The Writing Center at the University of Wyoming has migrated its scheduling to a new and better system, which brings out a lot of benefits to the students.
The past policies limited students from online consultation but the recent system provides integrated online consultation where students can simply be connected to a writing consultant in real time. The integrated e-tutoring capability also enables one to upload a paper and receive written feedback from a writing consultant.
“We made that change mainly for accessibility purposes for people, who maybe couldn’t get into the writing center for whatever reason, could visit with somebody either via video chat or just send their paper and get a feedback from a writing consultant,” Matt Drollette, Interim Director of Writing Center, said.
The writing center started making changes over the break when they received the students’ feedback. One of those changes was the option to increase the duration of the appointment from half an hour to an hour long.
“So I wanted to give people the option to have that longer time frame if they felt they needed it for longer assignments or for longer brainstorming,” Drollette said. “We also give them flexibility whether they want to choose their appointment for a half an hour to an hour. Some people might just choose for half an hour, some for an hour. But we figured it might be nice to give them the options.”
“It always took a long conversation at the beginning of the appointment, talking about the writing goals and what accomplishments we want in the assignments, that means we only had 20 minutes of time to talk about the actual writing,” Maaya Johnson, sophomore at UW, said.
Along with these immediate benefits, the latest system also allows to keep better track of data, including any feedback one leaves for the writing center, meaning they can adapt the Writing Center’s policies and programming to meet the ever-changing needs of the UW community.
“Data tracking is really important, as it really goes into improving services, we can see how students are using [the] writing center,” Drollette said.
The writing center has made the biggest change by increasing the hours from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and by improving the waitlist function, which allows student to receive messages when a previously booked appointment slot becomes available after a cancelation.
Previously, faculty, through collaborating with the English department, would come in and spend time, but with more professional consultants available, there are now people specifically devoted to the writing center.
“So, we have 10 consultants right now ranging from undergraduate to people with Ph.D.s and master’s degrees,” Drollette said.
UW student Mila Philips, majoring in English, said, “That’s really good that they are open till 7 p.m., it helps students who have job[s], specially [a] nine to five job.”
