Group items tagged

discussing disclaimers that cover student responsibility for course work and grading

"For students, personal statements and application essays are among the most difficult and most important documents they will ever write. They are difficult because they require both introspection and polish, and important because the writer may literally be competing for tens of thousands of dollars in a huge field of outstanding candidates. A writing tutor who has provided guidance on more than a thousand graduate applications, Joe Schall advises you on how to be competitive but not cocky, informed but not formulaic, openly creative yet professional. As you consider ways to write your way into your future, count on this website to help you grow and thrive in the process."

discussing how to keep student records when online records aren't an option

b discussion of a NNES student who visits the WC very frequently; discussion of limits on visits

discussing how to jazz up student orientation to the WC

how to address a faculty request for tutors to stamp papers to show that students have visited the WC see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=13278130

discussing how to best meet the needs of international students

a discussion of the top five reasons students visit the writing center

in this variation on the required visit, a discussion of a professor who has asked the WC to contact students to make appointments with them

"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. "

discussing whether to offer students writing assistance for "sensitive" documents (appeals, grievances)

discussing what to do when a faculty member "escorts" a student to the WC

discussing dedicated resources for grad students

discussion of resources related to tutoring graduate students

questions and answers on tutoring graduate students

a discussion of strategies for working with a student who identifies as autistic/having autism see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=17249148

discussing tools that help students assess their own skills and needs

Position statements on graduate student writing center administration, two-year college writing centers, disabilities, diversity, and racism/anti-immigration/linguistic intolerance.

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.

From abstract: "This dissertation theorizes the writing center as bridge-as an institutional resource that supports second language graduate writers as they journey from outside the academy to the inside-including its strengths and limitations, both locally (for these writers at this writing center) and for the field more broadly. I offer the metaphor of the writing center as bridge, both as an alternate writing center identity and therefore as an alternate approach to tutoring, and as an approach that privileges the multiple subject positions that students hold as they use the writing center.  [...] Based on the literature, the experiences of these participants, and my own experiences as a tutor-turned-coordinator, I ultimately argue that nondirective tutoring is rooted in practice with native-English-speaking undergraduates and that this practice so dominates many writing centers' identities that it has left little room for other subject positions, including those of second language graduate writers."