Wendy and other Inkshedders --
Agreed that an update on WAC/WID will be very timely at next year's Cs.
U of T has never fully adopted a labelling system for WAC or WID, though
interesting things are happening in several corners. I'm hoping my
colleagues will talk at the Cs about initiatives at Scarborough and at
Engineering, where several courses have integrated writing instruction
into the core content of gateway courses.
Arts and Science is still shuffling alternatives for fulfilling its
resolution on integrated writing instruction, but there is at least one
new course that may be of interest. WRI306H (Writing for Scientists) is
actually a revival of a non-credit course for senior science students
that we were able to offer free of charge for several years. Now it's a
credit course for which students pay fees, but it retains two
distinctive elements. First, it's co-taught by a writing instructor and
a senior science TA, a combination that gains credibility for the course
content and educates everybody about disciplinary differences. Second,
student work is evaluated on a Credit / No-Credit basis, so there's no
number grade that could pull down the stratospheric averages that these
ambitious students want to maintain for their med-school and grad-school
applications. That's a particular incentive for non-native speakers to
invest their time and energy into the course.
We hope also to mount a Writing for Social Scientists version soon, and
the Vice-Dean (an economist) would like it to emphasize quantitative
reasoning. I'd be very glad to hear about other examples of that type of
course.
Margaret
--
Margaret Procter, Ph.D.
University of Toronto Coordinator, Writing Support
15 King's College Circle, Toronto ON M5S 3H7
416 978-8109; FAX 416 971-2027
[log in to unmask]
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing
wendy strachan wrote:
>I think a discussion of Canadian WID/WAC initiatives at CCCC's sounds like a
>great idea as proposed through Tosh's submission from next year.
>I wonder which Canadian universities are offering or plan to develop
>writing-intensive courses as part of a WID/WAC initiative and in particular
>am wondering what characterizes those courses.
>Any links or hints very welcome! I'm doing some work on this and while it's
>easy to find this information on US sites, I haven't had much luck so far on
>Canadian.
>Many thanks and Happy Easter, everyone - I hear it's snowing up at SFU! (But
>the tulips are blooming in my garden)
>
>Wendy
>
>Wendy Strachan
>Simon Fraser University,
>Burnaby, BC.
>
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