INTEGRATING WRITING ASSIGNMENTS INTO AN HISTORICALLY NON-WRITING INTENSIVE COURSE

Students, faculty, alumni and employers all agree that it is important for students to acquire strong communications skills. However, finding a way to integrate writing assignments into technical courses, such as mathematics and accounting, can prove to be a challenge. This paper discusses one approach to address the problem. Specifically, one course writing assignment, evaluated with the StyleWriter software package, is presented. The use of StyleWriter and a rubric tailored to it, allow the instructor to provide timely, detailed feedback to students regarding both mechanical writing difficulties and content related issues. It is hoped that more faculty will adopt software to help evaluate writing assignments and allow students to hone their writing skills.