This will be a site for all writing centers interested in online consultation and other tech topics. Our goal is to establish a space where writing centers directors, consultants, and tech people can trade ideas, give advice, share best practices, and learn more about online consultations. If you’d like to get involved, there’s a place for you.
Whew! It’s the end of the semester! In February and March it felt like the semester would never end, then April went by so quickly that I don’t know where the time has gone.
On April 26th the WolfWeb Online Writing Center (WWOWC) closed for the semester, concluding its first year of operation. Admittedly, at the end of fall semester I was a little concerned. Having only 22 visits for the whole semester didn’t make our new OWC a resounding success. A habitual Pollyanna, even I was a little nervous that a program I had such belief in was not going to make it. Tweaking the availability of appointments seemed like a last ditch effort keep the program hobbling along. In my mind the appointments would pick up a little, but not enough to interfere with the popular afternoon drop-in hours. The person working as the online consultant would have plenty of time to help out when the drop-in service was busy. As with most everything, it looked good on paper, but was something else in practice.
In practice, the WWOWC had 63 visits during spring semester! Apparently, tweaking appointment availability was just what the WWOWC needed. As excited as I am about the total number of visits, I’m thrilled by the number of returning users the WWOWC had. Those 63 visits were made by 46 students, for an average of 1.36 visits per student. Ummm, yes, I know that a .36 visit is like a .5 kid, but I’m excited because it means that on some level users liked the service.
Hi Everyone,
Just a quick note to let you all know the WWOWC is still alive and kicking. I’ve just had to take a little writing hiatus. Look for more substantial content in late April.
If anyone has any idea how my hectic January expanded into a hyper-hectic February, and could help me prevent this in the future, please let me know.
As I’d hoped the new WolfWeb Online Writing Center hours are proving popular. Instead of slow and steady, I’m anticipating a mercurial semester that more closely follows typical due date patterns. There are 12 possible online appointments each week. The first week there were three appointments, the next week 6.
Last semester we covered a lot of training, philosophy, and logistics, what – if anything – would you like to hear about this semester? Let me know in the comments.
By early November I knew that more funding would not be a possiblity, and finding a way to keep up the WWOWC was a priority as I planned for spring semester. Staffing the WWOWC turned out to be slightly cheaper than I’d expected, and I decided to close the WWOWC a little early. The result is that we still have a little less than a third of our grant money to contribute to next semester’s staffing budget. It wasn’t exactly a cake walk, but without too much trouble I was able to figure out how to make our existing funding stretch a little farther to continue to offer the service for at least one more semester. Under our existing budget this semester two consultants worked with drop-in writers from 2-5 every afternoon. Next semester we will continue that set up, but for one of the consultants their first responsibility will be online appointments. They will only hold drop-in sessions when they are not booked with online appointments.
The biggest obstacle was figuring out how to make sure that there were no last minute appointments, so a consultant who started work with a drop-in writer at 1:45 wouldn’t suddenly have a 2 pm appointment. A new policy was born – All WWOWC appointments have to be made by 1 pm that day. Allowing students to make appointments until 1pm would still give them a chance to make same day appointments, and the cut off point allows the consultants to manage their time for the shift. At 1 pm any remaining WWOWC appointments will be blocked off, ensuring that no one sneaks in after the deadline.
Before scheduling this kind of shift I talked to the consultants to find out if they felt comfortable with such a system. They all felt like this process would work out for them. Once I started actually planning the schedule I made sure that only experienced consultants were asked to work the dual shift between drop-in and online appointments, and that they felt comfortable moving between one style of consulting and another. The decision to split one consultant between two types of sessions has other benefits. We are actually able to offer more online appointment times per week, increasing the online appointments from eight a week to twelve. Hopefully, these times will also prove more popular with students.
My fingers are crossed that this system will work out, and I think spring will be a good time to work out any kinks before the rush of next fall. Yes, I’m already thinking about next fall. Now that we’ve begun offering online services I’d like to keep them going as long as possible to help students find us. January gets pretty hectic for everyone, and our centers won’t open until the 23rd, so unless you have a burning question you’d like answered, you may not hear from me again until February.
My goal for the WWOWC has always been that online sessions mirror face-to-face sessions as closely as possible. From the moment the writer and consultant sit down together, or meet up on chat, I ask the consultants to focus on making a connection between themselves and the person across the table/web from them. Asking the questions listed on our session information cards as a way to break the ice and find out more about the writer, and what they would like to accomplish in the session. Establishing this connection can be a challenge in an online session, so I coach the consultants to keep their side of the chat, well … chatty. Spend some additional time on the session pleasantries – finding out about the writer, her day, her assignment, etc. Write brief, but frequent entries that the writer can read and respond to quickly. Most importantly, because one of the biggest frustrations when chatting online is not know what is happening on the other side of the conversation, I tell consultants to indicate what they are doing during any longer pauses (reading, typing, thinking, etc.). Continue reading
Initially, I tried to promote the WWOWC as a sister center to WSTS. In promotional visits to English 101 classes, I’d say the full name, and on the WSTS website any links were lableled WWOWC. In retrospect, I think the idea that the WWOWC needed to be a new service carried over from the grant class into my web design and promotions. Separating the two services meant we failed to take advantage of the WSTS’s already strong presence on campus, and created some confusion. WSTS is already seen as the place to go to get help with papers and presenations. As something new, WWOWC seemed like it would be something different.
