If you foresee changes to the administrative, curricular, or support structures of first-year writing at your institution over the next four years, feel free to explain. -TEXT- (n=147)
Answered in another section of the survey. Likely decrease in compensation/support for Coordinator of Composition. May be moved under supervision of Director of Gen Ed if such a position is funded.
We are in the early stages of General Education reform at the college. FY writing will be part of that larger discussion and reform.
we are currently searching for a new NTT Director of FYW but hope it will be converted back to a TT line in the next 4 years
We are discussing adding a stretch/ALP/Co-curricular lap option for students, outcomes will be revised to better connect them to GE outcomes, supplemental instruction for first-year writing will most likely be phased out due to budget constraints.
We are exploring alternatives to the research based comp II course.
We are hoping to expand our writing reach and begin a WAC program.
We are hoping to implement directed self placement and peer tutoring for the FYC courses (only professional tutoring is offered right now). We are also hoping to hire a FT TT WPA who will be solely dedicated to general education writing.
We are in a period of heightened examination of writing at the college. There will undoubtedly be changes to the structure of the writing department, the ways we administer and assess first-stage writing, and the ways departments enact their own internal writing requirements.
We are in the process of revision the College curriculum.
We are always rethinking and investigating our FYW curriculum and I think that will continue. Administrative support might change as the School of Liberal Arts is adopting a new formula for administrative support course re-assignments that could affect writing program administrative positions. We currently have a Director of Writing and a Writing Coordinating Committee composed of six faculty members, five of whom receive course re-assignment.
We are launching small group writing labs for FYC classes. Based on a placement exam, the lowest level writers will be placed in a required 1-hour lab they will take concurrently with our regular FYC sections. These workshops will focus on helping these students draft their papers for the regular class.
We are likely to be able to hire an administrative assistant, and we are considering allowing students to place out of Comp 1 and take comp 2 and a junior level course instead of comp 1 and comp 2
We are looking into changing our first-year program from one semester in the Fall to a full year requirement. Nothing has been decided yet, but we have a committee working on the details.
We are planning an assessment program for our first year composition courses now.
I am hoping we get a campus-wide assessment of writing in the next four years.
We are revising our general education program. It is too early to know, but I believe we will change the second course in our FYEP and make it a diversity and oral communication requirement.
We are trying to establish a Writing Fellows program that would support the first-year writing requirement.
We are consolidating with Armstrong and Liberty campuses in the next year, so many unpredictable changes will occur.
We are already seeing results of the elimination of the director of composition position in lack of consistency across sections. We also do not have any teacher development or training for comp teachers. We hired two new comp teachers (one tenure one non-tenure) and they received zero training or help before teaching the courses.
We are undergoing a revision of our General Education curriculum, so while I'm unsure how those revisions will proceed, I'm certain that changes to the curriculum and support for FYW will ensue.
there is a proposal to create a new department of writing studies and to separate from English.
If this does not happen, then English will probably create more TT lines and offer increased writing courses at the upper levels, and possibly a graduate writing studies concentration
The new English Department Chair has a vision of lowering caps for all comp classes and finding greater support for the director of comp and for comp faculty.
The school has implemented a new WAC/WID program which is likely to change the curriculum and has the potential to change administrative requirements around the FYC requirement.
The three course sequence is currently being redesigned by the new writing program director to align with WPA Outcomes. Two tenure-track lines for rhet/comp specialists have been opened.
The WAC model for staffing FYWS is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. We are talking now about which departments/faculty should or should not be responsible for this component of the program.
The Writers'Studio is ASU Online's FYC program. We are currently moving to Canvas, which will entail changes to how the courses are organized.
The Writing Studies Committee (we have no WPA) is trying to create more uniformity in our FYC courses, though it remains to be seen whether we will be successful.
There is a push to make the writing experience more standard across sections of the first year experience
We anticipate making changes to our Comp II curriculum.
I have asked for an assistant director to FYC.
There may be an effort to restructure the Research Emphasis in our core curriculum (focused on empirical research, not research from sources, which is covered in our Writing Emphasis) so that it in effect becomes a second semester of writing instruction and Writing Emphasis courses become prereqs for Research Emphasis courses.
