PeerCentered

It's quiet here on June 30 in Bellingham, Washington. Our little Center is plugging along with two tutors--there is no funding for a director in the summer, so my role is as additional (emergency?) support only. Our WC's open just 8 hours a week this summer, mid-day Monday through Thursday. I was in there a while ago, and we had "no customers." Like I said, it's quiet. That's nice, though, after the hectic pace of the rest of the year! The trick, I guess, is to let the quiet help me make room for some new ideas rather than lull me to sleep.... But of course there's nothing wrong with a nice long nap, either. Sherri Winans Whatcom Community College

We had a staff meeting today and talked about methods to get student writers to make follow-up appointments. There were a lot of good suggestions--anywhere from having a "most improved paper" contest to changing our report form to emphasize making new appointments. I think, however, the most valid perception that one of the tutors gave was to make sure one is not in a "one shot" mindset. In other words, if the tutor is thinking that this is the only time that he/she will meet with the student, than that will probably be communicated to the student writer unintentionally. The best thing to do is to go in with the open mindset that the student will be coming back, and that this session is one of many to come.

Welcome to Peer Centered. Hopefully we can stir up enough interest to get folks posting here. We had a fitfull start last fall, but then when the semester hit, people forgot about it. We'll see how it goes for the summer. I have plans to heavily advertise in the fall.

Hello there everyone; I am Mark Jeremiah Boone, Writing Center peer tutor at Dallas Baptist University; I am new to the blog. I want to talk about postmodernism/premodernism as it pertains to the reading/interpretation of a text. In my own experience here I have noticed little relevance of the issue except when perusing student's papers for English classes. My knowledge of the subject includes several philosophy courses and the fact that I have read books on postmodernism by premodern authors (Francis Schaeffer), books I would simply describe as "premodern" (for instance, CS Lewis), books I would call "postmodern" (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and a little Heiddegger), and books that have aspects of a Christian postmodernism (Gilbert Keith Chesterton). I have also taken classes with both premodern and postmodern professors. The issue, as I understand it, is this: premodernism's creed regarding hermeneutics (of Scripture or any other text) is that there...

I advertised PeerCentered on WCENTER the other day. Let's hope that more folks take interest in it. I suppose it didn't garner that much interest initially because of the shifting nature of writing center work. The summer has been relatively quiet so far. We started a few weeks back, and things have finally started to pick up. People get antsy when there are few students to meet with, so we've been doing things for the web site.

I had the opportunity to go up to the University of Utah the other day. They are starting up a writing center. Even in our tight budget times, they managed to swing fundingr. My friend and colleague Tif spent time talking to Raul Sanches, the person organizing it, discussing issues that tend to come up with writing centers at their inception, and, in general, discussing the prospects of a University Writing Center. We then went over to where the new writing center will be, and I will have to say I'm jealous. It is in the former card catalog room of the old part of the Marriott Library--a big old atrium that goes up 5 floors and (now) has a huge skylight at the top. The space borders on a big computer lab/reading room, as well as general reference--seemingly the center of that part of the library. I told them I was jealous of their set up, but then again, as Tif said, we have a pretty good set up as well. No marble, mind you, but we've worked hard with what we were given. ...

Blech summer is getting off to a rotten start--budget cuts--combative student writers--a general feeling of angst.

Well another year in the Writing Center is over. It has been a tough year, in all, having to face down a shrinking budget which means fewer students to work with more and more student writers. Ah well, I survived. Sad news at the end of it all--our new Community Writing Center (a service for out-of-school adults) is facing the budget ax. There are good folks here who are working to save it. Peer Centered the blog hasn't been extraordinarilly successful, but I think i am going to let it continue and really advertise it next fall. In the meantime, dear reader, I hope your summer goes well.

Ah what an interesting day in the Center. Aside from the normal number of bustling students, we had an impromtu gathering of faculty who sat on the couch and talked about comp/rhet pedagogical theory. This used to happen quite a bit my early history here, but had died off over the past few years. We recently hired three new faculty, and they are having a good effect on our overall faculty. All this was inspired from a movement in our WC to start weekly discussion on teaching/comp/rhet theory.

I guess we've all neglected poor PeerCentered. Time to rectify. It has been a busy semester--I am always intrigued by those posts on WCENTER about drops in usage for Spring semester at other institutions. I've never had that experience here at Salt Lake Community College. I sometimes think we are even busier in the Spring than in the fall. I am sure that is due to the nature of our institution. Last week was Spring Break, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Right before SB we were getting some "cranky" students. This of course put the tutoring staff on edge. The break was nice. Right now I look out across the Writing Center and see groups of writers chatting away and working on pieces. There is an discussion about the war in the corner on the couches. Outside there is a gentle desert rain.

