Download WAC/CAC Overview - Academics at Boise State University

An Overview of
Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)
and
Communication Across the Curriculum (CAC)*
Clyde Moneyhun, English Department, Boise State University
erin mcclellan, Communication Department, Boise State University
WAC as a philosophy
CAC as a philosophy
 When students write, they learn material
better (also known as “writing to learn” or
WTL). WAC research shows that students
who write about course material retain more
details, think more critically, perform better on
exams, and make higher grades.
 To cultivate a speech competence requires
multiple occasions of performance that build
incrementally on previous achievements.
Instructors focus on one practice, or an
integrated set of practices, that can be
identified and elaborated through the course of
the semester. Students recognize and become
habituated to developing this skill.
 Students keep learning to write across their
careers, from high school preparation for
college to first composition to writing intensive
courses in the major to the writing mentorships
of graduate theses and dissertations. Students’
writing skills grow across their careers and can
be nurtured at every step.
 The learning pay-off comes when students
actually see their own performance from the
perspective of an "other" point of view, and so
develop the habit of constructing their
discourse from that "other" position.
 Every discipline has its own uses for
writing, its own standards, its own
conventions. The best place for students to
learn disciplinary standards and conventions is
courses in the disciplines.
 Help students see that communication
competence is a life-time learning for which
students are being given the beginning building
blocks.
WAC as a pedagogy
CAC as a pedagogy:
 Every classroom can be improved through
the incorporation of writing; however, not
every classroom will incorporate the same kind
of writing, and not every teacher needs to
respond to student writing in the same way.
 Provide systematic reflective feedback
opportunities from multiple sources:
(a) teacher comments, modeling, and
evaluations
(b) student self-evaluation (personal reflection,
video)
(c) response from other students (oral/written
feedback, debate, modeling)
 The most helpful writing is embedded in
the process of learning. Writing in a
disciplinary course works best when it is
designed to help accomplish a teacher’s
pedagogical goals, from coverage of material
 Thoroughly analyze and discuss the
elements of the competency as a framework for
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to problem-solving skills to critical or
“synthetic” thinking.
learning. This accomplishes two things: (1) It
gives students who have difficulty mastering
the ability concrete footholds for measuring
improvement, and (2) it shows students who
take the competence for granted how to
understand and expand their abilities.
Evaluation instruments become not just a
grading tool but a learning tool.
WAC as a curriculum
CAC as a curriculum
 WAC is often institutionalized in the
undergraduate curriculum, for example in the
form of WIC (Writing Intensive Courses),
WID (Writing in the Disciplines), and here at
BSU in CID (Communication in the
Disciplines) courses.
 Help students see the value of what they
are learning and their degree of progress.
Preview/review at beginning and end of
semester to make salient the distance travelled.
WAC as a discipline
CAC as a discipline
 WAC is a field with a thirty-year history of
awareness of itself as a field, its own
disciplinary assumptions, controversies (or
challenges to the paradigms), specialized
jargon, canon of classic texts, journals, and
annual conferences.
 The National Communication Association
writes about the role of communication in
General Education:
 Once students have begun to have
confidence in their capability, provide external
 To facilitate writing as a curricular idea,
models and benchmarks of excellence, so that
WAC often entails faculty development
students:
through presentations, workshops, and
(a) connect what they are learning with
individual consultations.
valuable accomplishment out in the 'real world'
(b) have an inspiring model to emulate
 The most successful WAC efforts are those (c) see the range between basic progress and
in which leadership roles in the WAC effort are possible mastery
played by faculty from across the campus.
 WAC research has amassed data about
learning styles, cognition and metacognition,
discourse conventions, discourse communities,
and more: information that is useful to anyone
interested in enhancing students’ learning.
 WAC as a field is interdisciplinary by
nature. It draws on many fields for its theories
“To become competent communicators,
students must understand the role of their
communication choices and behaviors within
their social context, whether public or private,
with large audiences or with individual
partners, within cultures and across cultures. In
addition, they should understand the factors
that influence their decision-making, and the
factors that affect the potential success or
failure of their communication efforts. They
will need to learn how to translate their goals
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and its research methodologies, including
composition pedagogy, education and
educational psychology, sociology and
educational sociology, ethnography,
linguistics, language philosophy, and the
rhetoric of science.
as communicators into effective messages.
Contemporary students need to be aware of the
potential of new media and emerging
information technologies both to enhance and
impair the quality of communication. Above
all, it is imperative that students are introduced
to the complex ethical issues that will face
communicators in a multicultural and
technologically complex society.”
(source: http://www.natcom.org/Default.aspx?id=146&libID=167)
* Much of the information provided here is adapted from a list originally written by Associate Professor of Communication John Arthos, Denison
University.
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