Writing Across the Curriculum in a Human Physiology Class to Build Upon and Expand Content Knowledge

Leading scientific organizations, like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have called for innovative approaches to student learning that incorporate "real-world examples". Drawing on writing-to-learn theory, innovative writing projects can be used when they build upon writing skills acquired from other disciplines and use creative writing in order to improve content comprehension. This paper draws on the use of narrative writing in a college-level, human physiology course to show the benefits of alternative types of writing assignments. The paper provides the creative narrative assignment learning objectives, rubrics, and examples of student work. This paper also demonstrates how to transform a conventional physiology writing project into an innovative multidisciplinary writing across the curriculum (WAC) project. Specific student writing examples are provided in the paper to show how the students interacted with the course content in a playful way as they drew from writing skills learned in other classes.