Writing Programs Worldwide - Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places, 2012a

University of Alberta (Canada)
The most novel feature of this course, however, is the focus on “writing
about writing.” This approach to teaching writing takes the stance that writing
is the subject of study in a writing course; students read academic articles by
composition scholars as their course material. Students here are both novices
who are learning to practice the art of writing as well as students of a content
area that focuses on knowledge about writing.
WRS 103, AN INTRODUCTION TO WRITING IN THE SCIENCES
Writing Studies offered two distinct versions of first-year writing in 2010
because two sections of this course are reserved exclusively for first-year students
in the Faculty of Science who are enrolled in Science 100. Science 100
is an innovative, interdisciplinary re-thinking of first-year science that was in
its third year in 2010. The Faculty of Science consists of seven subject areas:
Biological Sciences, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Physics, Computing Sciences,
Mathematics and Statistical Sciences, Chemistry, and Psychology. This
configuration of areas is an artifact of institutional history. Several years ago
faculty in Science reconceptualized their first year curriculum into Science 100,
a year-long, 27-credit course, in which they take an interdisciplinary approach
to science, introducing students to all subject areas over the course of the year
and taking an experimental/experiential approach to the various topics. The
website describes the course like this: “SCIENCE 100 uses an integrated and
interdisciplinary approach and employs the expertise of top science professors
to deliver material from all seven Faculty of Science disciplines. The focus in
SCIENCE 100’s small classes is on in-depth teaching, conceptual understanding
and practical mastery of the fundamentals”: http://www.science.ualberta.
ca/ProspectiveStudents/SCIENCE100/HowItWorks.aspx . In addition to Science
100, these students also take WRS 103, a three-credit course, in the fall
term, which teaches them some of the concepts of writing that will contribute
to their success over the course of their undergraduate education.
In 2008, the first year that Science 100 was offered, students took a modified
version of WRS 101, Exploring Writing, a course developed for the general
population of undergraduates at the University of Alberta; it has students
read academic journal articles in writing studies and reflect on the implications
this theory has for their own writing practices. WRS 101, Exploring Writing,
was not well suited to the needs of undergraduate science students because
the course’s overt focus was on invention—helping students figure out what to
write about in a given assignment. In fact, the assumption that students need
help deciding on a topic is unwarranted with much science-related writing because
it is experiment- and data-driven. Writers in science come to a text know-
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