Writing Intensive Program Course Guidelines

The Writing Intensive Program recognizes that if students write without competence in their academic work and careers, it is due in large part to the fact that students are often given too few chances to write through their education.  WIP courses give students practice with writing in the context of learning within a discipline.  They engage students in writing to learn as they learn to write.  Though writing-intensive courses vary from one field to another, they all make writing important, give students opportunities to write in “low stakes” and “high stakes” situations, and engage students in conversations about writing.  This means that WIP courses give students more opportunities to engage in the processes of writing, to have successful writing in a discipline be a subject of instruction, and to have their writing responded to by instructors and peers.  To help WIP faculty and teaching assistants achieve these ends, we offer the following course guidelines.

Course Guidelines: Key Elements

Successful WIP courses specifically

• Feature interesting and innovative writing assignments and activities, teach students how to do them competently, and make the rationale for writing tasks and their specific benefits clear to students.

These assignments take different forms:  from brief, ungraded responses to thoughtful research projects designed to be completed in sections.  Successful WIP courses design writing tasks that engage students in thinking beyond the expected types of exam or term-paper writing, and they provide instruction along the way.  They also explain the goals and benefits of writing tasks that students are asked to do.

• Relate writing assignments clearly to course-learning goals.

Writing activities and assignments should be a discernibly relevant part of the course, integral to course learning and the ways of thinking and writing the discipline values.

• Teach the communication values of a discipline, for example, its rules of argument, evidence, and format (the kinds of writing and ways of thinking that are important in a field).

Successful WIP courses recognize two main things:  1) the most effective learning of communication skills occurs in the context of particular disciplines; and 2) the ways of developing and presenting knowledge in a field are marked by specific and inseparable writing values, which deserve attention throughout a student’s academic career.  WIP courses help students to understand how a discipline’s “ways of knowing” are integrally related to its ways of writing.  To teach disciplinary writing, then, is to help students to “think” like a sociologist, biologist, or musicologist.

• Teach the kinds of writing tasks students will do in their academic work and beyond—in graduate education and professional life.

Students perceive instruction in the kinds of writing tasks that graduate study and professional work require as an advantage of WIP courses.

• Teach the writing process by breaking assignments into parts and steps and help students understand the value of revision.

Rather than requiring an intensive—and exhaustive—amount of writing, writing-intensive courses give students a more intense engagement with the process of writing.  WIP courses stage and sequence assignments, and teach students to break writing tasks into parts, allowing time for reflection, discussion, and learning.

• Get involved with student writing:  offer opportunities for guidance, feedback, and revising.

The Writing Intensive Program recognizes that teaching writing in the disciplines means involving faculty in students’ writing processes as guides and coaches rather than only as graders.  Students perceive thoughtful, added contact with others about their writing and opportunities to revise as an advantage of writing-intensive courses.  Two things that students like most about their WIP courses:  1) the chance to get feedback, to revise drafts, and to improve their grades; and 2) the opportunity to receive multiple feedback perspectives from teaching assistants and other students.

• Make use of WIP teaching assistants and make their roles and resources clear to  students.

Along with other instructional resources, WIP teaching assistants help faculty provide more interaction with students about writing.  Successful WIP courses make use of the WIP assistant’s training, outline her responsibilities, and explain how students can benefit from working with the WIP TA (see Working with WIP TAs).

Course Guidelines:  Assignments

In addition to the guidelines offered above, here are some additional guidelines that will help WIP faculty and teaching assistants design successful writing assignments.

• The key questions to ask from the start:  What are my learning goals in this course?  How can I use writing assignments to achieve them?  What are the kinds and forms of writing that are essential in my discipline?
  

• Recognize the different purposes of different kinds of writing tasks—writing to learn and writing to present learning tasks, or in the words of composition scholar Peter Elbow, the difference between “low stakes” and “high stakes” writing. 

