class, grad school application, and/or future professional situation, WI faculty will help students by explicitly clarifying the rhetorical choices appropriate to your specific class and your specific field. Doing so will help students understand the questions to ask themselves both in writing for your class and beyond. This means that for each piece of reading and writing you do, you can define and discuss the following:
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Who is the intended audience?
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What is the purpose of the piece of writing?
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What is the writer hoping to accomplish?
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What is the genre?
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What kinds of evidence has been used?
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What is the tone and/or the language of the piece?
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Is the use of the 1st person appropriate?
Designing Formal Assignments
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Articulating learning goals
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Explaining expectations
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Proposing different essay options
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Developing a rubric
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Providing opportunities for feedback
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Informal Writing & In-Class Activities
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Reading for rhetorical models (not just content)
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Informal reading responses
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Peer review
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Summarizing positions: what’s essential?
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The one-minute paper
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Sharing experiences from your own writing, editing, or publishing process
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Strategies for Revision
Additional Resources
In the Classroom
"9 Tools for the Accidental Writing Teacher"
The One-Minute Paper
"On Writing" from the
Chronicle of Higher Ed
On Campus
Wilf Campus Writing Center
Around the Country
An Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)
George Mason University WAC
OWL (On-Line Writing Lab) Purdue