Communicating Across Academia: MIT WRAP’s Integrated Approach to Teaching Communication Skills

Communicating ideas effectively is a skill sometimes taken for granted. At MIT, the Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (WRAP) program recognizes the critical role communication plays in students’ academic and professional success in their chosen field.

MIT’s communication requirements have evolved since the first formal requirement was implemented in 1982, developing out of the belief that students across all disciplines should learn to write and present in ways that are clear, organized, and effective. Now, students must take two communication-intensive subjects in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and two related to their major. WRAP teaches the foundational writing subjects in CMS/W and collaborates with MIT faculty and departments to teach written, oral, and visual communication to over 4,000 students a year in more than 100 communication-intensive subjects.

Andreas Karatsolis, the interim director of WRAP, says that MIT saw the need for a transformation after consistent student and alumni feedback. “Most alumni thought their technical skills were great. But when it comes to communication skills, or what we would call more ‘soft skills’ or humanities-based skills, they felt that they could have used much more instruction and emphasis on application,” Karatsolis says.

When Karatsolis first came to MIT in 2013, WRAP was known as Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC). Karatsolis brought with him extensive experience teaching communication and design and spearheading pedagogy-enhancing initiatives at Carnegie Mellon University. In the last decade, WAC widened its scope to become WRAP. In addition to writing, students practice oral and visual communication in which they learn how to construct a clear and persuasive spoken argument with the support of engaging visual aids.

Communicating innovation, beyond the five-paragraph essay

For many students, Karatsolis admits that there is a certain level of “unlearning” about writing that has to happen. “Students often come in thinking that a five-paragraph essay is the only organizational model that they need, and we have to show them how different genres might have different organizational structures.” Armed with a variety of approaches to communication, students can better prepare themselves for presenting in front of clients, defending their thesis, or contributing to a scientific journal. “Our students are emerging professionals and future leaders in their fields,” Karatsolis says. “Providing them with the disciplinary knowledge and the communication tools they need to be successful is what we’re aiming for.”

WRAP’s teaching model centers around integration and collaboration. Experienced lecturers with diverse academic and professional backgrounds work with professors of all subjects to incorporate communication learning into their curricula. As Karatsolis puts it, “We want to find ways to integrate communication within the work of the discipline in the course. We don’t want to think of communication as something that happens after the technical work is done.” It is common for lecturers who are experts in communication and rhetoric to teach exclusively within scientific disciplines. WRAP provides these lecturers with the training to teach writing and communication in subjects outside of their areas of expertise.

Introductory writing courses: where students find their voice

Another advantage of what Karatsolis calls a vibrant community of lecturers is the diversity of thought that comes from their various research areas—and the diverse experiences of the students they teach. Andrea Walsh, a WRAP lecturer who also teaches courses in MIT’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program, recognizes that everyone’s relationship with writing is different, and several kinds of diversity contribute to that. “MIT is ethnically and culturally a very diverse institution,” she says. “In addition, students may be interested in diverse majors, or they may be diverse in the languages they speak. We also have some students who are struggling with mental health issues, neurodivergence, or similar issues.”

This diversity of experience shines through in the student work that results from 21W.022 Writing and Experience: Reading and Writing Autobiography, one of the classes Walsh teaches. The class gives students the opportunity to consider how their lived experiences can be worth writing about—something some of them have never done before. The students create a safe space to discuss their writing in small peer groups, a cornerstone of WRAP’s approach to teaching. “It’s a process you can take with you after the class,” she says.

Over more than 20 years of teaching at MIT, Walsh has also seen self-examination that takes place in these writing classes play a significant role in students’ academic journeys. “I’ve had students who are planning to major in one area, but decide to go in a different direction based on a topic they explored in their writing—or leading to a double major in writing and rhetoric,” she says. “In that way, introductory writing classes can help undergraduates clarify their interests, identity, skills, and goals.”

Opening new worlds

The WRAP instructors created a way to showcase the writing that emerges from introductory-level writing courses in Angles, an annual online publication that features exemplary pieces written by students in those courses. The publication is partially supported by the Umaer Basha Fund, founded in memory of former MIT student Umaer Basha (1979–1997) by his family, and by other generous donors.

Mathematics graduate student and former MIT Admissions blogger Paige Bright ’24 discovered a love for the creative nonfiction genre in her introductory writing classes, which led her to apply to and eventually earn the position of MIT Admissions blogger and work with Angles as an editorial assistant. She says WRAP directed her to courses at MIT that she never would have taken otherwise. “If I hadn’t ‘failed’ the first-year essay evaluation and placed out of the introductory writing class, I never would have been published in Angles, and my entire undergraduate path would look much different,” she says.

Bright, whose essay “Drops” was selected for the 2021 issue of Angles (published under the name Paige Dote), says that being included in the publication “made her realize how much she was starting to grow as a writer. I hope I get to write reflective pieces like that one for the rest of my life.”

Every year, Angles organizes an event where students published in that year’s edition can read their pieces to an audience. Bright recounts the rewarding feeling of reading another student’s work aloud. “I remembered how empowering the experience of writing for a magazine was for students’ voices to be heard!”

Instructing real-world discourse

Karatsolis, in thinking about the future of WRAP, says he aims to continue to support students in honing their communication styles both inside and outside the classroom or lab. “WRAP is unique because our goal is to have students be able to have the outcomes they need to produce authentic pieces of text for their scientific technical lives,” he says. Training faculty on how to engage students in communication assignments and how to integrate communication in their classes is critical to that goal, and WRAP also conducts research to compare how different communication approaches affect outcomes in student work and experience. One of those projects focuses on constructive dialogue on campus in collaboration with the Division of Student Life and the Office of the MIT President.

AI is a relatively new yet much-discussed topic. WRAP’s policies on generative AI tools are still developing, but as a general rule, MIT allows all educators to choose if and how they want to utilize it in their classrooms. Because there are so many genres of writing, different subjects will employ AI in different ways, he says. Students will also have diverging opinions and relationships with AI, and their WRAP-taught communication skills will allow them to generate useful discourse surrounding the subject. As Karatsolis says, “We help the larger MIT community think through some of the real-life communication problems that they might be facing.” — Julianne Massa

Julianne Massa is a 2024 Council of Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) summer intern.