Interaction Across the Curriculum

ELIZABETH A. FLYNN

KATHRYN REMLINGER

WILLIAM BULLEIT

Work in writing across the curriculum (WAC) is often described as occurring in two phases, writing to learn and writing in the disciplines. Phase I is seen as expressivist in orientation, as emphasizing writing as a mode of learning or writing as a process, and is associated with the work of individuals such as Janet Emig,J ames Britton, Donald Murray , and Peter Elbow. Research and pedagogy that arise out of this approach focus on the use of journals, freewriting, revision, and peer critiquing. Phase II, in contrast, is seen as social constructionist in orientation, as emphasizing the conventions of writing in various disciplines, and is associated with the work of individuals such as Kenneth Bruffee, David Bartholomae, and Patricia Bizzell. Research and pedagogy that arise out of such an approach include attention to the conventions of writing in different aca­demic discourse communities or in the workplace.

Frequently these two phases are seen as complements of one another (McLeod; Kirsch, Levine, Reiff; LeCourt). Some proponents of phrase II, though a ones and Comprone), argue that both phases are valuable but that attention to disciplinary conventions is necessary given that the writing-to-learn approach has dominated writing-across-the-curriculum programs and pedagogy. Others argue that phase II should replace phase I (Bazerman; AcKerman), defend phase I against those who would replace it with phase II (Fishman and McCarthy), or warn against the two approaches becoming factions that can lead to schism (Walvoord 67).

What proponents ofW AC rarely seem to question, though, is the two-phase description itself. The two phases may not always be called expressivist or social constructionist. Toby Fulwiler in "Claiming My Voice," for instance, calls the first phase constructivist and the second social constructionist (36). But the division itself is not often challenged. This two-phase description, though, is reductive and does not adequately account for the intellectual traditions that contribute to the WAC movement. If those traditions are not adequately understood, the movement becomes vulnerable to attack.

Although there are a number of recent appreciative considerations of the WAC movement including historical overviews such as David Russell's Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1870-1990: A Curricular History, there are also a growing number of critiques such as Janice Peritz's "When Learning is Not

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Enough: Writing Across the Curriculum and the {Re)turn to Rhetoric" and Daniel Mahala's "Writing Utopias: Writing Across the Curriculum and the Promise of Reform." Peritz sees the WAC movement in the United States as shallow and conservative (433). She also observes that the claim that writing increases student learning is an ideological one which has yet to be substantiated by either an ample body or an exemplary piece of empirical research (431). Mahala argues that the deeper questions that WAC implies have been compro­mised by political pressures within university bureaucracies (773). According to Mahala, the democratic ethos that was an integral part of British expressivism has been largely jettisoned by American theorists (777).

The WAC movement seems considerably less shallow and conservative, though, when analyses of the intellectual traditions that inform it move beyond the two-phase description. Here we will argue that an important tradition that has informed both phases of the movement, whatwe will call interactionalism, has been overlooked in discussions of the WAC movement. I define this interactional tradition, discuss it in the context of work in WAC, and describe it in relation to a WAC project focusing on writing in engineering. Then WilliamBulleit,afaculty member in civil and environmental engineering, and Kathryn Remlinger, a former graduate student who helped evaluate the project, illustrate the usefulness of this interactional approach in the development of our project.

Interactionalism Interactionalism is not always readily identifiable as a tradition within rhetoric and composition because it goes by different names in different contexts. James Berlin in Rhetoric and Reality uses the term "transactional" and shows how it is different from objectivist and subjectivist approaches to rhetoric. Louise Rosenblatt in The Reader, the Text, the Poem also uses the term "transactional," though she situates her discussion within the context ofthe readingofliterature. More recent discussions make explicit connections between interactionalism and postmodernism. Louise Phelps in Composition as a Human Science uses the term "contextualism" and discusses the approach in relation to hermeneutical traditions, especially the work of Paul Ricour. Thomas Kent inParalogic Rhetoric uses the term "communicative interaction" and draws heavily on the work of philosopher Donald Davidson. All four, though, describe an approach to language that emphasizes the complex interaction of language user, text, and social context and that resists foundational approaches to language that ground the process in a single causal factor.

In Rhetoric andReality Berlin divides work in rhetoric into three categories: objective, subjective, and transactional. According to Berlin, objective rhetorics are based on positivistic epistemologies, and the dominant form is current­traditional rhetoric. The objective perspective emphasizes that the writer attempts to perceive reality with impartiality. In this view, truth is seen as being located first in nature and as existing prior to language (8). Objective rhetorics make patterns of arrangement and superficial correctness the main ends of

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writing instruction and are rooted in behaviorial approaches to language (9, 140). Emphasis is placed on rationality, and rhetoric is seen as subservient to the ends of science (8-9).

Subjective theories, in contrast, according to Berlin, locate truth either within the individual or within a realm that is accessible only through the individual's internal apprehension (11). In this view, truth transcends the material realm, is attainable through a solitary vision, and resists expression (12). Berlin associates subjective theories with romanticism and with Freudian psychology and sees the pedagogical approaches of keeping journals and peer editing as arising out of a subjective orientation (14).

The transactional approach arises out of the interaction of the elements of the rhetorical situation, subject, object, audience, and language operatingsimul­taneously (15). Berlin identifies three forms of transactional rhetoric in the twentieth-century-classical, cognitive, and epistemic. In classical transactionalism, emphasis is placed on interaction between interlocutor and discourse community (15). In cognitive transactionalism, the individual is conceived of as inherently transactional, arriving at truth through a transaction with the surrounding environment (16). The epistemic approach emphasizes that interlocutor, audience, and the material world are all regarded as verbal constructs (16). It emphasizes, further, that all experiences including scientific and logical ones are grounded in language (16). Berlin associates epistemic transactionalism with the work of Kenneth Burke, Richard Rorty, Hayden White, and Michel Foucault (17).

