Writing Centers in Transition, Student in Transition: SWCA Research 2018

Kate Norton is a sophomore double majoring in Psychology and English. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Conference Grant which she used to attend the American Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference.

My colleague Lauren and I attended the Southeastern Writing Center Association’s 2018 conference in Richmond, Virginia. At Virginia Commonwealth University, we presented original research about the Emory Writing Center to a group of confederates who were interested in our particular topic, which was “Exploring Attitudes About Conventional Writing Center Sessions and Workshops.” When we began our research, we didn’t have a good handle on what our purpose was, but as we analyzed our data, we came to enlightening conclusions concerning our Writing Center and steps we would like to take to improve it. 

Our research was founded with the purpose of discovering Emory students’ opinions of and feelings towards our Writing Center. With the information we gathered from that, we went on to explore the idea of offering alternatives to our usual tutoring sessions. Currently, the Emory Writing Center offers 45-minute, one-on-one tutoring sessions for students. Additionally, the Writing Center will work with students on academic essays, internship applications, graduate school applications, statements of interest, among other things. When we started our research, we realized that attitudes about the Writing Center could potentially be soured by misconceptions. In order to conduct this research, we needed a topic. Formulating the topic and stable thesis for the research took a while and we changed it over time as our interests and focuses changed. It was important to realize that we could change the topic of our research to best fit our interests and explorations.

Through a questionnaire issued electronically through Google Forms, we collected data from 23 randomly selected Emory University undergraduates. We found that 72.7% of students had not attended a session at the Writing Center, though 95.5% had heard of the Writing Center. We wanted to understand why this large discrepancy exists. We thought we would ask a question about what students believe the Writing Center could help with. Only 54.5% believed that the Writing Center assists with science-based essays; 31.8% believed they could come to the Writing Center to workshop internship applications; and only 27.3% responded that they believed the Writing Center assisted with graduate school applications. These numbers show a trend that the undergraduate population does not understand the services the Writing Center offers. We then asked what would prompt students to attend a tutoring session. 54.5% of respondents chose “Learning more about the services the Writing Center provides.” The remaining 45.5 percent responded with, “Learning more about who the tutors are and what their specialties are.” These responses were consistent with our hypothesis, which was that the Writing Center does not adequately convey information about its purposes and services.

Students access the Writing Center—and the site we use to schedule appointments—via the Emory Writing Center website (linked below). From the first half of our research, we concluded that it would be pragmatic to improve the website. On the website, it is not immediately obvious where to look for services, tutor specialties, and other things like that. Students must navigate for a while to find this crucial information. We believe that using technology effectively and making it as easy as possible for users may significantly increase the amount of students that sign up for a session at the Writing Center. Perhaps the difficulty in understanding the Writing Center is the reason that students do not attend.

The second facet of our research was to assess the likelihood that students would attend a population-specific or studio-style workshops over our regular Writing Center appointments. Population-specific workshops would be held for a certain class, assignment, or major; studio-style workshops are held in a space where students compose on their own and have access to tutors for assistance if they need, but are not directly working with tutors the whole time. The second survey was given to 120 attendees, both graduate and undergraduate students, of Writing Center sessions. This survey gauged students’ attitudes towards workshops. Of the 120 students who took the survey, 85 of them said that they strongly, mostly, or somewhat agree that they would be interested in studio-style workshops. The fact that 70.8% of respondents indicated interest in workshops prompted us to explore the option of having the Writing Center offer workshops. If this large number of students is interested, the Center should take advantage and cater to a wider variety of students in order to better serve the student population of Emory while also increasing attendance at the Writing Center.

The experience of conducting research for an organization that I wholeheartedly stand behind was fulfilling for a few reasons. I am glad that I got to explore the field of research in a setting with Writing Center directors and fellow tutors; this also allowed me to conduct academic research for the first time. I enjoy public speaking, so I had the most fun when I was actually presenting the data to the audience. Everyone who attended had questions and participated in our talk, which was enjoyable because they offered some insights and suggestions as well. Presenting our research was surprisingly stress-free, because we were in a very streamlined academic environment, which made it feel as though we were among colleagues instead of among adults in the academic field. We found that actually conducting the research was difficult, but synthesizing and presenting it was more enjoyable and fruitful than expected. I was able to grow as a student by exploring undergraduate research for the first time; I now know how to synthesize data and come up with original conclusions. We were able, most importantly, to academically explore something we are passionate about. Being able to combine research and experience with gaining knowledge about the Writing Center was an entirely enriching experience.

Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.