The Blugold Seminar (WRIT) curriculum provides rigorous reading, writing, research, and rhetorical experience to ensure you have all the skills necessary to excel in academic communication. Experienced faculty select thought-provoking topics, encourage depth of understanding, foster classroom discussion, promote learning, and set high standards in classes that are not only engaging but also enjoyable. As you work though the WRIT curriculum with your professor and classmates, you’ll enhance your abilities in rhetoric, inquiry and research, writing craft, and digital literacy.

Throughout the course, you’ll practice critical reading, writing, and research skills that will give you confidence to express your voice in the classroom and to conquer any research and writing tasks you undertake at UW-Eau Claire.

For a detailed look at the WRIT curriculum, explore the learning outcomes and the segments that make the Blugold Seminar a unique and rewarding experience, in the accordions below.

Learning Outcomes

Rhetorical knowledge

• Understand and use the concepts of purpose, audience, and rhetorical situation in your writing;
• Understand and apply key rhetorical terms, including rhetoric, exigence, kairos, identification, extrinsic proof, intrinsic proof, situated ethos, invented ethos, pathos, logos, and enthymeme;
• Demonstrate rhetorical awareness pertaining to the conventions of academic English by using appropriate tone, style, format, and structure in your writing.

Inquiry & Research

• Demonstrate information literacy skills by finding and evaluating a variety of source materials;
• Demonstrate critical reading skills by summarizing, paraphrasing, analyzing, and synthesizing information from a variety of source materials;
• Formulate viable research questions, hypotheses, and conclusions;
• Understand the extent and nature of the sources needed to meet rhetorical goals within a specific writing situation;
• Learn how to participate ethically and responsibly in the inquiry and research process.

Writing Craft

• Assess accurately the strengths and weaknesses of their own writing and develop individual plans for revision and improvement;
• Understand and enact revision as substantive change;
• Identify and address "higher-order concerns" (for example, argument structure and insufficient evidence) in your own and others’ writing;
• Identify and address "lower-order concerns" (like punctuation and misspelling) in your own and others’ writing.

Digital Literacy

• Use a variety of technology tools to collaborate, compose, and revise;
• Use a variety of digital and multimedia sources critically;
• Understand that images, sounds, and animations - in addition to words - constitute the building blocks of modern communication.

Course Segments

Blugold Seminar (WRIT) courses are made up of four segments that take you through writing-intensive and inquiry-based approaches to college-level texts, research, and writing. 

Reading the conversations

Get introduced to some of the major conversations or debates about the section theme and to some parts of the classical discussions about rhetoric. You'll find resources available at the McIntyre Library and the practices necessary for college-level research.

Understanding perspective

Get ready to apply information literacy and research skills to find and evaluate an authoritative source (such as a scholarly article) on a specific topic. In this segment of the course, you'll learn valuable rhetorical terms and concepts and practice them with a variety of readings. You'll do a rhetorical analysis and write a paper on a source you select. 

Cultivating complexity

Collect additional authoritative sources to read more deeply into your topic, and practice rhetorical knowledge by discussing and analyzing new source materials. In this segment of the course, you’ll write a paper that will allow you to articulate the different views expressed in your readings and be able to put those views in conversation with each other.

Joining the conversation

Finally, bring together your skills and the course goals by completing scholarly research on a topic of your choice and by contributing to the existing conversation on that topic. You’ll make decisions about the rhetorical aspects of your final paper or project (such as intended purpose, targeted audience, genre, format, etc.).