When I first stepped into the classroom this morning, one of my students told me that she had completely scrapped an essay draft after her visit to the Writing Center yesterday. This was wholly her decision, although one supported by her Writing Consultant. She came in with a draft she was much happier with and is confident in turning in.

Then, just as class was about to start, another student took her cell phone out of class and a moment later, came back with phone in hand and announced

I have the Writing Center on the phone. Does anybody else need to make an appointment?

One of my other students then stood up, stepped outside and set up her own appointment. This is serious progress for my students. I always encourage my students to go to the Writing Center, but for some reason or another, I’ve never had this much success with one single class. So far, I’ve had all of my students schedule writing conferences at least twice this semester. I am even more impressed that I’m getting them to go frequently. I think the reason for this improvement is in the method I took to introducing them to the Writing Center.

Familiarity Aids in Willingness

I have always taken advantage of the Writing Center’s in-class features. In the past, I have always had them come to the class at the beginning of the semester and talk to my students about the benefits of working with a Writing Consultant on their papers. This will generally perk at least one or two of my average writers up and send them to set up an appointment. I’ve learned that if I can get them to set up the first appointment, it’s more likely that they are going to set up another appointment. The problem was getting more than just a few students to realize the potential for the Writing Center.

This semester, I was having a problem readjusting to teaching 2-hour summer blocks of classes and my first few days of lectures were going way too fast. So, on the second day of class–when I normally would have asked a consultant to come speak about the Writing Center–I took my small class to the Writing Center. It seems like this was a good icebreaker. I had the chance to leave them alone with the consultants for half an hour, they were able to see exactly where the Writing Center is, and they got free grammar handbooks out of the trip.

I think this worked as a great icebreaker for the students not only because they were able to find out where the Writing Center is, but they were also able to meet with not just one of the consultants, but meet all of the consultants that they could work with over the semester. Several of the students set up appointments before they left the Writing Center that day.

Adding Incentives

The familiarity was not the only thing that I did to get students to go to the Writing Center. I also gave them a semi-benefit for going. I’ve used this in the past, but it has only worked with one or two of my average students. What I did was tell them that if they would visit the Writing Center, they could have an extra 24 hours to turn their paper in. In the Fall and Spring semesters, I do the same thing. This time, it resulted in all of my students getting the extra time to turn in their paper. I don’t know how much this has to do with the amount of quick writing the students are doing during these short Summer semesters, but I do know that this is working well for the students. 

I give them this extra time to make it more worth their time to go to the Writing Center. If you think about it, if the paper is due on Tuesday and the student has the chance to make their Writing Center appointment for Monday, they may feel rushed to make the changes and still get the paper in on time. But giving them the extra 24 hours gives them the chance to work with the changes suggested by the Writing Consultant.

Changing up the Idea of the “In Class Workshop”

I think, though, that the biggest reason that the students have taken so well to the Writing Center this semester has to do with the final incentive I gave them. I always set up two days of in-class writing workshops over the course of a unit. This gives students a specific time to spend time working on their essays and gives them the chance to ask questions about their essays at a time when they can get answers before the flow of writing dissipates. In the past, I have requested a Writing Consultant to be present at the first of these workshops. This allows the students to learn what the Writing Consultant has to offer and has led a few other students to set up an appointment with the Writing Center.

I didn’t use this tactic this semester. Instead, I told my students that if they wanted to use part of their class time on these dates for an appointment with the Writing Center, they could do so. I put parameters on this idea, though. They had to attend class between 8am and 9am (our class runs 8-10am), but they could set up an appointment at either 9 or 9:30 and leave for their appointment about 15 minutes early. I also told them that they could only set up these appointments on days that are clearly indicated on the syllabus as In-class writing workshops. Writing Center appointments are not a reason to miss class on any other day of the semester.

My students took a great advantage of this throughout the semester. Just last week, my class was a virtual ghost town. Why? Well, I have 8 students this semester. Three of these students had appointments at 9am, three at 9:30 am, and the two that were diligently working in class after the other six had left both had appointments for later in the day. It has worked really well.

Final Thoughts

So now that I have all of my students frequenting the Writing Center, I see much better essays. I see my students asking more detailed questions about what I’m looking for in an essay. I am sure that some of this comes from the bright students I have, but I also know that it comes from the Q&A session they do with their Writing Consultants as they begin working on the essay.

I cannot say that all of the improvements I’ve seen among students attending the Writing Center frequently are due to the changes that I made in class. Another serious factor to improving student writing using the Writing Center is due to communication between myself and the Writing Center. But this post has gotten a bit lengthy, so I’ll continue in a separate post.