Group items tagged

"The Citation Project is a multi-institution research project responding to educators' concerns about plagiarism and the teaching of writing. Although much has been written on this topic and many have expressed concerns, little empirical data is available to describe what students are actually doing with their sources. At present, therefore, educators must make policy decisions and pedagogy based on anecdote, personal observation, media reports, and the claims of corporations that sell "solutions." The Citation Project begins the process of providing descriptive data. Our research team systematically studies randomly selected, source-based student papers from a range of different institutions. Our purpose is to describe how student writers use the sources they cite in their papers. With this information, educators will be able to make informed decisions about best practices for formulating plagiarism policies and for teaching rhetorically effective and ethically responsible methods of writing from sources. Preventing plagiarism is a desired outcome of our research, as the subtitle above indicates, but the Citation Project research suggests that students' knowing how to understand and synthesize complex, lengthy sources is essential to effective plagiarism prevention. If instructors know how shallowly students are engaging with their research source-and that is what the Citation Project research reveals-then they know what responsible pedagogy needs to address."

Launched in March 2013, the National Census of Writing seeks to provide a data-based landscape of writing instruction at two- and four-year public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. Despite numerous calls for empirical data to ground the design and administration of writing programs and writing centers, this is the first comprehensive study of its kind and covers the following sections:  * Sites of writing * First-year writing/English composition * Identifying and supporting diversely-prepared students * Writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing beyond the first year * The undergraduate and graduate writing major and minor * Writing centers * Administrative structures * Demographics of respondents

"Launched in March 2013, the National Census of Writing seeks to provide a data-based landscape of writing instruction at two- and four-year public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. Despite numerous calls for empirical data to ground the design and administration of writing programs and writing centers, this is the first comprehensive study of its kind and covers the following sections: Sites of writing First-year writing/English composition Identifying and supporting diversely-prepared students Writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing beyond the first year The undergraduate and graduate writing major and minor Writing centers Administrative structures Demographics of respondents With data from 900 institutions, the National Census of Writing will help educators and administrators across the country to better understand the variety of ways in which writing instruction is delivered in the twenty-first century. The research team has made the processed data available through this open-access database, which allows individuals to gather national data on pressing local questions. The database is searchable by type of institution, institutional size, geographical location, and, when we have consent, by the name of the institution."

The Consortium on Graduate Communication is an independent community of educators who provide professional development in academic written and oral communication to (post-)graduate students before and during their master's and doctoral degrees. The purpose of the CGC is to create online and face-to-face opportunities to discuss and share resources, ideas, research, and program models for this vital segment of international higher education. CGC members are interested in ESL/multilingual students as well as those studying in their first languages, and both written and oral communication.

The Rocky Mountain Writing Center Secondary Education Directory was compiled to help local, regional (RMWCA), and (inter)national (IWCA) organizations and institutions identify secondary schools in the Rocky Mountain Writing Center Region (AZ, CO, MO, NV, NM, UT, WY) as a precursor to connecting, collaborating, and/or supporting fellow educators in the fields of writing and peer tutoring. While the directory was originally to house all middle, junior high, and high schools, the scope was later narrowed to cover the 1,313 high schools in this eight-state region. (Article by Lisa Bell who compiled this directory is in Vol. 37.9-10 of the Writing Lab Newsletter, in open access archives: < writinglabnewsletter.org>,

a discussion of "educational truths," aspects of writing center philosophy that generally go unquestioned

Defines plagiarism, as defined by the School of Education, at Indiana University-Bloomington

St. Cloud State University has a certification program in Writing Center Administration. Open to writing center administrators with a bachelor's degree. Pairs well with an undergraduate or graduate degree in English or a graduate or doctoral degree in Higher Education Administration. The program is 10 credits. All courses are available online.

Publication Information: Harris, Muriel. (2015). Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference. WAC Clearinghouse Landmark Publications in Writing Studies: http://wac.colostate.edu/books/harris/. Originally Published in Print, 1986, by National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Illinois. This groundbreaking book offers advice for teachers new to conferencing, experienced teachers seeking to refine or expand their approaches to conferencing, and tutors working in writing centers. Since it was published in 1986, it has become one of the most widely cited books on conferencing. Harris offers a theoretical framework for conference teaching, descriptions of activities typical of and central to writing conferences, advice on diagnostic strategies for individualized instruction, and instructional strategies. Discussions in the book borrow from a wide range of fields, including counseling and therapy, cognitive science, anthropology, and education. In appendices, she includes a set of teaching materials that can be useful in tutor and teacher training.

Basic Writing e-Journal (BWe) is a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal. BWe publishes scholarship on teaching and learning in various basic writing contexts. Since basic writing programs often enroll economically disadvantaged students from diverse backgrounds, these students, their teachers, and the policies that influence their access to higher education are often the focus of this journal. Other key topics of concern to BWe readers include curriculum, instructional practice, teacher preparation, program evaluation, and student learning. Additionally, reviews of current scholarly books and textbooks appear regularly in BWe. Currently based at the City College of New York, BWe was founded in 1999 by the Council on Basic Writing (CBW) and continues to be sponsored by CBW.

Beth Carroll - Pragmatist philosophy puts writing center theory into action.