Berlin's objectivist rhetoric is related to modernist approaches within the humanities that reflect the belief in the possibility of arriving at objective knowledge through the scientific method or through legal processes of adjudi­cation of evidence. His subjectivist rhetoric is related to antimodernist ap­proaches within the humanities that deny the possibility of objective knowledge and place emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual and on dimensions of experience that cannot be measured or quantified. His transactional rhetoric is related to postmodernism within the humanities, an approach that denies the foundations that objectivity and subjectivity are based on, affirming, instead, the non-foundational and contingent nature of knowledge. The taxonomy he develops in Rhetoric and Reality is useful because it suggests that all three traditions have been and continue to be influential within rhetoric and compo­sition. His descriptions are brief, though, and do not explore fully the various traditions that make up the three approaches he identifies. In describing objectivism, for instance, he speaks only of behavioralism. Surely some forms of cognitivism are also objectivist.

He develops his ideas more fully in Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures. Here is uses the term social-epistemic rhetoric and makes explicit connections between the approach and postmodernism and poststructuralism. He observes that all language use is inherently interpretive, but he emphasizes that the language user is not a unified, coherent, and sovereign subject who can transcend

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language (86). He insists that language is ineluctably involved in power and politics (86). Berlin concludes his chapter on social-epistemic rhetoric by observing that students must come to see that the languages they are expected to speak, write, and embrace "are never disinterested, always bringing with them structures on the existent, the good, the possible, and the resulting regimes of power" (93).

By the time Berlin wrote, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures, he had perhaps recognized the limitations of the term "transactionalism" because he abandoned the term entirely. I, too, think the term is problematic because it can be confused with the category of writing to communicate with others in James Britton's taxonomy, a category that Britton and his colleagues see as opposed to expressive writing. I prefer the term "interactional" because it suggests a fluid, non­foundational process. In substituting interactional for transactional, however, I am not using the term in the way Louise Rosenblatt does. Rosenblatt in "Viewpoints: Transaction Versus Interaction" defends her use of the term transactional rather than interactional, explaining that the term transactional suggests that the observer, the observing, and the observed are part of a total situation (98). The term interaction, in contrast, according to Rosenblatt, suggests the acting of separable elements or entities on one another, a mechanis­tic rather than a fluid process (98). The term "interactional" as I am using it here is similar to what Rosenblatt in The Reader, the Text, the Poem and Berlin in Rhetoric and Reality call "transactional."

What Berlin calls objectivism Phelps calls scientism, positivism, or strong empiricism. Positivism, according to Phelps, sees knowledge as based on two kinds of proofs, sense date and universal reason (9). The world is seen as independent of the perspective of the observer, and science is seen as value free and "objective" (10). Contextualism, in contrast, according to Phelps, is intersubjectivist, an interpretive science, and is rooted in hermeneutics (22). Science is seen as a rhetorical practice. Contextualism escapes subjectivism or imprisonment within closed, virtual language by restoring the possibility of reference through discourse (25).

Phelps' contextualism is what Thomas Kent in Paralogic Rhetoric calls "communicative interaction." He tells us that the term "communicative interaction" derives from philosopher Donald Davidson's work and assumes that communicative interaction is a thoroughly hermeneutic act which cannot be converted into a logical framework or system of social conventions that determines the meaning of an utterance (x). Kent develops the approach in ParalogicRhetoric, arguing that language conventions do not control the produc­tion and reception of discourse but instead are established through the give and take of communicative interaction (x). Kent's perspective works against the idea that disciplinary communities produce relatively stable and static conventions that can be codified and then imitated, an approach that Kent calls communitarianism. Kent's perspective also works against the idea that any totalizing system can explain the language act, and Kent sees that one ofthe most powerful foundational elements in contemporary rhetorical study is the notion

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of convention (24). He emphasizes that pedagogies that emphasize teaching students rhetorical conventions are limited because learning these elements does not ensure that students can produce effective discourse (47). He explains that the hermeneutic act operates much like open-ended dialogue. Writing and reading cannot be separated from the dialogic interaction in which any specific act of writing and reading takes place (48). Kent says, "The most fundamental activity of discourse production is the hermeneutic act: the interpretive guess we must make about our hearer's or reader's code that occurs even before invention becomes possible" (38).

Kent's approach is especially useful in discussions of WAC because it includes a consideration of genre. Kent explains that although communicative interaction emphasizes fluidity and change, it also attempts to account for regularity and hence necessitates a consideration of genre. The work of Mikhail Bakhtin has been influential in the development of interactional accounts of genre, and Kent draws heavily on Bakhtin's essay, "The Problem of Speech Genres," in developing his theory of "paralogic genres." Kent emphasizes that a genre is a public construct rather than an internal transcendental category (128). He says that a genre never stands as a synchronic category outside the concrete reality of communicative interaction and cannot be reduced to a set of conven­tional elements that function together as a structural or organic whole (140). He sees a genre as "an open-ended and uncodifiable strategy for hermeneutic guessing that comes into being through triangulation or what Bakhtin formulates as open-ended dialogue" (128). A genre, according to Kent, is defined by its response to other utterances and not by its conventional formal elements (143). Like Phelps, Kent makes explicit connections between interactionalism and postmodern thought.

Interactionalism in WAC The work of James Britton is frequently associated, as I have already suggested, with phase I of WAC, especially given its emphasis on expressive writing or writing for the self as the matrix out of which other writing emerges. Britton, though, as I will demonstrate, is more interested in the social dimensions of language than in its individual dimensions and is therefore more closely associated with interactionalism than with subjectivist approaches to language. The work of Charles Bazerman, in contrast, is often associated with phase II of WAC given his interest in disciplinary considerations. Bazerman is unquestion­ably interested in writing in the disciplines, but his approach to disciplinary learning emphasizes interaction rather than static conventions. In important ways Britton and his colleagues and Bazerman are working within the same intellectual tradition, what I am calling interactionalism.

