DE Oracle @ UMUC

UMUC's Effective Writing Center: Who We Are, What We Do, Why We Do It

David Taylor

Senior Advisor EWC

School of Undergraduate Studies

Published: September-October 2011

Category: » University-showcase » Classes-programs

UMUC's Effective Writing Center (EWC) is one of the few fully online writing centers in the world and serves more students than any other writing center we know of. Because of the EWC's uniqueness, we are often asked to present at academic conferences where the teaching of writing is a main focus. The March 2011 gathering of the International Writing Centers Association in Atlanta, Georgia, marked the second time in five years that the EWC was asked to present to this group.

As a pioneer in American distance learning, UMUC is seen as the "tip of the spear" when it comes to dealing with many contemporary issues in higher education, especially the need to scale digital services for a dispersed and differentiated student population of 60,000 online learners and the faculty who teach them. Interest in our writing center programs seems to stem mainly from several broad trends in education that affect classrooms and tutoring services:

1. The rising demand for online offerings by traditional and adult learners
2. The increased use of writing center services due to cross-curricular emphasis on writing and communication skills
3. The need to depend less on text and more on multimedia instruction for today's visually oriented student

Many face-to-face writing centers are experiencing significant challenges because of these changes and perceive a pressing need to address them. One of the remarkable aspects of representing the EWC at these conferences is the realization that our daily routine of helping online students with their writing is considered revolutionary and even suspect by many whose experience includes only face-to-face tutoring. Audience reaction can usually be counted on to range from those who understand that online instruction will continue to grow in importance and gobble up copies of the presentation, to those who are cautiously interested, to those who are genuinely threatened by what the EWC represents—the digital future of writing centers.

The video presentation below, "UMUC's Effective Writing Center: Who We Are, What We Do, Why We Do It," was shown at the International Writing Centers Association's March 2011 meeting in Atlanta, in tandem with the annual Conference on College Composition & Communication. The video was designed to offer something for everyone in the audience:

• A heavy dose of "how-to" for those who want specific tools and strategies to help them get started
• A clear recitation of facts that document the rapid, far-reaching changes occurring right now in higher education for the fence sitters
• A straightforward presentation of the empirical studies that guide our methods and document our success for the skeptical

The video presentation itself is a model digital production that demonstrates how effective multimedia can be. For several years, EWC advisers have provided DVDs that include presentations done with live actors and voiced-over audio, in addition to uploading a Flash video version to UMUC's server and to YouTube. I am the live actor in the video below; the live action was shot in front of a green screen in my home and then composited into the video. Several EWC advisers also use green screens and have been digitally composited into some of the EWC productions (e.g., http://polaris.umuc.edu/ewc/gl_intro/gl_intro.html and http://polaris.umuc.edu/ewc/glwelcomes/kevin_web/kevin_web.html). For more information on the theory, methods, and tools used by the EWC in its digital creations, please see http://www.peakwriting.com/UMUC/onlineguide/av_solution.html.

Editor's Note: The video presentation below (transcript of video ) notes that "UMUC has recently decided to focus its offerings on the hybrid and fully online models and as of Fall 2011 will offer only these modes in 8-week sessions."  The new 8-week session format applies only to courses within the School of Undergraduate Studies. Graduate course offerings remain unchanged in their session length.