A collection of promotional and educational videos. Includes all of the PeerCentered Meet the Author chats

"Promotional and educational video about the Georgia Southern University Writing Center, written and produced by Xavier Best and Efadul Huq for Dr. Michael Pemberton's "Tutoring Writing" class, Spring 2010. Part I."

"Post-secondary writing centers have struggled to produce substantial, credible, and sustainable evidence of their impact in the educational environment. The objective of this study was to develop a college-level writing self-efficacy scale that can be used across repeated sessions in a writing center, as self-efficacy has been identified as an important construct underlying successful writing and cognitive development. A 20-item instrument (PSWSES) was developed to evaluate writerly self-efficacy. 505 university students participated in the study. Results indicate that the PSWSES has high internal consistency and reliability across items and construct validity, which was supported through a correlation between tutor perceptions of client writerly self-efficacy and client self-ratings. Factor analysis revealed three factors: local and global writing process knowledge, physical reaction, and time/effort. Additionally, across repeated sessions, the clients' PSWSES scores appropriately showed an increase in overall writerly self-efficacy. Ultimately, this study offers a new paradigm for conceptualizing the daily work in which writing centers engage, and the PSWSES offers writing centers a meaningful quantitative program assessment avenue by (1) redirecting focus from actual competence indicators to perceived competence development and (2) allowing for replication, causality, and sustainability for program improvement. "

conference announcements; "Building a Comprehensive English Learning Center at Del Mar College" (discusses materials, function, teacher education, advertising/promotion); "Where Does the Writing Center Fit In?" (WCs supporting WAC); mailing list

Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society is a peer-reviewed, blind-refereed, online journal dedicated to exploring contemporary social, cultural, political and economic issues through a rhetorical lens. In addition to examining these subjects as found in written, oral and visual texts, we wish to provide a forum for calls to action in academia, education and national policy. Seeking to address current or presently unfolding issues, we publish short articles ranging from 2,000 to 2,500 words, the length of a conference paper. For sample topics please see our submission guidelines. Conference presentations on topics related to the journal's focus lend themselves particularly well to this publishing format. Authors who address the most current issues may find a lengthy submission and application process disadvantageous. We seek to overcome this issue through our shortened response time and by publishing individual articles as they are accepted. We also encourage conference-length multimedia submissions such as short documentaries, flash videos, slidecasts and podcasts. In order to foster dialogue, our journal features a Reader Response section in which both contributors and readers are welcome to discuss the publications' content in a public, digital space.

"As student populations in colleges and universities continue to diversify, composition programs do not always meet students' varying needs. English as a Second Language (ESL) students appear to fail mainstream writing courses at higher rates than their traditional counterparts, yet mainstreaming continues to be mandated, often due to budgetary constraints. Many programs offer multicultural writing courses, but these, too, are often ineffective for many students. Meanwhile, as Paul Kei Matsuda shows, there is a decided split between the disciplines of composition and ESL. Since ESL scholars have a much stronger history of working with diverse student populations than composition scholars do, this study aims to look to ESL scholarship, specifically to contrastive rhetoric, to explore more effective methods of teaching writing to students with varying needs. This case study takes an in-depth look at one student's journey writing across cultures. Ming, a Chinese immigrant who has been in the United States for approximately ten years, is a junior at the University of Rhode Island who struggles with writing. Over the course of one semester, three of her projects were studied in depth. Data include transcripts of audiotaped tutorial sessions in the URI Writing Center, Ming's assignments and papers, and the researcher's notes from interviews with Ming following the tutorial sessions. ^ The new contrastive rhetoric (Connor, Kaplan, Purves) insists that external factors such as culture, education, and media influence the rhetorical patterns writers use. Through a lens of contrastive rhetoric, it becomes clear that most of Ming's difficulties when writing stem from a lack of familiarity with the conventions of U.S. academic discourse or of what her reader expects from her text. The source of much of this is cultural. While Ming's experiences are not generalizable, an in-depth look at her experiences foregrounds some of the issues that contrastive rhetoric addresses, making th

Rocky Mountains Writing Centers Association, home page. Has directories of high school and higher education writing centers, the RMWCA governance documents, and multiple newsletters, plus a listserv.

University of Washington Bothell Writing and Communication Center's extensive list of ESL Instructional resources, Young-Kyung Min who wrote all the resources offers the following: "Over the last four decades, the demographics in US institutions of higher education have rapidly changed with an ever-increasing enrollment of non-native English speaking students. The enrollment of non-native English speaking students on our campus has greatly increased since its establishment. Creating a global learning environment is one of the main learning goals for our campus; thus, it is very important for faculty to continue learning about the particular needs and concerns of our non-native English speaking students and the campus resources available to assist faculty in helping students with their needs and concerns. Please continue to visit this website as more resources will be added to this section."

"This statement responds to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism in four ways: by defining plagiarism; by suggesting some of the causes of plagiarism; by proposing a set of responsibilities (for students, teachers, and administrators) to address the problem of plagiarism; and by recommending a set of practices for teaching and learning that can significantly reduce the likelihood of plagiarism. The statement is intended to provide helpful suggestions and clarifications so that instructors, administrators, and students can work together more effectively in support of excellence in teaching and learning."

"This website supports a presentation on the implications of big data on writing center studies for the 2014 IWCA/NCPTW conference in Orlando, Florida. Its aim is to use newly available big-data sets about global development and education to provoke new questions about the impacts of writing center work."