Group items tagged

discussing disclaimers that cover student responsibility for course work and grading

An example of the University of Montana Writing Center's Annual Report (2014-2015 academic year). The purpose of this report is to showcase for administrators the scope of our work as well as make visible a handful of the Writing Center's programs that reach across the curriculum. Authored by Kelly Webster, Director of the Writing Center.

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.

This spreadsheet presents the years that over 1,000 writing center were founded. It may be of interest to those doing historical research. You'll note that the spreadsheet lists about 3,000 centers in total, many of which don't have founding years listed. If you know of a founding date that's missing, please submit it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CAMEiTQaiAUCDG5s7ImJVtfbHpvuPtVvS0tjq7rmRA4/viewform. And if you'd like to see some data visualizations of these dates, visit https://suemendelsohn.wordpress.com/.

From Praxis: "Writing centers are feeling the effects of budget reductions across higher education nationwide. Like other student services that don't offer credits or produce revenue, writing centers are particularly vulnerable to budget cuts. Community colleges, four-year colleges, and universities across the country are asking writing centers to make hard choices- choices that will affect consultant hiring, pay, and benefits as well as hours of operation, services, technological resources, and administration."

From Praxis: "Consultant trainers are also finding that they don't always have to look off campus to shake up their training practices. Conventional boundaries for who receives training and who offers it are also expanding. A tenet of writing center practice is that it makes consultants better teachers and better writers."

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.

crowdsourcing resources for a community college that wants to start a community writing center

a discussion of the types of WC work beyond tutoring that tutors perform

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

CHE article in ProfHacker, on how to start or improve a podcast. For writing centers that want to add podcasts on their websites. 

discussing the oldest WCs that are 100% online

a helpful discussion that defines and explains goals and outcomes (for assessment, SLOs, strategic plans, etc.) see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=18981151

discussion the problems associated with suggesting that students ask their instructors for extensions

a report from an academic skills center that offers tutoring in developmental reading and writing and English intro courses; article on using the center to train potential English teachers; mailing list

U.S. Dept. of Education's page with guidelines for grants for institutions that are developing Hispanic-serving programs. 

The Journal of Response to Writing publishes papers based on research, theory, and/or practice that meaningfully contribute to an understanding of how response practices lead to better writing. JRW has three purposes: 1. Provide a venue for theorizing and reporting ground-breaking research on response to writing 2. Invite writing theorists, researchers, and practitioners to a venue to share their work with one another and colleagues in adjacent fields, most notably Composition, Applied Linguistics, and Foreign Language teaching viz a viz L1 and L2 writing 3. Provide new or inexperienced teachers with immediate suggestions for use in giving, encouraging, or managing responses to their students' writing

discussing tools that help students assess their own skills and needs

discussing names that encompass all services

Suggests that writing centers should look to Long's Reactive Behavior Patters in order to better understand writer and writing center consultant behavior.