University of Wisconsin-Superior Basic Writing

University of Wisconsin-Superior Basic Writing

John McCormick, Heather McGrew, and Jamie White-Farnham

Our primary document is the proposal we used to change the credit hours in WRIT 099 from 3 to 2 and allow students to “co-enroll” in WRIT 099 and the mainstream course, WRIT 101. The main piece of persuasion we relied on was that the changes we made in the previous year in terms of professional development, curriculum, and pedagogy had increased students’ retention dramatically. In the proposal, we describe how co-enrollment would work and that we expected even more benefits to students. There was no university template for a credit-change, so we wrote this as professionally and simply as we thought was appropriate. The credit-change was granted by our department and then the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. We then worked with the Registrar informally to ensure a smooth transition for students.