WE Write!
Improving undergraduate student writing skills
The WE Write! Quality Enhancement Plan
WE Write! is a Writing Enhancement Program which works to build bridges between the English department's first-year writing classes [English 101 and 102] and selected 200-level courses, while creating a culture of writing instruction and practice across the undergraduate curriculum to improve student writing.
Goal
Students will improve writing skills.
Background
After an in-depth process that began in Spring 2019, with a broad base of input from administration, faculty, and students, Campbell University has identified student writing as the targeted area for improvement in Campbell’s upcoming Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). The program is called WE Write!
Beginning Fall 2021, A variety of existing 200-level courses will be converted to Writing Enhanced (WE) courses. These enhanced courses will reinforce the writing skills taught in 100-level English writing courses (ENGL 101 Academic Writing and ENGL 102 – Academic Writing & Literature). This project will not involve creating new courses. Instead, the enhanced 200-level courses will better focus on improving student writing and further the work already begun by the English department several years ago.
WE Write! will start as a pilot program in which a limited number of 200-level course sections will be converted to WE standards. A sufficient number of WE courses will be added and offered to ensure that undergraduates will have an opportunity to take at least one of the writing enhanced courses.
Faculty in English, History, Psychology, and Christian Studies will participate in WE Write! by transforming the 14 popular, 200-level courses below into compliance with WE
standards.
- CHRS 202 – Old Testament Survey
- CHRS 212 – New Testament Survey
- CHRS 224 – Christian Ethics
- CHRS 251 – World Religions
- ENGL 202 – British Literature II
- ENGL 201 – British Literature I
- ENGL 203 – American Literature I
- ENGL 204 – American Literature II
- ENGL 205 – World Literature I
- ENGL 206 – World Literature II
- ENGL 208 – Literature & Health
- ENGL 219 – Special Topics
- HIST 221 – United States History I
- HIST 222 – United States History II
- PSYC 260 – Developmental Psychology
To qualify as a WE course, each section should meet the following criteria:
- include a significant amount of assigned writing (15 pages or 4,000 words across assignments, with at least one thesis-driven essay longer than 1,300 words),
- provide guided writing practice from a WE instructor,
- apply a common WE Write! rubric for instructional and assessment purposes,
- have limited enrollment to ensure guided writing practice is feasible.
WE instructors will join a community of dedicated teacher scholars who are proactively working to develop students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking skills. This community of practice will be formed through activities that include workshops and reading groups led by the Workshop Moderator and veteran WE instructors, as well as opportunities for conference participation.
Fall 2023 Progress
