Writing Across the Curriculum Encounters Asynchronous Learning Networks or WAC Meets Up With ALN

This paper illustrates some of the problems and successes that the authors encountered while integrating ALN into a writing across the curriculum program and an online writing lab at a large research university. Using transcripts from ALN class discussions, the authors examine students’ networked interactions and analyze the classes’ responses to a variety of online assignments in a class on English composition and pedagogy, a course on electrical and computing engineering, and a class on writing technologies. In so doing, the authors set forth several pedagogical principles which emerged from their experiences with ALN in their individual classes but which also share a number of commonalities with effective WAC practices.