Student resistance to critical thinking emblematic of a liberal arts curriculum is often painfully obvious in freshman writing classes that impose a process-based approach to writing and thinking. Criminal justice students, like their peers in other majors with strong vocational orientations, often resist taking any more than the required liberal…

Suggests two ways to make grading of writing easier, fairer, more helpful to students: first, using minimal grades or fewer levels of quality, and, second, using criteria that spell out the features of good writing sought in the assignment. Discusses minimal grading techniques in contexts of low-stakes writing, high-stakes writing, the final…

Follow-up activities are essential to maintaining a writing-across-the-curriculum program. La Salle University created a second stage of program development through new workshops and symposia, collaborative teaching and co-authoring, and opportunities for student involvement. (MSE)

An annotated directory of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in two-year and four-year institutions in the United States and Canada, based on a 1987 survey, is presented. Annotations contain contact names and addresses and information about program design and components. (MSE)

The Writing-across-the-Curriculum movement has been encouraging instructors in a wide range of disciplines to consider writing as a tool for learning. This chapter discusses why writing can be a powerful tool but also why the movement is having problems in implementation. (Author/MLW)

Some funding is necessary to run a writing-across-the-curriculum program, but it is possible to redesign a program and keep it running when outside funding ends. (MSE)

Collaborative research in writing-across-the-curriculum is a powerful companion to the usual faculty workshop activities of listening, reading, and discussion. In collaborative research projects, teachers from two or more disciplines work together to understand better their students' thinking and writing. (MSE)

Argues that college teachers will have an easier and more productive experience with student writing if they make and communicate the distinction between high-stakes and low-stakes assignments and between high- and low-stakes ways of responding to student writing. Specific suggestions are made for communicating assignments and commenting on them.…

The enthusiasm generated by workshops in writing across the curriculum can be translated into lasting curricular change, particularly in freshman composition, general education courses, and upper-division writing emphasis courses. Committees, central to any change effort, can take any of a variety of forms. (MSE)

Continuing problems, troubling trends, and many opportunities face writing-across-the-curriculum planners in the future. Proponents must continue to believe in the benefits of writing-across-the-curriculum programs and widen and intensify networks of support. (MSE)

A discussion of Kenneth Eble's opinions on the role of writing in college instruction reviews his positions on the term paper, writing across the curriculum, collaborative writing, handwritten papers, and learning through writing. (Author/MSE)

The margins of college students' writing are the ideal site for teacher-student conversations about the writing, but most of these conversations misfire, largely for reasons that are avoidable. Suggestions are made for responding so students can understand, respond to, and learn from teachers' written comments. Examples from several…

Survey responses from 401 community colleges show that many of these two-year, open-admissions institutions have developed writing-across-the-curriculum programs that address the special needs of their faculty and students. (MSE)

The complex and comprehensive nature of writing-across-the-curriculum programs makes them difficult to evaluate. There are some measures of program effectiveness that are easy to collect and others that are worth trying for. (MSE)

The purpose of assigning writing that will not be formally graded is to assist students in learning subject matter and to create a classroom context that encourages active learning and interactive teaching. Offers three examples of college-level writing-to-learn assignments used in various disciplines, and some ways teachers can respond to such…