Category: The Online Writing Center

The entrance of the Noble Writing Center, located at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. Photo courtesy of Academic Support Network.

Writer’s Dual: Student Support in a Hybrid World

Higher Education, Technology, The Online Writing Center, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Centers

By Daniella Peinado, Dava Newell, Lisa Diethelm, and Jessica Jones—Supporting students’ writing online has been a topic of conversation in writing centers for decades. Muriel Harris discussed incorporating technology into writing centers in 2000, and in 2009, Neaderhiser and Wolfe reviewed ways writing centers were using new technology tools to support writing centers. The Academic Support Network (ASN) at Arizona State University (ASU) has developed a dual-modality tutoring model which taught us how to identify our core goals for supporting student’s writing to then use available technologies to adapt and meet those goals. […]

October 31, 2023
Five people holding up a colorful, cutout speech bubble that covers their face.

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

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

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 […]

November 29, 2022
OWCA circular logo on top of laptop keyboard

Centering Interdependence: The Inaugural OWCA Conference

Events, Online Writing Centers Association, The Online Writing Center, Writing Center Conference

By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin—Last week was the inaugural Online Writing Centers Association’s (OWCA) conference. OWCA is a new professional association (founded in 2020) with the mission of providing support to online writing centers, their professionals, and area of study. Starting off their first annual conference, OWCA’s call for proposals (CFP) invited presenters to consider a theme of interdependence […]

October 12, 2021

Staying Networked: Writing Centers, Social Media, and Pandemic Shifts

Covid, Higher Education, Technology, The Online Writing Center, Writing Centers

By Amanda May—My investment in writing center social media usage and non-usage grew out of my personal and professional social media practice. I still remember going to the Southeastern Writing Center Association’s 2016 conference and meeting Molly Wright, who ran the Facebook group Writing Center Network. At the time, that was my only connection to the writing center field because I was the sole writing center employee on campus. Molly convinced me to join Twitter because of #wcchat, a biweekly professional event that writing center administrators and tutors used to discuss writing center issues. […]

March 30, 2021

Ongoingness: Reflections from within a Pandemic

Graduate Students, Higher Education, The Online Writing Center, Writing Center Academic Staff, Writing Center History, Writing Center Tutors

By Jennifer Conrad—When we entered the spaces of online learning a year ago, few of us could have guessed what the time would hold. On the one hand, this past year has been one of shared experience: all of us are finding our way through a global pandemic, with all of its uncertainty, political and social unrest, boredom, loneliness, and other associated experiences. On the other hand, this time has been one that is deeply individual: each of us passing time in our quarantine “bubbles.”

March 16, 2021

Conversation Starter: Social Media and the Writing Center

Big 10 Writing Centers, Community Writing Assistance, Events, Higher Education, International Writing Centers, Outreach, Social Justice Committee, The Online Writing Center, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Receptionists, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Center Workshops, Writing Centers, Writing Fellows

By Jennifer Fandel—I have two words of advice on using social media in the Writing Center—embrace it!

And, to be absolutely honest and establish my hard-won credibility on the subject, let me say that I’m, personally, no social media devotee. But I have seen what social media can do, and […]

December 12, 2018
A person of color typing on a laptop

Behind the Scenes at the UW-Madison Writing Center’s Online Writer’s Handbook

Peer Tutoring, Technology, The Online Writing Center, Tutor Publications

By Bradley Hughes—always think that strong writing centers have core principles and commitments and passions at (and in) their hearts. Our Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, is all about a few core ideas, values, and commitments—we’re about supporting high-level writing across all academic disciplines, writing which is absolutely central to learning and to research across the university and in the professional and civic and non-profit worlds our graduates will enter (I always say that research universities really do run on writing); we’re about supporting ALL student-writers, from undergraduates through advanced doctoral students, from every discipline, from all kinds of backgrounds […]

February 13, 2018
A map of the UW-Madison campus, with blue stars showing locations of Writing Center satellite locations and many more red stars showing locations of Outreach events. The red stars are clustered around academic buildings on the east side of campus, with a significant separate cluster at the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine and Public Health on the west side of campus.

The Impact of Writing Center Outreach: Empirical and Anecdotal Evidence

Classes, Collaborative Learning, Outreach, Satellite Locations, The Online Writing Center, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Workshops

By Leah Pope—Every semester, the Outreach team of the UW-Madison Writing Center devotes dozens of hours to visiting classrooms, workshops, resource fairs, and student organizations to deliver brief introductions to the Writing Center’s services and teach or co-teach workshops on various genres and aspects of writing. As the TA Coordinator of Outreach this year, I have the unique pleasure of a bird’s-eye-view of Outreach teaching […]

November 7, 2016

Hearing Feelings and Visualizing Readers: Integrating Screencasting into Asynchronous Instruction

The Online Writing Center, Uncategorized

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 […]

May 4, 2016

Who Am I?

Technology, The Online Writing Center, Undergraduate Students

Jessie Gurd is the 2014–2015 TA Coordinator for the Online Writing Center and a PhD student in Literary Studies; she has been an instructor at the Writing Center since the Fall of 2012. Jessie studies early modern English drama with a focus on ecocriticism and spatial theory. You can find her on Twitter @jesstype. If the […]

October 20, 2014