Word Works
Learning through writing
at Boise State University
Number 87 October 1997
Published by the BSU Writing Center

Reflections on WID in the classroom

FOR THE PAST YEAR, THE STAFF OF THE BSU Writing Center has been responsible for the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) program at Boise State. Our first effort has been The Write Project, which Dallas Hightower and Jude Anson reviewed in Word Works #84. Now, after a year's experience with the project and after working with a couple of dozen faculty and hundreds of students in several different disciplines, we have tried to put together some reflections on what writing in the disciplines is essentially about -- particularly as it applies to individual classes at Boise State..

Please don't read the following with the impression that it is any kind of official policy. It is, rather, our attempt to distill the collective wisdom of past WID directors (Roy Fox and Allene Cooper), the staff of the Writing Center and The Write Project, and colleagues in WID and writing centers at other universities. Read it as an essay, an attempt to work out the concept of a WID class: what are its essential principles, assumptions, and practical applications?

Defining a WID class

WID currently exists at Boise State not at the level of a university-wide program, but at the level of individual classes and individual instructors. In a WID class, assigned writing is a significant part of the course work. Students complete formal writing assignments, but they also do frequent informal writing. The informal writings are used to engage students with the course material but are not graded. In other words, the course employs writing as a mode of learning (to use the well-known phrase first coined by Janet Emig).

A more detailed look at formal and informal writing assignments will help clarify what we mean by a WID class.

Formal writing assignments

When we think of assigning writing in a class, formal assignments are what we think of first. They give students an opportunity to experience the ways of thinking in the discipline and practice using its language. They provide another means, besides exams, for students to demonstrate their grasp of the material.

Formal assignments in a WID class entail more than handing out the assignment and, a few weeks later, grading the resulting papers. We know instructors who have done that and found the results dismal. Some have given up assigning writing altogether because the papers they get are so bad. Their experiences, and our experiences working closely with instructors and students in The Write Project, have prompted us to come up with the following principles for formal writing assignments. (We tried hard to be descriptive and call them characteristics rather than principles. We tried to say is and not should. But however we tried to write them, the truth is, these are the principles we believe formal assignments must observe if they are going to serve their intended purpose.)

Principle 1. Writing assignments are designed to clearly contribute toward learning goals for the course. If an instructor adds writing assignments to a course without considering their place in the syllabus as a whole, the assignments will seem tacked on. Students will think the instructor assigned them just to create more work. Therefore, instructors first need to clarify in their own minds just why they are assigning these particular papers. They also need to share those reasons with their students. Assigning formal writing to improve students' writing skills is an excellent motive, but instructors should also provide a statement of purpose that links the assignments to learning the subject matter of the course.

Principle 2. A WID course has multiple formal assignments, sequenced by subject matter or by degree of difficulty. Two papers a semester is a minimum. The one-shot term paper is not adequate, not if the assignment is intended to improve students' writing ability. When students write at least two papers, they learn from the first one and generally do a much better job on the second. Many writers make all their mistakes in the first assignment; then, by the time they do the second, they have put many of the mistakes behind them.

Principle 3. Assignments are given out in written form. They should include rhetorical information (audience, purpose, and possibly a specific genre) and grading criteria. We could cite countless Writing Center consultations in which students have come to us for help with a draft, but they have nothing in writing that states what kind of paper they are expected to produce. Consequently we have not been able to give them the help they need.

Principle 4. Means are provided for students to write drafts, get feedback, and revise. Revision is one of the most essential parts of the writing process. Many of us -- not just students -- when faced with a writing deadline will tend to put the writing off until the last minute. So a lot of papers come in as first drafts. They have not had a cooling-off period; they have not been reconsidered, except perhaps for a bit of surface editing. When this happens, students don't get much benefit out of doing the assignment. Also, the instructor suffers a lot more agony trying to deal with the papers.

Feedback can come in many forms. Students might bring drafts to peer-response sessions and critique each other's work. They might submit drafts to be reviewed by the instructor, or by Writing Assistants if the class is taking part in The Write Project. Students might be required to bring their drafts to the Writing Center for a consultation. These different methods provide different kinds of feedback; students should be encouraged to take advantage of more than one method for any draft. (see WW #73).

Principle 5. Students must be held accountable for all aspects of their papers: research, ideas, organization, style, correctness, and everything else. Any piece of writing must be regarded as a whole piece of communication. All its aspects are interrelated. If the ideas are excellent but the writing is clumsy in style or full of errors, the ideas lose credibility. If the writing looks polished and sophisticated but the ideas are weak, the paper will sound hollow. When instructors ignore surface correctness and focus only on ideas, or when students complain that they shouldn't be held accountable for correctness because "this isn't a writing class," both are missing the point. In a piece of writing, everything works together to create a single effect on the reader.

