Perhaps surprisingly, the answers are "no" and "no." The running joke in the WAC Program is that we could have named the experience "Writing Euphoria" and students would still shy away because the word striking fear in their hearts is actually "writing" rather than "intensive."
We know this because during the earliest years of General Education writing assessment, we discovered that students were waiting until their last semester at MCC-Longview to take a composition course. We also found that the more composition courses students had taken, the better they performed on the writing assessment. Needless to say, this finding speaks well of the composition experiences orchestrated by English faculty.
However, we all agreed that the kind of knowledge and writing experience recieved through composition courses would serve students much better if the courses were taken sooner rather than later. So the Writing Intensive requirement works, in part, as a powerful lever, steering students into the prerequisite, English 101, much earlier in their academic careers than they would elect to take it if left to their own devices.
What happens next is that faculty in other disciplines can build on that English 101 knowledge and experience by their embrace of the writing process and carefully designed assignments marked by thoughtful use of drafts and feedback meant to develop further the critical thinking abilities of their students.
The irony is that a Writing Intensive course is not more work for the students who take it, but, rather, for the faculty member who teaches it. For students, such courses offer interesting and unique writing projects just as many MCC-Longview courses do.
In Jim Pratt's Intro to Microcomputer Applications, for instance, students create a business plan for a hypothetical business they invent. In the Math-English learning community, Bridget Gold and Becky Foster have students do an array of writing projects, including letters explaining math concepts, similar to the kind featured in the book they read, Letters to a Young Mathmetician.
Matthew Westra encourages his Adolescent Psychology students to develop their own assignment by investigating an aspect of the field which particularly interests them. Those going into teaching can devise a curriculum pertinent to adolescent development while others choose to examine the historical, social, or medical dimensions of this stage.
Anne Nienhueser's WI project in her online course invites students to design a green home by researching ecological and economical sources and applying the concepts they've learned in Foundations of Physics.
For instructors, these courses reflect an emphasis on revision and an obligation to provide considered feedback to each student on a project draft so that the student can re-think some of the writing choices he or she has made. Students then have the opportunity to fully consider the impact and effectiveness of their writing and make changes to strengthen the project by revising it before turning it in for final evaluation by the instructor.
Once students take a WI course, they typically are quite sold on its value. In fact, it is not at all unusual for students who have transferred to 4-year colleges to report back on how valuable these WI courses were in preparing them for their coursework at the next level and even for employment beyond that.
The LV WAC Cadre ultimately settled on the name "Writing Intensive" because they knew that most of the 4-year schools to which our students transfer use this identifier. For better or worse, it seemed logical and appropriate to call the experience by its most recognizable name.
Check out MCC-Longview's Spring 2012 WI offerings and please direct your students to them! The instructors you'll find listed there are quite willing to discuss the nature of the projects and course work with interested students.
