Julia #9

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 too intimidating or too narrow or too overbearing. I'm interested in research that can help us understand better what kinds of help provided in the writing center carry over to future work, and what is limited to a specific class or paper. 

Comments

  1. WarrenOctober 31, 2018 at 11:14 AM

    Hi Julia,

    I think that's a great area of potential research. All too often, it's unknown whether what we do actually helps students; if it does, it's often unclear how it helps students or how lasting it is. Students often fill out feedback forms, but what becomes of those forms? What do we do with them? Further, the feedback forms tend to be limited to one session, not several sessions or a semester's worth of sessions. I think there's a lot that could be explored here.

    Warren

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