As we discuss excellence in teaching, I am reminded of the work I did to help develop the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) Rubric in 2006. Writing seems to be such an essential skill we want to develop in our students, and it is also an obvious way to assess their ability to comprehend course information and to think critically.
Although some instructors have embraced the WAC idea and rubric, I know there has been concern across campus that perhaps writing doesn’t really have a place in “my” course, or that “this” isn’t the kind of class that writes a lot of papers. So, when I received information about paragraph writing and how it can be integrated across the curriculum by simply evaluating paragraph responses, I got excited.
Perhaps we can truly make writing a form of assessment across the curriculum if we keep it short! Check out what the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Texas at Brownsville have done with this paragraph handbook.
What do you think about writing in your discipline? Would paragraphs be appropriate and easy to assess for you?