Ah--another semester completed. It is quiet in the Writng Center. The lights are out. The door is shut. I miss the bustle.

I know I haven't posted anything in a long time, but I would like to respond to the question regarding plagiarism. Occasionally at our meetings, we talk about the issue of plagiarism. We usually talk about plagiarism in a tutorial if parts of the paper seem different from the rest or if the student asks for help with quoting and/or citing sources. It's definitely a delicate issue when it comes to identifying plagiarism and whether the tutor should mention possible plagiarism to the professor. I'd also love to hear any additional comments, ideas, etc. about dealing with plagiarism. Anne, undergrad tutor, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

Hi, Sherri here, from Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, WA. (I believe this is my first post--I just already goofed and lost some text....) Andrea's post on paraphrasing and quoting reminds me of a topic I'm curious to hear from others about. During sessions, do you talk about plagiarism much? The tutors here in our Writing Center say they don't really think or talk about it too often, maybe just when the writer has mentioned it. But I've found that when I read a passage that doesn't sound like the rest of a paper and I say something about that, the writer and I will often have a really interesting conversation about plagiarism and quoting. ( The most recent interesting conversation I had was with a student in a speech class--he was thinking there were different "rules" for quoting in speeches--and maybe there are?) Just curious.

Sure sounds like you had a good season there, Andrea--more than just a little. I wonder why we worry so much about the effects of our sessions? Do lawyers put this much investment into their discussions with clients? Doctors? Now on to other business, I was thinking of adding a comment feature to the blog. What do you all think?

Writing Center Journal-November 18, 2002 Sometimes some writing center sessions are just extremely difficult. I have recently had one of these such sessions. An older man came in with a paper on MRI machines. He had quoted everything and wanted to know about paraphrasing. I explained to him the differences, and suggested that he have only a few quotes. I worried that I had not gotten through to him. A few days later, I saw another tutor was helping him with his paper. After the session ended, I asked her about his quotation problems. She said that his paper looked great, and he just had some documentation problems. Something I suggested must have helped him at least a little.

Your post brings to mind the recent "Why we live in the WC" thread on WCenter, Clint. Hope things keep humming along nicely for you. Liz

I am amazed that it is November already. Things are humming along nicely in the WC; there haven't been that many stressed-out students, but I'm sure that some will begin to pop up now that we are closing in on the end of the term. It started to snow the other day, and we all gathered by the window, student writers, peer consultants, faculty, and myself and watched. It was nice to think of the metaphor of a writing center as a warm, inviting place, in the heart of a storm.

Hi Neal, Your wrote, "But isn't it sorta unfortunate that the medium itself makes us have to try that much harder?" I couldn't agree more. More later, Liz

In response to Clint's message about "paperlessness" on October 22nd, I am one of those students who emails their pepers rather than turn in a paper copy! I think it's great, since I can send it as soon as I finish it, rather than print it out and leave it on the printer or the coffee table when I leave for class. As far as physical writing centers and how this will affect our work therein, I can see a future of tutors sequestered in cubicles, each with it's own computer; physical tutoring will be so uncommon that it will actually take place in the lounge instead of the cubes where we now work. Good or bad? It's really anyone's guess.

Hi, all and thanks to Clint for getting things up and blogging. I'm Neal Lerner, and I've logged on to this site because I'm currently not in a writing center (either directing or tutoring), and I miss it! So I thought I'd get some vicarious thrills by reading about your experiences and contributing my occasional two cents. What I am currently doing is working in a WAC program at MIT; I teach a course on writing in biology and work with students in a management course who are writing a required paper (this is all part of MIT's new Communications-Intensive course requirement). At any rate, I just finished responding to lots of those management papers, and it really reminded me of on-line tutoring. I had little context for what students were writing, the assignment was vague, and my sole means of interactions was through written feedback on the students' texts. It wasn't particularly satisfying (and, yes, I did invite each and every one of them to meet ...

Hello Again, Andrea, we've had the same experience at DePaul, and I agree it is especially challenging to work online with a student who does not seem to understand the assignment. We work online with entire classes, in one of our services, which enables us to have access to a copy of the assignment handout. We ask students to use a form on our web site to send us their drafts, which includes a field where they must explain their assignment. Although these explanations can be too abbreviated or otherwise unhelpful, when those students are part of the online class link-up, we can compare the students' versions with the instructor's handout (an interesting exercise in compare-contrast, sometimes!). I think one of our next sets of challenges is to find ways to engage students in an online discussion about their work. Like their in-person counterparts, online "clients" often wait until the last minute to contact us, so an online discussion might be impossi...

