In an effort to build community among secondary school writing centers and to provide more opportunities for directors to collaborate, SSWCA is pleased to announce our Digital Roundtable Series. Each month, SSWCA member schools are invited to join us for an informal discussion via GoogleHangouts. Each month’s topic and guiding questions will be announced in the month leading up to the roundtable.
On Tuesday, June 12, Stacey Waldrup (Board Member at Large) and Heather Barton (Board Member at Large) hosted a Digital Roundtable focused on data collection in the writing center. Much of our conversation revolved around the types of data collected and sharing it with students and staff. Stacey Waldrup of the Raider Writing Center at Crescent Valley High School (OR), Heather Barton of the East Wing Writing Center at Etowah High School (GA), Anna Moberly of the Canton High School Writing Center at Canton High School (CT), and Stephanie Hanson of the Atoms Writing Center at Annandale High School (VA) participated in this month’s roundtable.
The following notes were generated from our conversation.
Does your center collect data? Why, why not? We all collected data on student information and why they were using the center. Ways in which we gathered information included:
- Session cover sheets
- Google form (what assignment is, what students want during the session, stage student is at in writing process, what type of assignment, teacher name, what type of session (in-person, video, online, in/out of center))
- Spreadsheet available to teachers at high school so they can check in on students. (Tutors fill out form)
How to go digital and have less paperwork?
- Chromebooks. 1:1 school – students bringing their own to sessions
- Use google classroom/learning management system for the writing center – Heather uses Canvas with her 70+ tutor center to house tutoring information, service hour sheets, and event details. To schedule, Heather uses WConline (pricey, but worth it). WConline automatically allows for clients to receive reminders, for tutors to craft and send feedback to teachers, and to send feedback requests to clients after sessions. WConline also generates most of the data used by the center.
What do you collect? Who collects it? How is it collected? And from whom (students, tutors, teachers, admin)?
- Figure out how to determine the impact of student achievement – information on grade improvement
- Looked at Heather’s report – 2 AP stats students created for the WC and admin liked it and wanted more information.
- Turning it over the students was the best thing for the data to have them take ownership of the center
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- There is anecdotal data that the center is helping – principal not using numbers, not asking for numbers, so where do we go from there with the data itself
What do you want to find out?
- After effects of center usage – not just anecdotes, but with numbers
- Heather wanted to find the information needed by admin – Does the writing center help build writing skills? – and wanted to find out if the writing center helped build self-efficacy in writing: 1. Survey of students for self-efficacy before and after appointments (takes a long time to track); 2. Pretest to students on writing skills with then post-test (worked with another teacher on this.) Resulted showed skills increased with writing center usage. This could be replicated by working with another teacher in the department.
How is the data used?
- The data would be best used to help the most amount of people
- Keep tutors motivated
- Gather data based on admin pressure, but data is really collected for student use
- Bring in other teachers – has a collaborative with another teacher to teach a lesson for tutors – just other teachers as knowledge
When do you share with tutors?
- Try to throughout the year
- Start with data in the fall
- Don’t share all data with students, look at planning for next year
- Only share data that students care about
- Incentive for students to tutor more?
- Small incentives for student tutors – no negative for small incentives
- In what ways has teacher input affected your data collection/usage?
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- No specific collaboration with teachers – just anecdotal
- Maybe follow up with students with how they did on an assignment after having a session
- Looking at retention survey and use that to show usage of center
- Survey freshman of writing skills in beginning and then again in March
Takeaways and Further Reading:
- Kent, Richard. A Guide to Creating Student-Staffed Writing Centers Grade 6-12. 2nd. Ed. New York: Peter Lang, 2017. Print.
Studies that could be fairly easily replicated:
Dinitz, S., & Kiedaisch, J. (2003). Creating theory: Moving tutors to the center. Writing Center Journal, 23(2), 63-76.
- Focused on how tutors approach their engagement in a larger writing center conversation by looking at how consultants interact with and shape writing center theory.
Raymond, L., & Quinn, Z. (2012). What a writer wants: Assessing fulfillment of student goals in writing center tutoring sessions. Writing Center Journal, 32(1), 64-77.
- Discovered that tutors honored student goals and partially fulfilled them all of the time and wholly fulfilled them often; even so, there was a mismatch in tutor and student goals that led tutors to shift sessions focus to other topics of concern.
Enders, D. (2009). What we talk about: A longitudinal study of writing tasks students and writing center tutors discuss. Writing Lab Newsletter, 33(9), 6-10.
- Determined that editing was a major focus of tutorials but not the only one and that trends in focus were noticeable among disciplines and course levels.
