The Undersea World of Clint Gardner

Given that the new SLCC Student Writing Center(SWC) Peer Writing Advisors have been attending staff education classes for about a month now; have completed their observations and tag-team tutoring; and have started to work on their own with student writers; it has come the time when I stick my big nose into their tutoring reports for assessment purposes.  Ok, I’m casting this “intrusion” rather negatively, but that is simply to flip the notion around on you and explain why this is not intrusion but instruction.

We have a handy-dandy online reporting system here that allows writing advisors to not only collect data about student writers, but also to reflect upon the sessions they conduct.  To me that is the most important element in the report system.  Writing advisors have the opportunity to reflect on their work and to improve upon it.  It is so much ingrained in my notion of writing center work, in fact, that I kind of get the willies when I think about a writing center that wouldn’t have its tutors reflect on their work, and/or such reports are only aimed at an external audience (such as instructors.)  To me the reflection is essential to writing center work.  It helps us grow as tutors and respondents to other’s writing.

As the supervisor of the reporting system, I can go into any report in the system and read it.  Very rarely am I required to review a report in order to settle some issue that has arisen because of a session gone wrong. Mostly I stay out of the reports and only look at the broad data–unless I am conducting evaluations of the writing advisors’ work.  In general I believe the reports are the tutors’ and she or he should feel comfortable reflecting on in peace, as it were.  We cannot, however, fool ourselves into thinking these reports are private.  They are not.  They are very much a document of the SWC and should be treated as such.

Ultimately, I don’t see this as a huge conflict of interest for me:  yes, indeed, a tutor should have her space to reflect on her work, but she should also be open for feedback from someone else.  This is why I don’t see such evaluative/instructive work as “spying on someone.”  It is no more spying on a tutor than giving feedback on writing is spying on a student writer.  The new tutors need such feedback, and need develop the sense that they are a part of a community that takes practice seriously and carries on a discussion about it, either in-person or online.

Mike Mattison wrote about this issue in his article “Someone to Watch Over me:  Reflection and Authority in the Writing Center” (Writing Center Journal, Vol. 27, No. 1).   Although Mike’s situation was different (his new staff members were actively in the the Boise State Writing Center taking notes about sessions, which, apparently was seen as “spying” by some veteran members of the staff), the notion is the same:  we learn by reflecting on our work and getting feed back on it.

In any case, my concerns about this issue are a tempest in my own teapot, as it were.  The new tutors enjoy getting my feedback, and like talking about what I observe.  They will, in fact, ask why I didn’t happen to comment on a particular session they conducted.

I am helping to conduct a workshop for the upcoming International Writing Centers Association Conference in Las Vegas (woo hoo!) along with WC megastars Jill Pennington and Neal Lerner. While we haven’t worked out the session completely yet, I’d really like to pursue alternative assessment models/methods. I’m thinking of methods such as recorded exit interviews, focus groups, recorded discussions with students etc. I’ve done quite a lot of this assessment over the past few years with peer tutors in particular, and I would like to expand it to talking with student writers. Basically it would allow the student writer to speak out on her writing center work, and provide our writing center with valuable feedback. The questions I would ask them, of course, would have a purpose in mind.

As I have started to think about this, however, I begin to wonder if this is really assessment at all. I suppose I am informally coding the responses when I analyze them and put them together to build a “report” video. It isn’t, however, a quantitative thing. I’m not putting stats to it. I realize, of course, that assessment doesn’t necessarily have to be quantitative, but in order to find some respect as a “real study” it seems it has to be.

For example, there was a recent post on WCENTER asking about studies that explore faculty in two-year college writing centers. Since I’ve written on the subject and presented at various conferences, I was initially keen to write a response on the subject. The word “quantitative study” appeared (I believe, I can’t seem to find the post right now) so I backed away from the keyboard. Yeah, my work was in no way a quantitative study. It was observational. My perception of their work as well as feedback that I’ve received from students, peer writing tutors, and the faculty themselves. Is that quantitative? Does that meet muster?

So here I sit, for the moment, wondering if the assessment work I entertain talking to others about is really even assessment work at all. What are the parameters that define assessment? Is it what we do with the outcome and not the outcome itself?

So as I mentioned in my last post, I threw my hat in the ring for TYCA (Two-Year Colleague Association of the National Council of Teachers of English) Secretary. I was honored to actually win the election, even though I know my colleague Jeffrey Andelora of Mesa Community College would have been a fine selection as well. I know I will probably take guff on the matter, but I actually voted for Jeffrey. Now that is not because I don’t believe in myself, but simply because it seems extremely self-centered to vote for oneself in any election, and abstaining isn’t much better unless you know, for certain, that the other candidate would be harmful to the job. Jeffrey has some great ideas for the job, and has, in fact, inspired me to think about other things I could be doing as TYCA Secretary, by working on recruitment etc.

Ultimately, I want to “leverage” my position as TYCA Secretary to bring to the fore writing center issues, and to make more contact with writing center professionals at two-year colleges. I think that two-year writing center folks can benefit a lot by talking to each other and by being more aware of organizations such as IWCA that actively address their concerns. I also hope to make more folks in TYCA aware of writing centers and our perspective on things.

It should be a good three years!

Well the summer certain was interesting. Not only did I find out I was elected as TYCA National Secretary, but the building the SLCC Student Writing Center was subject to a reverse flood. In other words, the roof leaked. A leaky roof, however, sounds rather benign, like throwing now a few pans to catch errant drips. The flood we suffered, however, was more like the house in movie version of Fight Club.

