Writing-Intensive Courses

What are writing-intensive courses?

These courses emphasize writing at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum, including final-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different disciplines. The effectiveness of this repeated practice “across the curriculum” has led to parallel efforts in such areas as quantitative reasoning, oral communication, information literacy, and, on some campuses, ethical inquiry (Definition from AAC&U LEAP, 2008).

For information about writing-intense courses at Texas A&M University, visit the University Writing Center website.

What are the key attributes or outcomes of writing-intensive courses?

According to AAC&U's "High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter," this HIP is most clearly connected to the outcomes of Strengthening Intellectual and Practical Skills, which include

• Inquiry and Analysis

• Critical and Creative Thinking

• Written and Oral Communication

• Quantitative Literacy

• Information Literacy

• Teamwork and problem solving

Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance.

What are some strategies for creating and teaching writing-intensive courses?

Grauerholz (1999) provides some strategies for creating and teaching writing intensive courses:

• • Carefully consider whether or not writing can be used to meet your course goals or objectives

  • Design writing assignments that correspond to your course goals, and keep learning objectives in mind

  • "Different types of writing may appeal to different types of learners,” so try to include a mixture of different types of assignments that meet the learning goals (p. 314).

  • Decide how much writing you want to include in your course, and keep in mind that learning can be reinforced when students are given the opportunity to practice their writing skills through a variety of assignments

  • Treat writing as a process and carefully pace assignments to ensure success

  • Require revisions (e.g. peer critique), simplify grading, and devote class time to discuss writing

Why should reflection be used to facilitate this high-impact practice?

Writing to learn while learning to write is a well-documented strategy for helping students learn a subject as they write about it as well as helping them learn across the curriculum. Therefore, reflecting on the learning that happens as the result of writing in the discipline, as is often the case for "W" courses, is essential to helping students identify not only what they have learned about the discipline itself but also what they have learned about writing in the discipline.

How can reflection be implemented in this high-impact environment?

1. Select from the questions below based on the integrative and lifelong learning outcomes and the TAMU student learning outcomes essential to your course or topic, adjusting the questions as needed to the level of students you are teaching.

2. Choose appropriate reflection activities.

3. Use the assessment descriptions below as a guideline for evaluating student reflections.

Which reflection prompts will assist with facilitating and assessing this HIP?