crowdsourcing a list of resources on WCs and student learning/retention; research on cost-effectiveness; individual reports from directors that demonstrate value of WCs
see also a discussion on writing centers and grade improvement: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=18268126
Discusses research findings that writing center users procrastinate less on their writing, and that writing centers can be particularly helpful for student who have a high procrastination tendency.
Links to all of the WAC Bibliographies on the following topics:
Writing in the Disciplines
Writing to Learn
Program Design
Faculty Concerns
WAC in Two-Year Colleges
WAC in the Schools
WAC in the Disciplines
WAC Assessment
Pedagogy
Writing Processes
Writing Conventions
Genre
Research
WAC and Writing Centers/Learning Centers
Writing Fellows Programs
WAC and Second-Language Writing
Service and Experiential Learning
Literacy
Community
Inquiry
Technology
Discourse Analysis
Graduate Students
The sign-up page for Commcenters, an international listserv for scholars and researchers interested in communication services in communication, writing, and multimodal communication centers.
ABSTRACT: "At the 2014 IWCA/NCPTW Conference, founders of the National Writing Centers Association (now International Writing Centers Association) came together to reflect on the organization's beginnings, its strategies for institutionalization, and challenges that may still exist. A significant anniversary such as the 30th provides the opportunity for reflection. Additionally, a timeline of the organization's history is included, which provides important information for historical research.
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.
This is a very widely used site for open access materials on writing. Includes materials on research and citation, teacher and tutor resources, subject-specific writing, job search writing, ESL, MLA and APA guides, etc.
"The 18 entries in this bibliography summarize select articles and dissertations that focus on the effects of mandatory writing center visits. The entries are divided into two parts: Part 1 presents summaries of studies that emphasize quantitative and qualitative data. Part 2 presents studies that
rely on anecdotal evidence and theoretical arguments."
From Neal Lerner's July 2011 message to WCenter:
Folks, the latest issue (July 2011) of the Journal of Writing Research includes a very impressive study by James Williams and Seiji Takaku of the relationship between college students' self-efficacy, help-seeking behaviors, writing center visits, and writing performance. Here's a link to a pdf of the study:
http://www.jowr.org/articles/vol3_1/JoWR_2011_vol3_nr1_Williams_Takaku.pdf
Here's a snippet to take to your dean:
"The analysis showed that those students who frequently obtained writing center tutoring received higher grades in composition than those who did not, regardless of their ESL or native-English-speaker status. The frequency of writing center tutoring seemed to be especially valuable for the ESL students, who outperform their domestic cohorts, receiving significantly higher grades in composition."
"This article explores some important insights offered by second language acquisition research, focusing in particular on the findings of interactional and Vygotskyan approaches. Finally, it argues that writing centers may be an ideal place for second language writers to work on their writing."
NB This resource was based on a corpus of graduate dissertations.
"The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological 'nuts and bolts' of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation (see the top menu ). Other phrases are listed under the more general communicative functions of academic writing (see the menu on the left). The resource should be particularly useful for writers who need to report their research work.The phrases, and the headings under which they are listed, can be used simply to assist you in thinking about the content and organisation of your own writing, or the phrases can be incorporated into your writing where this is appropriate. In most cases, a certain amount of creativity and adaptation will be necessary when a phrase is used.The items in the Academic Phrasebank are mostly content neutral and generic in nature; in using them, therefore, you are not stealing other people's ideas and this does not constitute plagiarism. For some of the entries, specific content words have been included for illustrative purposes, and these should be substituted when the phrases are used.The resource was designed primarily for academic and scientific writers who are non-native speakers of English. However, native speaker writers may still find much of the material helpful. In fact, recent data suggest that the majority of users are native speakers of English. "
This open-access book by Steven J. Corbett, Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pegagogies, is available to be downloaded free. it is described as follows:
How closely can or should writing centers and writing classrooms collaborate? Beyond Dichotomy explores how research on peer tutoring one-to-one and in small groups can inform our work with students in writing centers and other tutoring programs, as well as in writing courses and classrooms. These multi-method (including rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case-study) investigations center on several course-based tutoring (CBT) partnerships at two universities. Rather than practice separately in the center or in the classroom, rather than seeing teacher here and tutor there and student over there, CBT asks all participants in the dynamic drama of teaching and learning to consider the many possible means of connecting synergistically.
This book offers the "more-is-more" value of designing more peer-to-peer learning situations for developmental and multicultural writers, and a more elaborate view of what happens in these peer-centered learning environments. It offers important implications-especially of directive and nondirective tutoring strategies and methods-for peer-to-peer learning and one-to-one tutoring and conferencing for all teachers and learners of writing.