By Mike A. Shapiro Mike worked as a tutor at the Writing Center at UW–Madison for five years, and as a coordinator for two. This fall, he is teaching first-year composition in the College of Engineering. As Julia Dauer wrote earlier this fall, writing tutors often balance diverse instructional lives. But what happens when that […]
Warm breezes waft down State Street, students linger on Memorial Terrace, and a thousand construction vehicles purr in the gravel-filled trenches that used to be our roads and sidewalks. It’s August in Madison, and the Writing Center is open. Many of the Writing Center’s programs continue over the summer—instruction, Fellowing, outreach, and workshops, among others—with a […]
Ineffective and effective practices for commenting on student writing By Mike A. Shapiro, @mikeshapiro, TA and Co-Coordinator in the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Those of us lucky enough to teach in a classroom or tutor in a writing center recognize how much learning can happen in a 30-minute conversation. Spending those same […]
By Andy Karr Andy Karr is Coordinator of the Wausau Homes Learning Center and Lecturer in English at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County. Andy worked from 2008-2010 in the UW-Madison Writing Center. He is completing a dissertation on writing and thinking in general education. The University of Wisconsin-Marathon County is one of the thirteen two-year […]
By Mike A. Shapiro, @mikeshapiro. Mike is a graduate student at UW–Madison, where he is completing a Ph.D. on the modern novel and where he is a TA in the Writing Center. At last week’s Midwest Writing Centers Association conference, we asked the folks who attended our panel whether their centers were tutoring online. Many […]
By Mike Shapiro, a graduate student and the online coordinator of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Writing Center. At its best, Twitter looks like the perfect tool for promoting any writing center’s goals: it privileges writing, supports lively conversations, and develops long-term relationships between writers and readers. Twitter can remind students, faculty, and administrators, every day, […]
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 […]