There was a state system-level executive order issued this year that is going to shake out into (hopefully) some new support structures for FYC students (through the Writing Center). Additionally, our campus is converting to semesters next year, and my plan is to finagle the curriculum so that there's room for student conferencing and (for the first time) 1-2 actual meetings with all of the FYC instructors per semester -- mostly, to "close the loop" on program assessment and do some more professional & curricular development.
There will be changes to the final assessments used for the first year writing program over the next year.
This was mentioned in another survey. Due to general education changes, I expect assessment methods to continue to evolve.
This year the coordinators were given additional release time due to large growth in the freshman class. The coordinator agreement is likely to change dramatically in two years in an effort to cost-save.
Though part of the Montana University System, the University of Montana Western is routinely ignored because of its small enrollment in comparison with the University of Montana and Montana State University. Money to support better placement or more robust assessment is not a priority.
We anticipate further cuts.
We are undergoing a comprehensive review of the general education program. Advanced drafts indicate that by fall 2020, composition courses will be eliminated and writing instruction will occur in specified, multiple locations in the new curriculum.
We are undergoing some pretty heavy revisions of FYW at TTU, starting this AY (2017-2018), which entails moving mostly to face-to-face classes, revisions in curriculum, new admin structures, new professional development.
The Dean of Arts and Science has called together a Writing Taskforce to reflect on how composition is done at our institution. We are likely to see increased freshman enrollments, which will place more demand on our writing programs at a time when our graduate program in English is shrinking. The question of who will be teaching our courses, among other things, is to be determined but things will look different.
We'll be trying to extend into a WAC program.
We will be moving to a portfolio-based assessment due to a change in general education objectives.
We will eliminate as many adjunct positions as possible and have all sections of FYC taught by full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty. We are about to launch a new general education curriculum that may involve some changes in how we assess our FYC courses.
We will hopefully change the way the portfolio functions--instead FYWS portfolio will be the final assessment for the course only (right now it is scored by additional faculty after the seminar ends). We hope to implement a later stage portfolio as a grad requirement (similar to Carleton).
We will likely develop a directed self-placement system to place students into FYC, and expand our range of first-year writing courses to include options at various levels.
we will lose our Director of First Year writing (retirement) and the line will not be replaced. Courses will likely therefore be taught by adjunct faculty.
We will move from a 6-hour to a 3-hour FYC requirement, followed by 3 WAC courses OR 2 WAC courses and 1 WID course. Additionally, we will move from 90% adjunct faculty to approximately 80% full-time NTT faculty.
We're converting to a semester calendar and 4-credit base (rather than 3) to take effect in 2019-2020, so all curricula and courses at our institution are being revised. This includes our FYC.
We plan to redesign the placement procedure for first-year writing.
We're currently revising our learning outcomes, which will affect the content of the first- and second-semester courses.
We're in the middle of a curriculum review so it's hard to say.
We've just studied Gen Ed requirements and change in structure is likely. Not clear yet how much this will affect FYW.
Writing courses should continue to evolve and change throughout the academic terms to stay relevant to the student, institutional, and career needs. Courses should consistently make sure they are in alignment with the WPA Outcomes Statement as well as best practices in teaching composition. The course should be relevant on a national level and part of researched based pedagogy. The course should reflect critical needs in writing instruction and be pragmatic to the course, institution, and career writing.
Writing Program Administrator position will be added.
Writing Program combining with Speech Communications to form new dept. called Rhetoric and Communications Studies Dept. and BA. Reduction from four tenure line to two tenure line Writing faculty (the other two re-organized into English).
We update the curriculum after each assessment cycle.
We have submitted a proposal to create a Writing Intensive Requirement and the creation of additional support structures for writing throughout the time-of-study for students.
We plan to propose a minor in the next year, building on the Notation in Science Communication that has been in place for three years. We will remain in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education but become a fully independent writing program under the umbrella name Program in Writing and Rhetoric, including the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking, Bing Honors College (a September program for seniors working on Honors theses), the Oral Communication Program, and the Stanford Storytelling Project. We also plan to expand our Writing Specialists initiative, which places PWR lecturers in departments and programs across campus to support writing.
We are undertaking a general curricular revision and I expect writing will not be an explicit part of the new curriculum.
