The Impetus for Making Digital Writing a University Wide GE Requirement: The Process and Outcome

Abstract

This paper gives an account of how I designed a digital writing course for California State University Northridge’s English Department, and then proposed it as a General Education (GE) course for the university. More importantly, this paper describes what it took me to push the course through multiple stages of curriculum review before its final approval by the university’s Educational Policies Committee (EPC), a faculty senate standing committee, as a GE course. I am sharing this experience to make a case that it’s possible to convince the whole university community on the importance of digital composing, and that is the direction we as a field should be taking moving forward. Digital writing benefits students in writing and rhetoric programs, but it has the potential to benefit the entire student body of any institution of higher education.