Both Lester Faigley in "Competing Theories of Process" and Berlin in "Rhetoric and Ideology" assign Britton's work to the cognitivist category. Faigley says that Britton and his colleagues at the University of London applied cognitive-developmental psychology to the developing sense of audience among

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young writers (532). Britton is a cognitivist, apparently, because he employs cognitive theory. Berlin speaks of Britton's focus on cognitive structures in arriving at an understanding of how grade school students compose. Berlin says, "For cognitive rhetoric, the structures of the mind correspond in perfect harmony with the structures of the material world, the minds of the audience, and the units oflanguage" (480).

Cognitivists, it would seem, are interested primarily in psychological developmental processes rather than language as asocial process. For them, the development of language abilities results from innate psychological develop­mental patterns that are programmed into the brain and that are presumably ahistorica1 and acultural. A cognitivist embraces a scientific rather than a humanistic perspective on the mind, focusing especially on biological factors and on inquiry into the nature of the human brain.

There is little evidence in Britton et al.'s The Development of Writing Abilities, though, of a preoccupation with psychological factors to the exclusion of sociological ones and virtually no concern with structures of the mind or with the biology ofthe human brain. According to Britton and his colleagues, writing abilities develop not as a result of innate cognitive structures but as a result of interaction with the world. They describe expressive writing, the writing function that is a matrix out of which differentiated form of mature writing are developed, in terms of intimate speech, family conversation, the use of language that is least inhibited, least constrained (82, 83). It precedes and enables other forms of learning because it provides the greatest opportunities for discovery and play.

This form of interaction is not only psychological but sociological as well. Britton and his colleagues invoke Vygotsky's Thought and Language to empha­size the importance of language in representing experience and in organizing and storing representations in other modes (78). They also invoke the field of sociology as emphasizing the importance of interactions between people and the co-operative building of a common world (79). Conversation becomes a central metaphor in the book since it is through conversation that individuals structure their own experience and weave into its fabric the experience of others (79).

This emphasis on conversation makes evident that the theory they embrace is a decidedly social one. The expressive function of language is not some romantic conception of the expression ofan autonomous self or some objectivist account of universal developmental processes that are determined by biological factors but a dialogue with the self or with intimate others that enables learning. Development is a process of moving from self toward other, from individual to the social. Britton and his colleagues speak of the learner-writer progressing by increasingly recognizing and attempting to meet the demands of tasks that become more and more difficult. Growth results not from random self­expression or from some automatic biological process set in motion at birth but from progressive attempts to communicate with increasingly demanding audi­ences. It also results from internalizing forms and strategies appropriate to increasingly more demanding tasks (85).

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I am suggesting that Britton and his colleagues are not primarily cognitivists but what Berlin in Rhetoric and Reality would call transactionalists and as such they have commonalities with researchers and theorists usually assigned to the social category. And although their work is presumed to support phase I 0 fWAC, writing to learn, they also have commonalities with work associated with phase II of WAC, writing in the disciplines. They do not emphasize the process of internalizing the forms and conventions of writing in the process of developing writing abilities, but they certainly acknowledge the importance of such a process. If development results from interaction with others and with disciplinary conventions, then writing is a mode of learning if it involves interaction with the self or others and with disciplinary content. The work of Britton and his colleagues also has a political dimension. As a number of scholars have pointed out (e.g., McCormick, Mahala), their work is characterized by a democratic ethos.

Charles Bazerman, like Britton and his colleagues, is working within an interactional tradition. Bazerman, in Constructing Experience, speaks of The Development o/Writing A bilities as "the most thoughtful study" coming out of writing across the curriculum (48). Like the work of Britton and his colleagues, Bazerman's approach has been influenced by the work ofVygotsky. Bazerman speaks in Shaping Written Knowledge of the need to develop a "unitary concept of signifying events simultaneously contexted within and realizing linguistic code, social relations, psychological cognition, and perception of the ambient world" (295). He sees Vygotsky's work as enabling a strong model oflanguage activity. Bazerman speaks of social activity in language as a complex and creative force that is not easily reduced to rule-governed behaviors (299). He speaks, too, of language and society being simultaneously realized in the social language act (301).

Bazerman is especially interested in developing a model of scientific use of language. Drawing on Vygotsky, he posits that language is a tool that helps us carry on cooperative activities, a process that necessitates shared knowledge. He says, "Much shared background knowledge and shared experience are necessary to create the shared perceptual schema" (303). In speaking of scientific articles, Bazerman observes that shared background includes shared technical words as well as shared conceptual, practical, and social worlds (303).

Bazerman sees that shared understanding is not always a given but often needs to be established, especially in the case ofthe neophyte becoming familiar with knowledge already shared within a community and in a situation in which change, growth, or instability occurs within the system of understandings already shared by fully socialized members of the community (304, 308). He explains that shared understanding is created by neophytes through interaction with accomplished adults. A kind of negotiation goes on between the beginner and the adult until the beginner produces an utterance recognized as bearing meaning within the socially shared system (304). He uses the example of the teaching of chemistry involving the teaching of the language of chemistry

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through textbook diagrams and charts, classroom discussions of reading assign­ments, assigning problems to be solved, and the teacher's commentary on demonstration experiments (305).

