The Online Writing Center, Uncategorized

Hearing Feelings and Visualizing Readers: Integrating Screencasting into Asynchronous Instruction

By Dominique Bourg Hacker – Before my work began as Coordinator of the Online Writing Center, I knew that I wanted to integrate screencasting into the email consultants’ workload. Screencasting is a video recording of your computer screen accompanied by voice narration. My predecessor, Mike Shapiro, had experimented with the technology in Summer 2014 and […]

The Online Writing Center

This rant is asynchronous

By Mike A. Shapiro This is Mike’s sixth year at the Writing Center. He is the 2012–13 TA coordinator of our Online Writing Center. Since 2010, he has worked as a tutor for the Pearson Tutor Services Online Writing Lab. Writing centers use the phrase asynchronous online writing instruction to describe this sequence: A student sends […]

IWCA, Writing Center Conference, Writing Centers

Reuniting in the Write Place: Rediscovering Community at the IWCA Collaborative

Introduction by Jennifer Conrad and Ellen Cecil-Lemkin—The 2023 IWCA Collaborative took place in Chicago on Wednesday, February 15 and marked our first return to in-person conferencing since 2019, the year prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The original call for proposals centered on a consideration of “writing center relationships, partnerships, and coalitions,” as well as the benefits of shared embodied presence with colleagues across the field of writing center studies. For us, there was a special energy about returning to a shared physical space, getting to see […]

Covid, Graduate Students, Writing Center Tutors

Creating Space: Building a Writing Center for Graduate Students

By Dr. Yvonne Lee, Lehigh University—Working with graduate writers is currently a topic being discussed in the literature, and much of what is being discussed is the uniqueness and liminality of the situation in which graduate student writers find themselves (Jewell & Cheatle, 2021; Lawrence & Zawacki, 2018; Russell-Pinson & Jafarian, 2020; Simpson et al., 2016). To many, graduate writers should already be experts in writing in their fields. To others, they are novice insiders who are still learning the practices and expectations of their fields.  […]

Diversity and Inclusion, Graduate Students, Peer Tutoring, Queer Theory, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

The Queer Tutor: Affirmation of Identity Through Writing Center Work

By Molly Ryan, Virginia Tech—I remember my first day of writing center tutoring distinctly: I can see the desk I selected, third from the front by one of the large windows on the outer wall of the second floor of Newman library at Virginia Tech. I remember the brightly colored Crayola markers laid out for tutors, selecting the black marker to write my name on my identifying tag, and then […]

Peer Tutoring, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

Weddings, Selfies, and Writers: Validation and Sustainable Emotional Labor Practices in Writing Centers

By Rachel Azima, University of Nebraska-Lincoln—So what could an overwhelmingly queer fandom in 2022-23, the aggressively cishet space of a wedding planning message board in the early aughts, and writing centers possibly have in common, besides being spaces/communities where I have been or am an enthusiastic participant? More than you might imagine, it turns out.

Graduate Students, Multilingual Writers, Technology, The Online Writing Center, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors

Illuminating the Writer Behind the Draft: Insights on Written Feedback Appointments

By Samitha Senanayake—After completing an asynchronous feedback appointment and glancing, often with tired eyes, at the neat blocks of paragraphs in the global or summary comment, I feel good: job done! But it’s only recently that I’ve begun to wonder what the same paragraphs might make a student feel. Even before they read the text, what must feedback in the form of  paragraphs feel like, sound like? In the same way, does a track change on Microsoft Word […]

Diversity and Inclusion, Events, Graduate Students, IWCA, Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Social Justice, Writing Center Conference, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors

Writing Center Affiliates’ Recent Conference Participation 

By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin—The first in-person International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) Conference since 2019 was held from October 26 to 29, 2022 at Vancouver, British Columbia. Sherry Wynn Perdue, IWCA president, wrote, “Attended by almost 500 members from all over the world, our annual conference offered presenters and attendees an opportunity to converse and conspire, so we may reconceive our roles as […]

Covid, Higher Education, Writing Centers

Pandemic Transitions: Be(com)ing a New Writing Center Director During COVID-19

By Amanda May, New Mexico Highlands University—Picture it: Tallahassee 2020. I was preparing to send my dissertation to the committee for my defense after a tumultuous final semester as assistant director. No part of writing center experience or scholarship prepared me to help transition from in-person services to fully online services in response to the pandemic, facing challenges similar to those described by Marilee Giles and colleagues. To make matters more difficult, I was also on the job market. […]