S3 E26: Writing Across the Curriculum

Drs. Tom Polk and Joan Hwang join your host, Dr. Rachel Yoho, to explore what Writing Across the Curriculum is, how it has developed, and current initiatives and impacts. 

Resources: Writing Across the Curriculum:  https://wac.gmu.edu/ WAC Research Reports:  https://wac.gmu.edu/past-assessment-and-program-review-resources/ Meaningful Writing Report:  go.gmu.edu/meaningfulwriting  

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Rachel 0:08

Hello and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Teaching podcast, a higher education podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University. I'm your host, Rachel Yoho. Today I'm really excited to be joined by two guests to talk about writing and how we write and how we teach across disciplines and across the curriculum. So with that, I'll ask our guests to introduce themselves.

Tom 0:34

Yeah. Hi, Tom Polk. I direct Writing Across the Curriculum at George Mason and teach writing in the English department.

Joan 0:42

Hi, this is Joan Hwang. Thank you for having me today. I'm a Term Faculty in the Composition program in the English department. And then, work programs faculty fellow. And I'm happy to join you today.

Rachel 0:55

Yeah. Thank you both so much for joining us. So as we get started, maybe our listeners have heard of Writing Across the Curriculum, or as we'll refer to it throughout the episode, WAC. So, if not, can you start us off with a brief overview of, you know, what is Writing Across the Curriculum and how does it interact with some of the things our faculty are doing?

Tom 1:21

Yeah. Well thanks for having us. WAC, as you got right, Writing Across the Curriculum, is really a pretty longstanding curricular movement or innovation in higher education that emerged in the United States, really in the late sixties or early seventies around the idea that writing is a good way of facilitating or promoting learning. I think really what we commonly call now, kind of active learning. And so the idea of using writing to learn course content is really sort of where it gets its start back at that time. I would say since then, you know, it's really added a number of layers to its programming, but probably its other real core focus is helping students learn to write in their majors or in their disciplines, right? And really helping to kind of open up access in the ways in which communications and knowledge production happens within those disciplines. So I guess I would say most succinctly WAC's mission really is to ensure that all students have kinda meaningful opportunities, to learn, to write and to write, to learn.

Rachel 2:25

I like that the learning to write and writing to learn. So as the name implies, Writing Across the Curriculum is everyone. Right? So you work with faculty all across disciplines. Is that correct, Tom?

Tom 2:37

We do. Yeah. In every, every discipline. Yep.

Rachel 2:42

Yeah. That's great. So can you tell us a little bit more about what that looks like from the Writing Across the Curriculum program at George Mason University? What does that look like here? Coming from that rich history of institutional change and teaching and learning innovation across decades now, actually, what does it look like in practice here at Mason?

Tom 3:04

Yeah, I mean over those times, I mean, so I'll just say WAC at Mason has existed pretty much that same amount of time. It really started with a couple of English faculty members here at Mason offering workshops on writing assignment design. How do you offer feedback to students across majors, and that was in the mid to late seventies. And somewhat like the sort of larger movement, you know, the program or the idea of WAC has kinda added layers. But I would say our sort of main project areas are true to that original idea of faculty development and curriculum development. How do we do good course design and how do we think about the way writing is integrated throughout a major or degree program? We do a fair amount around policy and guidance more broadly for thinking about how to shape a culture of writing here at Mason. And then we do a fair amount of research and assessment, really trying to understand what is happening here at, right, at Mason with writing. And how effectively are the courses that we teach operating to help students really learn, you know, how to write within their disciplines. The most visible aspect though, right, of WAC at Mason, I would say is the WI course, which is across all disciplines or all majors that offer an undergraduate degree program. We do not have a graduate version of WAC here at Mason. And that course is really just built on that concept of learning to write, essentially giving students an opportunity to understand, right, what does it mean to write within this field? How do, you know, members of this field or professionals in this field use writing, and what's really important, what do we value in good writing within this degree, program, major, or discipline?

Rachel 4:42

Can you also tell us, I think you used the WI acronym, can you also clarify what you mean there for our listeners?

Tom 4:50

So yeah, the WI course is an acronym, right? Stands for Writing Intensive course. They are courses at the 300 or above level in all undergraduate degree programs.

