The University of Pittsburgh was one of the first in the nation to recognize and promote the value of writing in the disciplines. Since 1981, the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences has offered writing-intensive (W) courses in every academic major. Dietrich School students must complete two W courses, one in their major field of study, in order to fulfill the General Education Requirements.
W courses at Pitt treat writing as a powerful mode of inquiry. Students who write frequently — in any discipline — not only develop strong writing skills but also extend their thinking and propel their learning. In a good W course, both students and teacher can see that writing instruction advances content learning rather than competing with it.
Across the Dietrich School, faculty members design and teach W courses that integrate writing thoroughly into the semester's learning experiences. Interested faculty may propose a new W course, or seek the W designation for an existing course, by submitting a proposal to the Dietrich School Undergraduate Council.
What is a W Course?
A writing-intensive course is a course in which students engage with writing substantively throughout the term; they write and revise throughout the term (not just at the end); they write a total of 23–25 pages (5,750–6,250 words); they get feedback from their teacher and their peers. The craft of writing is a significant focus of class time and instruction.
According to the Dietrich School Undergraduate Council, writing-intensive courses "must always be offered as writing-intensive for all sections, effective spring 2019," and the Council has set a minimum three-credit requirement for General Education Requirements, which may be met by combining courses with lower credit loads (Dietrich School Gazette, Vol. 50, No. 3, December 17, 2018). We think in most cases a three-credit W course is the most efficient way of meeting this requirement.
W courses should be capped at 25 students or fewer in order to allow teachers adequate time for responding to writing in substantive ways.
Proposal Process
The Writing Institute can be a resource to you as you are developing your ideas for your W course. The process is the same whether you are proposing a new W course or you are revising an existing course to be a W course from now on. Here is the typical process:
- Review the proposal requirements below and start drafting your course. If you want to have a conversation with us early in the process, email us or book a pedagogy consultation.
- When you have a fairly complete first draft, please contact the Writing Institute to review it and give you feedback. Keep in mind the Dietrich School submission deadlines (November 1 or March 15) and be sure to allow us at least a week for us to respond and allow yourself some time in case you need to further tweak your proposal.
- After you have made revisions, submit your finished course proposal via Curriculog as usual. As for any new course, remember to attach the cover page and assessment matrix. While your syllabus should include learning outcomes specific to your course, the assessment matrix serves a different purpose: it captures the shared outcomes for W courses across your department, allowing assessment to be compared meaningfully over time. Because assessment is most useful when it can be compared across courses, we recommend that your matrix reflect those department-level W course outcomes rather than outcomes specific to this one course.
- The Writing Institute, in its role as College Writing Board, will review your completed proposal in Curriculog and give you feedback. If you are seeking additional GERs for your course (you can only have three associated with one course), you will hear separately about the Dietrich School Undergraduate Council decisions on those.
We are eager to see departments develop engaging and useful W courses for their students, and we want to help you with that work, so please do not hesitate to contact us if you want support, have questions, or feel that the proposal requirements or W-course requirements don't serve the writing needs of your students. We are willing to explore alternative requirements if they make sense for your discipline and still offer students excellent practice and preparation in writing.
Requirements for W Course Proposals
Developing a W course proposal is more straightforward than it may appear at first glance. If you have questions at any point in the process, please reach out. We are here to help.
Deadline. Course proposals must be submitted to the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Council via Curriculog by November 1 for the subsequent summer and fall terms, and by March 15 for the subsequent spring term. The Writing Institute will review proposals after their submission.
Documentation. In addition to the materials required by Dietrich School Undergraduate Council (including a course description, syllabus, assessment matrix, and a detailed explanation of why the course should satisfy the requested General Education Requirement) your W course proposal should include the following four components. These can all be combined into a single document:
- A schedule of writing assignments.
- Two complete assignment handouts.
- A brief explanation of the scheduled revision.
- An outline of projected in-class writing instruction.
Below, you will find more detail about each of the components of the W-course proposal.
1. Schedule of Writing Assignments
One traditional model of college teaching has students turning in a long term paper at the end of the semester. In this model, students write the paper "on the side," without any assistance from the class or the instructor. Often they do very little writing earlier in the term, except perhaps on exams.
The writing-intensive course offers a productive alternative to this model. In a W course, writing occurs throughout the semester, not just at the end of the term, and serves as a mode of learning as well as a way of reporting what one has learned. When students do complete a complex final project, their work emerges from a sequence of earlier writing assignments.
Brief, informal assignments may ask students to practice certain kinds of thinking and writing particular to the discipline; students may then apply this kind of thinking or writing to a longer, more formal project. Alternatively, students may write sections of a complex culminating project over the course of the semester, to be reviewed by the instructor and revised before being integrated into the final paper.