The process of establishing shared understanding is somewhat different for established scientists. Scientists must deal with change that results from political and ideological forces outside the scientific community, changes in forms of communication, or changes that come from within the activity of science, often as a result of phenomena refusing to fit already existing formulations or as a result of a recognition that an idea developed to solve a narrow problem has broader application (308). New formulations must be cast persuasively, preferably compellingly because they will always encounter resistance (308). Bazerman sees this process of advancing new formulations as one of persuasion that results from a lengthy process of negotiation, transformation, and growth ofthe central formulations and related arguments (309). Bazerman sees this process of few formulations entering the common stock of formulations as a dialectical one with new formulations influencing future activity (309).

Vygotsky's work suggests to Bazerman that scientific language needs to be studied as an historical phenomenon. To understand what scientific language is and does, we need to see when, how, and to what purpose it is employed in the concrete settings of human history (313). History, though, is comprised of various levels that interact in a fluid process. The first level is the single living moment, the second the history of the individual, the third the accounts of the community as a whole, the fourth the history of cultural forms (314-5). Out of this fluid interaction, though, certain regularities develop. These regularities, however, are themselves fluid. Bazerman says, "We must see them as fluid to varying degrees and in relation to even more fluid elements, and must see them in relation to the complex activities that employ these regularities" (315).

The work of Britton and colleagues and Bazerman are not necessarily representative of work in WAC. Objectivist traditions that take the form of positivistic research, individualistic subjectivist traditions that take the form of expressivism, and social subjectivist traditions that take the form of communitarianism remain powerful. Given, though, that the work of Britton and colleagues and Bazerman has been very influential within the WAC movement, interactionalism as an intellectual tradition has contributed in significant ways to the movement. And certainly there are many other interactionalists whose work has played an important role in the movement.

Interactionalism in a WAC Project The WAC project described below, a collaborative endeavor between faculty and graduate students in the Department of Humanities and engineering faculty at Michigan Tech, is rooted in an interactional approach to language. An objectivist approach to the project would have emphasized that engineering consists of a body of knowledge or conventions that students must learn but would have focused on processes of imparting the knowledge itself rather than

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on student learning. The limitations of this approach have been thoroughly discussed within composition studies. Students are not receptacles to be filled but active learners who need to integrate what they are learning with what they already know. A subjective, expressive approach emphasizes the importance of active learning on the part of the student but underemphasizes the importance of the material to be learned. An interactional approach, though, emphasizes that learning is a social process that necessitates active involvement on the part of both the learner and the teacher while also emphasizing the contribution of disci plinary knowledge in the transaction. While expressivist approaches, given their emphasis on the individual language learner, tend to be relativistic, an interactional one attempts to move beyond relativism. Students' constructions of knowledge can be inaccurate or wrong. Constructive feedback from a supportive mentor can provide them a sense of how accurate their approximations are.

I will describe the project as a whole. Then William Bulleit, a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will describe the changes he made in his engineering design course as he interacted with faculty and graduate students in the WAC project and the way in which he used writing to interact with students as they developed their design reports. Kathryn Remlinger, a former graduate students in the Department of Humani­ties who participated in the project, then describes some effects of an interactive approach to WAC on student understanding and student attitudes.

The project (see Flynn, Jones, Baron, and Shoos; Flynn, Savage, Brown, Penti, and Watke) was funded by both the Whirlpool Foundation and the National Science Foundation (NSF). I was principal investigator of the grant sponsored by the WhirlpoolFoundationwhileDavis Hubbard of the Department ofChemis try and Chemical Engineering was principal investigator of the NSF grant, hence we were co-directors of the project. The project, which was entitled "Improving Writing in Engineering Design Courses," included faculty teaching senior-level design courses in most of the engineering departments at Michigan Tech as well as faculty and graduate students from the Department of Humanities and aimed to produce materials that would be useful in the teaching of engineering design courses across the country. We accomplished our objectives through the devel­opment ofa collaboratively.writtenManualintendedfor student use in en gineering design courses, a newsletter distributed three times a year for three years, an electronic bulletin board, and a national conference held at Michigan Tech. The NSF grant also supported two external consultants who assisted us with the design of the project evaluation and the creation of a project archive.

One of the challenges we faced as the project progressed was dealing with a conception oflanguage on the part of some of the engineering faculty that had positivistic tendencies. The challenge was intensified by the fact that in some ways the engineers had more authority in the project than the humanities participants given that the NSF grant guidelines stated explicitly that leadership for NSF-sponsored projects had to be provided primarily by scientists or engineers. This situation was an advantage when it came to identifying the goals

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of the project because the engineers were able to see that the project should focus on the development of materials to be used in engineering design courses. It was sometimes a disadvantage, though, when we had to deal with conceptual issues. In the NSF grant proposal, for instance, the engineers suggested that we call the materials we would be developing a "template.» 'This term apparently did not bother the reviewers of the proposal, who were no doubt also engineers, since we received the highest ratings possible in most categories from most of the reviewers. It began to bother the humanists, though, when the term persisted in project meetings. When we asked the engineers what they meant by it, they explained that they had in mind the plastic plate often used by engineers to form accurate copies of objects or shapes. From their perspective, then, the materials we were creating were a form into which students could pour their content. An important part of the project, therefore, involved encouraging engineering faculty to see learning as an interactive process rather than a mechanistic one.

TheManual to be used by students taking design courses became an important means for doing so. In the NSF grant proposal, we had promised to produce materials that could be used to assist students in the writing of design reports. The basic model we started with was a document prepared by chemical engineering faculty members Bruce Barna and Davis Hubbard that had been used in the chemical engineering design course for several years. The document was brief, emphasized the mechanical aspect of report writing, and did not place the writing of the report within a rhetorical context. The entire collaborative team, including humanities faculty and graduate students and engineering faculty, completely revised the guidelines that Barna and Hubbard had been using. The humanities group created sections of the Manual that placed the writing of design reports within a rhetorical, social, and political context. The engineering faculty contributed model reports and took the lead in deciding what format would be recommended to students. Negotiations regarding the report format were extensive and involved numerous compromises and accommodations. The Manual, then, was informed by an interactive approach to language and was itself a result of a highly interactive process.