October 28, 2002 Today, (at the Weber State University Writing Center) I did several "onlines" (corrected papers sent by E-mail). Many of the students were writing papers about civil disobedience, but they did not seem to understand what it really is. Many of the examples the students gave were of violent ways to solve a problem. It can be particularly difficult to help students with online papers, who do not seem to understand their own assignments. As tutors, we understand the assignment even less than they do. We are not in the class, and we are not able to talk to the tutees in person. However, in this case, since we had several students submitting papers from the same class and for the same assignment, I got a general view about what was expected of each student.

I've been thinking a lot lately about "paperlessness." In the long run, it would seem that student writers are going to be submitting their writing for their classes electronically instead of the traditional paper route. In the classes I teach, a good percentage of the students do this already. In all I think we as writing center folk need to be ready for such work, and equip ourselves to be able to respond to it. While I think the physical writing center will always exist, I think that even it will change as physical artifacts disappear.

I love the "let's pause for the cause" phrase. You'll have to tell me where you got that, Liz. Anyway, I think "shut up and listen" is one of the better pieces of advice that I've received too. In fact, a couple of tutors from DePaul's Writing Center were talking about how long we're supposed to shut up and listen in our sessions. We read an article by Muriel Harris that suggests a 15-second rule, but we all agreed that 15 seconds really wasn't long enough. I've found that if I wait a little longer, I'm often rewarded by a surprisingly insightful or dead-on response from my student, and I think waiting for those moments are worth it. They build that student's confidence in her ability to come up with the answer herself. -- Faith

Hi, I thought I would throw out a question as well. At Truman State University Writing Center I am on the planning commitee and we recently decided to do workshops on topics such as Grammar & Mechanics, Turabian style, etc. We are having a slow time getting off the ground and I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for aspects such as how to publicize the workshops, how often to hold them (1 a week? 2? 3?) and other related information. If anyone has more experience with workshops I would appreciate the info. Thanks, Abigail

I just wrapped up an unbearably slow week at the University of Houston Writing Center - but I did manage to get caught up on all of my assignments! I work M-Th in the evenings, so I can't really speak for the midday tutors, but my shift has been very quiet as of late. However, I have noticed that the same faces keep showing up each week to work on new assignments; I find this very encouraging because it shows a willingness and desire for improvement on the part of these students. It also shows, I think, that our efforts are valued by the student body (or at least by a select portion of the student body).

Hello All, I'm Liz Coughlin, assistant director of DePaul University's Writing Centers (hi Faith). I look foward to being a part of this community. Thank you, Clint, for setting it up. The "best advice" that you cite for Faith is one I'd second. Those "Let's pause for the cause" moments are often the most productive, and they're worth reaching for. I'm afraid I have to sign off now -- I have way too many meetings these days -- but will look in on our blog and post something again as soon as I can. Liz

Hello, My name is Andrea Carter, and I am a new blogger from Weber State University. This is my second year working at the writing center. I am a history teaching major and English teaching minor at WSU. I look forward to joining your group. --Andrea

We had a communal meeting between the Student Writing Center consultants and the Community Writing Center Writing Assistants. The Community Writing Center is one of SLCC's outreach programs. It is basically designed for all out-of-school adults. Although one-to-one writing consultations is a part of their service, they deal mostly with things like workshops etc. In any case the one-to-one service has started to pick up down there. The topic was "Help." In the discussion the folks explored what is too much and too little help. I tried to keep quiet during the meeting in order to let others talk. (As you might guess I am big into fostering peer tutor/consultant voices.) The discussion was healthy and honest, I think, and I think folks came away having learned a great deal about their practice. In all the meeting was pretty productive, and it is good to see that the Community Writing Center folks are still on the same page as us eventhough they deal with a vast...

A big howdy to all the new bloggerians. The most valuable piece of advice about tutoring I've received? Duck and cover! OK just kidding, but I couldn't resist being a smart alek. I have to think back to when I was a quasi-peer tutor (I was working in a WC as a grad student), and the best bit of advice came from a student I was working with. I was talking a lot to the student and she said "Hang on a second. I need to think about this." What it boils down to is knowing when to shut up and let some write.