The University Writing Committee

The UWC encourages the RIT community to engage with it in the practice, teaching, and study of writing. Let us know how students in your classes and programs learn to write for academic and professional purposes. From that starting point we can all improve RIT students' professional literacies and their excellence in writing.

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Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing Across the Curriculum (or WAC) has a 30+ year history in US higher education. Throughout its history, WAC has shown that effective writing instruction extends throughout all years of a student's undergraduate education, and spreads out across general education and in all the major programs.

Learning from this history, we believe that:

• Writing is a knowledge-making activity that fosters critical thinking.
• Writing is a complex, social, rhetorical activity (a “conversation”) that needs to be adapted to the particular needs of a variety of contexts.
• Writing addresses social situations through recognizable forms, or genres.
• Language and literacy cannot be separated from identity.
• Revision is central to developing writing.

RIT's Writing Intensive Curriculum follows this approach to WAC by embedding Writing Intensive courses throughout the curriculum of each program and designing these courses to provide students opportunities to learn to write substantive content within their discipline. A comprehensive WAC program enhances student learning as well as competency in writing.

Types of Writing Intensive Courses

In Writing Intensive Courses students:     

• are introduced to, practice, and ultimately gain mastery in producing written forms commonly found in the academic disciplines and professional contexts of RIT,
• practice reading, writing, and revising these common forms, and
• learn to express their ideas effectively with attention to audience expectations, context, and conventions.

There are, however, three different types of WI courses. 

First Year Writing (FYW) - First Year Writing is a course that plays an essential role in students' transition from secondary to post-secondary education. What distinguishes FYW from the other WI course is that students learn about the social and intellectual aspects of writing in the university, and develop critical reading, writing, research and reflection practices required for academic success. 

General Education Writing Intensive (WI-GE) - General Education Writing Intensive courses are located throughout the curriculum and use writing to engage students in course content. General Education WI courses reinforce the knowledge and practices introduced in First Year Writing. In General Education Writing Intensive courses, students are introduced to and practice reading, writing, and revising written forms common to the various disciplinary contexts of General Education "Perspective," "Immersion" and elective courses. Students ideally take these courses in their second and third years.

Program Writing Intensive (WI-PR) - Program Writing Intensive courses are located in disciplinary contexts and apprentice students in specific forms of writing. In Program WI courses, students gain mastery of written forms specific to the student’s major area of study at RIT.

What is a Writing-Intensive Course?

The criteria to be met for a course to receive a designation of "Writing-Intensive" are specified in Policy D01.5 and elaborated below. (These are the criteria used by the UWC in the approval process for granting WI designation)

1. Your course must have at least one writing-related learning outcome. Outcomes should state what the student will be able to do (i.e. writing skills learned in the course), rather than what students will do in the course (i.e. activities performed in the course). Some general examples of outcomes include:
   • Use writing as a tool to discover ideas.
   • Demonstrate the ability to use writing as a way of communicating ideas.
   • Identify discipline-specific ways of writing.
   • Demonstrate proficiency in disciplinary writing conventions appropriate to the course.
   • Demonstrate a degree of mastery in writing a paper in the format of a journal.
   • Show competency in written English according to an assigned disciplinary Style Guide(s).
2. Your course must have informal and formal writing assignments sequenced during the course intended as "writing to learn" and "learning to write" assignments.
   
   Examples of informal "writing-to-learn" writing assignments include brainstorming, free writing, journals, and reaction- response essays. Examples of formal "learning to write" assignments include critiques, reviews, laboratory reports, case studies, observations, essays, proposals, and research papers.
3. Students must receive feedback from you and have an opportunity to use that feedback to complete substantive revision of written work. This feedback might be supplemented by peer mentors, writing fellows, and writing center instructors.
   
   The feedback should facilitate the composing process but give the primary responsibility for revision to the student. This feedback might provide comments rather than markings and use sequencing to facilitate invention and pre-writing, drafting and revision, substantive editing and proofreading.
4. The course must include classroom modules dedicated to particular writing conventions—vocabulary, organization, use of evidence, citation—specific to the discipline or profession.
5. A minimum of 20% of the grade for the course must be based on the extent to which students display program writing criteria (i.e., as evaluated by rubrics) in the revision and editing processes of formal writing.

How do I Propose a WI Course?

First step: Use the Appendix B on the Course Outline Form (Current Revision) to propose a new or modify an existing course as writing intensive. The course outline, in conjunction with Appendix B should provide the information necessary to demonstrate that the course is consistent with the University Writing Policy and the Writing Intensive criteria. A course may request both WI-GE and WI-PR designation. Examples of each of the sections in Appendix B excerpted from approved WI courses are provided HERE.

Second Step: Once you have completed the CCC form, your college and department curriculum committees will examine the proposed course. After a course has been approved by the CCC of the college in which it will be offered, the course outline, including the completed Appendix B, is be forwarded to the college’s UWC member. They will bring the course outline to the UWC for review.

Third Step: The UWC will review submitted courses to determine if they meet the WI criteria. The WI designation is then either: 1) approved; 2) approved pending minor revision; or 3) not recommended.  This status is reported by the UWC representative back to the requesting CCC. In the case where a WI designation is not recommended, the UWC will provide suggested modifications to the appropriate CCC, at which point the college representative will work with the author and submit a revised form to the UWC, if so desired.

Courses will be reviewed by the UWC to determine if they meet the WI criteria as stated above.

• The course outline contains at least one topic related to the classroom discussion of particular writing conventions specific to the discipline or profession, presented in Section 4.0 of the course outline and elaborated on in Section II.b. of Appendix B.
• The course outline contains at least one writing related learning outcome, presented in Section 6.0 of the course outline and repeated in Section II.a. of Appendix B.
• Sufficient details related to informal and formal writing assignments are provided in Section II.c. of Appendix B.
• The kinds of feedback provided to students by the instructor and the opportunities for students to improve their writing based on the feedback are sufficiently explained in Section II.d. of Appendix B.

Fourth Step: The UWC chair will inform the ICC, the Registrar's Office, the college’s UWC committee member, and the college’s scheduling officer when a course has been newly approved as writing intensive. A copy of the approved course outline will be sent to the Registrar and to the college in which the course will be taught. 

A flowchart of the submission and review process has been developed to capture the responsibilities of those involved in the WI approval process.

If you have any questions about how to complete Appendix B, please consult with your college representative (UWC Membership ), or contact University Writing Program Director, Pamela Kincheloe pjknge@rit.edu.