The University of Gloucestershire, located in the southwest of the United Kingdom, is a small university with approximately 7,500 full-time students and 400 teaching staff. It has three faculties, all with a professional or applied focus: (1) Media, Art, and Technology; (2) Business, Education, and Professional Studies; and (3) Applied Sciences.…

In 2006, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) launched a major initiative, the Top 25 Project, to embed inquiry-guided learning (IGL) into its largest-enrollment courses across the university. These are generally entry-level classes and thus affect many students: 75 percent of incoming students on its main campus in 2010 were in at least one Top 25…

Follow-up activities are essential to maintaining a writing-across-the-curriculum program. La Salle University created a second stage of program development through new workshops and symposia, collaborative teaching and co-authoring, and opportunities for student involvement. (MSE)

An annotated directory of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in two-year and four-year institutions in the United States and Canada, based on a 1987 survey, is presented. Annotations contain contact names and addresses and information about program design and components. (MSE)

As a result of forces both in society and in their professions, college faculty find it difficult to raise the question of moral judgment with students. However, it is the disciplines themselves that offer the method and substance for values education. (Author/MSE)

Some funding is necessary to run a writing-across-the-curriculum program, but it is possible to redesign a program and keep it running when outside funding ends. (MSE)

Collaborative research in writing-across-the-curriculum is a powerful companion to the usual faculty workshop activities of listening, reading, and discussion. In collaborative research projects, teachers from two or more disciplines work together to understand better their students' thinking and writing. (MSE)

The enthusiasm generated by workshops in writing across the curriculum can be translated into lasting curricular change, particularly in freshman composition, general education courses, and upper-division writing emphasis courses. Committees, central to any change effort, can take any of a variety of forms. (MSE)

Continuing problems, troubling trends, and many opportunities face writing-across-the-curriculum planners in the future. Proponents must continue to believe in the benefits of writing-across-the-curriculum programs and widen and intensify networks of support. (MSE)

A study investigated whether Biglan clusters of academic disciplines (hard/soft, pure/applied, life/nonlife) could be used to explain disciplinary differences in college student ratings of instruction. It was found that Biglan clusters do not explain the differences, many disciplines still emphasize knowledge acquisition over higher-order skills,…

Survey responses from 401 community colleges show that many of these two-year, open-admissions institutions have developed writing-across-the-curriculum programs that address the special needs of their faculty and students. (MSE)

The complex and comprehensive nature of writing-across-the-curriculum programs makes them difficult to evaluate. There are some measures of program effectiveness that are easy to collect and others that are worth trying for. (MSE)

Writing-across-the-curriculum programs in secondary schools may have been fostered by the same body of knowledge as those in colleges and universities, but their evolution has been shaped by a different set of circumstances. Development of articulation programs between these institutions requires an understanding of their different contexts. (MSE)

Inquiry education cuts across conventional distinctions between liberal arts and professional programs and is supported by specially designed curricula and pedagogies. The establishment of Hampshire College is described. The idea that undergraduate education should promote students' intellectual independence was a strong thread through the…

A step-by-step guide to designing interdisciplinary courses is presented. Underlying theoretical rationales and expected educational outcomes are explored, and concrete suggestions and examples are offered. Steps include assembling an interdisciplinary team, selecting a topic, identifying disciplines for inclusion, developing the issues underlying…