WAC in Action outside CUNY
Writing Across the Curriculum has been successful around the U.S.! For example:
Prince George’s Community College in Maryland, with an ethnically diverse body of 17,500 students and a student to teacher ratio of 21 to 1, officially started its WAC program in 1983 with a beginning budget of $1,200. Since then, classes using a WAC model have found their greatest success with students in utilizing journal assignments, in-class freewriting, essay exams, "personalized" writing assignments, and student peer review of papers. WAC has been used favorably in classes ranging from Philosophy to Math and Science where passing rates have gone up -- in one documented case from 50% to 70%. — Ese Burlingame
Fulwiler, T. and Young, A., Eds. (1990). Programs That Work. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.
The University of Massachusetts, with a student body of 27,800 and a student to teacher ratio of 20:1, began its WAC program in the fall of 1982. Classes that have utilized WAC pedagogy range from Anthropology to Business to Physics. Their greatest successes have come from direct faculty involvement in encouraging the importance of writing to students; from positive faculty support through good attitudes about WAC manifested in teaching WAC-informed courses; and from having writing courses "skillfully integrated" into each student’s major. — Ese Burlingame
Fulwiler, T. and Young, A., Eds. (1990). Programs That Work. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.
A 1989 study by Hughes-Wiener and Martin of community colleges in Minnesota found that WAC instruction improved students’ comprehension of course objectives. The study also found that those students who had experienced more writing assignments throughout their college years were more positive about writing and were better able to understand course material in their classes. The study found too that the benefits of WAC for faculty members were manifold, helping professors with such problems as burnout and isolation within their discipline, improved faculty comradery, helped improve curricular coherence, and increased morale throughout the institutions studied. — Ese Burlingame
Williams, D.N. Writing Across the Curriculum Programs at Community Colleges. ERIC Digest. September 1, 1989.
A 1991 article by Sharon Sorenson states that WAC works best when it is incorporated into all areas of the curriculum, when it gives students the chance to assimilate information given to them in a course, and when it allows students to make connections between course material and their everyday lived experiences. Effective WAC assignments fall under two broad categories – expressive writing assignments (journals, summaries, etc.) and productive writing assignments (essay exam questions, terms papers, etc.). Sorenson points to several studies that illustrate the benefits of WAC, including a 1987 study by Gladstone showing how writing-to-learn assignments used in a math class improved student’s state competency test scores and a 1988 study by Barr and Healy in which they found that a "study of writing achievement across the curriculum attests to the fact that writing improves higher-order reasoning abilities. WAC programs are ideally suited [to achieve these ends] for they provide the theoretical base for teachers and the instructional strategies that enable students to reformulate ideas from text." — Ese Burlingame
For more information see:
Sorenson, S. Encouraging Writing Achievement: Writing across the Curriculum. ERIC Digest. January 1, 1991.
