Group items tagged

"College readiness has several dimensions, but of particular import is readiness to produce scholarly work that meets the expectations of college instructors. Differences from high school and college are well documented in the literature, and this study adds to that body of work by delineating the characteristics of first-year college assignments through a qualitative analysis of college faculty assignment instructions. Three themes emerge from the analysis: information literacy, especially initiating inquiry; academic writing, especially citing evidence in support of a thesis; learner dispositions, especially curiosity, open-mindedness, self-reliance, and perseverance. Findings have implications for high school library programs and high school teachers as well as librarians working with first-year college students."

A copy and paste, comment-shaping tool for online aysnchronous consultations. Aims to help consultants address common surface, global, citation and plagiarism issues in online student work.

"The E-Consulting UBERdoc" is a comment-shaping tool for online asynchronous consultations. This document aims to help consultants address common surface, global, citation, and plagiarism issues in online student work.

""The E-Consulting UBERdoc" is a comment-shaping tool for online asynchronous consultations. This document aims to help consultants address common surface, global, citation, and plagiarism issues in online student work."

Faculty and writing center tutors bring expertise to writing as practice and pro-cess. Yet at many institutions, the two groups work in relative isolation, missing opportunities to learn from each other. In this article, I describe a faculty de-velopment initiative in a multidisciplinary writing program that brings together new faculty and experienced undergraduate tutors to workshop instructors' com-ments on first-year writing. The purpose of these workshops is to assist faculty in crafting inquiry-driven written responses that pave the way for collaborative faculty-student conferences. By bringing together scholarly conversations on tu-tor expertise and the role of faculty comments in student learning, I argue for the value of extending partnerships between writing centers and programs. Such ac-counts are important to the field for challenging what Grutsch McKinney (2013) calls the "writing center grand narrative," which limits the scope of writing center work by imagining centers primarily as "comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing" to the exclusion of lived realities (p. 3). In this case, I describe a writing center where tutors bring their expertise outside the center and into the faculty office, consulting in small groups with faculty with the aim of enriching the quality of instructor feedback in first-year seminars.

a discussion of directive vs. non-directive methods and other techniques for working with developmental writers

Berkeley Electronic Press Selected Works: "Instruction, Cognitive Scaffolding, and Motivational Scaffolding in Writing Center Tutoring" and "Questioning in Writing Center Conferences"

Marin Smith's "Karma-Yoga and Non-Attachment to the Fruits of Work: Tutoring in the University Writing Center" was published in the Fall 2014 issue of the student journal Tutors.

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

a sometimes heated discussion of the role of WCs in anti-oppression work; also covers free speech

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

Article in NCTE's Forum by Nicole Caswell, Jackie Grutsch McKinney, and Rebecca Jackson, "A Glimpse into the Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors." pp. A3-7. This issue of Forum focuses on "Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty." Vol. 18.1 (Fall 2014). Access on the NCTE site is limited to NCTE members, but readers may have access through institutional libraries with databases of online publications. Article focuses on who does the work of directing and what work do new directors perform.

discussing how to help a tutor work with a student who has hygiene issues

The goal of the WPA Census is to create an online database that would serve as a first stop for people to find answers to questions that come up often in writing program administration practice and research.  The WPA Census embodies the idea that the administrative work of WPAs, WCDs, and WAC directors is scholarship. By ultimately providing these directors with a database that catalogs and organizes the diversity of writing programs, the Census will allow researchers to analyze macro- and micro-trends in the landscape of US institutions.

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.

"What can peer writing tutors do when they work with writers whose nervousness seems to get in the way of writing?"

survey results on writing in the workplace/ on-the-job writing

a discussion about candidates for part-time tutoring work who have extensive experience in the field

"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 offering tutoring services for students working on CVs