LibGuides: Fletcher Center Teaching and Learning Resources: Writing Across the Curriculum

About Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)

What is WAC?

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is a national movement to provide students with frequent and significant opportunities to write and revise throughout their college experience. Writing in the academic disciplines deepens knowledge of course topics and strengthens students' communications and thinking skills.

WAC at HCC is an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental coalition of faculty and staff who collaborate on strategies to use writing across courses. The group meets to chat about writing in the classroom, best practices for assigning and assessing writing, and how students benefit from communicating ideas in various modes.

Join the WAC group

The WAC group meets informally via Zoom on the second Friday of the month at 11 a.m. Check the HCC Faculty Development Calendar on the Home page of this guide for meeting dates. Contact Sean Wynkoop, assistant professor of English and communication, for more information: skwynkoop@hagerstowncc.edu.

Writing Across the Curriculum resources

WAC Approach to Assigning Writing
Guide from WAC at HCC to types of writing assignments that are well matched to courses without an ENG 101/112 pre-requisite, courses in which some students might have completed ENG 101/112, and courses with an ENG 101/112 pre-req.

Incorporating Writing into Your Course
Guide to incorporating writing in your course from the Eberly Center, Carnegie Mellon University
Teaching Resources - WAC Clearinghouse
Writing resources from the leading website supporting the use of writing and speaking in courses across the curriculum. Includes teaching guides and tip sheets for teaching specific skills and for teaching writing in the arts and humanities and sciences.
8 Webinars on How to Teach Writing With The New York Times
A library of writing webinars explores how to teach the kinds of real-world writing found in newspapers, including editorials, reviews, profiles, personal narratives and more.
Five common misconceptions on writing feedback
Learn how to write feedback that students will read, without wasting your time.

Sixteen Teachers Teaching: Two-Year College Perspectives by Patrick Sullivan (Editor)
Sixteen Teachers Teaching is a warmly personal, full-access tour into the classrooms and teaching practices of sixteen distinguished two-year college English professors. It has been designed to be a source of inspiration for high school and college English teachers as they go about their daily work in the classroom.

Generative AI resources

What You Need to Know About ChatGPT
Link to a webinar discussion of the impact of generative AI on teaching and learning, guidance, and resources compiled by colleges and universities, from Chronicle of Higher Education's Teaching newsletter

What type of writing to assign?

View this infographic in a larger size.

See "WAC Approach to Assigning Writing," elsewhere on this page, for explanations of writing to learn or engage and writing in the disciplines. Infographic by Kate Benchoff.

Reading Strategies: Making the Invisible Visible
Think-aloud exercises improve students' reading comprehension (Lynda Geoffroy, instructional specialist for Developmental Education and Adult Literacy Services, 2017)

"Teaching Content is Teaching Reading": Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham describes why content knowledge is essential to reading with comprehension, and why teaching reading strategies alone is not sufficient that students read with good comprehension.