Writing Fellows Training

Writing Fellows Program Overview History
The Guest Lecture program was begun soon after the founding of the Effective Writing Center in 2002 as a response to the desire of classroom teachers to bring writing instruction directly into the classroom. Today, the program is called Writing Fellows and advisers from the EWC visit 100's of online classrooms each session to assist students. Workshops usually focus on a current assignment that students are working on for that class. We help students analyze the instructor's assignment instructions, then devise a series of instructional threads that help students
build their response to the assignment step-by-step. These workshops often include helping students with outlining, thesis construction, introductory paragraph construction, body paragraph development, sentence style, grammar, citations, and any other writing skill needed for successful completion the assignment.  Our Mission As writing fellows, our goal is to assist students by first providing encouraging and constructive feedback on their submissions. Working in an online course can be an isolating experience. One of our main goals is to create an anxiety free zone, where students feel comfortable, valued and assisted in a timely manner (within a few hours of posting). Fear of judgment is a huge factor for students and it is our job to present our suggestions in a manner which reduces their fear and fosters constructive examples through careful, considerate language. The ultimate outcome of our visit is a classroom of confident and skilled writers. Feedback Hierarchy Our approach is to break down a longer assignment into a series of small parts. Usually each of our threads focuses on one small part, whether it be a short outline, thesis statement, body paragraph or a list of citations. Our feedback focuses on the main goals of each thread with detailed suggestions to the content posted by students. However, because we are writing advisers, we also take the time to comment on other aspects of the student's writing that may present issues down the road. So, for example, if a thread asks the student to submit a focused introduction paragraph that presents a clear thesis, the bulk of our feedback will be on the strategies the student chose to introduce the thesis and the adequacy of the thesis itself. However, if the student displays error patterns such as problems with capitalization, punctuation or proofreading, we would be remiss not to bring these briefly to the student's attention and suggest strategies for revision. Virtual Tour of the EWC