Writing in and across Disciplines
IMPLEMENTING WRITING FELLOW PROGRAMS AT TWO GERMAN UNIVERSITIES: IMPRESSIONS, CHALLENGES AND RESEARCH RESULTS
Stephanie Dreyfürst¹, Katrin Girgensohn², Franziska Liebetanz³
¹Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Germany ²European University Viadrina, Frankfurt /Oder, Germany ³European University Viadrina, Frankfurt /Oder, Germany
In this symposium, the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main and the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), both located in Germany, will report about their common project of implementing writing fellow programs at their universities. Writing Fellows are students educated as writing center peer tutors. They work together with lecturers and students across various disciplines. Lecturers who would like to teach writingintensive classes within their disciplines can apply for the writing fellow program. They can gain one to two writing fellows to work with their classes. The writing fellows help lecturers with the design of two writing assignments and provide written and oral feedback on the texts that the students hand in during the course of the semester. During class, the writing fellows comment two drafts per semester and meet afterwards with the student writers individually to discuss the next steps for revision. We introduced writing fellow programs at both universities in winter semester 2013/14 with the help of our partner writing center at the University of Wisconsin/Madison (USA). The program follows structures provided in the literature (e.g. Hall & Hughes 2011, HaringSmith 1992, Severino & Knight 2007, Zawacki 2008). We will report our experiences from working with about 15 very different classes in different disciplines and first results from an empirical study. The overall aim of course is to derive recommendations for action that may help future Writing Fellows in their daily work. Speaker One Speaker one will address the question of why writing fellow programs were taken into consideration as an addition to our centers’ regular work, based on local needs at both universities as well as on a brief literature review (cf. Severino et al. 2007, Zawacki 2008). The professional relationship between the two German writing centers and the writing center in the US will be outlined. The presentation will then give an overview of our writing fellow programs, addressing the following aspects: tutor education of writing fellows and their tasks within the program participating classes and the collaboration process between teachers, writing fellows and the program coordinator collaboration processes between writers and writing fellows A typical semester cycle in the writing fellow program will illustrate those aspects. Presentation one will close with a synopsis of the pilot in collaboration with the faculty for law and the following implementation at all faculties at the speaker’s university. Speaker two Speaker two will give a brief introduction to her university’s context and point out differences as well as similarities in her writing fellow program. The presentation will then focus on the evaluation results and experiences with the program. She will share some typical and multifaceted challenges which occur when offering such a program: ● before and during a writing fellow course, faculty teachers are required to voice their (sometimes vague) ideas about ‘good academic texts’ and evaluation criteria; the writing fellows need to know exactly what the teacher expects from the two writing assignments; ● students are confronted with a completely new learning environment where they collaborate with a writing fellow from the Writing Center; ● writing fellows face the challenge of acting as an intermediary between faculty and students while still being students themselves; avoiding certain ‘tripping hazards’ which come with their new role is paramount to their work;
● finally, the head of the program is entrusted with the task to supervise the entire process and to verify that the program’s guidelines are being followed by faculty teachers and writing fellows alike. Based on these experiences, some reflections on possible strategies for a permanent implementation of the writing fellow program will follow. Speaker three Speaker three will introduce results of an empirical study, conducted based on data that was collected in Frankfurt (Oder). The focus is to find out more about the differences between oral and written feedback. Given that peer tutors do not learn how to provide written feedback in their regular peertutortraining they face major challenges when working as a WritingFellow for the first time. The key questions of the study therefore are to find out ● how the WritingFellows employ the rules for oral feedback they already know on the written feedback they provide and ● which additional techniques they apply beyond that. Consultation protocols, the commentaries and the personal letter the writing fellows send to the writers are analyzed by qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2008). The overall aim is to provide recommendations for interactional feedback strategies future writing fellows can use in their everyday work.
References Hall, E. & Hughes, B. 2011, 'Preparing Faculty, Professionalizing Fellows: Keys to Success with Undergraduate Writing Fellows in WAC', The WAC Journal, no. 22, pp. 2140. HaringSmith, T. (1992). Changing Students’ Attitudes: Writing Fellows Programs. In S. H. McLeod & M. Soven (Ed.), Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs (pp. 175–188). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Mayring, P. 2008: Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. Weinheim: Beltz Verlag. Severino, C. & Knight, M. (2007). Exporting Writing Center Pedagogy: Writing Fellows Programs as Ambassadors for the Writing Center. Marginal Words, Marginal Work: Tutoring the Academy in the Work of Writing Centers (pp. 19–33). Cresskill, NJ:Hampton P. Zawacki, T.M. 2008, 'Writing Fellows as WAC Change Agents: Changing What? Changing Whom? Changing How?', Across the Disciplines, vol. 5, pp. Available from: < http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/fellows/zawacki.cfm>. [17 September 2014]