Recommendations and Suggestions
Because the possibilities for interpreting the above principles are so vast and because designing writing exercises may be new to many instructors, below are some issues to be considered when creating new courses or revising current ones.
How frequently and how much should students write?
Writing is at least 25% of the course work. The guideline for how much writing students should produce is approximately 5,000 words or the equivalent of 20 typed pages, some of which may be informal and not typed at all, e.g. journals, project logs, reflections. Students will have opportunities for multiple writing and feedback. However, one should also consider other defining criterion appropriate to the discipline: How complex is the writing task? Can complex tasks be broken down into component parts? For example, a history or sociology or health course might require a research paper involving forty or fifty sources. For that course, the paper, perhaps with one revision and one or two preliminary research summaries might serve. But a literature or biology or art history course might best be designed so that students comment on class readings or fieldwork or slides every day or so. Both formats could be considered “writing enriched.”
How many kinds (or forms) of writing should be incorporated into the mix of assignments?
For some courses, practicing one form (the report, the essay, the feature article, the annotation) may be the best way to unlock content. For others, a mix of forms will better serve the students (the letter and the journal entry and the short research paper and the long term paper). Whether one form or many, when writing is a significant part of the student’s work and course evaluation, the course is considered “writing-enriched.”
How much revision should students be expected to do?
For some courses writing a new version (e.g. a new letter, a new book review) is as effective as revising earlier versions. For other disciplines, reworking an item is the only way to master the form. It is probably true, however, that if a specific assignment is not revised, then the student ought to at least practice the form several times.
Should the writing be formal or informal?
Informal writing includes such tasks as keeping journals, writing up notes, recording personal observations, reacting to speakers or films in class. Formal writing includes clearly defined forms appropriate to the discipline, perhaps the research paper in biology, the market survey in advertising, the proposal in engineering, critical or evaluative writing in studio arts courses. A course with either formal or informal writing could satisfy the notion of “enriched.” However, we urge a mixture of both.
Could team projects, which produce a final written report, qualify as enriched writing?
In some disciplines—engineering, business, education, communications — team projects are central to their educational philosophies. But in these cases, it is sometimes difficult to be certain that a specific individual actually did any writing. The whole point of a team project, after all, is for the students to learn teamwork. But a team course could be made “writing-enriched” and still use the team concept with some adaptations. There is the “magazine model,” in which students are supposed to sign their sections of the project (much as a writer has a byline in a magazine). Or there is the “peer review model,” in which students are asked to write individual critiques of other projects (much as an academic paper with many authors is reviewed by selected individuals).
Should evaluation of student writing be by the instructor only or by peers?
Both techniques are used widely and successfully. The advantage of the peer review system is that students learn from others and that they receive feedback and perspectives other than that of the instructor. It also helps students to become thoughtful critical readers of other texts, student or otherwise. The disadvantage of the peer review approach is students can be very unskilled in reading carefully for weaknesses and strengths; thus, it requires that the instructor (or the instructor in collaboration with the WAC program) model for and train students in appropriate peer critique and response.
Should writing be “taught” directly or just assigned as part of coursework?
The intent of officially recognized writing-enriched courses is to provide some instruction in writing appropriate to the course and the discipline. However, we understand that in ten weeks it is difficult to balance both the discipline’s core material and writing instruction. If one has to cover the nineteenth century or the principles of supply and demand or the psychology of the third grader, is there time to explain how to improve writing? Here again, individual instructors will have to judge the needs of their students to decide how much class time is needed for instruction, but use of detailed handouts or web sites about the writing assignments can supplement classroom time without shortchanging instruction of other material.
