Begun in 2006, this project aims to identify, compile, analyze, and facilitate activity and interest in writing in the disciplines in higher education around the world. We are interested both in first-language and English-language initiatives. We are also interested in both undergraduate (our primary emphasis) and graduate-level initiatives, programs, and activities focused in disciplines, as well as academic writing centers, separate courses or modules, or similar services devoted to working with students and faculty/staff in and across disciplines.

The Project is sponsored in part by the International Network of WAC Programs (INWAC).

Project Links

• Objectives
• International (formerly Preliminary) Survey (for those responding from institutions outside the US); this survey is also available in French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese for those who would prefer to respond in those languages.
  
  Our thanks to the following scholars, who have contributed the translations:
  
  Céline Beaudet, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada (French)
  Sylvie Plane, Université Paris-Sorbonne, France (French)
  Paula Carlino, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (Spanish)
  Constanza Padilla. CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina (Spanish)
  Manuela Cartolari. CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Argentina (Spanish)
  Ana Brown. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina (Spanish)
  Nina Shevchuk-Murray, University of Nebraska, US (Russian)
  Annette Verhein, Hochschule für Technik, Rapperswil, Switzerland (German)
  Huahui Zhao, Umeå University, Sweden (Chinese).
  
  
• The US/Canada survey is no longer available online. For more information and for the first set of statistical results, click here. Since the close of that survey in June 2008, we invite respondents from Canadian institutions to submit entries to the International Survey (described just above).

• A second survey for U.S. and Canadian respondents was sent in 2010 to those (approx. 600) who identified their institutions as currently having a WAC or WID initiative or program. This survey focuses on respondents' perceptions of program success and sustainability. For more information about this more recent survey, please write to Tara Porter (tsporter@ucdavis.edu).
• A book based on results of the International Survey, Writing Programs Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places, will be published (2012) in print by Parlor Press and online by the WAC Clearinghouse. It will include profile essays on approximately forty institutions in 28 countries on six continents. Co-editors of the project are Gerd Braeuer, Paula Carlino, Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams, Aparna Sinha, and Christopher Thaiss (lead editor).
  

Please forward this information to anyone in any country whom you think might be interested. We would like to hear about any activities relevant to writing in disciplines, such as:

• teacher/staff development or discussions with staff/faculty across disciplines
• actual or contemplated courses, programs, centers, or writing-support services
• individual teachers or small groups of teachers/staff who have made the improvement of student writing or the use of writing as a tool for learning an explicit priority in their disciplinary courses.

Confidentiality: All survey responses are confidential, for data-gathering purposes only. If researchers wish to use names of institutions or names of specific respondents in reporting any data from the survey responses at conferences or in publications, permission will be asked and received from the particular respondents before the names may be used.

Further Note on Confidentiality: As of March 6, 2008, the International Survey for respondents from outside the U.S. has included the following question: "Would you be willing to have your name and institutional affiliation be made public in reports of this research?" If you answer "yes" to this question, you are giving us permission to publish your name and institution in any reports we make on this research. If you have questions about confidentiality, please write to us.

For those less familiar with the acronyms:

*WAC refers to "writing across the curriculum" and usually implies an initiative in an institution to assist teachers across disciplines in using student writing as an instructional tool in their teaching

*WID refers to "writing in disciplines" and usually implies that writing is occurring in some form as assignments in subjects or courses in one or more disciplines in an institution; it also refers to research that studies the theory, structure, and rhetorical properties of writing that occurs in disciplines, whether in teaching the discipline or in disciplinary scholarship.