Writing-Intensive Quotes

“Of the remaining four departmental comments, one thought the criteria might have an unwelcome impact on their existing pedagogy, one recommended the addition of reading, one challenged “writing in the discipline” as difficult to achieve in their multi-disciplinary department, and one referred to the need for course development.”
― Wendy Strachan, Writing-Intensive: Becoming W-Faculty in a New Writing Curriculum

“It was a first step toward making progress in reaching broad agreement on how a W-course would be defined. Incidentally, but importantly, it was also a first step in raising awareness of the implications of the writing-intensive requirement, and in encouraging departmental conversations that would articulate values about writing that the criteria would represent. The draft criteria went out to thirty departments with questions about faculty expectations of entering and graduating students’ writing; existing or planned courses that could be designated as W-courses; resources that departments would need to assist implementation; and an invitation to comment on the draft criteria.”
― Wendy Strachan, Writing-Intensive: Becoming W-Faculty in a New Writing Curriculum

“There were individuals in every discipline who recognized writing problems but wanted no part of addressing them: some regarded them as outside their expertise or area of responsibility; others thought students should be held more accountable, be better prepared in high school, or not admitted at all if they lacked the requisite language skills for university writing.”
― Wendy Strachan, Writing-Intensive: Becoming W-Faculty in a New Writing Curriculum

“we were disposed, when starting out, to use them as the basis for our practice in this new context. In our early work with professors, however, we were not in a position to impose rules. We soon discovered the folly of making any pronouncements about the amount of writing, for instance, which might distinguish a writing-intensive approach, and took it as our goal to find professors willing to experiment and to take some steps toward engaging more with writing. We were consultants with expertise in how to use and teach writing, and we suggested strategies and provided materials. The fact that those strategies were grounded in research and theory, and could be signaled as criteria emerged in our process of discussion with faculty about the rationale for adopting particular teaching strategies. The emphasis was on alternative pedagogies, not on a list of rules requiring compliance. Just as one does not need to know that a particular word in a sentence is functioning as an adjective in order to use adjectives, faculty also neither needed, nor were necessarily concerned, to associate a practice like revision with criteria for an as yet non-existent W-course. What eventually became official criteria were initially the elements that we encouraged according to what an individual faculty member was able and willing to accommodate. The early pilot courses overall represented all the elements that we would identify as foundational to effective practice in teaching writing, but in very few courses were all of the criteria present. Faculty members positioned themselves across a spectrum of starting points in their views of writing and its role in their courses. For many professors in the Arts and social sciences, the “writing-intensive” label simply acknowledged that their courses included substantial amounts of writing. For many in the Physical Sciences, the concept as applied to their courses could, at first glance,”
― Wendy Strachan, Writing-Intensive: Becoming W-Faculty in a New Writing Curriculum

“Since CWIL’s discipline-based practice was grounded not only in process but also in New Genre Theory, their criteria included assigning writing that would enable students to engage in the kinds of thinking typical of the discipline, as well as in writing in the genres typical of professional practice. The UCITF, however, was trying to draft criteria for the new Q (quantitative reasoning) and B (breadth) courses as well as for the W-courses. They were motivated to define courses in ways that would be comprehensive and meaningful, but would not impose demands likely to alienate faculty.”
― Wendy Strachan, Writing-Intensive: Becoming W-Faculty in a New Writing Curriculum