Co-Teaching as Synthesis: Learning to Ask Questions


Outreach, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

The students in Professor Rebekah Willett’s first-year course on the Internet and Society are crouched over their desks and laptops, some scribbling, some typing, some doing so fervently, some reluctantly. All are working to formulate a couple of sentences that synthesize two paragraphs of text they have in front of them. I’ve just walked with […]

October 10, 2011

Who Needs a Muse? The Real Reasons Why UW-Madison Students Are Attracted to Ongoing Appointments


Graduate Students, Multilingual Writers, Student Voices, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Rachel Carrales. The summer before last, I spent a month traveling through France, Italy, and Spain. It was a whirlwind trip, and I was only able to spend a day or two in each city I visited. It was so fast, in fact, that I find myself remembering only snippets of things: the fat, […]

October 3, 2011

Is There a Person in This Text? Synchronous Online Writing Instruction and Personhood as a Collaborative Gesture


Satellite Locations, The Online Writing Center, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

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 […]

September 27, 2011

From Visitors to Exiles to Tutors: The Changing Face of the Writing Center


Multilingual Writers, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Paula Gillespie. South Florida is full of surprises. A troop of macaws, probably freed from a zoo or pet store during a hurricane, descends into the trees down the street and spends the morning there, squabbling about which one gets to sit where. Burmese pythons, once pets that are now too large to keep […]

September 21, 2011

Sitting on Top of the World: A Multilingual Writing Center?


Multilingual Writers, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Manuel Herrero-Puertas. In an increasingly globalized world, more students start their papers with the phrase “In an increasingly globalized world. . . .” Stale as this formula sounds, the truth is that globalization leaves no landscape unaltered. Consider academia. More than ever, universities provide international avenues where scholars from different countries meet and exchange […]

April 28, 2011

Starting a slow-writing movement


Collaborative Learning, From the Director, Higher Education, Peer Tutoring, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

As we launched a new semester in our writing center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this past week, I loved listening to the lively buzz in our center emanating from conversations about writing projects.  And as I eavesdropped, I was reminded of how much I value slow, detailed, substantial conversations about writing in progress. Our […]

January 24, 2011