We foresee three changes:
1. With budget shortfalls, we are worried that WPA release time may be lost.
2. We are working on spreading our three required rhetoric courses (writing and public speaking) throughout the first three years, with students taking one each year.
3. Regular rotation of WPA role to another faculty member.
WE are working on improving our writing assessment.
We are working to add WI and WID courses over the next five years.
We assess regularly and generally anticipate changes in response to assessment feedback.
We continue to investigate ways for scheduling more FYC sections in Fall semester, possibly offered before the FYWS.
We expect the program to grow, requiring release time for the FYC Director.
We foresee enrollment caps rising due to the decreased number of faculty lines
We have a new college president, and the chair of the English department will be changing as well. Perhaps there will be changes ahead...one can hope.
We hope to see support for MLL writers, digital literacies, and faculty development for writing instruction.
We have a new core curriculum beginning in 2018-19. The old curriculum was a distribution model, while the new one is outcomes-based. Ostensibly, the same writing courses are part of the new core, and they are not changed in content. But the second, sophomore-level, course may change somewhat since it is now assigned to the Institutional Learning Outcome (ILO) "information literacy." Thus, we will be assessing students' learning in information literacy (each core course must be assessed for its achievement of its designated ILO), and this assessment requirement probably will change the course content somewhat. Already, we're partnering with the library to make our teaching of information literacy more deliberate.
We have been told to expect changes to the structure of our Gen Ed curriculum in the near future, but have not yet been told what form those changes will take.
We have been working to reimagine the core curriculum, including foundations like composition. We need a core that more deliberately scaffolds learning across levels and provides better opportunities for learning transfer. We hope to vote on a new model in the next academic year.
We have dropped one of the outcomes from the newly-created course piloted in 2017-2018. We will continue to refine the language as we assess student performance and teacher response.
We have hired more rhet/comp specialists and foresee greater attention to multimodal expression in FYC in the coming years; we are opening a new Rhetoric Studio in a rhetoric and communication commons that brings together our current writing center, speaking center, and other consulting support (digital/visual) for student projects.
We have submitted a number of proposals for changes: 1. A proposal to replace the CLEP with a portfolio; 2. The addition of a Graduate Student Administrator; 3. A proposal to pay part-time teachers for attending teaching and training workshops
We hope to revise curricula and be more intentional and meaningful about assessment
The director will ask for a big raise.
The curriculum will shift to a primary research approach.
Anticipate the hire of a TT tech-comm specialist to direct expansion of tech-comm Core writing
Anticipate the hire of a WID advisor / director to accompany implementation of a WID requirement
Development of writing across the curriculum and possible relocation of writing program
Course releases for the Director of Composition have gone from 3 per academic year to 1 per academic year over a three-year period. This is untenable with our regular 3-3 load for TT faculty. One of two things will result: A dedicated WPA admin position will be created and staffed through a national search for a suitable TT candidate OR the request for the new WPA TT line will be denied by the Provost and the current faculty member serving as Director of Composition will either quit or have some of his course releases restored. Due to a shortage of qualified faculty, it is unclear who would serve as Director of Composition if the current director quits and the TT search is denied (a likely eventuality). In short, budgetary pressures are driving how our FYW program is administered.
Also, we are overdue for a curricular revision of the FYW curriculum, but at his point in time there is nobody available to do it, for the reasons stated above.
course revision is a regular part of our practice and we will not change that.
curricular changes, more support from Academic Success dept
Curriculum always evolves, so I'm sure there will be some changes with that. The most challenging is responding to a new Texas requirement that basic writing students concurrently take first-year writing.
Curriculum is always being revised.
Decreasing support from the Deans office is changing staffing, curriculum, and faculty support
Duties of the writing program director are being reviewed by the department. We are also looking at clarifying and revising the assignments and syllabus for the second semester course.
Core curriculum is changing.
English Coordinator position filled. New initiatives and tracks developed for diversely prepared student population.
Explained in "Sites of Writing"
explained in other section--movement to FYS may be afoot. Writing coordinator may temporarily be staffed by TT faculty in a non-comp/rhet specialization while current WC acts as Associate Dean.
