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Research on Total Integration of Writing and Subject-Matter Instruction in the Disciplines : An Interim Report from National and International Perspectives

It is widely recognized that 21st-century college graduates around the world need strong communication skills to fulfill their roles as professionals and contributing members of their local, national, and global communities. Yet, studies continue to report that colleges are falling short in this important educational area [Hor05, IfM08, Wei09]. In regions like Europe that don’t have a tradition of including writing instruction in higher education, an increasing number of universities are instituting writing-foracademic-purposes, writing-for-special-purposes, and similar programs [citations] to develop students’ writing abilities. In the United States, many colleges have established writing-across-the-curriculum, writing-in-the-discipline, or writing-intensive-course programs that supplement the required first-year writing course with additional attention to writing in advanced subject-area courses. What they share in common, in most cases, is a focus on two or three classes. Proponents of these programs believe that the writing in these disciplinary courses increases students’ mastery of course content in addition to their communication skills. However, doubts have been raised about the quality of the evidence demonstrating their efficacy [Ack94, Och04]. Complaints about the writing of college graduates continue unabated. We propose to report on first-year results from a three-year study in which an interdisciplinary group of 35 faculty from 14 universities explores a much more comprehensive strategy for integrating writing into higher education. Sponsored by an $800,000 grant from the United State National Science Foundation, the study involves fully integrating writing and disciplinary instruction in a sequence of six courses that extend from the basic introduction to the senior capstone class in undergraduate programs in Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE). As students progress through the sequence, they will build their writing abilities in a developmentally progressive manner that parallels development of their technical skills. Instruction in writing will be inextricably tied to technical instruction. SE/CS faculty will deliver both. Students will learn the discipline’s genre and writing conventions through instruction and assignments that are deeply embedded in the technical context of their future careers.