There's a substantial amount of information about linked courses available through the Washington Center at The Evergreen State College, and the Learning Communities listserv. I'm in the process of trying to put together a sort of reading list -- but what may be most useful to you to know is that this is a very widespread movement and goes way beyond (though I think it includes) linking writing courses to discipline courses. Lots of experience out there with it, and with the administrative complications involved. It seems to me the question could easily go either way, depending on how you saw the linkage working, but my own view would be that the easiest thing to do is make the linkage a simple matter of the registrar's signing students up for both courses and the courses functioning for all administrative purposes as though they were freestanding. Thus a student who passed the disciplinary section and flunked the writing one could later sign up for another one, hooked to some other discipline, or to a freestanding one if that's an option. Similarly, the student who flunked the disciplinary section and could just sign up for another one, and consider her writing requirement or whatever passed. I think to hook them together more intimately would _presume_ that the two teachers were collaborating fairly intensely, and my own preference is not to presume that, but to let collaboration happen if it develops. The Aquinas Program here, which is three linked courses, has gone both ways -- separate marks, separate credit, and totally uniform homogenization. I'm involved in the homogenized one, and it's demanding and inflexible in important ways. Is what you're envisioning two classes, each composed of the same set of students, or would the students in the writing class compose a subset of the ones in the disciplinary class? I can get you more information about LEARNCOM and the Washington Center if it would help. There's recently been a discussion on the Learning Communities list about the demands on faculty of linked courses, and compensation of various kinds for participating in such communities. -- Russ __|~_ Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Aquinas Chair St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 452-0424 Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615 E3B 5G3 CANADA ___|____|____|____/ [log in to unmask] \ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.StThomasU.ca/hunt/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~