WAC Links

A Colorado State U introduction for faculty intended to encourage good practice across the curriculum. Compiled by Kate Kiefer, a member of the faculty at CSU. Copyright 2000.   

An ongoing inventory of publications in post-secondary composition, rhetoric, ESL, and technical writing: 1939-1999. A great resource for tracking down journal publications. Keyworded. CompPiler: Rich Haswell   

An extensive annotated bibliography on several areas related to WAC, including both general and discipline specific sources. The bibliography also addresses tutoring, peer review, evaluation, grading and marking, ESL, critical thinking, composition, and assessment/portfolios.   

A collection of resources for educators who engage students in communicating about mathematics With more than 90 pages, 80 attachments, and 450 external links, the website provides advice, resources, and literature related to numerous aspects of mathematical communication pedagogy. Some highlights include + short videos of common math presentation pitfalls & how to avoid them +weekly activities for teaching communication in a Real Analysis course +links to advice from respected mathematicians such as Serre and Halmos +lessons for teaching precision & rigor, flow, notation, guiding text, & more +key resources from Writing Across the Curriculum & Writing in the Disciplines +research articles and literature reviews related to communication pedagogy +opportunities for students to publish or present at conferences +resources for forming, supporting, and assessing student teams +examples of math for a general audience (e.g., Vi Hart's doodling videos) +pages about inquiry-based learning and the Moore Method +suggestions for providing effective feedback & managing workload +sample rubrics for assessing writing about mathematics +a blog by MAA Director of Publications and Communications, Ivars Peterson This website originated in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was expanded with support from the National Science Foundation, and is currently hosted by the Mathematical Association of America as part of their Mathematical Sciences Digital Library (MathDL). Submissions are welcome. Editors: Haynes Miller, Department of Mathematics, MIT Susan Ruff, Writing Across the Curriculum, MIT Ivars Peterson, Director of Publications and Communications, MAA   

A comprehensive introduction to and resource for Learning Communities. Includes ideas for getting started and sustaining LCs, a resource page, and a searchable directory of 131 learning community initiatives. Programs can add themselves to the database.   

Coordinating center for a large effort to document educational practices that encourage learning through student engagement. Centered at Indiana U. Broad survey results compare campuses on various factors that correlate with engagement.   

A searchable electronic compilation of the CCCC bibliographies edited by Erika Lindemann (1984-1990), Gail Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe (1991-1994), Gail Stygall (1995-1997), and Todd Taylor (1998-1999).   

This well designed and comprehensive site provides access to write-to-learn activities, a Writing Fellows handbook, and links to other WAC resources, among other features. You can read their newsletter at: http://writing.richmond.edu/resources/newsletter.htm   

Writing Program Administrators' jointly authored outcomes statement. Adopted April 2000. A version of this statement was published in WPA: Writing Program Administration 23.1/2 (fall/winter 1999): 59-66   

Statements on best practices in writing assessment, teaching, writing centers, and others.   

The Online Writing Center at Colorado State University is one of the largest compilation of resources for writers and teachers available online. "Resources for Writers and Teachers" include specific advice for teachers on designing and evaluating student writing, teaching specific writing skills (from narrowing topics to proofreading), and using computer technologies as teaching tools. Students can find advice on specific types or formats of papers, getting started, writing for specific audiences, and so on.   

We have a more complete list on the Clearinghouse. Follow the link!   

Prepared by Graham Tillotson, this history of WAC covers a lot of ground in very little space.   

We have another list of WAC Programs on this site. Follow the link!   

This site emerges from a 1997 ACA Culpeper-funded project to assist 14 ACA member colleges. It provides access to member sites, resources, links, and publications.   

Provides an archive of past WAC conferences. This site is sponsored by Rice University's WAC program.   

ATTW brings together teachers and researchers in technical, scientific, medical, and professional communication. They publish TCQ, meet yearly, sponsor an active listserv, and maintain a top website with excellent materials.   

The Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute at Baruch College, CUNY is a long-running initiative to promote effective communication, especially business communication, within a very diverse urban institution. They sponsor a yearly symposium in May.   

Up to date bibliography on Northern Illinois Program   

The Campus Computing Project focuses on the use of information technology in higher education. The project's national studies draw on qualitative and quantitative data to help inform faculty, campus administrators, and others interested in the use of information technology in American colleges and universities.   

The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) Writing Program is founded on the idea that the ability to communicate effectively will make Mines graduates more competitive, more confident, more successful in their careers, and ultimately in a better position to influence their chosen fields, the workplace, and our world. Jon Leydens, Writing Program Administrator E-Mail: jleydens@mines.edu   

The Center for Instructional Innovation (CII) is dedicated to the enhancement of teaching and learning on the campus of Western Washington University. The Center promotes discussion and debate about teaching and learning, provides support to faculty in instructional innovation and course development, and helps nurture a culture of educational innovation and instructional excellence across disciplines. The website includes extensive teaching resources and a best practices trove in the Innovative Teaching Showcase.   