Informal write-to-learn exercises

The purpose of short informal assignments is to promote thinking and learning, but the writing practice provided by informal assignments also develops fluency in writing about the subject. We can't understate the powerful effect of having students write frequently. It gets them to deal with the course material in their own words. Thus, not only does it help them internalize the material; it also helps them learn to write more like professionals in the field.

Write-to-learn assignments encourage students to experiment, to try expressing ideas in their own words, to speculate, to explore possibilities.

Such assignments include quick in-class writings at the beginning, middle, or end of the hour, in which students write down what they remember from the assigned reading, or solve a problem, or pose questions, or try to put a difficult concept in their own words, or recap what they learned during the class period. Other write-to-learn assignments include journals, logs, and response papers, and various kinds of "microthemes": one-page essays that focus tightly on a single idea. Some of the short ungraded assignments might be used as the germs of formal papers, but usually they are used for their own sake, to give students a way to clarify their thinking and solidify their learning.

Write-to-learn assignments are usually ungraded; many of them need not even be read by the instructor. There are good reasons for this. Students should feel free to say what they want in the writings, to explore ideas and connections -- and they should especially feel it's OK to fail sometimes, not feel pressured to make a good impression on the instructor. Though the writings are usually ungraded, they may be included in the course grade in a category such as class participation.

Word Works has already published a discussion of write-to-learn assignments by John Bean of Seattle University (see #23, 24, 50, 51.) See also Bean's book, Engaging Ideas, Jossey-Bass 1996.

Short ungraded writings also support the longer formal assignments in a number of important ways. First, on the most practical level, they prompt students to generate material informally that can be reworked into formal papers. Second, they help establish a habit of writing in the class that makes the formal assignments seem less formidable, more integral to the course. Third, they help create a climate in the class that encourages written expression as a valued way of thinking and communicating.

However, we should add a caution. Many instructors we know (the present writer included) have tried formal assignments in which students are asked to take a promising journal entry or other short writing and develop it into a formal paper. The results have not always been happy. It turns out that students still perceive a gap between the informal and formal writings, and they feel unsure how to proceed. The papers they end up writing are often disappointing, lacking the vigor and clear thinking of the original informal writings, stifled by distorted attempts to achieve an academic style.

We haven't yet explored solutions for bridging the informal-to-formal gap. However, there are two possible ideas instructors might try. One is to try the informal-to-formal writing assignment more than once. Possibly students need more than one try to make it work. The other is to devote class time -- and perhaps some office time -- to coaching students through the process. The difference between informal and formal writing is partly illusory. Students may assume they have to completely rewrite an informal writing in a "formal" style, whereas actually they may be able to use much of their original writing as is. The rest can often be written in a simple style not much different from their informal writing.

WID and faculty learning

Though the big selling-point of WID is that it enhances student learning and writing, the surprise bonus is that faculty learn, too. Teachers in the writing seminars offered at BSU in past years have testified that once they learned how to use writing in their classes, it changed the way they taught (WW #41).

Learning how to use writing. Writing is a complex, sometimes convoluted process. In working with students who are striving to complete writing assignments, teachers learn many things:

Discovering new ideas about teaching. By using short write-to-learn assignments, teachers find out how students are thinking about the course material and what they are really learning (or not learning). They get a new perspective on how much material can be really learned, as opposed to how much can be "covered." They often discover that their classroom management becomes less teacher-centered and lecture-oriented, and more student-centered and learning-oriented.

Aren't we really talking about writing-intensive classes?

Well, almost. The description of a WID class we have arrived at through our own experience looks very much like many universities' descriptions of their writing-intensive curricula. There is a reason for this. Even though writing-intensive courses take somewhat different forms on different campuses, they all have in common some combination of formal graded assignments and informal nongraded writing, integrated together. The only differences between our description of a WID class and a writing-intensive class is that the latter would have formal guidelines for the amount of writing produced and the proportion of the grade assigned to writing.

Attempts to establish a universal requirement for writing-intensive courses at BSU have not been successful in the past. Still, interest remains alive. There are instructors throughout the university who are teaching something close to writing-intensive courses -- particularly those involved in The Write Project. Whether we ever will have a university-wide writing-intensive requirement remains to be seen. Meanwhile, individual courses that use writing as a primary mode of learning are taking place now.

Thanks to Jonathan Pierson of the Writing Center for his help in editing this essay.