Writing Based Inquiry Seminars
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Teaching WBIS: Submit a Proposal

Proposals may be submitted at any time of the academic year to Pam Gemin, WBIS Co-Director. A file attachment on email is a suitable way to send the proposal. Proposals must be typed. View a sample WBIS proposal here.

Any proposal returned to the faculty member for further information should be revised and resubmitted in typed form.

A suitable length for the proposal is two to three pages. Please pay special attention to questions 6, 7, 8 and 9, which ask not only for lists of materials or activities, but also for a rationale for the connections between the material and the course goals.

The WBIS Course Proposals should include the following information. Please refer to the WBIS Goals, Amount of Writing in WBIS, and Course Criteria.

1. Your Name.

2. Date.

3. Title of your course.

4. Course description (one paragraph).

5. List of course goals and/or objectives of your section.

6. List of specific intellectual questions to be addressed by your course theme. You may elect to embed these within your Course Description in #4 above.

7. List and description of writing assignments. For the description briefly answer the following questions about each writing assignment:

a) What will students write about?

b) What is the learning objective for the writing assignment?

c) What analytical or other thinking skills will be involved in completing the assignment? (2 and 3 may overlap or even be identical.)

d) What practice in writing to synthesize ideas and information from sources will be required?

e) Will students have an opportunity to revise their writing after receiving feedback? If so, what form will this feedback take?

8. Briefly describe classroom activities other than traditional lecture that you will utilize (e.g., discussion, collaborative assignments, group work, peer review, student presentations, etc.).

9. List and describe required texts. Provide a 1-3 sentence description and/or rationale for using each text (i.e., why are you including this text? What will using it add to your course?). If you are using an anthology, coursepack, or selected set of readings, briefly describe the readings (e.g., short stories, articles from newspapers etc.), and provide a 1-3 sentence explanation/rationale for the selection of readings as a whole.