All Graduate Teaching Assistants (TAs) who are beyond their first semester of tutoring in UW-Madison’s Writing Center participate in professional development opportunities, known as Ongoing Education opportunities, affectionately, as an “OGE.” At the start of a semester, Teaching Assistants will often see a description at the top of an OGE selection form that reads as […]
By Sarah Greenfield. The day I met Laura (a pseudonym) was a memorable one. It was a slow day at the Writing Center last January, and I had a free hour in the middle of my shift. Laura was scheduled to meet with me later, but had mistaken the time of our appointment and had […]
By Christopher Syrnyk The physical embodiment treatment . . . When writers come through the doors of the Main Writing Center (WC) at UW-Madison, it’s worth considering how we instructors can process many bits of information about them. Before we meet, we’ve typically reviewed instructor records to prepare us for the session in the here […]
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a long and distinguished history of public service. The guiding philosophy of this commitment to public service, called the “Wisconsin Idea,” is often described as “the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state.” Since I have a scholarly interest in the Wisconsin Idea, I’ve been thinking about […]
By Sarah Iovan One of the things we at the UW Madison Writing Center constantly strive for is to be welcoming and accessible to everyone. Our primary service is to University of Wisconsin-Madison students, but we also try to reach out beyond the campus through the Community Writing Assistance Program, our Writing Center Colloquia, and […]
As a dissertator and the Coordinator of the Online Writing Center, when I’m not untangling late 16th-century poetry, updating the Writing Center’s website, or making sure our synchronous and asynchronous instruction runs smoothly I like to poke around the web to try and figure out how to make the many hours I spend in front […]
From all of us in the UW-Madison Writing Center programs, welcome to a new academic year! We’re off and running on an exciting new year.
Last October the Writing Center held an open house to celebrate the Center’s 40th birthday. Well over 100 students and colleagues came from across campus to— chat with our staff peruse posters about our programs sample our podcasts and our online consultations and videos of in-person consultations nibble on birthday cake from Lane’s Bakery and […]
When we begin instructor training we start with stating that online writing instruction differs from f2f, and its the Coordinators task to lead discussions regarding why good teaching, good learning, and good writing can emerge from networked spaces (Harrington, Rickly, & Day, 2000). Online writing instruction is also a topic that I’ve seen on the wcenter list-serv as writing center directors/coordinators explore the possibility of starting OWCs on their campuses, so I hope to explain in the extremely limited scope of this post a few of these differences and address concerns about the effectiveness of OWI.