The Centre for Learning Excellence provides a range of resources and links to help and support teaching and learning at the University of Bedfordshire. The Centre's aim is to support the delivery of a curriculum which helps students and faculty achieve the University's mission.   

The national organization for writing program administrators, with links to all kinds of resources including policy statements, consultant-evaluator services, assessment, the WPA's annual workshop and conference, the WPA-L listserv, and much more.   

Available as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file, "this statement responds to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism in four ways: by defining plagiarism; by suggesting some of the causes of plagiarism; by proposing a set of responsibilities (for students, teachers, and administrators) to address the problem of plagiarism; and by recommending a set of practices for teaching and learning that can significantly reduce the likelihood of plagiarism. The statement is intended to provide helpful suggestions and clarifications so that instructors, administrators, and students can work together more effectively in support of excellence in teaching and learning."   

This online tool gives teachers across the curriculum a series of questions to answer as they think about goals for writing in their classes and how different kinds of writing tasks might meet those goals.   

Digital Writing - Across the Curriculum: Implications of Technology for the Content and Outcomes Of a Liberal Education. Web Site devoted to collecting examples supporting the claim that faculty teaching courses in almost any discipline can teach those courses in better, richer ways if their students enter those courses with some skills in digital writing (e.g., creating web sites, developing wikis, and other forms of writing online). By "skills" we don't just mean the commands for using software, but also skills in using these genres of writing for academic purposes.   

Adaptable tips for teaching with Web discussion boards and email lists plus links to assignment design ideas, strategies for generating participation, suggestions for evaluating posts, and additional resources.   

Although written for students to use, this online module reviews strategies and steps teachers can move through quickly to help students prepare cleaner final drafts of papers.   

RNtoBSN.org has published this Web-based resource on effective communication skills for nurses. It was created to help improve lines of communication between individuals within care settings. The site's mission is to give students the tools and information to empower their education and career.   

Rebecca Moore Howard's bibliography on free standing writing programs.   

Global Learning Communities is an education consulting firm based in Australia with offices in the United States of America and New Zealand. GLC offers a wide range of workshops, services, and resources, but this web site does not contain substantial usable material.   

Website with resources and blog pertaining to writing, editing, and managing Web sites.   

Resource for all issues concerning the history of literacy.   

This is an online publication created by the Center for Instructional Innovation as a way to highlight and share exceptional teaching practices by Western Washington University faculty. Each year, several instructors are nominated to participate, and then work extensively with the CII to create this in-depth resource. This year’s Showcase theme, "Creating a Culture of Writing," honors faculty who embed the writing process into their coursework and engage students with quality writing assignments. Includes faculty portfolio, syllabi, video interviews, and learning outcomes.   

This project aims to identify, compile, analyze, and facilitate activity and interest in writing in the disciplines in higher education around the world. Directed by Chris Thais at UC-Davis.   

An annotated list of links on outcomes assessment, provided by North Carolina State University.   

Contains material relating to adult literacies, literate practices in the community, and academic literacies   

Studio approach helps undergrad engineering students with research communications skills at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. An NSF initiative.   

Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering Case Studies from MIT Mya Poe, Neal Lerner and Jennifer Craig Foreword by James Paradis To many science and engineering students, the task of writing may seem irrelevant to their future professional careers. At MIT, however, students discover that writing about their technical work is important not only in solving real-world problems but also in developing their professional identities. MIT puts into practice the belief that "engineers who don't write well end up working for engineers who do write well," requiring all students to take "communication-intensive" classes in which they learn from MIT faculty and writing instructors how to express their ideas in writing and in presentations. Students are challenged not only to think like professional scientists and engineers but also to communicate like them.   

The Legal Writing Institute is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1984 by the University of Puget Sound School of Law – now Seattle University School of Law. The Institute’s purpose is to exchange ideas about legal writing and to provide a forum for research and scholarship about legal writing and legal analysis. The Institute is currently housed at Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia. The Institute promotes new activities through a newsletter, published twice a year; a scholarly journal, published about once a year; and a national conference that has been held every other year since 1984. The Institute has over 1,300 members representing all the ABA-accredited law schools in the United States. The Institute also has members from other countries, as well as from English departments, independent research-and-consulting organizations, and the practicing bar. Anyone who is interested in legal writing or the teaching of legal writing may join the Institute   

Site of primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. Includes National Assessment of Educational Progree results, among many other resources.   

