The Writing Center offers a variety of resources to assist UAGC online instructors.

Reach out to us with any questions or supports needed!

Jennifer Dunn, M.F.A.
[email protected]

  • Academic Engagement Center  
  • Department of Education & Liberal Arts, College of Arts & Sciences

 

Louie Centanni, M.F.A.
[email protected]

  • Forbes School of Business & Technology
  • Department of Behavioral Sciences, College of Arts & Sciences
  • Department of Health Sciences, College of Arts & Sciences
  • Doctoral In Residence

 

Millie Jones, M.A., M.Ed.
[email protected]

  • Writing Center Lead

Students trust their faculty to direct them to the correct supports.


1. Encourage support based on student needs

It’s important to know which writing support is best for the kind of help the student needs.

When to suggest Website Guides—to review writing & APA guides/samples

These are beneficial for essentially every student for any type of writing need. Website guides are go-to resources for detailed information on any writing topic!

When to suggest Grammarly—to identify, understand, and avoid grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors

Grammarly is the best support for sentence-level errors, and it teaches grammar rather than just correcting it. Paper Review and Live Tutoring are less effective for grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

When to suggest Live Writing Tutoring—to help with a specific focus, such as APA, thesis statements, quoting, etc.

This is where a student can get direct instruction on a particular writing issue. A tutor can review a writing sample and APA during a live writing session.

When to suggest Paper Review—to get revision suggestions, focusing on organization and topic development.

Paper Review is less effective for grammar and APA formatting, focusing instead on holistic revision.

 

2. Prepare students for effective writing support

Preparing students for writing support ensures the most effective and efficient use of their time.

Avoid:

  • Telling a student: “Go to the Writing Center” or other similar broad statement
  • Giving a student a laundry list of areas that need improvement
  • Assuming a student knows what to ask a tutor for or how to ask a tutor for what they need

Provide:

  • Specifics of what a student needs help on and the language to use with a tutor such as, “adding my own ideas,” “paraphrasing,” or “selecting relevant evidence”
  • 1 or 2 topics/issues max– learning is incremental
  • When possible, give a resource to the student to review first before taking questions to the tutor

For example:

INSTEAD OF

“Get help from the Writing Center on avoiding plagiarism.”

TRY

“You have a few ideas that need to be cited. Review this resource.
Also, include more of your own ideas. Review this resource.
Write down specific questions and use the Live Writing Tutoring to ask a tutor when to cite or how you can add your own ideas.”

See our Write On!:Faculty Edition video "Preparing Students for Tutoring" and our presentation "Encouraging Effective Tutoring Supports" for more details!

As faculty and staff, you might notice a student struggling with grammar, punctuation, meeting assignment expectations, plagiarism, and/or other writing-related concerns. To support these students, you can refer a student to the Writing Center at any time. To do so, follow these instructions:

  1. Gather Information. In order to submit a faculty referral, you will need some key information, including the student’s name, email address, course number, assignments he/she is working on, and key issues you see in the student’s writing.

  2. Fill in the Faculty Referral Form. Fill in all required fields on the Faculty Referral Form and click the arrow to submit the referral form. *Limit student needs to 3-4 issues--learning is incremental.

    Image pointing to the submit arrows on the referral form.

  3. Writing Center Sends Email. Once the Writing Center receives your referral, we will send an email to the student with details about the supports that are best suited for their specific writing needs. We will copy you on this email.

We created a library of announcements showcasing our writing supports that you can post in your classroom. These announcements are ready to go, so you don’t have to create the content!

You’ll notice that they are Word documents, but within each Word document is the HTML code for the announcement, which you can copy and paste into your announcement's HTML Editor. For help posting these HTML announcements, watch this quick tutorial.

 

The Writing Center Program Liaisons work with the Instructional Designers and faculty Subject Matter Experts during a course development or revision to support the curriculum development and revision process. We can support student writing expectations with the following: 

Scaffolding and Reviewing writing assignments

We offer guidance on scaffolding writing assignments to guide students through the writing process and support student outcomes. We also review your writing prompts for clarity of student understanding of writing expectations.

Brainstorm, outline, draft, implement feedback, and final paper.

Suggesting writing resources to embed

We suggest Writing Center resources to embed within assignments.

Analysis Tutorial

 

Answering questions about available writing resources and student supports

We answer questions about the writing or APA resources available and the student supports we offer. We are also happy to hear suggestions for future resources and discuss other ways to support you. Reach out to your Writing Center liaison at any time.

Creating custom writing-related resources

We create customized resources to help students accurately complete assignments for courses under revision or development. Created on a case-by-case basis. These could take from 2-5 weeks to create.

Course Exemplar

 

Download our fillable assignment template to customize for any assignment: Fillable Assignment Template