The WAC Casebook: Scenes for Faculty Reflection and Program Development

The WAC Casebook: Scenes for Faculty Reflection and Program Development is designed for faculty and instructors who want to incorporate writing in helpful and productive ways in every higher education classroom-regardless of the discipline. A unique collection, it brings together approximately fifty actual or highly realistic scenarios that anticipate the range of situations faculty confront in writing across the curriculum programs. Organized into eight chapters, these scenarios do not end with resolutions; rather, they pose complex and engaging questions that encourage readers to become more reflective about their teaching. These narratives will prompt debates about possible courses of action and explorations of the issues. The chapters focus on such areas as the design of effective writing assignments and responding to and evaluating student writing. The content also addresses the question of working across disciplines with faculty who may share different views of writing and how it is best taught or learned. Each scene ends with provocative questions for reflection and discussion, as well as suggested readings to enrich the analysis. A list of web-based resources is included in an appendix. Ideal for faculty involved in workshops, seminars, and other faculty-development systems in colleges and universities, The WAC Casebook is an excellent text for graduate students in composition and rhetoric programs or in teacher-education programs.

Table of Contents:
Foreword ; Introduction: Reflection, Faculty Development, and Writing Across the Curriculum: The Power of Scene ; PART ONE. WRITING TO LEARN: SCENES OF INTELLECTUAL GROWTH ; 1. The Misbegotten Journal of Dennis Wong ; 2. Writing for Empathy ; 3. Writing Intensity ; 4. WAC Meets WMS: Not Love at First Sight ; 5. What's Appropriate? ; PART TWO. EFFECTIVE ASSIGNMENTS: SCENES OF THE CRAFT ; 6. Great Assignment, But Nobody's Happy ; 7. Trudy Does Comics ; 8. Who Has THe Power? ; 9. Pieces Missing: Assignments and Expectations ; 10. Managing Disciplinary Difference ; 11. In the Writing Intensive Univers(ity) ; 12. Spreading the Words: Collaborative Writing in "Killer Lab" ; PART THREE. READING STUDENT WORK: SCENES OF RESPONSE AND EVALUATION ; 13. Making Learning Visible: What You Can't See Can Change Response ; 14. Two Papers, Two Views ; 15. The Jonas Incident ; 16. Esmeralda's Math Class ; 17. The Finger on the Pulse: Who Teaches Writing? ; 18. It's All Academic ; PART FOUR. COACHING WRITING: SCENES OF IDEOLOGY AND INTERACTION ; 19. Rewriting the Culture of Engineering ; 20. Who's "Infantalizing?" ; 21. Shobhna's Pronouncements ; 22. It's Not Working ; 23. Requiring Revision, Juggling the Workload ; 24. You Have No Right ; PART FIVE. CYBERTEXT: SCENES OF WRITING AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES ; 25. Through the Back Door Into Cyberspace ; 26. Connecting Students with Professionals ; 27. Sondra Gets Hyper ; 28. Lost in the MOO ; 29. Anonymity, Botulism, and Counterfeit Russians ; PART SIX. FENCES AND NEIGHBORS: SCENES OF CROSS-DISCIPLINARY WORK AND FACULTY COLLABORATION ; 30. Whatever Things Are True: A Scenario in Four Acts ; 31. Is This Writing? ; 32. Showdown at Midwestern U: The First-Year Composition War Between English and Economics ; 33. Raising the Gates of Chem. 101 ; 34. The Strange Case of the Vanishing Very Bad Writing ; PART SEVEN. SEEDS OF CHANGE: SCENES OF APPRENTICESHIP AND THE ROLE OF GRADUATE STUDENTS ; 35. The Blind Men and the Elephant Called Writing ; 36. Greta's Cacophony ; 37. Mistakes in Social Psychology ; 38. To Teach or Not to Teach ; 39. Ranks, Roles, and Responsibilities: Crossing the Fine Line in Cross-Disciplinary Mentorship ; PART EIGHT. TENDING THE GARDEN: SCENES OF PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT ; 40. Been There, Done That: A Problem in WAC Funding ; 41. A Chemistry Experiment in Writing ; 42. Thoughts From the Rank and File ; 43. We Hate You! WAC as a Professional Threat ; 44. Forget Everything You Learned About Writing ; 45. Learning About Learning Communities ; POSTSCRIPT. PURSUING A SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING: RESOURCES FOR CONTINUED REFLECTION ON WRITING AND LEARNING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM ; Appendix: Best Online Resources for Writing Across the Curriculum ; ABOUT THE SCENEMAKERS