Writing Center Class Fall 2018

As others have already said, the wide variety of students served by the writing center makes research vital. The students I've worked with so far have come from different disciplines, backgrounds, and respond to different types of feedback. I see myself assuming too often that a student will learn the same way I do, or need the same sort of support. Coming to our meetings with an understanding of the variety of different learning styles and needs will not only make tutors more effective, but also more efficient, limiting dead-end attempts at teaching students in ways that aren'e accessible for them.   The area of variability that I've put the most energy into identifying and addressing is in scope of information learned. It would be easy to provide all the right information to help a student improve a paper without actually leaving an impact on the student. Perhaps the instruction was t...

As many others have echoed in their blog posts, I think the most important reason that Writing Centers conduct and share their research relates to the sheer breadth of disciplines we see as tutors. Over the past two weeks I have seen a Masters student in Urban Planning, PhD students in Chemistry and Quantitative Sociology, a first-year in Rhetoric, and a senior doing her Thesis (three of these students are English-language learners). The research that we have ready over the course of the semester, particularly the case studies and "Transfer-Based Issues" worksheet, have allowed me to fill the gaps in my own knowledge as a tutor, and meet my individual students as a helpful, resourceful mentor. At the beginning of the semester, I did not have the language to describe grammatical or syntactic transfer, or the knowledge of dialects that might make it possible for me to have more authentic, productive conversations with students who don't speak or write Standard American Engl...

For me, research in the writing center setting feels crucial in that it can serve to address questions that come up across so many disciplines. Because writing centers often see students from a wide cross-section of the University community, research has the ability to address how we serve students in a variety of fields and demographics. I'm especially interested in my WC enrollment student who may have dyslexia and the gaps that we saw during last week's class between the University's resources for learning disabilities, our students' instructors, and the Writing Center.  Research can help to bridge those gaps by identifying specific writing center populations and their needs and then taking this identification a step further by asking questions about how these students write, how their instructors teach, how we can best serve them, how they respond to feedback, what type of feedback "works" for which students from which backgrounds and in which contexts, ...

While reading Chapter 8 of The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors , I was pleasantly surprised to learn that tutors are the ones doing the research on tutoring. It seems like so many fields have research that is conducted by people outside the actual field, or people in the field who aren’t the ones actually applying the information. Especially in terms of tutoring where all of the work is personal, up close, and specifically tailored to a case by case basis, it seems vital for a researcher to be in tune with the practice of tutoring. I was intrigued by the essay referenced in this chapter that aimed to raise awareness about the “ethical considerations and pedagogical implications of using plagiarism detection software.” I recently had a student come in and ask if it was alright if he had a 90% original score from Turnitin. I’m honestly not very familiar with the system. I felt that 90% seemed like a good score, but I was not sure if that was enough to avoid being accused of plagia...

I think it's important for WC staff to perform research because, as Bedford points out, WC tutors have to compel their students to improve their writing even when we don't always know how best to compel them. Further research will hopefully continue to clarify how best to tailor a session to every student's individual needs, but for now I feel swaths of information are still missing. I feel this particularly acutely with my PhD statistics student. I've talked about the difficulties of working with a student who is producing a type of writing that feels fundamentally different to the writing I normally work with (so, writing that revolves around mathematical formulas instead of language analysis), and I'd be interested to see research conducted on how to best serve the writing of mathematicians. Although I'm trying my best with this student, in my heart of hearts, I cannot believe that I am truly helping her "grow" as a writer - each week I think I'...

I enjoyed reading Lorraine's Story and having the opportunity to situate myself in another tutor's experience in our writing center, and tutoring mostly academically while also being enrolled in a creative program. I pursued the social sciences as an undergrad, so I really enjoyed this piece because I could see major aspects of my mindset and approach in both Lorraine and Brian. I was interested in the 'debate' between the two and appreciated the democratic approach to disagreement that I feel can only really occur in a Writing Center (in opposition to a classroom with the hierarchal dynamic). I didn't love the sort of hard-line approach to academic writing as bad that the writer took -- I felt like there are so many incredible bridge authors in the interdisciplinary academy of the 21st century -- I'm thinking of people like bell hooks or Maggie Nelson who weave theory, personal writing, and creativity into their writing in really delightful ways. Even the aut...