Faculty proposing a W course must provide a schedule of assignments. The course calendar should make it clear that students:
- will begin writing early in the term;
- will write regularly throughout the term;
- will discuss writing in substantive ways in class throughout the course;
- will receive instructive responses between assignments;
- will revise some of their work significantly; and
- will write between 23 and 25 pages (or 5,750 to 6,250 words) in all.
2. Assignment Handouts
Students who are writing throughout the semester benefit from completing a variety of related assignments. A well-developed assignment handout does more than communicate logistics, it supports student learning in ways that are easy to underestimate.
For students, a detailed handout gives them something to return to as they work. Students often misremember verbal instructions or interpret them differently as the assignment progresses, so having clear written expectations helps them self-correct and stay on track. It also reduces anxiety, particularly for students who are newer to academic writing or to the conventions of a discipline.
For instructors, a fully articulated assignment makes evaluation more consistent and defensible. When criteria are written down, it is easier to apply them evenhandedly across a set of papers and to explain a grade when a student has questions.
For the course over time, a well-developed assignment is easier to revise and improve. An instructor who has thought through and written down their expectations can look back, identify where students struggled, and make targeted adjustments in future iterations.
There is also an equity argument for detailed assignment handouts. Students who have strong relationships with their instructors, or who come from educational backgrounds where asking for clarification is normalized are more likely to seek informal guidance when an assignment is vague. Students who don't have those relationships or that background are at a disadvantage when instructions live mainly in conversation. The same is true for students with auditory processing difficulties, who may find it hard to capture and retain a verbally delivered assignment. A well-developed handout levels that playing field.
Faculty proposing a W course must provide two sample writing assignments. Each handout should
- explain the purpose of the assignment, in relation to the trajectory of the course or the work of the discipline;
- describe briefly a process for successfully completing the assignment;
- make explicit the instructor's expectations regarding form, style, and content; and
- identify the criteria by which the writing will be evaluated.
Ideally, sample assignments will also illustrate the relationship between a substantial end-of-term project and the work of earlier assignments.
3. Explanation of Scheduled Revision
Revision is an essential element of a writing-intensive course. While careful editing is certainly an important part of this process, a W-course revision should involve much more than correcting mistakes. Substantial revision asks students to reconsider their earlier assertions, formulate and pursue further questions, develop more complex answers, or grapple with new ideas; that kind of rethinking is where much of the learning in a writing-intensive course actually happens.
It is worth being explicit about this distinction with students, many of whom have been trained to think of revision as proofreading. When instructors build revision into the course structure and explain what substantive revision looks like, students are more likely to engage with it as an intellectual act rather than a clerical one. Peer workshops, instructor comments that focus on ideas and argument rather than surface errors, and class time devoted to discussing what revision can accomplish all help students develop a more productive relationship with their own drafts.
Students need support if they are to revise their work in this way. Instructors can coach them through the process by planning in-class writing workshops, guided peer consultations, and discussions of disciplinary models, as well as by providing written comments that focus on substantive issues. The course calendar should allow sufficient time for these activities between the draft and a scheduled revision. Thus, it is important to begin work on the revisions well before the last week of classes.
Faculty proposing a W course must provide a document explaining the role of revision in the course. This document should indicate the following:
- what piece or pieces students will revise;
- when in the semester the revision will occur; and
- how the instructor will help the students move from draft to revision.
4. Projected In-Class Writing Instruction
When writing plays a critical role in student learning, in-class writing instruction assumes a greater significance. It is easy for students to experience writing assignments as separate from the intellectual work of a course, something that happens outside of class after the real learning is done. Deliberate in-class writing instruction pushes back against that perception. When instructors use class time to introduce disciplinary conventions, examine models, workshop drafts, or help students generate ideas, they signal that writing is a mode of inquiry central to the course itself rather than just a reporting mechanism.
There is also a practical benefit: students who receive instruction and practice in class before attempting an assignment on their own produce stronger drafts and have a clearer sense of what they are being asked to do. Class time devoted to writing is not time taken away from content; it is often the most direct path to deeper engagement with it.
Class time before and after the assignment can be used productively in a number of ways:
- introduce disciplinary writing conventions that apply to the assignment;
- examine texts that exemplify the kinds of writing and thinking required in the assignment;
- initiate brainstorming sessions or informal writing to generate ideas for the assignment;
- help students practice the kinds of thinking and writing required in the assignment;
- guide peer consultation groups in discussing student drafts;
- lead workshops that suggest possibilities for revision; and
- address common problems with usage, grammar, and style.
Faculty proposing a W course must submit a document in which they discuss the writing instruction they will provide. This document should indicate the following:
- when class periods will be set aside for writing activities;
- what activities the instructor will lead; and
- how these activities will help students progress in their writing.
You can read some examples of successful W-course proposals.