From the Center's Mission and Goals: "The Center for the Study of Higher Education engages researchers, practitioners, and policy leaders alike in examining significant issues of practice and policy confronting higher education at the campus, state, national, and international levels. As a research center emphasizing externally-funded, policy-oriented research, the Center serves as a vital and productive magnet for research teams, individual faculty, visiting scholars, and graduate research assistants working to improve practice and policy-making in higher education."   

The National Writing Project focuses on helping teachers become writers. It also helps them become better writing teachers. Its primary mission "is to improve the teaching of writing and improve learning in the nation's schools."   

InformEd is a learning and teaching hub designed for educators and e-learners, featuring resources and interactive and innovative ideas for learning and trends in education as well as education technology. The resource is an introduction to teaching strategies, including directive and non-directive learnin.techniques. Contact Person: Tess Pajaron   

A guide developed during an NEH-funded Writing and Technology Assistants Program, which trained a core of students to assist professors who wished to use computers to integrate technology and writing into their courses. Began 1998. Linda Anstendig and Eugene Richie, Co-PIs   

In 2011, MIT created a set of short videos about peer review—one for students and one for faculty—that address common issues with peer review and place student peer review in the context of professional peer review. These videos offer examples of peer review on both written and oral communication, and include perspectives from faculty in many different disciplines. The companion video, Peer Review in the Classroom: A Guide for Instructors is at https://youtu.be/ZGloEeb1QlI .   

Video interviews compiled under the direction of Jim Henry at U Hawaii-Manoa. Over two years, 17 instructors and 32 students from 16 different departments in writing intensive courses in which at least one writing assignment focused on local geography were video interviewed about teaching and learning, using standardized questionnaires. Their responses were edited into 680 discrete video clips that were then coded and tagged by a team of English graduate students and their instructor. These video clips comprise the Collections in this Scholarspace Community, augmented by keywords and abstracts to contribute to national and international research communities in Writing across the Curriculum (WAC)/Writing in the Disciplines (WID) as well as researchers investigating place-based writing. We also situate this research with respect to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), so that the contributions of students and teachers in these clips can support teachers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and elsewhere in developing writing assignments, courses, and curricula that tap geographic place to boost student engagement.   

The site contains much of interest to faculty teaching disciplinary thinking in their courses: articles, workshop handouts, lists of books on teaching thinking, links to other web sites on teaching thinking, a list of URLs for students writing persuasive arguments, and more.   

2013 update of articles on WAC   

Collection of faculty resources   

Part of SUNY Cortland's Online Manual for Writing Across the Curriculum, this extensive (non-annotated) bibliography provides lists of general and discipline-specific writing resources.   

Good, current collection of materials for teaching speaking and writing.   

The fifth edition of this comprehensive bibliography, compiled by Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzberg, and Nedra Reynolds, is available online on the Bedford/St. Martin's site.   

A branch of the National Council of Teachers of English, CCCC is the national organization for teachers of college writing. You'll find links to position statements, teaching resources, job advertisements, the CCCC annual convention, the CCC journal (online version, the CCCC bibliography, and much more.   

The Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) promotesb program development, research, and collaborative projects among programs in technical and scientific communication. The organization assists in the development and evaluation of new programs. CPTSC meets yearly in October and maintains a listserv and website in support of program development.   

Eserver is an online publishing outlet serving a variety of audiences and authors who decide that mainline publishing is not the way to go. The TC Library is a portal to many resources in tech comm. Another portal organizes resources in rhetoric. Maintained by Geoff Sauer at U Washington.   

The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT) involves 16 programs that work together to enhance learning, teaching, instructional innovation, and student success at Colorado State University. TILT works with a wide range of institutional partners to pursue its mission of enhancing learning and teaching across the University.   

Originally part of the American Association for Higher Education, the TLT Group consults with educational institutions to improve teaching and learning with technology. An offshoot of the TLT Group, the Flashlight Project, helps institutions develop instruments to assess the effectiveness of technology use in educational settings.   

These tipsheets are meant for those who conduct faculty development workshops or who just want to share good advice with faculty across the campus. We gathered the best advice from multiple sources and created topical tipsheets that are ready to print and use. The tipsheets are Word files, so they can be customized for local use. We ask that if you use the tipsheets, that you keep the footer with the icons for the WAC Clearinghouse and the University of Delaware Writing Center. If you would like to contribute a tipsheet of your own, email Steve Bernhardt at sab@udel.edu. The following tipsheets are available: Building Written and Oral Communication into Your Classroom, Responding to Student Writing, Peer Review, Grading Rubrics, Managing the Paper Load, Alternative Paper Assignments, How to Manage Grammar, Preventing Plagiarism, Using Reflective Writing in Service Learning, Service-Learning Assignments: Using Reflective Writing for Science and Engineering Courses, and Helpful Websites. You can also find links to these tip sheets under the Resources/Teaching Exchange area of the WAC Clearinghouse.   

