WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM AND THE ROLE OF THE

WRITING CENTER

Dani WeberUniversity of Pittsburg at Bradford

“I suspect that ideas only agree to step out of the shadows when you take the time to write them down. Writing isn’t a record of your thinking, it is your thinking.”

–William Germano

Two core objectives

• Improve students’ writing skills

• Improve students’ critical thinking skills • Organize • Analyze• Synthesize• Evaluate• Reflect

Entering the conversation

• Collaborative learning

• Harnesses the “powerful educative force of peer influence…[largely] ignored…by traditional forms of education” (Bruffee).

• Social construction of knowledge in “interpretive communities” (Fish) re the acquisition of “normal” discourse

• Benefits both tutees and tutors

The new normal

“As a form of collaborative learning, peer tutoring is important because it provides the kind of social context in which normal discourse occurs: a community of knowledgeable peers. This is the main goal of peer tutoring.”

--Kenneth Bruffee

What the Writing Center does not do:

• Edit

• Proofread

• “Fix” the paper

• Focus solely on the writing rather than the writer

• Write the paper for (or with) the student

What the Writing Centerdoes do:

• Interpret assignments

• Translate for students between communities, genres, and professors

• Map academic territories tutors themselves have traversed and explored

• Serve as liaison between diverse discourse communities on campus

• Maintain a strong feedback loop between students, faculty, tutors, and the WC

• Promote and support writing across the curriculum in myriad ways

Areas of expertise

  y

C

O

N

T

E

N

T x

RHETORICAL EXPERTISE

CORE STRATEGIES

• Provide in-class or in-center intros

• Offer workshops on diverse writing topics as needs arise

• Communicate regularly with faculty across the curriculum to identify writing-specific needs or concerns

• Build a strong cohort of tutors from diverse academic disciplines

Possible approaches

• Provide • Roundtable discussions, e.g. on effectively using writing as a teaching tool

• in-class tutoring demos• in-class mentoring/shadowing• small-group tutoring for specific writing assignments

• guest lectures on writing assignments by WC consultants

• Ensure students have access to needed resources

Sample topicsfor students

• APA, MLA, Chicago / Evaluating sources / Using online citation generators

• Reading and interpreting assignments

• Writing process: reading, pre-writing, writing, revision

• Organization, thesis

• Conventions of genre, considerations of audience

• Proofreading and editing

• Writing craft, e.g. effective transitions, style, tone

• Writing the Capstone

Sample topicsfor faculty across the

curriculum

• Recognizing and addressing plagiarism• Incorporating formal and informal writing into assignments (and why this is important)

• improving student writing (and how we can help)

• getting students started on a writing assignment

• evaluating/assessing student writing• creating an effective rubric• communicating discipline-specific expectations of style

Tools for the Toolbox

• Fishbowl

• Peer Review

• Floating thesis

• Function outline

. . . as needs arise.

Works Cited

Bruffee, Kenneth. “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Eds. Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

Germano, William. From Dissertation to Book. Chicago: U of C Press, 2005.