Joan 5:01

So we speaking a little bit more about the WAC courses at Mason. All the WAC courses at Mason are designed around three key learning outcomes. So they are writing to learn and writing to communicate and writing as a process. So if I briefly introduce each learning outcomes, writing to learn outcomes encourages thinking of writing as a tool for discovery. So students they do not just write to hand something in, but they write to think. Whether it is jotting down their reflections or notes or answering to the questions, or sometimes writing short summaries. So the act of writing helps them to notice patterns or test some of the ideas they wanna develop in their project, and then sometimes deepen their understanding of the subject matter in the course. So writing becomes a way of learning, not just showing what they know. And then the next outcome, writing to communicate outcome, this outcome moves from personal exploration to public expression So students really practice writing in the genres of their discipline, whether that means a research article or policy brief or analysis memo, or sometimes even a blog post. So the goal of this outcome is shaping ideas in ways that they communicate with the right audiences in certain context. And writing as a process outcome emphasizes that writing is not just one and done event, it's a process. So students learn to draft their writing and get feedback from their professors and peers and revise. And this process is not just one round, but happens at multiple times. And each round of revision makes the writing stronger and more precise. So students practice this kind of writing strategies so tailored to their genre and audience in their own buildup study.

Rachel 6:59

Yeah, that sounds great. So, you know, we see a lot of things across the disciplines and how students interact with writing and use that to develop their thoughts, their analysis, hopefully some of their critical thinking skills and all of that as well. So as we do this, can each of you tell us a little bit about some of the recent projects that you're working on, whether that's with individual groups or for across the curriculum as a whole?

Tom 7:27

Yeah, so we just finished up really a multi-year process that we've called the Writing Intensive Course Enhancements Process. And it was a lot of work, but that process began really coming out of our previous Mason Core assessment process in 2020. With a reimagining of the WI course, and really thinking what's central to writing at Mason and what's central to writing kind of at that time and sort of looking forward. And so we've really adopted this framework that I think the outcomes Joan talks about, map onto quite well, which we call meaningful writing. So how do we think about that framework of meaningful writing is more central, really to the WI course rather than the way it had existed since the nineties around, really some criteria, right? The chief one that we always hear about from faculty being, you know, am I assigning 3,500 words or not, right? You know, it's important to assign writing, of course, in a WI course, but we wanted to add a little bit more intentionality. You know, why are we using writing and how are we making this purposeful for our students, meaningful for our students, right? And so that process took many years, really, five I suppose at this point. And unfurled over a variety of stages. We worked in a cohort model across the full campus, and across all of our colleges. You know, really doing some initial outreach with those colleges, offering some support for the faculty who teach writing in those colleges as they prepared materials to demonstrate or to represent their WI course designs. That were then shared with the WAC committee and reviewed by those members and ultimately just given some feedback on. So the purpose of that process was to introduce a new innovation to the WI course and then to really give some useful feedback to the faculty who are teaching those courses. And so we've really wrapped up that sort of implementation phase of that process, I suppose. And now Joan and I are kind of shifting more to an assessment phase, right? Really trying to understand what have we done right? What have we learned about the WI course and where do we go with it next? So that we can think about what are some of the areas that need attention and what are some of the strengths that we can really build on?

Joan 9:53

Yes. So another fascinating part of that WI enhancement project was that actually it was not just me and Tom reviewing the course. We invited almost like, Tom briefly mentioned this, that we invited other faculty volunteers or representatives from colleges in the review process, so they were also able to kind of get a sense of how the WI courses are happening in other courses in their college, but also it was very cross-disciplinary experience for them because they also look at WI courses in other colleges as well. So it just provided us mutual benefits because not only that they observe how other faculty teaches their WI courses, but they also provide their own insights of the WI courses in their college. So they really helped us to kind of deepen and broaden our understanding of what are the challenges and benefits of WI courses in terms of helping students learn through writing in their programs.

