KHM: How similar or different was your idea of building from a writing center model from those models you researched at other universities?

DS: Well, with James's facility at Furman, I think he was working from a writing center model, as well. He's written extensively on writing centers and is very familiar with writing center pedagogy. So, I think we would see a lot of overlap with how they do things there. And I'm not as familiar with the specifics of the facilities that Clemson has. The situation is a little bit different at Michigan Tech, from what I understand, because they're in the enviable position of being able to have students actually do the composing at their lab. It's a relatively large facility, a number of workstations, enough to host maybe two small classes simultaneously. So the students can come there and compose the whole project in the lab, and they just receive support when they need it. I think that's a great model. It's also a very resource-intensive model.

What we're able to do is to give students support for an hour and then they go and actually do the bulk of composing off-site, at one of our public labs, or at their personal computer. But we only have three workstations right now, and we hope to increase that number and we hope to have more space and more equipment. But, for the foreseeable future, we really can only help a small number of people at a time and we're really designed for the one-hour session. And, again, that comes from the writing center model. You don't write your whole paper in the writing center necessarily. You come there and you get a response, and then you go home and write it or you go to a lab and write. It would be nice if you could write your whole paper in the writing center, and anytime you needed support, you just raise your hand and have a tutor come over to help you. But, that's very resource-intensive, and right now we can't afford to provide that kind of support.

Top | Next