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English & Reading Departments |
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What is the Writing Intensive Initiative at Inver Hills College?(9-06)
The phrase “Writing Intensive” and its initials, “WI"” are used by the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Rochester (UM-TC) to designate courses that “require a significant amount of writing.” Students must take four such courses beyond first-year composition: three in any discipline and one in the major field. Two of the four may be lower division. Even transfer students must take four WI courses. Many transfer students do not have transferable WI courses, and those who do sometimes find such courses difficult to identify and transfer. However, Inver Hills Community College has developed a system that not only makes transfer easier but also allows courses and even individual sections of courses to be taught and transferred as WI, usually without official curricular change. Inver Hills designates its WI courses on transcripts and course schedules as "WRIT."
HOW ARE WRIT COURSES NORMALLY TRANSFERRED TO UM-TC? Currently, UM-TC allows a few courses to transfer automatically from any given school. Such courses may, for example, include creative writing, journalism, and a second college composition course. In addition, an individual department may develop agreements through its corresponding department at UM-TC for automatic transfer of some of its courses. Normandale Community College’s English Department, for example, has such an agreement through UM-TC’s English Department for transfer of specific literature courses. UM-TC also accepts petitions for transfer of individual courses; however, petitions must come from each student individually, course by course, and the process of petitioning also can be lengthy and complicated.
HOW HAS INVER HILLS CHANGED THIS? Inver Hills Community College has added a new, more efficient method of developing WRIT courses for transfer. In this new method, IHCC and UM-TC have articulated an agreement for the automatic WI transfer of any course or section of a course (not necessarily the entire course itself) that meets the UM-TC WI standards. This means, simply, that any teacher at IHCC now can teach a course anytime as WRIT without permanent changes to the course. In addition, the teacher can teach a WRIT section of a course even if other sections are being taught simultaneously without WRIT. There is no need to make an official curricular change in the course if writing is acceptable as a form of evaluation. IHCC identifies WRIT courses by a note added to the online semester course schedule. Successful completion of each WRIT course is noted on a student’s official transcript with a "WRIT" designation.
WHAT COURSES QUALIFY? Any course or section of a course is eligible. If the course is not permanently WRIT, then the teacher must add sufficient writing to it, inform the school’s class scheduler of the WRIT emphasis, and also inform the WRIT coordinator or the registrar.
WHAT MAKES A COURSE SECTION WRIT? It is WRIT if it follows the UM-TC WI requirements below. In short, a WRIT course must require ten or more typed, double-spaced pages of formal writing in one or more papers, not counting multiple drafts. At least one paper must be revised from teacher comments. A student must pass the writing component to pass the course.
·
Courses at either the upper or lower division level in which the
course grade is directly tied to the quality of the student's writing as well as
to knowledge of the subject matter, so that students cannot pass the course who
do not meet minimal standards of writing competence.
·
Courses requiring a significant amount of writing—minimally ten to
fifteen finished pages beyond informal writing and any in-class examinations.
Note that the page guidelines may be met with an assortment of short assignments
that add up to the total; 10-15 page papers are not mandated.
·
Courses in which students are given instruction on the writing
aspect.
· Courses in which assignments include at least one for which students are required to revise a draft and resubmit after receiving feedback from the course teacher or graduate teaching assistant. Otherwise, writing assignments may be of various kinds and have various purposes, as appropriate to the discipline.
WHAT ARE ADVANTAGES TO STUDENTS? First, students who transfer to UM-TC already have some of their WI requirements finished. This allows them more time to concentrate on their majors, which may not have appropriate WI courses to meet students’ need for four. Second and perhaps more important, all students taking IHCC WRIT courses have the advantage of learning how to write better, more frequently, and more deeply. Studies in recent years (Beaufort; Carroll; Sommers; et al.) have indicated that professionals who feel best prepared for writing in their fields are those who were regular, frequent writers as undergraduates. As Nancy Sommers, Sosland Director of Writing at Harvard University points out, good writing is something that can only begin with a first-year composition course. It needs to continue throughout a student’s undergraduate education if the student is to retain initial writing lessons and develop them within the context of an academic/professional discipline. Third, the depth of thinking that writing requires means students learn more. A majority of IHCC WRIT students, when surveyed, reported they not only learned more of a course’s subject matter when writing (vs. no writing or objective testing) but also learned to think better in the course’s disciplinary patterns. Fourth, as a result, WRIT students often are better able to adapt to the writing needs of their future professions.
WHAT ARE ADVANTAGES TO TEACHERS? The UM-TC Center for Writing states, “In a recent study (Walvoord, Hunt, Dowling, & McMahon. In the Long Run. NCTE, 1997), WI faculty from three institutions commented that their WI courses enhanced students' critical thinking abilities, made students more active learners, and helped to reinvigorate them as teachers by encouraging growth and change” (http://writing.umn.edu/tww/policy/FAQs.html).
DOESN’T GRADING TAKE MORE TIME? The time commitment for a teacher to learn how to introduce writing is similar to that involved in developing any important innovation. However, innovation using writing can be broken into several smaller steps. Eventually, writing assignments only need require about the same amount of a teacher’s time as other forms of high quality discussion and evaluation. There are, in fact, many techniques good writing teachers use to decrease the amount of time they spend evaluating writing: for example, informal “quick writes” that are “graded” with a check mark, small student groups for critiquing each other’s writing, checklists for repetitive comments in evaluation, et al. Ultimately, the main advantage to teachers is that they see their students develop deeper and more discipline-oriented thinking patterns that help the students grapple with disciplinary concerns and subjects more thoroughly.
WHERE IS THERE MORE INFORMATION? (as of 5-05)
IHCC WRIT Coordinator: Richard Jewell, (612) 870-7024,
richardjewell@inverhills.edu
UM-TC WI Requirements: http://writing.umn.edu/tww/policy/guidelines.html
UM-TC WI Frequently Asked Questions: http://writing.umn.edu/tww/policy/FAQs.html
UM-TC WI Syllabus Checklist: http://writing.umn.edu/tww/policy/syllabuschecklist.html
UM-TC WI Help with Writing Assignments: http://writing.umn.edu/tww/index.htm
Efficient Evaluation of Writing: www.CollegeWriting.info (Click on “S. Teaching.”)
Writing in the Disciplines Handbooks/Textbooks: www.CollegeWriting.info (in “S. Teaching.”)
Date this page was most recently revised: 22 Aug. 2008
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