William Bulleit's account of how he altered his design course as a result of the NSF project illustrates well his considerable attempts to increase the amount of writing and the meaningfulness of the assigned writing in his design course. Initially the design report he assigned involved very little writing. In order to include more writing in the course he began to require the students to submit progr essreportson their design projects. In doing so, he increased opportunities for interaction with his students. Design reports became social processes rather than static forms. He also began to incorporate team projects into his course thereby building into the course design opportunities for student interaction. As a result of the NSF project, he also began requiring students to incorporate writing into their design reports thereby moving his report assignment closer to the genre used by the other faculty participants in the NSF project. Bulleit's narrative illustrates well one faculty member's response to the dialogue about writing in engineering that the project enabled.

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Bulleit's Narrative During the years from 1982-1993, I taught a senior level design course in Civil Engineering entitled "Prestressed Concrete Design.» Beginning in 1984, a design project was introduced into the course. The project, including the use ofwriting, evolved over time, and what follows is a description of that evolution and the lessons learned during that process.

The Problem The problem was to find a way to include writing, in a meaningful and useful way, into a term long design project where the project requires the use of highly technical material learned during the term. To further complicate the issue, the project requires a high level of technical knowledge, a large amount of calcula­tions, and detailed drawings to describe the final design. This is the reason why any writing that might be included into the project must be meaningful and useful.

The Project The project was the detailed design of a prestressed concrete bridge girder. The students were required to provide material specifications and final drawings that were detailed enough to provide all the information necessary to fabricate the girder.

The Evolution of the Solution I began using the design project in the Spring quarter of 1984 for a course taught only in the Spring quarter. The project reports were typical structural reports where the only writing in the report was the material specifications. Each student did their own individual project based on specified girder type, girder spacing, and concrete deck thickness. From 1984to 1987, the projects essentially involved no writing. During this time there were generally some unfinished projects handed in at the end of the quarter.

Between Spring 1987 and Spring 1988, I had some discussions with members of the Humanities faculty involved in the Whirlpool Project. These discussions led to the first halting steps, in the Spring of 1988, toward including writing into the design project. At this point in the evolution, I felt that it was inappropriate to include writing into the design project. So, the first use of writing was somewhat informal memos that were submitted every other week describing each student's progress on the design. These progress memos were examined by me both to determine each student's progress and to check their writing. They did show that, as expected, nearly a majority of the students needed work on their writing or needed to take more care in their writing. One unexpected benefit from the progress memos was that the number of unfinished projects dropped to virtually zero. The students seemed to be honest in telling me in their memos that they were behind on the project and that must have helped force them to work harder. This benefit alone is enough to convince me that progress memos

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are a vital part of any term or semester long project where the students are not forced to hand in portions of the project for incremental checking.

In the Spring of 1989, I made the progress memos more formal and required journals were included. No formal writing was as yet required in the final design report. Although, as before, the design report was a formal report with a specific structure, except that it had no significant amount of writing associated with it. I made the memos more formal by giving the students guidelines on the format of the memos and highly recommending that the memos be typed. The memos were still handed in every other week. In addition, I required the students to get a spiral bound notebook to use as a journal. The first requirement for use of the journal was that a first draft of each progress memo must appear in the journal. This requirement makes a memo more formal than it should be, but it forced the students to think about their writing by using a first draft. The remainder of the instructions were that the students should use the journal as a project notebook, including questions about the project, notes pertaining to the project, and even initial design calculations. The increased formality of the memos enhanced the quality of them. They tended to be more complete and more well written. Otherwise, the journals were of only limited success since they tended to include only the first draft of the memos and preliminary design calculations.

In the Spring term of 1990, I changed the project to a team project. This altered the nature ofthe project in the sense that now the girder type, girder spacing, and the concrete deck thickness were to be chosen by each design team. The design teams consisted of three students. Each student was required to do some preliminary design calculations to select two possible combinations of girder type, girder spacing, and deck thickness. The team then selected the most economical of these six combinations and performed the detailed design of the girder using the chosen combination. Formal progress memos were still required from each student. Not only were they instructed to describe their team's progress, but they were also to describe how well, or poorly, each of the team members were performing. Personality problems within teams became apparent to me before they might havewithoutthe memos. I retained the journal with the requirement that the first draft of each memo be included. More guidance was given on the use of the journal, and each student was to have a minimum of two entries per week with the goal being four entries per week. Four entries corresponded to the number of class periods per week. Initial design calculations were not allowed to make up more than 50 percent of the entries. I added some formal writing to the final report by requiring inclusion of a letter of transmittal. Each team member was required to write a draft of a letter of transmittal in their journal and then the team selected the best of the three. This again forced the use of at least a first draft and forced the team members to consider each other's writing. Lastly, each student was required to submit a final memo in which they graded each of their team members. The modifications to the project and the use of memos and journals made the work load great enough that any future changes would require a reduction of work in another area.

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The experiences of the years up to 1990 allowed a few interim conclusions. Formal progress memos were essential since they kept me informed about student and team progress and aided in timely completion of the projects. Forcing each student to keep a journal, even with guidance, was oflimited value for this kind of project and course; although the use of first drafts enhanced the quality of the progress memos. The use of teams permitted a more realistic project and introduced some interpersonal challenges into an otherwise calcu­lation-oriented project.

