{"id":6140,"date":"2015-10-26T17:40:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T22:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=6140"},"modified":"2025-03-18T16:33:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T21:33:24","slug":"a-case-for-compulsion-on-requiring-whole-class-writing-center-visits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/a-case-for-compulsion-on-requiring-whole-class-writing-center-visits\/","title":{"rendered":"A Case for Compulsion? On Requiring Whole-Class Writing Center Visits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Jessica Citti<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jessica Citti, Ph.D., has tutored in the writing centers at UW-Madison and the University of Iowa, where she also taught composition, rhetoric, and technical communication. She is now the Writing Skills Specialist at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, where she provides one-on-one writing consultations for students and coordinates the HSU Writing Studio.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I remember learning the word \u201cvolition\u201d in college. A friend used it over the phone (a phone with a cord, attached to a wall) and I was impressed. Volition. A word from the medieval Latin: <\/span>vol\u014d<\/span><\/i>, I wish, I will.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jessica<\/a>
Jessica Citti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later, after tutoring in writing centers at large public universities in the midwest, I came to think of this word in relation to writing center visits. While an occasional referral might be appropriate, students should come of their own volition. Stephen North sums up the problem with mandatory visits in \u201cThe Idea of a Writing Center,\u201d suggesting that such requirements\u2014while well-intentioned\u2014don\u2019t carry lasting impact: \u201cOccasionally we manage to convert such writers from people who have to see us to people who want to, but most often they either come as if for a kind of detention, or they drift away\u201d (440). <\/span><\/p>\n

Mandatory whole-class visits can create hardships for the center, the students, and the tutors. First, having a whole class descend upon the writing center could be an administrative nightmare. Students could overwhelm the center with last-minute requests for appointments, turning what was intended to be a positive experience into a decidedly negative one. Secondly, requiring visits within a specific time frame burdens already-overwhelmed students unable to fit an appointment into their schedules.<\/p>\n

Another reason to discourage required visits is pedagogical: peer-to-peer tutoring in the writing center relies on \u201cflexibility and interaction\u201d (Harris 29); as North and others suggest, writers who don\u2019t self-select may resist engaging in conversation or accepting feedback. Also, mandatory, whole-class appointments can be hard on tutors: working with large numbers of sometimes reluctant students who continually request documentation can make tutors feel like they are validating parking stubs rather than helping their peers develop as writers. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Aracata<\/a>
Image credit: TownMapsUSA.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Writing Studio at HSU<\/h2>\n

With this perspective, I joined the writing and learning community at Humboldt State University (HSU) in Arcata, California, the northernmost university within the California State (CSU) system. HSU is distinctive among other CSUs given its remote location along the longest undeveloped coastline in the state\u00a0and among ancient redwood trees that feed on coastal fogs. Many students from southern California are attracted to its strong programs in natural resources and conservation, biological sciences, and art, to name a few. Attending HSU also gives many of these students an opportunity to study as far away from home as possible while remaining in-state.<\/p>\n

The Writing Studio, staffed by undergraduate and graduate students from a range of majors, is nestled among other units of the Learning Center (science tutoring, course-specific tutoring, supplemental instruction, study skills tutoring, and math tutoring). Most of the other tutoring is drop-in, for credit, or by prearrangement; the Writing Studio offers some drop-in hours but is primarily appointment-based.<\/p>\n

When I learned that some faculty make visiting the Writing Studio a whole-class requirement, alarms sounded in my head: You can\u2019t require such things! They must happen naturally! What about volition? But I was new and wanted to respect current practices; also, I was curious how required visits worked at HSU, a relatively small university.<\/p>\n

Not so bad after all?<\/h3>\n

A quick perusal of the literature challenges the assumption that required whole-class visits to the writing center\u00a0will result in negative attitudes, unproductive sessions, and one-off visits. Individual studies by Barbara Lynn Gordon, Wendy Bishop, and Irene Lurkis Clark found to varying degrees that requiring whole classes to visit the writing center can positively impact student perceptions of the center as a resource for improving one\u2019s writing skills. For example, Gordon found that almost all students surveyed expressed some willingness to return on their own after a required session\u00a0(157). Clark even recommends that composition programs consider making required visits a department-wide policy (34).<\/p>\n

Required visits may be appropriate for specific student populations. At HSU, over half of this fall\u2019s first-time undergraduates are first-generation college students. In addition, a significant portion of HSU’s first-time undergraduates self-identify as Latino\/a. The call for \u201cvolition\u201d presupposes individual agency; as Phinney et al. note in their work on peer mentoring, Latino\/a students \u201cmay need more help in understanding and negotiating the demands of college, especially in their freshman year\u201d (601). Students who feel marginalized within academia often face a number of social, cultural, and affective barriers to seeking out resources on their own. In that case, required visits\u00a0may form\u00a0one part of a larger effort toward helping students develop academic self-efficacy. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
HSU campus on a non-rainy day
Photo credit: J. Citti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two tutors\u2019 perspectives<\/h3>\n

Curious what our consultants think, I spoke with Laura and Thomas. Laura is a second-year M.A. candidate in the Composition Program who tutors in the Writing Studio and teaches a section of introductory composition. Thomas is a senior English major who tutored in the writing center at a local community college before transferring to HSU and joining the Writing Studio staff.<\/p>\n

Laura, who requires her composition students to visit the Studio for an assignment of their choosing at least once, supports the idea that required visits can help students hesitant to seek out resources on their own. She sees required visits as a \u201cnudge\u201d that \u201cclears up the mystery, the ambiguity\u201d about what happens in the Writing Studio, likening the experience to taking the bus for the first time: \u201cscary at first, but then you get the hang of it.\u201d When individual students are sent here, it can feel like a punishment, she says, but having a whole class come can help \u201cbuild a community of writers.\u201d She\u2019s seen writers from the same class wave at one another from across the room while working with consultants. \u201cNo one feels alienated or scared because they\u2019re all in it together,\u201d she says. She has encountered some students who treat the appointment \u201clike another hoop to jump through,\u201d but attributes that attitude more toward the class or college in general than the Studio itself. She stresses that required visits seem more appropriate for first-year students than upper-division ones, and believes that required visits early on will lead to self-motivated visits in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas, while generally positive about required visits, has seen writers who, as North says, view a required visit to the Writing Studio as punitive. In these situations, Thomas starts by acknowledging the writer\u2019s annoyance at being there and then uses questions to draw the writer\u2019s attention to the draft: \u201cI approach it by saying, \u2018Well, you\u2019re here, so let\u2019s see what we can do.\u201d Thomas sometimes asks, \u201cWhat is your goal when you get through this class?\u201d to help the writer see the assignment within the larger context of his or her academic and professional objectives. By tapping into the writer\u2019s intrinsic motivations (and encouraging optimism by saying \u201cwhen\u201d rather than \u201cif\u201d), Thomas is usually able to help the writer focus on\u00a0the draft and the session will end positively. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few impressions so far<\/h3>\n

Though I have been at HSU for less than a year, I too have seen how required visits can benefit\u00a0student-writers, tutors, and faculty. My experience so far has underscored the following:<\/p>\n