Teaching with Writing (TWW)

2022–2023 Series

The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program offers regular events and professional development activities for faculty, instructors, staff members, and graduate students on topics related to writing and learning. These Teaching With Writing events occur in multiple forms throughout the year.

All events are free to UMN faculty and staff, but pre­-registration is required.

As learning technologies continue to evolve in higher education, writing becomes even more crucial in teaching and learning in our disciplines. The Teaching with Writing program supports and sustains all teachers from across the campus through timely and relevant professional development activities. In addition, our online resources provide examples of and approaches to course design, writing assignments, and other teaching activities that will help you integrate relevant writing and writing instruction into your classes.

We support writing instruction in the following ways:

Teaching Consultations: One-to-one or small group meetings offer support related to teaching with writing in course- and discipline-specific contexts.

Workshops and Short Courses: Interactive, structured sessions offer faculty members and instructors focused professional development related to integrating course-relevant writing instruction. Workshops feature single sessions on topics related to teaching with writing, while short courses, such as the five-day Teaching with Writing seminar for faculty and Teaching with Writing Online, provide more in-depth and context-relevant assistance.

Discussions: Faculty members from diverse disciplines discuss specific and innovative writing instruction practices they've developed.

Discussions with Readings: Using a shared set of readings that provide intentionally juxtaposed perspectives, participants are encouraged to explore controversial issues in contemporary writing pedagogy in a did and open dialogue. (Engaging Controversies and Threshold Concepts)

Panels: Instructors from diverse fields present on and answer questions about their experiences teaching with writing. Brief presentations from panelists are followed by robust discussion and question-and-answer sessions.

Faculty Learning Communities and Book Circles: These serial events bring together small groups of interested faculty to address topics of interest in greater depth.

Faculty Writing Hunkers: This interdisciplinary program provides faculty and staff members with writing retreats. Hunkers create a supportive and productive community of scholarly writers from a wide variety of disciplines and a range of academic ranks at the University of Minnesota.