Writing Across the Curriculum facilitates an array of professional development opportunities designed to offer faculty a variety of ways to learn more about writing instruction and reflect on their teaching.
WAC’s Core Curriculum
- WAC Foundations: 60 or 90-minute workshops focused on foundational concepts for teaching (with) writing
- WAC Primer: a 4-session learning community designed to introduce faculty to teaching the Writing-intensive course
- WAC Academy: a 7-session cohort-based faculty learning community exploring the intentional integration of learning to write within disciplinary courses and curricula
- WAC Innovators: a semester-long cohort-based leadership community focused on writing instruction
WAC Foundations Workshops: Fall 2025
Our workshops offer a brief, hands-on introduction into the foundations of teaching writing across the curriculum.
Introduction to the Writing-intensive Course
Are you new to teaching a WI course or want a refresher on some of the basics? This workshop will focus on writing-intensive course design and help faculty prepare for the semester ahead. Join WAC staff to learn more about the new learning outcomes and begin drafting your WI course materials.
Days and times (held on Zoom):
Wednesday September 3, 10:00am-11:30am. Register here.
Providing effective and sustainable feedback
Want to develop a more sustainable and effective plan for providing feedback? This workshop focuses on key practices for increasing the impact and efficiency of the feedback you offer. We will explore the characteristics of effective feedback and some strategies for implementing them.
Day and time (on Zoom): Wednesday September 17, 2025 | 10:00am-11:30am
Registration: You can sign up here
Designing, teaching, and assessing Writing-to-Communicate assignments
Want to more effectively guide students through their development of writing-to-communicate assignments? This workshop will introduce core strategies for designing, teaching, and assessing disciplinary writing. Join WAC staff to learn more and support your students’ writing success.
Day and time (held on Zoom): forthcoming
Registration: forthcoming
Designing, teaching, and assessing reflective assignments
Want to more effectively guide students away from surface-level reflection toward deep, transformative learning? This workshop will introduce you to strategies for designing, teaching, and assessing reflective assignments in your class or co-curricular learning environment. Participants will explore frameworks for deciding when and how to guide students’ reflective learning and have time to consider their own assignments in light of these frameworks. This workshop is ideal for faculty teaching experiential and project-based learning, including internships, clinicals, study abroad, Mason Apex, JS, community-engaged, and writing-intensive courses.
Day and time (held on Zoom): forthcoming
Registration: forthcoming
Preparing career-ready writers
This workshop explores strategies for supporting students’ readiness for writing in the workplace.
Day and time (held on Zoom): forthcoming
Registration: forthcoming
WAC Innovators: Spring 2026
Response-rich Learning
Feedback is an essential engine of growth and learning; when students engage with thoughtful responses from peers and faculty, they deepen their understanding and improve their application of course content. But providing feedback can also one of the most labor-intensive aspects of teaching.
This semester-long learning and leadership community seeks to address the challenge of creating response-rich but pedagogically sustainable learning. Participants in this community will develop expertise in response-rich learning, collaboratively design and curate instructional resources, and serve as campus leaders supporting faculty learning across campus. This community serves as a launchpad sustainable pedagogical change across the institution.
Participants will receive a free copy of Melzer’s Reconstructing Response to Student Writing and a $250 stipend for their development of an instructional resource and contribution to a community leadership plan. This opportunity is open to all faculty though faculty teaching project-based learning environments (e.g.,WI, Apex, OSCAR, CECIL, internships) might find this community particularly appealing.
Want to join? Complete our interest form to let us know.
Faculty Learning Communities: Fall 2025
Writing Assessment Inquiry Group
Last year, the WAC Committee developed a new rubric to assess writing-to-communicate (WTC) assignments. This fall, we are convening faculty who might like to or are planning to use the rubric in their courses this semester. If you would like to discuss how you are using the rubric this semester, join WAC staff and faculty across campus for monthly conversations about assessing WTC assignments. You can register here.
Request a Workshop
WAC Program staff are happy to offer one of our standing workshops to departments and programs. Descriptions of these workshops are below. If you would like to request a workshop, please email us at [email protected].
- Designing High Impact Writing Assignments: Participants in this workshop will learn the design principles that contribute to engaging and meaningful writing experiences for their students. The workshop will begin with a discussion of the research that informs these principles and will quickly move into some strategies for implementing them into courses across the curriculum. The workshop will close by offering faculty some time to implement one of the strategies into their courses.
- Small Teaching in the Writing-enriched Classroom: Inspired by James Lang’s popular book, Small Teaching, this workshop will introduce participants to some quick writing activities that can take as few as five minutes to effectively foster student learning in classrooms across the curriculum. The workshop will include a brief introduction to the writing-to-learn scholarship that informs these activities and will provide a sampling of model designs that participants can implement and build into their own teaching.
- Providing Feedback to Support Student Revision: This workshop will help faculty increase student engagement with and the impact of their feedback. Participants will first learn more about how students revise before exploring some strategies for providing feedback to support more substantive student revision. The workshop will close by offering faculty some time to implement one of the strategies into their courses.
Consultations
The Writing Across the Curriculum Program supports all faculty across Mason who teach (with) writing. If you would like assistance in developing course materials – syllabi, assignments, or activities – to help your student writers, please contact us at [email protected].