WAC CXC Pressbook
Our WAC Pressbook, called "Communicating Across the Curriculum: Resources for High-Impact Teaching with Writing at UW-Madison," includes instructional materials for teaching with writing in disciplines across the curriculum. Featuring assignment examples from UW-Madison instructors, Communicating Across the Curriculum incorporates best practices for designing and assessing formal and low-stakes writing assignments, for working with multilingual writers, for valuing language diversity, for teaching writing with artificial intelligence (AI), and much more.
Why teach with writing? Opportunities to engage with well-designed, carefully scaffolded writing assignments can empower all students in a course to succeed. Even more, engaging writing assignments can be incorporated into all classes, from large lectures to small seminars. Ultimately, writing serves as a powerful pedagogical practice to make your course inclusive and accessible for all students.
What are some next steps? Below are a few especially useful resources to support you to integrate writing into your courses. Please reach out to us if you'd like to consult on a writing assignment or activity or to learn more!
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Teaching Writing with AI
Teaching Writing with AI
- Why might students want to use an AI text generator for writing assignments?
- What are some of the risks to students of relying exclusively on AI?
- Writing a clear AI policy for your course
- AI integration levels in writing using a suggested scale
- What are some potential advantages to instructors (and students) of incorporating generative AI into teaching with writing?
- Designing writing assignments that motivate original and independent thinking
- Ideas for incorporating AI into the writing process
- A low-stakes assignment incorporating ChatGPT
- Scaffolding a larger paper using generative AI: Nathan Jung, Teaching Faculty
- A high-stakes writing assignment incorporating ChatGPT: Professional writing in healthcare
- Made not only by me: Coauthoring a children’s book with text and image generator
- UDL in your syllabus
- Examples of writing assignments that incorporate AI (from UW-Madison courses)
High Stakes, formal writing assignments
High Stakes, formal wrriting assignments
Below are suggestions for designing formal or summative writing assignments for your course. What we tend to call “formal” assignments are typically high-stakes assessments that significantly influence course grades. When designed well, they also significantly deepen student learning, can help students learn the writing conventions of a particular discipline, and can foster a sense of accomplishment and significance for and in students.
- What is “high-stakes writing”?
- Why incorporate high-stakes writing into your teaching?
- How to incorporate high-stakes writing into your teaching?
- The anatomy of a well-designed writing assignment
- Examples of high-stakes writing in UW-Madison courses
- Checklist for designing high-stakes writing assignments
Low-Stakes Writing Assignments
Low-Stakes Writing Assignments
Low-stakes or exploratory writing activities are short assignments or exercises that have little to no impact on a student’s course grade. These might be activities that students complete individually or collaboratively, and they might take place during class, in preparation for class, or in a reflection on a class session that has just finished. While these activities are “low-stakes” in terms of students’ grades, they are “high-impact” with regard to student learning. Low-stakes writing offers a means of discovery, questioning, and exploration. It can deepen students’ thinking, analysis, and persuasive skills, offer opportunities for reflection and growth, can build equity into a classroom, and can create connection between students and between students and instructors.
- What is “low-stakes” writing?
- Why incorporate low-stakes writing into your teaching?
- How to incorporate low-stakes writing into your teaching?
- Examples of low-stakes writing activities & assignments
- Examples of low-stakes writing in UW-Madison courses
- A step-by-step guide to designing a low-stakes writing assignment
Supporting students in the writing process: Language diversity and multilingual writers
Supporting students in the writing process: Language diversity and multilingual writers
- Research-based strategies for working with multilingual writers
- Marking (or NOT marking) errors
- Evaluating and grading multilingual students’ writing
- Labels: Multilingual, non-native English speakers, English as second language speakers
- Incorporating linguistic justice into your work as instructor
- Listen to multilingual students
Providing feedback on (and evaluation of) student writing
Providing feedback on (and evaluation of) student writing
Below offer resources on evaluating and assessing student writing inclusively, transparently, effectively, and more:
- Inclusive assessment
- Strategies for responding to student writing
- A brief how-to guide: Using SpeedGrader to respond to student writing (Mike Hean, Writing Across the Curriculum)
- Developing transparent evaluation criteria
- Assessing high-stakes writing using screencast feedback
- How to build and use rubrics effectively
- Ungrading and alternative grading
- Responding to students’ drafts using audio
Instructional Materials from the Writer's Handbook
Writing deepens the learning process by helping students make new connections with course content, giving them the opportunity to express themselves and to learn both content and disciplinary conventions at the same time. Below are selected instructional materials from the Writer's Handbook , developed by UW-Madison's Writing Center.
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Academic and Professional Writing
The following are some example assignments for professional and academic writing: