Introduction: Using this Book

Welcome to Locally Sourced, a UW-Madison Pressbook by the Writing Across the Curriculum program designed to support faculty, instructional staff, and graduate teaching assistants to teach writing in meaningful, inclusive, and intentional ways.  We hope this book will inspire you to incorporate writing activities into the courses you teach at all levels and in all departments across UW-Madison. If you already teach with writing, perhaps you will consider modifying a current assignment or adding high-impact practices such as opportunities for peer review or student-teacher conferences into your repertoire.

Writing assignments (both low-stakes and high-stakes) can be successfully incorporated into all courses, including those in STEM; writing can be an integral part of large lecture courses and small seminars; and writing can be a powerful way to make your course inclusive and accessible for students. Research makes it clear that opportunities to engage with well-designed, carefully scaffolded, and equitably assessed writing assignments can empower all students in a course to succeed. The goal of this book is to offer you suggestions and strategies, backed up by evidence, for implementing writing activities in effective and inclusive ways.

Here’s a bit about how to use this digital text:

• Within each section of this text you will find explanations and advice for implementing specific writing activities and, at the section’s end, practical and replicable examples of assignments and activities created by faculty and instructors from UW-Madison.
• The Table of Contents is on the left of each page and you can navigate to any section in the book by using the Contents menu.
• To navigate between pages in a particular section, click on the desired page in the Contents menu, or use the arrow at the bottom right to move to the next page.

Please feel free to contact us to schedule a consultation on teaching with writing. We hope to hear from you!

Sincerely,

The WAC Team