{"id":6251,"date":"2016-01-19T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T17:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=6251"},"modified":"2017-07-12T14:46:57","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T19:46:57","slug":"co-creating-a-workshop-notes-on-a-writing-center-and-library-collaboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/co-creating-a-workshop-notes-on-a-writing-center-and-library-collaboration\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaming Up: A Collaboration between the Writing Center and the Library"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Nancy Linh Karls and Barbara Sisolak<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Nancy Linh Karls is a senior instructor in the UW-Madison Writing Center<\/a>, where she serves as its science-writing specialist. She also leads and teaches the Mellon-Wisconsin Dissertation Writing Camps<\/a> and coordinates the community-based Madison Writing Assistance<\/a> program.\u00a0<\/span>Barbara Sisolak is a senior academic librarian with Steenbock Library<\/a>, where she provides reference and instruction to library patrons. As Instruction Coordinator, she manages Steenbock Library\u2019s information literacy instruction program in alignment with the UW Libraries Teaching and Learning Programs<\/a> office.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Barbara<\/a>
Barbara Sisolak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Nancy<\/a>
Nancy Linh Karls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this post, we share our experience of coming\u00a0together to design a workshop for graduate students, addressing\u00a0how our collaboration came to be; how we developed\u00a0our focus, approach, and materials;\u00a0how the workshop was received by participants; and what we learned in the process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Drawing on a Strong History of Workshops<\/h3>\n

The instructional workshop–with its focus on guided, active learning in a group format–can be an especially effective mode of instruction, and many writing centers offer various workshops for their students. At UW-Madison, both the Writing Center and the university’s Libraries have been offering impressive arrays\u00a0of\u00a0workshops for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

During any given week in the semester, the UW-Madison Writing Center offers several workshops on a wide range of academic writing topics. These short-term, non-credit workshops are taught by members of the Writing Center’s senior staff and represent terrific\u00a0opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff to learn more about a particular aspect of writing. Approximately 60 workshops are offered each semester, with recent workshop topics including the following:\u00a0<\/span>writing essay exams, writing about literature, senior-thesis writing groups, graduate writing groups, graduate research proposals, literature reviews, improving style, APA documentation, punctuation, application essays, academic cover letters and CVs, research posters, communicating with PowerPoint, presenting with Prezi, cultivating a professional online identity, and writing with Scrivener–to name just a few. (For more\u00a0information about the UW-Madison Writing Center\u2019s workshops, please see <\/span>Zach Marshall\u2019s recent\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0as well as our current workshop listings<\/a><\/span>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

UW-Madison’s Steenbock Library also has a very active instruction program, reaching students through timetable course-integrated library sessions, individual consultations, and workshops. Course-integrated library sessions tend to focus on the discovery and use of information in the context of a particular assignment or requirement of a for-credit class and are designed in partnership with the course instructor. Steenbock Library teaches approximately 150 course-integrated library sessions per semester. Workshops, however, are instruction sessions designed around library and information management topics germane to academic populations. Offerings include Introduction to Citation Management and specific citation manager tools such as EndNote and Zotero; Keeping Current with the Literature; and Impact Factors and Bibliometrics. Steenbock regularly offers eight to ten workshops per semester, many of which are targeted to graduate students through a branded Library series called the Graduate Support Series<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Identifying an Opportunity<\/h3>\n

The Writing Center and the Libraries have been\u00a0very\u00a0supportive of one\u00a0another’s instructional programs, including their respective workshop series, with instructors frequently\u00a0sharing information about particular offerings and encouraging students to take advantage of them. At the same time, we were also aware that some of the workshops offered by the Writing Center and the Library\u00a0focused on similar kinds of topics, although we tended to approach those workshops from somewhat\u00a0different perspectives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, the Writing Center has been offering for many years a graduate-level workshop called “Writing a Literature Review of Published Research,” which focuses on the literature review as a genre and on\u00a0rhetorical strategies for conceptualizing, drafting, and revising one\u2019s own review. Writing Center staff usually teach\u00a0three sections of this workshop a semester, and it always\u00a0draws a significant number of students. While the workshop consistently receives favorable reviews in student evaluations, some students occasionally\u00a0request\u00a0additional guidance and instruction on how to search effectively\u00a0for appropriate sources for their\u00a0reviews. Instructors for this workshop would frequently\u00a0address those concerns by referring students to library staff, recommending that students seek more tailored assistance from their subject librarians as needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, prior to Fall 2014, the Libraries offered a standalone workshop on library tools for literature review research in the sciences. This workshop focused on the available literature discovery tools and database search techniques and was offered as part of the Graduate Support Series. Attendance at this workshop was generally good and drew enthusiastic reviews. Invariably, there were questions and comments from the students concerning the actual writing process–rhetoric, mechanics, and style. Workshop instructors made attempts to respond to this by making sure the\u00a0Library workshop was scheduled prior to the Writing Center workshops, and referring students to those workshops\u00a0as well. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Steenbock<\/a>
Steenbock Memorial Library, which regularly hosts the “Researching and Writing Literature Reviews in the Sciences” workshop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the Spring of 2014, Brad Hughes, Director of the Writing Center, and\u00a0members of the Libraries’\u00a0administrative staff discussed\u00a0the possibility of partnering together to co-develop\u00a0a workshop that would be jointly taught\u00a0by both Writing Center and Library instructors. During\u00a0these conversations, it was suggested that a workshop focused on literature reviews for graduate students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields might be a productive\u00a0place to start.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joining Forces in a Combined Approach<\/h3>\n