Five year pilot of WAC initiative (WPA will be administrative lead).
Funding is tight, so I expect that retiring faculty will be replaced with adjuncts.
FYWS being considered in general education reform.
Core curriculum revision to be implemented in fall 2019.
Changes to the outcomes for FYC are currently being developed. I am working on a proposal to add a couple of 2- year, full-time lectureships for our graduate students so that they can gain much-needed experience teaching at the college level.
I am answering these questions about AY2016-2017, but changes have already occurred since then. We adopted a new core curriculum, which changes the FYC requirement and adds a writing intensive course requirement. We also gained administrative support for writing programs in Fall 2017 and added an awards program.
As stated earlier, we will be shifted into an entirely different department. Not sure how that is going to go.
As I have mentioned in previous responses, we are revising the writing program requirements as we revise the Gen Ed. We will reduce the required courses from four to three, and we will revamp the curriculum for the second and third courses so they are much more grounded in composition, rhetoric, and argument rather than literature.
As I indicated at the very beginning, I'm now Associate Academic Dean (starting July 1, 2018). I have been the de facto FYWS director, as the writing center director. Currently, no faculty member is responsible for the FYWS, but a goal I have as Associate Dean is to restructure responsibilities so that more faculty have responsibility for the FYWSs and so that all faculty teaching in the FYWS have some ongoing professional development related to writing.
As major administrative changes are made, curricular changes will likely follow.
As my department seeks to redefine itself at a time of budgetary shortfalls and impending faculty retirements, it is considering changing its name, mission, and programs to emphasize "argument-based reading and writing" (first-year writing, professional writing, ESL, etc.) and social justice. Over the next four years, I see hiring at least one tenure-track Comp/Rhet faculty member in development writing, cultural rhetorics, or writing assessment and, ideally, one NTT faculty member with a course release for assisting with Writing Program Administration. I expect to see argument-based writing options within our Writing Arts major and Certificate in Professional Writing expand, possibly resulting in a new major or separate argument-based writing track within the Writing Arts major. The FYW program will emphasize translingualism more in its curriculum, beginning with an activity integrated into all ENG101 sections.
As of fall 2018, we will be replacing a placement test with DSP. As of fall 2019, we will be replacing an integrated oral/written communication course with a writing-only course.
As part of a planned revision to gen ed in general
As the WPA for the first-year writing classes, the assessment mechanisms and learning outcomes for the courses will be revised and updated to reflect the needs of the institution, as well as the alignment to the WPA Outcomes.
Changes may be implemented as a result of the current Program Review.
As we are implementing WAC, FYC will likely clarify its learning goals and become more standardized in terms of its curriculum.
As we create writing goals and work to improve the culture of talking about the teaching of writing on campus, we will probably add more courses at least. I doubt we will ever have an official writing requirement.
Basic Writing has moved from the Learning Center to the Department of English; the curriculum and possibly the model of Basic Writing at our institution may change.
By moving toward the implementation of a WAC program, I would anticipate these changes.
Change in Writing Program Director may be an occasion for a change in administrative leadership structure.
Changes in curriculum, moving toward Writing Intensive requirements
Changes in placement, assessment
Hopefully we will be able to align our curriculum closer to sound practices within the field of Comp/Rhet. Hopefully the use of technology and multimodality will be added into the curriculum.
I am hopeful the longitudinal study we began in 2012-13 will show the need for more full-time instructors for FYC and affirm the switch to inquiry-based, transfer driven curriculum.
St. Olaf is in the early stages of its general education curriculum. Changes may impact first-year writing.
Our Writing Center Director will retire next year. We'll see what kind of institutional support the Writing Program then receives.
Our Board of Governors plans to continue to reduce gen ed requirements across the board, so we're waiting to see what that means for us, since we're already a one-course requirement.
Our faculty have made a number of adjustments to the first-year writing curriculum in the recent past and would like an opportunity to see a cohort move through the new curriculum from the foundation year through "Research for a Creative Practice" at the junior/senior year.
Our general education courses are under review, which may affect our FYW courses.
Our Provost has identified the 2nd FYC course as a "course of interest" for student retention and is adding financial support for more tutors and professional development. My hope is that will increase over the next few years.
