Let Me Out! I'm stuck in a closet.

Writing Center directors have the most control over internal factors: who is hired as a tutor, what criteria are used to hire, and how tutors are trained. We rarely have any say over where our centers are located, or how they are designed and equipped. Too often, writing centers are shoved into any unused corner or classroom available. The space isn’t chosen for its effectiveness. It is chosen simply because no one else wanted it. But if space is the most important factor in determining whether students return to a writing center, recommend that writing center, or believe that the tutors in that writing center have the ability to effectively share a body of knowledge (As my research suggests), and center directors have little or no influence over that factor, are directors being unfairly evaluated when their administration looks at their ability to retain current users, and bring in more? 

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Corpus-Driven Analysis in the Writing Center

In his May 19, 2015, blog entry, Thomas mentioned the empirical research that Isabelle Thompson (Emerita Professor, Auburn University) and I have been doing over the last seven or so years. Specifically, he mentioned our recent book Talk about Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors (Routledge 2014). We have been pleased with the response we have received to the book, particularly the coding scheme for tutoring strategies that we developed and tested. It seems that writing center specialists are eager for more empirical research to guide our practices.

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