Overview of case studies
Maynooth University WEC case studies - mapping to WEC core features
Maynooth University is currently exploring how best to support Writing-Enriched Curriculum (WEC) on campus. Given our context, with little tradition of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), Writing in the Disciplines (WID) or Writing Intensive (WI) programmes, we are working with colleagues to find an institutionally-sensitive approach. The path we have taken towards developing this approach reflects how CTL works with staff and departments generally which is to listen carefully, build relationships, share expertise, collaborate where appropriate and possible, and ultimately empower colleagues to achieve their goals towards supporting their students in their higher education. Hand-in-hand with working within our context and honouring the autonomy of departments, we are drawing on the scholarship of WEC to help us to provide writing related guidance that is research-informed and practice-based. We believe a mapping of our current ‘wayfinding’ practice against WEC features will help us to clarify our approach, as well as providing us with a framework for development. One element of this approach is the use of the core features of the WEC model by Anson and Flash (taken from Anson, 2021, p. 10) in the template for our institutional case studies.
Reference
Anson, C. (2021). ‘WEC and the Strength of the Commons’ in Anson, C. M., and Flash, P. (eds.) Writing-Enriched Curricula: Models of Faculty-Driven and Departmental Transformation. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado, pp. 3-14.
Case Study
Masters Applied Social Studies
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BSocSci Community & Youth Work
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Professional Masters in Education
University of Minnesota ‘The University of Minnesota's [U of M] innovative Writing-Enriched Curriculum Program (WEC) provides academic departments with a way to ensure that discipline-relevant writing and writing instruction are intentionally infused into their undergraduate curricula. The centerpiece of the WEC method is the Undergraduate Writing Plan, which is iteratively generated, implemented, and assessed by unit faculty working in collaboration with writing specialists from the WEC team. The program works toward the University's ultimate goal of graduating agile and effective writers in all disciplines by ensuring that all degree programs are "writing-enriched."’ The WEC model in U of M involves three stages: creating, implementing and assessing (evaluating) undergraduate writing plans. In U of M the WEC programme operates across nearly 50 academic units and in nine colleges. The programme was established in 2007.
NC State University. NC State University’s Campus Writing and Speaking Programme (CWSP), which was established in 1997, was the first in the US at that ‘class of institution to integrate writing and speaking across the curriculum using the departmentally-focused model (now sometimes referred to as the "WEC," or Writing-Enriched Curriculum)’. The programme uses consultations, a brown bag series, workshops, seminars, guest speakers and assisted inquiry to achieve it goals. The nature of the combination of writing and speaking, and the relative amount of attention to each is considered at departmental level; ‘the CWSP is committed to integration of communication modalities and sensitive to discipline-specific choices of those modalities.’
University of Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma’s (OU’s) WEC ‘supports academic programs working to implement an effective and coordinated writing curriculum throughout the major.’ OU takes a principles-based approach to their WEC work including: the need for consistent writing instruction; the importance of colleagues from the discipline teaching and assessing disciplinary writing skills; the central role of academic staff in integrating writing into the curriculum. OU works with WEC liaisons who ‘coordinate the work of drafting, revising, and assessing … writing plan[s] with their colleagues’.
Florida Atlantic University. The Florida Atlantic University WEC initiative ‘leads departments, schools, and colleges through the processes of integrating writing systematically throughout their majors and concentrations (e.g. facilitating department-wide discussions to identify desired student outcomes, mapping departmental curricula, creating assessment plans, and designing departmental proposals for revising curricula in majors and concentrations).’ The WEC initiative, the development of which began in 2014, provides an ‘integrated’ approach to writing in and across the discipline. FAU follows a create, implement and assess/evaluate model. WEC liaisons, from the department, work between the department and the WEC team to facilitate various elements of the process.
University of Mississippi The Writing-Enriched Curriculum in ‘Ole Miss’ draws on the scholarship of Judith A Langer and notes that ‘to enrich a curriculum with writing is to help students come to understand what … Langer calls “the ways of knowing” a subject area’. Within this approach, writing and thinking work hand-in-hand as ways of creating and communicating ideas within a discipline. In their approach Ole Miss note ‘that faculty in the disciplines are best suited for teaching students how to think like, argue like, and write like members of a given field.’ Ole Miss use Graduate Writing Fellows, Faculty Seed Grants and Workshops to support WEC.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges WEC began in Hobart and William Smith (HWS) Colleges in 2016. Following departmental conversations and consultation with a writing specialist, departments and programmes are supported to work together to develop a writing plan. Typical of other institutions using this approach the understanding of WEC in HWS centres around the idea that ‘communication is best taught in specific contexts that matter to students, not as an abstract skill disconnected from their passions.’ HWS note as one of the benefits of WEC that it ‘approaches change through a process that is faculty-driven, student-focused, institutionally-supported, and grounded in the intellectual priorities of each department/program.’
California State University San Bernardino. California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) WEC programme ‘offers a faculty-driven approach to supporting effective and relevant writing and writing instruction within an undergraduate curriculum’. Similar to the approach in other institutions, WEC in CSUSB in principles-based. Those principles refer to: the variety in modes of writing which prevail in a higher education today; the focus on process and development; ‘shared responsibility’ for writing development; the belief that ‘The incorporation of writing into content instruction can be most meaningfully achieved when those who teach are provided multiple opportunities to articulate, interrogate, and communicate their assumptions and expectations’. Writing plans are part of the outputs of WEC work with departments but CSUSB also notes the importance of responding in different ways to the specific needs of departments.
