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Using linked courses to scale institutional walls.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This paper describes two models for integrating technical writing with discipline-specific courses through service-learning: a linked course model and a linked project model. Both models allowed students to practice discipline-specific communication by writing grant proposals and other necessary artifacts. Our collaborations enabled us to become more reflective practitioners by seeing what we do through the lens of another discipline. Working with the community and writing for the community are means of increasing critical consciousness about complex social problems while working within the semester system.

Introduction

In Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition, Thomas Deans articulates for service-learning practitioners three paradigms for community writing: writing for the community, writing about the community, and writing with the community. The goals for the writing with community model are:

(1) Students, faculty, and community use writing as part of a social action effort to collaboratively identify and address local problems.

(2) Students and community members negotiate cultural differences and forge shared discourses.

(3) University and community share inquiry and research. (17)

While writing with community members is the ideal collaboration, many of us may not have established long-term relationships with local communities such as the partnership between Carnegie Mellon and Community House in Pittsburgh. Without supportive infrastructures, instructors are faced with the task of establishing a one-semester model that meets the needs of the community, goals of the course set forth by our departments, and civic and social goals we believe are fundamental to higher education. One means of developing that "pedagogy of action and reflection, one that centers on a dialectic between community outreach and academic inquiry" (2) that Deans suggests is to link a course or a project with another discipline. We created a more socially responsible pedagogy in our courses using two models that included service-learning components: a linked course and a linked project. This collaboration enabled us to become more reflective practitioners, in part by seeing what we do through the lens of another discipline.

Linked Courses

Linking community nutrition with technical writing, both required courses in the nutrition curriculum, allowed us to tailor a writing course to the communication goals of nutrition and further our commitment to community-based teaching and learning. Community nutrition is a junior-level course in dietetics where students learn about food assistance programs in the community and learn to design interventions to improve the diet and health of the community. Technical writing is a junior-level composition course for science and technology majors. In community nutrition, students develop and provide nutrition education materials and classes to clients in agencies as diverse as the food bank, adult day care centers, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and local hospitals. Students develop...