Peer Workshop: I like it.

The Workshop Works

Rather than doing a 1 on 1 peer editing session, Kassidy, Ryan, Deanna and myself held what developed into a writing workshop. Each of us evaluated every persons papers, and it worked out well.

It's been a long time since I have been part of this workshop format, but I felt like had I gotten multiple valuable perspectives on my paper and on my writing. I felt like I had useful things to say about my peers' work too.

Each of us gave the other group-members copies of our papers. We each read off our own paper paragraph by paragraph while the others offered a critique. We stayed unusually on-task.

Deanna got several perspectives on content choices. Ryan showed us his writing process in its very early primordial stage...which was actually forced me to peer into the darker parts of our humanity. Kassidy's paper was also in early stages. It was some kind of Right-wing anarchist manifesto that professed the need for students to take up arms against MSU police. "And we return their tear gas with mustard gas, escalating mercifully as evidence of our restraint with using nerve gas." It wasn't that well organized, in fact it was maniacal and raving. But I think the suggestions we made will be helpful.

This workshop is something I know the WRAC courses strive for, but I'll say I’d like to see more of it everywhere.

I'm confused. :/

“I'm a Student, I'm a Tutor, I'm Confused!: Peer Tutor and Classroom Student”

I chose this article because I can relate to it. The author, Jennifer Kimball, of University of Missouri-Columbia interested me with her point that during many sessions, consultants give advice to the writer and while giving that advice, it hits us why our teacher did not like certain things about our paper. Jen then states how consultants have experiences in other classes and they use this experience at the writing center. More importantly, we all have learned many ways in the center and these are helping us in our undergraduate life. Yes, Jen specifically talks about the undergraduate consultants at the Center and she feels that “being an undergraduate adds another layer that influences the way peer tutors wear these other hats.”

Then, she pretty much uses the article how the center helps undergraduate consultants…but more importantly, how we help the center! Overall, “Undergraduate tutors and writing centers have a mutually beneficial relationship: writing centers offer peer tutors a variety of experiences that can aid their development as students, and undergraduate tutors bring a useful dynamic to the writing center from their experiences in the classroom. Consciously reflecting on the connections between tutoring strategies and student strategies has encouraged me to be more active in cross-referencing these two aspects of my life. While peer writing consultants may be in an odd place, we're also in an ideal place to use our experiences to improve our abilities in the writing center and classroom.”

Last Class.

I really liked our discussion in class on Tuesday. I wanted to add to what I said to answer Trixie's question about learning the Writing Centers history.

I feel it’s really important we know we come from… so we can actually go to a place that’s more productive. I also feel that learning that the writing center has evolved greatly within the last 30 years ... and that fact that we have a management that wants to continue this trend to make the center a better place for writers is great! I feel it helps me put effort when I work ... and actually makes me want to come to work. I’m not talking about working at the center for life… I know we all have our planned careers and will follow different paths. I just feel that learning the history helped me connect with people more and gave me more job satisfaction.

Seeing and reading about change it one thing. But learning that our ideas and views could actually alter the way the Center runs… and help more writers is a wonderful feeling. The feeling of being that change (in a very small way off-course.)

http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis/?q=node/20

Productive & Useful

Productive And Useful For A Change
(In The Barack Obama sense)

The class discussion that we had last Thursday was probably one of the more useful that we have had. I felt like there were a lot of ideas going around about how writing centers can collaborate with academic departments to provide both better learning opportunities to students in specialized writing courses and also offer the opportunity to enhance more effective better consulting skills. It might be possible that by offering workshops to help writing center consultants become more useful and more responsive to the specific needs of students across an array of disciplines that we can truly improve writing across the curriculum.

This is what will ultimately be my final project, so I'll certainly be talking about these things more. But I can express honestly that when I consult for someone who has a Master's Thesis in the biological sciences, I don't feel like I understand the genre of academic science writing as well as I could. I feel like if I knew more about the expectations of the field that I could offer better consultations with students. This challenge wins a double frustration score when this thesis has been prepared by an ESL student.

I think we can do a lot more to prepare students for workforce writing and that we can also do more to help writing center consultants help them.

Primary Consultant 5

In the past few weeks, I have helped many students with digital stuff. Even though I like working with papers, I really enjoyed digital consulting. I noticed that most of the students who need help with digital stuff come to the center… I’m not sure if they know about the library satellite having digital consultant. I plan to add in my Bio that I work at the library so if anyone can’t find an appointment with me, they can come to the library. I helped students with adobe and nvu. Both clients left satisfied. With digital consulting, I saw that it really helps to have the student carry the task they came for a few times. This gives them confidence with the program. With nvu, there have been times when I have to ask Noah to help me. I learn it with the students and then we redo the procedure to make sure we all understood what Noah was talking about. I would like to add that when Noah comes over to help us, he does a really good job explaining nvu to the students and I plan to use his method when I consult someone who has not used nvu.

topic.

My project topic.

I plan to create slides, movies and podcast for students so they can learn keynote. I used a keynote presentation for my APA conference last weekend and I honestly beat everyone else’s presentation. There are many features in keynote that can help make a presentation much better than ppt. I also conducted a PowerPoint presentation and I hope that I can use my keynote presentation to edit/update the PowerPoint presentation.
For my project to be successful, I plan to study the pedagogies used for teaching students via media sources. I will talk to Noah and take his advice on podcasts, and refer to writing center journals for PowerPoint pedagogy.

Krish.

After reading chapter 6 and 7, I decided to blog on chapter 6 since it had many things I wanted to discuss. In the first half of the chapter, Ryan talks about how we can help the tutee during our consultation session by carrying the session on a computer. I am not fond of this idea for many reasons.

First: It will hard for students to read the paper. But considering that many of them spend a lot of time in front of their computer… I will not state this as my top issue.
Second: Many students like to hand write their essays, instead of type them. But, as Ryan states… that should not be an issue since most students type their papers anyway. So, this is not a biggy also.
Third: My biggest concern is something that Ryan stated. “Free writing at the computer can be a quick and convenient way to get started.” In my experience at the library, I have noticed that the few students who come there to work on their paper have pretty much done free writing and not revised. I feel that when working with these students, rephrasing the material is much harder on computer than on paper. When using the computer, students tend to free write but are scared to summarize and say that summarizing the material is the hardest part for them. These students are completely different when they write on paper. I feel that writing on paper challenges the students to rephrase their sentences a few times and this makes the paper better. I know it is more time consuming, but over time… I feel we create better writers.
I also feel that having something on paper helps me focus better.