Content contributed by Joshua D. Hill, PhD, and Sandra G. Lakey, PhD.
One of our goals as faculty is to graduate students who can both think well and communicate well, and across-the-curriculum writing instruction addresses both of those goals. After several years of Writing Intensive (WRT) courses, we found that there was too much of a gap between students’ early writing courses and their disciplinary WRT courses, so many of students’ gains in writing were lost. To develop appropriately as writers, students need some level of practice, instructional reinforcement, and feedback every semester.
Not all of us are specialists in teaching writing, but we are all part of our students’ writing instruction. Every class can be, in some small way, a writing class.
For that to happen effectively and (for instructors’ sake!) efficiently, we need some options and some idea-starters, which is the goal of this resource webpage. From the multitude of free resources available out there, we have selected a few and put them into groupings for you. We suggest that you scan the category descriptions and pick the area first that most resonates with your needs.
In the future, we hope to offer more actual examples from Penn College faculty across all the schools. If you have one such example to share, please contact us.
If these current resources do not resonate with you, or you are unsure about implementation in your class, contact Joshua Hill to get connected with a real live writing instructor. Or you might bring your questions to one of the Writing Across the Curriculum professional development courses.
Click on the tabs on the left side of the page to browse some of the best information available online about teaching writing across the curriculum. We will be adding resources as we find more that are valuable, easily accessible to all faculty, and/or targeted toward different discipline areas. For further reading, see also the following print resources in the Madigan Library: