Blogging It Up at WCJ

My colleagues Dawn Fels, Maggie Herb, Lila Naydan, and I have been asked to innagurate the Writing Center Journal's blog community series. We're writing about the working continditions of contingent writing center employees weekly during the month of February, 2016.

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WCENTER Survey

Last week, I was talking with colleagues about a future super-secret project (stay tuned) and we got to wondering how many two-year college writing center folks were on WCENTER. WCENTER is the preeminent listserv for writing center folks. I've been a member since 1992, but I don't recall anyone trying to figure out who (demographically) was on the list. Rather than burdening list members with a huge demographic survey, however, I just decided to stick with the original question: what types of institutions are WCENTER users coming from. I only left it up for a few days, so I'm not saying that this survey has captured all potential WCENTER readers/respondents, by the way. My Survey Monkey professional account was expiring, however, and I wanted to download the data. (so much for self-funded research, eh?) In any case, here we go: I did suspect that four year plus universities and colleges would dominate the users of WCENTER, given the list's history and the de

Results of survey on new media tutoring

A few weeks ago, I queried both the WCENTER and WPA email lists to get their response to a rather unscientific study on tutoring and new media in writing centers. These are the charted-up results. I hope to provide some commentary on them at some point when the (new)Jazz are not playing. UPDATE: comments ahoy! The number of respondents is 118 (n=118). The questions that allowed multiple answers are represented as area graphs to give a better sense of the overall spread of the response. Most of the respondents were from higher education. This is no doubt due to posting the survey on WCENTER and WPA-L. I am uncertain of the demographics of either of those lists, but I have a well-informed hunch that not many non-higher education folks participate in them. The purpose of my research is, ultimately, to write an article about tutoring in new media (for wont of a better term) at open access institutions. I was somewhat surprised by the nearly 20% of respondents who don&#

Peer Tutoring: The Essential Contact Zone

I recently had the honor of giving the keynote address at the 2013 South Central Writing Center Association's Annual Conference. Here is the text of the speech: Keynote Address for the South Central Writing Centers Association Annual Conference February 21-23, 2013 Corpus Christi, Texas Clint Gardner Salt Lake Community College Student Writing Center PRE-INTRODUCTION How many here are peer tutors? How many here have been peer tutors? Being the good writing center person that I am, I’m going to have you do a little writing first. Strange thing in a keynote address, I realize, but bear with me. “What are the most significant abilities, values, or skills that you developed in your work as a peer writing tutor?” Peer Tutoring: The Writing Center's Essential Contact Zone INTRODUCTION Today I want to talk about why I think Peer Tutoring is the essential contact zone for a writing center. By contact zone I mean the place where learning happens, in all it

Clint Gardner

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