Using these interim conclusions, I made modifications, in the spring of 1991, to increase the formal writing involved in the project report. As stated above, some changes were required in order to keep the work load at a reasonable level. The primary change was the addition offormal writing to the design report. The NSF project, under which much of this work was being performed, had as one of its goals the development of a design writing manual for use in design classes. The development of the Manual allowed me to see how it might be possible to include writing into the design report in a reasonable manner. The reduction in work load consisted of retaining the formal progress memos but dropping the individual journals. Thus, there were no first drafts of the memos, which was more realistic since most students were using a word processor to write their memos. Each team was expected to keep a team journal that was to include notes on team meetings, project questions, and any initial calculations that were performed by the team as a whole. I gave the students specific guidelines for the design report format. The format was a slightly modified version of that suggested in the design writingManual. The modification was slight enough that the Manual was potentially useful, so each team was required to use it. The final memo in which each team member evaluated the other team members was retained. The approach described above was reasonably successful. In the Spring of 1992, the only change was to convert the team j ournal toa team notebook. This notebook was to consist of a looseleaf binder including all initial design calcula­tions, meeting notes, and any other material concerning the project that was not included in the formal design report. This notebook was to be handed in with the formal report. This approach was also used in the Spring of 1994.

The approach used in the last two quarters is the best of all the possibilities considered. It is a reasonable approach that includes both significant writing and keeps technical content at an appropriately high level. The progress memos are absolutely vital to the project, even though without a first draft the quality ofthe memos is a bit low. I believe a slightly increased emphasis on the memos can alleviate that problem. The team notebook is a more realistic approach to forcing the teams to keep a running log of their work. The amount of writing required for the formal report is a bit great due to the need for the students to learn the technical material for the project during the quarter. This requirement prevents the review of the written part of the report by either the faculty member or by another team. There is just not enough time in the quarter. Thus, although the approach suggested is reasonable, it is not optimal. The technical content,

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including drawings and material specifications, are essential to the report. The writing is also essential, but incorporating multiple drafts of the report is quite difficult in the time provided during a quarter. If the project were performed using material that the students learned in previous quarters, then the suggested approach could be modified to allow evaluation of the first draft of the written part of the report prior to completion of the project. This would be a good addition to the project but was not a possibility under the restrictions of the particular course described here.

Bulleit emphasizes the value ofthe progress memo in keeping him informed of student progress and in keeping students on track as they undertook their design project. The progress memo encourages an interactive approach to learning. Students learn to create design reports by communicating the progress they are making as they construct them and by receiving feedback on those constructions rather than by merely internalizing the conventions of those reports. In ConstructingExperience, Bazerman speaks of the value 0 fpreparatory assignments such as proposals and progress reports in enabling students to write original rather than derivative research reports (52). Such assignments, accord­ing to Bazerman, help remind the student of the original goal of the work while encouraging creative and detailed use of the source material (52). Bulleit also observes that increasing the formality of the memos enhanced their quality. When the design project became collaborative, the progress memo allowed students to comment on the nature of their interaction and alerted Bulleit to personality problems. Writing enhanced learning when it was directly tied to the course project and when Bulleit provided students feedback on it. The journal became more useful when it became a course notebook that assisted students as they prepared their formal reports. Bulleit learned that an interactional journal is more useful than an expressivist one. Bulleit also mentions that the NSF project, and the project Manual in particular, provided students guidance on the format they were to use for their reports. The Manual introduced students to the genre of the design report and allowed Bulleit to create a report assignment that more closely resembled the assignments in other design courses at MTU.

Bulleit's description illustrates one faculty member's struggles as he at­tempted to integrate writing into a course that focused largely on technical calculations. The description of a former graduate student who participated in the project, Kathryn Remlinger, provides a broader perspective, suggesting that a number of other faculty members successfully altered their courses as a result of the project. Remlinger's description focuses especially on the effect of the project Manual on student learning.

According to Remlinger, The Manual provided students with models for the reports they were writing. The models were included not as a result of a belief in the positivistic assumption that exposure to a genre will automatically result in effective imitation of that genre, however. The sample design reports provided in the Manual were placed in a rhetorical context. Students were

Interaction Across the Curriculum 357

provided explanations of the parts of a report and were encouraged to prepare drafts of reports and to receive feedback on them from peers and from the instructor. The models were not templates but genres that students could attempt to approximate through a highly interactive process with others. The samples were also clearly provisional and in need of modification to be useful given that they were on topics different from those the students were working with and were often from entirely different engineering fields. Students could not simply imitate them. They had to attempt to approximate them, a process that necessitated receiving feedback on their successive attempts.

Remlinger's Narrative I worked with the project as a research assistant the third year of the project. My primary role as research assistant was to examine reading and writing interac­tions in various contexts: student project groups, project group presentations, and report writing. Throughout the year, another research assistant, Diana Risdon, and I relied on a combination of ethnographic and quantitative methods and analyses to identify patterns of interaction among students, professors, writing, and speaking. The data from this research shaped the final evaluation of the three-year project. We were primarily interested in finding out how students came to understand and use writing strategies and conventions specific to engineering design.

In orderto determine how writing and speaking were being taught, learned, and practiced in various engineering courses Diana Risdon and I observed a series of capstone courses within six engineering fields: chemical; civil; electri­cal; mining, metallurgical, and mechanical engineering.! Two of the courses were not involved in the project, thus we used field data from them for comparative purposes. 2 In addition to student-student, student-professor inter­action during lectures, we observed discussion between individual students and professors after class. We also observed several project groups from civil and metallurgical engineering as students collaborated on research and writing and attended several of these groups' final presentations. We tape recorded all of these observation sessions and described them in field notes. The field notes detail our observations of interactions that center on writing and speaking.