Rachel 11:00

Yeah, that's great. So all of our writing intensive courses are enhanced now, right? So we're enjoying that and we're asking questions like what have we done or what have we done for our assessment? So I think that's great. And I think also here, one of the things, especially as we think about our own teaching, or our own teaching, writing, or anything else, I think one of the key points that you mentioned that I don't wanna have overlooked here is that we don't have to always be looking at our own content. You know, we can learn so much from other disciplines, even if we're not talking about even moderately similar content. Maybe there's things that we can learn from other areas that we can adapt in our courses or our modalities. Maybe it's more about the modality, the instructional modality than the the content or something like that. So we don't always have to be coming up with our own things or only talking about our own disciplines or within our own disciplines. So I think that's really one of the most powerful things that I see in workshops or any of the other places where we get faculty from different areas together. So that's such a great point. So as we continue our conversation, let's shift over into teaching writing a little bit more broadly, since we have two of our campus experts on teaching writing for our listeners, you know, what would you say are some of the best practices or some of your key recommendations for teaching writing in whatever discipline or across disciplines?

Joan 12:29

Wow, I mean, there will be so many, so maybe we don't have enough time to cover all the--

Rachel 12:33

Yes, quickly, all the things.

Joan 12:35

But maybe I can share one kind of tips or strategies I always try to remind myself to use as well. So there's one Chinese saying that I love we don't know who said that, but it comes from the Chinese scholar it goes like this, so tell me and I will forget and teach me, and then I will remember and involve me and I will learn. So I'll use this saying as my teaching principle and then try to apply when I design my writing classrooms. And then I'm sure that this can be applied to so many different teaching context. So for example, modeling, in other words means demonstrating my own writing is something that I always find the students loves to see. And then this is one of the best, not the best, but the effective strategies I try to use in my teaching as well. So, usually our students also want to know how we, the professors use writing in our work and life as well. So it can mean using model text of a writing assignment. So I create our very good examples of students' model text in one semester. I just make sure that I get permission from the students and I use it for the next semester just to demonstrate what my instruction means, because sometimes writing instructions can be very abstract, so modeling can make abstract instruction to be very concrete. So that's something I do. And then sometimes I create my own text that responds to the assignment or project I assign to students, and then share that with the students in the class. So when I teach research writing, I pretend to be a student and to create a research question and collect sources for the questions just like my students do. But I just presented in my class as one way of demonstrating what the assignment is about. And I actually follow the sequence of the project just to give the full demonstration of each stage of research writing. Another important teaching strategy I really wanna recommend to all the audiences here is that facilitating students engagement with writing in the classrooms. And of course there are many ways of doing that. One thing we can do in the classroom is giving feedback, students writing, and then give students to get the feedback from their peers

Rachel 15:00

yeah, I think these are really such good points. Joan. I think especially when we're talking about modeling, you know, I've really done this a lot with students as well. Even in terms of something as simple as like, what's a good discussion board post and what's a great discussion board post? You know, where are the sort of those minimums and where can we level up? As well as even on things like, again, very simple, but replies to discussion board posts. So often the inclination is like, Hey, good job, I agree in, you know, many more words than that. But the point is, hey, good job. I agree. But how do we level that up? How do we bring in new ideas? How do we build on that? And really trying to model that and what can that look like in your field, in your area. So, yeah, let's go back to what you were talking about there. But I think these are really good points.

Joan 15:48

Thank you Rachel. And then that really digs into my next strategy I want to share with you today. So giving feedback because teaching writing is great, but it also comes with a lot of kind of adjustment. But one of the thing is that providing feedback to students writing, because sometimes it can be very time consuming, and how we can teach giving feedback among the peers. So that's something also needs some modeling or practice in the classrooms. So maybe I can share with you what I do in my writing classrooms as well. But before I begin that, I just wanna let you know that giving feedback does not have to happen always on the end product. We don't have to wait until students submit a complete draft. Maybe I would say the earlier, the better in the writing process. So for example, I create this in class peer review activity on students' research question, which is pretty early stage of research writing. So once students upload their preliminary research question on discussion board as homework, then in class, students kind of pair up with their peers and then have this consultation sessions. But sometimes when we use the word feedback, it sounds like more corrective or evaluative. So I prefer to call this activity as a peer consultation. So the first five or 10 minutes students exchange their ideas and the plans verbally, and then for the next 10 to 15 minutes they have this quiet time just writing up their feedback. Right? Focusing only on one or two things that I ask students, kind of focus on because they don't have to provide feedback on everything about the text or research topic. Usually one of those things that students need to comment on are the key learning objectives of that activity, so that way students can experience how to engage with their peers in terms of variety, and also they learn or reinforce their learning for their day because those two things are the key concepts for their day. Then as a last stage, they also have another five or 10 minutes of verbal session that they read the feedback they received and ask questions or sometimes reinforce some of the ideas they felt that they need to sometimes discard or sometimes to keep.