Suffice it to say, I was rather busy with physical things to post any update here. Talk about an Undersea World! Perhaps I am prescient?

I’ll write more about the TYCA job later.

The IWCA Summer Institute (an annual gathering of writing center professionals from around the world which focuses on writing centers and writing center development) will conduct a live webcast this year:

How Did We Get Here? Finding and Mapping Writing Center Literature
Presenter(s): Neal Lerner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, Southwestern University
Status: Not Started

During this interactive webcast session, originating from the 2008 IWCA Writing Center Summer Institute, we’ll survey the field of writing center literature, identifying and discussing key texts and ideas that helped define and continue to shape the field. We’ll do this, in part, with game playing to examine participants’ knowledge of writing center literature. Next, we’ll move beyond surveys and games to take a critical look at writing center literature and consider such questions as, have some of our founding texts become codifying and limiting, and how can our scholarship reach wider audiences? Finally, we’ll walk-through the process of using search engines to locate relevant literature that you’ll need either to support the claims you make to colleagues about your work or to pursue your own research. For more information about the 2008 IWCA Writing Center Summer Institute, please visit http://www.wisc.edu/writing/institute/.

Here’s a link to the webcast: How Did We Get Here? Finding and Mapping Writing Center Literature.

I’ve been a member of the SLCC’s Thayne Center for Service & Learning Service Learning Advisory Board (SLAB) for several years now. It is a great place and offers SLCC students and faculty many opportunities to engage in service, and learn from those experiences. In order to engage more faculty, the Thayne Center is starting up a new blog: The Engaged Campus. I’m looking forward to helping them out with getting the blog set up and contributing ideas and posts. It should be a good opportunity for faculty to share ideas. Each month it will have a theme. This is to spur commentary from faculty and drive the blog forward. I suppose contributors could write on what they like, but the theme does keep it focussed.

Pardon my silence, but this has been a rather busy semester. It is sad when I can’t even make time to write.

I recently returned from CCCC at New Orleans. The conference was excellent, and I was lucky to attend some very good sessions. I also had the opportunity to be at the IWCA booth with Michele Eodice, as well as to attend the IWCA SIG on Friday evening. I did break away from the conference a couple of times to indulge my passion for photography. I did record a session with Andrea Lunsford, Lisa Ede, Michele Eodice, Kami Day, Michael Spooner, and Kathy Yancey about collaborative writing. It was one of those sessions that gets you thinking, and I’ve been thinking about what it is we mean by “collaboration” in writing. The idea behind the session was to hear what authors who write together think about collaboration, but, of course, this quickly branched into the notion of what collaborative learning and writing are for our students. I’m hoping to do some writing on the topic (yeah right!) In any case, I recorded the session. I don’t think, however, that I’ll ask permission to post it on PeerCentered since it doesn’t really relate to peer tutoring–or maybe it does.

Hmm.

This weekend, some of the SLCC Peer Writing Advisors and I are headed off to Boise State University for the Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference. We are taking our iPod recorders, so we will be recording various sessions for PeerCentered.

Unfortunately, my old and beautiful Undersea template was vunerable to hacking. I’ve found a new one which allows me to post my own images in the header image. It is a functionally stylish template, but my goldfish image does not convey the breadth that the other one did.

Oh well, at least it conveys the limitations that I often feel.

It seems proper to bookend my rather sporadic blogging by posting a binary title for you. In any case, as you might imagine, I’ve been rather busy this first month-and-a-half of spring semester 2008. Mostly I’ve been dealing a great deal with class stuff. I’ve been out of the classroom for nearly two years due to professional, campus, and Student Writing Center commitments, save working with tutor education, and I was feeling a bit rusty at first. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I was doing–I am pretty diligent, some might say obsessive about class planning, but I did feel a bit out-of-sorts since it seemed all new to me again. In all I was a bit nervous about that feeling, but then I fell into enjoying it again. I also realized I needed to review my teaching style to reach this particular group of students. They are a bright group who have an interesting perspective on things.

In any case, that’s why the long silence.

In other news, I’ve gone all out, and in true fashion, completely contradicted myself about the facebook.com issue. I’ve found that there are literally thousands of SLCC students active on facebook, and many, many peer writing tutors in writing centers. I have, therefore, created a facebook group for PeerCentered. It already has quite a few members, although there is not much activity. We’ll see. It is, however, the most interest the PeerCentered concept has ever received in its many permutations.

I don’t feel too badly in taking this thing to facebook: if that is where people are, then so be it.

Well I feel compelled to write something, given that it is the end of the semester. I will, therefore, make notes:

1. One can tell the student who has been working on her or his paper for a long time by the state of their attire. Sweats and bad-hair-day beanies mean the student is pulling an all-nighter to hopefully get the paper done. The well-dressed student who does not have that desperate look in her or his eye is the one who took more time or (I hope this is not the case) such students just don’t care.
2. Something or someone must be trying to hack WordPress, as my administrator account was deleted. Time to upgrade, I suppose.
3. The end of the semester is notoriously unpredictable. Our rush days came early this week. Now it is relatively quiet.
4. I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom next semester.
5. I feel scatter-shot at the moment.
6. I have a peer review to write that I thought I had finished. I understand why the editors want more now, but at the time I was under the happy delusion that my enthusiastic acceptance of the piece in question was enough.

Random notes on a random day.