Resources for Faculty
Assessment of Student Writing Project 2007-
Faculty FAQ
Resources for Teaching Writing
- Suggestions for Teaching Writing in Your Classes
- Some Research Conclusions About the Teaching of Writing
- What Teachers Can Do to Help Students Improve Their Writing
- "Managing the Paper Load" --Richard Straub
- "Addressing Error" --Vivian Zamel, UMass-Boston (used by permission)
Support for Writing and Teaching
The staff of the Writing Center can support your teaching efforts by providing
- individual consultations on your own writing
- consulting for your students
- referrals for students who are struggling with writing
- course design consultations
- classroom workshops
- teaching materials and references
- classroom visits by peer writing consultants
Faculty members are welcome to attend one or more of our weekly peer consultant meetings to discuss their expectations for assignments that their students will be bringing to the Writing Center. If you wish to attend a meeting, please call the Writing Center at 577-3141 and speak with one of the professional consultants.
Recommended Online Resources
- Writing Across the Curriculum (The OWL [Online Writing Lab] at Purdue)
A gateway both to WAC resources and to an extensive collection of handouts and presentations on all aspects of academic writing - Resources for Writers (Bucknell University Writing Center)
- Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)
- Writer's Web (University of Richmond)
Individual Consultations on Your Own Writing
Many members of the faculty and staff consult us about their own writing. In private sessions you can talk about your ideas, read us your draft, revise a chapter of your book, edit your dissertation, or practice a professional presentation.
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Consulting for your students
Professional consultants and peer writing consultants work with students on individual and collaborative writing projects. We can meet with students at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming through drafting and revising. We can also help students develop their oral presentation skills. Consultants are experienced in working with international and learning disabled students. (For more information about how professional and peer consultants work with student writers, see Faculty FAQ.)
We ask that faculty members who encourage entire classes of students to make individual consulting appointments notify us well in advance, and also share with us the goals of the writing assignment on which the students are working. Keeping the Writing Center informed enables us to share useful information about assignments with our peer writing consultants, as well as to anticipate increased demand for appointments.
Writing Referrals
Writing Referral Form - printable copy
As always, all students, faculty and staff members are welcome to visit the Writing Center at any time, with any writing project, at any stage of the writing process. In addition, a writing referral system, established in Fall, 2006 with the aim of providing timely assistance for students who need it most, is now available.
Faculty members are encouraged to identify as early as possible in the semester any student who appears to have significant problems with writing. We ask that the faculty member meet with the student to discuss the areas of writing with which the student needs assistance.
The referral form is designed to facilitate this discussion by listing possible areas of concern and allowing space to describe the ones that appear to be at issue in a particular course or assignment. After the faculty member and student have completed the form together, the student should bring the form to the Writing Center main office, Roberts 100A and request an appointment with a Writing Center staff member.
The student should bring to this appointment any associated written work, assignment instructions, handouts, etc. In this initial meeting, the student and the writing consultant will formulate a plan for addressing writing issues and assignments of concern, most likely in regular sessions with Writing Center consultants and/or peer writing consultants. We strongly encourage the faculty member to monitor the situation during the remainder of the semester, remaining in communication with both the student and the Writing Center. –Adapted from the revised Writing Program legislation, approved by the faculty in April 2006.
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Course Design Consultations
Staff members are available to work with you as you plan a course that involves writing. In the past, we have helped instructors:
- identify and articulate course and assignment goals
- incorporate active learning strategies into their teaching
- craft writing assignments that support course goals
- sequence writing assignments and opportunities for revision throughout a course
- develop techniques to provide useful feedback on student writing.
Classroom Workshops
Writing Center staff members are available to conduct the following workshops for your students during class meetings (1 to 1 1/2 hours). The primary purpose of staff-led classroom workshops is to model ways that faculty members might lead such workshops themselves in teaching writing across the curriculum.
We will be happy to work with you to prepare and co-facilitate a workshop for your class. Since classroom workshops on writing are far more effective when course instructors participate in them,
The purpose of Writing Center staff-led workshops is to model for writing program instructors practices that instructors might adapt for their own teaching. For this reason, and because our staff is small, classroom workshops may not be repeated more than three times for any individual faculty member.
(If you would like simply to make your students aware of the Writing Center's services and encourage them to visit the Writing Center, you might consider inviting a peer writing consultant to visit your class.)
Writing in College - This interactive workshop is intended for first-semester students and, like our other workshops, generally requires an entire class period. Participants consider the writing they have done in high school, the ways in which writing assignments for their Bucknell courses may present new challenges and require new approaches, and some common practices of successful college writers.
Writer-Centered Peer Response - Students learn and practice useful strategies for responding constructively to each other's writing. In the process, they learn how to identify and articulate questions about their own drafts. This workshop is best scheduled when students have written a first draft of an assignment. Writing Center consultants customize these workshops for each course and assignment, so please plan for some lead time and discussion as we plan your workshop.
Oral Presentation Workshop - In this practice session, students learn effective oral delivery techniques and methods of providing constructive responses that will help a fellow speaker improve. This workshop is useful when students have been given an oral presentation assignment. Writing Center consultants customize these workshops for each course and assignment, so please plan for some lead time and discussion as we plan your workshop.
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Teaching Materials
The Writing Center staff will gladly share articles, books, and other teaching materials, including the ones listed below:
- Electronic access, via Electronic Reserves and the Blackboard course "Workshop on the Teaching of Writing," to course syllabi and writing assignments gleaned over the years from courses in many disciplines. These course descriptions and assignments incorporate writing as a process, active and collaborative learning strategies, and many other useful teaching ideas.
- Books on the teaching of writing in various disciplines, including business, engineering, the sciences, the social sciences and the humanities.
- Articles and books on gender, race, and class issues in the teaching of writing.
- A wide variety of grammar references and handbooks on style and usage
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Classroom Visits by Peer Writing Consultants
As schedules permit, Writing Center peer (i.e., student) writing consultants may be available to visit your class to explain to your students what to expect in a Writing Center appointment and how to make the best use of Writing Center services. Faculty members and students have found these brief student-to-student conversations to be very effective. To arrange for a visit, please call the Writing Center at 577-3141.
We hope this is obvious, but . . .
Writing Center staff members and peer consultants should not be used as "substitute teachers" when the course instructor is absent.