Rachel 18:13

I think those are such great points, Joan. You know, even from my experience, you know, teaching in the STEM fields, peer review is so difficult, and it's such a hard thing to teach, but it can be like you're talking about such a valuable learning experience. You know, whether they're connecting back to the learning goals, they're connecting with their own thoughts, they're extending their ideas, but just like you were talking about earlier, modeling that, or how do we help them through that process. And so, you know, even some of the things that I've done of like, okay, here's some sentence starters. Here are some ways to give feedback. And I hope just a little bit, they start to appreciate the difficulty we have as instructors giving good feedback, you know, when they go to read that, but maybe not. But as we do that, thinking about how do you give constructive feedback, you know, because again, just like those discussion board posts, you can easily default to that, hey, sounds good. Well, that doesn't actually help any in the learning process, right? So how do we model that? So yeah, let's turn it over to Tom, some of your thoughts and some of your recommendations for our listeners, if you will, or solve all the things about writing in under two minutes.

Tom 19:19

Yeah, here we go. All the problems gone. Um, no, I would emphasize, I think what you and Joan were just saying, peer review is really important and a really important skill to develop in disciplinary work. But as people and students work their ways toward professions, I would say one of the things that's really important in using feedback is echoing a little bit of what Joan said, is that pure feedback doesn't need to happen on full drafts either. We can shift it all the way up into early stages of the writing process. And one of the things that I find in helping students offer productive feedback is to not ask them to offer evaluative comments, right? Like, Hey, is this a good post? As much as descriptive comments, right? If you're interested in students offering feedback to one another on main ideas. Don't ask them, do they have a good thesis? Ask them, can you restate the main idea of this paper? Right? Can you highlight it for the student that you're offering this feedback to? Because if they can't do those things, that gives the other student that feedback as to whether it's, whether it's good or not, and gives them something that they can act upon, right? That I need to clarify this rather than, you know, my peer said it was kind of okay, but I don't know what to do with that comment. So I think, yeah, I think peer review is really, really, a great thing to integrate into the course and can have a lot of teaching power. I guess the other thing I would add related to in classroom is just recognizing that writing involves knowledge and skills. And I think modeling we often think of in terms of modeling skills, like how do we sort of manipulate this microscope or whatever it might be in, you know, a different setting. We can do that with writing. How do we model revision strategies? But the modeling that Joan is talking about, I think is also what knowledge goes into producing particular kinds of texts, right? And what are the particular expectations for our discipline of this text. So that's knowledge that students need to be aware of in order to really produce those kinds of texts effectively. And so just as a framework approaching, I think writing as both knowledge and skill I think is really important in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, I think we can also really be aware of the fact that writing can be so many things and it's really important or helpful for degree programs to think about what parts of writing they're addressing when, right? So that faculty in classrooms can make decisions about their priorities and not have to worry about all the things that they could be talking about in terms of writing. So, you know, generic course 300, I don't know, we'll say. Um, chemistry 300 focuses on synthesis, whereas chemistry 495 focuses on research based writing. So that the faculty in those classrooms have more of a plan for their teaching. And I think also that they have opportunities, Rachel, like you were saying earlier, to exchange with one another. Right? So what are the systems outside of those classrooms that foster those relationships? Knowledge exchange, resource exchange to help one another, produce more effective, you know, lessons, stronger course designs. And honestly, you know, happier work. Right? I think overall, or more joyful because you have an opportunity to do this as a team rather than in isolation, which is what I find faculty often feel like they are in.

