Becoming Technological & More Involved.
Inspired by Clint and the Writing Center listserv, I realized how much folks are (or were, or do every year) for events like International Writing Center Week. I've been working as a tutor now for a couple of years and I have to admit that the Writing Center of which I've been a part has not been involved in that capacity. In fact, aside from the dreaded (by me) classroom visits we do throughout the semester, there aren't any other ways in which we manage to become more visible to the campus community. Our having begun using WCOnline as of last summer has made it easier for students to make appointments (and cut down significantly on the number of phone calls we've been getting), and while I haven't heard any statistics on a potential increase of sessions, I would like to make us more visible, promote our services, or at least present ourselves and a nifty place to get help. We have such a large student population that I know we couldn't handle becoming inundated (who could?) but I would like to make us more visible in some capacity.
And it's hard to do this, since our Writing Program is in a temporary state of flux. Tutors come and go, too, although many stay for several semesters, eventually even those who left because of scheduling conflicts, or the variety of reasons that tutors leave - eventually they graduate anyway. It can be difficult to get everyone involved when people work as few as one or two hours a week and only come in during one particular part of the week (say, Friday afternoons, which are much less busy than other times).
So what to do? I'd love to get us podcasting, but we don't have a permanent director at the moment; besides which, I myself am graduating in May and would not be able to set up something as comparatively advanced as this. I've set the wheels in motion to see if we could establish a Flickr account - at least the campus community could get a feel for the tutors - but that might be too little, and I worry that once I leave, that will languish.
Activities for International Writing Centers week would have been lovely to do recently, but nothing was even discussed within our center, and that might be something I bring up to our new Writing Program director.
And it's hard to do this, since our Writing Program is in a temporary state of flux. Tutors come and go, too, although many stay for several semesters, eventually even those who left because of scheduling conflicts, or the variety of reasons that tutors leave - eventually they graduate anyway. It can be difficult to get everyone involved when people work as few as one or two hours a week and only come in during one particular part of the week (say, Friday afternoons, which are much less busy than other times).
So what to do? I'd love to get us podcasting, but we don't have a permanent director at the moment; besides which, I myself am graduating in May and would not be able to set up something as comparatively advanced as this. I've set the wheels in motion to see if we could establish a Flickr account - at least the campus community could get a feel for the tutors - but that might be too little, and I worry that once I leave, that will languish.
Activities for International Writing Centers week would have been lovely to do recently, but nothing was even discussed within our center, and that might be something I bring up to our new Writing Program director.
Comments
Post a Comment