In addition to serving our student population, we are passionate about assisting faculty members, too. We often collaborate with faculty members to create in-class workshops for their students, assist with assignment design, and brainstorm effective ways to incorporate writing into assignments.
What We Do At The Writing Center
Resources For You
Creating Writing Assignments
Learn how to sequence and scaffold writing assignments.
Creating Effective Rubrics
If you are interested in creating more effective rubrics, check out some wonderful rubric templates here.
Syllabus Statement
You can add a blurb about our center in your class syllabus.
Plagiarism Resources
Here is a link to the WOU Code of Student Responsibility.
Singular They/Them Pronoun Usage
IWCA’s statement on singular they/them pronoun usage.
Looking for Tutors: Recommend a Student in Your Discipline
We hire student tutors from across the disciplines and are always looking to add new members to our team. If you know a student in your discipline who you believe would make an excellent writing consultant, click on the form below to recommend them for hire. We’ll reach out to them and invite them to apply to our center.
How We Can Serve You
Assignment Design
Giving students a well-designed assignment is a key aspect to receiving quality papers from your students. We offer services that help you develop, define, and/or revise writing assignments; consult with you on course writing objectives, writing assignments, in-class heuristics, and grading tools; and even offer workshops related to the writing of international students and English Language Learners.
First Year Seminar Course Support
FYS 107 introduces students to writing as a mode of learning within the context of a particular theme, like Eat for the Planet, Nature and Photography, and Do Scientists Create Disasters? Through writing-to-learn activities, students learn to use writing to think through key concepts or ideas presented in the course.
The Writing Center is able to serve your FYS 107 in two ways: (1) we introduce your students to the writing support that is and will be available to them for any class and any level of instruction during their time at WOU, and (2) we are able to help you incorporate meaningful writing activities into your classes without adding to your grading and response workload.
When first-year students become comfortable accessing academic support resources like the Writing Center, they are more likely to succeed at WOU. In 2019-20, nearly 200 FYS students used Writing Center services, with 55% of them returning multiple times, which is good news: our research shows that students who use our services repeatedly and over time increase their writing self-efficacy much more quickly than those who don’t.
Additionally, the Writing Center can help you, as an FYS 107 or 207 instructor, with any of the following: (1) explore options for integrating non-graded writing activities that promote rich discussions, check comprehension, encourage recall, and generate ideas, to name a few, and (2) design assignments to ensure transparent, equitable, and efficient grading for formal and/or informal writing projects. We can also visit your class in person or virtually to facilitate a Spotlight Workshop, which models a process for giving feedback on an assignment your students are working on.
Ultimately, we are here to support both your students and you, so you can expect to hear from us before the start of each term. At the very least, we’d love to invite you and your students to schedule a time to visit us at the Writing Center.
Writing Center Workshop: Incorporating Meaningful Non-Graded Writing Activities into First Year Seminars
How We Can Help Your Students
In-Person And Online Sessions For Free
At the Writing center, we offer both in-person and online services, to accommodate the diverse group of students we have here at WOU. In-person tutoring sessions give the students the opportunity to work face to face with one of our trained tutors, which can allow for an in-depth analysis of the students’ works and insightful feedback on what can be improved. Live online tutoring sessions offer the advantage of accommodating students that may not have the flexibility to attend an in-person tutoring session; students are able to chat one-on-one with a trained tutor and receive detailed feedback on their assignments in real-time.
Students can easily make an appointment through their Portal or through our Make an Appointment page, linked below. If you want to help your students make an appointment with us, consider sharing this page with your students or linking it to your Canvas page:
In-Class Feedback Workshops
The Writing Center offers whole-class or small group spotlight workshops where a writing specialist and a writing consultant come to your class on a specified date to work with your students on their drafts. The writing specialist models for the group what would be done in a regular writing center tutorial by reading aloud the assignment instructions, reading aloud a volunteer’s essay, discussing with the student-volunteer the content and/or grammatical error patterns found within the paper, and giving the class strategies on how to self-correct the errors. These workshops are effective in that all students benefit from them; most often, errors addressed by the specialists with the student-volunteer are common errors that other students make and need to learn how to self-correct. Moreover, spotlight workshops show students and professors, in an authentic context, how the writing center works to empower students to become stronger writers of their college assignments.
The "Golden Ticket"
If you would like to verify that your students visit the Writing Center, you can ask them to provide you proof of their visit. For in-person visits, tutors provide the student-writer with a gold-colored confirmation slip, “the Golden Ticket,” which serves as proof of their visit. For online appointments, tutors email an appointment confirmation directly to you. This is an optional service we provide, so please have your students mention the appointment confirmation to their tutor if you would like to receive confirmation of their visit.
Manuscript Preparation
As both an instructor and researcher, you will most likely be producing works for publication throughout your career. The Writing Center offers one-on-one support for faculty in preparing and readying your manuscripts for publication. We offer a broad range of services, from content revision to citation management; please feel free to make an appointment with us if would like help in any step of the process.
