Seth Andrew Killingbeck and Dr. Kristine Hansen, Undergraduate Education—University Writing

Because of a widespread concern that students fail to genuinely comprehend the subject material they study, during the 1980s many American academics began to advocate simple British instructional tools emphasizing writing. Contemporary literature and conversations refer to these tools as Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), Writing in the Disciplines (WID), and Writing to Learn. Each of these related initiatives seeks to improve the educational quality of students by encouraging them to write more about classroom topics. Underlying pedagogical theory and empirical evidence indicate that, when implemented properly, increased student writing benefits students not only in their own comprehension, but in their ability to communicate their knowledge to others. These improvements, while important in virtually every field of study, have important applications in undergraduate economics, specifically at Brigham Young University.

While WAC, WID, and Writing to Learn greatly overlap in their methods, each of them has a slightly different focus and objective. Without delving unnecessarily deep into the fundamental tenets of writing across the curriculum, it is important to understand the key components of the move toward more academic writing. First, WAC is the broad idea over-arching the other two concepts. It recommends that instructors outside of English departments implement writing in a vast array of other courses that are traditionally not writing-intensive. Karen Gibler, a professor at Georgia State University, explains that there are two key elements to WAC. The first element, writing to learn, encourages increased cognizance because “by exploring ideas in writing and explaining concepts to themselves before explaining to someone else, students have the opportunity to work through new ideas and difficult concepts (2001, 41). As students write about what they learn in the sciences or in other classes, they must process the information in their mind in order for it to make sense on paper. The second element of WAC, writing in the disciplines, involves providing opportunities for students to improve their writing skills outside of their writing classes. WID not only allows students to enhance their writing through repetition, but it also encourages them to learn to write using the conventions of their respective fields (2001, 41). Writing to learn and WID encompass the two distinct objectives of WAC, adding depth to student understanding and producing competent professional writers.

During the last two decades, several economics professors have taken interest in the potential gains from WAC and studied the need for and effectiveness of writing across the curriculum. Some researchers have set up clinical studies, while others have merely analyzed trends before and after implementing WAC ideas. Georgia State’s College of Business, Notre Dame’s Economics Department, Illinois State University, and Davidson College are among those schools having studied the effects that WAC has on economics students. However, the vast majority of their research has focused solely on the writing-to-learn aspect of WAC. In contrast, in conducting my own research, I focused on the writing-in-the-disciplines side of WAC at BYU. Because the BYU Economics Department had essentially no relevant data on the educational and career pursuits of its undergraduate economics alumni, I created and conducted a survey which I sent out to over 700 economics alumni from the years 1986-88, 1991-93, and 1996-98.

Approximately 40% of the solicited alumni responded to the survey. They provided valuable information about their post-graduate studies, current careers, common writing tasks, frequency and amount of time spent writing, most valuable undergraduate writing preparation at BYU, and opinions about how to better prepare economics students for future on-the-job writing tasks. As a result of this survey, the Economics Department now has useful and unprecedented data on the pursuits of its own alumni to help it continue improving its high level of economics education. The results of the survey—while perhaps not entirely surprising—strongly support the need for increased writing preparation for undergraduate economics students. Approximately 90% of the respondents described “effective written communication” as an “extremely” or “very” important skill in their careers. One-quarter of the alumni indicated that they spend at least 40% of their time at work writing in one form or another. Nearly all of them admit to writing on at least a daily basis to several different audiences and in several different genres. According to the survey results, writing is an important and frequent part of the alumni’s careers.

The alumni responses also show that even within a single major—in this case economics— alumni careers and corresponding writing tasks vary greatly. For example, the 10% of alumni who now work as attorneys write significantly more than the 51% pursuing careers in business. Those respondents who described themselves as economists or educators are more likely to spend time writing journal articles than are those in other professions. And even with the different writing habits among professions, there was fairly mutual agreement among the alumni that increased and more effective writing assignments could benefit the current and future undergraduate economics students.

Having solid data about the writing tasks of the economics alumni and their self-assessed preparedness allowed me to make several recommendations to the Economics Department and to Undergraduate Writing. The primary suggestions deal with the under-utilized resources already available to professors and students on campus. Professors interested in increasing their students’ writing competence can attend faculty writing seminars, send students to the university writing lab, invite Writing Fellows to their classes, or simply be more selective in their grading of written assignments. On a larger scale, the Economics Department can investigate ways to ensure access to M Comm 320 to those students interested in pursuing business careers. Since on-the-job writing tasks appear to vary more by career than by undergraduate major, it might be beneficial to allow students to choose Advanced Writing classes based on career plans. A final suggestion is to reassign the dozens of part-time Advanced Writing teachers, who currently reside in the English Department, to specific colleges and schools on campus and encourage them to specialize in the writing conventions of the respective departments. The bottom line is that the level of writing preparation can be improved without incurring significant costs. For more complete results, please refer to my honors thesis in the Harold B. Lee Library.

Reference

• Gibler, Karen M. 2001. Applying writing across the curriculum to a real estate investment course. Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education 4:41-53