North Carolina Writing Center Network (NCWCN)
SWCA North Carolina State Representative: Sara Littlejohn
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Calling North Carolina HBCU Writing Center Personnel:
The Conversation, an event organized to facilitate the exchange of ideas and the acquisition of newknowledge concerning HBCUs' writing centers in North Carolina, will be held at Winston-Salem StateUniversity on Friday, March 23, 2012 from 10 AM to 2 PM. The Conversation will include a discussionof how the resources of an existing writing center can be utilized to support a QEP that is writing intensive. Please contact Dr. Dwedor Morais Ford at forddw@wssu.edu or 336-750-8666 for additional information.In the Works:
Spring 2012 Tutor/Consultant Training Retreat for Colleges in Winston-Salem!The retreat will include mock training sessions based on various campus populations, best practices (from tutors/by tutors), and group activities so that tutors can rely on each other during the year instead of solely getting advice from directors.UNCG hosted a Director's event on Friday Oct. 7 from 11-3. This event was designed specifically to provide an opportunity for colleagues to work on their SWCA proposals and share ideas about presenting. As always, there is so much to talk about, and we trailed in and out of our usual WC concerns. Designed as a workshop event, the agenda was relaxed, and we had about 15 participants. UNCG sprung for parking, coffee, and some fairly impressive Spartan cookies, with pictures of little Blue and Gold Spartans baked right into the dough. (How do they do it?)
NC Directors Meet at UNC-Greensboro for a Day of Workshopping
About 35 directors and assistant directors from around NC attended an SWCA North Carolina Director's Day Workshop at the UNC-Greensboro campus on April 1st. We had a wide range of schools represented: small liberal arts colleges, large public and private universities, and community colleges.
For each session, we gathered some key concepts within our chosen topics of Assessment and Online Consulting/Tutoring, which led to some solid conversations about both issues.
The assessment conversation yielded a plan to develop our own writing center assessment criteria and methods. As a group, we realized that it would be far more beneficial to us if we "took control" over our assessment methods rather than reacting to outside measures for how we assess. That said, we are sharing our current assessment methods with each other through dropbox (thanks to Laura Benton for setting this up). From these shared practices, we will develop some internal procedures that we would then be sanctioned as best practices by our institutional bodies, first as SWCA, and then maybe at the IWCA level. This helps prevent duplication of resources and allows all of us to benefit from the collective wisdom of the group. The goal is to have several ways to collect data, so even though some of the information is "soft" data, triangulated with other methods, we would present strong assessment methods with usable and analyzable (and reliable) data. I will likely be putting together some information for a panel at SWCA/CCCC for next year, so we can share this info when we have it put together.
In the land of online consulting, the group was at varying stages of development and practice. Most of the conversation was a discussion of asynchronous and synchronous methods. Cost, usability, pedagogy, and equipment/available programs were also some of the greatest hits of the afternoon session. Here too, we are planning on sharing information through drop box to help each other develop and think about the whys and hows of this work.
We ended the day with a discussion of Sydney Richardson's Tutor Retreat plans. I will let her fill you on the great ideas that the conversation yielded.
It was a good day all in all. Though most of us are familiar with each other's schools, this was the first time many of us had a discussion amongst us about these issues. I can easily see the benefit for this happening once a semester perhaps. Future topics murmured about were the institutional and professional situations among directors, working with multi-lingual writers, and teaching the theory and practice course. So I hope we will be able to do this again soon.
The Day's Agenda
9:30 - 10:00 Arrival, check in - Coffee and light refreshment - MHRA Humanities Lounge
10:00 - 10:30 Welcome, Introductions, Goal Setting
10:30 - 12:00 Assessment Workshop
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch - Box lunches available in the MHRA 3208 Conference Room
1:30 - 3:00 Online Consulting Workshop, coffee, water and soda provided - MHRA 3rd Floor
3:00 - 3:30 Sydney Richardson - Planning time for Tutor Consultant Training workshop
3:30 - 4:00 Finishing up and planning for future events
Sponsoring an Event
We like to have free and low-cost events so everyone can attend. If your institution is able to sponsor or co-sponsor an event, please contact Sara Littlejohn.
Other ideas and Suggestions?
Contact the NC rep: Sara Littlejohn
Got materials? Send them today, and they'll be posted below!
SWCA
est. 1981
southeastern writing center association
SWCA - 2012
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