Student in lab

While the Writing Program offers an array of strong first-year courses to help students begin to develop as writers, Writing-Intensive (WIN) courses and other writing within the disciplines occur across all undergraduate BU schools and colleges in upper level courses. Students continue to write throughout their academic careers at BU, and through the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) program, we support undergraduate writing in academic disciplines in a variety of ways.

WID serves as a resource to academic units by collaborating to create unit-based writing plans, organizing co-teaching experiences of Writing-Intensive courses, organizing and administering unit-based peer writing tutoring, consulting with faculty to implement best practices for teaching writing, including designing and scaffolding writing assignments, commenting on student work, developing writing-to-learn exercises, and providing opportunities for student reflective writing.

Working from a perspective that is informed by current scholarship on writing in the disciplines, the WID program emphasizes the distinctiveness of writing within disciplinary contexts. While writers across many disciplines may share common concerns and expectations about writing, each discipline has its own writing genres, writing conventions, citation styles, disciplinary histories, ways of using evidence, and views of what constitutes knowledge and knowledge production. The WID program is a resource to help both students in developing their writing skills & confidence and faculty in providing effective pedagogical approaches to teaching writing.

 

Contact:

David Shawn

Associate Director for Writing in the Disciplines

dshawn@bu.edu