Survey Results from surveys completed by students in the capstone courses augment data from the observations. The survey questions for all eight classes were identical except that the surveys completed by students in non-project classes did not include questions about the Manual since it was not available to these students. Because the focus of the project was to improve the writing of engineering design students, the majority of the survey questions centered on student perceptions about writing in their respective design courses.3

Results from the survey indicate that interaction among students and professors that centers on speaking and writing positively benefits students'

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perceptions and abilities:4 an average of nearly 50 percent of the students in the project classes (and an average of 25 percent in the two non-project classes) responded that their writing had changed during the course of the design class. Those students responding that their writing had not changed accredited this to already established good writing abilities, not enough report writing in the class to allow for improvement, knowledge of professors' expectations, the lack of writing instruction, strict standards that did not allow for change, and the stress on design rather than writing.

Results also reflect students' perceptions of what is most and least beneficial in their courses with respect to writing their design reports. In general, students responded that theManual, prior knowledge, sample reports, and handouts were the most helpful in preparing their reports. Several students also reported that Technical and Scientific Writing (HU333) prepared them well for report writing. Students stated that what hinders their report writing the most is the lack of time and uncertainty of professors' expectations.

In the survey responses students also described a variety of group work situations and experiences. Positive descriptions included those of shared workload, more developed ideas, small group size (3-4 students), and experience for working with groups. Of the students surveyed, 70 percent who cite positive group work experiences were from the project courses, whereas 44 percent of these students were from non-project courses. The percentages of project students and non-project students who reported negative experiences were 12 and 24 percent respectively. Students described negative experiences with the groups resulting from unequal work loads, scheduling problems, and unequal distribution of power, and thus participation, among group members. Students reported that this unequal distribution of power was an effect of gender differences within the group.

Because the focus of the "Improving Writing in Engineering Design Project" was to help instructors develop methods for incorporating written and oral communication into the curriculum, the survey also included questions about how students perceived teaching methods and practices. Students' responses described how they were receiving instruction and suggested ways to improve teaching methods and materials. Students described a variety of teaching methods-from "Very good. Easy to understand and follow" to "Horrible-are there any methods?" All of the responses mention the lack of adequate instruction prior to writing. And although many students found the Manual to be beneficial as a teaching tool, nearly half of the students wanted clearer, more detailed instruction prior to writing their reports, critiquing other students' reports, and giving oral presentations. Most important, students responded that modeling was both the most helpful instructional tool and the most central aspect to writing instruction in the engineering design courses. Modeling in this sense is the use of "models" or generic forms of writing: reports specific to particular engineering fields; report components such as cover letters, title page, table of contents, and summaries; sample calculations, tables, and figures; and

Interaction Across the Curriculum 359

guidelines for formatting reports. Students stated that the most helpful models were examples from the Manual, class handouts, sample reports from the various engineering fields, and opportunities for revision after receiving feedback from professors.

"QUiz» Results from another surveyor "quiz" provided data for further evaluation of the project. Students in five of the project classes and two non-project classes responded to a second survey of six questions asking about formal report writing.5 The" quiz" asked students to respond briefly to questions that covered 1) identifying the writer's considerations when writing a formal report, 2) identifying the most frequently read part of a formal report, 3) using tables and figures in a formal report, 4) acknowledging sources, 5) identifying the major sections of a formal report, and 6) commenting on logic! ethics/politics in design reports. Students' responses represented the effect of the project on students' knowledge and use of writing in engineering.

Results from the "quiz" showed that project students were more aware of the entire rhetorical situation of writing in engineering. These students went beyond the standard advice to "consider audience" to considerations of purpose, arrangement, and style, and the ethical and political implications of their writing. Yet not only did these students understand these considerations, buttheyalso knew how to use the conventional sections of a formal report. Since the project's goals were to incorporate meaningful writing into engineering for the benefit of the students and to produce materials that would facilitate this incorporation, the students' responses confirmed the belief that these goals were accomplished.

Results The research findings and evaluation of the "Improving Writing in Engineering Design Courses Project" demonstrate that the major objectives of the project were realized: the curricula of the d~sign courses were restructured to include more teaching and practicing of writing and speaking; course materials focusing on writing and speaking were developed, tested, and incorporated into the teaching and learning in the various design classes; and most important, students in the project courses developed understanding and skills as writers and speakers. Furthermore, the success of the project has been evident as engineering and humanities researchers continue a collaborative conversation in develop­ing course materials, faculty and student understanding, and curriculum with regard to improving the teaching and learning of communication skills within engineering design courses. The interaction of "language user, text, and social context" among researchers and teachers of writing and engineering design foster the interaction among students and professors about writing and speaking. This interaction in turn further develops students' understanding and use of writing and speaking specific to the demands of their particular fields of study, and perhaps beyond to other contexts.

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Remlinger's description includes results of a student survey and a student "quiz." An important finding of the survey was that more students in project courses than in non-project courses felt that their writing had changed as a result of the design course. The survey also indicated that students felt the project Manual and sample reports were especially helpful to them. Students in non­project courses were largely on their own in conceptualizing what a design report was and how they were to go about writing one. The students in the project course, in contrast, had examples to give them some sense of the genre they were expected to approximate. They reported that they found modeling to be an especially helpful technique.

Results of the "quiz" Remlinger reported on also indicated that students in project courses were more aware of the entire rhetorical situation than were students in non-project courses and were more fully aware of the conventional sections of a formal report. Other results were that students in project courses had better attitudes toward group work and fewer negative experiences as a result of collaboration.

Conclusion Recognizing that much WAC theory and practice is interactional has a number of consequences. It allows proponents ofW AC to defend the movement against charges that it is rooted in outmoded and conservative theories and pedagogies. Writing to learn is often seen as hopelessly romantic and individualistic in its conception of the writer as an isolated individual who must be released from the fetters of institutional constraints. Writing in the disciplines is often seen as hopelessly conservative in its conception oflearning as a matter of internalizing the relatively stable conventions of a relatively stable discourse community. WAC becomes a matter of reproducing traditional hierarchies and exclusionary power structures. Interactional approaches to WAC, though, emphasize writing as a social and political process as well as an individual one and see writers as able to alter discourse communities rather than merely adjust to them. They become potential agents of political and social transformation.

