Faculty Resources (WAC)

There is an implicit assumption that WAC is a faculty-driven phenomenon…WAC assumes that students learn better in an active rather than a passive (lecture) mode, that learning is not only solitary but also a collaborative social phenomenon, that writing improves when critiqued by peers and then rewritten. Faculty must see these as important and useful ways of teaching before they will institute them in their own classrooms (McLeod & Soven, 2000, p. 4).

Benefits

There are both short- and long-term benefits for faculty who include writing in their courses. In the short run, teachers are better able to gauge how well students grasp information and where they need elaboration of key concepts. In the long run, as more teachers incorporate writing into more courses, students become more and more practiced at using writing as a communication and learning tool. Especially for more advanced or specialized work in the discipline, teachers reap the benefits of having students who are better grounded in the fundamentals and ready to engage in more sophisticated analysis of ideas (WAC Clearinghouse, n.d., “What’s in it for me?” section).

How the WAC staff can help instructors to implement WAC in their classrooms?

  1. Meet with you to discuss ways to incorporate writing assignments into any class, small or large.

  2. Help review and tailor any of your assignments that have a writing component to help make it clearer for students and to help develop rubrics for speed and accuracy of grading.

  3. Visit your class to help students get started on your writing assignments.

  4. Hold workshops on creating good writing assignments.

  5. Host discussions of how to improve the writing of students in your programs.

  6. Conduct reviews of writing assignments in your department's courses to identify exactly what your students are being asked to write and to ensure that they have access to resources on how to write (online and on-campus) (University of Alberta, 2002).

What we need from you:

  1. Up to one hour of class time to review the assignment(s) with your students, and talk to them about effective, discipline specific writing strategies.

  2. The course syllabus, assignment description, and any ancillary material (marking rubrics, scoring guides, sample assignments, and the like).

How to apply:

Contact Linda Nicholl at: [email protected]