Our second-semester writing course (dropped as institutional graduation requirement but retained by the College of Arts & Sciences) will be revised.
Our University System partnered with the Gardner Institute's Gateways to Completion Initiative. I anticipate we will overhaul English 1101.
Over the past four years, the English department (Humanities and Fine Arts Division Chair is also a member of the English faculty) has revised its requirement to align with the WPA Outcomes. With the retirement of a tenure-line English faculty member, the HFA chair and the English department made the case for converting the retired line into WPA line. They were successful and my position was created. Tenure-track WPA. They actively sought a composition and rhetoric trained WPA with administrative experience (I spent two years as Director of Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Metropolitan Campus; was English and reading department chair at a community college from 2005-2009). I was hired / tasked to create a full writing program (update and realign FYC and Writing Center; create WAC). I am in my first semester in this position.
New General Education program was implemented in FA18, so changes will be made as we accommodate the new program.
Perhaps the WPA position will be restored or replaced with something.
Plan to move to corequisite model for writing instruction and support for current basic writing students.
Probably a further increase of enrollment caps; decrease of administrative support; increase of assessment activities
Revisions to general education current
Significant overall of general education requirement is pending
Some changes may come about as a result of a self-study of the FS Program completed in AY 16-17 as well as the college's ongoing Strategic Action Plan.
new general education requirements are being implemented statewide. For the time being (until fall 2020), our writing program should be stable. But we could lose our 2nd (200-level) writing requirement, or it could cease to be required for all students.
new gen ed will be launched in fall 2020
I am not certain, but budget issues threaten
I hope to see a FT-NTT position of assistant director added.
I am working on hiring more full-time non-tenure-track instructors (who currently have to be re-interviewed and re-hired either annually or every three years, depending on which contract they were hired on) and on converting some of our full-time instructors to lecturer positions (for which they would not have to be re-interviewed and re-hired for). The lecturer conversion may result in more full-time faculty with administrative responsibilities.
I anticipate the program will be led by a new director who initiates a reorganization.
I don't know if I foresee changes or simply hope for changes. I would like to see a more aligned curriculum between our three required writing courses so that there is a direct progression from ENG 110 to ENG 120 to ENG 201. I would also like to see more uniformity in how these courses are designed and taught. Since the vast majority of our faculty teaching these courses are part-time instructors not trained in composition/rhetoric, even though we have clear outcomes and a process for assessing outcomes, I don't think the outcomes are implemented similarly across the courses. I would especially like to see a greater understanding and acceptance of WAW in our writing curriculum.
I don't know. I'm going to begin a conversation.
I have requested a position for FYC Coordinator be created. It may not be approved this budget cycle, but as the number of faculty teaching FYC doubled from 2016-2017 to 2017-2018, and the college is currently emphasizing the importance of the first year experience for students, it seems likely to be approved within the next several years.
I plan to request a position for Writing Program Administrator to coordinate our multiple sites of writing be created, separate from my position as Writing Center Director.
I hope to generate greater support among other TT faculty in my department for the Director position, and potentially to develop an additional Associate Director position for greater continuity when the Director position passes to another member of my department.
I think the first semester of the writing requirement will become more aligned with rhetorical/genre studies approach; we are piloting sections now. We are starting to make headway, very slowly, with a WAC program, which will also involve more systematic assessment of the reading/writing proficiency required by the University.
More departments are considering or are adding WID courses. More students are adding a Writing Studies Minor, requiring the taking of more writing courses.
I would like to connect the writing our students do to community-engaged learning. I foresee a need for staffing to help facilitate this.
I would love to see a second required writing course as well as a robust WAC/WID program implemented, but we are meeting resistance every step of the way.
I'm hoping to add more support structures for part-time faculty teaching FYW.
I'm hoping to have the administrative/leadership structure of this first-year writing program better defined, so when I fill out surveys like this or apply for jobs, I know what to label what I do. I certainly do all the work of a writing program coordinator, but it's mostly been in an unofficial capacity.
in process of hiring a WPA.
Massive changes to gen ed curriculum in the offing.
Moravian's general education curriculum is being revised, to be completed (tentatively) by Spring 2020.
Yes, we continue to refine our WID-focus in FYC
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