The UP Writing Center—an awesome peer-tutoring resource that can support student writers from any discipline—opens August 29 for the semester. After a successful year of online tutoring, we will now be moving to a hybrid model where students can choose to meet their Writing Assistant online (via Zoom) or in person in the Learning Commons (BC 163). We count on faculty to get the word out to students about this valuable resource, so please consider encouraging your students to seek us out. Our 24 Writing Assistants (WAs), representing 14 majors and all five UP colleges, can help writers from all disciplines, at all levels, and at any stage of the process, from brainstorming ideas, understanding assignments, outlining, to revising. Students can book appointments through our online scheduler and explore our website for writing-related resources.
One of the best means of getting students to bring their work-in-progress to the Writing Center is for faculty themselves to encourage them to do so (some professors require at least one visit; some give extra credit to students for using our services). When talking to your students about the UP Writing Center, you might keep in mind the following:
- Our goal is not just to inspire better papers, but create better writers. This means we don’t “fix” papers; we work with students to improve their overall writing skills for this and future tasks.
- Writing assistance isn’t just for students with major grammar or mechanical problems. Instead, we focus on higher-order concepts such as argument, organization, development, and other areas. Even accomplished writers can make progress on their work in a half-hour session.
- Our Writing Assistants represent most majors as well as the professional schools, and they are trained in a semester-long course to work with students from any discipline.
- You may have found that your students weren’t able to find appointment times in past semesters, especially in early fall as we await the newly trained Writing Assistants to come on staff. We’ve fixed that problem this semester, preparing the new Writing Assistants to begin working earlier in the term—so reassure students that if they want writing help, they should be able to get it!
- When a student meets with a Writing Assistant to discuss a paper for your course, you’ll get a copy of the conference report—a brief summary of what the student and Writing Assistant worked on (This is an easy way of keeping track of who visited the WC for assigning extra credit, e.g.).
A highly effective way to familiarize your students with the Writing Center and to demonstrate your support for our services is to invite a Writing Assistant to drop in to your classroom to give a 5-10 minute presentation during the first few weeks of the semester. Email our hotline writing@up.edu with the day and time of the class you’d like a Writing Assistant to visit and we’ll get back to you shortly.
UP no longer requires students in writing-embedded courses (English 112 and Philosophy 150) to purchase the Pocket Cengage Handbook, so if you’d like to refer your students to a reputable resource for issues of grammar, mechanics, and citation, we recommend the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL).
To foster student writing integrity at UP (i.e., find cases of plagiarism when they occur), consider using the Turnitin function through your class Moodle page. When creating the online assignment to which students will upload their papers, simply toggle on the “Turnitin” switch and papers will be automatically screened for plagiarized content.
Finally: as the Director of the Writing Center, I (Molly Hiro, English) am happy to be a point of contact on all writing-related matters this semester. Would you like a designated Writing Assistant to work with you and your students this term? Do you need insight on crafting better writing prompts? Help with strategies for evaluating student writing? I may not have all the answers, but feel free to try me: hiro@up.edu.