The confusion might go some way to explaining the consistent, but low, number of WWOWC users. As I mentioned in my quick update, mid-semester I sought out new ways to promote the WWOWC. As I crafted emails, and started our twitter account I had to choose between continuing to promote the WWOWC as a separate sister center to WSTS, or integrating it into the WSTS’ identity. I chose integration. If you look closely at the WSTS website, you will see that the old WWOWC navigation button has changed and is now WWOWC – Online Writing Center. Instead of creating two separate Twitter identities for our two centers, I created one WSTS account (@wstsncsu). Using that account, every one to two days I send out a tweet specifically promoting our online writing center.
Creating the WWOWC catapulted the WSTS into a web presence as well. We don’t have many followers yet, but occasionally other NCSU entities will retweet us, and I believe it is good promotion for both centers.It might be too soon to know if this strategy will prove effective, but I’m happy with how it supports my efforts to build a WSTS community on our campus.
This semester has been so full that I simultaneously can’t believe it’s almost over, and can’t wait for it to end. Next time, I’ll post about consultant training: what I did this time, and what I will try to do differently next semester.
Since the WWOWC is housed in the face-to-face WSTS, I need to tell you a little bit about the physical space. The WSTS is in a long, narrow room (approx. 12’ x 26’). A good portion of the room is taken up by a room that houses the building sprinkler system. It leaves us with a small 4’ x 6’ cubby in the back, which isn’t really ‘usable’ space. When I started the job in Fall 2010, the room was painted white and organized to maximize functionality. Two circular tables provided consulting spaces, there were filing cabinets for storage, a small waiting area, and a couple of book shelves. Given the awkward proportions of the room, it was a decent set up.
Like I said, it was a very functional space, but it certainly didn’t set me at ease. The core of my philosophy of writing center work is that both the consultant and writer need to feel comfortable enough in a space to share their writing and ideas with each other. The center provides the physical space from which the consultant and writer can engage, and share with, each other. The center becomes that space when it is deliberately designed to welcome whomever enters, and to visually signal that “work happens” here. Consequently, I resurrected my set-designing skills, pulled out a scale ruler, and began redesigning the space. The family tradition of using furniture rearrangement as a coping mechanism finally paid off!
Forgive me for rushing, but I’m determined to get this post in before September runs out.
The WolfWeb Online Writing Center (WWOWC) opened on September 6, and it’s been an interesting few weeks.
Let me share some of the technical details of the WWOWC. To help give structure to our synchronous model of consulting, the WWOWC opened as an appointment-based center. Writers can make appointments in 60-minute blocks between 12:30 and 2:30pm, Monday through Thursday. It’s not a lot of time, I know. I would love to offer more appointments, but since WWOWC consultants are being paid from the grant we received, there are only so many hours to spread around.
All of that being said I’m happy to say that in our first four weeks, we’ve served eight writers. It might not seem that impressive when you consider that there were 30 appointments available. What makes me happy with those numbers is that they didn’t happen in a cluster. The first week there was only one appointment, but since then we’ve had at least two appointments a week. One week we even had three. I’m really happy about this consistency. It might just be my Pollyana nature, but I think the consistency tells me that there are writers out there who want to use this kind of service. The low numbers reflect that we haven’t stumbled upon the best time to offer appointments.
As I said, I started with a soft launch approach to marketing for the WWOWC. To that I’ve added some overt marketing. When I sent an email promoting our service to the entire College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS), I specifically mentioned the WWOWC. This week, I also moved into completely new territory for us by starting a Writing and Speaking Tutorial Services (WSTS) Twitter account (@wstsncsu), and sending out our first tweets. (Follow us!) Although the account is for all of WSTS, I plan to use it to promote WWOWC appointments. Our tweets will be geared towards NCSU students, but you are welcome to check us out.
In the more thoughtful side of this post (hopefully by October 15), I’ll talk more about constructing our online space and identity. For now, I just wanted to make sure to keep you all updated.
As part of this project, we are investigating the types of software online writing centers are using, as well as the types of institutional support they have (or don’t have). You can help us by taking our brief survey.
One of the earliest decisions I’ve had to make about the WWOWC is how much, and where, to publicize the center. The grant that allowed me to pilot the center only allowed me to staff eight hours a week of OWC time. While I would love to flood the campus with announcements about the OWC, our undergraduate population is over 24,000 students. I’m afraid too large of a promotional campaign would flood the service, creating numerous problems. I am, however, also afraid that too small of a promotion will result in minimal usage of the center, which would hurt my ability to make an argument for continuing to staff the WWOWC.
Ultimately, I decided to use a soft-launch approach. The WWOWC is on the main page of the WSTS webpage where any student looking to find out information about the WSTS will find it. Each semester someone from WSTS, usually myself, visits all the English 100 & 101 courses to promote our services. During my visits, I promote the WWOWC. Also, the WSTS staff’s first project this semester is to create an “Introduction to WSTS” video for all the distance learning courses. I will make sure the WWOWC is promoted there as well.
As I work my way through all the classroom visits to the English 100 & 101 courses the first week of WSTS appointments generally fills up. Yet, we still don’t have a single appointment for the WWOWC. Intellectually, I know there aren’t any appointments yet because the WWOWC doesn’t open until after Labor Day, and we ask students to only book appointments two weeks in advance, but my stomach hasn’t come to terms with that reality yet. As an adamant believer in the efficacy of synchronous online writing support I want to see the WWOWC succeed. It is also the first major project I’ve championed as the Coordinator of Writing and Speaking Tutorial Services, and since I jumped into writing this series, the success of the center suddenly feels much more important to me professionally as well. This is where I just have to take a deep breath and wait for September.
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