The WAC Journal  

Welcome to The WAC Journal, a national peer-reviewed journal on writing across the curriculum, published by Plymouth State College. The WAC Journal is an annual collection of articles by educators about their WAC ideas and WAC experiences. It is a journal of practical ideas and pertinent theory. We welcome submissions from all WAC scholars. The WAC Journal is available in print and online versions. To obtain a printed volume of the journal, please view our subscription information.

WAC Journal, The. Journals>Writing>Writing Across the Curriculum

WAC Meets TAC: WebCT Bulletin Boards as a Writing to Learn Technique  

Fall of 2000 seemed like the right time to introduce more technology into my undergraduate course Applied Child Development. Several forces came together to lead me to this decision. NCATE had encouraged teacher preparation courses to make more use of technology. The friendly folks at Information Technology Services were offering summer workshops on introducing WebCT into classes. The Computer Advisory Board (CAB) or the Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) group—I’ve forgotten which, and I’m not sure I know the difference—was offering bribes, I mean honoraria, to people to make such innovations. And I was recovering from the experience of trying to teach the quietest group of students I’d ever encountered in one classroom, a group I had come to affectionately refer to as 'mime school.'

Miller, Robert S. WAC Journal, The (2002). Articles>Education>Writing Across the Curriculum>Online

Writing to Learn in Mathematics    

The majority of people, mathematicians included, think that writing out formulas is exactly what we call writing in mathematics. I was guilty of the same preconceptions before I started to work with the Writing Across the Curriculum Project at Medgar Evers College. The definition of writing to learn that we use at MEC helped me come up with the idea that served as the basic principle for my further experiments and conclusions as I implemented writing to learn in mathematics.

Flesher, Tatyana. WAC Journal, The (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing to Learn Quantitative Analysis: Doing Numbers with Words Works!  

While all institutions of higher learning value writing, each institution manifests its values in different ways. Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has established an Office of Campus Writing, with a Director to design and offer faculty development opportunities to integrate writing more meaningfully and more effectively in the curricula of the 21 academic and professional schools that comprise the campus. One major faculty development offering is the annual two-week intensive Summer Faculty Writing Forum. This Forum accepts up to 15 faculty each year from schools and disciplines across the campus. These faculty, more used to the role of writing to demonstrate learning, investigate the capacity of writing to communicate learning, enhance learning, improve critical thinking, and reflect upon and evaluate learning. They design writing assignments, develop rubrics, and explore how to respond to written work more effectively. Upon completing the Forum, all faculty are asked to apply what they have learned to their own teaching, and to disseminate successful applications among their colleagues. This article focuses on the three-semester application of one Forum participant, an application that has evolved into a research project that clearly demonstrates the power of writing-to-learn to improve student understanding of quantitative analysis. It traces this evolution through e-mail exchanges between a professor of Computer Technology (Bob) and the Director of Campus Writing (Sharon).

Hamilton, Sharon and Robert H. Orr. WAC Journal, The (2002). Articles>Writing>Writing Across the Curriculum