Written, Oral, and Multimodal Communication
Students matriculating prior to Fall 2023 are enrolled in SAGES - the Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship.
Students matriculating in Fall 2023 and later will be enrolled in a new set of Unified General Education Requirements (UGER). Part of the UGER is the Written, Oral, and Multimodal Communication (WOMC) requirement, which is summarized below.
WOMC Requirement for Students
Students must pass the following sequence of courses:
- An Academic Inquiry Seminar (3 credit-hours) during their first year of enrollment;
- Two Communication-Intensive Courses (at least 3 credit-hours each);
- A Disciplinary Communication Course (3 credit-hours); and
- A Capstone Project Course (at least 3 credit-hours).
All courses offered to satisfy the WOMC requirement are designed to provide opportunities to develop their reading, writing, and communication skills in the context of course topics and disciplinary approaches that align with students' majors and post-graduation goals. The WOMC sequence works toward a set of programmatic student learning outcomes. As they progress through their WOMC courses, students reflect on their development as writers and upload documents to their Experience Portfolio.
| Course | Writing/Communication Goals & Expectations |
| Academic Inquiry Seminar (3 cr) | Introduction to academic inquiry; focus on developing effective writing processes & entering academic conversations; majority of instruction addresses writing & communication. |
| Communication Intensive (2 @ 3cr) |
Writing & communication activities are used to explore course topics; focus on refining writing processes & composing research-based arguments; consistent writing/communication instruction. |
| Disciplinary Communication (3 cr) |
Introduction to disciplinary forms of communication; focus on discipline-specific skills/genres & entering disciplinary conversations; intentional writing/ communication instruction. |
| Capstone Experience (3 cr) |
Independent research, scholarship, and/or creative activity; focus on project-specific skills/genres & communicating knowledge to the public; individualized writing/communication instruction. |
| Experience Portfolio | Collection of artifacts that demonstrate development of writing/communication proficiency; includes materials from each writing/communication course in the sequence. |
For Students Who Matriculated before Fall 2023
The Undergraduate Advising Support Office has provided the guidance about how you may use courses designed & approved for the UGER to fulfill your current SAGES, physical education, and school-specific general education requirements.
For Faculty
For faculty developing writing/communication courses for the new UGER, please visit our UGER Resources for Faculty page.