Rachel 23:05

Yeah, these are such great points. I wanna go back and highlight something that you mentioned Tom, about, so even that production, the process and how we feel about it, but also like what you were mentioning earlier, writing comes in so many forms, and for me, a lot of the conversation has to start with having our students see themselves as writers, right? Building confidence in order to be able to combine, like you were both saying, that knowledge and the skill, but underlying that, at least from my view, is a lot of, do I see myself as a writer or can I see myself as a writer and seeing all the different ways we write in our daily lives, even if it's not, okay, an academic paper, a homework assignment, a whatever. You know, we might be writing a grocery list, a text message, an email. We're writers. But building that transferable skill, that confidence of, yes, I can do this, I can engage with this, and it is that skill that I'm gonna practice, I think is so, at least from my view, so very important.

Tom 24:07

A hundred percent. Yeah, I mean I think confidence and efficacy with any skill is super important. And I think we can all point to our own lives in that regard. Right, where, you know, we're working on a project, we're trying to write a thing, and it's just not working. And we find ourselves becoming increasingly frustrated. And, uh we want to give up. I think we should recognize, you know, again, that knowledge piece, that writing involves knowledge and skills. Anytime we're writing something new, we're learning something new. And it can be a frustrating, intimidating process. And I think, recognizing that students actually do bring quite a lot of knowledge and skill related to writing into the classroom, or communications more broadly into the classroom that they are accomplished and can build upon those skills and prior experiences with communicating to say, you do have some facility here, right? We're gonna build it and we're gonna shape it into what this discipline thinks of as good communications, but you are already bringing in very, good experiences and lots of knowledge, with communicating, with writing that we can really recognize and value as teachers.

Rachel 25:14

Yeah. That's great. Well, thank you so much. So as we start to wrap up today, any resources that you all would like to share, workshops, consulting, anything that faculty at Mason might seek or any other listeners might seek on their own campus?

Joan 25:29

So when it comes to supporting writing on campus, a WAC program is trying to meet faculty where they are. We offer a range of opportunities to support faculty in their work with writing and by hosting workshops. They dive into the nuts and bolts of designing and then teaching and assessing writing in the classrooms. So along those, we run two extended series. One is the WAC Primer, which takes a closer look at writing intensive courses, and it happens over four sessions. The other is called WAC Academy, and this even takes a step further and to think more deeply about how writing is happening in each discipline. So helping WI instructors to teach the threshold concepts in their disciplines, in their teaching with the writing. And beyond these structured programs, we also work one-on-one with the faculty and departments. Providing some consultations on everything from assignment design again to assessment strategies or sometimes like a big picture, like a curriculum planning.

Tom 26:38

Yeah. I guess I'll also point out for on campus resources, we have a grants program that offers time and space for units to work with us as teams to further develop the way in which they integrate writing into their degree programs or courses, and a number of other asynchronous resources that, you know, might be useful to faculty from all over, including some videos about some of the concepts that we've listed today. You can check all of those out at WAC.gmu.edu. I would also say the framework that we referred to earlier of meaningful writing, Joan produced a report on that based on some research that we conducted here with seniors on our campus, just reflecting back on their experiences with writing and what kinds of writing they found most meaningful to their undergraduate experiences. And so I would encourage people to check that out. We have a number of other reports on that same website under a heading of research reports.

Rachel 27:38

All right, well, sounds great. We'll be sure to link those in the show notes as well. But with that, as we wrap up our conversation, I think here we're really looking at the keystone concept of modeling. Whether we're modeling for our students what writing can look like or what any other activity within our courses or individual classes might look like. You know, we talked a little bit about the engagement with the topic, engagement with the material as well as how we build knowledge and skill. But it really comes back to how we model that, how we model the feedback process, how we model the writing process, and maybe how we even model how to integrate some of the new things like we haven't talked about with like artificial intelligence or text generators, whatever we're looking at there as well. So really here the key being modeling. So with that, thank you both so much for your time. It was great to have this conversation and please be sure to check out our episodes every two weeks we're publishing throughout the fall and spring semester. So thank you both so much for your time.

Joan 28:40

Thank you, Rachel.

Tom 28:40

Thank you.