The WID program at Texas A&M University is housed in the writing center. The writing center functions traditionally to support student writing, but it also supports faculty development and offers writing assistants to work with writing-intensive classes, among other services. Follow the links under Faculty & Advisors to see more on the WID program.   

Website for a model Innovation Center providing services on campus for instructional materials and student resources, as well as providing services to regional communities.   

Includes links to the several facets of WAC at GMU, e.g., the Writing Center, the WI requirement, Online Guides to Writing in the Disciplines, plus history and resources for teachers   

The WAC Program helps faculty and teaching assistants (TAs) in all disciplines integrate writing assignments and writing instruction into their undergraduate courses. The program also helps graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with various aspects of their writing, from global concerns such as organization to local concerns such as sentence clarity, and with writing in various genres, such as dissertation chapters, articles, proposals, teaching philosophies, and curriculum vitas.   

WAC stands for Writing Across the Curriculum. WAC is really more of an idea than anything else. It's the idea that college students should not stop writing when they leave their freshman composition course. Rather, writing should play a role "across the curriculum," meaning in all courses and in all departments, throughout a student's college career. Over ten years ago, CUNY decided WAC was important enough to require each CUNY campus to develop its own WAC Program.   

Advice and samples for instructors, drawn from writing-intensive courses at UW-Madison. WAC newsletter. Info about Madison's WAC program.   

WAC.pitt contains useful information for faculty and students alike, from writing assignments and W-course guidelines to assistance with writing an essay or submitting a paper for a writing award. In conjunction with the College of Arts and Sciences, the College Writing Board, and the Writing Center, WAC.pitt seeks to improve the teaching and learning of writing in academic subjects across the curriculum.   

Housed at Boise State University's writing center Web site, Word Works is a series of broadsides on rhetoric and composition. Written from a cross-disciplinary perspective by members of the Writing Center staff and of the BSU faculty, it is intended as a resource for instructors in any discipline who are interested in using writing to enhance learning.   

Information on using writing to support teaching and learning that would be of interest to faculty at other institutions.   

A well designed, comprehensive site with a wide range of resources and links.   

The Writing Centers Research Project at the University of Louisville conducts and supports research on writing center theory and practice and maintains a research repository of historical, empirical, and scholarly materials related to Writing Center Studies.   

The Writing Fellows are specially trained peer tutors who work with writers in all disciplines. Writing Fellows staff the Writing Center (located on the second floor of Barnard Hall); they are also attached to various Barnard College courses.   

One of many student-driven organizations at Brown, Writing Fellows work in a spirit of collegiality, helping to extend intellectual discourse beyond the classroom. Mutually engaged, Fellows and Fellowees ultimately do more than focus on writing; they shape their own and each other’s education, and in so doing they help to keep vibrant what is most unique and valuable about Brown.   

The Writing Fellows Program is a peer tutoring, discipline-based program which encourages and supports the development of mature student writing across the disciplines and the curriculum. As trained and skilled undergraduate tutors, the Writing Fellows work with faculty and their students on two class-specific writing assignments. By reading, commenting and explicitly focusing on long-term writing development, Writing Fellows contribute to the development of careful student thinking and writing and, as a result, support the aims of an undergraduate education at BYU.   

Fellows will make thoughtful and extensive comments on draft papers and confer one-on-one with students in an effort to help them make significant revisions to their work. The Fellows are equipped to tutor writing across DePaul’s departments and colleges. Fellows have worked with students in courses in physics, theater, chemistry, religious studies, Honors, computers and digital media, anthropology, political science, English, journalism, and sophomore seminar. Fellows have received resounding praise from faculty and students alike.   

The Writing Fellows Program at Tufts University is designed to enrich the process of writing by making space and time for drafts, conversations and revisions... The opportunity to speak with someone about our writing is truly priceless. It can greatly improve the weakest paper and help even the strongest become more effective. As Writing Fellows, we have chosen to act as an essential medium in this process of growth, both for the students we work with and in our own evolution as writers and thinkers   

Writing Fellows are a dedicated group of undergraduates who assist their peers with developing and improving their writing skills. Central to their mission is the belief that writing is a process. As such, Writing Fellows continually strive to learn new and creative ways of writing and tutoring, while also respecting the individual approaches students and professors employ in their own work. The Writing Fellows believe that the peer relationship creates an opportunity for strong improvements in writing. To establish this more personalized approach to conferencing, each Writing Fellow meets with students outside of the classroom on an individual basis.   

Writing Fellows: Work with students to revise their papers and help improve their writing. Are assigned to work with specific classes each semester. They meet with the professor and discuss the expectations and requirements for each of the assigned papers. Meet with approximately 15 students in a class twice a semester and discuss ways to improve the paper and meet the professors' expectations.   

Excellent set of guides for faculty