Our attempt to encourage more writing across the curriculum is based on the assumption that writing and thinking are inter-related cognitive skills. Our further assumption is that creating writing-intensive courses will require more than just adding more papers to a course syllabus, but will significantly impact the learning process and will, therefore, alter teaching methods. The first uses writing as a mode of learning. Writing assignments so conceived would include learning journals and ungraded writing assignments encouraging students to think on paper. The other approach sees writing as discipline-specific and teaches students the conventions of academic writing.
Extensive literature exists that documents research on the teaching of good writing.
There are many theories and methodologies, and many different kinds of programs based on them. The pressures that have been growing here for the last ten years toward teaching more and more classes at all levels in large lecture sections have had the inevitable and clear result of eliminating or critically reducing precisely the kind and extent of writing that students must do if their education is to have integrity and their degrees validity. The Univeristy of Georgia is not, of course, the only place to feel this problem. As we have mentioned earlier, a number of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the country have begun establishing programs and providing the resources to deal with their versions of the problem. The Harvard Assessment speaks unambiguously to the need for as many small, writing-intensive courses as possible to ameliorate it.