Once we received the green light for co-developing this workshop, the two of us–along with Diana Wheeler, then a librarian at Wendt Commons, began gathering\u00a0for a series of meetings at our various departmental homes, as well as at the Memorial Union and over Skype, to chat about our ideas for this new workshop.\u00a0Both the Writing Center and various libraries\u00a0had been offering somewhat related workshops, but none\u00a0of us had yet offered a workshop that specifically addressed all stages of the literature review process.\u00a0We were therefore especially excited to pool each other’s expertise and work together in a more collaborative way.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we got to know one another, we debated answers to questions such as these: Will students want to come to a jointly-led workshop? If so, what will they want to know? How will they \u00a0want to spend their time? What will we want them to come away with? We also had questions regarding\u00a0more logistical issues, such as location, days\/times, publicity, registration, and assessment.<\/p>\n

Although it was relatively easy for us to come to an agreement that dividing the workshop into roughly two parts (researching and writing) made sense, one of our biggest questions and discussions centered on whether it made more sense to lead with the “researching” focus or the “writing” focus. Indeed, we could see either approach working well. Ultimately, we decided that it would likely be more helpful for students to obtain an overview of the genre they’d be expected to produce–so that they\u2019d know their “final destination,” so to speak–before digging more deeply into searching strategies, and we structured the session accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Using our previous, individual experiences teaching workshops on the subject matter as reference points, we co-developed a workshop lesson plan. In this plan (stored in Google Docs so we could all have access and share, co-author, and revise accordingly), we determined what we wanted to focus on, how the session should be organized, what amounts of time would be devoted to the various topics, and who would present on each\u00a0of these topics. We also freely shared our existing materials and negotiated how we might adapt some of them to our new target audience of STEM graduate students.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a>
Screenshot from a PubMed search<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Screenshot<\/a>
Screenshot from a Web of Science search<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We then had to determine\u00a0when and where to offer the workshop. We decided to begin by piloting\u00a0two sections of the workshop in Fall 2014. As part of our discussions and decision-making process regarding location, we understood that any efforts to increase the Writing Center’s presence across campus would be beneficial. We thus scheduled these workshops at two locations–Steenbock Library and Wendt Commons–that we hoped would increase our chances of attracting graduate students from the biological and physical sciences. These locations also featured classrooms with computers available for students’ use, which was essential for the workshop we were developing.<\/p>\n

We knew it was crucial\u00a0to cross-publicize these workshops in an effort to help spread the word. As a result, both the Writing Center and the Libraries included the workshop in their online and print listings of their semester\u2019s workshops. We titled the workshop “Researching and Writing Literature Reviews in the Sciences,” and drafted this description: “If you need to write a review that brings together many different research publications, this workshop is for you! Join the Writing Center and the\u00a0Libraries as we discuss strategies for focusing your topic, searching for papers and publications, reading critically, developing themes and organizing your material.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Co-Teaching the Workshop<\/span><\/h3>\n

After much discussion and careful consideration, we decided that it would be most strategic\u00a0for us to jointly offer a 90-minute workshop that focused on two aspects of the literature review writing process: the kinds of background research and search strategies necessary to write a literature review as well as the rhetorical issues to consider when studying and composing the literature review as a genre. In addition, we found it necessary\u00a0to condense or otherwise modify our original, separate workshop material to make way for greater integration of content between our two programs. We ultimately structured the workshop in this way (times are approximate):<\/span><\/p>\n