By the University Writing Council

The WCU University Writing Council & Advisory Board created a series of modules for teaching writing better. We are sharing these modules here in the TLC Teaching Resource Hub. The full suite of activities is available on D2L.

When student contributions to a writing assignment don’t align with faculty expectations for an assignment, improvements can often be made to the design of the assignment. This in turn leads to better clarity and contributions from students. Although we often assign writing, we may not always design our assignments in a way that makes the purpose, focus, and expectations for the assignments clear. In this module, faculty will learn some strategies for designing assignments that utilize critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing.

We must be clear about how we define the critical processes given that writing and thinking processes vary from discipline to discipline. Higher education is in no small part an acculturation of students into an academic and professional community that thinks and writes in particular ways; and thus, we must teach students the ways of writing and thinking in our respective fields if we wish to help them join our discourse communities.

Follow this link to the full module on Teaching Writing and Critical Thinking. WCUPA log-in required.