The simple distinction asks instructors to think about “how much a piece of writing matters or counts” in a particular situation and how it contributes to the learning process.  Low stakes writing assignments aim “to get students to think, learn, and understand more of the course material” without penalizing them for making errors that would count in high stakes writing situations.  Often informal, low stakes assignments are described and judged differently from high stakes writing, which is the end result of the writing process.  High stakes writing, which presents learning more formally, is evaluated more formally.

Students benefit from both low stakes and high stakes writing assignments.  Writing process pedagogy says that students’ high stakes writing will improve 1) if we assign low stakes writing and allow it to be revised before demanding high stakes writing, and 2) if we are involved in the process of helping students produce high stakes writing.  Effective WIP assignments provide opportunities for writing to discover, capture, record, or respond informally and opportunities to elaborate, revise, and refine work into a more formal product.

• If the writing assignment is a high stakes one, stage the assignment, building in several opportunities for helpful feedback, conferencing, and revision.

For example, require that the student first submit planning materials—such as a working thesis, a tentative outline of major points, or an annotated bibliography; later, require the student to submit a rough draft to which you and the WIP TA will respond with useful strategies for revision—global, at first; a second—and even third—draft will allow you to respond to more local concerns, such as grammar, punctuation, and usage issues, before the student hands in the final product.

• Teach discipline-specific models, formats, conventions.

Along with teaching the writing process, teaching students to write means teaching the writing conventions of a discipline: how to think, how to argue, how to write as scientists, sociologists, or music historians. Judith A. Langer's "Speaking of Knowing" emphasizes that "writing (and the thinking that accompanies it) then becomes a primary and a necessary vehicle for practicing the ways of organizing and presenting ideas that are most appropriate to a particular subject area " (71). This requires faculty to state explicitly the often tacitly held "rules of argument and evidence that represent the ways of thinking unique to each discipline" (83). 

• Avoid the tendency to attempt too much.

Two sequenced writing assignments with guidance and feedback in planning, drafting, and revising, for example, give students greater learning benefits than turning in a 20-page paper at the end of a course. Teaching with writing requires working smarter, not necessary harder.

Course Guidelines:  Syllabi

As the case in any course that asks students to write, strong syllabi are especially important in writing-intensive courses because they model effective writing, establish the purpose and role of writing in the course, and give vital information about it. Furthermore, in a WIP course, syllabi teach the writing process by charting writing assignments, their stages, and due dates. Moreover, syllabi, both paper-based and online versions, are perhaps the course document that students are most likely to keep up with and to review most often. This makes the syllabus an important teaching tool—for students as well as for faculty.  Previous WIP faculty have reported that writing-enriched classes lead them to articulate more clearly their goals for a course and to state objectives and criteria for grading more explicitly in their syllabi and materials.

Some features of effective syllabi for Writing Intensive Program courses are listed below.

• Make writing in the disciplines philosophy, as well as the role and benefits of writing in the course, clear.

WIP syllabi should integrate writing assignments fully into course learning.  In some situations, this many entail more selling than in others: students in lecture-based courses may not expect to have to write and may be resistant because, as they put it, "It isn't an English class." This resistance may be met by emphasizing the benefits of writing to learn the course content, as well as by emphasizing writing as a critical competency in an information culture. It can also be countered with truly innovative writing assignments that students see as clearly relevant to their university and post-university careers and that boost their performance in the course. 

• Introduce and articulate the role of your WIP TA.
  
• Stage assignments, breaking them into manageable parts with opportunities for guidance, feedback, and revision. A course calendar or process timeline can be useful.
  
• Sequence assignments so that students can build on and elaborate early learning.
  
• Consider logistics of prompt feedback, conferences, and revision. 
  
• Offer clear guidelines and criteria by which work will be generated and evaluated. 

Along with articulating the features of effective writing in a course and specifying the most important writing conventions, course materials should let students know what part disciplinary styles and formats such as MLA, APA, or CBE will play, as well as the role that editing errors involving grammar, punctuation, and spelling will play in finished work. 

Material originally composed by Parker Middleton.
Revised by Michelle Ballif 07.06.