Writing Across the Curriculum in Psychology

A decade ago we discovered that students in senior seminars did not know how to write psychology term papers. So we developed a course called Literature Review Seminar. The course teaches how to conduct bibliographic searches, how to analyze and compare research articles, and how to outline and write 20-page literature review papers. These are the kinds of papers that are required in graduate seminars. The course was so successful, that the we made it a requirement for all psychology majors.

Our experience with the course inspired us to develop a program of Writing Across the Curriculum, in which Literature Review Seminar would be the key course. We analyzed the writing assignments that we had been assigning in every psychology course, and designed a developmental sequence of assignments.

In Intro Psych, students write a short paper analyzing a research article. In sophomore and junior level courses students analyze research articles in more depth, and write other analytical papers applying theoretical concepts. In laboratory courses and statistics, students learn to write research reports. They are then ready to take Literature Review Seminar their junior year. Their senior year they take Psychology of History Seminar, and write another literature review paper, but this time they would do it on their own without weekly assignments.

The overall success of this program has been indicated by student papers being presented at professional and undergraduate conferences, two papers being published in professional journals, and reports from alumni in graduate school. When their classmates from other colleges are assigned literature reviews they don't know where to begin, while our graduates simply ask how many pages and how many references. The program also provides a model of how to coordinate all course offerings within a psychology department.