Our project involved dialogue between two groups that don't often engage each other. The interaction that occurred as our project progressed was certainly primarily productive exchange. Our meetings were characterized by laughter, good-natured kidding, and friendly observations about different ways in which we used language or approached problems. We decided, for instance, to drop the word "invention" from the Manual because it had quite different connota­tions for writing specialists and engineers. And we discovered, as we began to plan the project conference, that engineers and writing specialists structure conferences quite differently. The result was a combination of the two struc­tures, a very amicably worked out compromise. Also, many of the humanities participants observed that their participation in the project greatly enhanced their teaching of technical writing.

Interaction Across the Curriculum 361

The term "interaction," though, like the terms "dialogue" and "conversa­tion," suggests successful, nonconflicted exchanges. WAC projects, however, perhaps more than other academic projects, are sites of struggle. Often the writing specialists who are charged with developing programs are themselves struggling for status within the academy either because they are untenured or because composition occupies low status in relation to other fields in the academy. Frequently they are women faced with the task of convincing males to adopt new pedagogical approaches. Graduate students working on WAC projects face even greater challenges to their authority. Also, the undergraduate students whose learning is to be enhanced occupy considerably lower status within the academy than do faculty or graduate students and may be reluctant to express their opinion about new pedagogical structures being created. Finally, factors such as disciplinary status, gender, class, race, and ethnicity often result in hierarchies that affect all participants in WAC projects including non­writing faculty.

Although the humanists and engineers participating in our project learned a great deal from each other, our interaction was not always sufficient to bridge the considerable gap between our different disciplines. The humanists had difficulty throughout the project understanding basic engineering concepts and approaches, and the languages and calculations of the student design reports remained quite foreign. The engineers, in turn, had difficulty throughout the project understanding our objections to positivistic approaches to language. At the conference at the conclusion of the project, for instance, some engineering faculty, including some Tech faculty, argued that students should be given separate grades for content and form, an indication to us that the idea of writing as a form into which content could be poured had not been eliminated.

The difficulties both groups had in comprehending the approaches of the other make evident the need for WAC projects that enable long-term, sustained interaction. Five years of frequent and very productive exchange contributed significantly to the knowledge of both the humanists and engineers but was not enough to completely overcome the disciplinary limitations of either group. At one time, proponents of WAC conceptualized WAC projects in terms of brief workshops and follow-up activities. Clearly, though, significant change, espe­cially in the sciences and engineering, will result only from the creation of permanent structures that bring writing specialists and faculty from different disciplines together on a regular basis.6

Michigan Technological University Houghton, Michigan

362 JAC

Notes

'The courses were observed were Chemical Engineering Plant Design I, n, 1lI (CM 421, 422, 423); Civil Engineering Prestressed Concrete Design (CE 423) and Waste Distribution and Waste Water Collection Systems (CE 454); Electrical Engineering Integrated Circuit Engineer­ing (EE 452); Underground Hardrock Mine Design (MG 472); Metallurgical Engineering Material Design and Selection (MY 471); and Mechanical Engineering Design and Thermal systems (ME 421).

'Metallurgical Engineering Material Design and Selection, MY 471 and Civil Engineering Waste Distribution and Waste Water Collection systems, CE 454.

3Copies of the surveys are included in the appendices of the project evaluation report, The National Science Foundation Project Evaluation, Improving Writing in Engineering Design. The report summarizes and evaluates the activities and accomplishments of the three-year project. The report presents the findings of researchers' evaluations of methods and materials used by faculty to incorporate written and oral communication into the design courses. The report also includes a brief history of the project, presents principal findings, describes faculty and student perspectives of the project courses, and provides recommendations for further study as well as for future projects.

'Response rates varied among the classes surveyed. In general, students from the chemical engineering classes had a higher response rate in proportion to other classes. This is perhaps because the professors of these classes, Bruce Barna and Davis Hubbard, had been involved in writing across the curriculum projects with humanities faculty since 1985 and therefore encouraged students to participate more than other professors had. In proportion to other classes surveyed, the mining engineering class (MG 472) had a very low response rate: eight of twelve students responded to the survey. Thus, compared to other engineering classes which consist of 50 or more students, the percentages from MG 472 reflect a small number of responses. Also, there were significant differences in the mining students' perceptions and experiences with writing when compared to the students from other courses. This difference may reflect the fact that the mining curriculum does not require students to take Technical and Scientific Writing (HU 333), which is required for students of all other engineering fields except Chemical Engineering, which requires a departmental writing and speaking class (CM 414).

sThe "quiz" and students' responses are included in the project evaluation report. 6We would like to thank E. Penfield, an anonymousJAC reviewer, John Flynn, and Gesa

Kirsch for the very useful feedback they provided on drafts of this essay.

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Winterowd Award Winners Announced

The annual W. Ross Winterowd Award forthe most outstanding book on composition theory published in 1996 was awarded to James A. Berlin for Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies, and Honorable Mention was awarded to John Schilb for Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory.

The 1995 W. Ross Winterowd Award was awarded to Xin Liu Gale for Teachers, Discourses, and Authority in the Postmodem Composition Classroom.

This annual award was generously endowed by Professor Winterowd. The selection committee was chaired by Thomas West. Professor Winterowd presented the 1996 awards during the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition meeting at the CCCC Convention in Phoenix.

Send nominations for the 1997 W. Ross Winterowd Award to Sidney I. Dobrin, Co-Editor, JAC, Department of English, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-7310.