General Education Writing Requirements
General Education Writing Requirements
First-Year Writing Experience
First-year students need particular skills to navigate the academic world and become successful students and global citizens.
VUE is designed to help students develop necessary academic skills such as argumentative writing, close reading and critical thinking. Additionally, students will work to develop their discussion skills (both leading and participating) as well as presentation skills. Great opportunities also exist in the course for students to become more adept at retrieving, evaluating, and managing information, as they connect to the rest of the world through our electronic information services.
The Honor’s College
The Freshman Program, Texts and Contexts, is part of an Honors Humanities Program that will span throughout a student’s education at Valpo. Christ College (CC) is a two-semester sequence that meets every weekday.
- The first semester of the Freshman Program is graded pass or fail to allow students to adjust to these new demands. The second semester professors will start handing out letter grades.
- During the first few months of their freshman year, CC students together must create the Freshman Production, a full-length musical.
- For most of the year, the focus is on primary readings in history, literature, philosophy, and religion from the ancient world to the present day.
- Students will engage in materials through debates throughout the year.
- Students learn to refine and express their ideas in a variety of arenas and scholarly writing.
More information about the curriculum can be found here.
Second-Year Writing Experience (WIC)
Sophomore-level courses in the Valpo Writing Program.
After students have completed two semesters of VUE or the Christ College Freshman Program (or comparable courses for transfer students), they are required to take at least one Writing and Information Literacy Course (WIC). These courses entail 15-20 pages of final draft prose divided across at least two writing assignments.
WICs are designed for sophomore students who have already taken VUE 101 and 102 or Christ College Freshman Program (or comparable courses for transfer students) but have not yet taken a Writing in the Disciplines (WID) course at the junior-level. At least one WIC will be required of each VU student, and courses will be offered beginning in the 2017-2018 academic year.
WICs include the following elements:
- Enrollment caps of 20 students
- Fifteen to twenty pages of final draft prose divided across at least 2 writing assignments throughout the semester
- One research-infused writing assignment
- Class time devoted to writing instruction
- Multiple drafts of writing assignments
- Peer reviews
- A writing conference with a faculty member
- Embedding library instruction
- Archive a writing assignment in an electronic portfolio for program assessment
40% of a final course grade is dedicated to formal, revised writing. Informal writing (not including drafts of formal writing assignments) may count for up to 10%.
Third-Year Writing Experience (WID)
Writing In Your Discipline
Junior-level writing courses focusing on writing in your discipline (WID) at Valparaiso University
Writing in the Discipline (WID) courses integrate writing and information literacy into discipline-specific assignments. These courses are specific to each major and are part of Valpo’s vertical writing program. The WID requirement will take effect with the entering class of students in Fall 2020.
WID courses are designed for juniors who have already taken:
- Valpo VUE 102 and 102 or Christ College Freshman Program*
- At least one WIC course*
*Or comparable courses for transfer students
Capstone Writing Assignment (CWA)
The Capstone Writing Assignment (CWA) is a senior-level writing and information literacy assignment that reinforces first year, WIC, and WID student learning objectives and facilitates mastery of all Writing Program SLOs. The minimal required elements are the same as for the WID courses.
The Capstone Writing Assignments must include the following minimal elements, with the capstone writing assignment focusing on mastery:
A. Continuing to build on the vertical writing program SLOs, the SLOs for the Capstone Writing Assignment are to:
- Use the language, media, resources, formats, styles, and techniques of a discipline effectively and persuasively.
- Demonstrate fundamental best practices of writing in a discipline.
- Critically read discipline-specific scholarly and professional texts in order to describe ways of thinking, writing, and researching specific to a discipline.
- Use discipline-specific scholarly and professional texts as models for writing projects.
- Successfully prepare a substantial writing project in the discipline(s), the length, scope, and genre of which is typical of writing in the discipline(s) and determined by faculty in the discipline.
B. The Capstone Writing Assignment will include the following pedagogical elements:
- Convey to students the purpose and best practices of writing in the discipline
- Require every student to complete at least one formal, graded writing assignment that requires multiple drafts with instructor feedback on a preliminary draft
- Introduce students to disciplinary databases and resources such as journals and other oral, written, and visual sources
- Model use of essential writing technologies employed by disciplinary scholars and writers
- Address any unique elements (form, vocabulary, etc.) of writing in the discipline
- Provide substantial practice for students at both writing and reviewing writing in the discipline
- Convey to students the need for, and value of, being able to write for both a specialized audience in a field and a general audience beyond that field.
Assessment of student success at achieving these SLOs will be done at the program level as determined by the disciplinary faculty and at the university level by submission of sample student writing to the University Director of Writing.