Faculty Resources

The Writing Center is dedicated to supporting writing across campus. We offer one-to one feedback sessions for students, faculty, and staff, as well as custom workshops and presentations. 

In our 1-1 tutoring sessions, writers work with a tutor on a specific writing project. Writers can come in at any stage of the project, whether they're just getting started or putting final touches on a project. Our tutors offer critique, praise, and suggestions, but the writer is always in charge: writers set the agenda for the session, draw from their own knowledge and experiences, and make the final decisions about their writing. We believe all writers benefit from a reader, and this process of feedback and conversation is central to the writing process.

The goal of a feedback session is to move a writing project forward and to teach the writer something about writing in our 45 minute sessions. Writing is highly individual and context-dependent, so we focus on helping writers better understand their options. Rather than aiming for a "perfect" project after a single session, our goal is to help writers develop transferable skills through attentive, focused discussion of the writer’s paper. The work is incremental, but deep learning always is.

As tutors, we usually start by focusing on the big picture: has the writer accomplished what the prompt or guidelines call for? Is the writing achieving what they want to achieve? How's the organization, structure, format, argument, evidence, citations, genre, conventions, tone, and design of the project? Once the writer feels good about these big picture concerns, we move to sentence-level issues like spelling, grammar, and other errors. We especially try to focus on patterns of error so we can help writers learn how to proofread and edit their work independently. However, good writing is not (just) the avoidance of error, so unless otherwise asked, we begin with the big picture.

Most writers hear about the Center from their professors, so thank you for spreading the word! First, it's always beneficial to talk with your students about your own experiences with writing: hearing how you approach the writing process and seek out resources like writing centers, writing groups, and writing buddies does a lot to normalize the idea that writing isn't a "one and done" skill.

Second, we are happy to come to your class for a class introduction. You might also include this language on your syllabus and Canvas site:

• Feedback Session: Stuck on your draft, or just need a second opinion? Bring in your writing and any concerns to have a tutor look over your work with you! 
• Planning Session: Have 0 words written? That’s fine! Bring the assignment prompt and we’ll go over it with you and help you brainstorm ideas and make a plan for your project.
• Accountability Session: Trouble focusing alone? You can come sit with a tutor who will help you stay on task. They’ll check in on your work every 15-20 minutes while you work independently.

Yes! But because we likely cannot accommodate all your students visiting in one week, we have a few requests. Check out our Required Visits page for more information. You might also consider: 

• Offering extra credit to students who visit the Writing Center. 
• Using Writing Center visits as a way to offer make up opportunities to students who miss peer review or workshop days in class. 
• Working with us to bring a few tutors to your class for a peer workshop, where students bring drafts to class and discuss them with their peers.

We leave it up to students to determine if they want you to know when they come in. If they do, they’ll tell us and we will email you a session summary. (We do not sign or stamp papers.) If a student says they have attended and you did not receive an email, ask them to contact us and we will resend.

Absolutely. See our Workshops and Presentations page for more details.

Yes! The Writing Center is available to everyone in the Ball State community, and about 3-5% of our visits are with faculty and staff. All tutors are trained to work with a variety of types of writing. You can learn more about our tutors by going to our schedule and selecting an appointment slot; when you choose an appointment time, the tutor's bio will appear on the appointment form.

We sympathize! Here are a few small things we suggest:

• Talk to students about your writing process at some point this semester. Show them a draft you’re working on. Share something frustrating in your writing work! Student writers often think we don’t struggle, and they think their work needs to be perfect from day 1.
• When you’re creating rubrics or assignment prompts, make your expectations clear and quantifiable, and give a sense of why this expectation exists–especially if it is something that might be specific to this genre or to your field.
  • For example: instead of just saying, “don’t use ‘I’ or ‘we’ in this lab report, it’s helpful if you can explain briefly to students that a lab report is about the experiment and the results, not about the people who conduct it.
• When you’re grading writing, it may be helpful to consider writing in light of "higher order concerns," or concerns with content, concepts, and ideas, versus "lower order concerns," or things like syntax, grammar, and polishing.
  • For lower order concerns, we suggest looking for patterns. That way, you can explain a concept once, identify a few instances, and leave the writer to find the rest.
  • For higher order concerns, you might consider choosing the most pressing or important issues. Try to spend time explaining why it's an issue. For example, if you can explain to a writer how their lack of a thesis statement impacted your experience as a reader, it can help them move from thinking, "I need a thesis statement because that's what you do in a paper," and toward understanding, "Including a thesis statement helps my reader understand the scope and goal of the project."